Ch.64064 – Men in Love 1

# 064 – Men in Love # 1

The identity of the body that danced tap with us in the rain-soaked mountain cabin.

It was Gu Hyena, the female student who disappeared at the beginning of the semester.

No wonder the school was thrown into chaos right before final exams when a student everyone had been searching for suddenly appeared—just a body without a head.

Rumble-rumble.

Whoooosh.

It was as if an early monsoon season had arrived.

Rain continued to pour outside the school windows as final exams approached.

Gloomy days.

Perfect for quiet self-study.

Of course, since our Yeongji High was a bottom-tier school, not many students actually studied during self-study periods just because teachers told them to.

I didn’t study either.

Probably only top students like Jeongseok and Jeong Sojin were seriously studying in our class right now.

I glanced at Teacher Hong Miri, who was sitting in a chair near the podium, constantly tapping on her phone.

It had been quite some time since I had thrown English teacher Hong Miri into the “Nightmare Corridor.”

I’d had three English classes since then.

During those three classes, I carefully observed whether there were any changes in English teacher Hong Miri. There weren’t any major changes.

She didn’t try to act familiar with me like before. But there was something slightly concerning.

“Teacher keeps making us do self-study and just looks at her phone these days.”

“But she seems happy. Did she get a boyfriend or something?”

High school students, standing between childhood and adulthood, are sensitive.

The students seemed to have noticed the change in Hong Miri.

Teacher Hong Miri seemed to be in a good mood lately.

She would occasionally hum mysterious tunes or respond to students’ calls with smiles more frequently.

Other students might not know, but I was certain she had entered the “Nightmare Corridor” as a player and experienced some kind of emotional change.

What about Jeong Sojin then?

I glanced at Jeong Sojin.

Jeong Sojin was also a “player” who survived the corridor. You could call her a “survivor.”

Buzz.

Just then, my phone vibrated softly.

“Jungle Jeongseok: I heard Kim Haeil is under investigation. I asked some prosecutor uncles who were colleagues of my dad. They said the evidence is too clear this time for him to escape.”

So Jeongseok wasn’t studying during this self-study period either.

That made sense.

Jeongseok disliked Kim Haeil, the prime suspect in the “Bong Seyeon murder case.” Jeongseok was passionate about punishing criminals.

“Jungle Jeongseok: And the uncles said they’ll keep our identities confidential. I guess it would get messy if students were exposed to the media.”

Having connections in high society is really nice.

Information comes in right away.

Anyway, it seemed best to wait for Korean law enforcement to pressure “Kim Haeil,” who turned Gu Hyena into a head ghost, and extract information from him.

But according to Jeongseok, Kim Haeil had been exercising his right to remain silent since the day after his arrest.

“Jungle Jeongseok: Also, they found traces of drugs in Gu Hyena’s body.”

“…”

Drugs?

The world is scary.

A high school girl doing drugs.

Was this also the work of Kim Haeil, the management deacon at Yeong-gwang Church?

By the way, Yeong-gwang Church was also suffering because of Kim Haeil, the perpetrator of the gruesome murder case.

It was only natural for controversy to arise when a murderer had been brazenly attending church.

“Jungle Jeongseok: This is a secret I’m only telling you. When Kim Haeil was arrested, he said everyone would drown in the sea of Aion. That the sea of Aion would rise and drown us all.”

The sea of Aion. That’s the first I’ve heard of it.

Fortunately, Jeongseok was the type who liked to explain things.

“Jungle Jeongseok: Aion is a concept from Gnosticism, an ancient religion or school of thought. Gnosticism reveres a dualistic worldview where the material world we live in is evil and the spiritual world is good.”

“That’s similar to Plato’s Theory of Forms”

I’m a high school student too.

I knew about Plato’s Theory of Forms.

Plato argued for the existence of “Forms,” perfect concepts, and claimed that the world we live in is merely shadows of those Forms.

In other words, the “phone” I’m looking at is actually just a shadow of a phone, and the “real phone” exists in some distant higher-dimensional world.

“Jungle Jeongseok: As expected, you get it. Speaking of Plato, there’s also the ‘Allegory of the Cave.’ Remember the note we found?”

