Ch.8008 – The Auntie from Hell 1

# 008 – The Auntie from Hell # 1

“Congratulations! You have safely returned from the Nightmare Corridor!”

“Beginning settlement for 1 survivor, 3 deceased.”

The settlement began.

Clink-clink-clink-clink.

I heard the sound of countless coins falling as text appeared before me like ending credits.

“Ghost encounters: 3 times + 30 P”

“Escaped personnel: 1 person + 100 P”

“Deceased personnel: 3 people + 30 P”

“Item acquired: Battery Lantern (Rare) + 100 P”

“Nightmare Corridor progress: 5% + 50 P”

“Total: 310 P”

Wow! Oh shit!

I’d been feeling troubled in many ways until just now.

But now I felt refreshed enough to wash away all that gloominess.

310 points!

I, who had been barely collecting 2 points per day through the “Broken Clock” trait, suddenly earned 310 points.

Normally, it would have taken me 155 days to collect 310 points.

I suddenly felt like I’d won the lottery and become rich.

Hah, this is living!

Since I’d recently unlocked the shop, there was a lot I could do with these points.

I was about to head straight to the shop when unfamiliar text appeared, suggesting there was still more to settle.

“3 deceased individuals acquire quirks.”

“Kim Geonho ◀ Select to view”

“Jeong Sojin ◀ Select to view”

“Yang Juhui ◀ Select to view”

Acquiring quirks after death.

It seemed that something strange happened to people who died in the Nightmare Corridor.

It was quite puzzling to see Yang Juhui’s name included here.

Did Yang Juhui end up dying…?

I wanted to ask what happened, but she didn’t seem to remember anything about the corridor.

“Hey, who’s this girlfriend who dumped you? Is she from our school? Is she ugly?”

“…”

“Alright, let’s start class. Everyone take your seats. Class president Sojin… I mean, ahem, today let’s have vice president Jeongseok give the greeting and start class. Seok, greeting please.”

The middle-aged, bald math teacher entered for first period.

Yang Juhui stopped questioning me and closed her mouth.

I was curious about what a quirk was, so I decided to use today’s “Advice” function.

“Advice.”

“Advice from ‘The Broken Clock’: A ‘Quirk’ is a grotesqueness that resides in one’s body, soul, and mind. If someone possesses 2 or more quirks, they will die. ‘Quirks’ can be treated by unlocking the Clinic, a locked item in the shop, and spending 100P.”

Death-.

My body trembled at those words.

So if you die in the Nightmare Corridor, you acquire a quirk, and if this process repeats, you eventually die in reality too.

I wonder if everyone except me losing their memories is also related to death and survival?

If I had died too, I might have lost my memories and gained a quirk.

With that thought, I knew what I needed to do first after earning these points.

Clink-.

“Spending 100P to unlock a locked item.”

“The Clinic is now open.”

“You can treat ‘Quirks’ at the Clinic.”

That was a relief.

If I ever acquire a quirk, I’ll need to immediately treat it at this clinic by spending 100P.

It seemed wise to save up plenty of points.

But what about the “Nightmare Corridor” that gave me so many points?

I manipulated the status window.

“Starting Chapter 1. Nightmare Corridor.”

“Please select players from the list.”

“You can select up to 4 people.”

“Re-entry waiting time – 32:15:44”

Oh, I can go again.

I wasn’t sure if I should be happy about this or scared…

Seeing the matching wait time, it felt like a dungeon with time and date restrictions for entry.

“Hey!!!! Apologize right now!!!!”

During the boring math class, a female student’s sharp voice pierced through like a dagger.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned their heads to see Jeong Sojin standing up like a warrior, glaring at her desk partner, Ahn Youngmi.

“Ahn Youngmi, you just said I smell! You said I smell like night flowers! Apologize right now!”

“What… what are you talking about? Sojin, why are you suddenly acting like this? What flower smell? What did I say to make you… so scary…?”

