Courage Test #4
Courage test. Sneaking into a haunted house, an abandoned building, or a derelict school to retrieve an object or simply explore. Honestly, I never understood why anyone would do something like that.
It seemed Jeong Seok felt the same way.
“A courage test that involves going into the old school building? It feels like nothing but risk with zero return.”
Jeong Seok was great in a lot of ways, but being too smart was his flaw. Sometimes you just need to charge in with a hot-blooded heart, without overthinking it, and shout, “Yeah, screw it, let’s do this!”
Luckily, I was a man who knew how to make deals.
“If you come with me, I might consider punishing that suspect. Just so we’re clear, I said consider, not that I’ll definitely do it. Don’t get it twisted.”
“……”
Jeong Seok looked like he couldn’t forgive the criminal who had brutally murdered the high school girl next door and even hidden her head, yet was still walking free in the world. If his sense of justice was genuine, my offer must have sounded like honey.
“You’re saying you want to meet him?”
“…Well, I’ll decide after seeing what you do.”
“Don’t forget that promise. You’ll know for sure once you meet him. That guy is seriously bad news. You’ll see at a glance that he’s the kind of scum who shouldn’t be roaming free in society. I mean it.”
Since Jeong Seok accepted my proposal rather willingly, I suddenly grew curious.
“But can you actually meet him if you want to?”
“He’s been in and out of prison for other crimes, but yes, you can meet him now. He’s in Gaeryong Metropolitan City. Ever heard of Yeonggwang Church? He lives there as a caretaker, taking care of the place in exchange for room and board.”
Yeonggwang Church. Suddenly, the cross covered in all those stickers in front of Yang Ju-hui’s house came to mind. Wasn’t that the church her mother attended?
“Is it Pastor Cheon Ae-soo’s church, by any chance?”
“You know a lot. They say if that pastor lays his hands on you, even illnesses get cured. In the old days I would’ve called it an obvious scam, but after everything we’ve been through, I’m starting to wonder if something like that could actually be real.”
This Gaeryong Metropolitan City really is small. All these incidents are tangled together like a spiderweb in places I never would have imagined.
Anyway, the important thing was that we were about to explore the old school building today.
“Ha Yeong-won. But why the old school building all of a sudden?”
“If you explore the old school building with me today, Yu Da-hee says she’ll grant me a wish.”
“What?”
Jeong Seok’s face turned slightly red. The guy was a first-year high schooler, basically a walking bundle of hormones.
“You don’t mean…”
I knew exactly what he was thinking. After all, I’d had the same thought.
“That’s right. I’m going to ask Yu Da-hee about what happened that summer in sixth grade. You told me to ask her directly if I wanted to hear the story. If I use the wish ticket, maybe I can finally get the truth?”
My obsession with Yu Da-hee’s wish ticket came from fairly rational thinking. Jeong Seok let out a small “Oh,” clearly impressed by my explanation.
“Ha Yeong-won. I’m seeing you in a new light. I thought you were the type who couldn’t say no to any girl’s request and just blindly did whatever they asked. You know, the guy who’s weak to women.”
“Hey, you asshole. Who are you to talk? Weren’t you the one getting completely owned by Bong Ji-yeon?”
“That’s… that’s different because of the circumstances. Speaking of which, I haven’t seen Bong Ji-yeon in a while. She’s been acting strangely well-behaved lately, which actually makes me nervous.”
A flicker of anxiety and worry crossed Jeong Seok’s face. That was when I realized he didn’t purely hate Bong Ji-yeon, the girl who used to bully him.
“Hey, Jeong Seok. Since it’s just us guys, I’ll ask straight up. Do you like Bong Ji-yeon?”
Bong Ji-yeon was a fairly pretty girl. She wasn’t as beautiful as Yu Da-hee or Yang Ju-hui, but those two were on a completely different level to begin with. Bong Ji-yeon was easily one of the top three prettiest girls in class. Right on the borderline.
If Yu Da-hee and Yang Ju-hui were the type that made you think, “Could I really date someone like her? No way, I’d never have a chance,” then Bong Ji-yeon was the type that made you think, “If it’s her, maybe if I play my cards right…” Yeah. She was a solid seven.
