Failure
Whirr. Whirrrrrr.
The drone of the old fan motor from the Security Office behind her gradually faded into the distance.
Her footsteps struck the aged terrazzo tile of the corridor, producing a dull, cracking sound. In the vast, panopticon-like interior filled only with silence, that single footfall echoed with an unnatural, elongated resonance.
With every breath she drew, a damp, chill cold scraped sharply through her lungs. The powerful beam of the LED flashlight in her right hand carved a round tunnel through the pitch-black darkness, stretching ahead.
Wherever the light touched, classroom doors that should have been locked tight stood gaping open, vomiting darkness. It was as if the entire school—this enormous beast—had opened its maw, waiting to savor its first meal.
Class 1-2.
She pushed the round beam of light through the crack of the front door, the first one standing open. Beyond the landscape of desks and chairs scattered irregularly under a thick coat of dust, a pitch-black stain stuck to the center of the blackboard caught her eye.
It was no ordinary dampness or mold.
The edges of the stain writhed like insect legs, dribbling down toward the tile floor. The black liquid that left the blackboard did not pool on the ground. Instead, it rose vertically, beginning to form a grotesque three-dimensional shape.
Two limp arms. Two limp legs. A thrashing figure whose joints seemed shattered, bent every which way. Where a face should have been, there were no features—only a pair of enormous lips, hideously torn open all the way to both ears, stretched wide.
"…Teacher…."
A bizarre resonance that seemed to dig straight into her skull without passing through her eardrums.
"Why… are you late…?"
It was a child's lisping pronunciation, yet the tail end of the voice cracked roughly, like a sharp scrap of metal scraping glass. At that sound—lips trembling as if the jaw joint had been shattered—every fine hair on her body stood on end at once.
Her breath stopped for an instant. A chill like ice water surging backward through her veins from her toes slammed into her spine.
But her body did not freeze under the weight of terror.
Her left hand plunged into her pocket and clamped tight around the hilt of the crude Shaman Knife, its blade completely blunted. She jammed the flashlight into the holster at her waist, then quickly layered her now-empty left hand over the blunt lump of metal. The moment both hands locked around the scrap-iron lump, a faint heat began to stir and rise from deep in her chest, just below the solar plexus.
That blood-red heat raced along her heartbeat, surging through her veins, through both arms, gathering at her fingertips. Around the rusted, dark-red blade of the Shaman Knife, a formless blue light wavered faintly, like a heat haze.
"Get lost."
A low snarl tore from between her parched lips.
She drew her elbow back, then used the springing forward momentum to slash a single diagonal cut through the empty air.
Shiiik.
With a sharp whistle that tore the air, the blue trail clinging to the tip of the Shaman Knife sliced across the black figure's waist. The form let out an ear-splitting, blood-curdling scream and doubled over. From the cut surface, sparks flew, and the black shape began crumbling from the edges in an instant, as if paper were burning.
The black lumps dripping toward the floor turned into thick, foul-smelling smoke before they even touched the tiles, scattering into the air.
A terrible stench brushed her nose. Yet the moment that smoke seeped into her lungs through her airways, an inexplicable warm energy wrapped her entire body instead of revulsion. The rigid muscles of her neck and shoulders melted loose, and the crushing fatigue of extreme tension washed away as if it had never been. Near her wrist, a small scrape that had been red and swollen from earlier began to close before her eyes, new flesh knitting over it.
She furrowed her brow hard at the unbelievable sight.
…The wound healed? What the hell?
But there was no time to stand there in shock. Through the open cracks of the corridor doors, and through the fine fissures in the ceiling and walls, the sensation of countless streams of negative energy crawling like insects pricked her skin. That presence soon became sharp, solid forms and came at her from every direction.
She dropped reflexively, dodging the pitch-black masses pouring down from overhead. Staying low enough nearly to touch the floor, she swung the blade in short, clean arcs, tracking the trajectories of the negative energy that lunged for her legs. With a sickening, shearing friction, the black forms were torn apart. Cutting and batting away the relentless ambushes that gave her no chance to straighten her back, she rolled and broke through the corridor.
The second classroom she dove into to escape the pressure was already a nest of enemies. Shadows that had been lurking among the twisted desks and chairs charged like beasts. She kicked hard off the floor and cut horizontally through the center of the lead figure. In the instant sticky remnants blurred her vision, she twisted her body, knocked aside the claws reaching from behind, and immediately linked into a thrust. Each time the cold blade flashed inside the narrow classroom, the forms crumbled amid grotesque screams. Only after she drove the blade deep through the last enemy's throat did the crushing murderous intent subside.
Swallowing rough breaths, she shook the residue from her blade. Then she moved her feet back out into the corridor, where an unpleasant silence had settled once more.