What kind of situation is this?

Whisper-whisper-.

The students started murmuring, and Jeong Sojin, seemingly unable to contain her anger, dashed out of the classroom.

I pressed on Jeong Sojin’s name in the quirk settlement window to check the result.

“Jeong Sojin: ‘Persecutory Delusion’ – The parallel lines of dreams and reality that should never meet have finally touched. Are the whispers in your ears really just dreams? Or…”

Persecutory Delusion.

Imagining that others are trying to harm you.

Jeong Sojin’s behavior suddenly made sense.

What about the others?

After checking Kim Geonho’s quirk, I was about to check Yang Juhui’s when-

Slide-.

The classroom door opened again.

I thought Jeong Sojin had returned already, but standing at the door wasn’t a fresh-faced schoolgirl in uniform but a rather aged and fierce-looking middle-aged woman.

“What the?”

“Who’s that?”

I was quite shocked by the continued disruptions during class.

The woman in a white dress had a face contorted with rage, as if she were some kind of ghost.

Looking closer, she was also holding a pair of scissors covered in stains, making them look ominous and unclean.

“Um… isn’t that the woman who was handing out flyers in front of the school yesterday?”

“The woman from Yeong-gwang Church? The one who’s always telling people to go to church?”

“What’s with those scissors!”

The church woman strode into the classroom and approached me.

What the hell, why is she coming toward me? What’s going on?

For a moment I feared I might not have escaped the nightmare yet, but then-

“You fucking bitch! You’re crazy enough to stay overnight with a boy? You dog-like bitch! You Satan-possessed bitch! Come here!”

“Eeek!”

Yang Juhui screamed.

She was grabbed by her long blonde hair and dragged along, nearly falling over.

“Let… let go! Let go and let’s talk! Outside! Let go! Aaah!”

“You devil-possessed slut! You whore! You need to repent before Lord Aesu! Come on! We need to cut off your phone and internet too. And shave all your hair off! You devil-like bitch!”

“Ah! Let’s just go outside first!”

“You, how dare you talk to your mother like that? You really are possessed by Satan. In the name of Aesu, I command the evil spirit to leave! In the name of Aesu, I command the Satan spirit to leave!”

The shouting echoed so loudly down the hallway that the young English teacher who was teaching next door came to our classroom to witness the scene.

“Umm… should we call the police, math teacher?”

“No, no, the school atmosphere is already unsettled because of the disappearance incident at the beginning of the semester, so let’s handle this internally first…”

“What’s going on? What’s happening?”

As students from other classes gathered to watch this chaotic scene, I felt so embarrassed that I wanted to cover my ears and scream as loud as I could.

# # #

“Wasn’t Yang Juhui’s family rich? This is creepy.”

“She never talked about her home. Never let anyone visit either.”

“So fake. No wonder she only used cheap shoes and makeup.”

After the end of the 7th period, during dismissal time.

Students were still talking about what had happened in the morning.

About students staying out overnight.

About Jeong Sojin causing a scene during class.

And about the behavior of Yang Juhui and her aggressive mother.

Honestly, everything was shocking.

It was hard to believe all this happened in just one day.

“Wow, so that cult girl was acting all high and mighty until now? That’s so fucked up.”

“I heard the girls from Class C are planning to gang up on Yang Juhui. I’m going to watch. I’m close with Jiyeon from Class C, you know.”

“You’re in with Bong Jiyeon? Yang Juhui is really in trouble. I should go record it too.”

High school freshmen are neither children nor adults.

Perhaps that’s why the instability of being caught in between makes it difficult for them to recognize boundaries that should be respected.

This was especially true for the bottom-feeders at a delinquent school like Yeongji High.

Kim Youngho.

Lee Jinseong.

Park Inbae.

I should throw those lackeys of Kim Geonho into the “Nightmare Corridor” later.

