The Lady from Hell (1)

Congratulations! You have safely returned from the Nightmare Corridor!

Starting settlement for 1 survivor and 3 deceased.

The settlement began.

*Clank Clank Clank*

As the sound of countless coins falling rang out, letters appeared in front of me like ending credits.

Oh wow! Holy shit!
To be honest, I was feeling down in many ways until just now.
But now, my gloominess has been completely washed away, and I feel so refreshed.

310 points!
I, who had barely collected 2 points a day through the trait of [Broken Clock], earned 310 points in an instant.
Originally, it would have taken 155 days to collect 310 points.

It felt like I had suddenly won the lottery and become rich.
This is the life!
Since I had opened the shop not long ago, there was a lot I could do with these points.

Let’s go to the shop right away and do some shopping.
I was about to think that, but unfamiliar letters appeared as if there was still something left to settle.

The 3 deceased gain an Eccentricity

• Kim Geonho ◀ Select to view
• Soh Jin ◀ Select to view
• Yang Juhui ◀ Select to view

Gaining an Eccentricity after death.
It seemed like something unusual happened to those who died in the Nightmare Corridor.
It was quite puzzling that Yang Juhui’s name was included here in this unfamiliar situation.

Did Yang Juhui end up dying…?
I wanted to ask what happened, but Yang Juhui herself seemed to have no memory of the corridor at all.

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

“…….”

“Alright, let’s start class. Everyone, take your seats. Class president Sojin… No, ahem, how about Vice President Jeong Seok leading the greeting and starting class today? Seok, the greeting.”

The middle-aged, balding math teacher for the first period entered.
Yang Juhui also shut her mouth, unable to ask me more questions.
I decided to use today’s ‘Advice’ feature first to find out what an Eccentricity is.

“Advice.”

Advice from the [Broken Clock]

An [Eccentricity] is a strange phenomenon afflicting the body, soul, and mind. If one possesses 2 or more Eccentricities, that person will die. [Eccentricities] can be cured for 100P at the Treatment Center unlocked in the shop.

Die…
Hearing those words made my body tremble.

If you die in the Nightmare Corridor, you gain an Eccentricity, and if that process repeats, you ultimately die in reality, too.
Could it be that everyone except me losing their memories is also related to life and death?

If I had died too, I might have lost my memories and gained an Eccentricity.
As I reached that thought, the first action I needed to take after getting points was decided.

*Clink*

100P will be used to unlock a locked item.

The Treatment Center is now open.

[Eccentricities] can be cured at the Treatment Center.

What a relief for now.
If I gain an Eccentricity, I’ll have to immediately cure it at this Treatment Center using 100P.
It seemed best to collect as many points as possible.

More importantly… what happens now to that Nightmare Corridor that gave so many points?
I tried manipulating the status window.

Chapter 1. The Nightmare Corridor begins.

Please select players from the list.

Up to 4 people can be selected.

Re-entry waiting time - 32:15:44

Oh, I can go again.
Should I be happy about this or scared…
Seeing the matching waiting time, it also felt like a dungeon with time and date restrictions on entry.

“Hey!!!! Apologize right now!!!!”

In the middle of the boring math class, a girl’s shrill voice stabbed like a dagger.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned their heads to see Jeong Sojin standing up from her seat like a fighter, glaring at her seatmate Ahn Yeongmi.

“Ahn Yeongmi, you just said I stink, right?! That I stink like a hooker! Hurry up and apologize!”

“Wh-what? What are you talking about? Sojin, why are you suddenly like this? What stink? What did I say that you’re acting so scary…?”

What the hell is going on?

*Whisper whisper*

The kids started murmuring, and Jeong Sojin, unable to contain her anger, dashed out of the classroom.
I checked Jeong Sojin’s result by pressing her name on the Eccentricity settlement window.

Jeong Sojin: [Paranoia]

The parallel lines of dreams and reality that should never meet have finally touched. Are the whispers in your ears really just dreams? Or…

Paranoia.
Arbitrarily imagining that others are harming you.

Jeong Sojin’s actions just now made sense.
What about the other kids?
As I finished checking Kim Geonho’s Eccentricity and was about to check Yang Juhui’s Eccentricity,

*Clatter*

The classroom door opened again.

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

“What?”
“Who’s that?”

I was also quite startled by the constant anomalies occurring during class time.
It was because the face of the middle-aged woman in a white dress looked as ominous and wrathful as a ghost.
Looking closer, she was also gripping scissors with stains all over them, looking inauspicious and unclean.

“Hey… isn’t that the middle-aged woman who was handing out flyers in front of the school yesterday?”
“The Youngkwang Church? Is she the one who tells us to go to church every day?”
“Wait, what’s with the scissors!”

The church lady strode into the classroom and approached me.
What the, why is she coming towards me? What the heck?
The momentary fear that I might not have escaped the nightmare yet was fleeting…

“You fucking bitch! How dare you spend the night out with a guy? You damn bitch! You devil-possessed bitch! Get over here!”

“Ack!”

Yang Juhui screamed.
Yang Juhui was dragged out, about to fall over, with her long, yellow hair grabbed.

“L-Let go! Let’s talk after you let go! Outside! Let go! Ahh!”

“You devil-possessed bitch! You cheap slut! You need to repent before the Lord! Let’s go! I need to cut off your phone and internet, too. And shave off all your hair! You devilish bitch!”

“Ah! Let’s go outside first, sheesh!”

“You, is that any way to talk to your mother? You really are possessed by the devil. In the name of the Lord, I command the evil spirit to depart! In the name of the Lord, I command the devil to depart!”

