DNLYHS Chapter 1 (Part 2)

It said something about recording things, but if he wasn’t allowed to show those records to others, what kind of purpose did that even serve…?

This man said his role was to protect others. He was tall and looked strong, and considering he’d come all the way downstairs without a flashlight to save him, he must be quick-thinking and capable. Meanwhile, the young man didn’t know what he was supposed to do. In a chaotic situation like this, he had no confidence he could figure out the right thing to do and act smartly without hesitation.

But even so…

“Don’t say it like that. It might look useless now, but it could help you someday, right? I’ll definitely repay you for saving me.”

“…If I offended you, I’m sorry. I’m sure there’s an important reason you were given that role.”

Surprisingly, the man apologized quickly and agreed with him. The young man suspected the earlier harshness came more from anxiety than actual ill intent, and quietly nodded.

“So, what exactly is your role supposed to do?”

“It seems like I’m supposed to record things. But I’m not allowed to show those records to anyone…”

“What does that even mean? Aren’t records meant to be read by others?”

“I don’t really understand that part either. Ah, but maybe it’s because I didn’t finish reading the Code. I got kicked out of the library partway through and everything turned into chaos.”

Maybe I should read the Code of Conduct now. Thinking that, the young man glanced at the man. He seemed to consider it for a moment, then nodded.

“Then read it as quickly as you can, and let’s move.”

“Move? Does your Code say we need to go somewhere?”

“This isn’t for me, it’s for you. You were attacked by those strange shadows earlier, right? You look fine on the surface, but in reality, your body is probably a mess.”

He pointed to the floor. The light was too dim to see clearly, but if one looked closely, the young man’s shadow was still curled up, trembling in pain. It definitely didn’t look fine.

“Tell me when you’re done reading. We’ll stop by the staff room for a moment.”

Though his tone was sharp, it was clear he was concerned. The young man nodded quietly and quickly opened the notebook.

---

The notebook did contain various safety rules, but the young man couldn’t shake the feeling that this “Code of Conduct” was deliberately vague about the details.

[Small, fixed locations with continuously operating artificial light are safe. Examples include the red emergency lights on fire hose cabinets and the green emergency exit signs in the hallways.]

[Do not rely on overly bright light sources such as fluorescent lamps. If you must turn on a bright light, secure a safe hiding place beforehand.]

[Not all places in the school contain artificial lighting. Therefore, prepare a portable light source. You will need it for your task of “recording.”]

From what he had read so far, he could deduce two major conditions. First, there were other threats roaming the school besides those shadows, and they were sensitive to light. Second, as mentioned at the beginning, he had to record something.

But what exactly was he supposed to record? Who had assigned him this task? He wondered, but it didn’t seem likely the notebook would explain.

It appeared to contain only instructions for behavior. It told him what to do in the current situation, but anything beyond that he would have to figure out on his own. Even without anyone telling him, he somehow sensed that.

[2. The essential items the Librarian must secure are a portable light source and writing utensils. For writing tools, obtain items that cannot be erased by an eraser, such as ballpoint pens, water-based pens, name markers, or fountain pens.]

[2–1. Locations where flashlights may be found: first-year staff room drawers, administration office wall cabinet, facilities office wall cabinet, wall shelf beside the gym equipment storage room door]

[2–2. Locations where writing utensils may be found: second-year or third-year staff room drawers, principal’s office drawers, music room, art preparation room]

[2–3. Locations where items cannot be found: classroom drawers and lockers, hallways on the first to third floors of the main building, rooftop, auditorium, your throat, your stomach, behind you, above your head, inside your eyeballs, beneath your feet and within your shadow, and inside any part of your body that you can never reach no matter how you try 〉〉〉〉〉〉 Do not search there! Ever!]

[If you cannot find the necessary items even after checking all locations, do not panic. Close your eyes and calmly count to ten.]

[Find the required items before the end-of-day broadcast begins. If you fail to complete today’s task, you will not be able to hide in your shelter.]

