I Became the Hidden Mastermind

006 – Abyss of the Boy # 6

006 – Abyss of the Boy # 6

“A favor? Eternity, asking me for a favor?”

Yang Juhee made a pitiful expression.

Is she still thinking of acting sassy and cheeky even in this situation?

This crazy girl.

If only she knew the location of the multipurpose room, she would have confidently gone on her own!

“What favor? Eternity, what favor could you possibly ask me? Huh?”

Yang Juhee clenched her fist and asked me.

Feeling like saying, “Let’s see where this goes.”

“Not a favor to ask right now. Later, there’s something I’ll ask for. I can’t tell you what the favor is right now, but can you promise to listen?”

“What are you talking about? Making a promise without even saying what the favor is?”

“Promise! It might sound a bit strange to say it now. But, if it’s for the sake of escape, I might really need your help… Like a trump card.”

“hahahaha….”

Yang Juhee laughed.

However, her expression soon changed to seriousness.

“Ha Eternity, just because we’re here talking like this, do you think I’m easygoing? If it were usual, would you even bother asking me for a favor?”

Ding- Ding-

At that moment, a peculiar alarm rang.

When I turned my head, the digital clocks in the office were all indicating exactly 1 PM.

1 PM…

Really?

Is it this dark at 1 PM?

Whether it was the surprise from the clock’s sound or the sudden chill, Yang Ju-hee shook her body and swept her hair back from her forehead.

“Fine. I don’t know what your request is, but I’ll listen. I hate staying here longer than necessary.”

“Good. Let’s leave from here then.”

# # #

“Jeong So-jin claims to have seen three ghosts. Is it true? Besides the ghost with a bobbed haircut, are there other ghosts? Do you know what kind of ghosts they are?”

I asked Yang Ju-hee about the other type of ghost.

However, Yang Ju-hee shook her head as if there was nothing to grasp.

“No, I’ve only seen that shaman girl and the headless one. Is Jeong So-jin lying?”

Both Jeong So-jin and Yang Ju-hee claimed to be together during the incident with the headless ghost.

If Jeong So-jin saw it, Yang Ju-hee should have seen it too.

Did Jeong So-jin lie, as Yang Ju-hee suggests?

Or did Jeong So-jin see a third ghost separately after we parted ways?

There was another question on my mind.

“What about Kim Geon-ho? Where did Kim Geon-ho go?”

“Don’t bring up that guy’s story. Acting tough as usual, bragging like a real man, but the moment he saw a ghost, he wet his pants. Maybe he even soiled himself with… something more. Ugh.”

Yang Joo-hee held So-jin Jung’s hand and cursed Kim Geon-ho, who had run away while pretending to be tough.

As far as I know, Kim Geon-ho liked Yang Joo-hee.

Well, not exactly liked… maybe targeted as a male.

s*xual desire and affection are separate things.

But Yang Joo-hee never really liked Kim Geon-ho, and this time, it seemed she was thoroughly disgusted.

Anyway, Kim Geon-ho’s whereabouts were unknown.

It seemed to be somewhere in this corridor, but where and what he hid as remained a mystery.

As I walked for a while, I could solve two questions at once.

The first was the location of the multipurpose room.

“It’s the multipurpose room! Yeongwon, it’s the multipurpose room!”

Yang Joo-hee was very excited.

The characters written as “Multipurpose Room” looked like an oasis in the desert.

But I couldn’t be entirely happy because there was a large amount of blood splattered in front of the multipurpose room.

There were scattered shoes, including the Valencia shoes that Kim Geon-ho used to wear.

No, looking closely, there were not only shoes but various other things.

If you put them together well, wouldn’t it complete the puzzle of one person?

“This…,” Yang Joo-hee tried to say something to me but stopped.

As if deliberately avoiding the unpleasant smell of iron, she turned her gaze and inspected the lock on the entrance of the multipurpose room.

Upon closer inspection, there were traces of something striking the lock in the multipurpose room.

