Ch.2002 – The Boy’s Abyss 2

# 002 – The Boy’s Abyss # 2

“Chapter 1. Nightmare Corridor begins.”

“Please select players from the list.”

“You can select up to 4 players.”

Ever since the Status Window appeared, it felt like I was in some kind of game. The word “player” only reinforced that feeling.

But “Nightmare Corridor”?

Just the name alone gave me such an ominous feeling that I involuntarily swallowed the saliva pooling in my mouth.

No matter how I look at it, this doesn’t seem good.

Isn’t there a more detailed explanation?

As I tilted my head in confusion, more text appeared before my eyes.

“One day when you opened your eyes, you found yourself lying in a dark corridor.

Terrible sounds echo from the pitch-black corners, and an ominous presence draws ever closer.

You had no choice but to move forward to survive and escape this bizarre situation. Eventually, you will reach shocking secrets and strange taboos…”

…This really does sound like a game description.

In terms of genre, it’s a horror game.

The number of selectable players is 4.

The names on the player “list” were all people whose faces I recognized.

Could I really make four of these people participate in this horror game called “Nightmare Corridor”?

It was only natural that my heart was racing with excitement at this unfamiliar situation.

I had been desperately waiting for something like this to happen for the past two months.

Something extraordinary that would completely shatter my ordinary life.

Although the “Hypnosis App” I’d been hoping for wasn’t there, if I just sat around feeling disappointed, I’d clearly remain a punching bag forever.

Not long ago, Yang Juhui had asked, “Yeongwon, you live with just your mom, right? And she comes home late every day?” She was even trying to find out where I lived.

My house becoming a hangout for those thugs?

Absolutely not!

I’ll protect my home and my daily life myself.

After much deliberation, I dragged names I knew well into the slots, as if filling out a form.

“Kim Geonho”

“Yang Juhui”

“Jeong Sojin”

After considering various factors, these three definitely needed to be included.

That meant I needed to fill the remaining slot…

I examined the names linked in the list.

Among them was the most familiar name of all.

After thinking so hard I thought I might lose my hair, I filled the last empty slot with a name.

“Ha Yeongwon”

My own name.

It might be somewhat reckless, but if “something” were to happen because of me, I wanted to see with my own eyes what would unfold and what the results would be.

Also, though I’d been avoiding it in many ways, I might discover why this strange “Status Window” had appeared before me.

I was particularly concerned about the part in the Nightmare Corridor description that said, “Eventually, you will reach shocking secrets and strange taboos…”

“Well… so what happens now?”

There were still 20 minutes left before lunch break ended.

In this leisurely time, I looked around, making sure not to miss even the slightest change.

But was I being too sensitive?

Nothing happened until the end of lunch break.

“…”

There really were no unusual occurrences.

If I had to point out something concerning, it was that even after lunch break ended and class began, the Class D troublemakers like Kim Geonho and Yang Juhui hadn’t returned to the classroom.

Kim Geonho skipping class wasn’t particularly unusual…

What was strange was that even Yang Juhui and our class president Jeong Sojin were skipping class.

Wasn’t Sojin extremely sensitive about her academic record and school reports? And didn’t Yang Juhui, despite being a bully, work hard to maintain her grades?

Tap tap-

Our Korean history teacher, dressed in hanbok, tapped the podium with a danso flute and asked:

“Does anyone know where these kids are? Try calling their phones. I can understand Geonho, but our class president Sojin and Juhui skipping this history teacher’s class is unheard of!”

Originally, collecting phones was school policy, but because of a female student’s disappearance at the beginning of the semester, our school no longer collected phones and instead trusted students not to use them.

Some students tried calling the absent students, but no one answered.

The students didn’t return to the classroom even when the next period began, or even by the time school ended.

# # #

“Hey, Ha Yeongwon. Did you tattle to the teacher? About me bullying you?”

Smack!

As I came to my senses from the pain of being hit on the back of my head, I saw the small tyrant Yang Juhui glaring at me with a deeply furrowed brow.

“Are you deliberately trying to ruin my school record and fuck up my life? You pervert!”

“What!? No, what nonsense is this? Why am I a pervert?”

Thud-!

Before I could finish speaking, Yang Juhui’s fist struck my chest.

My breath was knocked out, and I screamed.

“Ack!”

Someone might say, “Why is a sturdy male student making such a fuss about being hit by a girl his age?” But that’s something only someone who hasn’t been punched by Yang Juhui would say.

I was a literary boy who was slightly on the weaker side among male students.

It was only natural that I would cry after being hit by the school bully, Yang Juhui.

“Ha Yeongwon! Are you trying to ruin my life? I know everything! I know everything, you bastard! Give me back my life! My life! I just wanted to succeed and get out of that fucking house!”

