Headache, Madness, Plan
The sound of the classroom door bursting open carried clearly from the darkness far behind us, yet the distinctive hammering footsteps of the "ghost" never seemed to draw any closer. Whatever was hunting us was having trouble tracking our trail.
We kept a measured pace as we pressed forward. Choi Ji-hyeon, who had been constantly glancing behind us, finally turned her eyes ahead and fell into stride alongside us.
"Hey! Why aren't you watching our backs—"
"It's already in sight—what's the point of more lookout? If you've got breath for that, use it to run faster!"
Choi Ji-hyeon cut herself short at the male student's irritated shout and just ran. His blank face twitched at the brow, temper flaring beneath the surface, but my next words left the emotion nowhere to go—it simply churned inside him.
"You checked everything?"
"Yeah. Every last one."
Whether he couldn't find an opening to jump into the exchange or simply chose not to, the male student just set his jaw and kept running.
Still, it was a relief that she'd gone through all the papers I'd handed her.
Before long, that familiar, loathsome hammering began to rise faintly from behind us.
So it had found our direction.
Fortunately, we found the stairs at the same moment.
Overhead, fluorescent lights flickered in a frantic, ceaseless strobe, as if determined to remind us we were still inside the tag-game's domain. Sparks leapt inside the fixtures, hammering the tubes into brief flashes that lit the stairwell in stuttering bursts. The moment I saw the steps, I didn't hesitate—I threw myself downward.
The male student and Choi Ji-hyeon faltered for a second at the darkness waiting below, but my total lack of hesitation steeled them. They clenched their teeth and plunged after me.
The fluorescent light didn't reach the lower flights. The stairs became little more than half-guessed shapes—and that alone made them a trap not to be underestimated. Even I, taking the steps two and three at a time, felt my ankles twist and threaten to roll with nearly every landing. The darkness-drowned stairs shattered any sense of distance and summoned waves of vertigo. I was forcing myself forward on nothing more than the physical instincts I'd honed in 666 Village, barely managing a tightrope walk of near-misses as I hurtled down.
Behind me, the male student and Choi Ji-hyeon could barely contain their shock. Watching Han-seong race down these dark, cavernous stairs—stairs that seemed to induce a constant hypnosis of spinning feet and whirling vision, where you'd fall the moment you let go of the railing—as if he were mocking the very danger of it, left them stunned.
—Crack.
The gap kept widening. The male student, bold and determined, tried to match Han-seong with a daring leap—but the moment he let go of the railing, an ominous sound like bones slipping out of joint rang out, and he began tumbling mercilessly down the stairs.
Crunch. Crack. Thud-thud. Crunch.
The sharp edges of the steps seemed purpose-built for this. Every time the male student rolled over them, they chewed his body with deliberate, grinding thoroughness. Arms, legs, torso—nothing was spared. The sickening sounds of grinding flesh and shattering bone filled the stairwell.
At the horrifying sounds rising from behind, I stopped mid-descent and spun around.
Other dangerous things prowling the school?
Forcing my body—trembling from my hammering heart—to turn fully, I saw a dim shape tumble rapidly past me down the stairs and slam onto the landing below with a heavy thud. Wary of the writhing dark-red form, I carefully descended for a closer look…
"…"
It was an unidentifiable male student, painted head to toe in blood.
.
.
…No—it was the guy who'd been following me.
He'd been so thoroughly bloodied that it took me a moment to recognize him. Gripping the railing with one hand, I crouched and examined the wreck of his body. He was soaked in blood, covered in wounds large and small—and yet, astonishingly, he was otherwise intact. Despite the irregular rise of the steps and edges sharper than anything imaginable, not a single limb was bent the wrong way. Nothing had been severed. He'd made it all the way down like that.
Just as I thought. He was never a survivor.
Witnessing a body with durability no human could possess, the suspicion I'd been carrying solidified into certainty.
As that conviction hardened, I felt a vibration through the railing. Looking back, I saw Choi Ji-hyeon carefully gripping the handrail as she made her way down. She was clearly trying to hurry—each step she planted on the stairs had an urgent, desperate quality. Thanks to that effort, she'd managed to rein in her anxiety and descend as fast as she could. She planted her hands on her trembling knees and spoke.
"I was trying to come down fast myself, but—"
She glanced at the male student twitching at our feet like a corpse, then finished.
"I got a pretty good look at what not to do."
…
We stared at the corpse-like male student for a moment. Then I snapped out of it, swung my backpack around to the front, and unzipped it. I dug around inside until my fingers found what I wanted and pulled it free.
The fluorescents still weren't on at this floor. Choi Ji-hyeon squinted at the object in my hand and asked, puzzled.
