Chapter 43
After the warm, soft memorization session came to an end.
Only after finishing Imina's OX quiz could we finally leave the duty room.
A silent hallway.
If there was one good thing, it was that the weak lighting meant it wasn't completely dark like some cheap horror game.
If I'd been watching this scene on a monitor, I would've been thrilled, thinking, ‘This horror-game atmosphere is insane!’ But….
“This atmosphere is no joke.”
“Quiet is better than watching something jump out at you.”
Unfortunately, we were seeing this dreary school up close and in person, so you could call that a tragedy.
“As I explained, this is the first floor. The students' classrooms start on the second floor.”
“That's the universal school rule.”
Almost every school has its classrooms starting on the second floor.
At least, that was true of the roughly 160 elementary, middle, and high schools in Seoul I'd visited while maintaining their school routers.
The first floor tended to have more noise and issues involving outsiders because so many people passed through it.
The only exceptions were a handful of first-grade elementary-school classrooms.
Most of the ordinary special rooms wouldn't be on the first floor either, so our priority was to head straight for the second floor.
We walked down the hallway with our footsteps muffled as much as possible, keeping watch around us.
Because subduing the security guard was impossible.
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Security Guard
Rank: Level 1
Classification: Entity-Type
‘Security Guard’ is an entity that appears at ‘Yeondoo High School.’
It takes the form of a man in his fifties wearing a dark-colored security uniform and always carrying a metal bat in one hand.
Its physical abilities have been confirmed to be on the level of an average man in his twenties.
According to witness testimony, there have been numerous cases of ‘Security Guard’ sightings on every floor at the same time.
The Bureau believes that a ‘Security Guard’ necessarily exists on every floor where an outsider or student is present.
When an experiment was conducted in which all people were moved to a single floor, the security guards on the unoccupied floors were observed to disappear immediately.
In addition, when a target being pursued by the ‘Security Guard’ on the first floor moved to the second floor, the pursuing ‘Security Guard’ immediately disappeared, while a new ‘Security Guard’ was confirmed to appear in the center of the second-floor hallway.
The newly appeared ‘Security Guard’ continued patrolling as before until the target came into its field of vision.
After several experiments, it was discovered that no more than one ‘Security Guard’ can exist on each floor.
If pursued by a ‘Security Guard,’ the top priority is to change floors and break off the entity's pursuit.
Although ‘Security Guard’ is a Level 1 entity, it has been confirmed that targets classified as ‘outsiders’ inside Yeondoo High School cannot subdue the security guard by any means.
Therefore, do not plan or attempt to neutralize the ‘Security Guard’ while classified as an outsider.
‘Security Guard’ displays hostility toward both students and outsiders encountered in the hallway.
However, its attack priority has been confirmed to be outsiders first, then students.
When pursuing an outsider, it continues tracking them even after they leave its sight, until they change floors.
By contrast, when a student enters a classroom or special room, the pursuit ends.
Judging from the things the ‘Security Guard’ says, the time period at ‘Yeondoo High School’ is presumed to be nighttime self-study,
and it appears to act aggressively toward students as well because being out in the hallway is considered a violation of school rules.
However, numerous entities that respond only to students have been confirmed to exist inside the special rooms.
Therefore, even if you have student status, taking refuge in a regular classroom rather than a special room is recommended.
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A guy who can beat urban legends to death is only Level 1? According to Imina, Red Mask was Level 2.
I guess a home-field advantage really does matter. Though there are also bizarre baseball teams that lose more often at home.
The school at night was dreary even apart from the Security Guard roaming around.
The pounding rain striking the windows and the schoolyard covered by another layer of darkness.
The statue of King Sejong sitting silently with an open book, gazing toward the school gate.
The unseen gazes of something invisible felt here and there outside.
“Nothing good comes from staring for too long.”
Imina approached and poked my right cheek, and only then did I come to my senses.
“A person who fights monsters must be careful not to become a monster in the process. If you gaze into the abyss for long enough, the abyss will gaze back into you. It's a famous quote.”
They were Friedrich Nietzsche's words.
“…Did entities and the Bureau exist back then too?”
“Probably?”
Why on earth hadn't Earth already gone under ages ago?
It wasn't long after leaving the duty room that we saw stairs leading upward.
The problem was that, of the stairs at either end and in the center, we'd arrived at the ones in the center.
We had no choice. A blood trail left by Red Mask ran in the direction of the stairs closer to the duty room.
“If we go up here, we'll run straight into the Security Guard.”
“Probably.”