Are these really instructions he could trust? That odd, deranged line in the middle made him uneasy, but he skimmed the important points. He already had a flashlight, so he could move on…

“I finished reading. Looks like my task today is to find writing tools in a staff room or somewhere like that. Then I’m supposed to find a shelter and hide.”

“Just that? That’s all your task is… No, wait. Hm, seems the tasks are adjusted to your level. If your mission had been anything difficult, you’d be in trouble right now.”

He’s definitely concerned, but he has a habit of saying things in a very annoying way. The young man shot him a glare, but the man was already hurrying forward. It wasn’t a situation where they could relax anyway. There was no way to know when the end-of-day broadcast would start.

They walked quickly through the strange school’s hallway. The young man finally had a moment to calmly observe his surroundings. But what he saw in the dim beam of the flashlight was eerie and unsettling.

He had no memories, but he knew one thing for certain: normal schools did not look like this. Normal schools didn’t have pitch-black paint covering every window. They didn’t have long claw-like scratches on the wooden floors. They didn’t have door handles smeared with some dark red substance that could be blood, or maybe ink…

I’m scared.

I want to leave. I want to go back to wherever I came from. How am I supposed to survive here for two whole weeks…?

As he struggled against the fear rising deep inside him, he suddenly glanced at the man’s face.

“……”

The already pale man looked even more ashen with fear. Each time a shadow seemed to twitch even slightly, he flinched and scanned the surroundings tensely.

Maybe he had realized something was terribly wrong in this school too. Thinking that, the young man felt his own fear ease just a little.

“Um… it’ll be okay. I’m sure we’ll get out.”

“…I know that. It’s not like we’re actually going to be stuck here forever.”

The man answered bluntly, but afterward his expression softened slightly. Seeing that, the young man smiled faintly.

Though the hallway felt unusually long, checking the nameplates with the flashlight as they went led them to the staff room. It didn’t say which grade level it belonged to. But considering all the classrooms they’d passed were second-year rooms, this was likely the second-year staff room.

There should be writing tools here. And if the man was correct, there should be a way to treat his shadow as well.

But as he opened the door and moved to enter, the young man noticed some writing near the doorway.

Make sure to pick up your student ID before going to the cafeteria

Was it just his imagination, or did the handwriting look familiar…? It reminded him of the reversed writing on the restroom door earlier, but it felt even more familiar than that.

While he tilted his head in confusion, the man had already stepped inside through the open door. The writing must have been blocked from his view by the young man’s body.

“Hurry up and get in. This is no time to drag your feet.”

“Ah, yes!”

“For now, you look for the writing tools. I’ll find something that might help you.”

The young man nodded and immediately began searching the staff room desks. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to take care of the urgent task first and then mention the writing he had seen on the door.

Papers, worksheets, and workbooks were piled on the desks. He glanced at them without thinking, but quickly realized he shouldn’t. The dates on the documents, the publication years on the workbooks, even the letters printed on the covers, every single one of them was a complete mess.

It was as if someone who didn’t understand Korean or numbers had tried to imitate the shapes using nearby references. Not a single legible character existed on any of them. The longer he looked, the more dizzy he felt, and he shuddered.

This school really is strange. It’s like a half-hearted imitation of a school from decades ago…

With trembling hands, he opened a drawer. Thankfully, it contained a number of writing tools neatly organized. Several of them fit the Code of Conduct’s requirement for pens that could not be erased.

But when he examined each one closely, every writing tool had some flaw. Too old and ready to break, bent pen tips, or ink that failed to flow properly, making them nearly useless.

Are all the items in this school like this? Even the flashlight he got from the library looked so dim it seemed like it wouldn’t last long… As he kept comparing and checking them with lingering hope…

There’s something usable.

A voice whispered faintly inside his mind. Following that whisper as if entranced, he looked up to see a rather luxurious-looking leather pouch sitting on top of the desk.

Without thinking, he opened the pouch. Inside was a fountain pen. Its body was an elegant shade of red, and a gleaming gold clip was attached to the top, the kind meant to hook onto a shirt pocket.

Unlike the shabby pens in the drawer, this one shone like new, and its pen tip was sharp. Sharp enough that he had the strange impression it could pierce someone’s throat and make blood spray like a fountain.

