The Tiger's Den
Late-spring sunlight poured down into the classroom. Before second period began, the homeroom teacher came looking for Class 2 of the first-year high school division. Only moments earlier, an alarm had blared loudly enough to send the whole academy building into a panic. Had the Abyss on campus grounds actually backflowed? The teacher had rushed over, no doubt, to warn everyone not to leave the building without permission. The students waited for instructions with faintly nervous faces.
And then—
"……Huh? Wait, isn't that……"
The instant the class saw the girl who walked in through the front door alongside the homeroom teacher, every one of them froze.
The teacher stood at the blackboard and gave the lectern a light tap. "As you all know, Jihyo came back from a serious injury recently. Keep that in mind, and I expect all of you to help her out so she doesn't overexert herself for the time being."
Dozens of pairs of eyes swung toward the expressionless girl standing before the blackboard. Straight, dark hair fell neatly to her waist, and her deep, lake-blue eyes carried a faint shadow beneath them. A transfer student, out of nowhere? No—this school didn't even have a concept of transferring in the first place.
"……Seol Jihyo?"
"Whoa. It's really Seol Jihyo."
That was the girl who'd had her accident right before middle school graduation. Of course, the real Seol Jihyo was still undergoing treatment at the family estate—but not a single soul in that classroom had any idea.
"How is she back at school already?"
"She looks way too fine for someone who went through an accident like that……"
"Her Core's Regeneration, isn't it?"
"Still. Even so."
The murmurs carried both unrest and unease. Not one person in the room was welcoming her back—anyone who wasn't a fool could see that much.
"Jihyo, if you have something to say to your classmates, go ahead."
Jiwoo swept the classroom from end to end. Everyone was staring at her as if she were some exotic curiosity—as if a pig hauled off to the slaughterhouse had come strolling back unharmed.
Some of the people who bullied Jihyo are in this room.
…Maybe most of them. Maybe all of them.
Jiwoo's hand tightened around the strap of her bag. The "memories of Jihyo" that Soyoung had shown her that day held far more than just the accident in the Abyss. Regrettably, none of those scenes had ever caught the face of a classmate besides Jihyo herself. And yet there had been exactly one person.
"Oh, right. Seol Jihyo. You go."
The boy who had shoved Jihyo toward the Infected. Jihyo had been flung back hard, and for an instant the camera had caught the boy's face. It lasted less than a second—but Jiwoo remembered it perfectly.
He's bound to be in the same class.
Among the dozens of pairs of eyes fixed on her, Jiwoo felt one gaze land on her with unusual, unhidden boldness. Her blue eyes drifted naturally toward it.
"……"
Bright, fluorescent orange hair. A cluster of piercings dangling from nose and lips. The moment their gazes met—his eyes sharp and upturned—Jiwoo narrowed her own, just slightly.
Found you.
That one.
It had been a full twelve years since Jiwoo had last stepped out into the "outside world," but she had no time for wonder. There was a saying: to catch a tiger, you have to enter the tiger's den. By that logic, Gaon Special Academy was exactly that—a tiger's den, for her. The Infected she'd run into earlier? Nothing to her. The truly grotesque things were here.
"Yo, fuck, did you see that movie? I watched it and it blew my goddamn mind."
A guy who spat curses with every other word. Holes punched into his face in at least five places, his uniform jacket undone, not even his tie tied properly. The boy with the garishly dyed fluorescent hair was raising a ruckus in the classroom.
Jiwoo had been watching him from the back row seat the entire time.
"I want my phone back."
"Learn to take a hint the first damn time?"
…No doubt about it. That was the guy from the video. Same class after all.
Of course, he was only the one whose face had been caught on camera. Which meant there were others in the group who had entered the Abyss with Jihyo. For example—the hand that had slapped Jihyo's shoulder, wearing a bracelet with a small four-leaf clover pendant. The feet that had walked close beside Jihyo—red sneakers from some brand or another. The voice, the color of the nail polish, even the vague shape of the schoolbag that had flashed by—every last detail was etched precisely into Jiwoo's memory.
But right now, no one in the room stood out as a certain candidate.
…Except for that fluorescent head.
If I take him down first, the others might unravel like sausages on a string.
The scrape of a chair. The moment she rose from her seat, dragging it back—
"Hey! Did you hear? About the alarm that went off earlier."
Someone barged in through the back door with great energy. "Talk about overreacting. Wasn't that just a glitch? The homeroom teacher didn't even say anything about it."
Ah. That siren. Jiwoo had heard it too—standing right in front of the Abyss. So it had carried all the way to the classrooms, then.
"No, they're saying it wasn't a glitch. The Purification Squad was dispatched after the alarm, and there were already dead Infected at the scene."
"Huh? Who killed them, then?"
"That's the thing! Apparently the chairman's calling in every teacher right now to figure out who did it. The staff room's in absolute chaos."
"……"
Jiwoo sat back down in her seat.
"They say the Purification Squad got there less than five minutes after the alarm, and someone had already killed them in that window."
"That fast?"
"And it wasn't just a kill. They say the bodies were totally obliterated. The bones were crushed to powder—they thought they were human corpses at first, not Infected."
…So it was that bad, huh. Jiwoo wouldn't know. She hadn't stopped to check.
"Could a practical-combat teacher have been passing by? Did the CCTV catch anything?"
There was a camera there?
Jiwoo's gaze snapped around. "I heard on the way over—it was a student in uniform, supposedly."
"A student? Then wouldn't it be someone from the Special Unit?"
"No idea. They didn't get a look at the face."
The stir in the classroom swelled larger and larger. A thoughtless, offhand act was drawing far hotter attention than she'd ever intended. This was turning into a dangerous situation.
Seol Jihyo's Core was known to be Regeneration. Hardly a Core suited for cutting down Infected. If it ever came to light that Seol Jihyo had taken down Infected bare-handed, all on her own, it would invite suspicion.
And if word of that reached the main house… Grandfather would drag me back by force, no question.
Her grandfather hated it when Jiwoo used her Cores. To be precise, he hated the existence of "Seol Jiwoo" becoming known to the world. Which meant that if he found out, revenge would be neither here nor there—it would all be over.
That can't happen.
This was, after all, the same grandfather who had kept silent even after Jihyo had been pushed to that state. It said everything about how desperately he despised any kind of uproar.
Still… my face wasn't caught, so I should be fine… right?
It had to be. She was fiddling absently with her innocent textbook, pressing down a thread of unease, when she suddenly felt a gaze settle on her right cheek.
"……?"
Her head turned of its own accord. A boy was staring straight at her. The seat beside her—her desk partner.
…What. Don't tell me he's figured out what I did—
…Ah.
The moment their eyes met, Jiwoo's thoughts cut off mid-sentence and she caught her breath without meaning to. It was the sheer beauty of him—beautiful enough to seize her gaze and refuse to let it go. The hair that swayed shallowly before her eyes was black enough to swallow sunlight whole, a jet-black that seemed to drink in every color in the world, so absolute it was almost silent. And yet the eyes boring into her were an empty ash-gray, as if holding nothing of this world at all.
Reflexively, Jiwoo checked the name tag pinned to the left breast of his uniform—Moon Yoojin.
She couldn't be too careful. He might be one of the ones who'd bullied Jihyo, too. With that thought, she flicked her eyes down to his shoes. Black leather dress shoes. A brand and shape she'd never seen in the video. Shoes are clear.
Next she shifted her gaze to his hands. No bracelets, no distinctive accessories of any kind. Accessories are clear.
Which meant…….
"Hello."
She decided to talk to him. To hear his voice.