It was when she had passed the second classroom and reached the threshold of the third.
Something was scraping across the floor, crawling rapidly out of the dense darkness at the center of the corridor.
Tadak. Tadadak. Tadak.
The sound of multiple palms striking the hard flooring in rapid succession.
Kreeeeek!
She slammed the flashlight beam down. A black stain with a human torso and six grotesque arms sprouting like a spider's was charging at her, twisting its joints hideously.
She raised her right hand and pulled a crude red talisman, drawn with a marker, from her inner pocket. Pushing the faint heat remaining at her fingertips into the paper, she flung the talisman hard at the creature's hideous head as it crawled across the floor.
With a fluttering sound, the talisman flew through the air and slapped dead-center onto its forehead.
Chiiiiisss—!
Kkeugigigigik!
A beast's death cry burst out, accompanied by the sound of red-hot iron searing raw flesh. From the point where the crude red markings touched, the black shell began to boil and melt. Its six arms thrashed in agony, trying to claw at its own head, but soon lost their form and collapsed into sticky liquid.
Once more, the rising black smoke seeped into her nose. A heat more intense than before raced through her veins, cleanly erasing the pain in her shoulder ligament that had been strained a moment earlier.
She had no idea how much time had passed.
From the first floor of the Old Building up through the third, and through part of the connecting passage that led toward the New Building, she scoured every corner and continued an endless slaughter. Forms in red school uniforms pouring out of cabinets. Evil spirits in teachers' clothes hanging from fluorescent lights, swinging like pendulums. Faces dangling upside down from the corridor ceiling with mouths open. Gaunt hands bursting half-bodied through the wall tiles, trying to seize her ankles.
Inside this deformed building, the number of dead ghosts overwhelmingly exceeded the number of living humans it could hold. It was not merely a haunted house. It was like a vast jar that had, for decades, sucked in and sealed away every scrap of negative energy from the surrounding area.
Every time she swung the Shaman Knife, threw a talisman, or cut and struck, black smoke rose. Her breathing grew rougher, and thick beads of sweat dripped from under her chin—yet paradoxically, the sensation in her torso was growing light as a feather. Each time she shattered the monsters' forms and inhaled the smoke, the heat that began in her lower abdomen entered her heart, circulated through her entire body, knitting torn muscle and endlessly resupplying her depleted stamina.
Is it because of this scar Grandmother carved into my belly? Even though I've hit my limit so hard my muscles are screaming, spiritual power and stamina keep getting force-fed into me.
But separate from the recovery of physical damage and muscular fatigue, the fundamental exhaustion and unease that gnawed at her mind did not disappear.
At last she finished clearing the very end of the third-floor corridor—the final special-activity room of the Old Building.
She pulled the flashlight from her waist and swept the beam this way and that, but she no longer felt any writhing presence or murky negative energy nearby. The nerves that had been stretched taut suddenly loosened, and both shoulders dropped with a soft thud.
Even if her stamina was being forcibly restored, continuously dumping adrenaline past her limits had driven her brain's fatigue to the extreme. More than anything, from running the cool corridors and swinging a blade the whole time, her inner T-shirt was already stuck to her skin with clammy sweat.
It was the instant she moved to wipe the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve.
"…Ugh."
A heavy, subtle pressure pushed up from her lower abdomen. After hours in a state of extreme tension without releasing any fluid, her bladder had reached its limit. Her lower belly tightened, sending an urgent physiological signal.
Yuna roughly jammed the flashlight back into its holster and looked toward the restroom sign still faintly visible at the far end of the corridor. It was a door whose red paint for the women's restroom marking had peeled halfway off, smeared like a bloodstain.
I'll take care of the bathroom here first and keep going. Exploring the New Building side will have to wait until tomorrow. What kind of school dumps out ghosts at cemetery levels.
She walked toward the end of the corridor. Perhaps because the ghosts' energy had cleared, the sound of her footsteps on the tile floor seemed lighter than before.
But it was the very moment she stepped up to the old plastic threshold of the restroom.
Woom. Woooohm.
From deep within the floor pipes, a low, heavy vibration—like a massive machine spinning uselessly—crawled up through the tile walls into the soles of her feet. It was not simply the sound of water flowing. It was an ominous tremor, as if the building's own guts were writhing.
Frowning, she reached out with her right hand and shoved the door open.
Creeeak.
The instant the rusted hinges screamed open, a viciously concentrated ammonia stench and the reek of decades-old water scale gouged her nasal membranes like a blade. It was the nauseating stench of water left to rot in an old sewer.
"Ugh…."
The instant she raised a hand to cover her nose—
From deep in her lower abdomen, an extreme pain like dozens of thick iron needles randomly stabbing her organs exploded like a lightning strike.
"Ugh! Hahk."
