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Escape and Confinement
“Ugh…”
I scrambled to my feet.
Every inch of my body throbbed from the impact of the fall.
Each movement sent sharp, stinging agony radiating through me.
It felt like one or two bones were cracked or broken.
Under normal circumstances, I would have collapsed and groaned under the pain, but my survival instinct forced my body to move.
The guard watched my miserable state through the window. He stood rooted in place like a wooden post, utterly motionless.
‘Is the guard unable to enter the classroom too?’
Soon, the guard approached the front door.
He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a key.
Without hesitation, he inserted it into the lock.
-Click
The tightly locked front door swung open with sickening ease.
‘Fuck.’
The guard entered the classroom without any obstruction. There was still no focus in his eyes.
Then life flooded into his pupils, and his eyes snapped wide open. The guard began to convulse madly in place.
I couldn’t suppress my horror as I watched his forearm bend acrobatically, snapping a hundred and eighty degrees.
Twisting his body like a contorted marionette, the guard put on an acrobatic show, as if auditioning for Cirque du Soleil.
Before long, his head rotated three hundred and sixty degrees. The guard began to move, his limbs creaking and cracking.
One step, two steps. His pace swelled uncontrollably, and soon he was sprinting toward me like an arrow.
‘What do I do?’
My mind went blank.
A fear unlike anything I had ever experienced consumed me.
Yet the determination to survive somehow forced my legs to move.
“Fuck off,”
I snatched up a nearby chair and gripped it tight. I slammed it into the back of the guard’s head as he charged wildly at me.
-Thud!
A dull, heavy sound reverberated through the classroom. It was a blow that would put a normal person in critical condition at the very least. But the guard didn’t so much as flinch.
He didn’t let out so much as a scream, nor did he fall. The guard froze perfectly still, locked in his charging stance.
His gaze fixed solely on me.
“Be-hella!”
I brought the chair down again. This time, I smashed it squarely into the guard’s head.
The End.
A strike that should’ve put him out for twelve weeks.
But the impact felt wrong.
It didn’t feel like striking a human skull. It felt like hitting a solid lump of iron.
Then came a crunching sound, and the chair broke apart. It wasn’t the guard’s head that shattered—it was the chair, along with my sanity.
The end.
“Fuck…”
I threw the broken chair leg and bolted. Immediately after, heavy footfalls thundered behind me.
The guard was chasing me. At this rate, he would catch up for sure.
I weaved between the desks, putting distance between us to avoid being caught.
But the guard simply barreled through the desks as if they were mere annoyances, giving chase.
There was only one escape route.
Only the front door. But it was too far from here. The odds of the guard catching me before I reached it were high.
‘Over there!’
I looked for another way out. I grabbed a nearby fallen chair and hurled it at the window.
If the window was locked, I was prepared to smash the glass and escape.
-Bang!
The chair arced through the air and struck the window, bouncing off with a loud clang.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. The window was perfectly intact, not a scratch on it. This godforsaken school even had bulletproof windows.
‘Fuck…’
I stared at the absurdly sturdy window in despair. Before I knew it, the guard was right behind me.
In that moment, time seemed to slow to a crawl. A spine-chilling terror washed over me.
Even as I wasted time on futile attempts, the desperate will to survive made me run. I used a chair as a foothold to climb onto a desk and sprinted across the tops.
The guard, seemingly having not expected this, flailed about in confusion, losing me.
‘This is it!’
I immediately ran for the wide-open front door. This was a chance that wouldn’t come again.
I forced my legs—which felt ready to give out at any second—to keep moving.
Vaulting over desks, I reached the front door in no time.
“I’m almost there!”
Just one more step and I’d be out of the classroom.
-Crack
My leading left foot came down on the door threshold. Simultaneously, a sharp, stinging pain shot through my toes.
‘Wait.’
By the time I realized something was wrong, my momentum was already carrying me out of the classroom.
My brain screamed at me to stop, but my legs, completely beyond my control, carried me outside. I couldn’t stop my momentum.
The moment I was completely outside, I instinctively knew I had crossed a point of no return.
Soon, my toes began to redden as if being crushed. My blood vessels became congested, as if about to burst, and the redness gradually crept up my body.
Bulging veins covered my body like threads crawling across my skin. A burning, stinging agony surged through me.
I lost all control and collapsed. I couldn’t feel my legs. My lower body was mangled beyond recognition.
Crimson blood sprayed and dripped everywhere. Pooled blood soaked my lower body. It was not a pleasant sensation.
I couldn’t even tell if the wetness was from pissing myself or from the blood.
I writhed grotesquely, sprawled flat in the hallway. My lower body was mangled beyond recognition.
My legs were blown apart, flesh torn and bloodied. Only tough muscle fibers dangled loosely between the bones.
They had completely lost their function as limbs. In this state, crawling was my best option.
Tears burst from my eyes. They weren’t shed from sorrow or injustice, but from pure agony.
I had gone too far to turn back now. Before I knew it, the veins had crept up to my upper body as well.
It was a grotesque sight, as if red threads had been scattered across my entire body.
The progressively swelling veins tore at my skin, and a burning agony seized my entire body.
My consciousness faded. I could only stare blankly at the horrific sight.
[Escape the classroom within the time limit.]
