Dispatches from the Graduate School of Ghost Stories - Chapter 23

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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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Haunted Locations and Graduate School (23)
It might just work
First rule of conduct for an Explorer when an unprecedented Anomalous Phenomenon occurs at a Haunted Location.
Identify the cause.
“It’s past seven now, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Over ten minutes. Students should’ve filed in the moment the bell rang.”
The seniors spoke quietly while keeping their eyes on the school gates, then surveyed the now-silent Pond.
The newcomer who’d caused the disaster stood at attention behind them, steeling himself for the verbal lashing to come.
Truth be told, a tongue-lashing would be a mercy. If things went sideways even slightly, this was the sort of Haunted Location where you could lose your life, so they should have discussed it properly before he acted. Fortunately, the seniors weren’t holding him accountable.
“Well, what’s done is done. Let’s figure out how it got to this.”
So Hwi-yeong and Lee Ju-ho combed through their past records, checking whether any similar cases existed, but found not even a hint.
Yu Jong-hwa was a newcomer, and even the seniors weren’t people with especially specialized knowledge, so the three ultimately failed to identify the cause of the Anomalous Phenomenon.
Right now they needed a Plan B.
Second rule of conduct for an Explorer when an Anomalous Phenomenon occurs at a Haunted Location.
Run.
So Hwi-yeong checked through his belongings and stuffed the broken Axe that Lee Ju-ho had picked up into her bag.
“Should we give up on the Gas Burner in the Music Room?”
“Yeah. There’s nothing important. We can buy a new Frying Pan.”
“All right. Jong-hwa. Let’s get out right now. We’ll abandon the research materials—I’ll tell them I was out on an exploration elsewhere. If I apply quickly for somewhere I can explore solo, that should work.”
“Mm… no. The professor said we definitely need one, so we should wrap this up since we’ve come this far. Hey, Jong-sik. Go back into Class 3 and grab those Candies. You can make it there and back in five minutes, right?”
Hwi-yeong, her expression listless, issued instructions toward the source of the problem.
Translation: you’re responsible, so you fix it yourself.
Go alone into a classroom where three ghosts had been? But his crime was far too grave to rebel. Yu Jong-hwa, looking like death warmed over, answered obediently.
“Y-yes, I’ll be right back.”
“No. Better if I go. At least I can handle things with force.”
“Doesn’t he look pretty sturdy too?”
“…It’s not the same thing.”
Human strength, for what it’s worth. Lee Ju-ho didn’t spell it out, but Yu Jong-hwa caught on quickly.
Thank you so much, Senior!
He stood silently, his eyes shining with infinite reverence toward this kindly senior who’d volunteered to sacrifice herself.
So Hwi-yeong sighed, brushed off her pants, and got to her feet.
“That’s enough. I was joking. Let’s all go together. Even the road to the afterlife’s better with company.”
“I could just go alone…”
“If you go and we lose contact, we won’t even be able to come look for you, Jong-ho.”
And so the three decided to return to the classroom together as a unit.
They tilted their heads toward Class 3, its window shattered. There was no sound of a raucous quarrel, and no eerie presences watching them. Before long, Yu Jong-hwa could be certain that the Principal was no longer in the sixth-grade classroom.
The proof was the blinds drawn down over the Principal’s Office window near the Pond.
“Seniors, if you compare the ghost in the Library to the Principal, which one scares you more?”
Lee Ju-ho answered his question matter-of-factly.
“The Principal, because there’s so little information… if it were me, I’d pick a fight with the Library friend.”
“It’s over there, Senior.”
Yu Jong-hwa glanced around cautiously, barely flicking his index finger to indicate the window.
Two pale, murky eyes peered at them through the gaps in the blinds.
In a flash, all three spun around and pretended they’d seen nothing.
“Well, that’s one down. I wish the girl from the Library would be gone too.”
“Since it’s morning, I think they all went back to their places. Baek Sa-hye is the real problem though…”
They didn’t enter the school openly and honestly. They had no courage or spirit of adventure—only healthy bodies.
So the three scaled the wall. To be precise, two climbed the wall while one rode piggyback.
They meant to be righteous thieves—grab what they needed and leave quickly.
“Senior, are you really okay?”
“Don’t talk, Jong-ho—you’re heavy enough. Words have weight too, don’t they?”
“What are you saying, seriously.”
Hwi-yeong, perched on Ju-ho’s back with a serene expression, scolded Jong-hwa.
Around Ju-ho’s waist was wound a sturdy Climbing Rope, which also connected to Yu Jong-hwa’s waist as he scrambled up the wall behind her.
To survive at a Haunted Location, you had to know how to Climb.
Yu Jong-hwa, who hadn’t yet learned this trendy new sport, struggled painfully upward, gripping the gaps in the crumbling bricks as he followed.
“Hello there?”
A clear, melodious voice drifted down from above.
With Ju-ho’s movement halted, Yu Jong-hwa, who’d been clinging to the wall like a cicada, lifted his head to look up.
Baek Sa-hye had poked her head out the broken window and was greeting them.
“Why would you come in that way? Our classroom has two doors.”
“……Is it just you?”
To emphasize his state of exhaustion after being worked to the bone all day, Yu Jong-hwa asked the child in the most pitiful voice he could muster.
