School (3)
As the creature’s tongue came down over my face for the last time, my consciousness rebooted with a jolt, and a strange line of text rose up to greet me.
...A masterpiece?
“What’s with you? Why are you spacing out?”
“...Namgo. What time is it?”
“Huh? It’s 10:21.”
The computer lab was lit up.
Namgo’s face, still holding the black crescent moon in a downward strike, showed none of the urgency from a moment ago.
Was I... alive? Had time reversed?
At the word masterpiece, I grabbed the lantern and pulled out the movie ticket I’d tucked inside.
Masterpiece - School Ghost Story ■■■■.■■.■■
On the movie ticket, which had held nothing before, crooked writing had appeared.
The moment I took it out, the ticket started crumbling, then scattered away.
The date and time were so mangled they couldn’t be read anymore, but it was clear enough that this had sent me back in time.
I died after being attacked by the janitor, and the ticket’s effect rewound me to an hour and forty minutes earlier.
Was being killed by a supernatural entity the activation condition for the movie ticket?
The time probably followed the runtime of the movie.
It felt disgusting, like my death had been turned into a toy for someone’s amusement, but in the end, this thing had saved me once.
And it had brought me a brief glimpse of the future, too.
“There are two janitors here?”
“No, just one. Why are you asking all of a sudden?”
“Think about it. Are you sure there’s really only one? What if the other one’s the hidden-type, or there’s more?”
“There’s really just one.”
“How are you so sure?”
Because I had just met two of them point-blank?
Under my suspicious stare, Namgo shrugged.
“If there were, I would’ve seen them already. I even trailed the route the janitor took in case there was a way out after it passed through.”
“You sure?”
“I’m telling you, yes. Just in case, I even went the opposite way from its patrol route and checked every other room. I covered everything.”
Then why were there two?
There wasn’t any way they’d suddenly brought in extra staff today, and the only thing different from usual was me, the transfer student.
...Nice benefits. They assign one janitor per student?
From the janitor’s point of view, it was a sweet deal. From the point of view of the student who had to hide from it, it was hell.
“Hah. Let’s go.”
“You said this was for practicing with the sword, so where are we going now?”
“To set a trap.”
“You said that’d be quick- wait, I’m coming too!”
We moved fast, hurrying to the end of the corridor.
Whether the janitor would show up here again after time had been rewound was anyone’s guess.
For now, assuming it would appear, I spread Black Thread in a dense web.
“Weren’t we supposed to hide here?”
“Changed my mind. If those janitors charge us, we’re not backing down here. We’re cracking their skulls.”
“Those janitors?”
“Focus. When one of them gets caught in the web, you hide and go straight for the throat.”
“...This feels more like we’re the ones trapped, but okay. Got it.”
In the middle of the straight corridor, between classroom doors, I strung Black Thread front and back until it formed a sealed space like a spiderweb.
A last stand? No.
This was a mouth waiting to swallow them whole.
Now, no matter where they burst out from, they’d be caught.
And then, like a spider pouncing on prey, we’d strike once the food was secured.
“Namgo.”
“W-what? Are we hiding now?”
“No. No matter what happens, make sure you kill one of them. I can’t help you. There’ll be two.”
“Huh? Two? What do you mean, th-”
There wasn’t time to explain it all and make him understand.
The hour hand and minute hand both pointed to twelve, and the lights went out.
I hung the lantern on the Black Thread, up against the ceiling, to preserve a sliver of vision, then tightened my grip on the hammer.
“Ah, ah! The janitor! Huh? T-t-two of them?”
“They’re coming from the same place. Get your head straight and hold onto the Black Crescent properly!”
“Damn it, what the hell is thisss!”
The two janitors who spotted us lurched forward.
The Black Thread I’d strung ahead of time tore under their strength, but the spiderweb stuck to their bodies only tangled tighter the more they moved.
The janitors staggered forward through layer after layer of Black Thread.
But the more they struggled, the more the thread clinging to them intertwined, slowly turning into bindings.
This might be easier than I thought.
“These bastards attack with their tongues too, so be careful.”
“Aaaaah!”
“Hey, what are you swinging already for!”
The panicked Namgo swung the Black Crescent before the janitor even got into range.
The janitor’s chest split open, yellow pus-like gunk spraying out, but at the same time the Black Thread connecting it to the wall was cut as well.
“Khakhek! Khakhek! Hieek kaahi!”
“Kyaaaah!”
“Ah, you idiot!”
The janitor, freed at last, snatched at Namgo’s uniform.
Namgo yelped and swung the Black Crescent again, but with no real force behind it, he only left a shallow scratch on the janitor.
Kill the one stuck to Namgo first.
“Like this!”
The janitor holding Namgo had an empty crown of a head, right there in plain view.
“The head!”
I slammed the hammer down on the perfect ten-point target.
“Crush it for real!”
The janitor’s skull caved in, and its hand clamped around Namgo dropped away.
“I told you to cut the neck when you had the chance!”
“It was too scary, okay... But you’re really good at fighting. No wonder you go around hunting supernatural things.”