But that was only talking about looks. Wasn’t her personality straight-up psycho queen bee?
“Dude. Bong Ji-yeon is a total queen bee with a trash personality and a full-on delinquent. Why would you like a girl like that of all people? What, do you have some fetish for getting bullied by delinquent girls?”
“No. Are you really the one to be saying that? You’re the same. Ha Yeong-won, you did a Pikachu impression in front of Yang Ju-hui. You of all people shouldn’t be lecturing me.”
Okay, fair point. When he put it that way, it did sound hypocritical. So this was what they meant by putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.
“Still, if Yang Ju-hui is a normal delinquent, Bong Ji-yeon is hardcore mode. She’s friends with even more dangerous senior delinquents.”
If Yang Ju-hui was the lone wolf type, Bong Ji-yeon was the kind who ran in a pack. And naturally, it wasn’t a very high-quality pack. From what I’d heard, some of the seniors had even done time in juvenile detention.
“She wasn’t always like that. She was a good kid back when she was doing short-distance track. We used to do homework together before that. …It’s just that she suddenly started hanging out with weird people.”
According to Jeong Seok, Bong Ji-yeon used to come over to his house while he was studying, pester him, and mess around. …So they were childhood friends?
I’d thought Jeong Seok was just another awkward guy from an all-boys middle school like me, but it turned out he had a pretty childhood friend who used to visit each other’s houses? A sudden surge of irritation rose in my stomach. Why did I feel so betrayed?
My three years of middle school were literal hell! Was this the insurmountable gap between golden spoon kids and commoners?
“But everything changed after her third year of middle school. Bong Ji-yeon injured her leg and had to quit track. From then on, it was like she entered her rebellious phase. The girl completely changed.”
So Jeong Seok had watched his childhood friend slowly transform while hanging out with delinquents. The bright, mischievous friend who used to come over and tease him started smoking with her delinquent older boyfriends, rumors of them dating began to spread… That was… its own kind of boy’s hell, I suppose.
After talking with Jeong Seok for a while, we eventually arrived at school. It was Saturday. Schools on the weekend are usually quiet.
“The security guard isn’t here today.”
I thought of the guard who had caught us and given us a hard time when I snuck out of school to find my missing mother. I’d felt a bit of resentment toward him, but Jeong Seok said something unexpected.
“That security guard actually helped a lot when we were looking for your mother. He used to be a police officer, apparently. He contacted his old colleagues and asked for all sorts of favors.”
“Really?”
So he was just a man with strong professional ethics. Maybe I should buy him some fruit later. Even someone that dedicated didn’t guard the school on Saturdays, though.
Jeong Seok looked around.
“I heard back in the day they had classes on Saturdays too. Students had to come in on weekends and study until five in the afternoon. Even during vacation, apparently.”
“Whoa, seriously? That’s insanely brutal. That’s the real ghost story. Anyway, where’s that dog hole Yang Ju-hui mentioned? She said there was one in the wall.”
The school gate was firmly locked. Climbing over it seemed too risky, so sneaking in through the dog hole was the better option. I thought about contacting Yang Ju-hui for a moment, but after learning why she hated Yu Da-hee, it felt awkward to reach out right now. I’d contact her once everything was neatly resolved.
Luckily or unluckily, we found a hole in the fence by the school tennis court. Someone had taped paper over it, but it was easy enough to remove.
Scrape—.
As I crawled through the narrow hole, I said,
“My mom’s doctor told me that even if someone lost their memories, familiar stimuli can sometimes help them recall what they’ve forgotten.”
My mother, who had gone missing and then returned, had even forgotten about me, her own son. She still got a little confused sometimes. But I’d worked hard to stimulate her brain in various ways, and thanks to that, she had improved a lot. She would only get better from here.
If my guess that Yu Da-hee had “lost her memories” was correct… maybe today’s exploration of the old school building would help her remember various things?
That would surely bring back the memory of when she witnessed Yang Ju-hui’s older sister. It would definitely help in finding her.