He gripped the window sill and pulled himself up to glance around the classroom, but it didn’t seem like anyone else was there.
“I saw the Imugi ascend earlier. Nobody’s going to come anymore.”
“Wait. You know about the Imugi? Baek Sa-hye. Please think I’m dumber than anyone who’s ever come here, and explain this in as much detail as possible. I haven’t caused some kind of disaster, have I……?”
“How detailed should I get?”
“As much as possible! And kindly!”
While Yu Jong-hwa was persuading the suspicious girl, Lee Ju-ho removed her outer coat, draped it over her arm, and swept away the glass shards to clear the space around the door frame.
She first lifted So Hwi-yeong and placed her inside the classroom, then hooked one leg over the window sill and nimbly climbed through.
Of course, Yu Jong-hwa had an enormously difficult time entering the classroom. Climbing the four stories was hard enough, and squeezing his body through the window was even worse.
“Don’t tell me the mystery of Yeongrok Elementary School is actually over? People aren’t permanently locked out or anything like that, right?!”
The moment So Hwi-yeong reached the classroom, she began tearing through the floor with a loud clang.
Yu Jong-hwa too crawled on all fours searching for candies, but found nothing. The candies that had scattered everywhere at night were now nowhere to be seen.
“The anomaly site is finished. An Imugi living in the pond became so enraged that it kept causing strange things to happen at the school.”
“No! I absolutely cannot report this. The pharmaceutical companies will go crazy…… I might even get fined by the government!”
“Brother. Is the material that comes from here really that important?”
“I only overheard it from the researchers, so I’m not entirely sure…… but apparently items from anomaly sites that don’t negatively affect the mind are extremely rare. This place actually clears the mind and enhances concentration, so it has value.”
In place of the furious So Hwi-yeong, Lee Ju-ho offered a thoughtful answer and began explaining her basic knowledge from memory.
Many desire immortality, but it’s impossible that any anomaly site product has such a convenient function. Anything even remotely beneficial to health sells for exorbitant prices on the black market, and various research institutes are eagerly analyzing the composition.
“Wow, so something like ADHD could be treated right away with the material that comes from here?”
“Hmm…… it’s not quite that remarkable. More like a higher-performance vitality tonic……? There’s also some fatigue-recovery effect, supposedly.”
“Yu Jong-hwa’s right. Those brown bottles they sell at convenience stores…….”
“Oh, that.”
At the suddenly mundane performance, Yu Jong-hwa muttered to himself. So he’d been running around for 24 hours just for a fatigue-recovery supplement? Though it had to be better than that, surely…….
Wait. Could it be that the stone received the fatigue-recovery effect and turned back into the snake’s head? Struck by sudden enlightenment, Yu Jong-hwa marveled at his own brilliant deduction.
“The thing is, different effects show up for different people. Some say it has no effect at all. Some say they did a little better on tests. That’s why the product description says it ‘may’ enhance concentration.”
“Isn’t that a scam?”
Science naturally works such that great breakthroughs come from small discoveries.
Yu Jong-hwa decided that anomaly site research was just that kind of world and simply accepted the reality.
“Is that glittery thing really that impressive?”
“I don’t know if the effect is impressive, but the price certainly is.”
To the child’s question, So Hwi-yeong offered a cynical, adult-like reply.
Baek Sa-hye, who had been quietly listening to their conversation, pondered for a moment before casually dropping the truth that no one else had uncovered.
“It’s a Yeouiju. The Imugi dropped it when it lost its head, and it shattered and scattered around the school.”
“……So people were busy stealing degraded versions of the Yeouiju.”
The reason the snake had grown angry at the sight of humans made sense now.
It must have been able to ascend after recovering at least some of the Yeouiju. Yu Jong-hwa, vaguely embarrassed as he recalled his own blunder, began to worry about the future.
If Yeongrok Elementary School truly ceased to be an anomaly site, then he would become the principal culprit responsible for shutting down an excellent supply source.
“Will we not be able to obtain any more fragments of the Yeouiju here?”
“They won’t be produced anew. But there’s still quite a lot remaining. The Principal took most of them, though…… and there are a few with the other teachers.”
The child carefully approached the teacher’s desk and pulled out a drawer that didn’t come loose easily.
A few cheap candies wrapped in glittering paper remained inside.
Yu Jong-hwa and Lee Ju-ho immediately reached for the candies, but So Hwi-yeong swatted both their hands away.
“We’re only taking one.”
“Why? It would be better to take them all.”
“That’s only good for you. Now we’re going into strategy mode. We have to maintain the Yeongrok Elementary School anomaly site no matter what. At minimum, we can’t be the ones who end it.”
She spoke seriously and rearranged the desks to create a place to sit.
The three of them sat side by side, facing Baek Sa-hye.
Though she didn’t need to comply, the girl seemed amused by something and took the seat they offered.
“We’re asking for your cooperation.”
So Hwi-yeong suddenly bowed in a formal posture.
The other two, picking up on the cue, bowed as well, and Sa-hye nodded her head with the arrogance of a company president.
Before So Hwi-yeong’s strategy began, Yu Jong-hwa wanted to resolve the lingering doubt. The child knew far too much.
“But tell me—what exactly is your identity?”
Unable to hold back any longer, Yu Jong-hwa raised his hand and asked.

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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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