Chapter 2: room 2-4(part 2)

The darkness wasn't just the absence of light; it felt like a heavy, suffocating pressure slowly crawling to swallow the very walls of Classroom 2-4.

I stood frozen, my back pressed hard against the icy, smooth wood of the sealed front door. My hands, which had been trembling frantically minutes ago, suddenly stilled. A deathly, absolute quietness took over my consciousness.

(Breathe, Da-in... just breathe slowly,) my inner voice pleaded in a sharp, muffled panic, while my heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird trying to break its cage. (Panicking won't bring the handle back. Running blindly in this pitch-black room will only make you trip... think... think logically!)

The air around my neck was growing colder with every passing second, and the oxygen became so scarce that a dull ache bloomed in my chest. The silence in the room was heavy, borderline visceral, to the point where I could clearly hear the steady drip of cold sweat rolling down the back of my ear and soaking into the collar of my white uniform shirt.

I slowly extended my hand into the absolute void, relying entirely on my sense of touch to avoid the wooden desks scattered around. The windows were permanently sealed by those massive, rusted iron shutters, and not a single drop of city light could pierce through. I knew, with my hyper-focused analytical mind, that I needed a heavy tool—a metal chair, a fire extinguisher, anything to smash against the doors or windows.

I took a few slow, measured steps forward, moving with a calm composure despite the sheer terror eating away at my stomach in the dark, until my knee abruptly bumped against the edge of the teacher's podium.

Gripping the edge of the concrete desk, my fingers blindly searched the drawers. The first drawer was empty save for old chalk residue. The second was locked. But when I leaned down and pulled open the deep, forgotten bottom drawer, the wood let out a sharp, piercing screech that violently shattered the deathly silence of the room.

There was no emergency landline. No sharp tools.

Instead, my fingertips brushed against a thick, heavy, leather-bound booklet. It smelled faintly of settled dust and old ash.

The moment my hand rested on the weathered leather, a violent shock of sub-zero cold shot straight up my arm, piercing my chest. At that exact microsecond, something impossible happened; a dim, unsettling blue luminescence bled from the cover of the booklet—just enough to illuminate my pale fingers. It revealed a sequence of jagged, hurried handwriting carved into the leather: "Survival Protocol for the Administrative Staff - Do Not Break the Seal."

My entire frame locked up, the breath dying instantly in my throat.

The monstrous, invisible pressure in the room suddenly reached its crushing peak, slamming down on my shoulders as if a heavy weight was forcing me to drop to my knees. The raw malice saturating the dark classroom was thick enough to touch, screaming at every human instinct in my body that I was no longer alone.

Then, the echo vibrated.

Step...

The distinct, solid sound of a dress shoe stepping heavily onto a wooden desk.

Step...

The footsteps were agonizingly slow, rhythmic, and entirely unbothered, moving casually across the rows of desks from the dark, farthest corner of the classroom... heading straight toward my back.

(There is something behind you... there is something standing right behind you!) my brain erupted in a frantic, screaming hysteria, my survival instinct tearing through the icy armor of indifference I had built.

I couldn't fight it. I violently whipped my body around, letting out a sharp, terrified scream that tore through the empty, sealed room as I clutched the heavy booklet to my chest like a shield.

Through the dim, pale blue light emitting from the book, the nightmare manifested before my wide, horrified eyes.

Sitting casually atop a wooden desk right in front of me was a young man. He was attractive, with sharp, aristocratic features and messy jet-black hair falling loosely over his forehead. But his appearance offered no comfort; his skin was as bloodless and pale as winter frost, and his eyes were completely devoid of life, harboring a dry, abyssal blackness that seemed to actively suck the remaining light out of the room.

He wore our exact Myeong-Shin High uniform—the charcoal-gray blazer and jet-black pants—but his white shirt had the top button open, his sharp collar resting loosely with an arrogant, sloppy carelessness. Beneath his leather shoes, a thick, fluid mass of absolute shadow writhed and twisted freely, blackening the floor beneath him.

He rested his chin on his hand, his pale lips curved into a sharp, mocking, utterly sadistic smirk, watching my frantic terror with eyes that gleamed with pure, dark amusement.

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