Dispatches from the Graduate School of Ghost Stories - Chapter 19

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Horror Stories and the Graduate School — Chapter 19
Beneath Your Feet
The classroom door stood wide open, waiting for him.
Bathed in moonlight, the interior was as empty as an elementary school in the dead of night.
“Stop! Don’t go alone!”
Hwi-yeong’s shout rang out from behind him, but Yu Jong-hwa did not slow. The ghost with its crushed lower half cackled as it chased after him, and the trustworthy seniors were falling steadily farther away. Yet for reasons he couldn’t name, this classroom now felt utterly safe to him.
Always exercise caution within a Horror Phenomenon.
After entering a Horror Phenomenon, you must constantly verify your Identity.
Keep a record of your current physical condition—eyes, ears, arms, legs, number of organs, and so forth—along with distinctive memories from your past. Consult these records whenever confusion sets in.
Though the degree varies, once you enter the site, the events within the Horror Phenomenon will feel as though you yourself experienced them directly. Do not assume that the emotions you feel within the horror story are wholly your own; examine them critically.
Synchronization can happen to anyone.
These warnings occupied the first page of every official Horror Phenomenon manual.
Yet Yu Jong-hwa, only two months into his enrollment at the Horror Studies Graduate School, stepped into sixth-grade classroom 3 without proper suspicion—as if he belonged there.
The wooden classroom floor, accustomed only to the light weight of children, groaned under his heavy footsteps, creaking and twisting slightly with each step.
Apart from that, the school was remarkably silent. Yu Jong-hwa realized he could no longer hear the sound of the corpse with its crushed lower half pursuing him.
He turned carefully and confirmed that no one remained in the hallway.
“My seat is…”
Once a student entered the classroom, they had to sit at their assigned desk.
He searched his memory and stepped in front of the desk in the back row.
[Kim Jong-sik]
On a yellowed, faded sticker, a name was scrawled in red ballpoint pen.
This is not my name.
Upon confirming the alias written over a water-stained surface, Yu Jong-hwa grimaced at the throbbing ache in his head.
Isn’t that strange? The sixth-grade classroom didn’t exist on the list of mysteries the seniors mentioned.
So why couldn’t the ghost from the library enter this place?
You shouldn’t stare at the floor like that!
Beneath the sticker bearing his alias, faint scrawl still remained. Yu Jong-hwa carefully traced the scrawl with his fingertip.
The confusion that had stirred a bittersweet nostalgia ended abruptly, leaving only a stale, unclean air in its wake.
Scratch, scratch.
The sound of something being scraped roughly was very soft.
“Help me. I can’t breathe…”
The voice came from beneath the floor.
Yu Jong-hwa lowered his head toward his feet, then started and hurriedly stepped back with his right foot.
Rolling…
A small pale yellow candy caught on his toe. He couldn’t tell how long it had lain there. It tumbled across the floor with a clear sound, coming to rest where the wood had warped and lifted.
Yu Jong-hwa gazed absently at where the candy had stopped.
Through the gaps in the old wood, he could see there was a space beneath the floor. It was far too narrow and dark to make out anything, yet a pair of eyes reflected in the moonlight gleamed distinctly from within.
White fingers, their nails completely shattered and stained with blood, suddenly thrust through the gap in the wood.
“Get me out! Help me! Get me out! Get me out! Get me out! Get me out!”
The girl trapped beneath the floor thrashed and writhed, trying to claw her way up. The vibrations of her struggling body transmitted to Yu Jong-hwa, who stood above her.
The moment truth dawned on him, he bent down quickly and shouted.
“Stop, you’ll hurt your hands! Just wait a moment—I’ll get you out right now!”
Speaking frantically in unison with the trapped girl, he seized the floorboards with bare hands and wrenched them upward.
The pale hands scratched across his knuckles, constantly trying to drag him downward.
The classroom, though it could never possess will or consciousness, seemed determined to stop him from rescuing the child—shaking violently, spilling dust everywhere.
At an hour when everyone slept, could the small child trapped alone beneath the classroom truly be just a child? Even though he stood within a Horror Phenomenon.
Yet Yu Jong-hwa did not pause. He was certain he was not under the Phenomenon’s spell.
The girl was someone he knew.
“Sa-hye! You’re all right! I’ve almost got it open…!”
He did not possess the hardness of heart to ignore a child who had once saved his life, even trapped in a place like this.
Whether she was already dead, or deceiving him to draw him into death itself—at this moment, the truth hardly seemed to matter.
In truth, even if this girl had not been the one to give him the answer, he would have willingly pulled the child free. Her voice, cracked as she called for help, sounded genuine with terror. I’m a full-grown adult and strong enough, so isn’t it all right to save them first and think about danger later? He knew it was foolish reasoning, yet he deceived himself with it.