"Cigarettes…?"
"Yeah, that's right."
"…You're going to smoke right now?"
"Huh? No? What?"
Choi Ji-hyeon was sharp, smart, and physically capable in so many ways—and yet every so often she showed a completely blank side.
"Think about it. That 'ghost' is chasing us right now."
"Yeah."
"We've put this much distance between us—so how did it lock onto our direction?"
That was enough. Ji-hyeon's eyes lit with realization.
"Ah! You mean the smell?"
"Exactly. It could be tracking us by sound, sure—but you only find out by trying everything you can."
Choi Ji-hyeon nodded in agreement, then suddenly stopped and asked again.
"What if the cigarette smell just makes it identify us even easier? That kind of scent doesn't wash out easily."
"I've thought that through. First—"
I opened my mouth to explain further—but something snatched the cigarettes from my hand at a speed too fast for the eye to follow.
More stunned than startled, I looked around. The male student who'd been lying quietly on the floor was now sitting propped against the wall. And in a trembling voice, he asked me:
"I-i…is this… real… cigarettes…?"
.
.
.
…How the hell should I know? I've never smoked one.
Is it fake?
I hid my bewilderment and answered casually.
"Try it and find out."
Before I'd even finished speaking, the blood-soaked male student was already prying open the pack with shaking hands, pulling out a cigarette and the lighter stashed inside.
—Click.
—Hiss.
He lit up with a fluency so practiced it looked completely natural, then exhaled a pale cloud of smoke. The distinctive acrid smell of tobacco drifted through the air.
"Uuuhhh…"
A sigh that could have been a moan or a moan of pure bliss leaked out mixed with the smoke. One drag became two, two became three. Before long he was just sitting there, blankly smoking as if he'd completely forgotten we were being hunted. Watching him, I reached a conclusion.
At least they don't seem to be weird cigarettes.
So the cigarettes belonged to other victims dragged into this place?
I thought for a moment, recalling the locker stuffed full of cigarette packs.
…Still, that was an awful lot of them, wasn't it?
I shook the thought away and, with a quick snatch, reclaimed the pack from the male student's grip. The male student, who'd been staring blankly into space, froze for a second as if he hadn't even registered what happened—then shouted.
"Hey! Give that back!"
"What the hell are you talking about? These were mine to begin with."
Strictly speaking they weren't mine either—but how would he know that?
I shook five cigarettes free from the reclaimed pack and crushed them between my fingers. The tobacco crumbled, piling into a heap of leaves in my palm, and the nauseating cigarette smell clung to my hands.
Whether from shock at my sudden action or something else, his mouth fell open in surprise—but the cigarette, soaked in blood, stuck stubbornly to his lips instead of falling. Even as he shouted and his mouth moved, the cigarette clung tenaciously, bobbing along with his lips.
"What are you doing?!"
I didn't react to his panicked shout. Calmly, I handed half the crushed tobacco leaves to Choi Ji-hyeon. I rubbed the tobacco leaves evenly over my entire body. I stripped off just the vest of my school uniform and hung it on the nearby railing, then worked the leaves into everything still on me—necktie, dress shirt, no distinction. Choi Ji-hyeon, expressionless, followed my lead without a flicker of protest.
Even as I rubbed the leaves into my clothes, my mind was racing—plugging variables in and out, revising and fitting the plan together. Keep the broad framework intact, fold in this new variable, and the odds should improve. I could theorize all I wanted—I'd only know by actually doing it.
Thinking through the variables, I glanced sideways at the male student. From the cuts large and small, instead of blood, an unidentifiable black-green liquid clung in sticky patches.
A terrible headache—one that was starting to feel familiar—rose up and smothered my furiously burning thoughts the way you'd bank a campfire, then retreated deep into my skull.
Had I overworked my mind too hard since the classroom?
Was my body finally failing to handle the damage accumulating through death and regression?
Or was the madness that had been quietly stacking up from sights beyond human comprehension finally starting to break free?
Even after quieting my thoughts, a stabbing headache still smoldered like embers in ash, tightening around my skull.
—Drip.
Another nosebleed gushed out in a rush, and my head went faintly blank.
…
…
…Hmm.
I shook my head, and the tightening headache flared worse—but the pain itself snapped me back to clarity.
Nothing changes.
No matter what.
By any means necessary.
We just need to escape. Now.
The male student looked ready to keep shouting if left to forget we were still playing tag with a "ghost," so I brushed the remaining tobacco leaves onto my knees as if dusting off my hands, then dug through my bag and tossed him a fresh pack.
He snagged the flying pack with practiced ease. On his smiling face, bizarrely, there was not a trace of pain.