Test of Courage #3
Jeong Seok told me that Yu Dahee had gotten caught up in some kind of major incident back in elementary school. And it seemed to be a completely different case from the disappearance of Yang Ju-hui's older sister.
“It’s a bit hard for me to say it myself.”
Jeong Seok usually loved explaining every little detail, but this time he was oddly hesitant. I wanted to press him for more, but if he was drawing the line here, there had to be a reason. Everyone has their own baggage, after all.
The electronic lock beeped as I opened the door. Inside, Yu Dahee had already gathered all her things.
“Sorry, everyone. I think I just got in the way. I’ll head out now.”
Was she going home? Given the heavy atmosphere, it didn’t feel like we could keep playing games or anything else. In the end, Yu Dahee left too. Only Jeong Seok and I remained. The house that had felt noisy and cramped moments ago suddenly seemed far too spacious.
“What a night. I never expected Yang Ju-hui to scream like that and storm out,” Jeong Seok said.
He really hadn’t known anything about the tension between Yang Ju-hui and Yu Dahee. I gave him a quick summary of what Yang Ju-hui had told me. Jeong Seok’s eyes widened in shock.
“She gave a false witness statement? No wonder Yang Ju-hui lost it. But why would she do that? What could Yu Dahee possibly gain from lying to the police?”
Looked like Jeong Seok had hit the same wall I had. Why on earth would she do something like that? From any rational standpoint, it made no sense.
“She was just an elementary school kid. Maybe she got a thrill out of fooling adults. Kids pull all kinds of pranks at that age. It was probably just childish, innocent malice.”
That was the best theory I could come up with. But Jeong Seok, who had gone to the same private elementary school as Yu Dahee, saw it differently.
“From what I remember, Yu Dahee was the one who took the best care of the school rabbits and hamsters. She was always the most dedicated.”
“Really?”
“The sudden reversal… I think that’s the key point here.”
A sudden reversal of her statement. Suddenly claiming she couldn’t remember. Come to think of it, someone close to me had been going through something similar lately. My mom. Her whereabouts had been unclear for three days after she went missing, and her memory was so fractured she had even forgotten her own son.
Yu Dahee reversing her testimony about Yang Ju-hui’s older sister’s disappearance. My mother’s memory loss. If these two incidents that seemed completely unrelated were actually connected?
“Seok, when exactly was that big incident you mentioned? You said Yu Dahee got dragged into something serious in elementary school. Can you at least tell me when it happened?”
“…Summer of sixth grade. After that, she started coming to school in a chauffeur-driven car. I didn’t realize she still did that.”
Summer of sixth grade. I could almost hear cicadas buzzing in my ears, and sticky sweat rolled down my back. The sudden midsummer feeling made my skin crawl. I shook it off and spoke in a deliberately serious tone.
“I heard Yang Ju-hui’s older sister was attending Yeongji High School when she disappeared. Even four years ago, a female high school student going missing would have been huge news, right? Maybe we’ll find something if we search.”
We looked up missing persons cases in Gaeryong City and incidents involving female high school students. The results were disturbing.
Consecutive Disappearances of Female High School Students in Gaeryong City
The police are still struggling with the investigation…
There were quite a few cases. Even earlier this year, a Yeongji High student had gone missing. Five years ago, another student had disappeared and was later found with only her head remaining. And four years ago, yet another had vanished.
“This article seems to be about Yang Ju-hui’s older sister. It was written in the spring, and that’s when she disappeared. But according to what you said, the incident Yu Dahee experienced happened in the summer. The timelines don’t line up.”
I had assumed the major event caused Yu Dahee to lose her memory and reverse her statement about the disappearance. But the big incident she went through came much later than the reversal. I couldn’t make sense of it. We’d probably get clear answers if we asked them directly, but these were sensitive topics. It wouldn’t be easy to bring up.
###
“More than that, why are there so many missing persons cases in this city?”
It really was an ominous place. Maybe it had something to do with the city being built on a massive spiritual water vein.
“Could it be the same perpetrator?”
“No, I don’t think so. Take this headless case. The suspected culprit was arrested. He even confessed. But it wasn’t connected to the other incidents.”
Jeong Seok pointed at the article about the “headless female high school student” case from five years ago. He seemed surprisingly well-informed.
“But the perpetrator was released due to insufficient evidence.”
A man who had confessed was let go for lack of evidence? As I frowned in confusion, Jeong Seok continued.
“I thought it was impossible too. Back then my father was known as the undefeated prosecutor. But after handling this case, he changed.”
I remembered that Jeong Seok had once dreamed of becoming a prosecutor. That was why he had joined the ghost-hunting Ha Yeong-won Pirate Crew—to become the world’s strongest prosecutor who could catch every criminal. I hadn’t fully understood when I first heard about his aspirations, but now it was clear he carried complicated baggage of his own.
“And the missing head from that case has never been found. Remember when I freaked out and fell in the elevator after seeing a rolling head? I wondered if it might be that one.”
“Was the head you saw in the elevator from this female high school student?”
“No. It looked different. This girl was the older sister who used to live next door to us. If it had been her face, I would have recognized it immediately. It was someone else.”
So Jeong Seok had lived next door to a girl who was murdered with only her head missing. His prosecutor father had handled the case, and the culprit had walked free. What was I supposed to say to that?
Just four of us hanging out at my house today, and I had learned far more disturbing information than I ever wanted. I had only planned to play some games, eat chicken, and talk about the Nightmare Corridor.