It might be expensive. It might even be the finest writing tool he had ever handled…

The moment he, almost hypnotized, picked up the fountain pen from the pouch, its glossy shine melted away under the light as if dissolving like liquid, then vanished. In its place, a cold, heavy foreign sensation surged up violently from the inside of his throat.

W-what is this?!

Instinctively, he grabbed his neck. Something long and hard was lodged deep inside his throat. Something the size and shape of a pencil or pen, something metallic…

A fountain pen?

The instant the thought crossed his mind, an unfamiliar voice whispered inside his head, urging him.

Take it out.

Put your hand in.

Agonizing pain ripped through his throat, a pain so sharp it felt like it was tearing open. A fierce, uncontrollable urge followed, he needed to reach inside and pull that metallic object out.

He wasn’t even sure if it truly was a fountain pen. But if something like that was stuck in his throat, it would be hard to breathe, let alone move around. It already hurt so horribly, if he left it alone and the pen tore his throat somehow, how much worse would it get?

Besides, if it really is a fountain pen, that’s actually good, isn’t it? If it came from inside my body, then it’s mine. I’m allowed to take it!

He knew the thought made no sense, but with his breath tightening and his head spinning from lack of oxygen, it somehow felt convincing. He opened his mouth as wide as he could and pushed his fingers inside.

Just a little deeper and he could reach it. Thinking that, he shoved two fingers down his throat, but the pen kept slipping further downward. Growing desperate, he pushed his hand even deeper.

I shouldn’t be doing this.

He wasn’t sure what exactly was wrong. Accidentally swallowing the pen so it ended up in his stomach? Or forcing his hand too deep down his throat? Maybe it was one, maybe both.

But he couldn’t stop. If he could just reach a little deeper, just a little, maybe he could grab it. If he could pull it out, he could fulfill the Code’s requirement to acquire a writing tool.

That was what the Code of Conduct said. That he needed to find a writing tool. Not a pencil or mechanical pencil, something that couldn’t be erased. And this fountain pen, now slipping deeper into his insides, definitely fit those conditions.

If he just followed the Code of Conduct, he could escape. If he followed it, he could survive. If he followed…

Wait.

What did the Code actually say?

[2–2. Locations where writing utensils may be found: second- or third-year staff room drawers, principal’s office drawers, music room, art preparation room]

[2–3. Locations where items cannot be found: classroom desks and lockers, hallways on the first to third floors of the main building, rooftop, auditorium, inside your throat, inside your stomach, behind you, above your head, inside your eyeballs, beneath your feet and within your shadow, and inside any part of your body that your hands cannot reach 〉〉〉〉〉〉 Do not search there! Ever!]

The moment he recalled that line, clarity struck him like a bucket of cold water.

N-no!

He realized far too late that he had been greedy. The rule clearly said to search the staff room drawers, not to touch someone else’s belongings left on top of the desk.

No matter how fine that writing tool inside the pouch might be, it wasn’t the writing tool meant for his “task.” And he wasn’t even sure it was something he could safely handle.

“Huh, huff!”

He yanked his hand out of his throat with all his strength. The foreign sensation lodged in his neck vanished as if it had never existed.

When he squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, the fountain pen was still inside the leather pouch, and not a drop of saliva clung to his fingers. It was as if everything that had just happened was a dream or a hallucination.

Shuddering, he quickly closed the pouch.

A-all right, I’ll just choose this instead!

He picked up a thick-tipped permanent marker rolling around in the back of the drawer. At first he thought it was too blunt and too heavy in stroke, but maybe something like this would actually be better for writing anywhere. It could leave clear marks not just on paper, but also on glass or wooden surfaces.

“Why the face? Are you hurt? Did you find a good writing tool?”

Just then, the man approached. He looked perfectly calm, as if nothing unusual had happened to him.

“I found one. I’m fine… really.”

The young man answered wearily, and the man raised an eyebrow in slight confusion. The man was holding a sheet of paper, and when the young man looked closely, the words “Early Leave Slip” were written on it. The man crouched and handed the slip to the young man’s shadow on the floor.

