Plus
It was just an ordinary morning.
Until that broadcast came on.
—Kzzzzzt. Kzzzzzt.
"...What the hell. Who turned the TV on?"
"Teacher, the remote's right there on the desk."
"It wasn't us."
Everyone was still frowning in confusion when the unidentified man appeared on the screen — and at first, he earned nothing but laughter.
"What is that? Some lame cosplay?"
"Halloween was ages ago. What kind of event is this supposed to be?"
The teacher jabbed the power button on the remote again and again, irritation plain on his face, but the television refused to shut off. Eventually he stepped out into the hallway.
The moment he checked the other classrooms, he froze.
DONG—
A massive toll of a bell rolled out through every classroom television, spilled into the corridors, and flooded the entire school.
The teacher staggered back, overwhelmed by the wrongness of it — but the middle schoolers, still at an age that would stake their lives on a good laugh, only stared at the screens with bright, curious eyes.
"—Unable to accept the truth of Karma, you will be weeded out of this vast dimensional cosmos. It can't be helped. That is the natural order of things."
Well — only a handful of people actually understood the man's meaningless rambling.
"Unnie, what is he even talking about?"
"Beats me. I don't know either. At least I can tell it's complete nonsense."
Yujin answered Sujin's question in a flat, uninterested tone.
Whoever was pulling this prank, a stunt this dull and joyless was only going to earn the wrath of every teacher and student in the building.
"The teachers have probably stormed the broadcast room by now. Kinda curious what the culprit's face looks like..."
"—You must even face extinction. How wretched that must feel."
Yujin snorted at the cosplay guy still droning on.
Extinction? What kind of theme is that? If you're going to pull a prank, at least make it light and fun.
She did feel a little wretched, though — watching a man who had no idea his attempt at a joke had already crashed and burned in spectacular fashion.
"—But there is no need to worry."
"—To those of you who will suffer the sentence of extinction, I will deliver an ending that is endlessly clean. And to those who watch — endlessly entertaining."
"Hey! Knock it off already!"
"Ah, that bastard's seriously the worst. If you're gonna put on a show, make it something people can actually enjoy. Of all the garbage..."
The boys in the classroom bellowed and jeered at the top of their lungs.
Whether he heard them or not, the bandaged man only smiled — and vanished with one last line.
"—Walk a mile in their shoes."
"—I sincerely hope your deaths are worth at least that much."
"Walk a mile in their shoes, my ass. How about I just dismember the bastard."
"Hey. Anybody know who that guy is? Which classroom is closest to the broadcast room?"
"Probably Class 5 or 6."
"He's dead. That son of a bitch. We're grabbing him and snapping his arms and legs every break period."
Yujin turned away from the television and swept her eyes over the classroom as it erupted back into noisy chatter — then she found herself looking at her twin sister, who somehow seemed off.
"Hey, Kim Sujin. What's wrong with you?"
"...No, that broadcast. Didn't it feel a little weird?"
"What? Don't tell me you actually got scared, Kim Sujin. Over a broadcast like that?"
Yujin let out a small, incredulous laugh and tugged on Sujin's ear.
"Ow ow ow! What was that for?!"
"Ugh, seriously. What am I going to do with you, being this naive? Kim Naive-Naive!"
"Ah — don't call me that!"
Sujin raised her voice in irritation at her sister's teasing — the same as always, and yet something she could never quite get used to — and in that same instant:
"Kyaaaaaaah!"
A scream tore through the air from somewhere nearby.
"...Huh?"
"What was that? Who was that?"
Silence swallowed the classroom whole.
And just like that, in a single breath, Yujin and Sujin's ordinary lives shattered into pieces.
"Hah... hah..."
Barely managing to calm her hammering heart and burning lungs, Yujin tightened her grip on Sujin's hand.
"U-Unnie..."
"Idiot! Use that breath to take one more step instead of talking!"
Yujin yanked irritably at her shirt, soaked through with cold sweat, pressed herself flat against the bathroom wall, and carefully peered out past the corridor.
"Ghk. Grrhk. Ghk."
At the same moment, a bone-chilling sound rose from the opposite end of the hall.
Yujin and Sujin both clamped their hands over their mouths and kept backing deeper into the bathroom.
As the footsteps and moans drew closer, Yujin shoved her trembling sister into a corner and hid with her.
With only her eyes peeking out toward the bathroom entrance, she watched a boy's corpse stagger past on unsteady feet.
