Chapter 75

The government agent and I pressed our backs against the wall and looked down the hallway, toward Class 1-5 at the far end—the classroom we had escaped from.

Just as I finally got a look...

The lights flickered.

Mannequin-like figures appeared at the other end of the hall.

'... Three?'

There was one more now. Two boys and a girl.

The two who had come out of the classroom were smiling at us, drenched in blood. The third stood motionless in a still-clean uniform.

With the lights on, they looked like grotesquely lifelike wax figures, or people frozen in a photograph.

But whenever the lights went out...

A flicker.

They appeared farther forward.

Every time.

Even as we kept backing away.

A flicker.

At the very limit of the emergency flashlight's reach, the light revealed them standing motionless again, closer than before.

We couldn't put any distance between us.

A flicker.

"..."

I could imagine it... The moment the flashlight batteries ran out, this standoff would be over.

'Ha.'

Even as I moved my feet slowly and carefully, that image seized me by the nape.

We finally stopped only when we reached the dead end of the hallway.

And then...

[DING-DONG-DANG-DONG]

"..."

[A fatal incident has occurred in Class 3-2.]

F*ck.

[The deceased student is third-year Park Chaea.]

[Let us all observe five seconds of silence.]

"Get ready."

I gripped the flashlight tightly and pressed against the wall behind me.

[5]

I swept the flashlight rapidly across all three of them.

Each time the beam passed over them and returned, they were closer.

[4]

The agent and I each caught an entity in our beams.

... What about the other one?

[3]

The other one.

Where did it go?

I swung my flashlight from side to side, even checking our blind spots, but it wasn't there.

[2]

Anxiety made time accelerate.

Where, where the hell was it, where...

Oh.

I whipped the flashlight downward.

[1]

The bright beam illuminated my feet... and a pale, bloodied hand just about to grab my ankle.

A hand extending from a school uniform sleeve.

"..."

A Segwang Technical High School student lay flat on the floor, grinning up at me.

[This concludes our moment of silence. May the deceased rest in peace.]

"..."

Slowly, I drew my foot away.

'Ha.'

This was insane. Insane!!

If my reflexes had been even a little slower, I would have died.

'I've never even played a VR horror game in my life...!'

I never thought I would experience this shit for real.

I backed away, very slowly alternating which eye I opened so I would never blink both at once.

My limbs were shaking.

Staring intently at the other two student entities, the government agent said,

"Once you leave the floor, the students of that year generally don't seem to pursue you very aggressively."

I knew that.

If there was still prey left on their floor, they were more likely to go after it...

"Let's head upstairs."

"... We're going up, not down to the first floor?"

"Yes. Our mission is to reach the fifth floor, preferably the auditorium."

I immediately remembered the very first announcement I'd heard.

["Attention, students of Segwang Technical High School! The graduation ceremony will begin shortly. Please gather in the auditorium."]

"... What's in the auditorium?"

"We have absolutely no information yet. That's why we need to investigate."

Of course.

'The exploration records accumulated so far only cover the early-to-middle portion of what's in <Records of Dark Exploration>.'

How many people could possibly have obediently gone to the place a nightmare school's announcement told them to gather?

The few who tried going up would all have been caught and killed by the students.

The higher we went, the more boldly, unpredictably, and intelligently the students would try to hunt us...

And the bigger problem...

Never come up to the fifth floor!! You're better off dying below it don't ever come u—

-Final recording of Exploration Record #12

...came when you evaded all of that and actually reached the fifth floor.

'Ha, I really don't want to go...'

The most depressing part was that I had to go there anyway.

Should I at least take comfort in having someone with me?

Still, we couldn't go as we were. Time to steer things slightly off course so we could prepare properly.

"If you don't mind, could we stop to look around the third and fourth floors as well?"

"Is there a reason?"

"Something about this makes me think it's structured like a horror game."

"...!"

"In games, you have to collect important items to progress."

I spoke while slowly climbing the stairs backward.

"I'm not sure, but I'd search the specialized rooms first... Places like the music room, science lab, or faculty office. I'd check the yearbooks and student records, too."

"..."

"I think there might be clues or keys among the props and objects."

We kept climbing.

As we gained distance from the 'students' surrounding us, they drew far enough away that a single flashlight beam could cover all of them.

Only then did the agent speak.

"Our analysis team reached a similar conclusion. ... That this seemed to be a game-based ghost story."

Oh.

"They said the fictional high school name and the way you have to run from monsters were very similar."

"Oh, I was thinking along the same lines."

"But no one has suggested this before. An investigation focused on objects rather than monsters or people..."

For some reason, his eyes seemed to be sparkling.

Since he looked like his high-school self and had no dark circles, it didn't look bizarre.

"Very well. Let's examine as many rooms as we can. We'll pass the word on as more agents join us, too..."

More agents... I'd rather not.

But he went a step further, as though he was actually getting excited.

"Come to think of it, now that you're a provisional agent, we should address each other by code names. Do you have one you'd like?"

Good lord.

"Oh, we mainly use historical materials. Uncommon terms make it easier to distinguish them."

'He's even letting me use a code name?'

It felt like he was letting me live out every fantasy I had.

... Oh. Was there a code name I'd wanted to use if I ever created a Named Disaster Management Bureau agent in <Records of Dark Exploration>?

Yes.

But I did have enough shame not to bring it up right now...

"... I'll go with Grape."

"A fruit. Nice and simple."

For a moment, I imagined what Braun would have said about that.

'I kind of miss him.'

