Students gathered at the schoolyard and pointed to the rooftop.
âWhatâs that guy trying to do?â
âDunno. It looks like heâs going to jumpâŠâ
A student was standing on the roof.
âWhat do we do?â
âFuck! Somebody call a teacher!â
âOver there! There!â
The students who had been playing soccer. The students taking walks. Even the students who were leaving school a little bit late. The kids who were scattered around the campus gathered in bunches. The behavior was instinctive. They felt that whatever was going to happen, it was something they could not handle on their own.
âThisâŠ!â
Some people decided to act quickly instead of pointlessly gathering around.
âThis isnât good. Gongja! Call 119. Tell them our schoolâs name and that a student is trying to jump from the roof. Hurry! Iâm going to the roof to try to stop him!â
Raviel did not send someone to call the teacher. Instead of looking for someone else to take responsibility, she urgently reacted to the situation. Raviel hurried to the schoolâs main building without waiting for my response.
âAhâŠâ
When I saw Ravielâs back, my frozen body began to move. Thatâs right. I didnât know what was happening, but there was no time to waffle. I hurriedly dialed the numbers on my cell phone. One. OneâŠ
Thwack!
Something fell on the ground just before I could press nine. At first, I thought the student had jumped. However, the thud was too quiet for it to be a human body. It was the sound of the student on the roof throwing his cell phone.
ââŠâŠâ
I looked up at the roof while pressing the nine.
Our eyes met.
It was the face I had seen in the classroom. The boy who had sat in the last row by the window, studying silently by himself. But it was only at this moment I felt I was seeing the childâs face properly.
The childâs eyes were black.
The childâs cheeks were white.
âââ.â
The child raised a corner of his mouth in a mocking smile.
Slowly, his lips moved. A silent sound. His words were buried by the distance, but I could read them by looking at his lips. A word that I had to recognize, even if I didnât want to acknowledge it.
[Die.]
Then.
Small fingers like a rake let go of the fence on the rooftop. He let go, andâ
The wind.
The person.
ââ â â â â â â â !!â
The students screamed. The world became crowded with noise. âWhat the â !â Someone fitfully moaned. âAaâ aaâ aah!â Someone convulsed, tearing off the sleeve of someone elseâs uniform.
ââ cher! Teaâ !â âFuâ ,â âThis is â !â
In an instant.
The school was no longer a school. Everything rived into chaos. The schoolyard became a desolate desert. The main building was nothing but a ghastly prison.
The classroom was a slaughterhouse for animals or a farm for rearing them. The animals were always hungry. In the world of slaughterhouses and kennels, a person only existed to become a corpse.
Red.
A person had died.
ââŠâŠâ
In a trance, I looked at the campus. The bricks were soaked red. The redness spread further. Fearing that the redness would stain their feet, the students backed away. Some pulled out their cell phones. Ka-click! An artificial noise chimed.
âAh.â
The sound moved my body.
âDonât do it.â
I went to the students.
âWhat are you doing now? Donât take a picture! I told you to stop!â
The students flinched. But more and more students were gathering. Leaving the soccer ball in the desert, the flowers on the walking paths, and turning their backs on the road home, more and more people gathered.
âStop it!â
When I blocked one side, they took out their cell phones on the other side.
âIâm telling you to stop! Fuck, donât do it!â
An unnameable emotion rode up my throat. I felt like I would cry. Anger. Contempt. Disgust. In the main building, on the first floor, the second floor, the third floor, the fourth floor, and the fifth floor, the students stuck their heads out to gawk. Countless faces. With countless eyes.
They looked.
âStop! It!â
The sunset was red.
âDamn it.â
Why?
âStop. Taking. Pictures!â
The hundred faces were expressionless. From the first floor, the Black Dragon Master looked here. From the third floor window, the Heretic Questionerâs face was poking out. The Crusader and the Count were watching from the ground. The children of the Hellfire Residence surrounded me. The cultists stood on the schoolyard. Ka-click! Click. They moved their fingers to take pictures.
