Courage Test #5
Teachers found it difficult to get tattoos in visible places. It was unavoidable because of the nature of the job, which required standing in front of students. Just imagine a teacher with tattoos or traditional irezumi on the back of their hand, arm, or shoulder. It would inevitably look strange.
So what about the left ankle? The left ankle wasn’t a spot that would normally catch a student’s eye during class. Of course, it was perfectly visible to someone like me, lying flat on the floor and staring straight at the ground.
Click.
“Is anyone there?”
The voice I had grown quite familiar with lately echoed through the staff room. It belonged to Hong Miri, the English teacher for Yeongji High’s first-year students.
On Hong Miri’s left ankle was a black butterfly-shaped tattoo. At first I thought it was a birthmark, but on closer inspection it was clearly a tattoo in the shape of a butterfly.
“You kids. Whoever you are, if you’re hiding in here, you’d better come out now. I’m saying this for your own good. Do you have any idea how dangerous the old building is? There’s broken glass everywhere and nails sticking out.”
Click. Click.
Hong Miri warned us as she paced around the staff room. She had figured out that someone had sneaked into the old building, but she didn’t seem to know exactly where we were hiding.
Click.
When the high heels that had been walking like that stopped right in front of the desk where I was hiding—.
I couldn’t help but be shocked.
“……”
The black butterfly tattoo that had been on her left ankle just moments ago… had vanished.
Could a tattoo appear and disappear at will? Or had I simply seen it wrong?
While those thoughts ran through my head, Hong Miri’s sharp high-heel clicks faded as she left the staff room and disappeared down the hallway. It sounded like she was heading up the stairs to the second floor.
“Phew…”
Only then could I release the breath I had been holding and calm down. My whole body was stiff from staying in such a tense, awkward position for so long, and cold sweat ran down my back.
“Everyone okay? The teacher’s gone!”
I kept my voice low but loud enough for everyone to hear. Yu Da-hee slowly emerged from the empty cabinet.
“I hid on impulse, but we got through it without being caught. The training from when the game got really dangerous must have paid off. If I hadn’t known where to hide, we definitely would’ve been found.”
Yu Da-hee judged that her experience hiding from ghosts in the Abyss Corridor she had played earlier today had helped her evade the teacher’s eyes.
Soon Jeong Seok, who had been crouched inside the blue PP box, raised his head.
“If we’d been caught, it wouldn’t have ended with just a scolding. Maybe we should stop now.”
The thrill of breaking the rules was hard to shake. Neither Jeong Seok nor Yu Da-hee seemed able to calm down easily.
Still… I had no idea when the teacher who had gone up to the second floor might come back down, so I figured we should use this chance to head to the basement of the old building.
“Let’s go. To the basement.”
In a flash we all darted out of the first-floor staff room. Finding the path to the basement, however, proved more difficult than expected.
A pitch-black hallway. With the three of us together the eerie feeling was reduced, but we still had no clue which way to go.
“Where are we supposed to head?”
We had to locate the basement while avoiding the teacher’s watch, yet we didn’t even know the layout. That was when Yu Da-hee spoke.
“Guys. I think it’s this way. Past the bathroom at the end of the corridor there should be stairs leading down at the dead end! I remember now!”
Yu Da-hee must have recalled something. We shortened our strides, carefully avoiding the glass shards on the floor so we wouldn’t cut ourselves or make noise, and moved toward the end of the hallway.
And just as she had said, stairs leading down to the basement waited there.
Gooooooo—.
But it was extremely dark and reeked of damp mold, making me seriously question whether we should really go down. It felt like ghosts or dangerous people might be lurking. There were probably cockroaches everywhere, too.
“……”
“……”
“……”
Were they all thinking the same thing? None of us—me, Jeong Seok, or Yu Da-hee—could take a single step easily. If Yang Ju-hui had been here she would have snapped, “You bunch of cowards. Follow me!” and boldly taken the lead.
“Tsk. Fine. I’ll go first.”
As the leader I decided to set an example. Clink. Clatter. I carefully stepped over the randomly scattered glass fragments on the stairs. The temperature dropped sharply the moment I descended. It felt like walking into a cold refrigerator.
The muggy air of the last few days before summer and the sweat that had come with it cooled instantly, sending a deeply eerie chill through me.
“Whoa, damn. Look at all this mold.”
In the abandoned basement, mold bloomed everywhere like flowers or murals. There really was that much moisture. The claim that the school sat atop a spiritual water vein must have been true. The mold situation was beyond serious.
A Ghost Lives Here
Red Mask
If You See a Ghost, the Ghost Sees You Too
DIE
I CURSE YOU
But the mold was the least of our worries. The scariest messages were these.
If You Turn On the Lights, a Ghost Will Come
Don’t turn on the lights? How were we supposed to not turn on a light in this darkness? It made no sense.
Jeong Seok and Yu Da-hee soon followed me down. I asked Yu Da-hee, “Does anything come to mind?”
“Mm…”
She let out a long, thoughtful hum, either searching her memory or wrestling with a thought. Then, as if something had clicked, she grabbed my wrist.
“The atmosphere feels different from what I remember. Yeong-won, can you turn off your phone light?”
Turn the light off? If I did that we wouldn’t be able to see anything. Still, there was no other option. I was the leader, but our goal was to help Yu Da-hee recover her memories, so I complied.
I switched off the phone light as she asked. Because we were underground, not a single ray of light entered. Everything sank into perfect blackness. It felt like Yu Da-hee and Jeong Seok right beside me had vanished, and I couldn’t even see my own hand.
The darkness was so complete that fear hit me like a hammer.
What if, when I turned the light back on, Jeong Seok and Yu Da-hee were gone?
“Guys. You’re still next to me, right?”
I asked the darkness out of pure fear. Jeong Seok’s voice answered from the black.
