Ch.87087 – Beginning 2

# 087 – Above # 2

“Now I’m Jeongseok! Hahahahaha! Hahahahaha!”

Jeongseok, who had crawled into the science lab, started laughing loudly and finally grabbed Bong Jiyeon.

Then he tried to shove Bong Jiyeon into the dog hole.

“Get in! Hurry, get inside! Inside! You’ll become one of us too. You too!”

“Kyaaak! You crazy bastard!”

Bong Jiyeon screamed.

Jeongseok was definitely a fake, just as Bong Jiyeon had distinguished with her sharp eye!

I felt I couldn’t just stand by and watch.

At that moment, Yang Juhui struck Jeongseok hard with a baseball bat.

“You crazy bastard! Let go of that!”

Crash-!

There was the sound of breaking glass, and then Jeongseok’s body shattered.

He literally broke into pieces like porcelain or a window, scattering across the floor.

“I am Jeongseok. I aaaaam—”

His lips, reflected in the broken glass shards, were still speaking eerily.

I was so shocked that I stomped on it with my foot to break it.

“Get lost!”

Crash-

The atmosphere was truly maddening.

Bong Jiyeon collapsed to the floor.

“Jeongseok, you son of a bitch! Just try talking to me again! I swear!”

Bong Jiyeon was crying bitterly, trembling.

The problem came next.

A hand suddenly emerged from the dog hole in the science lab and grabbed Bong Jiyeon’s leg.

“Huh? Kyaaaaaaaa!”

Bong Jiyeon disappeared into the science lab’s dog hole with a terrible scream.

This was truly a nightmare.

About five seconds later, Bong Jiyeon spoke from inside the science lab.

—Wow, it’s really amazing in here. You all have to see this. No, wait. I’ll come out first. Guys. Wait there.

Something was trying to come out into the hallway.

Even though it was speaking with Bong Jiyeon’s voice, it didn’t seem like Bong Jiyeon.

As I was getting dizzy with fear, Yang Juhui grabbed my hand.

“Hey! What are you doing? Let’s run away first! Hurry!”

Padadat-!

Yang Juhui and I ran like mad.

We still hadn’t found Shinsan.

The second floor was truly a terrible place.

I just wanted to get out of here.

That was all I could think about, but then a problem arose.

Dududududu-.

The sound of someone stomping their feet heavily was coming from the hallway ahead of us.

“The Dancing Ghost…?!”

The Dancing Ghost was approaching from the front.

—Hey guys, where are you going? Let’s go. Let’s go into the science lab together.

—The mirror is nice. Everything is sparkling.

The voices of Bong Jiyeon and Jeongseok coming from behind us.

We were caught between a rock and a hard place.

I could only clutch my head.

“…We’re really screwed.”

I was as good as dead.

I wanted to cry.

Yang Juhui spoke to me as I was like that.

“Hey! Ha Yeongwon! Get a grip! We’re not dead yet! If we keep our wits about us, we can find my sister and you can end this terrible situation!”

“No…, we have nowhere else to hide….”

“Hey. Take this. And get your head straight.”

Suk-.

Yang Juhui handed something to me.

It was the Escape Talisman she had been carrying.

“Hey, if you give this to me, what about you…? You’ll forget everything if you die, you know?”

“I won’t die. And if I do….”

Gwak-.

Yang Juhui gripped the baseball bat in her hand even tighter.

Then she started running straight ahead with all her might.

“Yaaa!”

She let out a fierce yell.

Finally, Yang Juhui came face to face with the Dancing Ghost.

The Dancing Ghost’s arms and legs were elongated as if someone had forcibly stretched them, its eyes were hollow, and only its mouth was grinning.

It was a woman with very long hair and red-painted lips. The peculiar thing was that her hair was standing straight up toward the sky.

“Ueueueue—”

“What are you saying, you fucking bitch!”

Whoosh, Thud-!

The bat that Yang Juhui swung boldly hit the Dancing Ghost’s head.

Crack-!

The wooden bat broke from the impact, but the Dancing Ghost also fell to the floor.

