Chapter 81

A temporary tattoo.

Something the <Moonlight Tattoo Shop> had thrown in for free.

["Do any of these symbols represent courage, or the boldness to act without fear?"]

In response, the tattoo artist had recommended a design depicting a tomato tree...

And transferred that exact design onto a temporary tattoo.

The tattoo I was now applying to my neck.

"..."

To be honest, I had a rough idea of what I hoped it would do.

Make all these supernatural things stop frightening me, as though the part of my brain that felt fear had been numbed.

Like Team D... Yes.

... Like Deputy Eun Haje and Supervisor Park Minseong used to be.

I wanted to explore these terrifying supernatural phenomena with such composure and abandon that people would wonder if I had any sense of self-preservation.

But.

"...?"

I blinked inside the locker.

'It... doesn't seem to be doing much?'

I thought of the students who had chased me.

Scary as hell.

I thought of the deranged rabbit mascot I had encountered in the theme park ghost story.

Goosebumps.

I thought of the ghost in the tiger-victim ghost story, sobbing and knocking on the door while pretending to be human.

'... That's terrifying!!'

Everything I thought of gave me chills.

'D-did I get scammed?'

Or had I applied it wrong? I'd never actually used a temporary tattoo before, so who knew.

Either way, I had no way to check right now.

"..."

Damn it.

I had to stick to the plan regardless.

Now that the “teacher” had left the fourth floor, this was my chance.

'It must have gone downstairs.'

In the end, I swallowed and stepped out of the locker.

... Of course, what lay outside would be horrific.

The blood and pieces of Team D's freshly killed supervisor would be scattered everywhere, so I braced myself as I stepped...

...

"...?"

'Tomatoes?'

Wait a second.

I strode out of the faculty office and headed up to the fifth floor.

There...

The reason I had avoided the fifth floor all this time lay exposed in all its glory.

"Aaaaah!"

The fifth-floor walls were now plastered with overlapping pages from old yearbooks.

And the students in the photographs were reaching outward, their faces contorted in pain.

"Aaaaah!"

Beyond the scraps of yearbook paper, I could see writhing masses of flesh.

Something that would inflict immense psychological strain and panic on anyone who entered the fifth floor.

It openly revealed itself as less a school than some grotesquely twisted other world.

Red light pulsed where the ceiling lights should have been.

But...

Tomatoes.

Ha.

Hahahaha!

'What the actual fuck!'

There were tomatoes everywhere people's heads should have been!

No, it wasn't as though they didn't look human.

The people in the yearbook photographs? They all looked human. People screaming in agony with twisted faces!

But they simply felt like tomatoes.

The rational voice telling me that there was no need to associate those things with fear translated directly into emotion.

Yes, that was exactly how it felt...

They were nothing.

'Hahaha...'

The farther I walked down the hall, the further back in time the yearbooks went. The graduates had melted into increasingly horrific, inhuman shapes and solidified against the walls.

Strange talismans and lumps of flesh pulsed on the walls and ceiling.

And a voice.

"I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryItoreupthetalismanwedugupintheschoolbackyardI'mastudentat■■SchoolIwaspreparingforthegraduationceremonyI'msor... NoNo! Graduationisn'taritualNotalivingsacrificeNoNo!! PleasesavemeSave—"

Some hints about the game's lore, then.

Hearing them now wouldn't change anything.

I walked down that hallway feeling no different than if I were taking a stroll down the street. No, perhaps a little more cheerful than that.

Everything being tomatoes was kind of funny.

At the end of the hallway, I stopped before a huge door on the right.

A neat teal steel door.

The one door that had retained its original, intact appearance on this fifth floor turned grotesque den.

It led to the auditorium.

The setting for the game's final chapter.

<Graduation Ceremony in Progress>

Graduates only. Please knock before entering.

I read the instructions printed on the A4 sheet.

Wasn't I a first-year student in Class 5, not a graduate?

'This is the kind of mechanic where having the item opens the door.'

And I already had it.

The item you would normally have to play through the entire game to obtain in the final chapter.

Would you like to use 'Name Tag Decoration'?

Of course.

KNOCK KNOCK.

With the Name Tag Decoration pinned to my chest, I knocked on the auditorium door.

The enormous door before me glided smoothly open.

"..."

Hundreds of third-year students seated in hundreds of seats turned to look at me.

This year's graduates.

