School (4)

"We’re screwed! We’re totally screwed! We’re never getting out of here! Waaaaah!"

"Shut up."

"You don’t get it because you don’t know how hard the test is! They expect us to place first in that thing... Hold on, Daejang, what are you doing?"

Hmm. The janitor had turned into a deflated balloon. There wasn’t much worth salvaging from it as material.

Then was this the only useful part left, this thing that looked like a gigantic sea anemone?

Could I use the bones visible through the cut surface?

"W-why are you cutting that up?"

"I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. I’m farming materials."

"Uuugh!"

What was he even good for, being this squeamish?

Honestly, I was disgusted too.

Cutting through the soft, slick flesh that felt like I was handling a tongue was no easy task.

In fact, if Namgogoedam hadn’t been here, I probably would’ve thrown up a few times already.

Grinding my teeth and forcing myself through it out of sheer pride, I stripped the bones free. The only reason I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could tolerate it this much was because fighting that spider had built up some immunity.

Even so, the bones I’d pulled out were strangely shaped.

"Could probably swing this as-is."

A thick central spine ran through the middle, with flatter bones packed tightly along both sides.

If I sharpened the edge at the end after cutting it, it could work as a sword or a dagger, and if I sliced it into smaller pieces, it might even serve as throwing stars.

For now, I peeled away the flesh from the severed head all the way to where the tip of the tongue had been, just to get a clear look at the whole thing.

"Wueeeaagh-"

"Ah, shit. Go puke in the bathroom!"

The vomit fighting its way back up nearly broke loose again.

God, this was annoying...

Dragged into a place like this out of nowhere and forced to do some giant sea anemone dissection show.

Swallowing every curse, I kept my hands moving without a break and finished deboning the thing. Then, at last, a line of welcome text appeared.

▶ Parasitic Tongue Bone (B)

Oh, B-rank!

Even higher grade than the Thought Core I’d gotten before!

"H-heh, heh heh heh."

"...You really have lost it, haven’t you?"

While I was stroking the bone affectionately, Namgogoedam ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠came back after rinsing his mouth and asked with a wary expression.

"Nope. Namgogoedam, you handle the other one."

"Wueeeaagh!"

"Hey, you little shit—!"

Watching him clamp a hand over his mouth and sprint back to the bathroom, I realized I’d ended up having to do that too.

I hated it so much I could scream, but the fact remained that it was a B-rank material, so I grabbed Black Moon again.

"Hoo...

"Don’t strike a burned-out pose after barely turning two pages."

"Seeing trigonometry makes me crave instant noodles. It’s good with cup ramen."

"Kim Daejang! Don’t give up, you can do it! Are you seriously going to lose like this?"

"Yeah, I am."

I’d flipped past pages covered in so many lines I couldn’t tell whether it was math or art, but I still hadn’t solved a single problem.

Right. This body was a math loser.

No, honestly, I was just a full-on school loser.

I’d given up on being a student already.

"You somehow survived this long?"

"Top of the agri school, after all."

"If it’s an agri school, isn’t it just a matter of sowing seeds?"

"Quit saying something stupid and look at even one more problem. The test’s starting soon."

"Okay, I’ll die."

Being called stupid by Namgogoedam, of all people.

What was the point of living a life like this?

I’d spent the time studying because he dragged me into it, and even then I hadn’t managed to process a single material.

I was already tired and sleepy, and staring at a textbook that worked like a natural sleeping pill had me nodding off every few minutes.

"Please, just focus!"

"Chwup... but all those lockers are sealed now, so does it even matter if we fail?"

"This could loop back like before. And even if it’s safe... do you really want to keep living here?"

"Hmm... if they give us lunch boxes, this place might be okay?"

A nice place if it fed you lunch and dinner.

Sure, Namgogoedam had spent the whole time being chased at night and studying during the day, so of course he felt like he was dying. But once the danger was gone, this was paradise.

As long as you ignored those students with their faces smashed flat.

"Good morning."

"Ah. I didn’t study at all. This is bad."

"Did you see yesterday’s one? ■■■■ was pretty funny."

Living Korean textbooks, the whole lot of them.

The way they talked felt even more mechanical than AI.

Haa... once the students started arriving, that meant it was about to begin.

"Namgogoedam."

"What now? You ruined my studying too, thanks to you."

"Can I cheat off the person next to me?"

The second rule: the average score had to be above 60.

So this wasn’t even about placing first anymore. I had to worry about failing outright first.

At my words, Namgogoedam blinked, then said in disbelief, "With those guys? I’ve never even tried that because it’s scary. If you get close, even while hiding, they stare at you."

"Tch. Amateur. I’m a real man, so I’ll try it."

"That’s not a legitimate thing to say! Since when does cheating make you a real man?"

"The answer is in this classroom."

"Yeah, sure, there’s an answer! But what if something weird pops out again because of that?"

A weird thing?

That meant more material, then.

"Sounds like easy farming?"

"Agh, seriously, you insane bastard... maybe it would’ve been better if you’d just never shown up."