[Failure Penalty: Death]
It wasn’t enough to simply escape the classroom. If I truly wanted to live, I had to escape within the time limit, just as the message instructed.
But I didn’t.
I had dismissed the timer, which warned of the time limit’s danger, as no big deal.
And that was why I was here now.
“Hurk.”
My throat burned as if set aflame.
My head spun as pain choked the breath from my lungs,
-Pop
Soon, my consciousness faded as I felt bundles of nerves snap.
[You have died.]
[Restarting from checkpoint.]
**
I slowly opened my eyes.
A familiar sight greeted me.
The classroom was silent as the grave. The school at midnight was pitch black, devoid of a single light.
“…”
For a moment, my mind went blank, as if my soul had left my body. I couldn’t forget what had just happened.
‘A dream?’
As I sat there in a daze, something on the desk suddenly caught my eye.
It was a notebook. Opened haphazardly, it had strange numbers written on it.
[00:00]
Seeing this, my entire body broke out in goosebumps, and I felt a sense of déjà vu.
I checked the clock. The current time was exactly midnight—the same time I had woken up just moments ago.
Soon, a message appeared in the air.
-Fwoosh
[The tutorial has begun.]
[Escape the classroom within the time limit.]
[Remaining Time: 9:59]
[Reward: Status Window]
[Failure Penalty: Death]
…No way.
My tongue stuck fast to the roof of my mouth. I was frozen stiff. The words wouldn’t come.
[9:48]
And so, to my dismay, the timer began to tick. Staring at the relentlessly decreasing numbers, I froze.
My head was full of confusion.
What would happen if I exceeded the time limit? Would the nightmare I just experienced repeat itself?
I swallowed hard and looked down. Fortunately, my lower body was intact. Both legs were still firmly attached.
But I subconsciously realized this too was a matter of time.
If I dawdled, I’d end up flailing on the ground like before.
If I wanted to live, I had to escape this damned classroom within ten minutes.
[9:32]
Exactly nine minutes and thirty-two seconds.
I scrambled to my feet and looked around the classroom.
It was the exact same scene as before. The lockers, the desks—everything was in the exact same place.
The locked front and back doors, the red locker—all of it was the same.
‘…Nothing much has changed.’
I had probably missed something earlier because I’d only given the room a cursory glance.
This time, knowing my life was on the line, I scoured the classroom with a keen eye.
First, I approached the nearest desk to check for anything hidden.
[It’s an empty desk.]
A message popped up out of nowhere. It described the situation for me, as if supplanting my internal monologue.
‘It’s not like this is some RPG.’
It was an absurd spectacle. I let out a hollow sigh and continued searching.
Then, out of nowhere, I spotted something glinting between the desks. It was a piece of paper.
A torn notebook page was wedged between the desk legs. Oddly enough, it was glowing. As I reached for it, the light faded.
[You have acquired a note.]
A new message appeared.
Just like acquiring an item in an RPG.
Did that mean I had to check items the same way as in an RPG?
“Inventory.”
Swallowing my pride, I muttered under my breath. Instantly, a large window materialized in the air.
[Held Items]
1. Note
Wow, this really works.
The item window displayed the note I had just acquired. That confirmed my suspicion that this wasn’t just a scrap of paper.
‘Is this how you do it?’
I mimed clicking the air, and the note’s detailed description appeared.
[Note]
【A note wedged under the desk. It is heavily crumpled and torn. A hastily scribbled memo is written on it.】
A hastily scribbled memo?
I couldn’t just gloss over it. It was clearly a clue for escaping the classroom.
As I fumbled to unfold the note, a message popped up.
[Would you like to use the note?]
Given that my current reality was ripped straight from an RPG, the interaction methods were identical as well.
I mimed clicking the ‘Yes’ button, and the note unfolded with the sound of rustling paper.
-0134
As described, the crumpled note bore numbers scrawled in messy handwriting.
In absolutely terrible handwriting, at that.
If the note had contained numbers like 2 or 5, which are easily confused, I wouldn’t have been able to read it.
Thankfully, the numbers were intuitive ones like 0 and 1, so I could barely make them out. The fact that there were four digits was especially significant.
‘Wait, a password?’
Four digits naturally made me think of a password. Four-digit puzzles were a staple of RPGs.
You combine clues from your surroundings to find a four-digit number, then enter it into a keypad to unlock something.
A puzzle format common to RPGs across all eras.
Therefore, the four-digit number on the note had to be a password.
‘Then where is the password for?’
The red locker used a key, not a keypad.
Then there was only one thing left.
The lock on the back door of the classroom.
[Please enter the password.]
Hoping against hope, I headed to the back door.
“Please work…”
I entered the numbers exactly as they were written on the note.
It was suspiciously straightforward to have a four-digit number written so explicitly, but I wasn’t about to complain.
Trash games are usually like this, after all.
They pad out the maps for no reason to piss off players, or create puzzles that make progression impossible.
Given that, it wasn’t at all unusual for the RPG genre to feature puzzles so simple that even a five-year-old nephew could solve them.
I decided to bet on that sliver of hope.
I was betting everything on the fact that the developer of this real-life RPG was a braindead fucking moron incapable of designing a sophisticated puzzle.
[0134]
I entered the password into the lock and slowly pulled on it.
-Clack
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