Photo.

“I can do it. I can. The longer I stay, the more I feel consumed by this place. I need to find it and get out quickly. But is it really possible? I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I’m a prisoner trapped in the eternal cave… What was my name again?”

Jeongseok showed me a photo of the note.

The “Allegory of the Cave” is one of Plato’s explanations, comparing humans to prisoners bound and unable to move, facing a cave wall.

Unable to turn their gaze, prisoners must look at the cave wall their entire lives. Behind the prisoners are torches, and because of these torches, the prisoners can only see their own shadows cast on the wall.

Let’s say that occasionally animals or various people are also illuminated by those torches.

Animal shadows. Human shadows. To a prisoner who has seen only these shadows all his life, those shadows would be real people and animals.

But what if, by some chance, the prisoner’s shackles were released?

What if the prisoner discovered that the shadows he had been seeing were merely “shadows,” and that humans and animals with actual forms really existed?

The prisoner would want to seek out a higher-dimensional reality.

This reality is the conceptual world of Forms, and the shadows are the imperfect material world—this is Plato’s Theory of Forms.

If you ask whether the mention of the “cave prisoner” in the note we found in the corridor is related to Plato’s Forms, well… I can’t be certain, but.

Jeongseok said:

“Jungle Jeongseok: By the way, dualistic Gnosticism was heavily influenced by Plato. Gnostics view the material world as evil and consider the spiritual world supreme. They believed that the path to escape the material world and head toward this spiritual world opens through spiritual knowledge called gnosis.”

“Hmm.”

“Jungle Jeongseok: This spiritual knowledge, or gnosis, was sometimes combined with Christianity and transmitted as the gospel of Christ, and during the period when alchemy was popular, it was regarded as something like the philosopher’s stone or elixir.”

“So what’s the conclusion? Don’t be long-winded, just tell me the conclusion.”

“Jungle Jeongseok: The name of our high school is Yeongji High School, right? And the Cheon family, the foundation’s founders, made money through alchemy in the past. Don’t you think there might be a connection?”

Now that I heard it, that was true.

It was more like they derived the name from it rather than just being connected.

“Jungle Jeongseok: And as I mentioned earlier, the beings of this spiritual world are called Aions. And the original meaning of Aion is quite interesting. Aion means ‘eternity’ in Greek.”

“…”

“Jungle Jeongseok: Then what could the sea of Aion be? I don’t think Kim Haeil is just raving nonsense because he’s gone mad.”

At Jeongseok’s words, I quietly closed my eyes.

The massive water vein flowing beneath Gaeryong City, the sea—

I was trying to feel the eternity of its unfathomable depth.

Of course, I couldn’t feel anything like that at all.

# # #

The school was full of self-study periods.

The vice principal and principal were busy dealing with reporters, and Yeongji High’s teachers never had much passion for academics anyway.

The students were just as terrible in terms of their level.

“Hey.”

For instance, Bong Jiyeon was a mean school bully.

After school.

Bong Jiyeon came all the way to our Class D and called for someone.

“You. I’m talking to you. Yang Juhui’s lackey. Ha Yeongwon.”

“What?”

After dancing that exciting tap dance at the Gaeryong Mountain Cabin, Bong Jiyeon had been keeping her distance from us as if she were scared of something.

But today, she was waiting for me after school.

“…That wasn’t just a dream we had back then, was it?”

Bong Jiyeon asked quietly.

It seemed she still couldn’t believe the experience of fighting with Gu Hyena’s body.

The police said we had hallucinations from gas produced by lighting a bonfire in the enclosed cabin. Of course, what we experienced was undoubtedly real.

But Bong Jiyeon still seemed unsure.

“…Now that they’ve caught the culprit again, we can finally get my sister back, right? Make him confess where he hid the head. My sister too…”

“I… don’t know much about that. Wouldn’t it be better to ask Jeongseok about such things? Of course, I hope everything works out well.”

Bong Jiyeon glared at me slightly with her narrow eyes.

Her attitude suggested she had a lot to say but was holding back.

