A brightly lit classroom within the ghost story.
“Die! Die!”
Behind me, people were desperately striking at the unmoving, eerie student.
“Let’s wait until they pass by.”
In front of me, the government agent glared at my fellow company employees walking by, his gaze a mix of wariness and disdain.
And stuck in between them…
Me.
No colleagues, missed timing, and the task of clearing this nightmare of a ghost story safely while pretending to be an innocent civilian to the agent beside me.
The truth? I’m actually from the pharmaceutical company this agent loathes.
“……”
How much harder can this get?
‘This is insane.’
The employees had moved far ahead by now. I might have made eye contact with a few of them, but as I avoided their gaze, they refrained from approaching me and walked off quickly.
At least that was a relief.
For a moment.
Flicker.
The lights went out again.
“Hieek!!”
This time, however, people reacted faster than the incoming darkness.
“……I-It’s not moving!”
“It worked!”
I took a deep breath.
When the lights flickered back on—
The ‘Sekwang Technical High School student’, who had been frozen like a statue, was now lying on the floor near the back door.
“Waaah!”
The frenzied attacks had evidently worked.
This time, even when the lights went out, the student couldn’t move. Instead, it appeared to have succumbed to the accumulated violence and now lay on the floor as though dead.
However, its outstretched right hand still reached toward the back door, as if trying to grab hold of it…
The people cheered in triumph, holding bloodied mops and chairs in their hands.
“It worked! This is it!”
We need to run.
When one student entity becomes immobilized, resembling biological death—
quickly—
All nearby student entities are summoned to the scene.
[Ding- dong- daeng- dong-]
[A death has occurred in Class 1-5.]
“Huh…?”
The school’s announcement played over the intercom.
The voice was heavier this time, somber.
A slow funeral march played in the background.
“Now.”
The agent poked me in the back.
“Run.”
[The deceased is first-year student Lee Wonyool.]
I immediately bolted out the door.
I tried to take in as much of the hallway’s layout as possible while running, noting key details and pressing myself close to a nearby wall to minimize my profile.
“Should we press our backs to the wall?”
“Exactly.”
[Let us observe a moment of silence for five seconds.]
I complied without resistance as the agent pushed me to sit against the wall.
Then—
Thuk.
The lights went out.
[5]
Through the faint sound of the funeral march came the creak of the back door opening.
[4]
“AAAHHH!”
“Ack!”
“W, what… keuuugh—”
[3]
“Help…”
“Huk—”
[2]
Screams.
Short, desperate screams.
[1]
……
……
Silence.
The funeral march continued.
[The moment of silence is over. May the deceased rest in peace.]
Forcing my trembling head up, I looked back into the classroom.
I had to look.
Flicker.
As the lights returned, the scene came into focus.
The classroom was a wreck, smeared with blood and filth.
Bodies were strewn everywhere, slammed against walls, collapsed on the floor, or sprawled across desks.
‘…Hah.’
And among the carnage, only two figures remained standing.
Two Sekwang Technical High School students, frozen by my gaze.
One stood atop a decapitated corpse, while the other smiled as it clutched the front door, staring at me.
They’d noticed me.
‘Damn it.’
Sweat dripped down my chin.
“…I’ll step back, just slightly. I’ll continue to stay in view of the classroom.”
The agent gave a slight nod.
Still keeping my eyes on the front, I groped along the wall, retreating cautiously.
The reason I’d chosen this wall:
[Portable Light Source]
A red emergency flashlight was mounted nearby.
It was an essential tool—a portable light source capable of freezing the students even during a blackout.
‘Absolutely necessary.’
However, where three lights should have been mounted, only one remained.
‘The employees must have taken the others.’
What surprised me was that, even with Baek Saheon among their group, they hadn’t taken all three lights for backup.
On top of that, they’d cleverly inserted a wad of paper into the release sensor to prevent the alarm from sounding when the lights were removed. Clearly, these were experienced ghost story explorers.
They had even left behind one of the crumpled papers in the empty slot.
‘They thought that far ahead.’
Reaching back, I grabbed the paper.
As I brought it forward, the folded back of the paper caught the edge of my vision.
– Debt
Not bad.
I crumpled Baek Saheon’s note, shoved it into the sensor slot as a makeshift stopper, and extracted the flashlight.
‘Huu.’
With this, I had taken the first step in preparing for potential blackouts.
‘Next…’
“……! Did you grab the flashlight?”
“Yes.”
“…Excellent. Keep it on at all times. Now, let’s retrieve the name tags.”
The agent strode briskly toward the classroom’s front door.
Right up to the face of the student entity that was glaring at me.
‘Huuuuu…’
Just watching the scene made every alarm in my head scream.
Yet the agent moved swiftly and tore the name tag from the mannequin’s chest.
Then, without hesitation, he collected the tag from the entity lying by the back door—the first one to ‘die’.
I could feel my stomach churn.
‘This is an irreversible move.’
When a student’s name tag is stolen in its presence, that student will pursue the thief relentlessly until you die.