Seeing this, I shouted with joy.

“It worked! You knocked it down! Juhui! You did it!”

“……”

But Yang Juhui was silent.

She slowly turned around and spoke to me.

“…Yeongwon, get out of here right now. And remember me.”

Yang Juhui raised her hand.

As if she were saying goodbye.

Soon, Yang Juhui’s hair rose into the air as if she had static electricity.

“Kkeuk-geuggeuk….”

Crack, crunch, snap.

As Yang Juhui began to move her body unnaturally and bend her arms and legs, I finally looked up.

Something was protruding from the ceiling.

Its form was so blurry that it was difficult to see.

But I could see it.

If it was me.

I focused all my attention on my eyes and was able to discern what was protruding from the ceiling.

“Hahaha!”

It was the upper half of a human body.

Something like the upper half of a human body was hanging upside down, grabbing Yang Juhui’s hair with its two arms and shaking it in all directions like a clumsy puppet show.

The way it was being shaken looked like dancing.

Thump thump, thump thump thump-.

The upper body stuck to the ceiling watched with amusement as Yang Juhui, suspended in mid-air, struggled desperately with her arms and legs, dying.

“Hahaha!”

Its face was so flat that it was impossible to tell whether it was male or female, with only its hollow eyes standing out as pitch-black darkness.

“Hahahahaha! Hahahahahahaha!”

The laughter was not from the dancing person but from the creature attached to the ceiling. It was laughing at Yang Juhui and me with its large mouth.

It wasn’t a ghost like Gu Hyena.

It was pure malice itself.

“Tick-tock tick-tock-. I’ll suck your brain-.”

“Come into the mirror.”

“Hahahahahahaha!”

This was a place where only mockery and malice existed, without any backstory or causality.

The bottom of the abyss where even a speck of humanity is defiled with filth.

It was hell.

I had never felt so powerless before.

I was afraid and angry.

I was so scared and angry that tears welled up.

“Just you wait, you bastards.”

# # #

When I opened my eyes, it was morning.

Something fluffy was moving around on my body, startling me so much that I threw it.

“Oh my, how startling!”

—Weeeong-!

Looking closely at what flew far away, it was a white-furred cat.

The cat I had saved from a ghost before.

It had a princess-like name.

Baekseol?

Why was the white cat Baekseol in my room?

Only then did I remember that I had fallen asleep at Yu Dahui’s mansion on Friday night.

It was to meet Chairman Cheon Daegon with Kwon Suho on Saturday morning.

“Baekseol, did you wake Yeongwon up?”

Just then, someone entered the room where I was staying, wearing slippers.

It was Yu Dahui.

Yu Dahui, wearing a sky-blue dress that looked like pajamas under a brown cardigan, peeked into my room and waved her hand slightly.

“Yeongwon, good morning.”

Suk suk suk-.

I silently watched the scene.

I was still half-asleep, having just woken up from a nightmare.

Now I noticed that my whole body was covered in cold sweat.

My heart was pounding like it was broken, and my throat was dry.

But before drinking water, I thought there was something I needed to ask first.

“Dahui, did you have any dreams last night?”

“Me? I, um… I dreamed about rabbits.”

So she didn’t dream about the Nightmare Corridor.

It was clear that Yu Dahui wasn’t in the corridor last night.

“Yeongwon, the housekeeper says to come down to the dining room for breakfast.”

Yu Dahui disappeared into the distance, swaying the skirt of her sky-blue dress like a fairy’s robe.

Through this brief conversation, I was able to come to my senses more clearly, and I felt frustrated.

So I buried my face in the bed and screamed.

“Aaaah!”

Last night’s corridor expedition was a complete failure.

Although it wasn’t the corridor expedition I had planned, but rather a “random matching” variable.

Nevertheless, most things had been going well for me these past few days, so I had gained a bit of confidence.

My shoulders were high, so to speak.

But the second floor of the corridor wasn’t as easy as I thought and was a terrible place.

A perfect defeat.

The mockery of the ghosts who laughed at me still seemed to linger in my ears.