“But… are we really going in there? This place is seriously creepy.”
Jeong Seok stood in front of the old school building with his mouth hanging open. The building, bathed in the reddish glow of the evening sunset, had an unexpectedly sinister and gloomy atmosphere. The first-floor windows were shattered everywhere, graffiti that looked like it had been sprayed with a fire extinguisher covered the walls, and unknown mold bloomed across every surface.
The building was also much larger than the new school building. Back in the baby boom era, they apparently had up to ten classes per grade with forty to fifty students each. Maybe that was why the old school building felt like a colossal structure compared to the schools I knew.
“It’s so eerie it makes you believe the rumor that the school was built on top of a mass graveyard.”
As I tried to shake off the goosebumps rising on my skin by recalling the time I fought ghosts using feng shui, Jeong Seok spoke up.
“I looked it up. Before this school was built, there used to be a grand mansion belonging to Cheon Il-sik, the great landowner of this area. It was a Western-style mansion built during the Japanese occupation, and it was the only modern-style mansion in the area. Apparently it was incredibly grand.”
A Western-style grand mansion. I couldn’t quite picture it.
“Cheon Il-sik even received a title from the Japanese. A count, I think. So his family went beyond being yangban nobles and became actual aristocrats. Pretty impressive, right?”
“It is impressive. What are those people doing now?”
“You didn’t know? The Yu Da-hee you’re waiting for is Cheon Il-sik’s great-granddaughter.”
No way. Yu Da-hee was even more incredible than I thought. If she’d been born in the old days, she would’ve been like an aristocratic young lady.
“They say that even now, if you want to do politics or business in Gaeryong City, you have to go through the Cheon family. My dad met them when he ran for mayor. There are even rumors that Oseong Electronics was nurtured by the Cheon family.”
“They must be filthy rich. But Yu Da-hee’s last name is Yu, not Cheon. Is she a granddaughter from the daughter’s side?”
“…Now that you mention it?”
Even Jeong Seok didn’t seem to have questioned why Yu Da-hee’s surname was Yu.
Swish—.
While we were chatting, the evening sunset completely set, and the world was swallowed by darkness. The old school building, which had at least felt like a human structure before, now looked like a massive gray tombstone embedded in the ground.
Did we really have to go in there? Maybe I should just call it off now.
Right as that thought crossed my mind, a message from Yu Da-hee arrived.
I guided Yu Da-hee to the hole in the tennis court fence.
Creak. Creak.
“It’s narrower than I thought.”
Watching Yu Da-hee wriggle out of the narrow hole gave me a strangely peculiar feeling.
Pat pat—.
While Yu Da-hee was brushing off her knees, I asked,
“So where exactly in the old school building are we supposed to go? Can we just head inside?”
“Hmm… Let’s go to the basement first.”
Not even the first floor, but the basement? A chill ran down my spine. Mostly because I was sure there would be a ton of cockroaches. Still, we couldn’t back out now.
We slowly entered through the open door of the old school building and were walking down the messy first-floor hallway when—
“Hey! Who’s there!”
Someone shouted at us from outside the building. Had we been caught?
Jeong Seok said, “There must be a teacher on night duty! Ha Yeong-won! What do we do? If we get caught, the old school building exploration is over!”
“What do you mean what do we do! For now… let’s hide! Da-hee! We need to hide! There should be a staff room nearby, let’s go there!”
“Huh…!?”
Startled, we rushed into the first-floor staff room. It was damp and covered in dust.
“Hide first! Find somewhere to conceal yourself!”
Click. Click. Click.
Soon, the sharp sound of a woman’s high heels echoed down the first-floor hallway of the old school building. I cautiously poked my head out from under a desk and looked toward the staff room entrance.
Before long, the beam of a phone flashlight appeared, followed by bright red high heels stopping at the doorway.
Click. Click.
The light swept back and forth across the desk I was hiding under as the person approached. While I observed the situation from beneath the desk, something strange caught my eye.
“……”
On the left ankle of the person wearing those high heels was what looked like a tattoo… or perhaps a bizarre birthmark.