Chapter 132. < Wasteland. (2) >
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Translator: thursdays Editor: Yahiko PR: LightBrin
2.
“Look over there! Over there…”
“Wh-what do we do? Should I call a teacher?”
Students gathered at the schoolyard and pointed to the rooftop.
“What’s that guy trying to do?”
“Dunno. It looks like he’s going to jump…”
A student was standing on the roof.
“What do we do?”
“Fuck! Somebody call a teacher!”
“Over there! There!”
The students who had been playing soccer. The students taking walks. Even the students who were leaving school a little bit late. The kids who were scattered around the campus gathered in bunches. The behavior was instinctive. They felt that whatever was going to happen, it was something they could not handle on their own.
“This…!”
Some people decided to act quickly instead of pointlessly gathering around.
“This isn’t good. Gongja! Call 119. Tell them our school’s name and that a student is trying to jump from the roof. Hurry! I’m going to the roof to try to stop him!”
Raviel did not send someone to call the teacher. Instead of looking for someone else to take responsibility, she urgently reacted to the situation. Raviel hurried to the school’s main building without waiting for my response.
“Ah…”
When I saw Raviel’s back, my frozen body began to move. That’s right. I didn’t know what was happening, but there was no time to waffle. I hurriedly dialed the numbers on my cell phone. One. One…
Thwack!
Something fell on the ground just before I could press nine. At first, I thought the student had jumped. However, the thud was too quiet for it to be a human body. It was the sound of the student on the roof throwing his cell phone.
“……”
I looked up at the roof while pressing the nine.
Our eyes met.
It was the face I had seen in the classroom. The boy who had sat in the last row by the window, studying silently by himself. But it was only at this moment I felt I was seeing the child’s face properly.
The child’s eyes were black.
The child’s cheeks were white.
“——.”
The child raised a corner of his mouth in a mocking smile.
Slowly, his lips moved. A silent sound. His words were buried by the distance, but I could read them by looking at his lips. A word that I had to recognize, even if I didn’t want to acknowledge it.
[Die.]
Then.
Small fingers like a rake let go of the fence on the rooftop. He let go, and—
The wind.
The person.
“■■■■■■■■!!”
The students screamed. The world became crowded with noise. “What the ■!” Someone fitfully moaned. “Aa■aa■aah!” Someone convulsed, tearing off the sleeve of someone else’s uniform.
“■cher! Tea■!” “Fu■,” “This is ■!”
In an instant.
The school was no longer a school. Everything rived into chaos. The schoolyard became a desolate desert. The main building was nothing but a ghastly prison.
The classroom was a slaughterhouse for animals or a farm for rearing them. The animals were always hungry. In the world of slaughterhouses and kennels, a person only existed to become a corpse.
Red.
A person had died.
“……”
In a trance, I looked at the campus. The bricks were soaked red. The redness spread further. Fearing that the redness would stain their feet, the students backed away. Some pulled out their cell phones. Ka-click! An artificial noise chimed.
“Ah.”
The sound moved my body.
“Don’t do it.”
I went to the students.
“What are you doing now? Don’t take a picture! I told you to stop!”
The students flinched. But more and more students were gathering. Leaving the soccer ball in the desert, the flowers on the walking paths, and turning their backs on the road home, more and more people gathered.
“Stop it!”
When I blocked one side, they took out their cell phones on the other side.
“I’m telling you to stop! Fuck, don’t do it!”
An unnameable emotion rode up my throat. I felt like I would cry. Anger. Contempt. Disgust. In the main building, on the first floor, the second floor, the third floor, the fourth floor, and the fifth floor, the students stuck their heads out to gawk. Countless faces. With countless eyes.
They looked.
“Stop! It!”
The sunset was red.
“Damn it.”
Why?
“Stop. Taking. Pictures!”