The sound must have echoed in the hallway because the young English teacher from next door who was teaching came to our class to witness this scene.

“Hmm… Should I report this to the police, math teacher?”
“No, no, the school atmosphere is already unsettling with the disappearance case early in the semester, so let’s handle it internally for now…”

“What? What is it? What’s going on?”

Kids from other classes also gathered to watch this situation, and amidst this chaos, I felt embarrassed in many ways and wanted to cover my ears and scream with all my might.

“I thought Yang Juhui’s family was rich? This is spine-chilling.”
“She never talked about her family. She wouldn’t let us visit her house either.”
“So fake. No wonder she only used cheap shoes and cosmetics.”

Dismissal time after the 7th period.
Students were still chatting about what happened this morning.

About the kids spending the night out.
About Jeong Sojin making a scene in the middle of class.
And about the behavior shown by Yang Juhui and her overbearing mother.

Honestly, everything that happened was shocking.
I couldn’t believe all this happened in one day, either.

“Wow, so that crazy bitch was acting all high and mighty until now? Fucking ridiculous.”
“I heard the girls from Class C are gearing up to stomp on Yang Juhui. I’m gonna go watch it then. You know I’m close with Jiyeon from Class C.”
“Jiyeon is targeting her? Yang Juhui is screwed. I should go and take a video, too.”

1st year high school students are neither children nor adults.

Maybe that’s why the instability of being in between sometimes makes it difficult to discover the lines that shouldn’t be crossed.
This was especially true for the bottom-feeders at a delinquent school like Yeongji High.

Kim Yeongho.
Lee Jinseong.
Park Inbae.

Those little shits following Kim Geonho, I’ll toss them into the Nightmare Corridor later.

It’s not that I particularly have a sense of justice, but Yang Juhui was someone who was my girlfriend, even if briefly. Seeing those guys curse at her frankly pissed me off.
I guess I was unknowingly a bit of a romantic.

Also, now that I know people entering the Nightmare Corridor earn me points, there were many things I wanted to test and check in various ways.
If you’re upset, you should have lived kindly instead of bullying me.

“Honestly, every single one of the guys in Class D could be tossed into the corridor like guinea pigs, and I wouldn’t care.”

Everyone in Class D is either a perpetrator or a bystander.
Especially Kim Geonho…
…Well, since Kim Geonho gained that Eccentricity, it’s only a matter of time before he quiets down.

With those thoughts, I sat in the library and unpacked my bag.
I was a member of the library committee, and when I had free time after all classes ended, I would manage books or clean the floor like this in Yeongji High’s library.

Despite being a delinquent high school, Yeongji High had pretty good library facilities, and since there were no bookworms at this school, the study environment was pleasant, too. In a way, this was my oasis.

And the ‘literary girl’ I had a bit of a crush on would often come to the library and read difficult books like Baudelaire’s “The Flowers of Evil” or Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.”

“I wonder what 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 bummer.

Anyway.
For now, there were many things I wanted to find out about the old school building.
What’s with the ghosts appearing in the corridor of the old school building?

Is there a book about the history of the school or something like that?
As I was looking for such a book,

“Youngwon.”

A soft and gentle voice called for me.
Turning my head, a woman in a black suit was looking at me.
It’s Kang Haneul, the Korean teacher.

“The teacher wants to talk with Youngwon for a bit. Is that okay?”

“Yes. Of course.”

*Swish*

I sat across from the teacher in the corner of the library.
A few students glanced over here.

Kang Haneul was pretty.

If girls of the same age were fresh-faced… What would be the right word for the thirty-one-year-old teacher… well-ripened? Or that she had the charm of a confident member of society… It was an adult woman’s appeal that was hard to express with my vocabulary.

She was popular among other teachers and boys, too, and I heard she got quite a few confessions.
Honestly, if I had the courage, I might have jokingly confessed once or twice, too.

“Youngwon, you haven’t been having a hard time or anything lately, right?”

“No. Not really.”

“Really? You’ve been putting bandages on your face a lot these days, too.”

“I fell.”

“Then do you know what this is?”

*Swish*

Kang Haneul handed me a piece of paper.
On that paper, it was written, “Bullying is happening in Class D.”
The handwriting was neat. Even the periods were meticulously dotted.

“…I don’t know about that.”

I really don’t know.
Who wrote this?
Is it the same person who wrote the letter to the faculty room yesterday?

“Youngwon. You can tell me honestly. The teacher can help. Like holding faculty meetings and the school violence committee. And contacting the police.”

“No. Really, it’s fine. Seriously. There are no problems at all in Class D.”

“I think you are an honest and kind child, Youngwon. The poem you wrote back then was also very good… So, can you tell me truthfully?”

Poem.
At the beginning of the semester, Kang Haneul assigned writing a poem as homework.

The poem I wrote then, “Trickling, Trickling Brook”, seemed to be to the teacher’s liking, and she highly praised it and even read it in front of the other students.
It was also Kang Haneul who recommended me as Yeongji High’s library committee member.

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

“Is it because of your mother? Are you worried your mother will be concerned if this becomes a big deal? But Youngwon, considering your mother is a single parent raising you… Rather than hiding it, being honest…”

“Seriously! There’s nothing like that. Teacher, this is making me uncomfortable. Rather, you said you were an alumna of Yeongji High, right?”

“Yes. In a way, you’re my junior. The teacher was also a high school student once. So I can also counsel you about things you’re struggling with and having a hard time with…”

“Then… Do you happen to know if anything happened in the old school building in the past? Like a shaman with bells coming…”

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