There was a slight chance that the center of the hallway mentioned in the report referred to somewhere else, but I didn't feel like taking that risk.
In the first place, Imina wasn't even looking at these stairs; she was staring at the distant end of the hallway.
Come to think of it, where had the Security Guard on the first floor gone?
Since the hallway was laid out in a square, I assumed it was at one of the other corners, but….
Considering how long we'd spent in the duty room, it was more than enough time for the man with the physical abilities of a twenty-something to have dealt with at least one thing that had been Red Mask.
“Mr. Seong-bin?”
“Ah.”
Lost in thought, I stopped walking for a moment, and Imina, who had been walking ahead, came over and poked my cheek again.
“I was wondering why the Security Guard hadn't appeared.”
Jingle, jingle.
“Mr. Seong-bin, let's agree that you won't think about things from now on.”
I shouldn't have thought about it.
I heard the sound of metal colliding behind me.
Then came the sound of something made of metal touching the floor.
When I turned around, I learned what had been making the sound that scraped at my ears.
The keys on the thick ring of keys hanging from his waist swayed with his steps, clashing against one another to create the noise.
The sound of a metal bat slick with dark-red blood tapping the tiled floor in time with his hand movements.
The source of the sounds was shining a reddish flashlight around as he walked slowly… slowly toward us, and then—
“Hmm?”
Our eyes met.
“What are you? Why are you here when you're not even a student?”
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump!
The thing, which had been walking slowly until a moment ago, began running toward us at a terrifying speed.
“Run for the stairs!”
Imina shouted as she pulled my arm.
The moment the brief spell over my mind broke, my body reacted.
Because I knew that if I got caught, it wouldn't end with merely having my shoulder lightly bitten. I knew it wouldn't end with mere pain.
I ran, summoning every last ounce of strength I had. But there was still some distance left before we reached the stairs at the end of the hallway.
Had it really always been this far from the center of the hallway to the end?
Or was the school pulling something? I had no idea.
At least, thanks to running as if my life depended on it, the Security Guard—whose physical abilities were supposedly those of an average man in his twenties—wasn't catching up to us; the distance was actually widening.
Just like a pursuer in a horror game being slower than the player.
After running as hard as I could, I managed to reach the stairs.
“Don't run in the hallway. Don't climb several stairs at once.”
The Security Guard said what he had to say in a flat tone despite his agile actions.
Since Imina and I were going up three steps at a time, it seemed he'd added a new line to his repertoire.
“You're the one who caused this, aren't you?”
I agreed. If someone hadn't been running behind me wielding a deadly weapon, obviously I would've followed the rules.
And how were we supposed to climb these stairs one step at a time and reach the next floor when we couldn't even see the next floor after taking three steps at once?
“Do you know how many steps we have to climb to reach the next floor?”
“I don't know anything except that the stairs aren't eternal!”
It was absurd that I had to feel relieved that they weren't eternal, but it was several hundred million times better than getting caught from exhaustion and turned into ground meat.
“Outsiders, don't go up to where the students' classrooms are. Don't disturb the teachers.”
For a moment, I found myself missing today's parents, who would immediately file a complaint if ‘Yeondoo High School’ were real and a guard dared speak to them like that.
Maybe I was only thinking that because the Security Guard's voice was already coming from at least 200 stairs below us.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Maybe I wanted to avoid the fear of the metallic sound hammering the walls and stairs, stabbing directly into my head.
“We're here!”
At Imina's shout, I looked up and saw an entrance leading to the second-floor hallway far above the stairs.
Something briefly peeked out between the entrance and me, barely concealed by her short skirt, but that sort of thing wasn't important right now.
Clang!Clang!Clang!Clang!Clang!Clang!
Simultaneously with Imina's shout, the metallic clanging and the sound of someone climbing the stairs suddenly sped up.
I forced even more strength into my thighs, which were on the verge of cramping, and continued climbing.
Ten steps, seven, four, and then one….
Bang!
The moment we passed through the entrance and entered the second floor, I quickly shut the door.
Strangely, the footsteps and metallic clanging that had sounded fairly close only moments ago vanished as if they had never existed.
The problem was—
“Don't relax, Mr. Seong-bin.”
“Hmm?”
The fact that a hallway splitting in both directions, something we definitely could never have seen from the end of the hallway, was welcoming us.
“What are you two?”
The Security Guard that had been chasing us from behind until a moment ago was approaching us from ahead, with only its metal bat cleaned of blood.
“Why are you here?”
I should have realized it when the stairs turned out not to be normal.