The hundred faces were expressionless. From the first floor, the Black Dragon Master looked here. From the third floor window, the Heretic Questioner’s face was poking out. The Crusader and the Count were watching from the ground. The children of the Hellfire Residence surrounded me. The cultists stood on the schoolyard. Ka-click! Click. They moved their fingers to take pictures.
+
The one who murdered me was you.
Don’t forget.
You killed me.
+
I looked up at the rooftop.
“……”
Raviel looked down at me.
“But, Gongja.”
Raviel’s voice flowed from the sky.
“Weren’t you the one who killed him?”
The world became a wasteland.
The sky turned completely red.
Like watercolor, the red dripped and soaked the earth.
The people turned red, and my vision, too, turned red.
“—As you are all aware, something scandalous has happened at our school.”
The principal was speaking in the auditorium. He was wearing the face of the Sword Saint.
“But I believe in the students of Shinseo Middle and High School…”
Redness.
“He sent that sort of text. Wasn’t he really crazy?”
In the classroom, students gossiped with the faces of the Count and the Crusader.
“That’s right. In retrospect, he’d always been a little weird.”
Redness.
“Ignore the people who’re making a fuss about it. They’re just keyboard warriors who would never make a peep to someone’s face. Hmph. Those guys should just have their fingers cut off.”
At home, my father drank whiskey with Bae Hu-ryeong’s face and smile.
“Yeah, man. Sometimes you beat people up in life. So what? Why’d he just take it and die because of something like that? Wasn’t he a total attention whore? Hey! Call the Four Heavenly Kings! Let’s go play a game!”
My older brother put his arm around my shoulder with the cheerful voice of the Flame Emperor.
Redness.
“Yes, your teacher is also devastated. I’m torn, but—”
The homeroom teacher spoke at the lectern. His face was the Venomous Snake’s.
“—this is a very important time for you students. Time will fly when you become third-years. Actually, the winners and losers will be decided in your second year, this year. Think carefully about what’s important to you and pull yourself together.”
The students opened their mouths. In unison, they replied.
“Yes, teacher.”
Only the class president kept her head bowed without a word.
The president wore the face of the Black Dragon Master.
A white flower was placed on the child’s desk. One days. Two. Three. Less than a week later, the desk disappeared elsewhere. I didn’t know who had taken it away.
Not a single student asked who had cleared it out.
No new desk appeared in the window seat of the back row.
“……”
The wind blew.
The curtain blew.
Nobody was there in the place where the wind blew.
[The trauma will repeat.]
Then.
[The severity of the penalty is high.]
[The penalty is the animal road.]
Ding,
Dong,
Dang,
Dong.
A wretched melody rang.
There was a noise masked in the sound. The school bell rang with an electronic sound that mimicked the natural sound. To conceal the fact that it was nothing but a counterfeit, the melody became more energetic and lively.
-This is the broadcasting department, notifying all students remaining on school grounds…
An imitation.
-Other than the students who will participate in nighttime self-study, please go home now. Once again, the broadcasting department announces…
Something that had failed.
-Recently, some students have remained on school grounds after dismissal time has passed. To the students at school now, please return home if you have not applied for nighttime self-study.
Feeling my insides churn, I opened my eyes.
“Sunbae, wake up! We’ve been dismissed!”
“……”
“Oh? You’re already awake.”
The Heretic Questioner beamed.
“But it’s not good for you to sleep on your desk! It’s bad for your back, and more importantly, you won’t sleep well. I understand that you’re studying…”
I did not wait for the Heretic Questioner to finish his words. I stood up and dashed out of the library. Behind me, I heard the Heretic Questioner’s voice.
“Ah, sunbae! You shouldn’t run in the halls!”
Running down the halls, I ground my teeth.
‘I understand.’
I figured out the source of my confusion.
This was undoubtedly the trauma of the Constellation Killer, Lefanta Aegim.
It was just that my memories were laid over Lefanta Aegim’s nightmare like [skin].
The same situation.
The same cast.