It wasn’t because I had any particular sense of justice, but Yang Juhui had been my girlfriend, albeit briefly. Seeing others badmouth her honestly made me angry.

I guess I was unknowingly a romantic.

Also, now that I knew people entering the Nightmare Corridor would earn me points, there were many things I wanted to test and confirm.

If you’re annoyed with me, you should have lived kindly instead of bullying me.

“Honestly, I wouldn’t mind throwing every single person from Class D into the corridor like lab rats.”

Everyone in Class D is either a perpetrator or a bystander.

Especially that Kim Geonho…

Well, with the quirk he acquired, it was only a matter of time before he calmed down.

Thinking about this, I sat down in the library and unpacked my things.

I was a library committee member, and when I had free time after all classes ended, I would manage books or clean the floor at Yeongji High’s library.

While Yeongji High was a delinquent school, the library facilities were quite good, and since nobody read books, the study environment was pleasant. You could say this was my oasis.

And the “literature girl” I secretly had a crush on would occasionally come to the library to read difficult books like Baudelaire’s “The Flowers of Evil” or Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.”

“I wonder which class she’s in.”

She wasn’t here today.

It’s always fun to see her when I come to the library, so that’s a shame.

Anyway.

I wanted to learn more about the old school building.

What is it about the old building that makes ghosts appear in the corridor?

I was looking for a book about the school’s history or something like that when-

“Yeongwon.”

A soft, gentle voice called me.

When I turned my head, a woman in a black suit was looking at me.

It was Ms. Kang Haneul, the Korean language teacher.

“I’d like to have a word with you, Yeongwon. Is that okay?”

“Yes, of course.”

Slide-.

I sat down with the teacher in a corner of the library.

Some students glanced in our direction.

Ms. Kang Haneul was pretty.

While girls my age were fresh-faced, the thirty-one-year-old teacher was… how should I put it… well-matured? Or should I say she had the impressive confidence of a working adult… She had an adult woman’s charm that was difficult to express with my vocabulary.

She was popular among other teachers and male students, and I heard she received quite a few confessions.

Honestly, if I had the courage, I might have playfully confessed to her too.

“Yeongwon, have you been having any difficulties lately?”

“No, nothing in particular.”

“Really? You’ve been wearing bandages on your face often these days.”

“I fell down.”

“Then do you know what this is?”

Slide-.

Ms. Kang Haneul handed me a piece of paper.

It said, “Bullying is occurring in Class D.”

The handwriting was neat. Even the period was precisely placed.

“…I don’t know anything about this.”

I really don’t.

Who wrote this?

Is it the same person who wrote the letter to the faculty office yesterday?

“Yeongwon, you can be honest with me. I can help you. We can hold teacher meetings and school violence committees. We can contact the police.”

“No, you really don’t need to do that. Really. There’s no problem in Class D.”

“I think you’re an honest and kind student, Yeongwon. I also really liked the poem you wrote back then… So please, can you be honest with me?”

Poem.

At the beginning of the semester, Ms. Kang Haneul assigned students to write poems as homework.

The poem I wrote, “Dorangdorang Dorangmul,” seemed to have impressed her, as she praised it highly and even read it in front of the class.

It was also Ms. Kang Haneul who recommended me for the library committee at Yeongji High.

“Teacher, I’m really not being bullied. And I’m not as honest and kind as you think I am.”

“Is it because of your mother? Are you afraid she’ll worry if things get bigger? But Yeongwon, considering your mother who’s raising you alone as a woman, rather than hiding it, being honest…”

“Really! There’s nothing like that. Teacher, I’m honestly confused. By the way, you said you’re a Yeongji High graduate, right?”

“Yes. Technically, you’re my junior. I was once a high school student too. That’s why I can counsel you about the things you’re worried about and struggling with…”

“Then… do you know if anything happened in the old school building in the past? Like a shaman with bells coming or something… If you tell me, I might be able to think about it a bit more.”