Do You Really Think I Don't Know?
Even the brief respite we took at the ambiguous boundary between the stairs and the hallway was short-lived. At the faint sound echoing down from overhead, everyone prepared to move without a word needing to be spoken.
The male student, covered head to toe in serious lacerations and bruises, casually stuck a cigarette in his mouth and rose from his seat as if nothing were wrong.
I watched him for a moment, then took the five hand mirrors I had rummaged from my bag and stuffed them into the school uniform vest I had hung on the nearby railing, wrapping them this way and that until I had formed a compact bundle of clothes.
The vest was made of a stretchy material that made shaping it into a round ball easy enough.
Once finished, I tossed the clothes bundle through the gap in the railing into the endless darkness below, whose depths I could not fathom.
The clothes, briefly visible as they shrank before my eyes, were soon greedily swallowed by the darkness that had claimed the lower stairs.
Had I thrown only the vest, it might have fluttered about in the air, catching on the railing or stopping at another floor. But weighted with the mirrors, it vanished in a straight line without straying far from its intended path.
With that done, I quietly gestured for the others to follow, but instead of descending the stairs I slipped behind the door that separated the now-familiar dark hallway from the staircase and held my breath.
The ghost’s speed was clearly such that fleeing over any long distance would inevitably lead to capture. That was why we needed to shake it off once and proceed with the escape.
As if to prove my point, even though we had left the classroom ahead of the ghost and started first, its insane speed—crossing the hallway in an instant and reaching the stairs—confirmed that my choice had been right.
Skrrrk. Skrrrrk. Skrrk. Skrrrrrrrk. Skrrrk.
Before long, a dull friction sound like stone scraping mercilessly across the floor came from above the stairs.
The “ghost” announced itself noisily as it descended, then stopped right in front of where we had been staying. From that point, no sound came at all.
I carefully used another hand mirror taken from my bag to peer outside.
In the small space of the hand mirror, the ghost appeared standing in the middle of the dark landing, shaking its head this way and that as if confused. It twisted its neck grotesquely in all directions as if trying to listen, moving in unnatural, jerky motions like a broken wind-up doll, or else slammed its head into the floor or railing as if to catch a scent or body odor.
In any other place the sight would have been laughable enough to draw a snort, but knowing that its occasional unspeakable cries of resentment and every action were murderous intent directed at us, we could only freeze in place.
After thrashing about for no small amount of time, the moment the “ghost’s” head twisted in all directions—
I locked eyes with its blood-red pupils, bent at an angle that should not exist even in a mirror.
I immediately pulled the hand mirror back.
Quietly drawing my trembling hand behind me, I pressed myself flat against the door.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The hard sounds of something striking the cold stone floor of the landing rang out, filled with suspicion—a sound that heralded death.
As the spine-chilling noise approached right up to the door connecting the stairs and hallway, we froze solid, unable even to breathe.
Then—
—Clang!
A faint but sharp shattering sound came from far below.
It was the hand mirror that had slipped free from the clothes bundle upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, striking the floor.
From the blood-soaked male student’s mouth, pressed as close to the wall as possible, silent smoke leaked out. The distinctive scent of tobacco began slowly filling the air.
To the “ghost,” which had been straining every nerve for even a single clue, there was no clearer sign than that.
The “ghost” sniffed the air for a moment as if confirming the scent, whipped its head this way and that, then returned to the stairs. It jammed its head as far as it could into the railing gaps as if trying to pierce the darkness with its nose, sniffed, and soon let out a howl as it thundered back down the stairs.
The situation that had swept through like a storm left our minds in tatters, but somehow I gathered what remaining reason I had and stepped out into the hallway.
The legs leading me forward staggered, and my vision swam.
"Think you can keep going?"
A voice laced with mockery and scorn reached my ears. The male student’s voice.
—Thud.
At the sensation of someone catching me from the side, I looked over to see Choi Ji-hyeon supporting me with a resolute gaze. It was a look that somehow reminded me of Yeom Sang-hyeon.
I shook my head briefly, focused, and put strength into my legs. This time my body moved safely in the direction I intended.
Slowly righting myself, I began advancing down the hallway. As I walked I moved my wrists and ankles this way and that to check my condition, and found that my body could still move reasonably well.
So the problem was on the mental side, then.
If I had to list the causes, there would be too many to count. The madness that had piled up amid today’s endlessly repeating classes and deaths. The spirit exposed to the ghost’s horrific hunts and sights no sane mind could endure. And beyond that, the possibility of causes I hadn’t even noticed overflowed.
Somehow I was stitching together a mind that threatened to shatter and moving, but issuing commands to my body with broken thoughts rather than a sound mind meant I could clearly feel it failing to obey control at intervals.
Even though the ghost had already vanished down the stairs below, its distinctive howls occasionally rang in my ears as auditory hallucinations, and the ghost’s eyes—with black pupils like a bottomless abyss and veins writhing disgustingly like worms—would appear like illusions in a corner of my vision.
Still, we were almost at the end. If I could just draw out the variables as I planned, we could escape this time. I walked, burning the hope I had practically forced out of myself.
As expected, a hallway filled with gloom. The only difference from the hallway of the floor we had escaped from the classroom was that light unique to the night sky of reality had begun seeping in through the windows lined up along the corridor.
As if it were nothing, I casually rolled my stiff neck and looked out the window. Instead of black fog, the scenery of the high school grounds, the assembly platform, and more came into view far below. Roughly estimating the height from the ground based on the view outside the window… this seemed to be about the height of the third floor.
Black shapes walking sparsely over the scenery dazzled the eyes like ticks crawling across a lawn.
I had been secretly glancing out the windows from the corner of my eye when I felt a gaze from ahead and turned my head forward to find the male student staring straight at me.
"What are you looking at so hard?"
A voice with a subtly flat pitch. Another chilling clue that reinforced the certainty that this was a being wearing a human skin.
Even with the new clue that the companion walking with us was not human, I showed no agitated expression and casually changed the subject.
"No. Just my neck’s stiff."
The male student continued staring into my eyes with those spine-chilling pupils for a while, as if searching for something more hidden, then finally turned his head and walked forward again.
"Got a light?"
To the question asked without even looking back while walking straight ahead, I tossed another pack of cigarettes.
Even though he clearly wasn’t looking behind him, the blood-soaked male student simply moved his hand to snatch the flying cigarette pack, then roughly tore it open with his large hand and pulled out a cigarette and lighter from inside. Smoke continued to drift endlessly through the air above his bloodied head.
After observing the male student’s movements for a moment and confirming he was absorbed in his cigarette, I began silently removing my dress shirt. Choi Ji-hyeon beside me also shrewdly and quietly took off her own dress shirt.
Both of us now in short-sleeved T-shirts, I walked on while tying the sleeve of the dress shirt Choi Ji-hyeon had handed me to the sleeve of my own, making one long rope, then continuously watching the male student walking ahead with his back turned, I began tying the end of the crude rope made from dress shirts to the window frame.
As I quietly proceeded with the work, I stopped at the eerie voice coming from ahead.
"But you know…"
I steadied my slipping hands at the voice and began moving them even faster. Almost done. The tying was finished; only the final step remained.
The moment I brought my trembling hand to the firmly tied rope, the words that followed stabbed like a thorn.
His blood-soaked body seemed to keep walking forward, but his neck was twisted a full 180 degrees, looking straight back at me with a smile as the male student cried out.