Anomalies swarmed around the section chief and the Watcher.
Of course, since they were all duplicate bodies, there was nothing we could do for them right now.
Unless we wanted to fight anomalies inside a hallucination.
[I’ll take the music room. You take Year 1, Class 3.]
Senior Yeonu said so and gestured with her hand.
[If you don’t want to find the anomaly and kill it, figure out the rules. Then you should be able to escape without catching it.]
“R-right.”
It felt like one of those familiar Napolitan ghost stories.
I wondered if it would let us live as long as we followed the rules.
[Let’s go.]
Nervous, I nodded, then hurriedly called out to her.
“S-senior!”
[…?]
When I called her, she turned back to me and tilted her head.
“I’ve been wondering since earlier… S-senior, you can defeat anomalies with that anomaly, can’t you?”
[…I can.]
She looked down at the blade with a slightly uneasy expression.
I cautiously asked her,
“What about me…?”
[You can attack too, can’t you? Like when you hit me.]
“I-it doesn’t look like I can control that.”
[Really?]
My body had transformed like an anomaly’s and attacked her.
But that had only happened while my PTSD was being triggered; it wasn’t something I could control.
When I attacked, I had even felt as if someone else was controlling my body.
So when I asked what I should do if I encountered an anomaly, she asked me a question instead.
[Do you specifically need your head cut off to revive?]
“…What?”
[Will you revive even if you just die……]
“No… I-I don’t want to die.”
[The only thing you’re useful for is dying and coming back to life, isn’t it? Are you asking me to use you as a test subject?]
She asked with a deathly blank expression.
I had thought we had gotten a little closer, but apparently not.
I quickly lowered my eyes and said I was sorry, that I hadn’t meant that.
[…If it looks like you won’t come back after dying, I’ll cut off your head for you.]
“…Okay.”
[I’ll make sure you revive no matter what, so don’t worry and die.]
She said that and patted my shoulder.
I wanted to say it wasn’t comforting at all.
‘Scary, scary, scary, scary…!’
But fear was stronger, so I said nothing and entered through the main entrance.
[The music room is on the third floor. Year 1, Class 3 is on the second.]
“…I’m immune to hallucinations, right?”
[Yeah. We confirmed that the sound causes the hallucinations.]
“Our homeroom teacher… was the music teacher……”
[You should’ve said that sooner.]
I had never even imagined our teacher would be an anomaly, so how was I supposed to have told her?
Like that, we reached the second floor.
[Tap the earphones once and you’ll be able to hear the sounds around you.]
“What about the song…?”
[They’ll probably filter it out.]
She said that and told me to press them first.
I really didn’t want to, but she had her hand on the sword hilt like she would kill me if I didn’t, so I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed down hard on the earphones.
Then her voice came through.
“How is it? Can you hear me?”
“Uh… yes. But the radio cut off.”
“We’re close, so it’ll work again once we’re farther apart.”
Then she pressed her own earphones.
“I’m going up. If anything happens, scream.”
“Y-yes……”
“Good luck. And if there’s anything strange, record it and use your head to find a way out. We need to call for support.”
Even though she had been dragged into an anomaly, she was completely unshaken.
Watching her, I trembled.
“Rules… ruleees……”
The hallway stretched on without end.
Wondering just what rules this school could have, I slowly headed toward our classroom.
* * *
When I arrived at the classroom, I saw a single remaining desk and bloodstains.
Smelling the metallic reek of blood, I slowly walked inside.
“…Rules, rules.”
When it came to rules to follow at school, there was only one thing that came to mind.
[School Rules Guide]
A bloodstained school rules guide.
I peeled it off where it had been taped to the blackboard, placed it on the teacher’s desk, and began to read it slowly.
[School Rules Guide]
[1. Students must always greet teachers.]
[2. Ignore the teacher when they call you. Ignore Rule 1.]
[3. Do not run in the hallway.]
[4. If the security guard calls you, run away like mad and ignore Rules 3 and 5.]
[5. If the security guard calls you, greet him politely.]
[6. Do not read Rules 2, 4, and 8.]
[7. Observe Rule 6.]
[8. Ignore all of the teacher’s actions. Ignore Rule 9.]
[9. Teachers and students must respect one another.]
[10. If you have read a rule you were not supposed to read, report it to a teacher immediately.]
“…!!”
The school rules guide had been altered in some bizarre way.
I couldn’t see a single rule that was properly written.