“When trying to break the lock, there must have been a loud noise. Perhaps someone heard that sound and came. That’s probably how it happened.”

“Is it that bell girl? That shaman girl!”

Could the bell girl have done such a thing?

Does being caught by the bell girl lead to this?

No.

I didn’t think so.

“Since the sound of the bell echoes loudly from a distance, Kim Geon-ho couldn’t have missed it. It’s like the sound is ringing as if telling you to hear it and run away.”

“That makes sense. But there’s something bothering me.”

“What is it?”

“Hayoungwon, were you calm with a strange composure compared to what I saw in the classroom? Your mind is working well too. You’re not originally that kind of character… Maybe a ghost?”

…Did I seem too calm?

I tried to concentrate on enduring the fear in my own way and surviving somehow.

When I thought it was troublesome to attract unnecessary suspicion, Yang Joo-hee said,

“Should I check if this is the real Yeongwon by touching his butt?”

“Ouch, don’t do that!”

“What’s wrong, it really is Yeongwon. Well, whatever, let’s say Kim Geon-ho died here. Honestly, I can only think that he deserved divine punishment. If it wasn’t the bell girl, could it be a head ghost?”

No, in my opinion, it wasn’t a head ghost.

I’ve seen how a person caught by a head ghost dies up close.

The physical force to mutilate a person like a fragment is not within the capabilities of a head ghost.

The conclusion that emerged after various circumstances was one.

There is something different from the Bell Girl or the Head Ghost in this nightmare corridor -.

Something so terrifying that even Kim Geon-ho’s physical strength cannot escape-.

“The third ghost that Jeong So-jin mentioned…?”

As I reached that thought, a creepy shiver ran down my spine.

Yang Ju-hee grabbed my arm desperately.

“Hey, open it quickly. Quickly. Open the multipurpose room! Quickly! Quickly! Quickly! Quickly!”

Clank-.

As I inserted the key, the lock clicked and the door creaked open.

When the rough sound of someone’s breathing, due to tension and anticipation, became indistinguishable-.

“Uh…?”

Someone made a surprised sound.

It was Yang Ju-hee.

“Multipurpose room… Where is the multipurpose room…? Multipurpose room… Where is it….”

Yang Ju-hee seemed dizzy in the corridor that appeared when she opened the door.

Just as I described earlier, when I opened the door to the multipurpose room, it turned out to be another ‘corridor’.

When I shone the lantern I obtained from the office, it said “1-4” on a classroom near the corridor.

“Ugh! Ahh! It’s the same corridor!”

Yang Ju-hee sat on the floor as if she had lost her mind, cursing.

This is how a person falls apart when the ‘hope’ they believed in shatters.

It could have been a planned event in some way.

The confirmation that the ‘multipurpose room’ was the exit was nowhere to be found.

“Damn it!”

The problem was that impulsively swearing Yang Ju-hee shouted loudly. It was easy to imagine what kind of situation she might end up in if this continued.

“Hey! Yang Ju-hee! Snap out of it! The exit might be beyond here! Even if it looks the same, it could be a different corridor!”

“Is it because of me…? Because I didn’t listen to my mom….”

Yang Ju-hee seemed beyond recovery.

Well, it’s understandable since she couldn’t escape from this dreadful corridor. Perhaps it was my mood, but I could hear the sound of droplets in the distance—drip-drip.

I debated whether I should leave Yang Ju-hee here.

But for me to escape, Yang Ju-hee was absolutely necessary.

The moment I grasped the identity of this horrible corridor, I was convinced, and so I couldn’t abandon Yang Ju-hee.

“Hey. Yang Ju-hee. Get yourself together!”

Slap!

I squatted down and slapped Yang Ju-hee’s cheek strongly.

“Ah—.”

Yang Ju-hee seemed surprised by the unexpected shock.

The expression on her face clearly showed that she hadn’t thought at all that I would slap her cheek.