The young man’s shadow, bleeding and collapsed earlier, accepted the slip. Or rather, it accepted the copy of it, because what the shadow received was the paper passed along by the man’s shadow.

The moment the shadow took the slip, the real slip in the man’s hand lost all its ink and became an ordinary blank piece of A4 paper.

And the young man’s shadow disappeared completely. As though it had simply gone home and left the main body behind.

“It should be fine now. It’ll come back tomorrow good as new.”

“H-how did you do that? How do you know so much? Can’t we use that early leave slip to go home too…?”

“I only copied what was written in the Code of Conduct! And if I could use it myself, don’t you think I would have? It said only one slip is issued per day, so if it actually worked, I would’ve used it long ago and left this place.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because it also said we’d be forced back into the school the next day. What would be the point? And I’m not even convinced it sends anyone back to their real home…”

Let’s hope your shadow recovers safely. The man responded curtly. It didn’t sound sincere, but the young man decided to take the words as they were.

They hadn’t known each other for long, but this man had already saved him multiple times. If nothing else, that alone proved he was a good person.

The young man took a breath and was about to thank him when…

A sharp sound suddenly rang out above their heads.

[Ah, ah. N-now, we will begin the end-of-day broadcast.]

[Your, uh, your ‘daily tasks’ have ended. If you have completed all assigned duties, please find a hiding place. It must be a location where, once the door is locked, no one can come in or out.]

[Once again, this is an announcement. The ‘daily tasks’ for the first day have ended. If you have completed all duties, please find a hiding place….]

The ceiling speaker in the staff room crackled with a strangely hesitant voice.

The young man realized instinctively.

This was, in truth, a warning that a new danger was beginning.

A sharp cracking sound scraped across the window glass. It was chilling.

“Uh… uuh…?”

There’s no way it’ll break, no way… That pointless optimism shattered at the same time the staff room windows did. Before their eyes, every window in the staff room collapsed all at once.

Moonlight poured in through the empty window frames, flooding the room with brightness. Even though it was still clearly night, their eyes had grown so accustomed to the darkness that it felt almost like midday.

Outside the windows hung the moon, icy blue, abnormally large, and captivating to the point of being dangerous…

No, we must not look at that moon. The young man grabbed the man’s arm, who was also being drawn toward the moon, and turned away without hesitation.

“Run, now! We have to get to the hiding place!”

“……!”

The man finally snapped out of it and began running with him.

Behind them, a bubbling, boiling sound grew louder and louder. They were too focused on escaping to dare to look back, but in the young man’s mind, the images of what was happening behind them rose vividly on their own.

Shadows swelling like liquid. Unknown creatures bursting out through the sticky, tar-like black surface. Not hollow illusions clinging awkwardly to the floor, but real creatures with mass, standing up, ready to harm them…

They didn’t have time to admire the monster. No, in fact, it was better not to look at all. Seeing it would only paralyze them with fear. The young man was certain it was better to run without knowing anything.

Of course, life rarely works out so conveniently.

“Uh, ah… aaah…!”

He should’ve expected this. The sound of shattering windows had come from both the hallway and the classroom side. So of course the hallway windows near the staff room would have shattered as well.

“What… what is this.”

He thought he had moved quickly, but the second-floor hallway was already “finished.”

There was no other word that could express it. His brain refused to process what he was seeing. All he could register were smears of black and sticky things, and red, metal-smelling things.

They writhed. They stuck and peeled off. To one another, or to the walls and floors. The gaping holes that opened and closed looked like mouths singing a silent song, or like throats screaming without vocal cords. He wasn’t even sure they were mouths. But he couldn’t imagine those holes being used for anything other than devouring. If he got too close to those gaping openings that spewed red, saliva-like liquid, he would be eaten whole from head to toe.

No, the real problem wasn’t the mouths.

It was the eyes.

The hallway was packed wall to wall with masses of eyeballs, so many that it was impossible to tell whether they were red, white, or black.

He couldn’t tell if multiple eyes were connected into clusters, or if each of those clusters was in fact a single eye.

Either way, it didn’t matter.

