Ch.195195 – The Labyrinth Called School 4

# 195 – The Labyrinth Called School #4

“So that’s Yeongwon’s father!”

Kwon Sua exclaimed while watching the press conference on TV.

The billionaire chairman in his mid-thirties, Cheon Boseong, was a handsome man with pale skin and somewhat gloomy features. He resembled a certain boy, though he looked more dignified due to his age.

“Is that what Yeongwon will look like when he grows up?”

Kwon Sua imagined Ha Yeongwon as an adult.

Since sons tend to resemble their fathers, that boy also had the potential to become a dignified adult.

Potential.

Suddenly, the boys and girls remembered that they were beings of infinite potential. The feeling from when they had carved their names on cherry trees and talked about their dreams under the starlight came back to life.

That summer night when cicadas were chirping loudly.

That summer that had not yet come.

“Who is Ha Yeongwon?”

Someone asked the question again.

The chairman on TV broke his silence and answered.

“Are there any reporters here who have raised children? A father desperately tries to find traits in his child that resemble himself. A son is like his alter ego.”

To a father, a son was like himself. Therefore, a father who lost his son was as good as dead himself.

“Someone said that child might not share my blood. They said the child was deformed from birth and didn’t resemble me at all. But that child is indeed my son.”

People were greatly surprised by Cheon Boseong’s story.

The protagonist of various conspiracy theories circulating in the world was the young chairman’s son. Even the reporters had never heard that the chairman was married.

Was he lying?

While everyone was thinking that, News Director So Jaesu sensed various emotions in the young chairman’s expression.

The portrait of Ivan IV hanging on the wall overlapped with the man’s expression.

And the chairman’s appearance, which bore no resemblance to So Jaesu himself, overlapped.

“I just want to give that child back his daily life.”

So Jaesu had experienced losing a child in his youth.

And recently, he had lost Gu Hyena, a girl he cherished like his own daughter.

Having experienced two great losses, he could empathize with the chairman’s sense of loss.

So Jaesu was greatly surprised to realize that such a great sense of loss existed in an heir who had inherited the entire world. His sense of loss was neither fabricated nor exaggerated, but extremely genuine.

“I’ve researched many methods to give the child a normal life. From medical literature to extremely superstitious things. If you ask whether what’s happening now is related to that, I can say both yes and no.”

The press conference ended there. It was a brief moment, but many truths were revealed.

In a way, one could say the raw truth had been exposed.

[So he kidnapped high school girls as sacrifices to save his son?]

[Crazy, is this actually happening in 21st century South Korea lol]

[Country’s doomed]

The press conference coverage began making headlines loudly.

The content was so sensational that people enjoyed talking about it.

“Unnie! Look at this! I folded a paper Tyrannosaurus!”

Yu Dahui’s younger sister, Kang Nayu, was excitedly waving around a paper Tyrannosaurus she had folded. The young girl Kang Nayu was good at origami.

She took after her mother, Yu Inna, who was also good at origami. Yang Juhui found Kang Nayu extremely adorable.

“Did you fold that Tyrannosaurus for me? How did you fold it?”

“Grrrr, don’t talk to me! It’s not for you!”

Kang Nayu was still wary of Yang Juhui, who had fought with her sister.

She wanted to be loved by her sister.

Of course, Yu Dahui didn’t pay attention to Kang Nayu’s Tyrannosaurus.

‘I shouldn’t get attached.’

When everything returned to normal, Kang Nayu was supposed to disappear. If you give affection, you feel sadness when you lose it.

Of course, young Kang Nayu didn’t know that.

“Unnie! Look at this! Nayu is a Tyrannosaurus! Rawr!”

Thump-thump-thump.

Watching the child running around the secret base, the boys and girls were lost in their own thoughts.

They thought the moment to say goodbye to their daily lives was not far off.

Their peaceful daily lives.

After much deliberation, Kwon Sua uploaded a post on her SNS.

[I heard there’s a superstitious object at Yeongji High School that grants wishes! They say the chairman hid it somewhere, and I hope we can all find it together. I heard it looks like a clock ㄷㄷ]

“Is it right to post like this?”

Kwon Sua had the most followers on SNS. A post written by Kwon Sua, who had not shown her position since her sudden retirement announcement, would be enough to attract people’s attention.

The story, intertwined with the strange chairman’s actions and the disappearance of high school girls, began to gain momentum like a sail catching wind.

[Was the clock the reason Kwon Sua quit being an idol?]

[Were the missing high school girls actually sacrificed by Kwon Sua? lolll]

[This is so childish, what’s with this talk about a wish-granting clock, is this Dragon Ball?]

Of course, not all reactions were positive.

There were many people in the world who didn’t care about others’ affairs and instead acted cynically.

“It doesn’t seem to be working.”

When Kwon Sua became slightly depressed, Jeongseok, who was monitoring the internet reactions, spoke.

“We don’t need to convince everyone. We didn’t know anything about Yeongwon’s clock either. That’s the kind of object it is. What’s important are the kids at our school.”

Jeongseok thought that by now, the students of Yeongji High School would clearly recognize the suspicious student Ha Yeongwon and the superstitious events happening to save him.

Whatever the people on the internet were saying, the students of Yeongji High were actually experiencing strange things.

# # #

Monday returned. A protest broke out in front of the school.

It was a protest condemning the chairman and the politicians colluding with him.