That astonished expression quickly turned into anger, and she lunged at me.

“aaah!!!”

It was like a tiger.

The person who treated the nightmare corridor as their own playground seemed ready to charge at any moment. But that wouldn’t happen.

This one was just reckless.

But I was different.

Because I hadn’t given up yet.

In fact, I was grasping at the clues for escape, finding courage in holding onto the possibility of a multipurpose room escape. However, Yang Joo-hee turned out to be surprisingly good at fighting, and I was taking hits almost one-sidedly.

Ah, damn, it hurts so much!

I just got hit in the spine and bones!

If I keep this up, I’ll die from getting beaten!

“Hey! Wait! Just a moment! Ah! We can escape this corridor! I’ve thought about a few things, and it’s actually a simple trick! We can get out of here! But first, let’s get out of this place!”

I picked up the struggling Yang Joo-hee and went into “1-4.”

Then I said,

“Listen carefully. All of this is fake.”

“…What? What do you mean?”

“All of this is a dream! The entire place is a chaotic mess in terms of time!”

Time flows differently in dreams and reality.

Sometimes you spend years in a dream, even though it’s just a moment in reality.

The fact that Yang Joo-hee, who went missing yesterday, spent two days here, was a vague hint.

There was even more evidence.

“Status window.”

I took advantage of Yang Ju-hee’s distraction and opened the status window.

『Name: Ha Young-won Lv.1

Ability: 《Broken Clock》

Funds: 0 Points

Description: Once highly regarded, you have been spending meaningless days, killing time. However, even a broken clock manages to display the correct time twice a day.』

I had 0 points in my funds.

By the way, my funds used to increase by 1 point every day at noon, but yesterday, I spent 100 points to open a shop, and I gained 1 point at midnight.

I had used that 1 point I gained at midnight to invoke advice about this “Nightmare Corridor.”

So, my funds were now at 0.

But the clock I had seen in the faculty office already indicated that it was well past 12 o’clock in the afternoon.

If it really was already past 12 in the afternoon, then there should be points in my status window. That’s the normal expectation.

“The continuous repetition of the corridor is like that too. When people dream, is it a space or a loss of ability? Well, it’s because some functions of the brain stop. It feels like the same space is repeating. Have you seen the movie Inception?”

Most importantly, I had a crucial hint.

This place is the “Nightmare Corridor.”

What is a nightmare?

It’s a bad dream.

In other words, it was blatantly telling me right from the beginning that this place itself is a dream.

In other words –

“This is all just a dream!”

“What? Hah, damn… Fine. A dream… really… If it’s truly a dream, what should I do? Should I just die?”

“No, it’s better to put that on hold just in case.”

Many people woke up from scenes of death when they had nightmares.

But I didn’t know how the death experienced in this nightmare’s corridor would manifest in reality.

Honestly, I don’t want to die.

It’s genuinely terrifying.

“But I do know how to wake up from a dream for sure. I have this skill of desperately snapping out of it when I feel like I might be dreaming.”

“What!?”

“It’s called lucid dreaming. Sometimes, when guys have erotic dreams, they unconsciously experience lucid dreaming. I have the skill to wake up before having lucid dreams. It may sound like a lie, but I’m dead serious. If this is a lie, I’ll lick your feet.”

“What…”

Yang Joo-hee’s expression changed abruptly.

Jingling, jingling-

“Where are you, where, where are you, where are you, where are you, where can’t see, can’t see here, can’t be here, where are you, where.”

The sound of the bell girl wandering outside could be heard.

But to me right now, the bell girl or whatever was not a concern.

“I tried lucid dreaming on my own, you know? But given the circumstances, it didn’t work well. It seems like I need some kind of stimulation. When I say stimulation, it could be visual stimulation or tactile or auditory…”

“So what do you want me to do?!”

Yang Joo-hee shouted anxiously, pushing away her unease.

I was serious.

“Well, first, do you want to take off your shirt?”

“Wow….”