At last, the wooden floor came completely loose. Yu Jong-hwa lifted the girl out of the narrow gap.
Her small, limp body was filthy with blood, dust, and raw abrasions. And it felt unnaturally, unnervingly cold.
“You’re all right. Let’s go now.”
“Really?”
A clear, ringing voice—all trace of fear vanished—answered him.
The child, who had hung limp and powerless in his arms, suddenly turned her head and looked at him.
The child’s eyes were solid black, without any whites. Moreover, her body was cold to the point of being barely warm to the touch—clearly no longer in the state of a living person.
Yu Jong-hwa froze in shock, and the girl named Sa-hye easily slipped free from his arms and set her feet on the floor.
“I wasn’t trapped at all…… was I?”
“No. ‘I’ really was trapped beneath the floor.”
“Who locked you away?”
Even as Yu Jong-hwa sensed the conversation drifting, he pressed forward carefully, asking about the child’s past.
The situation frightened him, but as an adult he felt the weight of responsibility, struggling to speak as kindly as he could manage.
The short-haired girl brushed dust from her clothes, then hopped onto her desk.
One leg of the desk was twisted; it creaked unsteadily each time the child swung her legs.
“Strange things have been happening at this school, haven’t they? Like the older girl in the Library who was chasing after you earlier.”
“Right. There was an accident in the Library.”
Yu Jong-hwa saw no need to explain to the child that this place was merely a Horror Phenomenon, or that the accident in the Library might never have actually occurred.
“Being crushed by the bookshelf was just bad luck. That kind of death can’t be helped. The 4th Floor Restroom is…… ah, that one isn’t death. Just a ghost who answers back when you knock on the door at night. Not a dead person—just a ghost. You understand?”
Wasn’t that the same thing?
From what the child was saying, it sounded like the student in the Library really had died in the past.
Yu Jong-hwa wondered how much of it was true, but he didn’t ask Sa-hye.
Unlike during the day, the child’s expression was remarkably bright.
The girl who had been chirping away in that high voice swept her hand across the desk, which was covered in curses and obscenities.
“Yeongrok Township only has one Elementary School. There aren’t many kids, so we all know roughly where everyone lives. There was this girl who had a reputation for being really smart, but her family was dirt poor. She lived alone with her grandmother.”
“I see.”
“When we were younger, people just avoided her and didn’t talk to her. But as we got older and our minds grew harder, we started hating her even more. We’d curse at her for just looking at us…… shove her when she walked by quietly. I guess that girl had an annoying personality too.”
“…….”
“Right before Elementary School graduation, the kids started calling her out after school to beat her up. I don’t know what we were thinking, honestly. Were we not scared of the police? Or did we think she had no adults to help her, so she’d never report us on her own? Of course the girl fought back. She said she’d report everything, that she’d send us all to jail. Like that.”
“…… What about the teachers……?”
“See, in stories like this, teachers usually don’t exist. Or they know and just ignore it.”
“Still, that’s too much…….”
“Anyway, listen. None of that matters. What matters is that they thought she was an easy target, but she kept fighting back, and those bastards missed their chance to stop. They didn’t even check if she was dead or alive—they just buried her. They tore up the classroom floor and hid her body so they wouldn’t get caught carrying a corpse. It was the day before winter break. No one came back.”
I was alive for a very, very long time.
The girl whispered in a sharp voice.
As an adult who had grown up without great incident and unscathed, Yu Jong-hwa struggled to find words to offer her, choosing them carefully over a long pause.
“You weren’t wrong. That wasn’t…… really. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know. Whether my personality was bad, whether I was too smart, whether I was poor. None of those details matter. The problem is that there’s a dead child in this classroom.”
The child’s words were ambiguous. The choice of the word “details” was strange. Rolling it over in his mind, everything the child said carried a distance, as if she were describing a fictional character.
He felt a curious unease, but it didn’t seem like an important issue for escaping this situation, so he lowered his voice and asked the girl carefully.
“Did you want to lock me up instead of yourself?”
“How could that be.”
“I thought…… you called me here to ask for help. I kept hearing someone calling, and the moment this classroom came into view, I wanted to come in. The seniors didn’t seem to see the classroom at all.”
“You’re the only one I called.”
“Then what……?”
“But I don’t need a replacement. My revenge is already finished.”
Scratch, scratch, thud.
With those words, the sound began of several small hands clawing at the floor.
The noise grew louder, becoming the desperate thrashing of someone trapped underground, struggling to escape before they suffocated.
From all across the worn classroom floor, densely packed, came screams and wails.
Yu Jong-hwa forgot to breathe for a moment.
He stood still, enduring the countless presences he felt stirring beneath the old wooden boards.
“Do you want to help these children too?”
The girl laughed and stomped on a section of floorboard that had come loose.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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