Jeongseok, dead-.

Yang Juhui, dead-.

Bong Jiyeon, dead-.

Unlike when I had initiated the matching myself, no point settlement window appeared, so I had to open the status window to check my friends’ quirks.

「Jeongseok – 《Golden Arrow》: The golden arrow of love makes people fall into romantic love. Some would even throw away their lives for that love.」

「Yang Juhui – 《Intense Jealousy》: It is said that those who commit the sin of jealousy suffer the eternal punishment of having their eyes sewn shut so they cannot see anything.」

「Bong Jiyeon – 《Suspicion》: Trust and love cannot dwell in a suspicious mind. The fate of a person who cannot harbor any belief in their heart is only loneliness.」

Three deaths.

Three quirks.

I currently had 282P.

Since it would take at least 300 points to treat three quirks, my current points were slightly insufficient.

I had secretly hoped that Bong Jiyeon, who had been carrying a talisman, might have escaped, but it seemed she had died mercilessly after being dragged into the science lab.

“Tsk….”

I’m screwed.

I can only treat the quirks of two out of the three.

It was then that I heard it.

Woof woof-woof woof woof-woof woof-.

Kyaaaak!

“…?”

The sound of a dog barking loudly came from somewhere.

And the sound of women screaming too.

A woman’s scream was truly something that could be heard clearly in any situation.

There was supposedly some scientific reason why women’s screams are particularly clear to the ear.

Anyway, that wasn’t what was important, and I rushed toward the sound.

It was coming from a room on the second floor.

The mansion’s housekeepers, in their pajamas, were half-crying and horrified.

“This one’s completely crazy!”

“Get lost! Get lost, you dog bastard!”

“Grrrr, woof woof-woof woof-!”

The sisters were afraid of the barking dog.

Had some rabid stray dog sneaked into the mansion?

No.

The identity of the creature standing on all fours and growling fiercely in front of the housekeepers was none other than Kwon Suho!

“Woof woof! Woof woof woof!”

Kwon Suho was barking wildly on all fours like a dog.

I wondered what was going on, then remembered that Kwon Suho had died in the Nightmare Corridor last night while possessing one quirk.

That meant Kwon Suho had acquired two quirks in reality.

Weren’t people with two quirks supposed to die?

“Status Window.”

I tried to open Kwon Suho’s entry in the status window.

But Kwon Suho’s name had disappeared from the player list.

This meant I couldn’t check his quirks or put him in the clinic to treat them.

『Advice from 《The Broken Clock》: 《Quirk》 is a weirdness that dwells in the body, soul, and mind. If someone possesses 2 or more quirks, they will die. 《Quirk》 can be treated by unlocking the clinic item in the shop and spending 100P.』

I recalled what my trait had advised me earlier.

Death.

Was this transformation into a dog what death meant?

“What’s all this commotion so early in the morning!”

“Ch-Chairman! Look at him!”

“He’s gone crazy and trying to bite people! Kyaak! You pervert!”

Chairman Cheon Daegon, apparently drawn by the commotion, came to the housekeepers’ room and frowned at the scene.

He glared at the growling Kwon Suho and the frightened housekeepers for a while, then finally burst into laughter.

“The dog punk has really become a dog. Is Miri here?”

“Yes, Chairman. I’m here.”

Teacher Hong Miri also entered the room.

Teacher Hong Miri looked at the growling Kwon Suho and made a quick assessment.

“At first glance, it might look like symptoms of schizophrenia or rabies… but I don’t think so. It seems the contents inside have been switched. If that’s the case, there’s nothing we can do.”

Switched-.

I had seen that story in the Nightmare Corridor last night.

There was definitely something about that in the principal’s letter inside the safe!

The switching of ghosts and humans.

At this moment, I understood the fate of those who accumulated two quirks.

Those who accumulated two quirks completely lost their bodies to ghosts.

Teacher Hong Miri asked Chairman Cheon Daegon:

“Should we contact Gwanak? Their people would be experts in this kind of thing.”

“No. Contact Director Kwon. He should take care of his own son.”