The real problem was that every single one of those eyes was fixed on them.

We can’t escape.

The creatures that erupted from the churning shadows grew rapidly, like plants sprouting from the earth. Though unlike plants, they were lumps of swollen, sticky flesh. Until now they had been limited to “shadows” because of the strange constraint called the “daily tasks,” but now that those tasks had ended, it was as if they claimed this hour as their own.

Inside the wide-open staff room, and from both ends of the hallway, the lumps of flesh multiplied. The eyes buried within stared at the young man.

Only stared. Nothing more, nothing less, but the young man could sense his fate. He would never escape those gazes. Not alone…

“What are you doing?! Why are you just standing there staring at that thing?!”

Fortunately, this time the man moved first. He grabbed the young man’s arm with one hand and, with the other, aimed the mirror at the masses of flesh.

Perhaps their nature was the same as the shadows, only the appearance changed. Because the moment the creatures saw the mirror, they collapsed immediately.

Thud, shhk. For such hollow sounds, the process of the flesh collapsing was horrifying. The countless glossy red eyes trembled all at once, then split down the middle as they began spewing pale, wriggling things in torrents.

The sharp cracking sound of something scraping across the window glass was unsettling.

“Uh… uh…?”

Surely it won’t break, surely… But that meaningless optimism shattered along with the staff room windows. Before their eyes, every single window in the staff room collapsed at once.

Moonlight poured in through the empty frames, flooding the staff room with brightness. Even though it was still night, their eyes had become so accustomed to the darkness that it felt almost like daytime.

Outside the windows hung a moon, so blue it looked freezing, unnaturally large, and impossible not to stare at…

No, we can’t look at that moon. The young man grabbed the man’s arm, who had been just as entranced by it, and pulled him away without hesitation.

“Run, now! We have to get to the hiding place!”

“……!”

The man finally snapped back to himself and started running with the young man.

Behind them, a bubbling, boiling sound grew louder. They were too focused on running to look back, but in the young man’s mind, vague images formed on their own.

Shadows boiling like liquid. Unknown creatures pushing their way out of the sticky, tar-like black surface. Not half-attached illusions clinging to the floor, but real creatures, rising, taking shape, ready to attack…

They didn’t have the luxury to stare at the monster. No, in fact, it was better not to look at all. Seeing it would only freeze their minds in fear. The young man was certain it was better to run in ignorance.

Of course, things never go the way one wants.

“Uh… ah… aaah…!”

He should have expected this. The sound of breaking windows came from both the hallway and the classroom sides. So naturally, the hallway windows next to the staff room must have shattered too.

“What… what is this.”

He thought he had been fast, but the second-floor hallway was already “done for.”

There was no other way to describe it. His brain refused to understand what his eyes saw. The only information he could grasp was the black, sticky masses… and the red, metallic-smelling mess smeared everywhere.

They writhed. They stuck and peeled off. To each other, to the walls, to the floors. The gaping holes that opened and closed looked like mouths singing a silent song, or like throats screaming without vocal cords. He wasn’t even sure they were mouths. But he could not imagine them being used for anything other than devouring. If he got anywhere near those openings that spilled red, saliva-like liquid, he would be eaten alive from head to toe.

No, the important part wasn’t the holes.

It was the eyes.

The hallway was packed full of eyeballs, so many that he couldn’t even tell if they were red, white, or pitch-black.

He couldn’t tell if multiple eyes were fused together, or if each mass was a single huge eye.

Either way, it didn’t matter.

What mattered was that all of those eyes were staring at them.

We won’t escape.

The creatures bursting out from the bubbling shadows grew rapidly, like plants sprouting. Though instead of plants, they were lumps of thick, slimy flesh. Until now, they had stayed as “shadows” because of the constraints of the “daily tasks,” but now it was as if they claimed this hour as their own.

Inside the wide-open staff room and down both sides of the hallway, the flesh grew thicker and thicker. The eyes buried in the flesh stared directly at the young man.

Only stared. No more, no less. But the young man sensed his fate. He would never escape that gaze. Not on his own…

“What are you doing?! Why are you staring at it like that?!”