Thud, thud thud-!

Yang Juhui pummeled my torso with her fists.

I felt like I was going to pass out, and I desperately tried to defend myself.

“…What are you talking about! Why would I ruin your life? I didn’t do anything!”

“Really? You swear?”

“Really! I swear!”

Swoosh-.

Only then did the merciless punching stop.

However, Yang Juhui was still furious like a demon, and horns seemed to have grown on her head.

“Still, don’t you think it’s your duty to take responsibility for my life? Take responsibility like a man.”

“Responsibility? What responsibility?”

“You pervert! You were always looking at my legs! I’ve been defiled because of you. Take responsibility! You even confessed that you liked me before! You said you liked me, right? Well, I like you too, Yeongwon!”

Yang Juhui rushed toward me.

The fragrant scent of cosmetics wafted over me.

It was an overwhelmingly stimulating feminine scent for someone like me who had spent three years in an all-boys middle school. This kind of scent was always rampant in our Yeongji High School, which was notorious for being a delinquent school.

I felt the blood rushing downward, and my entire body felt like it was melting into a puddle. How could Yang Juhui be throwing herself at me like this!

Thanks to that thought, my brain rapidly cooled down.

“Ah, shit, this is a dream. I knew something was off.”

No, this wasn’t just a dream.

It was clearly a wet dream!

“No! If I stay like this, I’m really screwed!”

I desperately tried to hold onto my consciousness.

Then, like a submarine that had been deep in the ocean suddenly rising to the surface at full speed, I felt my consciousness surfacing.

“Gasp!”

I let out a huge scream and trembled.

When I came to my senses, I was lying on a futon in a dark room.

“Haaa…”

Like someone who had just had a nightmare, my body was drenched in sweat.

But what was important now wasn’t that, but whether I had experienced a wet dream or not.

After quickly checking inside my pants and underwear, fortunately, they were just wet with sweat, and the dreaded incident hadn’t occurred.

“Did I fall asleep without changing out of my uniform? No wonder I had such a terrible dream sleeping so uncomfortably.”

I had the talent to prevent wet dreams by exerting superhuman mental strength when I felt one coming on. Honestly, it was an impressive skill.

When I had a wet dream in middle school, my mom came to wake me up in the morning and asked, “Our Yeongwon has become an adult? What did you dream about? Was it a naughty dream? Who appeared in your dream?” She teased me for a week, which became a severe trauma for me.

“Ah, shit. This is really fucked up… I was too busy to take care of it yesterday… But still. I did it the day before yesterday, and already…”

Why, don’t men’s wet dreams have a cooldown period?

Unlike women’s menstrual cycles, there’s a total volume that builds up, right? Isn’t it supposed to not happen until that’s completely full?

I found it quite strange that it had already filled up.

“That was a close call. But of all dreams, why that one…”

Maybe I had this dream because I had secretly looked at Yang Juhui’s legs up close yesterday.

“That wicked girl. She must have deliberately shown me her legs to make me have a wet dream. She must have shortened her skirt just to torment me. What a psycho.”

I cursed Yang Juhui as if she were my parents’ sworn enemy as I headed to the living room.

Since I was already awake, I thought I’d get a glass of water…

“What the hell is this─?”

When I opened my bedroom door and stepped out, the world was a completely black tunnel.

The living room of our cramped, run-down two-room villa, where cockroaches occasionally appeared, was nowhere to be found, and a dark corridor greeted me instead!

“Oh, shit… I’m really screwed.”

Did someone kidnap me while I was sleeping and lock me in a strange room?

For a moment, I had such thoughts, but I wasn’t stupid.

I immediately understood that this situation wasn’t normal.

I wanted to understand the situation in more detail, but that didn’t seem to be the priority right now!

Jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle-.

The bell sound coming from far away felt particularly strange and ominous!

“Advice!”

First, I decided to use the ‘advice’ function from the Status Window, which could be used up to twice a day.

I lost the only point I had since opening the shop, but that was fine.

“Advice from ‘The Broken Clock’: In the Nightmare Corridor, there are hiding places such as cleaning supply closets and lockers that allow you to avoid ghosts for a certain period of time. Who could have prepared such things?”

Hiding places!

Pat-.

As I felt my way through the dark corridor, my hand touched what seemed like a rusty iron door. This must be the cleaning supply closet the advice mentioned!

Click, creak-.

The stench of rotting mops in the cleaning supply closet I hurriedly hid in was so terrible it felt like it would twist my nose off, but that was the least of my worries-.

Jingle, jingle, jingle-.

Something I could never have imagined began to pass by the narrow iron cage where I was hiding.