“I’m here. Wow. Turning the light off really changes the mood. Da-hee, does anything come to mind now?”
Yu Da-hee hummed again in the darkness. “Yeong-won… let me hold your hand for a second.”
Someone took my hand. It was soft, warm, and the fingers were very slender. It had to be Yu Da-hee’s hand. I instinctively knew it, but after everything I had experienced I still wondered if a ghost pretending to be her had grabbed me, so I pinched the back of the hand.
“…Kyaa! Something bit me!”
Yu Da-hee screamed. It clearly wasn’t a ghost. Then Jeong Seok spoke from the darkness.
“…Maybe there are bugs? It’s damp, so centipedes could be around. Should I turn the light back on?”
His voice was trembling. He already wanted to banish the darkness.
But Yu Da-hee spoke urgently. “No. Absolutely not. You must not turn on the light. We’re going to move forward slowly. Yeong-won, hold Seok’s hand tightly. Never let go. I’ll say it again—do not turn on the light.”
Walk through complete darkness holding hands? It sounded insane. The school basement was terrifying enough already.
“Hey, Seok. Grab my hand. Hurry.”
Still, holding both their hands should make it less scary. I reached out in the dark and soon caught Jeong Seok’s hand.
“Hey, Ha Yeong-won. This is your hand, right? It’s not a ghost hand or anything?”
He seemed to have imagined the same thing I had. What a coward. Anyway, the three of us held hands and slowly advanced through the darkness.
The chilly air wrapped around us like sticky vanilla ice cream. Walking through the basement drained mental strength faster than I expected, so I opened my mouth to ease the psychological burden.
“Da-hee. Is there a reason we can’t turn on the lights?”
“…I remember walking like this before. Someone held my hand… It was really scary, but I felt reassured.”
I could understand that. I was terrified right now, yet having the others with me gave me a strange sense of security.
Step. Step.
We moved forward relying on each other’s body heat in the darkness. Then a sudden fear struck me.
“Hey, Jeong Seok. That’s you behind me, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What are your main jungle champions?”
“Kha’Zix and Nidalee.”
Good. The person behind me really was Jeong Seok. Then the girl in front of me had to be Yu Da-hee, right?
“Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three—”
Yu Da-hee was counting something. I thought it was a simple countdown, but she stopped dead at “forty-four.” She must have been counting her steps.
“Why are you counting steps?” I asked.
Jeong Seok answered instead. “Now that you mention it, there was a rumor about a ghost at Yeongji High that answers three questions. You go into the last stall of the underground girls’ bathroom, knock toward the outside, ask three questions, and someone waiting outside answers all of them.”
“Dude, are you kidding? Why tell that story right now? It’s scary.”
Talking about ghosts in a graveyard summons them, after all. Though this wasn’t a graveyard, and the feng-shui ghost I had already destroyed wouldn’t appear just from the story… Still, the tale of a ghost that answered three questions felt familiar. Wasn’t that the Ajumma Ghost? I had already taken care of her. Nothing to be afraid of.
Jeong Seok continued in a shaking voice. “When I first heard the story, I thought it was strange because Yeongji High doesn’t have an underground bathroom. But now I see… this old building does have a basement.”
He was right. Suddenly Yu Da-hee stopped again at forty-four. She turned ninety degrees to the left exactly as before and began walking while counting from one again.
“Yeong-won. If we walk another forty-four steps… we’ll end up back where we started in a square, right? Is the basement of the old building laid out like a square cloister?”
Buzz.
Someone’s phone vibrated. It was Jeong Seok’s.
“Huh. I think I just got a message.”
“Hey! Do not check your phone! I don’t know what it is, but don’t!”
I warned him in a panic. My own phone was also vibrating nonstop. But that was impossible. When Yu Da-hee had asked me to turn off the light earlier, I had powered the entire phone down just in case!
How could a powered-off phone vibrate?
“Forty-four. It should be around here…”
Yu Da-hee stopped at forty-four again. Then a bright light exploded.
She had turned on her own phone and shone the beam around. Stairs appeared—the same stairs we had used to come down. Had we returned to the starting point?
No, that wasn’t quite it.
“…What the hell is this?”
Someone cried out in confusion. It sounded like Jeong Seok, but honestly it could have been any of us.
Red letters I had never seen before covered every wall. Instead of the mold that had bloomed like blood-red spider lilies, long black strands now sprouted everywhere. Their thickness and texture looked sickeningly similar to human hair.
“I remember now. An older girl… told me she would help me get out of here, so I should hold her hand, close my eyes tight, and count… She said she came here to find something… a round ball-like thing…”
Yu Da-hee seemed completely unafraid of the sudden change and focused only on digging up her memories.
“…Why did I forget this until now? The magic wand that sister gave me… I dropped it here…”
She reached out as if she herself couldn’t understand it, then picked up a magic wand from the floor—the kind little girls played with. A red diamond was embedded at the top of the pink stick.
A cheap toy wand with a red plastic diamond on a pink rod.
Owner: Yang Ju-hui
“Hey. Do you kids really want to die?”
Flash.
The basement lights suddenly blazed on. When I turned my head, the teacher in sharp high heels stood at the top of the stairs glaring down at us.
“……”
I looked around in panic. The basement was once again filled with ordinary mold. The “A Ghost Lives Here,” “Red Mask,” and “If You See a Ghost, the Ghost Sees You Too” graffiti remained, but there were no “Save me” messages and no hair covering the corridor.
Hong Miri looked down at the basement and shouted, “You brats! Get up here right now!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jeong Seok and I climbed back to the first floor feeling like we had been granted a new lease on life. Yu Da-hee followed us. In the bright light I saw a round name tag attached to the end of the wand’s handle.
It read Yang Ju-hui.