Ghost Story #1
“Why didn’t you come yesterday?”
The literature girl was holding Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. Her jet-black hair shimmered like the night sky, and her pale skin was as translucent as spilled milk. The moment I realized the faint smile on her lips was directed at me, my mind went blank.
“I’ve been waiting for you. You never showed up.”
The girl I’d been quietly crushing on since I saw her in the library was saying she’d been waiting for me. I glanced around, wondering if she was talking to someone else.
Swish.
A slender white hand reached out and brushed dust from my shoulder.
“You had some dust on you. See you later.”
Thud. Vroom.
The literature girl climbed into a sleek black car and disappeared in a cloud of exhaust. I was certain I would remember this moment until the day I died.
“Hey, Ha Yeong-won. Are you close with Yu Da-hee?”
Yang Ju-hui’s voice snapped me back to reality. Until that second, I’d felt like I was still floating in a dream.
“Her name is Yu Da-hee? Was I supposed to know her?”
Yang Ju-hui seemed familiar with the literature girl’s name. Then again, it wasn’t strange for someone that beautiful to be well-known. Yang Ju-hui was pretty too, but they belonged to completely different categories. If Yang Ju-hui was the type of pretty you saw on social media, the literature girl was the kind of beauty you felt while listening to Bach or Mozart.
“You just acted like you knew each other, and now you’re pretending you don’t? That’s hilarious. Don’t tell me that ex-girlfriend you mentioned before was actually Yu Da-hee? You’re ridiculous. How—”
Yang Ju-hui’s expression twisted mid-sentence. She’d said it was funny, but she wasn’t smiling at all.
“I’m going ahead. I don’t want to be late.”
She checked her phone and started walking at a ridiculous speed. Her long legs made it look more like running than walking.
“Hey! Wait up!”
Yang Ju-hui vanished in a blur. I tried to catch up, but the awkward atmosphere made it impossible. She must have misunderstood. Did she really think I used to date Yu Da-hee? Judging by her sudden foul mood, she and Yu Da-hee probably didn’t get along.
By the time I reached school, Yang Ju-hui was already face-down on her desk. She stayed like that through the entire morning and didn’t move even after lunch ended. Sleeping through school like that—she was a total delinquent. Not that she hadn’t always been one.
「Do you know who Yu Da-hee is?」
「Jeong So-jin: Yeong-won, you shouldn’t be on your phone during class lol」
“……”
I was an idiot for even asking her. Just as I thought that, another message arrived.
「Jeong So-jin: You mean Yu Da-hee from Class A? I don’t know much except that she comes to school by car every day lol」
She didn’t know. Even if Jeong So-jin was the class president and had a wide network, she wouldn’t know everything about students in other classes. Time passed with that thought, and after school, Yang Ju-hui grabbed her bag the second the bell rang and stormed out. I’d wanted to talk about the Nightmare Corridor today, even briefly, but instead another girl approached me.
“Yeong-won, what are you doing after school?”
It was Jeong So-jin, the class president. The fact that the most popular girl in Class D was talking to me drew strange looks from everyone packing their bags. What kind of situation was this? I wondered the same thing. Why was Jeong So-jin coming to me again? Was it because of the message I sent earlier? I immediately regretted my actions.
“If you don’t have plans, want to go to the bookstore with me? I need books for a book report for the essay contest, but I don’t know much about novels or that kind of stuff…”
Did Jeong So-jin see me as someone who knew a lot about novels? At the beginning of the semester, I had read various books during breaks and lunch, so maybe that was it.
Swish.
That was when it happened.
“Hey, Jeong So-jin. Why haven’t you been cracking down on kids smoking lately? As class president, you should be keeping them in line. Come to the old building during lunch tomorrow.”
Kim Geon-ho swaggered over to my desk and spoke in his usual rough tone. I’d thought school life had been quiet lately, but I had a bad feeling I was about to get dragged into something annoying. And I was right.
“What did you say? Who are you to order me around, Kim Geon-ho?”
Jeong So-jin shot back with narrowed eyes. Kim Geon-ho trembled.
“Whoa, shit. Scary. That’s terrifying. Ha Yeong-won, you heard that too, right?”
