Ch.6006 – The Boy’s Abyss 6

# 006 – The Boy’s Abyss #6

“A favor? Yeongwon, you’re asking me for a favor?”

Yang Juhui wore an expression of ridicule.

Even in this situation, she was still planning to act proud and prickly?

This crazy girl.

If only I were the one who knew where the multipurpose room was, I’d leave her behind in a heartbeat!

“What kind of favor? What could our Yeongwon possibly want from me? Hmm?”

Yang Juhui crossed her arms and asked me.

It had that “let’s hear what you’ve got” feeling.

“It’s not something I need right now. I’ll have a favor to ask later. I can’t tell you what it is now, but can you promise to help?”

“What are you talking about? How can I promise something when you won’t even tell me what it is?”

“Just promise me! It’s hard to explain right now. But if it comes down to escaping, I might really need your help… Think of it as my trump card.”

“Haha…”

Yang Juhui laughed.

But her expression quickly turned serious.

“Ha Yeongwon, do I look that easy to you since we’re stuck here together? You can barely make eye contact with me normally, but now you’re asking for favors?”

Ding-a-ling-. Ding-a-ling-.

Just then, a strange alarm rang out.

When I turned my head, all the electronic clocks in the faculty office were showing exactly 1:00 PM.

1:00 PM…

Really?

It’s 1:00 PM but it’s this dark?

Yang Juhui, who seemed startled by the clock sound, brushed her hair back from her forehead.

“Fine. I don’t know what the favor is, but I’ll help. I don’t want to stay in this place any longer anyway.”

“Great. Then let’s get out of here.”

# # #

“Jeong Sojin said she saw three ghosts in total. Is that true? Besides the Bell Maiden and the Head Ghost, there’s another ghost? Do you know what kind it is?”

I asked Yang Juhui about the third type of ghost.

But she shook her head as if she had no idea.

“No, I only saw that shaman woman and the head. Maybe Jeong Sojin was lying?”

Yang Juhui and Jeong Sojin were supposedly together up until the Head Ghost incident.

If Jeong Sojin saw something, Yang Juhui should have seen it too.

Was Jeong Sojin lying, like Yang Juhui suggested?

Or did Jeong Sojin see the third ghost separately after they split up?

I had another question.

“What about Kim Geonho? Where did he go?”

“Don’t even mention that bastard. He always acts like such a tough guy, putting on airs, but as soon as he saw the ghost, he pissed his pants. He might have even shit himself too. Ugh!”

Yang Juhui thoroughly cursed Kim Geonho, who had run away holding Jeong Sojin’s hand.

As far as I knew, Kim Geonho liked Yang Juhui.

Well, rather than “like”… it was more like… he was targeting her as a male.

Sexual desire and affection are separate things, after all.

But it seemed Yang Juhui, who hadn’t particularly liked Kim Geonho to begin with, had come to absolutely detest him now.

Anyway, I couldn’t figure out Kim Geonho’s location.

He was probably somewhere in this corridor, but where he was hiding or what condition he was in…

After walking for a while, I was able to solve two questions at once.

First was the location of the multipurpose room.

“The multipurpose room! Yeongwon, it’s the multipurpose room!”

Yang Juhui was overjoyed.

The sign reading “Multipurpose Room” must have looked like an oasis in the desert to her.

However, I couldn’t be completely happy because there was a large amount of blood splattered in front of the multipurpose room.

There were also shoes scattered around. Balenciaga shoes that Kim Geonho used to wear.

Actually, looking closely, there was more than just shoes.

If you gathered everything up, you could probably complete a puzzle of one person.

“This…”

Yang Juhui started to say something to me but stopped.

As if trying to ignore the pungent metallic smell, she turned her gaze to examine the lock sealing the entrance to the multipurpose room.

Looking carefully, there were marks indicating someone had tried to strike the lock with something.

“If they tried to break the lock, it would have made a loud noise. Something probably heard the sound and came… That’s probably how this happened.”

“Was it that woman with the bell? That shaman woman!”

Would the Bell Maiden do something like this?

Is this what happens when you’re caught by the Bell Maiden?

No.

I didn’t think so.

“The Bell Maiden’s bell rings loudly from far away, so Kim Geonho would have noticed her coming. The sound rings as if deliberately warning you to run away.”

“That’s true. But there’s something that’s bothering me.”

“What?”

“Ha Yeongwon, you seem strangely calm, different from how you were in the classroom. Your mind is working well too. That’s not your usual character. Are you… a ghost?”

…Did I seem too calm?

I was just trying to focus on surviving by suppressing my fear.

Just as I was thinking that this kind of suspicion was annoying, Yang Juhui said:

“Should this noona check if you’re the real Yeongwon by touching your little buddy?”

“Ow, stop it!”

“What? So you are the real Yeongwon. Well, let’s say Kim Geonho died here. Honestly, I can only think he got what he deserved. If it wasn’t the bell woman, could it have been the Head Ghost?”

No, I didn’t think it was the Head Ghost either.

I saw up close what happens when someone is caught by the Head Ghost.

The Head Ghost doesn’t have the physical power to slice someone into fragments like this.

After considering all the circumstances, there was only one conclusion.

There was “something” different from the Bell Maiden or the Head Ghost in this nightmare corridor—

Something so terrible that even with Kim Geonho’s physical abilities, he couldn’t escape—

“The third ghost Jeong Sojin mentioned…?”

When I reached that thought, a chilling sensation ran down my spine.

Yang Juhui frantically tapped my arm.

“Hey, let’s open it quickly. Quickly. Open the multipurpose room! Quickly! Quickly! Quickly! Quickly!”