A scream burst out of her unbidden, and her waist folded like an animal's. Both hands clamped hard over her lower belly; she nearly collapsed right there. Cold sweat sprang up across her forehead and the bridge of her nose in an instant.
This was no ordinary menstrual cramp or bladder pressure. From the deep inner wall of her uterus, a terrible heat was spreading as if fire were catching, as if her organs were burning through. It was a completely different quality from the warm recovery heat she had felt while cutting down ghosts moments before. This was pure agony—a biological warning that something was going wrong from inside her body.
She clenched her teeth until her molars threatened to crack, braced a hand against the wall tiles, and staggered toward the inner stalls. Even through the gut-wrenching pain, the limit of holding her urine had already crossed the critical point.
She kicked open the innermost old wooden door. In the center of the floor, a squat toilet yellowed with water scale gaped hideously open. Not a Western-style toilet—an old-style fixture you had to crouch over on the floor.
With trembling hands she hooked her bag strap over the door handle.
Clink. Clatter.
The brass bell bracelet hanging from one corner of her bag rang dully and loudly inside the narrow stall every time the door shook. That ear-splitting jingle only grated on her nerves further.
She pulled the flashlight from the holster at her waist and stood it upright in a corner of the tile floor. The round light struck the ceiling, casting the narrow restroom stall in a pale glow.
With shaking fingers she undid the buckle of her waist belt, heavy with the master-key ring, rolled up the hem of her clothes, and lowered the zipper of her cargo pants. She dragged pants and underwear down together past her knees and awkwardly squatted over the squat toilet.
The moment her most private, vulnerable genitals were nakedly exposed to the cold, damp air outside, goosebumps raced up the insides of her thighs. Each time the fluorescent light trembled with a crackling noise, the round light from the floor flashlight tangled with it, and grotesque shadows swayed across the walls.
"Haa…"
The pressure in her bladder that had felt ready to burst released, and hot liquid poured down toward the hole in the floor. A short sigh of relief slipped between her lips along with the ease of release—but the unpleasant heat and pain that felt like her uterus was being wrung did not ease in the slightest, continuing to crush her entire pelvis.
Gritting her teeth, she hurriedly finished her business, tore off some of the rough roll paper from the holder beside her, and wiped her skin. She tossed the paper into the toilet hole and shoved the silver flush handle protruding from the wall hard downward.
Clunk.
The handle folded down as if spinning free, but no fierce rush of water followed.
"Huh…? Is the toilet clogged?"
Instead—
Squelch. Gloop. Shluuurp.
It was not the pipe vibration she had heard at the entrance earlier. From deep inside the round hole of the squat toilet right under her feet, a spine-chilling viscous sound—like dozens of chunks of wet raw meat being forcibly crammed into a narrow pipe and crushed—was surging upward at high speed.
"…Huh?"
It was the moment she tried to half-rise in confusion, without even pulling her pants back up.
Between the unprotected cleft of her buttocks, something thick, ice-cold, and slick rubbed against her with blatant directness.
Before the goosebumps could punch through her spinal cord and slam into her brain—
Paaaah——!
From the narrow squat-toilet hole beneath her feet, dozens of thick, long tentacles dripping black mucus erupted all at once in a furious surge.
In the instant the tentacles shot up, Yuna's body moved on instinct. The body that tried to scramble backward slammed its back into the narrow stall wall. Bang. Her startled shoulder crushed against the cement wall, and her breath caught for a second. But even that impact was a luxury. Already one tentacle was coiling around the inside of her thigh and tightening.
"Let go, you bastard!"
With a curse full of venom, her left hand reflexively plunged inside her underwear. Her fingertips met a cold, rough texture. It was the small shaman knife, rusted over in reddish-brown, its blade completely blunted. The hemp cord wrapped around the hilt was slick with sweat.
The hand drawing the knife trembled hard. The pressure of the tentacle around her thigh was growing strong enough to crush bone in an instant.
She clenched her teeth.
Just below the solar plexus, she forced up the faint warmth that always sat in that place. In a body already exhausted to its limit, that ember would barely catch. After several empty spins, the heat finally rose like a thread—and around the blunt blade, a formless blue light wavered faintly like a heat haze.
"Haa——!"
She exploded a breath and drove the knife straight down into the tentacle coiled around her thigh.
Thwack. It was a dull tip with no edge, but in that moment, wrapped in blue heat, it acted as something more than sharp. The tentacle's surface sizzled and burned. With a nauseating smell like cooking flesh, yellow mucus gushed out, fouling the back of her hand and the tile floor.
Kieeeeeek——!
A terrible scream burst out as if the entire building's plumbing were ringing. The constricting pressure released, and her leg was free for an instant.
It was a chance. But the opening was far too short.