Thud. Kim Geon-ho’s hand landed on my shoulder. He’d been joking around, but it seemed like he was genuinely afraid of Jeong So-jin. Proof of that was the way his hand shook on my shoulder. I understood. I was terrified of Jeong So-jin too. More than anyone, I knew what she was capable of when pushed to the edge.
“Ah, fuck, this is so boring.”
Kim Geon-ho stormed off. Watching him leave, Jeong So-jin frowned and clicked her tongue.
“What a total delinquent.”
“What? You bitch, what did you just say?”
“I said what I said. What about you? What did you just say? What? Bitch?”
The atmosphere grew strange. Even the students packing their bags for home stopped and stared in dead silence.
“……”
Stuck between them, I felt like dying. Why did this have to happen at my desk? Kim Geon-ho was one thing, but why was Jeong So-jin suddenly acting like this? Then I remembered the new quirk she’d gained this morning.
《Gambler》: Failure is treason. Success is revolution. In the world of gamblers, there is no retreat—only forward. Even if they don’t know where the path leads.
The quirk Gambler turned people into reckless daredevils. Jeong So-jin and Kim Geon-ho glared at each other like they wanted to tear one another apart. Kim Geon-ho was the first to back down.
“Shit… Class D is fucked these days.”
Swish. Kim Geon-ho disappeared from the classroom. The heavy atmosphere lightened a little.
“Yeong-won. If Kim Geon-ho bothers you or hits you again, tell me.”
“……”
…No, class president. Right now, you scare me more than Kim Geon-ho. I was shaking so badly I could barely stand. Was this some kind of ominous sign?
“Hey, class president. The homeroom teacher is calling you.”
Swish. Someone stood up and called for Jeong So-jin. It was Jeong Seok, our vice president.
“The homeroom teacher?”
Jeong So-jin narrowed her eyes, glanced between me and Jeong Seok, then said, “Yeong-won, see you later,” before hurrying out into the hallway.
It had been a day full of storms. Now it was time for me to go home too. But the thought of heading back didn’t appeal to me at all.
Auntie Ghost. Mom’s ghost.
That thing had already appeared at home twice. If I went back now, Mom would still be working overtime, so I’d be alone. If the ghost showed up again… I might actually die this time!
What should I do…? When things were this uncertain, it was best to use the advice function.
“Advice.”
Broken Clock’s Advice: “The library is a temple where all the relics of ancient sages filled with virtue, and everything free from delusion and deception, are preserved and rest in peace.”
What the hell did that mean? It probably meant I should go to the library. That was a good idea.
###
I’d always thought Yeongji High’s library was excellent. It had plenty of old books and kept getting new releases. It was like heaven to me.
“Suddenly need to pee.”
They said the smell of ink could make you need to urinate. That was exactly what was happening to me.
Swish. I set my bag down in a corner and picked up a broom. As the library committee member for Class D, I was obligated to clean the library. It was a position Kang Ha-neul had recommended, and she said it would look good on my school records.
“……”
While sweeping, I glanced around. I wondered if the literature girl—Yu Da-hee—might be here, but she wasn’t.
“You came today?”
“Mommy!”
I jumped so high I probably looked more startled than a cat seeing a cucumber. My voice echoed through the quiet library. Once I calmed down and turned around, I saw the girl from this morning standing close by.
“Why are you so surprised? I already did all the cleaning here yesterday.”
“Cleaning?”
“Yeah. I’m the library committee member for Class A too. Didn’t Teacher Kang Ha-neul tell you? You haven’t been coming these past few days, so I had to do everything alone. I was waiting.”
Yu Da-hee spoke in a gentle voice. She carried an air of leisure that people like Yang Ju-hui and I, who lived in poverty, could never have. The kind of person who never had any reason to rush through life. Thanks to that, I felt a little more at ease too.
“Oh. So you’re on the committee too.”
I hadn’t known Yu Da-hee was a library committee member. I’d thought I was the only one in charge of this library as Class D’s representative. Then again, thinking about it, the place was too big for one person. So Class 1-A and Class 1-D each had a committee member to manage it. When Yu Da-hee said this morning that she’d been waiting for me, she must have meant waiting for help with the committee work!