Then another scream rang out from farther down the hall. The corpse stopped dead —
"Grrrghghghgh. Ghk!"
— wrenched its head around with its mouth stretched wide open, then bolted away in a blur. They watched it vanish with eyes full of raw terror.
Desperately trying to crush the tension flooding every inch of her body, Yujin pressed a hand hard against her chest and turned her head.
She found Sujin pressed tight into the filthy corner of the bathroom wall, shaking violently, and spoke in a whisper.
"...Kim Sujin. Calm down. It went somewhere else."
"What... what was that? Unnie. What the hell was that thing. Seriously."
"I don't know either. Stop asking me things you don't know! If you don't know it, I don't know it either!!!"
Even though Sujin was the one who always did better in school, Yujin clawed at her hair under the rising tide of irritation and fear — then slowly lowered her hands and leaned back against the wall.
Sujin watched her sister with trembling eyes, then asked in a voice just as unsteady.
"...Unnie. What do we do now?"
Yujin gave no answer — but both of them already knew.
They were trapped in this damp bathroom. And if they wanted to get out, they would have to risk their lives.
They spent a full day locked inside the girls' restroom.
Stepping out into a corridor crawling with monsters, clear-headed and calm the way people did in movies and dramas — that was far too much to ask of them.
"The adults. The adults will come save us. They have to..."
The words that scraped out of Yujin's cracked lips were hopeful, but Sujin couldn't say a thing in reply.
Like a keyword stuck to a piece of fiction — like a happy ending already written into a finished story — this reality was far too brutal to let them cling to hope in her sister's words.
Worse, at some point the power cut out completely. In the pitch-black middle of the night, when they couldn't see an inch in front of their faces, both sisters — older and younger alike — sat trembling with every nerve focused on sound alone.
And if they happened to catch even a single set of footsteps passing by, their barely-closed eyelids would snap wide open. Sleep, in a situation like that, was a luxury they couldn't afford. They stayed awake the entire night.
Chirp — chirp-chirp —
Yujin opened her eyes to bright sunlight pouring through the bathroom window and the sound of birds, and for a moment she thought it might all be over. She scrambled to her feet.
Gyaaaaaagh...
Then someone else's scream crushed that hope flat. The eyes that had gone round with hope slowly closed, and Yujin hung her head.
"Hic... hk..."
Her shoulders shook. The sobs that leaked out were terribly faint — and that very faintness made her look like a fragile child.
Sujin wanted to lift a hand and stroke her sister's back, to comfort the girl who had seemed so strong only yesterday. She couldn't.
Sujin was exhausted too. She had nothing left — no strength, no heart — to offer comfort with.
A little later, footsteps echoed down the corridor again. Yujin's head snapped up. She grabbed Sujin's hand and pulled her back into hiding.
Then she turned on her sister with bloodshot eyes and opened her mouth.
"We're getting out of here, Sujin. We have to get out. Out of this goddamn bathroom."
If they just sat here rotting, rescue or no rescue, nothing would come of it. Absolutely nothing.
"...Okay. I'll do whatever you say, Unnie."
Dying one way or dying another — it was all the same.
Starve to death in a bathroom, or get eaten by a monster.
But what Yujin meant was not what Sujin had steeled herself for. She wasn't talking about going out through the hallway.
"Through... the window? But... we're on the second floor."
"Be grateful it's not the third. From the second floor, we've got a real shot."
It was still better — far better — than getting spotted by a monster while crossing the corridor.
Sujin finally nodded at her sister's words, swallowed hard, and slowly looked out past the window.
Second floor, they called it — but the longer she stared, the more dizzying the height became. No wonder they had put off this escape route all day. The drop alone was enough to make Sujin's vision swim.
Yujin took a few deep breaths, then gripped Sujin's shoulders and pointed to one side beyond the glass.
"See that? You have to land in those bushes. No matter what."
"And when you fall, make sure your head doesn't take the hit. You can get hurt anywhere else — but not the head. Never."
"...Okay."
"I'll go first. Once I'm down and I give you the signal, that's when you jump. Got it?"
Sujin nodded. Yujin bit down hard on her lip, then added one last thing.
"If — after I land — the monsters come after me. Wait until they're gone from the area, then jump. And go straight into the city and find the adults."
"....."
"Answer me! Do you understand?!"
"...Y-Yeah. Okay, Unnie."
The hand gripping her shoulder was trembling, just a little. Sujin had no choice but to pretend she didn't notice.