The Danger of Both Sides
"..."
"..."
Choi Ji-hyeon and I stood frozen, words stolen from us by the chilling, grotesque sight—until it started walking toward us, and only then could we force our bodies to move.
"Hmm, hmm. I wonder if you'll manage to run before I get in the way?"
The male student had been retreating with an odd, almost humming cadence, yet his face never left mine. Now he twisted that backward body around and began walking straight toward me.
A thick, grinding sound of bone on bone filled the air. He turned his neck as if it didn't hurt at all and opened his mouth.
"Ah, so that's how you get out of here? No wonder you kept looking out the window."
The way he grinned as he spoke looked anything but normal.
We tried backing away, but from the stairs behind us came the sound of something racing upward. The intermittent howls we'd been hearing all along made it clear—the ghost had realized it had been tricked and was coming up to catch us.
"Oh, stuck between a rock and a hard place, aren't you?"
He sounded almost delighted. I kept retreating, swung my bag around to the front, and smiled.
"...You're smiling?"
"What, I'm not allowed to smile?"
Even though the situation was clearly stacked against me, he stared at my grin with genuine incomprehension. I slipped my hand into the open bag.
"You know, I've been through a few of these. This place... it's incomplete, in its own way."
The sudden monologue stopped him cold. He stood there looking baffled, the threat of his advance momentarily forgotten. I used that split second to keep talking.
"Doesn't something feel off to you? Your memories are gone—hazy at best. But you're overflowing with power. And yet, weirdly, bits and pieces still surface. From where I'm standing, you're not human."
"..."
"Right now you're thinking, What the hell is this guy talking about? I'm human. But you're not. You're not a survivor. Whether it's a penalty from me being dragged here by force, or some glitch from overlapping survivors, you were originally a being that belonged to this place. You just got misclassified as a survivor because of an error. And that classification looks like it's almost worn off. What do you think?"
I pointed at his hand with my chin. He looked down at it with vacant, unfocused eyes.
There, his hand was writhing in grotesque, unnatural ways—bulging and shifting as if a rat were burrowing under the skin, trembling as it reshaped itself at will.
"..."
"..."
"..."
A wordless silence filled the hallway. Only the ghost's howls drawing closer from far off proved that time hadn't stopped.
"No. No. I can get out. Don't lie to me. I'm human. I'm getting out of here. I'm human. I can escape from here. I'm getting out of here. This is my chance—"
The blood-soaked male student, frozen for a moment, began spewing words too fast to understand and strode toward me. Even as the distance between us shrank rapidly, I kept talking, perfectly calm.
"I wasn't saying any of that so you'd understand. I was just buying time. Looks like some of your human memories are still hanging on?"
He no longer even tried to answer—just charged at me with bloodshot eyes locked on mine. I kept talking.
"So here's a question. When a survivor tries to escape, the entities of this place attack them. Will they attack you the same way?"
I finished speaking and pulled my hand from the bag. Another hand mirror caught the hallway's pale light in my grip.
At the same moment, I caught both his swinging arm—coming down hard enough to crush me—and the student himself in the mirror's reflection—
Kihihit.
A faint, giggling laugh rose from the glass, and a sharp, deep crimson line carved across the male student's face as a spray of blood erupted.
I kept his reeling, wounded form in the mirror as I stepped back, felt the dangerous vibration in my grip, and flung it into the air.
Clang!
A shattering crack that seemed to slice straight through the heart exploded outward as the hand mirror burst into pieces that scattered in every direction. In the dizzying scatter of sharp, refracted light, the male student strode forward, white bone showing through the gash on his face.
"Doesn't even hurt?"
He grinned. I grinned right back.
"That so?"
Without another word, another hand mirror was already in my hand, drawn in a flash. The moment he saw the light flash in my grip, he reflexively crouched into a defensive stance and thrust one hand forward—but taking a stance doesn't stop a reflection from forming in a mirror.
That same bone-chilling giggle sounded, and this time a horrific wet crunch of flesh and bone rang out. The blood-soaked student's right shoulder caved in as if an invisible someone had brought a hammer down on it.
The mirror vibrated violently again. I threw it at him. It exploded right in front of his face, the shards punching in and opening countless tiny gaps.
Now the male student said nothing—just advanced on me with a rigid face, step by heavy step. I walked backward as if it were the most natural thing in the world, pulling out hand mirrors one after another.
When the blood-soaked student advanced one step, I retreated one step. When he leaped forward in a single bound, I kicked off the floor and fell back. Hand mirrors flashed in my grip and exploded.