They were half melted into their chairs, unable to leave their seats, and tears like black ink poured from their eyeless faces.

But...

I felt nothing beyond pity.

Really, pity was the appropriate response in this situation.

'They can't hurt me, either.'

With irrational fear replaced by tomatoes, I walked down the aisle between the chairs toward the enormous stage opposite me, where a graduation banner hung.

My footsteps plodded on.

Behind me, the graduates turned their heads to watch me with expressionless faces...

I climbed onto the auditorium stage.

Then I took hold of the microphone on its stand at center stage and announced,

"We will now begin the graduation ceremony."

[DING-DONG-DANG-DONG]

As though it had been waiting, bright, majestic ceremonial music began playing at my declaration.

Graduation music...

At that moment.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Screams swept through the auditorium.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

As though a skin were being peeled away, the auditorium's intact appearance fell away to reveal something grotesquely misshapen.

The horrific scenery I had seen in the fifth-floor hallway appeared.

Those images surged toward me like a final desperate struggle, as though seeking to punish the person trying to ruin everything.

But I felt perfectly fine.

It was all tomatoes.

And the greater danger was only beginning.

'It's coming.'

To force the student who had started graduation all on his own into a seat below the stage.

THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD

Footsteps raced up from far below.

'The teacher is coming.'

It was fine.

'I've got more than enough time to do everything before it gets here.'

I pulled a pen-shaped auto-injector from my pocket and plunged it into my arm.

Happy Maker.

The ultra-powerful single-use painkiller gave a cute, artificial little trill as it injected the luminous liquid inside its container into my bloodstream.

A comfortable, refreshing vitality flowed through my veins and spread throughout my body, leaving me utterly weightless.

Like magic.

'Good.'

At the same time, I popped two Nostalgia candies into my mouth at once.

No more than three Can-dies at a time!

You might plunge into nostalgia too deep to escape!

Right. Following the instructions, too.

Now I would be perfectly comfortable and in perfect condition.

'Whew.'

And now time was up.

BOOM

Something squeezed through the gap between the auditorium doors.

The “teacher” thrust in a hand deformed by the blackboard fused to it and tore the door itself away, warping the steel.

CRAAAAACK

The door crumpled and fell away.

And there it was.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

A gigantic human figure.

But only in silhouette.

It looked as though several teachers had been crushed, crumpled, and stitched together, then forcibly stuffed back into a human-shaped mold.

A flesh monster with arms on its head, heads on its shoulders, and shoulders on its knees.

It entered the auditorium with eerily measured footsteps...

THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD

Blackboards, textbooks, student registers, chalk, glasses, and the like swayed from random parts of its body, attached in a senseless jumble.

Standing on the stage opposite it, looking at a sight grotesque enough to make anyone shudder...

"..."

All that bubbled up inside me was a desire to win.

Because I had to get past that thing to go home and fill my collector...

'That's right.'

This situation called for tenacity, not fear!

The tattoo on my neck grew hot, setting my gut, heart, and even my head boiling.

'Ah.'

Now I understood.

The effect of this temporary tattoo was...

'Exhilaration.'

Overflowing adrenaline.

The exhilaration that made you charge in like a madman the moment you found something you wanted, a goal!

And supporting it all, the sensation that made everything feel like tomatoes!

'I can do this.'

Without hesitation, I gripped the auditorium microphone and glared straight ahe—

SLICE

I dodged.

Well, it did hit me, but instead of losing my head, I lost half my right hand.

"...!"

It startled me a little, but there was no pain.

No psychological shock, either! It was simply like watching a tomato get crushed.

The courage for reason to overcome instinct.

And blazing motivation.

'I'll get this done, no matter what.'

... Did you know?

This horror game wasn't actually action-based.

The chase sequences did require some basic gaming reflexes, but fundamentally, it was a puzzle and deduction game.

And in this final chapter, the student controlled by the player used the various abilities acquired throughout the game.

You had to counter the teacher's attacks like solving a puzzle, holding on to this microphone until the graduation song ended.

But as an explorer, I couldn't play it that way.

'I'm wearing a borrowed uniform. I'm not a real student.'

Still.

'I can respond like this.'

I drew the Glass Hand Cannon and fired.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

The small transparent pistol the Disaster Management Bureau agent had given me demonstrated its power nicely.

The teacher screamed in pain as the bullet struck its shoulder.

But it didn't seem to have done much actual damage.