"If I hadn’t, you’d already be minced meat."

"I’m going to lose my mind."

The Backrooms ignored the rules of reality.

So why not ignore the rule that cheating was forbidden too?

You there. This is your fault!

You looked too easy to solve!

I’m going to NTL your answer sheet and carve my traces all over it until it becomes mine!

Give birth to my score! Hup, hup!

"You really are insane, huh?"

"It’s not like reading the book now would help anyway."

"I don’t even know anymore..."

"So which one of them is best at studying?"

"How am I supposed to tell when all their faces look like that?"

Too bad.

The weird students were so sensitive about their image rights that I couldn’t even tell who was who.

Besides, they were all talking like they were normal, but if you actually listened, every one of them was just blurting out whatever was on their mind.

"My mom made me seaweed soup because of the exam. I hate it."

"Whoa, really? I wanted that too."

"So the national team had a group food poisoning incident?"

"Is TS actually the next stage of human evolution?"

That was the kind of conversation the two facing each other were having.

Well, at least I knew one of them was a TS stan.

I looked for the one who seemed most likely to be good at studying.

That one looked sleepy, this one was drawing... in the end, I chose the student in the front row closest to the board, among the ones pretending to be ordinary students.

The people who actually studied hard were always the ones sitting in front, trying to stand out.

"Hey. I’m your seatmate from today."

"With the acceleration of AI, the climate crisis is worsening faster. In the chicken race between singularity and extinction, what should we do?"

"Let’s get along? Yeah, sure."

"Love is like quantum entanglement. It transcends distance."

I was pretty sure this one was a bingo.

Because I couldn’t understand a single word coming out of his mouth.

Once I settled beside him and waited, the bell rang and the test began.

At some point, the test paper and answer sheet had appeared on the desk.

The students and Namgogoedam buried their noses in them and started solving the problems.

Maybe I should take a look too.

Holy shit.

These weren’t just problems.

They were complete fucking garbage.

Some kind of polynomial function using calculus...?

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

I wanted to see the face of the teacher who thought this counted as a question.

Giving up quickly, I looked beside me.

My seatmate was moving through the problems with speed and precision.

I almost wanted to applaud him with both hands.

This is what it meant to be comrades, right? Helping each other when things got hard.

Without hesitation, I copied his answer sheet.

"Mine, today’s cafeteria food is- why? What’s coming out? Are you taking it?"

It was only after I finished the fourth answer sheet that my buddy suddenly turned his neck to the side and started speaking.

He seemed angry.

He was really going to get serious over a little cheating from a weird thing?

"Your answers... were awesome?"

"Come back after your cram school and hand it over. Let’s order chicken. You have to die!"

There was still time left on the test, but my buddy ignored that and stood up anyway. With a chilling tone hidden inside his ordinary speech, he reached out and grabbed my shoulder.

You swung first.

"You crazy bastard! What the hell are you doing?"

"I did you a favor and this punk doesn’t even know his place and comes at me?"

With a lightning-fast ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠swing of Black Moon, the weird student’s head was liberated from academics.

The rolling head fell silent after a few words.

"The weather’s nice, so let’s go for a walk, chicken and sunshine feel so nice."

"Aaaah!"

"The guy whose head got chopped off is calmer than you. Why are you freaking out?"

"What if these guys are actually people?"

"People? After getting shredded by tentacles and having their heads lopped off, and still acting that calm? There’s no way they’re people. They’re just weird things trying to eat a little of our human minds."

The man who died in the anomaly was the same. These things were only wearing human shapes; they couldn’t be called people.

Nothing more than props and dolls for this stage called the Backrooms.

Just things that needed to be broken.

"Ah, I got a good idea."

"What now...?"

"Unlike certifications, this kind of test is all relative ranking, right? But what if there were only two students left?"

"What are you-"

"If I wipe all these guys out, then obviously I’m first."

"Uh...? Well, yeah, but that’s a little-"

"Don’t empathize with weird things. Focus on surviving. Looking at these questions, our brains wouldn’t be enough even if we smashed them into this for years. So this is the only way."

At the same time, I swung Black Moon and took the neck of the student behind me clean off.

Shit, Namgogoedam, I know I don’t need that expression from you.

I know what I look like killing things that resemble human beings.

But these aren’t people.

They’re the same things that keep repeating this exam every day, with two students dying and new ones being replaced as if nothing happened. There’s no way they’re human.

"I’m getting out of here no matter what. If you’re going to waste time feeling half-assed sympathy for these weirdos, then stay here by yourself."

"...Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll do it, okay?"

I tossed Black Moon to the nodding Namgogoedam.

After hesitating for a moment, he swung at the student beside him and took its neck off.

Yeah, just focus on surviving.

As we moved, the students responded by bending their joints in grotesque ways, but they still couldn’t handle the two of us once we’d decided to fight seriously.

A few minutes after the hammer and Black Moon had been swinging nonstop, only the two of us remained in the classroom, and when the test time ended, only our two answer sheets were left on the teacher’s desk.

At the same time, a status window appeared.