Soon, Yang Juhui, who had finished preparing to go home, popped out into the hallway.

“What are you two whispering about? Getting friendly?”

“What are you talking about? I like rich guys. I heard Yeongwon’s family is super poor.”

“That’s true. My family is a bit poor.”

I nodded, terrified at the thought of Bong Jiyeon developing feelings for me.

However, Bong Jiyeon took my hand and examined my palm.

“But your wealth line is really long and straight. You might become rich later!”

Palm reading. What’s with the palm reading?

Soon, Yang Juhui frowned and said a few words.

“Hey, Bong Jiyeon. What’s with the palm reading nonsense? And what brings you here anyway? Waiting for us in the hallway? Feeling lonely because you’re being ostracized in Class C? Does this big sister need to play with you?”

Yang Juhui and Bong Jiyeon bickered as always.

They really get along well.

Bong Jiyeon said:

“Hey, let’s wait a bit longer and go with Dahui from Class A. We agreed to look at cosmetics on the way home today. And Dahui knows a place that does great tarot readings! They say the love fortune readings are amazing!”

“Tarot, for crying out loud. Bong Jiyeon, you’ve gone from palm reading to tarot—you’ve completely lost it. It’s all fake. Just trying to scam empty-headed girls like you out of your money!”

“What are you saying? Don’t you know about statistics? Physiognomy, fortune-telling—it’s all statistics!”

It seemed Bong Jiyeon had come to trust superstitions like palm reading and tarot in the few days I hadn’t seen her.

No, most girls are just obsessed with things like MBTI, fortune-telling, and horoscopes.

Anyway, it was a girls’ gathering, so there was no room for me, a guy, to join in.

Actually, tonight was a night when we could enter the “Nightmare Corridor.”

It would be good if we could discuss this in advance, but… since we have phones, we’ll have to talk about it in the group chat.

Jeongseok had already left school quickly to conduct his own investigation into the “Kim Haeil” case.

I had to go home alone for the first time in a while, and I got caught right at the school gate by a scary older girl.

“Hey, you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. It’s you, right?”

She was the ugliest girl in Kwon Suho’s group.

Park Eunjeong.

A school bully with a plain face without makeup.

“It’s you, right? The one who found Gu Hyena. Gu Hyena was a friend of my acquaintance’s cousin’s friend.”

…That’s practically a stranger.

But it seemed the information that I was the one who discovered Gu Hyena’s body had spread somewhere.

Sigh. This is going to be really annoying.

“I… don’t know much about it.”

“Don’t even think about lying. You know Suho oppa, right? Suho oppa is incredibly good at detecting when people lie. Come with me to see Suho oppa.”

Senior Park Eunjeong suddenly grabbed my hand.

Her hand was soft and warm, which made me even more flustered.

“Me? Why?”

What would happen if I went with her?

Would I get beaten up badly?

No, it didn’t seem like that kind of atmosphere.

“Gu Hyena was one of Suho’s acquaintances. He seems to have a lot of questions for you. By the way, Suho oppa has tons of girlfriends and acquaintances. From what I’ve seen, there must be about ten. There was even a celebrity.”

Impressive.

Is that what being a third-generation chaebol is like?

And this Park Eunjeong senior was continuously spewing TMI without a break.

“Park Eunjeong: ‘Loose Lips’ – An anxious mind cannot accept silence and stillness. I end up talking about anything. The problem is that I don’t consider the time and place.”

It must be because of this quirk.

This was actually a good opportunity for me.

“What do you mean when you say that Suho oppa… hyung? Suho hyung can detect all lies?”

“It’s true. Don’t believe me? He can identify every single lie. He’s like a master. He’s never been wrong. Not even once. He’s like a superhuman.”

Is it possible for a person to detect every lie?

If such a thing were possible, it would truly be a superpower. Until last year, if I heard such a story, I would have said, “Stop lying.”

But in a world where ghosts actually exist, there’s no reason such superpowers couldn’t exist too.

A superhuman who exists in reality…

Perhaps a hero or a watcher.

This encounter.

Should I avoid it?

Or should I face it head-on?

I thought about it for a while and made my decision.