+
The one who murdered me was you.
Donât forget.
You killed me.
+
I looked up at the rooftop.
ââŠâŠâ
Raviel looked down at me.
âBut, Gongja.â
Ravielâs voice flowed from the sky.
âWerenât you the one who killed him?â
The world became a wasteland.
The sky turned completely red.
Like watercolor, the red dripped and soaked the earth.
The people turned red, and my vision, too, turned red.
ââAs you are all aware, something scandalous has happened at our school.â
The principal was speaking in the auditorium. He was wearing the face of the Sword Saint.
âBut I believe in the students of Shinseo Middle and High SchoolâŠâ
Redness.
âHe sent that sort of text. Wasnât he really crazy?â
In the classroom, students gossiped with the faces of the Count and the Crusader.
âThatâs right. In retrospect, heâd always been a little weird.â
Redness.
âIgnore the people whoâre making a fuss about it. Theyâre just keyboard warriors who would never make a peep to someoneâs face. Hmph. Those guys should just have their fingers cut off.â
At home, my father drank whiskey with Bae Hu-ryeongâs face and smile.
âYeah, man. Sometimes you beat people up in life. So what? Whyâd he just take it and die because of something like that? Wasnât he a total attention whore? Hey! Call the Four Heavenly Kings! Letâs go play a game!â
My older brother put his arm around my shoulder with the cheerful voice of the Flame Emperor.
Redness.
âYes, your teacher is also devastated. Iâm torn, butââ
The homeroom teacher spoke at the lectern. His face was the Venomous Snakeâs.
ââthis is a very important time for you students. Time will fly when you become third-years. Actually, the winners and losers will be decided in your second year, this year. Think carefully about whatâs important to you and pull yourself together.â
The students opened their mouths. In unison, they replied.
âYes, teacher.â
Only the class president kept her head bowed without a word.
The president wore the face of the Black Dragon Master.
A white flower was placed on the childâs desk. One days. Two. Three. Less than a week later, the desk disappeared elsewhere. I didnât know who had taken it away.
Not a single student asked who had cleared it out.
No new desk appeared in the window seat of the back row.
ââŠâŠâ
The wind blew.
The curtain blew.
Nobody was there in the place where the wind blew.
[The trauma will repeat.]
Then.
[The severity of the penalty is high.]
[The penalty is the animal road.]
Ding,
Dong,
Dang,
Dong.
A wretched melody rang.
There was a noise masked in the sound. The school bell rang with an electronic sound that mimicked the natural sound. To conceal the fact that it was nothing but a counterfeit, the melody became more energetic and lively.
-This is the broadcasting department, notifying all students remaining on school groundsâŠ
An imitation.
-Other than the students who will participate in nighttime self-study, please go home now. Once again, the broadcasting department announcesâŠ
Something that had failed.
-Recently, some students have remained on school grounds after dismissal time has passed. To the students at school now, please return home if you have not applied for nighttime self-study.
Feeling my insides churn, I opened my eyes.
âSunbae, wake up! Weâve been dismissed!â
ââŠâŠâ
âOh? Youâre already awake.â
The Heretic Questioner beamed.
âBut itâs not good for you to sleep on your desk! Itâs bad for your back, and more importantly, you wonât sleep well. I understand that youâre studyingâŠâ
I did not wait for the Heretic Questioner to finish his words. I stood up and dashed out of the library. Behind me, I heard the Heretic Questionerâs voice.
âAh, sunbae! You shouldnât run in the halls!â
Running down the halls, I ground my teeth.
âI understand.â
I figured out the source of my confusion.
This was undoubtedly the trauma of the Constellation Killer, Lefanta Aegim.
It was just that my memories were laid over Lefanta Aegimâs nightmare like [skin].
The same situation.
The same cast.
