How to Survive the Horror Novel I Wrote
Chapter 17
Chapter 17
When lunchtime arrived, a crowd of teachers close to Mo Yeyeon marched into the first-grade Teachers' Room, led by Mo Yeyeon herself. Among them, naturally, were the English Teacher and the Japanese Teacher.
All of a sudden, I found myself cornered in a standoff.
The first-grade teachers, who feigned neutrality while looking away from workplace bullying, stopped on their way out for lunch, watching us with gazes split evenly between amusement and concern.
“Teacher Jian. I heard you barged into the second-grade Teachers' Room yesterday and framed Teacher Ye-yeon as a liar?”
The English Teacher planted her hands on her hips and demanded an explanation.
It was utterly absurd. Who was the one being framed as a liar right now?
“I only went to clarify the facts—”
“Who in this room doesn't know the facts? Who doesn't know you have a boyfriend, yet went out on a blind date anyway and wrecked the whole thing?”
“That’s not what happened—”
“So you didn't ask for a blind date? You're saying Teacher Ye-yeon lied?”
The Japanese Teacher cut me off and beat me to the punch. Her tone was openly sneering.
“……Yes.”
“Teacher Jian, you really are too much.”
Mo Yeyeon's eyes welled with tears as her voice trembled. The teachers who had come with her comforted Mo Yeyeon while censuring me in unison.
“Teacher Jian, know when to stop.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Did you really have to blow things out of proportion like this?”
I felt like an archery target, bristling with arrows.
There were too many mouths condemning me.
Too many eyes glaring at me.
Stab.
A sharp pang pierced my stomach.
Stab. Stab.
Amidst that stinging pain, the nightmare from last night that had chased me all the way to school grabbed hold of my ankles, ravenously dragging me down into its gaping maw.
I was dragged helplessly into an abyss of despair.
Overlaid upon the scene of the Teachers' Room was that day from twelve years ago.
In place of Mo Yeyeon and my fellow teachers stood the bullies who had beaten me, their parents, and the teachers who groveled before them.
My clothes shifted into a school uniform. Ha Jian the teacher vanished, leaving only Ha Jian the outcast. A loner who had a family that might as well not exist, who had no friends, and who had not a single soul on her side in the entire world.
I was alone.
Still.
Or perhaps forever.
All at once, I wanted to die. How wonderful it would be if I could just evaporate on the spot.
Clack, clack, clack-clack-clack-clack.
To make matters worse, the sound of typing began to echo in my ears.
Ju Ugeum, not you too…….
Please just stay put. If only for right now.
Yet there was no way the voice in my head could reach Ugeum.
The typing did not stop, and a desolation beyond words washed over me.
Because I had a pretty good guess. A guess as to why Ugeum had specifically chosen the hours I was at school to emerge.
Yesterday, instead of coming to see me, he had cross-referenced his own trail with the plot of the Night Series, which meant today he must have set out to find the author.
Namely, me.
As it turned out, it wasn't just that I had no one on my side. Enemies surrounded me on all four sides.
Inside my workplace were people itching to socially bury me, while outside prowled a monster determined to physically bury me.
“Teacher Jian, if you have something to say, go ahead. You seemed to have plenty to say to me yesterday.”
Backed by the protective shield of her colleagues, Mo Yeyeon spoke in a frail, delicate voice, playing the kind, meek victim.
“…….”
I couldn't say a single thing. What could I possibly say? In a place where not one person was willing to listen to me.
“Look at her, can't even utter a single word once we actually lay out the mat for her to speak.”
Someone snorted in derision, leaving me flabbergasted. Lay out a mat for me?
I was rolled up inside the straw mat. Rolled up tight, unable to budge an inch, taking a merciless beating from the crowd.
It was right then.
Knock, knock.
An abrupt knock scattered the attention locked onto me. The gazes piercing through me turned and fixed upon the door of the Teachers' Room.
A moment later, the door slid open, and an unexpected figure appeared.
A gentleman who wore a black suit as though posing for a pictorial.
……A serial killer wearing the mask of one.
It was Ugeum.
Why—why was he here? My mouth dropped open as question marks flooded my brain. Hadn't he stepped out to find Mun Seongwon?
Ugeum drew the eyes of everyone in the room like a vampire. Every single person in the Teachers' Room stared at him, spellbound.
Ugeum possessed that kind of power. The power to bewitch people.
In a silence where time seemed to stand still, Ugeum slowly took in the faces of the teachers surrounding me. The corners of his mouth were curved in a smile, his eyes narrowed softly.
On the surface, he looked gentle, but the tilt of one eye was subtly twisted.
And only I, Mun Seongwon, the author who had created the serial killer Ju Ugeum, could see the glint of the blade hidden behind that mask.
Goosebumps erupted all over my skin. Why are you looking at these people with those eyes? They haven't done anything wicked enough to become your prey.
“Who…… May I ask what brings you here?”
Mo Yeyeon blushed, hesitantly breaking through the quiet.
