The Boy's Abyss #3
Jingle, jingle, jingle—.
The eerie sound of bells grew steadily closer. I forgot to breathe, eyes wide open, body frozen stiff. It felt like all the blood had drained from my veins.
Jingle, jingle, jingle—.
Finally, when the bell sounds passed right in front of my nose, I caught sight of something bizarre through the hole in the cleaning supply closet door. If I had to describe its overall appearance, it was a woman wearing a garishly colorful outfit in the five sacred colors. I knew it was a woman because of the long hair and the pale flesh jiggling between the disheveled top. Her legs were white and slender, her ankles thin, but the strange part was that instead of socks she wore something like traditional Korean beoseon.
Jingle!
In one hand she held a rod covered in countless bells, and in the other, a lit candle. Her mouth was torn all the way to her ears, with her tongue dangling long below her chin. It looked utterly horrifying.
“Whereareyoucan’tseecan’tseeWhereareyoucan’tseecan’tseeWhereareyouwherewherewhere.”
From the gaping hole of a mouth came a constant stream of words searching for something. Like some kind of rap, she repeated the same phrases without pausing for breath—an impossible lung capacity.
When I looked closer at the face illuminated by the candlelight, the area around her eyes was horribly crushed and mangled. The moment I saw the empty holes where her pupils should have been, my heart plummeted.
…Fuck. What the hell is that!?
At a glance, it didn’t look human at all. A ghost. It had to be a ghost!
I squeezed my eyes shut, terrified that the pounding of my heart might echo outside. Whatever it was looking for, I prayed it wasn’t me!
Jingle, jingle, jingle….
The one small mercy was that this horrific ghost—or monster—had simply walked right past the cleaning supply closet where I was hiding. I’d honestly wondered if such a pathetic hiding spot would even work, but it seemed the crushed eyes had kept it from noticing me.
“……”
Even after the bell sounds had completely faded, I stayed hidden inside the closet for another five minutes or so. Honestly, I didn’t want to leave. If I just stayed here, dawn would come, and maybe police or rescuers would show up to save me—such hopeful thoughts filled my head.
“Ugh.”
That was when the rotten stench of mops inside the cleaning closet grew so unbearable I couldn’t stand it anymore. Even breathing through my mouth made me want to vomit. What the hell?
A thought flashed through my mind. I pulled up the advice I’d seen earlier.
Broken Clock Advice: The Nightmare Corridor contains hiding spots such as cleaning supply closets and lockers that allow you to avoid anomalies for a limited time. Who could have prepared such things?
“Maybe….”
Was it because of that “limited time”? You couldn’t hide in these spots forever! That had to be it!
Fuck this!
I wanted to stay hidden here for the rest of my life!
“Ugh, blegh…! Gueeegh…!”
I desperately held on. But the nausea kept rising, and I started worrying that if I stayed any longer the bell woman might come back and hear me retching. What would happen if she found me? I didn’t know, but it definitely wouldn’t be good!
Agh, damn it! I don’t know anymore.
Creak.
I finally crawled out of the cleaning supply closet. The stench that had been tormenting me vanished like a lie. I’d been worried the smell would cling to me, but thankfully that didn’t happen.
What the hell was going on? Had I finally gone insane?
It wasn’t impossible… but something clicked.
“…Status Window.”
One day you opened your eyes to find yourself lying in a dark hallway. From the pitch-black corner came horrible sounds, and an ominous presence drew steadily closer. In this bizarre situation, you had no choice but to start moving if you wanted to survive and escape. Eventually, you will reach a shocking secret and a strange taboo….
This place was clearly the Nightmare Corridor that the Status Window had described. There was no need for anyone to explain why I was here. I had come of my own free will.
Thinking back now, it was such an idiotic thing to do that I wanted to strangle my past self—but that wasn’t important right now. The only thing that mattered was surviving somehow.
What had it said about this Nightmare Corridor again?
In this bizarre situation, you had no choice but to start moving if you wanted to survive and escape. Eventually, you will reach a shocking secret and a strange taboo….
Escape! If escape was possible, that meant there had to be an exit somewhere in this hallway!
Whatever the case, I couldn’t hide in the cleaning closet any longer. I had no choice but to start moving.
The one small mercy was that this glowing, hologram-like Status Window lit up the area right in front of my feet. Without it, I would have died in the darkness.
“Hoo…”
I took a deep breath, strained my ears to listen to my surroundings as much as possible, and began inching forward through the bizarre hallway.
Creak, creak—.
The hallway floor was wooden, and every step made noise that grated on my nerves, but there was nothing I could do about it. Still, the layout felt strangely familiar. It looked just like the hallways of Yeongji High School. Maybe this place really was the hallways of Yeongji High?
If my guess was right, turning this corner should lead to Class 1-D—.
「1-4」.
