Ch.36036 – Courage Test 5

# 036 – Courage Test #5

Teachers found it difficult to have visible tattoos.

It was unavoidable due to the nature of their profession, having to stand in front of students.

Think about a teacher with tattoos or irezumi on the back of their hand, arm, or shoulder.

It would inevitably seem strange.

Then how about the left ankle?

The left ankle wouldn’t normally be visible to students during a teacher’s class.

Click.

Of course, it was clearly visible to someone like me who was lying flat on the floor looking down.

“Is anyone here?”

A voice I’d become quite familiar with lately echoed through the faculty office.

It was the voice of Ms. Hong Miri, the English teacher for Yeongji High’s first-year students.

Ms. Hong Miri had a black butterfly-shaped tattoo on her left ankle.

At first, I thought it was just a birthmark on her body, but looking closely, it was clearly a butterfly-shaped tattoo.

“You kids. I don’t know who you are, but if you’re hiding here, you’d better come out now. I’m saying this for your own good. Don’t you know how dangerous the old school building is? There’s broken glass everywhere and nails sticking out.”

Click.

Click.

Ms. Hong Miri warned as she walked around the faculty office.

She seemed to know that someone had snuck into the old school building, but didn’t know exactly where we were hiding.

Click.

As those high heels approached right in front of the desk where I was hiding—

I couldn’t help but be a little surprised.

“……”

The black butterfly tattoo that had been on her left ankle until just now… had disappeared.

Do tattoos just appear and disappear at will?

Or had I been seeing things wrong?

While I was thinking this, Ms. Hong Miri left the faculty office with the click-clack sound of her high heels and disappeared down the corridor. She seemed to be heading up to the second-floor staircase.

“Phew….”

Only then could I exhale the breath I’d been holding and calm down. My whole body was stiff and cold sweat ran down my back, probably from being in a strange position for so long while extremely tense.

“Is everyone okay? The teacher’s gone!”

I asked in a small but clear voice that everyone could hear.

Then Yoo Dahui slowly emerged from an empty cabinet.

“I hid on impulse, but we managed not to get caught. I think the game trained us for emergency situations. If I hadn’t known where to hide, we definitely would have been caught.”

Yoo Dahui assessed that she was able to hide from the teacher’s eyes thanks to her experience hiding from ghosts in “Nightmare Corridor” that we played today.

Soon, Jeongseok, who had been crouched inside a blue PP box, also raised his head.

“If we’d been caught, I don’t think it would have ended with just a scolding. Should we stop now?”

The experience of deviation is thrilling.

Both Jeongseok and Yoo Dahui seemed unable to calm down.

However… I thought it would be good to go down to the basement of the old school building while we had the chance, since I didn’t know when the teacher who went upstairs would come back down.

“Let’s go quickly. To the basement.”

Patter-patter-

We all quickly darted out of the first-floor faculty office.

However, finding the way to the basement of the old school building was more problematic than expected.

Dark corridor.

Being together as a group of three lessened the eerie feeling, but we had no idea which way to go.

“Which way should we go?”

Having to find the basement without knowing the way while also avoiding teacher surveillance.

That’s when Yoo Dahui spoke up.

“Guys, I think it’s this way. If we go past the bathroom to the end of the corridor, there should be stairs going down to the basement at the dead end! I remember now!”

Had Yoo Dahui recalled a memory?

We took careful steps to avoid stepping on glass fragments scattered on the floor to prevent injuries or loud noises as we headed toward the end of the corridor.

And there, just as Yoo Dahui had said, were stairs leading down to the basement.

Whoooosh-

However, it was very dark and filled with a damp, moldy smell, making me wonder if it was really okay to go down there.

It felt like ghosts or malicious people might be lurking.

There would probably be lots of cockroaches too.

“……”

“……”

“……”

Did everyone have similar thoughts? Neither I, nor Jeongseok, nor Yoo Dahui could easily take a step forward.

If Yang Juhui were here, she would have confidently led the way saying, “You cowards. Follow me!”

“Tsk. Alright. I’ll go first.”

As the person becoming the leader, I decided to especially lead by example.

Clink. Clang.

As I carefully stepped over glass fragments carelessly abandoned on the stairs, I felt the temperature drop dramatically.

It felt like entering a cool refrigerator.

With summer approaching, the humid air of the past few days and the sweat that had been flowing because of it instantly cooled, giving me quite an eerie feeling.