Without offering any reply, Ugeum strode right into the cluster of teachers.
The teachers confronting me, Mo Yeyeon included, stepped aside to the left and right, parting like the Red Sea.
Ugeum walked straight toward me, his gaze fixed entirely on me.
Yet I couldn't bring myself to meet his eyes and lowered my head instead. Because with every single step he drew closer, it felt as though the Night Series was turning into reality.
Finally, his two feet came to a halt right in front of me.
“Jian-ah.”
At the sound of that impossibly warm voice, all my tension melted away like a lie. I snapped my head up to look at him.
The bloodlust and madness that had flickered in Ugeum's eyes were nowhere to be found, replaced entirely by a ripe, gentle affection. As if none of it had ever been there to begin with…….
Had I seen wrong? Was it just my persecution complex again? Had my tension, fear, and stress conjured up a danger that didn't exist?
“We promised to have lunch together, so why aren't you answering your phone? I was worried something had happened to you.”
“……?”
Ugeum scolded me in a tender voice. I was utterly bewildered. A lunch promise? I had never made such an arrangement.
The same went for the phone call. Reflexively checking my phone, I saw no missed call notifications.
Dumbfounded, I looked back up at Ugeum, only to find him casually glancing around at the surrounding teachers.
“Is there a problem here, by any chance?”
Ugeum was a quick-witted, brilliant character. The instant he opened the door to the Teachers' Room, the instant he saw Mo Yeyeon's clique encircling me, the instant that unnatural silence was poured over the room like cold water…… In that single breath, he must have grasped the entire situation.
“…….”
The teachers who had been cornering me just moments ago averted Ugeum's gaze with guilty expressions.
“It's lunchtime, right? Let's go eat.”
Ugeum took my hand with a faint smile, then turned to the room and asked,
“Would you mind if I borrowed my girlfriend for a bit?”
Gasps of caught breath leaked out from all around us. The teachers exchanged stunned glances and whispered among themselves.
While Mo Yeyeon's clique merely read one another's cues, a few of the first-grade teachers who had been standing by as bystanders told him to go ahead.
Led by Ugeum's hand, I walked past the teachers parted on either side.
The moment we stepped into the hallway hand in hand, passing students stared at us with wide eyes.
More specifically, at Ugeum.
“No way! Teacher Jian! Is he your boyfriend?”
A first-grade female student I taught asked with sparkling eyes.
“Huh? Uh……”
A boyfriend. A public relationship. The collapse of teacher authority.
While my brain habitually conjured the worst-case scenarios, Ugeum answered in my place.
“Hello. I'm Teacher Jian's boyfriend.”
“Kyaaaah!”
The female students nearby shrieked in delight.
“You're so handsome!”
“Even your voice is gorgeous! You should be a voice actor!”
“Mister Boyfriend, you have something on your face! Good looks!”
Ugeum burst into laughter.
It felt as if we had stepped into an idol concert. Whenever Ugeum spoke, they squealed because he spoke; when he smiled, they swooned because he smiled; when he waved, they went wild because he waved.
It was a strange feeling.
Kids, this man you're fawning over for being handsome is actually a serial killer from a horror novel…….
We walked past the fussing students and made our way outside.
A black Porsche was waiting for us in the school parking lot.
How had he parked here? Normally, only authorized personnel were allowed inside.
I had no idea. Ugeum wasn't an ordinary person anyway. Even if the car had popped out of thin air, I wouldn't have been surprised. Ugeum himself flashed from East to West like Hong Gildong.
As he always did, Ugeum opened the passenger door for me, walked around the front of the hood, and slipped into the driver's seat.
If manners maketh man, as that movie slogan goes, then Ugeum might as well be called human.
I gazed silently out the car window before asking softly as we cleared the school gates,
“How did you know to come?”
“Know what?”
“That I…… was in trouble.”
“You were in trouble?”
Ugeum gave me a look of surprise, but to my eyes, it seemed like nothing more than playing dumb.
“You really didn't know?”
“I didn't. How could I have known that?”
Yet I had the distinct feeling that he had known.
Otherwise, how could he have shown up at such an exquisite timing?
“Then why did you come looking for me out of nowhere? We never made lunch plans.”
When I pressed him with a suspicious glare, Ugeum offered an awkward smile.
“I just made up an excuse because I wanted to eat with you.”
It sounded like a lie—right now, that very explanation felt like an excuse—yet my heart, which had been frozen solid amidst the bitter hostility, melted into complete mush.
Forcibly contorting my expression, which kept wanting to soften, I grumbled for no real reason,
“Don't you even have friends?”
Ugeum replied with utter nonchalance,
“You're the only one I have.”
Depending on how one took it, it was a chilling thing to say. Ugeum ought to have felt like a stalker.
I was hopeless. Right now, it just made me happy.
When I had thought I had no one, how could I possibly push away someone who said I was the only one he had?
I was not alone.
I had Ju Ugeum.