However, their appearances were those of the people from my life, not the people whom Lefanta Aegim would remember. That was why the Black Dragon Master, the Crusader, and the Count became students. Master and Bae Hu-ryeong became my parents.
As for me.
‘I’m the culprit.’
There was a bloody taste in my mouth.
‘I’m the perpetrator of this situation.’
I had experienced many traumas until now, but each time, I had been an [observer]. I had always felt like a first-person observer. But because my rank grew, the penalty increased.
Here, I was party to the trauma.
Not only me, but everyone I remembered.
Except for one person.
‘Damn it!’
I arrived at the stairs.
[Behaving properly ♪]
[Living joyfully ♪]
[With a happy heart ♪]
The motto at which I couldn’t even laugh hung on the stairs. Don’t kid with me. Seriously, don’t joke. Cursing inwardly, I looked up the flight of stairs leading to the rooftop.
There stood the only person I did not remember in this world.
‘The Constellation Killer.’
His frame was small. The student grabbed the iron door and shook it back and forth. Clank. Clank! The chains were so robust that it seemed difficult to loosen them.
“Haa… A key…”
The student sighed and turned around. At that moment, our eyes met. The student held his breath for a millisecond, then bowed his head politely.
He was greeting me with his head lowered.
‘Why didn’t I realize it earlier?’
I should have known that something was off when I learned that child was my classmate. Wasn’t it obvious?
What kind of classmate would greet another classmate with a bow?
It was wrong.
“……”
The student eyed me carefully then quietly began to walk. When he tried to pass beside me, I called out to him.
“Wait a moment.”
“Yes?”
The student spoke respectfully like it was natural. He didn’t look me straight in the eyes, but carefully upward from an angle.
My throat throbbed.
“…Please let me borrow your cell phone for a moment.”
“……”
“Please.”
The student obediently handed over his cell phone. He had been silent for a while, but the silence was not refusing my request to see his phone. He had simply been confused about my use of polite language.
I opened the cell phone, which had no password.
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Messages from Unavailable: 47
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I opened the texts, one by one.
I looked at them.
[I feel so bad for the underclassmen at our school ?? They have to call you sunbae, ■■. Have you ever thought about how they feel? Doesn’t it hurt your conscience?]
[Hey, you ignoring me?]
[Wow! There’s a student who never washes his uniform?!]
[■■… How filthy. How can you be even dirtier than the math teacher? lolol]
[You were so happy you could die just cuz I said hi in the hallways yesterday, lolol. I just lost at rock paper scissors, k? Don’t get the wrong idea ??]
[■■ lives in a dump. The indoor shoes and the school uniforms are all recyclable. The only trash that can’t be recycled is ■■.]
[You smell awful. Seriously, you reek.]
[See you after class.]
Snap.
I closed the phone.
I couldn’t read any more.
“……”
I closed my eyes and breathed. I breathed and narrowly managed to calm down. In this trauma, I didn’t have my dagger or the handkerchief Raviel gifted me. It took me a lot of effort to calm my emotions.
“Why…”
I looked at [the Constellation Killer’s past].
“Why do you bring your cell phone to school? You can just keep it at home.”
Then, the student replied.
“…You said that you’ll kill me if I don’t bring it.”
When I gulped, my spit felt cold.
My head became dizzy.
“Then, just throw it away completely. Why don’t you throw it away? It can’t be helped if you say you lost it.”
“This.”
The student.
The one who would one day be called the Constellation Killer opened his lips.
“It’s the cell phone Gongja-nim gave me. The one you used to use…”
“……”
“Because my family doesn’t have money… You’re paying for the fees. So that if Gongja-nim tells me to come out, I would come out right away. For that purpose. You said that if I lose it, you’ll kill me…”
A building that became a blight.
Friendships that imitate friendship, love that imitates love, a meaningless thing that feigns significance, this animal farm that pretends to be special—there was only malice.
“Can I really throw it away?”
Only the malice was real.