“Wow, shit. Look at that mold.”

The abandoned basement had mold blooming everywhere like flowers or murals.

So much moisture.

The talk about the school being built on a water vein must be true.

These mold babies are seriously bad.

But the mold was actually the least of our concerns.

“Ghosts live here”

“Red Mask”

“If you see a ghost, the ghost sees you too”

Someone had written words like “Die” or “I curse you” all over the walls with black and red lacquer, making it look hideous and giving me the creeps.

It seemed like some punks had snuck in at night like us and scribbled, but due to the atmosphere, it looked quite bizarre.

The most frightening thing was this:

“Do not turn on the lights”

“If you turn on the lights, the ghost will come”

Don’t turn on the lights?

How can I not turn on lights in this darkness? Talk sense.

Jeongseok and Yoo Dahui soon followed me down.

I asked Yoo Dahui:

“Does anything seem familiar?”

“Hmm….”

Yoo Dahui was silent for a while, either contemplating or trying to recall memories.

Then, as if remembering something, she grabbed my wrist.

“It feels different from what I remember. Yeongwon, could you turn off your phone light?”

Turn off the light?

If I turn it off, we really won’t be able to see anything.

But there wasn’t any other option.

I was the leader, but our goal was to help Yoo Dahui recover her memories.

Swish-

I turned off my phone light as Yoo Dahui suggested.

Perhaps because we were in the basement, not even a speck of light entered, and many things were engulfed in darkness.

Perfect black.

It felt as if Yoo Dahui and Jeongseok right beside me had disappeared, and I couldn’t even see my own hand.

# # #

It was so dark that I suddenly felt scared.

What if when I turn the light back on, Jeongseok and Yoo Dahui are gone?

“Guys. Are you still next to me?”

I asked, feeling unnecessarily scared.

Then Jeongseok spoke from the darkness.

“Yes. Wow. With the lights off, the atmosphere is no joke. Dahui, does anything seem familiar?”

Jeongseok asked Yoo Dahui.

In the darkness, Yoo Dahui responded with another “Hmm…” and fell silent again.

“Yeongwon, let me hold your hand for a moment.”

Someone grabbed my hand.

It was a soft, warm hand with very slender fingers.

This must be Yoo Dahui’s hand.

I instinctively recognized it, but through various experiences, I wondered if it might be a ghost pretending to be Yoo Dahui, so I pinched the back of that hand.

“…Eek! Something bit me!”

Yoo Dahui screamed.

It seemed she wasn’t a ghost after all.

Soon, Jeongseok spoke from the darkness.

“…Could there be bugs living here? Since it’s damp, there might be things like centipedes. Should we turn the light back on?”

Jeongseok’s voice was trembling.

He seemed to be already tired of this darkness and wanted to turn on the light.

However, Yoo Dahui urgently said:

“No. Absolutely not. You absolutely must not turn on the light. Now we’ll slowly move forward. Yeongwon, hold Seok’s hand tightly. Never let go. I’ll say it again, you must never turn on the light.”

Walking forward holding hands in darkness where nothing can be seen?

It seemed like madness.

The school basement was already scary enough…

“Hey, Seok. Grab my hand quickly. Hurry.”

Still, having both Yoo Dahui and Jeongseok holding my hands would make it less scary.

I reached out my hand in the darkness and soon was able to grab Jeongseok’s hand.

“Hey, Ha Yeongwon. This is your hand, right? It’s not a ghost’s hand or anything?”

Jeongseok seemed to have thought something similar to what I had imagined.

This coward.

Anyway, we ended up slowly advancing through the darkness holding each other’s hands.

The basement, where a cool chill covered the body like sticky vanilla ice cream.

Walking through it consumed mental energy more rapidly than expected, so I wanted to say anything to reduce the psychological burden.

“Dahui, is there a reason we shouldn’t turn on the light?”

“…I remember walking like this before. Someone held my hand… I was terrified, but it made me feel secure.”

I think I understand.

Right now I’m really scared, but having everyone together makes me feel somewhat secure.

Step.

Step.

We continued forward through the darkness, relying on each other’s body heat.

Then suddenly I got scared.

“Hey, Jeongseok. That’s you behind me, right?”

“Yes.”

“What jungle characters do you usually pick?”

“Kha’Zix and Nidalee.”

Oh.

Indeed, it was Jeongseok behind me.

Then, is the woman in front of me really Yoo Dahui?

“Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three-.”

Yoo Dahui was counting something.

I thought she was just counting down, but she stopped walking abruptly at “forty-four.”

She must have been counting steps.

“Why are you counting steps?”

I asked.

Instead of Yoo Dahui, Jeongseok answered.

“Come to think of it, there was a rumor about a ghost at Yeongji High that answers three questions. If you go into the last stall of the girls’ bathroom in the basement, knock facing outward, and ask three questions… someone waiting outside will answer all those questions.”

“Hey, shit. Are you kidding? Why are you telling ghost stories now? It’s scary.”

If you tell ghost stories in a cemetery, ghosts appear.

Of course, this wasn’t a cemetery, and since I had already destroyed the feng shui ghost, telling ghost stories wouldn’t make ghosts appear…

But… the ghost that answers three questions wasn’t unfamiliar.

Isn’t that the “Mother-in-law Ghost”?

It was a ghost I had already dealt with. Nothing to be afraid of.

Jeongseok said in a trembling voice:

“When I first heard this story, what I thought about was that Yeongji High School doesn’t have a basement bathroom. But now I see that this old school building… has a basement.”

That was true.

Stop.

At that moment, Yoo Dahui’s steps stopped again at 44.

Just like before, Yoo Dahui turned her body 90 degrees to the left and started walking again.

Soon Jeongseok asked:

“But Yeongwon, don’t you think this is strange? We’ve now turned 90 degrees twice, walking in a ‘ㄷ’ shape. The shape of Yeongji High’s old school building should be ‘ㄴ’. We are now….”

“Hey, that’s only when viewed from above ground. The basement layout could be different.”

I blamed Jeongseok, feeling unnecessarily scared.

I was starting to get frightened.

Yoo Dahui continued to just count numbers.

“Forty-four.”

Yoo Dahui’s steps stopped again at 44.

And again she turned 90 degrees and started counting from one.

“Yeongwon, if we walk 44 steps again… you know we’ll end up back where we started in a ‘ㅁ’ shape, right? Is the basement of the old school building a square corridor?”

Ding-

Just then, someone’s phone rang.

It was Jeongseok.

“Oh. I think I just got a message.”

“Hey! Don’t check your phone! Whatever it is!”

I warned Jeongseok out of anxiety.

My phone also seemed to be vibrating continuously.

But that didn’t make sense.

When Yoo Dahui asked me to turn off the light earlier, I had turned off my phone completely just in case!

How could a turned-off phone vibrate?

“Forty-four. This seems like the place….”

At that moment, Yoo Dahui’s steps stopped.

Flash.

And a bright light source burst forth.

Yoo Dahui had turned on her phone and shone its light.

Stairs were visible.

They were the stairs we had come down to the basement.

Had we returned to our starting point?

No, that didn’t seem right.

“…W-what is this?”

Someone made a startled sound.

It was probably Jeongseok, but honestly, it didn’t matter who it was.

“Help me”

“Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me” “Help me”

Red writing I hadn’t seen before covered every wall densely.

And instead of the mold that had bloomed like flowers from hell, black, elongated things were sprouting everywhere.

Their thickness and visible texture… looked similar to human hair.

“I remember. Some older girl… said she would help me get out of here if I held her hand, closed my eyes tight, and counted… That girl said she came here looking for something… Something like a round ball….”

Yoo Dahui seemed focused on recalling her memories, as if this sudden change wasn’t frightening to her.

“…Why did I forget this until now? The magic wand that girl gave me… I dropped it here….”

Swish-

Yoo Dahui seemed not to understand herself.

Soon she reached out and picked up a magic wand from the floor, the kind girls might play with, with a red diamond embedded at the top of a pink stick.

“Hey, do you guys really want to die?”

Flash-

Just then, the lights in the basement suddenly came on.

Turning my head, I saw a teacher in pointed high heels glaring at us from the first-floor staircase.

“……”

I looked around in confusion.

I saw the basement full of mold everywhere.

“Ghosts live here”

“Red Mask”

“If you see a ghost, the ghost sees you too”

There were no pleas for help and no hair covering the corridor.

Ms. Hong Miri looked down at the basement and said:

“You brats! Get up here right now!?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jeongseok and I went up to the first floor, feeling like we’d survived.

Yoo Dahui followed us up, and in the bright light, I could see that the magic wand Yoo Dahui was holding had a name tag attached to the end of its handle.

“Yang Juhui”