I shook off the emptiness left by my 'Good Friend' and continued the conversation.

"What should I call you, Agent?"

"My code name is Bronze."

"Understood, Agent Bronze."

The agent—code name Bronze—gave a faint smile and a rather pleased nod.

As though he were looking at an intern.

'Is it just me, or have I been getting a lot of new-recruit welcomes lately...?'

In any case, until we were completely off the stairs, we kept stubbornly bending down to check below us and make sure the students weren't following.

Of course, one of us was always watching the floor above as well.

And at last, we reached it.

[3F]

The third floor.

The floor used by the second-years.

"... It's quiet."

The students below had naturally slipped out of our sight, but they didn't appear at the top of the stairs. Apparently, they'd found someone else and gone after them...

Still glancing toward the stairs just in case, we entered the third-floor hallway.

Under the bright lights, it was astonishingly clean.

No blood, no filth, no bodies. No people standing rigid and desperately staring at students with tears streaming down their faces.

"..."

There weren't even any student entities in sight.

And I thought I knew why.

'They've sealed off all the doors.'

Someone had already locked every classroom door.

They'd even secured them with chains and padlocks.

'...! This has to be the Daydream employees.'

It was in our manual.

Students wearing Segwang Technical High School uniforms display a degree of reluctance to damage school facilities.

When doors are quietly closed and locked without provoking them, they have been observed returning to their desks and entering an inactive state.

Besides, with the doors secured like that, anything coming out would inevitably make noise.

We could hear it and turn to look immediately.

'A first-line safety measure.'

While there were still enough people around to severely limit the mannequins' movements, it was fairly manageable if you moved stealthily.

"..."

But with the hallway this quiet, we had to be quiet, too.

Those students were drawn to sound.

"The second-year faculty office is around the corner."

"Should we crawl there?"

A nod.

After that exchange of barely audible whispers and nods, we lay flat and moved quietly along the wall, keeping out of sight.

Even then, we never stopped watching corners where someone might silently appear, like the end of the hallway or the stairs.

Cold sweat soaked my back.

'A little farther. Just a little farther.'

Slowly.

We just had to get through without pushing ourselves.

When we were more than halfway there...

"Aaaagh!"

...

Someone screamed from beyond the hallway.

'No.'

If they heard a sound...

RATTLE.

RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE.

I didn't dare lift my head.

From every padlocked door came the sound of a handle being pulled.

... The students had heard it, too.

RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE.

The agent and I stayed flat and crawled like mad until we were out of the hallway.

Then we looked back.

RATTLE...

"..."

"..."

I let out a breath.

Fortunately, perhaps because there had been only one scream, the rattling of the handles stopped.

But I could see several shadowy figures peering out through the doors...

"..."

This was fucking terrifying.

It was an enormous relief that they weren't looking our way.

I swallowed.

Still, there was one comforting fact: we'd reached our first destination.

[Second-Year Faculty Office]

It appeared as soon as we rounded the corner.

Every door to the faculty office was padlocked, too, and its windows had been covered from the inside with something like newspaper, blocking the view in.

It was strangely chilling, but I couldn't have been happier to see it.

"Please keep watch in all directions for a moment."

The agent fitted a thimble-like item onto his finger and poked it into the padlock's keyhole.

The thimble slid into the hole, despite being the wrong size, and the padlock smoothly opened.

'Wow.'

Bureau-issued gear really did have that dream-come-true appeal.

"There may be students in the faculty office, too. Let's enter carefully."

Then we opened the door.

"...!"

"...?!"

An utterly unexpected scene awaited us.

"Close the door quietly."

"..."

"Quickly."

I closed the door behind me.

There were no students inside.

Instead, about seven people were glaring at each other in a standoff.

Suspicious high schoolers wearing animal masks, and suspicious high schoolers holding transparent pistols.

Disaster Management Bureau agents and Daydream Inc. employees.

'They're fighting!'

And on a table between the two opposing factions lay a single fountain pen.

'... An item.'

One I knew, too.

Second-Year ■■■'s Fountain Pen

They seemed to be pressuring each other to back off so they could claim it.

'Seriously? Instead of exploring the ghost story, they're wasting personnel on this pointless...!'

They even seemed to notice our arrival a moment late.

"Agent Bronze."

Only then did several of the apparent agents brighten and look at the man beside me, code name Bronze.

But surely someone as rational as the agent at my side wouldn't approve of this situation...

"Let's join them."

"...??"

Hold on.

But he had already walked over and taken his place at the head of the agents.

And I...

"..."

Was receiving some very intense stares from my animal-masked coworkers.

Especially the two fellow recruits who knew my face.

"??"

"??!"

I never thought I'd see the day Baek Saheon and Jang Heoun wore identical expressions.

Their eyes flicked between my iron Disaster Management Bureau badge and my translucent pistol, as if to say:

'Why the hell are you on that side...?'

Meanwhile, the government agent called to me again.

"Agent Grape."

"G-Grape?"

The agent answered icily.

"Even your character is typical of that company, mocking someone's code name."

"...??"

This was driving me insane.

"Come over here. You'd be better off away from the door."

"..."

'What do I do?'

I weighed the situation furiously.

And made my decision.

'I can't be a traitor.'

In the end, I walked over and stood beside my acquaintance.

"Yes, Agent."

Right beside Agent Bronze.

"What is—what the...!"

"..."

That's right. I couldn't be a traitor.

'I can't betray my own safety...!'

That's how it is, my fellow recruits.