chapter 1:Room 2-4

They say the worst kind of isolation isn't being alone; it's being surrounded by people who look at you like you are some kind of anomaly.

At Myeong-Shin High School, I was that anomaly. The quiet, newly transferred shadow that nobody wanted to touch.

"Look at her... that's the psycho from the transfer records."

"Really? She looks so ordinary. How can someone with that face be malicious ?"

The whispers followed me like a heavy, sticky residue through the corridors, digging into my back every time I walked past. Inside my head, I was tearing those whispers apart. But on the outside, my severe social anxiety acted like a physical padlock on my vocal cords. My throat would tighten, my vision would drop, and I would submissively bury my face beneath my dark hair, letting the silence swallow me. I had long since stopped trying to connect with humanity. My shyness wasn't innocence; it was a survival mechanism to protect a heavily fractured mind.

But the world rarely spares those who refuse to fight back. My quiet, submissive posture only made me a perfect target for the apex predators of the classroom.

It happened near the end of the afternoon self-study session. A girl from the front rows—the kind of popular, sweet-faced student whom the teachers adored—suddenly rushed to my desk. She was visibly trembling, her eyes wide with a perfectly rehearsed panic.

"Da-in... please, you have to help me," she whispered, her voice cracking as she held a plastic-wrapped box. "The strict supervisor is outside for a surprise contraband inspection. If he finds this cigarette pack on me, I'm ruined! My parents will kill me! Please, just hide it in your bag for a second. They won't suspect the new girl!"

I didn't want a scene. More than anything, I desperately wanted to escape the suffocating social awkwardness of the confrontation. So, against my better judgment, I gave a silent, hesitant nod. Before I could even ask a single question, she shoved the cold, wrapped box deep into my backpack and scrambled back to her seat.

Five minutes later, the supervisor was towering over my desk. With a smug, knowing grin, he reached into my bag and pulled out the contraband.

"What is the meaning of this, Park Da-in? Caught bringing banned items into the academy on your very first week?"

My heart violently hammered against my ribs. My anxiety tried to paralyze my throat, but the sheer, blinding injustice of the moment forced me to push through the choking weight. I stood up, my frame rigid, my voice shaking but loud enough for the entire room to hear.

"It's not mine, sir! I didn't bring it. She... she was the one who begged me to hide it just minutes ago!" I pointed my finger directly at the popular girl.

The classroom went dead silent. The girl slowly turned around, her eyes widening with a flawless display of tearful shock and wounded innocence.

"Silence!" the supervisor barked, slamming his clipboard onto my desk with a deafening crack. "Shut your mouth, Park Da-in! Do you honestly expect me to believe a single word you say? Look at her—how dare you maliciously throw the blame on such a gentle, exemplary student!"

I looked at the supervisor, then around the room. The popular girl was smirking from behind her fake tears. She didn't just get away with it; she now actively despised me for trying to drag her down with me. The trap was sealed shut, locked by the same cruel assumptions that had always haunted me.

Of course they believe her, a bitter, icy memory flared up in my mind. They always believe the perfect ones. It was the exact same patterns of my past—the blinding jealousy of a girl I thought was my friend, and the horrific moment she deliberately threw herself down the concrete stairs, severely injuring herself just to paint me as a violent sociopath and strip away my top-tier academic scholarship. History was simply repeating itself.

In that exact moment, the frantic trembling in my hands suddenly ceased. The desperate urge to cry or scream died instantly. A terrifying, absolute coldness took over my consciousness, disconnecting my emotions entirely. Ah, I thought, my inner voice turning flat, dead, and clinical. Speaking up is useless. Humanity is a waste of breath.

"Since you are a new transfer, we won't involve the principal's office tonight," the supervisor announced loudly, turning away. "Your punishment is after-school sanitation duty. You will clean Classroom 2-4 entirely by yourself after the regular classes end."

I spent the late afternoon sweeping the floor and wiping down the wooden desks in absolute, mechanical silence. I finished the work quickly, eager to leave this suffocating concrete box and go home. But when I gathered my belongings and walked to the front exit, I grabbed the steel handle and pulled.

It didn't move.

I rattled it, a cold drop of sweat rolling down my neck. Through the small glass pane of the classroom door, I saw a heavy wooden wedge jammed tightly beneath the exterior handle, and a thick iron chain looped around the corridor railing. She had locked me in from the outside.

Suddenly, a shadow crossed the glass. It was her—the popular girl. She stood in the dimming, empty hallway, looking at my trapped reflection with a twisted, sadistic smile of pure satisfaction. She silently mouthed the words: "Have fun in the dark, freak," before turning on her heel and walking away, her footsteps fading into nothingness.

Hours passed. I banged on the wood until my hands were bruised, I yelled until my throat was completely raw, but nobody came. The building emptied out. The sun dipped below the horizon, and the golden evening dissolved into a heavy, suffocating midnight blackness.

Now, I was just sitting at a desk in the pitch-black room, exhausted, cold, and entirely abandoned by the living.

Tick. Tick. Click.

The neon clock mounted at the front of the classroom struck exactly 9:00 PM.

In that precise second, a heavy, metallic thud violently shook the very foundations of the room! I spun around in sheer panic, the breath dying in my throat. Massive, rusted iron shutters violently slammed down from the exterior, sealing the windows completely and cutting off the midnight air.

Gasping, I rushed toward the front exit, grabbing the steel handle with all my strength, hoping against hope that the lock would give way.

My heart stopped beating. The steel handle didn't just lock—it literally began to melt and sink into the wood, vanishing into thin air right before my eyes. In a single second, the door became a smooth, seamless, impenetrable slab of timber—an extension of the wall itself.

At that exact moment, the fluorescent lights overhead flickered intensely for three consecutive times... and died completely, leaving me drowned in absolute, deafening darkness inside the sealed, isolated classroom.

A suffocating, primal dread flooded the air, and an invisible weight of absolute malice pressed down on my chest like a boulder. The oxygen began to vanish. But beneath that immediate threat of death, the helpless, timid girl inside me fractured completely.

The switch was flipped. My mind hardened into an icy, hyper-focused composure.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***