One. Two. Three. Four.
In the dark hallway, he ducked and weaved around the endless exploding mirrors—hiding behind the pillars by the windows, leaping so high his head nearly scraped the ceiling—thrashing in every direction. I was pouring cold sweat, reaching out and pulling back, maintaining distance, adjusting angles so Choi Ji-hyeon's reflection never caught in the glass, and keeping myself out of the mirrors with every ounce of focus I had.
In that breathless clash, a terrible, familiar howl rose behind me.
The ghost.
Ghost at my back. Blood-soaked student in front. Nowhere left to retreat.
The only good news was that the ghost still had some ground to cover before it reached us. I could see the male student's murderous intent clearly—he'd lunge the moment I reached for a mirror—so I staggered my draws, sometimes using two at once, carving out breathing room in the fight. Whenever the standoff threatened even a second of silence, the sharp crack of shattering mirrors and a storm of shards would whip through the hallway without fail.
I threw another mirror that was about to explode, aiming for his face. This time he threw both arms up to shield himself, determined not to take it again. I used that opening to dump a pile of mirrors from my bag onto the floor.
He crouched, muscles coiled for the next strike—but when nothing came, he peered out through the gaps between his shielding hands. What he saw was me, empty-handed.
Sensing his chance, he exploded forward. Even as he charged without mercy, his blood-red, vessel-burst eyes scanned my hands for any sign of an attack—but there was none. I simply dropped low, as if I meant to charge him right back.
At the same time, the ghost seemed to enter the hallway from the stairs—the fluorescent lights flickered rapidly and flooded the corridor with light.
"Ha!"
Under the flaring lights, the male student was a ruin—crushed and gouged, blood streaming from long crimson gashes that showed bone—yet his face still radiated raw power, the kind that could tear someone like me to shreds in an instant, and he didn't even bother hiding his sneer. He came at me as if I were a fool, then in a blink kicked off the ground and folded space itself, arriving right in front of me before I could even blink.
Even then, I kept an easy expression and pointed a finger downward.
My calm in the face of murderous intent right under his nose finally made him realize something was wrong. He looked down—and in his eyes, five blood-soaked versions of himself, projected in the five hand mirrors lying flat on the floor, stared up at the student floating in midair.
Before he could do anything—two downward strikes and three sprays of blood, all amid a chorus of raucous laughter. As the slashes carved through the air, I threw my already-low body forward. The floor was littered with sharp mirror shards, but I covered it with my bag and rolled across.
Crunch. Crack.
I felt the mirror fragments grinding to powder under the bag through my back. After rolling through the hallway full of silver glass, our positions had reversed.
The male student opened his mouth to say something, but I turned and wrapped my arms around Choi Ji-hyeon.
And then.
.
.
.
Bang!
Bang!
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
The mirrors under the male student's feet exploded, and a silver storm swallowed his blood-soaked, tattered body whole. I felt the fine spray of shards hit me for a moment, then it seemed to stop. When I turned to check, what stood in the middle of the hallway under the flickering fluorescent light—casting a long shadow—was no longer merely blood-soaked. It was a shape that could barely be called human.
"Just how many... mirrors... do you have..."
His voice was broken, cutting in and out as if his throat had been nearly severed. In answer, I reached into my bag and pulled out a fistful of mirrors.
"Quite a few."
The male student—now looking like blood, bone, and flesh mashed together—left a trail of blood as he walked toward the window.
"You stupid bastard. You leave the only escape route over here and run that way? Have fun with the ghost."
I held out a mirror toward him, almost like a charitable offering.
"Here you go."
The male student screamed in pure exasperation, vaulted toward the window, grabbed the rope, and vanished into the open air—but the attack had already landed. The mirror in my hand began to shake again, on the verge of exploding.
And I knew exactly the right place to throw it.
I wound up with everything I had, pulling my arm back. I clenched the violently shaking hand mirror hard enough to crush it, then wrung every last bit of power from my shoulder muscles and hurled it.
"Ugh!"
With a single, frustrated shout of effort, the hand mirror slipped from my fingers and shot across the hallway at terrifying speed—straight into the face of the ghost charging toward us.
Then the shattering blast.
A cloud of dagger-sharp silver shards filled the air and buried themselves deep in the ghost's face.
"Gweeeaaagh. Khek. Uweeeekiiiiiiiii—"
It screamed, spitting a mix of broken glass and tooth fragments, blood-tears streaming from between tightly clenched eyelids. A bone-chilling scream filled the entire hallway.