“Cut the crap and the one over there- huh?”
My right arm, the one gripping the hammer, was yanked violently downward.
No, the janitor’s tongue had already curled around it and was pulling.
I’d smashed its head. Why was it still alive?
“It-it’s coming from behind too!”
“Namgo!”
The other one behind me had also shot out its tongue and wrapped it around my ankle.
Suddenly I was about to be drawn apart like a victim of the old quartering punishment, and I barked at Namgo while straining to hold on.
“I’ll save you!”
The tongue pulling my right arm was cut in half by Namgo’s Black Crescent.
For one brief second I felt relief, and then the force still dragging at my ankle yanked me toward the janitor that was half-bound in Black Thread.
“Namgo! Sword!”
I scattered Black Thread and Silver Thread however I could to keep myself from being dragged away, then caught the Black Crescent Namgo threw at me.
And just as I was about to cut that damned tongue, it suddenly let go and snapped back, and the janitor’s body began convulsing hard.
“Boss, you okay?”
“For now... but what the hell is that?”
“...Uh...”
Something long was forcing its way out of the janitor’s jawless mouth.
A grotesque thing, thick and long, shaped like a tongue.
When it reared up like a snake, the janitor shriveled down like an empty husk.
“You said it was an humanoid supernatural thing.”
“I didn’t know something like that would pop out either.”
Not a single piece of Namgo’s information was reliable.
The tip of that long tongue twitched, and dozens of anemone-like heads wriggled at the end.
It was disgusting beyond belief.
Just thinking that I’d already died once to something like that, and had just been subjected to a tentacle play session, made my skin crawl.
“The good news is that looks like the real body. If we kill that, this should be over.”
“Yeah, right. The one we just killed isn’t moving anymore.”
It was grotesque, but its durability was weak.
So it had been using the janitor like a shell, I guessed, and when it looked like it might die bound in the web, it’d slipped out.
But how were we supposed to catch that thing?
“It only crawls where there isn’t any web...”
“I see it too. Clever bastard.”
Since I’d been planning to catch the humanoid janitors, I’d laid Black Thread mostly from the knees up.
Which meant the floor was wide open.
That grotesque snake was free to move, and we were the ones surrounded and trapped by Black Thread instead.
“We really are trapped...”
“I didn’t know there’d be something like that. You should’ve told me properly. Though I guess a failure like you wouldn’t know anything anyway.”
“Damn it. I’ll prove it at the next exam!”
“Prove what? You’re still at the bottom of the pile.”
Keeping my eyes on the snake, ready for it to lunge at any second, I took a breath.
Should I throw out more Black Thread and try to pin it down?
But if it ran off like that, we’d be screwed.
It wasn’t just clever; it was the sort of bastard that would become a nightmare later if I let it slip away.
“Boss. You need to save me, okay?”
“What?”
“I’ll hold that thing down for you.”
“What are you planning with that serious face?”
“Aaaaah!”
Namgo didn’t answer. Instead, he suddenly shouted and started waving his hands through the Black Thread like a madman, getting himself completely tangled up in spiderweb.
Then, with that huge frame of his, he leapt.
“Now!”
“That crazy bastard...”
Namgo, covered head to toe in webbing, jumped onto the snake and slammed into it.
The clever snake tried to dodge, but barely at the tail end of it, Namgo managed to catch the tip of its tongue, and then he yanked the thing back in reverse.
The snake raised its head and lunged to kill him.
“Die!”
Like an axe blow, Namgo brought the Black Crescent down, and the snake twisted to flee again, but Namgo simply rolled with it, clinging to it with both arms.
Restricted by Namgo’s body sticking to it, the snake could no longer move properly, and in the end the blade of the Black Crescent severed its neck.
“Hah, hah... You insane bastard.”
“Hahaha... I made a mistake, but I still carried, right?”
“Carried my ass. If you hadn’t screwed up in the first place, we could’ve killed it cleanly by taking its head.”
“Anyway, we won, so let’s have a drink.”
“What a load of crap... Hah. So is that the end of it?”
“I don’t know? It was my first time killing a janitor... Phew. Hey, can you take this off me?”
“Take it off yourself.”
I ignored Namgo, who was crawling out like a caterpillar wrapped in web, and grabbed the lantern first.
If the area had been cleared, exploration should activate.
Jack O’ Lantern (B)
Current Area: School
Exploration ■ : ■V ■Purchase■ , ■■■ ■■■
...Ah.
“Boss! You’re not planning to go off alone, are you? Take me with you! Ow, why is this stuff so sticky!”
“...Shit. It’s not over.”
“What? No, seriously, help me get this off!”
“The School hasn’t been cleared. Looks like there’s something else.”
“Huh?”
Even after killing the janitor in the locker room, I still couldn’t graduate from the School.
That meant there was only one gimmick left.
The exam that happened every single day.
Don’t tell me this thing only ends if I place first on the test?
“N-no way!”
For both Namgo and me, an awful assignment was waiting.