Some of the rules were even written in thick red letters.
The only rule that was the same was that students must always greet teachers.
“…Who made the rules like this?”
At that moment, a very familiar voice came from behind me.
“Sion, you’re late.”
It was the perfectly ordinary voice of our homeroom teacher.
My head turned back of its own accord.
There stood a human figure with about half of it crushed, smiling at me so very gently—
“Can you see your teacher? Sit down. Class has to begin.”
It was smiling at me.
So very gently.
I had to ignore it.
Should I ignore it?
“Aren’t you going to greet me? You saw me, didn’t you?”
Like the Watcher, the teacher spoke human words fluently.
Staring at the teacher, I froze.
I didn’t react at all.
Which rule was I supposed to follow?
Which rule did I have to follow to get out of here alive?
Moving only my eyes, I looked at the rules placed on the teacher’s desk.
One rule entered my sight.
[4. If the security guard calls you, run away like mad and ignore Rules 3 and 5.]
If the security guard called, run away like mad.
That was what I had done.
And the other two, Rules 3 and 5, were not running in the hallway and greeting the security guard politely.
Those were things I hadn’t done.
I had a rough idea now.
About the rules of this school.
‘I have to follow only the rules written in thick red letters and break the rest.’
I quickly looked for the rules concerning teachers.
[1. Students must always greet teachers.]
[2. Ignore the teacher when they call you. Ignore Rule 1.]
[8. Ignore all of the teacher’s actions. Ignore Rule 9.]
[9. Teachers and students must respect one another.]
I had to obey these rules to survive here.
I still hadn’t done anything.
“Hurry to your seat. I need to take attendance.”
The teacher said so with the gentlest smile in the world.
If I moved even a single step from here, I could die.
I had to act naturally.
While avoiding the distorted teacher.
I slowly turned my head away from the teacher to follow the rules.
“……”
Without saying a word, I stopped in place.
I was scared, so terribly scared, but I couldn’t even show surprise.
I had to cut off every interaction with the teacher and do nothing but breathe.
‘I can do this… please… Mom…!!’
Praying inwardly for her to let me live just one more time, I crouched down in front of the teacher’s desk.
And the teacher approached me, staring down at me as if she would kill me.
I desperately pretended not to see it and only kept sniffling.
* * *
When Yeonu arrived at the music room, she slowly looked around.
She couldn’t see anything.
“…The piano. Where did it go?”
Even the piano that had been playing perfectly fine until just now was gone.
“Is the piano the main body? Not the homeroom teacher…?”
Thinking that, she pulled out an earplug slightly.
The sound of the piano was still audible.
If there was one thing different from before, it was that now, even inside the music room, it was coming through the speakers.
“The broadcasting room…?”
Wondering if it had moved to the broadcasting room, she considered listening a little longer, but because of the auditory hallucinations, she couldn’t, and immediately put the earplug back in.
“If it’s in the broadcasting room… I’ll need a key.”
Yeonu let out a sigh.
Everything felt bleak, and her hands began to tremble.
“Get a grip. You have to live again.”
She cut down anomalies solely to survive.
Just as she had cut down her father.
Just like that day when she had made certain to end her dying mother’s breath.
Determined to become stronger, Yeonu moved from her spot toward the place where the piano had originally been.
“…I can see outside the window now. Why?”
The view outside the window, which had been invisible earlier, was beginning to appear again.
And the red light streaming in through that window illuminated one spot.
The place where the piano should have been.
As if bewitched, she approached it and found a single sheet of paper lying there.
[Music Room Rules]
“……”
She didn’t know if the paper had been there originally.
But Yeonu had a feeling this was not a paper that had originally been there.
Because the paper itself—
“…It’s wet with blood.”
It was damp, soaked in blood. The handwriting on the A4 sheet was crooked, as if someone had written it in a hurry.
Seeing letters that looked as if the writer barely knew how to write, Yeonu took out an envelope, carefully unfolded the paper, and placed it inside.
“Material… collected.”
Precious material to be used in analyzing the anomaly.
After taking it, she rose from her spot.
[Senior, be careful…!! The teacher is going th-that, that way! No matter what, absolutely don’t acknowledge her, and don’t attack her…!! You have to pretend not to know she’s there to live!!]
Sion’s urgent transmission came through.
And immediately after—
“You’re someone I haven’t seen before.”
A grotesquely kind voice rang out.