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Translator: thursdays Editor: Yahiko PR: LightBrin
2.
“Look over there! Over there…”
“Wh-what do we do? Should I call a teacher?”
Students gathered at the schoolyard and pointed to the rooftop.
“What’s that guy trying to do?”
“Dunno. It looks like he’s going to jump…”
A student was standing on the roof.
“What do we do?”
“Fuck! Somebody call a teacher!”
“Over there! There!”
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.
“This…!”
Some people decided to act quickly instead of pointlessly gathering around.
“This isn’t good. Gongja! Call 119. Tell them our school’s name and that a student is trying to jump from the roof. Hurry! I’m going to the roof to try to stop him!”
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 school’s main building without waiting for my response.
“Ah…”
When I saw Raviel’s back, my frozen body began to move. That’s right. I didn’t know what was happening, but there was no time to waffle. I hurriedly dialed the numbers on my cell phone. One. One…
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.
“……”
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 child’s face properly.
The child’s eyes were black.
The child’s cheeks were white.
“——.”
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 didn’t want to acknowledge it.
[Die.]
Then.
Small fingers like a rake let go of the fence on the rooftop. He let go, and—
The wind.
The person.
“■■■■■■■■!!”
The students screamed. The world became crowded with noise. “What the ■!” Someone fitfully moaned. “Aa■aa■aah!” Someone convulsed, tearing off the sleeve of someone else’s uniform.
“■cher! Tea■!” “Fu■,” “This is ■!”
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.
“……”
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.
“Ah.”
The sound moved my body.
“Don’t do it.”
I went to the students.
“What are you doing now? Don’t take a picture! I told you to stop!”
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.
“Stop it!”
When I blocked one side, they took out their cell phones on the other side.
“I’m telling you to stop! Fuck, don’t do it!”
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.
“Stop! It!”
The sunset was red.
“Damn it.”
Why?
“Stop. Taking. Pictures!”
The hundred faces were expressionless. From the first floor, the Black Dragon Master looked here. From the third floor window, the Heretic Questioner’s 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.
Don’t forget.
You killed me.
+
I looked up at the rooftop.
“……”
Raviel looked down at me.
“But, Gongja.”
Raviel’s voice flowed from the sky.
“Weren’t you the one who killed him?”
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.
“—As you are all aware, something scandalous has happened at our school.”
The principal was speaking in the auditorium. He was wearing the face of the Sword Saint.
“But I believe in the students of Shinseo Middle and High School…”
Redness.
“He sent that sort of text. Wasn’t he really crazy?”
In the classroom, students gossiped with the faces of the Count and the Crusader.
“That’s right. In retrospect, he’d always been a little weird.”
Redness.
“Ignore the people who’re making a fuss about it. They’re just keyboard warriors who would never make a peep to someone’s face. Hmph. Those guys should just have their fingers cut off.”
At home, my father drank whiskey with Bae Hu-ryeong’s face and smile.
“Yeah, man. Sometimes you beat people up in life. So what? Why’d he just take it and die because of something like that? Wasn’t he a total attention whore? Hey! Call the Four Heavenly Kings! Let’s go play a game!”
My older brother put his arm around my shoulder with the cheerful voice of the Flame Emperor.
Redness.
“Yes, your teacher is also devastated. I’m torn, but—”
The homeroom teacher spoke at the lectern. His face was the Venomous Snake’s.
“—this 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 what’s important to you and pull yourself together.”
The students opened their mouths. In unison, they replied.
“Yes, teacher.”
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 child’s desk. One days. Two. Three. Less than a week later, the desk disappeared elsewhere. I didn’t 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.
“……”
The wind blew.
The curtain blew.
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