“You’re Ha Yeong-won, right? I’m Yu Da-hee. Teacher Kang Ha-neul has mentioned you a lot. This is the first time we’ve actually talked. You were always reading, so I never had a chance to say anything.”
“Ah.”
“You read a lot of Murakami Haruki, don’t you? You read Norwegian Wood. Also The Decameron, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lolita… The common point in all those books is…”
I was shocked that the literature girl I’d been crushing on remembered every single book I’d read. Then I grew afraid. The common point in those books… They all had very explicit sexual descriptions!
While I stood there flustered, Yu Da-hee let out a soft laugh.
“The common point is that they’re all foreign novels. I like foreign novels too. I’ve already read The Catcher in the Rye ten times. Lately I’ve been interested in feng shui—”
Maybe it was because her voice was so gentle, or maybe I was just tired from everything that had happened, but I yawned without realizing it.
“Do you not like talking about this kind of stuff?”
Yu Da-hee tilted her head, her chatter pausing. Honestly, I was moved.
“No, I like feng shui too. Like the Battle of Red Cliffs formation.”
“That’s military strategy. Feng shui is about mountains and water.”
Yu Da-hee laughed again. She actually understood my joke and laughed. She really was on another level. Honestly, I never thought I’d have such intellectual, high-level conversations at Yeongji High School. While I stood there trembling with emotion, Yu Da-hee looked at my hands. I was holding books about folk tales and ghost stories—things I’d looked up to learn more about Yeongji High.
“Do you like scary stories?”
“I guess you could say I do…”
“Really? Then Yeong-won, lend me your ear for a second.”
Swish. Before I could even agree, Yu Da-hee brought her mouth close to my ear. She had no sense of distance. It was the attitude of someone who assumed others wouldn’t mind her getting close. The attitude of someone who had never been rejected by others in her life.
“Come to think of it, they say this school was actually built on the site of a huge cemetery. Is that true?”
I felt her soft breath against my sensitive ear, sending a pleasant shiver down my spine.
“A cemetery? More importantly, why are you whispering…?”
“If you tell ghost stories in a place where ghosts gather, like a cemetery, they’ll actually come. They think you’re talking about them. So just in case, I’m keeping my voice low.”
“…Ah…”
“After construction finished, people and students kept going missing. Some student was even found with just their head missing. They say that head is still wandering around looking for its body…”
The words whispered in my ear were chilling. A ghost that was just a head. There was something oddly familiar about that story.
“They say tons of shamans came to the school too. But most of them ran away while performing rituals in the school building.”
Her breath and voice were stimulating. I wished this moment could last forever.
“One shaman supposedly gouged out their own eyes and then hanged themselves in the bathroom. After that, you could hear the sound of the shaman’s bells in the hallway. Jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle—”
Yu Da-hee seemed to really enjoy telling scary stories, even imitating the bell sounds with her mouth. Her imitation was so good that it actually sounded like bells were ringing nearby.
Jingle jingle jingle jingle jingle jingle—
…Wait, were those bells actually ringing?
While I stood there confused, Yu Da-hee kept talking.
“But the scariest thing isn’t the shaman ghost or the headless ghost. The really terrifying ghost is…”
Yu Da-hee’s voice grew quieter. Was the story over? I took a step back.
“……”
“……”
Now that I looked at her, Yu Da-hee’s face was completely blank. It was an empty expression, as if all emotion and desire had vanished. It was like someone had pressed a pause button. A beautiful girl’s blank face was this horrifying.
“Um…”
Looking at Yu Da-hee, who no longer seemed human, goosebumps rose all over my body. Was she actually a ghost? Just as that thought crossed my mind—
“If you tell ghost stories in a cemetery, ghosts will come. If you tell ghost stories in a cemetery, ghosts will come. If you tell ghost stories in a cemetery, ghosts will come. If you tell ghost stories in a cemetery, ghosts will come. If you tell ghost stories in a cemetery, ghosts will come. If you tell ghost stories in a cemetery, ghosts will come.”
“Mommy! Ah, shit, it’s happening again! It’s starting again! Again! Again! Again!!!”