However, their appearances were those of the people from my life, not the people whom Lefanta Aegim would remember. That was why the Black Dragon Master, the Crusader, and the Count became students. Master and Bae Hu-ryeong became my parents.
As for me.
âIâm the culprit.â
There was a bloody taste in my mouth.
âIâm the perpetrator of this situation.â
I had experienced many traumas until now, but each time, I had been an [observer]. I had always felt like a first-person observer. But because my rank grew, the penalty increased.
Here, I was party to the trauma.
Not only me, but everyone I remembered.
Except for one person.
âDamn it!â
I arrived at the stairs.
[Behaving properly âȘ]
[Living joyfully âȘ]
[With a happy heart âȘ]
The motto at which I couldnât even laugh hung on the stairs. Donât kid with me. Seriously, donât joke. Cursing inwardly, I looked up the flight of stairs leading to the rooftop.
There stood the only person I did not remember in this world.
âThe Constellation Killer.â
His frame was small. The student grabbed the iron door and shook it back and forth. Clank. Clank! The chains were so robust that it seemed difficult to loosen them.
âHaa⊠A keyâŠâ
The student sighed and turned around. At that moment, our eyes met. The student held his breath for a millisecond, then bowed his head politely.
He was greeting me with his head lowered.
âWhy didnât I realize it earlier?â
I should have known that something was off when I learned that child was my classmate. Wasnât it obvious?
What kind of classmate would greet another classmate with a bow?
It was wrong.
ââŠâŠâ
The student eyed me carefully then quietly began to walk. When he tried to pass beside me, I called out to him.
âWait a moment.â
âYes?â
The student spoke respectfully like it was natural. He didnât look me straight in the eyes, but carefully upward from an angle.
My throat throbbed.
ââŠPlease let me borrow your cell phone for a moment.â
ââŠâŠâ
âPlease.â
The student obediently handed over his cell phone. He had been silent for a while, but the silence was not refusing my request to see his phone. He had simply been confused about my use of polite language.
I opened the cell phone, which had no password.
+
Messages from Unavailable: 47
+
I opened the texts, one by one.
I looked at them.
[I feel so bad for the underclassmen at our school They have to call you sunbae, â â . Have you ever thought about how they feel? Doesnât it hurt your conscience?]
[Hey, you ignoring me?]
[Wow! Thereâs a student who never washes his uniform?!]
[â â ⊠How filthy. How can you be even dirtier than the math teacher? lolol]
[You were so happy you could die just cuz I said hi in the hallways yesterday, lolol. I just lost at rock paper scissors, k? Donât get the wrong idea ]
[â â lives in a dump. The indoor shoes and the school uniforms are all recyclable. The only trash that canât be recycled is â â .]
[You smell awful. Seriously, you reek.]
[See you after class.]
Snap.
I closed the phone.
I couldnât read any more.
ââŠâŠâ
I closed my eyes and breathed. I breathed and narrowly managed to calm down. In this trauma, I didnât have my dagger or the handkerchief Raviel gifted me. It took me a lot of effort to calm my emotions.
âWhyâŠâ
I looked at [the Constellation Killerâs past].
âWhy do you bring your cell phone to school? You can just keep it at home.â
Then, the student replied.
ââŠYou said that youâll kill me if I donât bring it.â
When I gulped, my spit felt cold.
My head became dizzy.
âThen, just throw it away completely. Why donât you throw it away? It canât be helped if you say you lost it.â
âThis.â
The student.
The one who would one day be called the Constellation Killer opened his lips.
âItâs the cell phone Gongja-nim gave me. The one you used to useâŠâ
ââŠâŠâ
âBecause my family doesnât have money⊠Youâre paying for the fees. So that if Gongja-nim tells me to come out, I would come out right away. For that purpose. You said that if I lose it, youâll kill meâŠâ
A building that became a blight.
Friendships that imitate friendship, love that imitates love, a meaningless thing that feigns significance, this animal farm that pretends to be specialâthere was only malice.