My guess had been correct. But the details were slightly different. Instead of Class D, it was Class 4. Didn’t Yeongji High divide classes with letters from A to G? I vaguely remembered that they used to use numbers but switched to letters when the new school building was built….
“New building… old building….”
That’s right. This was the old building. The old Yeongji High structure!
Suddenly I remembered that I had unlocked the Old Building in the shop window. The old building that had been tightly locked so students couldn’t enter. This was the hallway of the old building!
That meant there had to be an entrance to the building somewhere. If I could get out through there…!
If the layout of the old and new buildings was similar, there should be stairs nearby….
With that thought in mind, I slowly moved forward. But strangely, no stairs appeared. Only an endless hallway continued on and on. It was like an unbreakable nightmare.
Jingle, jingle, jingle—.
Ah—.
A faint light appeared at the far end of the hallway, and the sound of bells began again. The problem was that there were no lockers or cleaning closets nearby where I could hide.
“……”
Thinking only of survival, I looked around and spotted a classroom labeled 「1-4」. Hadn’t I just passed Class 1-4 earlier? No, that didn’t matter right now!
Slide—.
Luckily the classroom door was unlocked. I slipped inside and hid among the many desks. The jingle-jingle sound spread through the hallway around me.
# # #
How much time had passed?
The sound of bells gradually grew distant. A wave of relief at having survived washed over me, along with a strange sense of accomplishment.
“What the hell, that wasn’t shit.”
Humans really were creatures of adaptation. I felt a little more relaxed than before and looked around.
“……”
And I immediately regretted my actions.
The classroom of Class 1-4 was covered wall-to-wall with talismans scrawled in dark reddish-brown writing. It was an incredibly ominous, skin-crawling place. The kind of thing that would actually appear in nightmares.
But the truly horrifying part came when I realized I wasn’t the only one in the classroom.
Creak, creak—.
The sound came from beneath the teacher’s desk. It sounded like a monkey, or maybe like wood groaning. Damn it….
Come to think of it, hadn’t the Status Window said something like this?
The Nightmare Corridor contains hiding spots such as cleaning supply closets and lockers that allow you to avoid anomalies for a limited time—.
The word “anomalies” had bothered me. If there were other horrific ghosts besides the bell woman roaming these hallways…!?
Flash—.
That was when the Status Window’s light caught a pair of glowing blue eyes. I was so startled I nearly stopped breathing, and it seemed the other side had noticed me too.
“Yeongwon… is that you, Yeongwon!?”
It was a small voice, but somehow loud at the same time. I know that description doesn’t make sense, but that’s exactly what it was.
Scrape—.
The thing that had been crouching under the desk crawled toward me on all fours. Only then did I finally recognize what those glowing eyes were.
It was glasses!
“Jeong Sojin…? Class president…?”
“Yeongwon-ah…!”
Whoosh—!
Jeong Sojin—the class president of Class 1-D and someone I had quite admired at the beginning of the semester—threw her arms around me.
“Yeongwon-ah…! I’m so glad to see you…!”
The strong scent of cosmetics hit me, and something soft pressed against my chest. Sojin had a bigger chest than she looked. And even the model student Jeong Sojin wore makeup—those thoughts crossed my mind at the same time as a sense of foreboding.
“You—how do I know you’re really Jeong Sojin? Give me proof!”
This hallway’s ghosts might be trying to trick me!
I hurriedly pulled away and stepped back. The thing that might be Jeong Sojin or might be a ghost looked momentarily stunned, then let out a relieved laugh.
“Puhuhu, Yeongwon, you really are funny, aren’t you? Remember when we handed out textbooks together? We went to the storage room together to get them. You carried all the boxes and…”
She was right. On the day of the entrance ceremony, after classes had been assigned, the homeroom teacher had asked me and Jeong Sojin to move boxes of textbooks. Back then, after three years at an all-boys middle school, I was basically a monk, so being alone with a pretty girl like Sojin had made me nervous and excited. I’d even said something stupid like, “Sojin-ah, if it’s heavy, I’ll carry your box too.”
Maybe my manly and gentlemanly behavior had made her like me. She might have said, “Oh my, you’re such a nice guy!” and we would grow close, study for exams together, get married, have grandchildren… I had fantasized about stuff like that.
I know. It was a stupid thought.
But anyone who survived three years at an all-boys middle school would end up thinking the same way.
Anyway, the fact that she knew about that incident meant this really was Jeong Sojin.
As I let out a small sigh of relief, Jeong Sojin flicked on a small lighter. Even a tiny flame can bring comfort to a person’s heart.
“Yeongwon-ah, we need to find a key! The entrance door key! I don’t know how much time we have, so I’ll be quick—this hallway requires a key to escape! I know where the entrance is!”
A key. That was a pretty positive keyword. Literally the key to everything.
“The key should be in the teachers’ office key storage box! But going alone is too scary, so… Yeongwon-ah, I’m really glad you’re here. Truly….”