'It wasn't particularly high-grade equipment, anyway.'

It didn't matter.

'I was only trying to throw off its aim...!'

SLICE

The rusty blackboard hurtling toward me severed my left foot.

"...!"

Even so, I didn't move. I simply stood there holding the microphone.

Blood gushed out, soaking the stage.

"..."

Right. Human strength couldn't dodge or overcome that monster's attacks. I wasn't Section Chief Lizard, after all.

Well, that didn't mean there wasn't a way.

'I can just give up on that.'

THWACK.

The rest of my right hand vanished up to the wrist.

Ignoring it, I fired the Glass Hand Cannon again with my left hand.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

"YoumustlistentoyourteacherAaaaaaaahSitdownInyourseatI'mconductingthegraduationAaaaaaaah!"

Again.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

My left thigh burst apart.

I held on.

SLICE

Both legs were gone.

'Out of bullets.'

As I slid downward, I clung to the microphone stand.

SLICE

My left hand, holding both the pistol and the microphone, fell away.

But my dangling body was wrapped around the microphone stand.

SLICE

I hauled myself up the microphone stand with what remained of my left elbow.

Blood splashed hard against my cheek.

"..."

And...

Huh?

The graduation music had stopped.

'Now!'

Just as the “teacher” raised its blackboard once more with its grotesque flesh,

I called into the microphone.

"Congratulations on your graduation."

...

In an instant,

Holographic pixels filled the auditorium like a shower of blossoms.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah"

The shrieking teacher melted away, and the grotesque monstrous entities covering the auditorium vanished with it as though burning away.

So did the chairs holding the students captive.

"Woooooo!!"

Freed, the third-year students burst out of the auditorium.

Their eyes were now brimming with tears and joy.

In the original “bad ending,” they all became the teacher's minions and emerged from the auditorium like zombies, killing every explorer who remained...

'... The ending changed this time.'

I lifted my head.

The auditorium curtains drew back, and warm yellow and red light filtered gently through the windows...

Dawn.

"..."

A pop-up appeared.

Happy Ending 02

: Graduation of Liberation

So this was the ending.

Then an assessment of my final-chapter performance appeared beneath it.

Happy Ending 02

: Graduation of Liberation

Score Rating : A

I checked the Dream Essence Collector.

Gleaming golden liquid was rising inside it... A color as rich and mesmerizing as it had been during The Tuesday Talk Show.

["A or higher."]

'I did it.'

A thrilling sense of accomplishment enveloped me.

I swallowed the last fragment of candy on my tongue and smiled as my consciousness faded.

Now I would wake up.

No, I would return to myself lying in bed. Having successfully cleared the ghost story and escaped!

'Good.'

I'd drift into a comfortable sleep and wake up in the morning...

...

...

...

... Am I back?

Huh?

It looks like the instruction manual is back inside my tattoo! Should I take it out?

Wait.

Since when have I been hearing this voice?

No, I'm not hearing it...

I'm the one saying it.

...

Since when

has the instruction manual been staying inside my tattoo?

Why have I started casually brushing past the teacher's proper thoughts that keep popping into my head?

Why did I suddenly dismiss the Fox Counseling Office so easily, citing concerns about side effects, when I'd been thinking I should go after my next exploration?

Why have I come to consider the unsettling, unknown intelligence I summoned through “Good Friend” the person I feel most comfortable with?

Without any visceral revulsion or wariness?

...

...!!!

'No.'

I can't let it consume me like this!

But the questions are already disappearing. As the Nostalgia Candy wears off, my present self is reclaiming its place!

The contamination is flooding in...!!

I struggled desperately in the hazy, floating sensation of waking from sleep.

'Kim Soleum!!'

Remember.

Remember!!

You're contaminated right n—

* * *

"Gasp."

Wow.

"I thought I was going to die."

I opened my eyes, drenched in cold sweat.

A deep sigh of relief escaped my lips.

'I did it, anyway.'

But at the same time, I seemed to have this unsettling feeling that I'd forgotten someth—

—...

—You're awake..., my friend.

...

...!!

'Aaaaah!'

I scrambled upright and immediately rescued Braun from beneath my pillow, just before his stuffing could be flattened!

'That was a close one.'

"Sorry!"

Then I flopped back onto the bed, spread-eagled. Exhaustion and comfort washed over me together, and I grinned.

Anyway... it looked like I'd made it back safely!