The moment she turned to escape, two more tentacles surged up behind her at once. Inside the narrow stall there was no room to swing a blade wide. The tip of the knife, following the arc of her extended arm, struck the corner of the cement wall beside her with a dull clang.
A tingling shock ran up her wrist. For an instant the strength left her grip.
One tentacle did not miss that gap and snatched the hilt.
"No——!"
She reached to grab it, but she was too late. Another tentacle coiled around the blade and yanked, and with a sound like bone snapping—crunch—the old shaman knife was torn from her hand.
The knife lifted into the air was swung between the tentacles again and again, then began to be crushed from every side, as if promising to do the same to Yuna herself.
Crrrack. Screee.
The old piece of metal that had endured so many years was ground to pieces without even a scream. The shattered fragments mixed with yellow mucus and pattered down onto the floor.
The sensation of having lost her weapon swept coldly through her entire body.
There was no time to think further. Stepping on the half-fallen pant legs, she threw herself unsteadily toward the door.
One step. Two steps.
On the third, something cold and slick coiled around her ankle.
Her balance gone, her body pitched forward. Palms and knees slammed hard into the wet tile floor, skin scraping raw. Before she could feel the pain, a thick tentacle coiled around the nape of her neck as if someone had seized her by the back of the head.
"Kh, hhk…!"
With the sensation of her windpipe being squeezed, her feet lifted clear off the floor. Her toes flailed in empty air. Her vision shook, and the broken fluorescent light smeared into multiple streaks.
Between the pressure around her throat, only that spine-chilling viscous sound bubbling from the tentacle's surface rang close—very close—in her ears.
"Ugh, khahk…!"
The pressure of the tentacle around her neck grew steadily stronger, completely crushing her windpipe. Both hands rose reflexively toward her throat, grabbing and trying to tear at the slick mass of flesh, but it only slipped through her fingers like wet soap.
The talisman—I have to get the talisman out…
She urgently stretched one hand toward her coat pocket. But before her fingertips could even reach it, another tentacle strand whipped in like a lash and coiled around the coat's hem.
Riiip——!
The coat tore in an instant. With the sound of seams ripping, one entire sleeve was ripped free and fluttered in the air. The bundle of talismans she had kept in the inner pocket scattered and fell onto the filth-pooled tiles, soaking through.
Her eyes flew wide at the sight of her last hope being shredded right in front of her.
No…!
In the instant before reason snapped, instinct moved first. The moment she realized that gripping the tentacle around her neck with both hands was meaningless, she forced her head to twist and brought her mouth to that mass of flesh.
Crunch!
Her teeth sank into the tentacle's surface.
Tough, rubbery hide mashed between her teeth, and a fishy, disgusting-tasting bodily fluid burst into her mouth. Nausea surged, but she put even more force into her jaw.
As if the faint heat she had forced up from below her solar plexus transferred to the tips of her teeth, a pale blue light crackled at the bitten spot.
Kieeek!
With a sharp scream, the pressure around her neck loosened for an instant.
As if enraged, another tentacle strand shot in on a diagonal. A strike aimed at her abdomen.
Even half-choked, her body twisted on instinct. The tentacle that barely grazed her side and missed slammed into the tile wall. With a booming crash, shattered tile fragments sprayed in every direction.
I dodg—!
Before she could feel relief, a second strike aimed at her solar plexus followed immediately.
Thud!
The impact that landed exactly on her solar plexus made her vision flash pure white.
"Kh…!"
Her breath cut off completely, and she was released from the tentacle that had been choking her. Her floating body was flung down onto the floor as if discarded. Her back and the back of her head struck the wet tiles with a dull sound, but even that pain barely registered.
She tried to breathe and could not. From the blow to her solar plexus, her diaphragm felt completely frozen; her mouth only gaped, and no air entered her lungs.
Collapsed on the floor, she twitched her limbs. Her eyes were alive, staring up at the ceiling, but her body could not properly move a single finger.
As if determined not to miss the opening, one tentacle coiled under her ribs. Her upper body was dragged up into the air as if forced upright.
Damn it…!
Still unable to breathe, she crossed both arms to guard in front of her abdomen. She instinctively felt another blow coming.
Thud!
The impact that struck her forearm sent a pain that seemed to ring through to the bone. It felt as if her arm would tear off—but the moment the thought that she had blocked the worst of it flashed through her mind—
Another tentacle from the opposite side slammed straight into her unguarded lower abdomen.
"Gguh…!"
Pain beyond imagination punched through her entire pelvis. The earlier unidentifiable pain and this physical impact mixed together, and her vision went white and blurred. Her mouth fell open on its own, and the saliva she had been holding back ran down her chin in streams. Sour fluid rose from deep in her throat.
Her body hanging in the air went limp. At the edges of her vision, black spots began to bloom one by one.
Here… like this…