Tracing the Source of the Grotesque
The first day at the academy began once again. By now, my self-introduction had become second nature after countless repetitions, and I pieced together all the information I had gathered so far. I hadn't been as proactive in collecting intel as Elaine Astraea, but even so, I'd been looping through nearly a full month of these days. The raw materials stored in my head were more than sufficient. All that remained was stacking them into the right answer.
By the end of morning roll call, I had formed one hypothesis. I still didn't know what the infection source was—whether ordinary people were vanishing and being replaced by grotesque humans in their empty spots, or if normal humans were the base and simply getting infected by some virus-like entity. What I focused on was the pattern in how these grotesque humans increased.
There was no rule to which humans turned grotesque, but there was a rule to their emergence. According to Elaine, the first replacements were only students. But by the time I regained my senses, even the faculty had been substituted. And on the day Elaine vanished, even the students in Class A had been overtaken.
That was definitely strange. Why were Class A students the last to be eroded by the grotesque humans? Why hadn't a single teacher been replaced until a certain point? There was a rule to this infection. And regularity implied direction—not some abstract, conceptual direction, but a physical, spatial one.
Given the academy's layout, Class A was at the very end of the hallway, as its name suggested. The staff room sat in the middle. Tracing back the flow of how these grotesque humans spread, it was clear they originated from the opposite end of the hall from Class A.
The condition for which humans got replaced was random. But where it started was certain.
Having reached that conclusion, I headed straight for F Class.
...
Roll call had just ended, and the halls were still bustling. If I wanted to find the incident's origin, now—before all the students scattered—was critical.
I opened the door to F Class and stepped into the classroom.
"Excuse me. I'm Allen Jest, the assistant homeroom teacher for Class A. We've had a theft in our class—mind if I take a quick look around?"
Dozens of eyes—students and grotesque humans alike—turned to me. They seemed thrown off by my words, unable to react properly, and I seized the opening to act without hesitation.
"Alright, I'll take that as a yes. Thanks for your cooperation."
A brazen abuse of teacher authority. The kind of stunt only possible because I was a teacher.
I didn't need to pinpoint the infection source in one go. The key was to spot anything remotely suspicious. Time was on my side—if something looked off, I could track it slowly in the next loop.
But as I rummaged through the classroom to some extent...
"Teac...her."
A familiar, twisted voice called out to me.
"How... caaan a teeaacher... raaandomly... seaarch... stuuudents'... per...sonal... beee...longings... with...out... per...mish...sion?"
She—no, it—voiced a complaint that any student might naturally have. But unlike that perfectly student-like grievance, the gaze this grotesque human fixed on me carried something entirely different.
Suspicion.
It was eyeing my sudden appearance and odd behavior, wondering if I'd figured out the grotesque humans' true nature.
"Es...pee...cially... sin...ce... you... won't... telll... us... the... stu...dent's... naaame... or... whaaat... was... stoooleeen?"
Pretending to ask for the student's name or the stolen item's details, it casually blocked my escape route. No doubt, if my answer seemed suspicious, it would pounce on me immediately.
"Sorry, but I can't disclose that. I'm worried there might be bullying going on in the academy. It'd be great if there wasn't, but if there really is, and I carelessly reveal the victim's personal info, that student could end up suffering even more, right?"
"Thaat... dooes...n't... hooold... waaater."
But the grotesque human showed no sign of buying my hasty excuse.
"If... you're... sooo... con...cer...ned... abooout... haaarm... coo...ming... to... the... vaa...ctim... isn't... re...veaaaling... the... sii...tua...tion... it...self... juuust... cau...sing... moooore... haaarm?"
The suspicion deepened. The grotesque student's eyes sharpened until they nearly touched its ears.
Faced with that menacing grotesque human's attitude, I...
"How DARE a mere student question their teacher right now!!!! You little brat!!!!!"
"!?"