Click—

When I inserted the key, the lock opened, and the door creaked open.

As someone’s breathing grew rough with excitement from tension and anticipation—

“Huh…?”

Someone made a dumbfounded sound.

It was Yang Juhui.

“The multipurpose room… where is the multipurpose room…? The multipurpose room… Where is the multipurpose room…”

Yang Juhui seemed disoriented by the corridor that appeared when we opened the door.

As I just explained, when we opened the door to the multipurpose room, what appeared wasn’t the multipurpose room but another “corridor.”

When I shined the lantern we’d acquired from the faculty office, I could see “1-4” written on a classroom near the corridor.

“Arrrgh! Aaaah! It’s the same corridor!”

Yang Juhui sat down on the floor and cursed as if she’d lost her mind.

This is how people break when the “hope” they believed in shatters.

In a way, it might have been predictable.

There was never any confirmation that the “multipurpose room” was an exit.

“Fuck!”

The problem was that Yang Juhui, who had given up, was cursing loudly and making a lot of noise. It was easy to imagine what would happen to us if we stayed here.

“Hey! Yang Juhui! Get a grip! The exit might be just beyond here! Even if it looks the same, it could actually be a different corridor!”

“Is it because of me…? Because I… didn’t listen to my mom…”

Yang Juhui seemed beyond recovery.

Of course she’d be in despair, unable to escape this terrible corridor.

Maybe it was just my imagination, but I thought I could hear the jingle-jangle of bells in the distance.

I considered leaving Yang Juhui behind.

But I needed her to escape.

The moment I figured out the nature of this corridor, I became certain of that, so I couldn’t abandon her.

“Hey. Yang Juhui. Snap out of it!”

Slap!

I crouched down and slapped her cheek hard.

“Ah—”

Yang Juhui seemed shocked by the unexpected impact.

Her expression showed she hadn’t expected me to slap her at all.

That dumbfounded expression quickly changed to anger, and she lunged at me.

“Yaaah!!!”

She was like a tiger.

Her attitude was as if she knew I was the one who had thrown her into this nightmare corridor as a player. But that couldn’t be the case.

She was just giving up.

But I was different.

I hadn’t given up yet.

In fact, the multipurpose room incident had given me a clue about escaping, and my courage was welling up. But Yang Juhui was surprisingly good at fighting, and I was getting beaten one-sidedly.

Ah, shit, it hurts so much!

She just hit my solar plexus and bones!

If this continues, I’ll be beaten to death!

“Hey! Wait! Just a moment! Ack! We can escape this corridor! I’ve thought about it, and it’s actually a simple trick! We can get out of here! But first, let’s get out of here!”

I picked up the struggling Yang Juhui and entered “1-4.”

Then I said:

“Listen carefully. This is all fake.”

“…What? What did you say?”

“This is all a dream! First of all, time is all mixed up in this place!”

Time flows differently in dreams and reality.

In reality, it might be just a moment, but in dreams, you can spend years.

The vague hint was that Yang Juhui, who disappeared yesterday, had spent two days here.

Moreover, there was more evidence.

“Status Window.”

I called up the status window while Yang Juhui was dumbfounded.

『Name: Ha Yeongwon Lv.1

Trait: 《The Broken Clock》

Funds: 0 Point

Description: Once promising, you’ve been killing time in a meaningless daily routine. But even a broken clock shows the correct time twice a day.』

My funds were 0 points.

For reference, my funds increased by 1P every 12 o’clock, and yesterday afternoon I used 100 points to open the shop, and then gained 1 point at midnight.

I used that 1 point gained at midnight to get advice about this “Nightmare Corridor.”

So my funds were 0.

But the clock in the faculty office showed that it was well past 12 PM.

If it was really past 12 PM, points should have been added to my status window.

“The repeating corridors are also a clue. When people dream, their spatial awareness decreases. It’s natural since part of the brain’s function stops. It feels like the same space is repeating. Haven’t you seen the movie Inception?”

Above all, I had a decisive hint.

This place is the “Nightmare Corridor.”

What is a nightmare?

A bad dream.

In other words, it was telling us from the beginning that this place itself is a dream.

Which means—

I was probably still asleep in my room, and morning hadn’t even come yet!

“This is all just a dream!”

“What? Ha, shit… Okay. A dream… If it’s really a dream like you say, what should we do? Should we die…?”

“No, just to be safe, we should hold off on that for now.”

Generally, many people wake up from nightmares when they’re about to die in the dream.

But I didn’t know how a death in this nightmare corridor would affect reality.

Honestly, I don’t want to die.

It’s really fucking scary.

“But I definitely know a way to wake up from a dream. I have a talent for desperately waking myself up when I’m about to have a wet dream.”

“What…!?”

“Wet dreams, you know. Sometimes men have wet dreams when they dream about something erotic. I have a talent for waking up before having a wet dream to prevent it. It sounds like a lie, but I swear on everything. If I’m lying, I’ll lick your feet.”

“…What…”

Yang Juhui’s expression changed rapidly.

Jingle, jingle—

“Where is it where is it where is it I can’t see where is it I can’t see with my eyes where is it I shouldn’t be here I need to get out where is it where.”

The sound of the Bell Maiden wandering outside could be heard.

But at this point, I didn’t care about the Bell Maiden.

“I tried to have a wet dream by myself, you know? But given the situation, it’s not working well. I think I need some stimulation. Stimulation could be visual, tactile, or auditory…”

“So what do you want me to do…!”

Yang Juhui shouted, as if pushing away her anxiety.

I was serious.

“…Well, could you start by taking off your shirt?”

“Wow…”