Chapter 16: Main Character (III)
Under the light of the red moon, a soft chiming of bells was heard as two teenage girls traversed through a hall lit by blood. A cold draft bellowed through the corridor, blooming goosebumps across both Cha Hwa Rim and Im Nari’s bodies, yet they soldiered on.
Dan Woo, wearing the shell of Cha Hwa Rim, had his hands dancing over a school bag steeped in the sweet scent of glutinous rice. His left hand caressed the bag while his right continued to grip the now-warm surface of the chiming bells. He let them lead him now.
Soon enough, the two girls stopped at a certain door as the chiming bells increased to a greater frequency, their sound flooding the hall before suddenly stopping. Cha Hwa Rim suddenly felt a wave of dark, malevolent energy seeping out from beyond the door. Dan Woo glanced up to see the words:
Class 2-3.
That was Cha Hwa Rim and Im Nari’s homeroom.
"Cha Hwa Rim... can you hear that?" Im Nari suddenly asked, her hands wrapping around Cha Hwa Rim. The warmth and fragrance of Im Nari’s presence melted the creeping cold, slowly flushing away Cha Hwa Rim’s stone-faced look. Dan Woo suddenly felt Cha Hwa Rim’s heart beat faster and faster.
This feeling...
Dan Woo quickly retracted Cha Hwa Rim’s hand, startling a slightly scared Im Nari as he turned Hwa Rim’s eyes toward the door, ears perking up.
There was nothing.
Yet Im Nari seemed to have heard something.
"Stand behind me."
A cold teenage female voice reverberated through the hall.
Dan Woo stretched out a hand, ready to swing the door open. But just as the soft feminine hand grasped the surface of the handle, a warm energy filled Cha Hwa Rim, making Dan Woo feel as though he had been plunged into sizzling hot oil.
His senses warped as colour, sound, and smell intertwined in a meld of otherworldly sensations, blurring the line between reality and hallucination. Slowly, it all began to calm.
When Dan Woo opened his eyes, the bright light of the sun greeted him, its warmth striking his skin.
The sounds of drowning chatter entered his ears, accompanied by the soft scent of chalk, books, and a mixture of floral fragrances.
Dan Woo tried to make sense of the stabilizing disorientation as a warm, mature female voice spoke.
"...Okay everyone, settle down. Today we have a transfer student."
Once the words landed, Dan Woo’s vision settled, faces, desks, and unfamiliar students hitting him all at once. Several pairs of eyes now stared at him as though he were an exhibition at a zoo.
"Would you mind introducing yourself?"
Dan Woo turned to see a warm, caring face at the source of the voice. He still gazed around, his head whipping about as he tried to contextualize what his eyes, ears, and other senses were feeding him.
Was he still in Hanseoung Academy?
His eyes swept across the unfamiliar classroom before turning to the faces, searching to see if he could recognize anyone. He could see the familiar logo of Hanseoung Academy, but every face was unfamiliar to him.
Then he saw a familiar one.
It was Im Nari.
"New student..." a voice began, yet even with the silence, Dan Woo was still dazed.
"Hey, new girl!"
The words cut through the muddled haze, Dan Woo’s attention immediately drawn toward a boy sitting at the back.
"Your name?"
"What?"
"The teacher is asking for your introduction."
Dan Woo turned to look at the teacher before finally regaining his bearings.
"My name is Ki— Cha Hwa Rim, and I am happy to be here."
She spoke, moving through the mechanical motions as her eyes remained glued to a face at the back.
"Welcome, Cha Hwa Rim. You can choose any desk to your liking."
The moment the words left the teacher’s mouth, Cha Hwa Rim was already walking past several empty desks, heading straight for the only familiar face before taking a seat beside her.
"Im Nari," Dan Woo began.
The girl remained silent.
"Im Nari," she tried again.
Yet Im Nari remained silent, her face glued to the movements of the teacher at the front of the class.
Dan Woo soon fell silent as well, trying to make sense of the direction of whatever story she had been drawn into.
At first, he thought maybe he was dealing with an anomaly that forced all under its domain to play out a script, and since he was playing the character of Cha Hwa Rim, that meant within this instance he was Cha Hwa Rim, at least until he finished the instance. That would explain why he couldn’t make use of his system abilities, as fundamentally he was no longer Dan Woo.
But now, he wasn’t so sure.
The Chapter they were working through was about a vengeful ghost that lived within the mirrors of washrooms, compelling everyone who gazed upon their reflection to take their own lives. Cha Hwa Rim was supposed to fight against this vengeful ghost the classic way, but now it seemed like he was dealing with a high-level anomaly, and he wasn’t sure how to proceed with the story.
He sat down, going through the massive number of Chapters he had just devoured, trying to see if the current scene brought about any feeling of familiarity.
There was nothing.
After all, Cha Hwa Rim’s exorcism always took place at night beneath the gaze of the red moon.
The red moon...
Dan Woo muttered the words.
Did he need to be under the red moon to complete the instance?
Then why had it suddenly become day?
He needed to learn the rules of this particular instance. After all, eerie Instances operated under different rules, each tied to an anomaly’s concept within its domain.
All he knew was that whatever anomaly he was dealing with was a high-level one.
He turned his attention to the classroom situation.
There was a teacher teaching English. The other students seemed focused—well, not all of them—but it definitely felt like a normal classroom. Some were sleeping, others scribbling down their notes anxiously, while others were simply lost in their own dreams.
There also seemed to be a number of absent students, as many desks sat empty, but he would know for certain when attendance was taken.
I need to try something, Dan Woo thought as he reached into Cha Hwa Rim’s school bag, searching for her shamanic tools.
Gone.
Everything was gone.
The glutinous rice, the brass bells, the talismans, the ritual daggers, the fans...
There was nothing.
It seems I’ll have to improvise, he thought.
He looked deep into Cha Hwa Rim’s memories of shamanism, deciding to perform an improvised ritual.
Dan Woo quickly pricked Cha Hwa Rim’s finger. A single drop of blood fell as she began to chant silently.
The moment she began, a cold breeze started to blow as soft whispers bombarded her ears. They were unintelligible, like a delayed chorus of words, yet every voice seemed to come from the same source, carrying the same cadence.
Dan Woo struggled to make out the words. Only two stood out.
2 and 3
What was it with 2 and 3 again?
He sighed, only to open her eyes to a much later part of the day, the name Cha Hwa Rim spelled out in her own blood.
A note was stuck beside it.
You shouldn’t have come here.
The words drilled into her eyes as she looked around, trying to understand where they had come from. But before she could even get her bearings—
A wave of notification pulses suddenly rang out throughout the classroom as everyone turned to their phones, including Dan Woo. The name of an app unfamiliar to him began to echo from every device.
It’s time.
It’s time.
A girl with glasses and the cliché scholarly look stepped up to the podium as she began.
"This is the fifth round of Skeletons in the Closet. It’s time to open the skeletons."
Immediately, a strange children’s song started to play throughout the school’s PA system.
As the daylight faded...
...the red moon rose.
Dan Woo bounced his gaze between the girl at the front, the now-alert students, and finally his own phone, the interface of the app Closet staring back at her.
What was going on?
The question slipped from his lips as the girl continued to explain the rules of the game.