A severed head… Suddenly a thought flashed through my mind.
“Oh, right. Seok, about our English teacher Hong Miri. Don’t you think she’s suspicious?”
“The English teacher? Yeah, that sports car she drives is definitely not something a teacher’s salary can afford. It’s suspicious no matter how you look at it. Could be her family’s rich, though.”
“No, not that part.”
I told him what I had witnessed recently. The blood flowing from her neck. The mismatched skin tones on her face and body.
Jeong Seok immediately pulled some documents from the bag he had brought.
“You’re saying it might be connected to the twin experiment?”
Twins are truly remarkable. The development of the sisters —Yeri and —— over the past five years has stood out among all the children in the facility. Especially the younger sister ———’s aptitude as a Watcher far exceeds expectations.
The older sister lacks the unusual birthmark present on the younger sister’s body. Could this difference create a gap in stages even though they share the same blood as twins? In any case, these sisters will surely lead us to —.
The experiment was a failure.
“The sisters’ names… Yeri and… Miri? Hong Ye-ri and Hong Miri? Yeong-won, this sounds entirely plausible. They usually list the older sister first, so the younger sister mentioned here would be Hong Miri…”
Jeong Seok seemed lost in thought. Then he reached a conclusion.
“It says the younger sister has a unique birthmark on her body. If we could check it ourselves, we might be able to confirm her identity. Since it’s described as ‘unusual,’ it must be distinctive enough to notice.”
Check whether Teacher Hong Miri has a birthmark on her body… Was that really what we were considering right now?
“How exactly are we supposed to check that?”
How were we supposed to verify an unusual birthmark on a female teacher’s body? Even Jeong Seok couldn’t come up with a reasonable method. After a moment, he offered one idea.
“You know the rumor about Kim Geon-ho hanging around motels with the English teacher, right? If it’s true, maybe he would know whether she has a birthmark or not.”
“Come on, that rumor seemed fake.”
“Are you one hundred percent sure it’s fake?”
If he put it that way… I couldn’t be completely certain.
“They say Kim Geon-ho hasn’t been coming to school lately. Even if he has, asking him if the English teacher has a birthmark on her body feels… awkward. Anyway, while we’re on the subject, let me explain something else…”
Since the topic had come up, I went ahead and told Jeong Seok about the Nightmare Corridor. He was a trustworthy friend and sharp as a tack.
“Is that real? You can actually send people to places like the death floor in the elevator? Like party players entering a dungeon?”
Good thing he caught on so fast. I also explained that dying inside the corridor gave you a Quirk, and that stacking the same Quirk twice would kill you.
“Quirk… Does that explain why my cousin Jeong Sojin suddenly freaked out in class, screaming that her body smelled and refusing to attend?”
His reasoning was spot on. Just mentioning the Quirk had led him to guess that Jeong Sojin was a player. I wondered if he would get angry about me throwing his cousin into that terrifying ghost story, but Jeong Seok simply said,
“This is fascinating. Maybe everything we’ve been experiencing is connected to that Nightmare Corridor. If we keep raising that progress rate, we might start seeing some clues.”
He didn’t seem particularly bothered that I had sent his cousin into the corridor. Something else was clearly on his mind, though.
“Can anyone enter that corridor? Or is there a standard for appearing on the player list? Am I on it?”
“You are. I see you on the list right now. Some people appear, some don’t. I have no idea what the criteria is. Yu Dahee was added today too. Maybe it’s based on people who have met me.”
When I checked the player list again, Hong Miri’s name had been added as well. I was still marveling at how strange it was when Jeong Seok got worked up.
“Do you even realize how insane this is? You’ve become someone who can kill people without leaving a single trace of evidence. You’ve read Death Note, right? You’re basically the protagonist from that!”
“Death Note… the one where you write someone’s name in a notebook and they die?”
“Exactly! If you became friends with the President of the United States, you could probably drag him into the corridor and kill him. And there would be zero evidence!”
When he put it that way… it really did seem possible.
“Guess we really were the mafia or the imposter in that game. And Yeong-won, if it’s you, couldn’t you secretly kill the culprit from that incident five years ago?”
Jeong Seok pointed at the monitor, at the case of the girl who used to live next door.
“Delivering the death penalty to those who slipped through the legal system. It’s ridiculous for someone who clearly committed a crime—someone the victim never forgave—to live proudly just because they repented a little in church.”
I found myself wondering what would have happened if the status window had gone to Jeong Seok instead of me. Would people have started dropping dead left and right?
“Hey, Seok. That’s going way too far. Let’s say you actually killed them. What if they all turned into ghosts and came after me? I’d be the one getting screwed. If the ghost of the U.S. President threatened me with the nuclear button, could you handle that? If a murderer ghost started chasing me, I’d piss my pants for real.”
“…That’s… yeah, that’s a fair point. Ghosts…”
Jeong Seok nodded like he understood, but his eyes were still swirling with complicated thoughts. Worried he might say something even darker, I cut in first.
“I was actually planning to explore the corridor with everyone today. But with the mood like this, we should probably skip it for now.”
Vrrr-. KakaoTalk.
My phone buzzed. I checked it and saw it was from Yu Dahee.
Whoa, that’s giving me the creeps.
Going to a place that already looked like it was crawling with ghosts? No thanks. Did I really look like the kind of guy who would do anything a pretty girl asked, even though I could theoretically control the fate of the President of the United States?
“Hey, Seok. Wanna do a test of courage today?”