“To think Ha Yeongwon was a real person.”

“Are we going to be sacrificed too?”

Students watching the protesters gathered outside the window made jokes among themselves.

It was too noisy to study.

“Is this the clock?”

“That’s just a digital clock.”

Some students snickered while looking at clocks hanging around the school.

A wish-granting clock? They weren’t naive enough to believe such things unless they were young enough to believe in Santa Claus, not high school students.

But for some students, it came across as truth.

‘This school was crazy. No wonder I felt uncomfortable!’

It was the delinquent Kim Geonho.

Until middle school, Kim Geonho had been considered a promising judo athlete, but after entering high school, he had become docile, as if he had lost his fangs.

Every time he entered the classroom, he would break out in a cold sweat for no reason, and whenever he dozed off, he would have nightmares. Dreams where he was chased by ghosts or stabbed to death by crazy girls.

He had such dreams repeatedly. Every time he woke up, sweat would pour down like rain, leaving him soaked like a mouse that had fallen into the sea.

‘It’s too vivid. It doesn’t feel like a dream. The problem is that it’s becoming clearer every day!’

The dream, which was initially blurry, had now become clear enough to make out its contours. Kim Geonho tensed up as he looked at the empty seat in front of him.

It was the seat of Gong Yerin, who had gone missing, and Lim Huiyeon, who was refusing to attend.

In his dream, it was Gong Yerin and Lim Huiyeon who killed him.

‘It must be a premonitory dream!’

The pain was too vivid to dismiss it as just a “dream,” and the voices of the female students laughing sweetly were clearly spreading in his ears.

Like a stain that wouldn’t come off.

‘That guy Ha Yeongwon really exists. This school is crazy!’

Ha Yeongwon, a male student born with deformities.

Someone was definitely carrying out all sorts of sinister deeds to restore him to his original state.

Perhaps Ha Yeongwon himself was plotting some evil scheme.

‘He exists!’

Kim Geonho strongly felt the presence of a male student who couldn’t possibly exist. It felt like he was staying near him and sending glances his way.

It wasn’t just Kim Geonho.

Most of the students in Class D felt the same emotion.

“Hey, Yang Juhui. You asked if we knew Ha Yeongwon back then. Why did you say that?”

Kim Inho, one of the delinquent group who had been quiet due to too many recent events, asked Yang Juhui.

Kim Inho vividly remembered Yang Juhui making a fuss on April Fool’s Day.

“Me? I… don’t know. I can’t remember well.”

Yang Juhui brushed it off.

She didn’t have the confidence to speak coherently.

Soon, someone among the children asked the transfer student Yu Dahui.

“Dahui, you said you exchanged messages with Ha Yeongwon. Is that true?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then he really exists, right? He’s probably just a terribly ugly or scary kid who doesn’t attend school. Is he actually a student in our Class D?”

The students of Class D thought about a certain male student. Strangely, they all felt like they could vaguely picture the outline of a male student they had never met and whose face they didn’t know.

“It’s all nonsense!”

Bang-!

Kim Geonho slammed his fist on the desk.

“It’s all nonsense, so if anyone talks about Ha Yeongwon or whatever, expect to get hit.”

All the students in Class D were intimidated by Kim Geonho’s fierce words. But the children of Class D noticed that Kim Geonho was more frightened by the recent events than anyone else.

The saying that a scared dog barks the loudest fit perfectly now.

But Kim Geonho didn’t understand how the human brain works.

‘If you tell someone not to think of an elephant, they’ll think of an elephant. The human brain is weak against methods of negation. There’s actually no function for negation.’

Jeongseok sensed that the children of Class D had started to recall and imagine Ha Yeongwon.

It was really not far off.

‘I wondered if it was really possible for the future to change the past. To be honest, I still don’t believe it.’

Jeongseok had lacked self-confidence for a long time. It was difficult to predict how he could be of any help in this task of creating something from nothing.

‘It’s been long.’

It really had been a long time.

Jeongseok closed his eyes and recalled the hard times until now. The things he remembered from when he was five years old. And memories of laughing and chatting with friends from an even more distant past.

“……”

Jeongseok suddenly felt a great sadness wetting his chest.

It was self-pity for having spent a childhood far from normality and becoming an adult one step ahead. The boy’s daily life was already broken.

‘Why did it have to be me?’

Early on, the boy had envied and been jealous of a friend who seemed like the protagonist. He thought that if it were him, he could accomplish many things more excellently and coolly.

But being the protagonist of the world wasn’t such a cool thing.

It was lonely.

It was something that made him shudder and want to run away from the weight that sometimes pressed down on his shoulders.

In that pain, Jeongseok even resented and hated the boy who had burdened him.

The best way to get revenge on the boy was to return what was on his shoulders.

Swoosh.

While Jeongseok was feeling the cool breeze coming from the window, Kim Geonho, who had particularly good intuition, thought he should go home quickly.

An old apartment where his father, a former boxer, his ordinary mother, and his younger sister lived.

After returning to his room and attaching lots of talismans and crosses that his mother had obtained, Kim Geonho was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief.

Sitting in a chair, he closed his eyes briefly to shake off the fatigue that felt as heavy as wet cotton.

‘I think I can sleep well for once.’

When he opened his eyes—

Kim Geonho realized he was standing in an unfamiliar corridor he had never seen before.

“Aaaah~”