"How can this be!!! Back home, there's a saying: 'all are one with the military'!! It means the sovereign, teacher, and parents are as one!! In other words!!! It means treat your teacher with the respect due a sovereign and parents!!! Haven't you heard that you shouldn't even step on your teacher's shadow!!! And yet you have the gall not to obey with a simple 'yes' when your teacher gives an order—instead doubting your teacher and talking back!!!!"
"Y-Yes, s-sir¿!"
"No excuses!!! When an adult scolds you for wrongdoing, you bow your head flat and beg forgiveness with 'I was wrong'!! Where the hell did you pick up this habit of making excuses to weasel out!!!???"
I had no time to waste on some pathetic grotesque human right now!! Normally, they hid among ordinary humans, pretending to be normal. But if they thought their cover was blown, they'd drop all pretense and kill without mercy.
Conversely, if they judged themselves safe, they'd keep up the human act no matter what happened.
"Ah, th-that... I diiiidn't..."
"This is why kids these days are hopeless! Hey, student!! Are you the one who stole it!? Afraid of getting caught, so you're blocking my investigation!?"
"N-Nooo!! I... haaaven't... stoooleeen... aaaanything!!"
"Then why are you blocking your teacher? Or do you think since it's not your stuff, you don't care if someone else gets robbed or bullied!! How selfish can you be!! They say kids nowadays are all about individualism, lacking social skills and acting selfish—and it's true! The world's really going to hell!"
"U, uuuugh..."
"Back when I was your age, stuff like this was unthinkable! But you young people just chase what's comfortable for you.... What, are you crying now? What do you have to cry about!?! This is all for your own good! You hate hearing what adults say that much? There's an old saying: listen to elders and rice cakes fall even in your sleep. Advice like this is priceless—you should be grateful to get it for free! And yet you scowl like that.... Huh? Look at those eyes? You gonna eat your teacher alive?"
"Aaaahhh!!"
In the end, that grotesque monster could only flee, mimicking a pitiful student's act under my boomer tirade.
Phew. Mission accomplished.
The stares from the other students in the classroom had turned ice-cold, like they were looking at a psychopathic serial killer. But reputation reset after today anyway.
More importantly, I needed to use this hard-earned time to investigate F Class.
...
Trading my social standing, I finished searching F Class. Bye-bye, my precious reputation. See you again after midnight.
But even after turning the place upside down, I found nothing suspicious. Was my hypothesis wrong? No. There was definitely a rule to the infection. The grotesque humans emerged starting from F Class, gradually spreading down the opposite hallway toward the staff room and Class A.
...Upstairs!
Viewed from above, the 1st Main Building's layout ran 1-A, then B, C, staff room, D, E, F in sequence. But in three dimensions, floors 2 through 5 overlapped above.
Were the grotesque humans descending from the upper floors, not originating on the first?
I pushed past the students and grotesque humans eyeing me like a bug and headed upstairs.
"Teaaacher, waaait!"
But right on cue, a cowardly grotesque human showed up with backup teachers from the staff room, forcing me to dodge their grasp and flee to the underground cave.
Dirty little cheat.
...
The next day, after the reset, I investigated the classrooms at the end of the 2nd and 3rd floor hallways—right above F Class.
Nothing there either.
But it wasn't a total loss. Every time I searched the empty classrooms on those floors, I could feel the grotesque humans' gazes growing fiercer.
Their blatant hostility was proof I was heading the right way.
After checking up to the 3rd floor, I returned to the underground cave to reset their wariness. The following day, I hit the 4th floor.
From the 4th up, there were lounges, recreation areas, convenience facilities, and club spaces. At the hallway's end: club rooms.
Nothing suspicious there.
But as I searched the 4th, their suspicion toward me turned outright overt. In the end, I had to retreat to the underground cave to reset.
And finally, the last spot remaining.
This had to be it. The answer.
The final room at the end of the 5th floor hallway—the topmost level. All that was left was searching the locked storage room piled with unused supplies and teaching materials.
The final first day dawned.