Episode 248
Jeong In-ho was born with poor empathy skills, but as he grew into an adult, he learned to understand and respect the emotions of others. Despite this, Jeong In-ho was unable to empathize emotionally with anyone. Even though he intellectually understood why he was crying and laughing and had a vague sense of it, he still couldn’t shake off the calculating thoughts.
However, after experiencing the hidden world, Jung In-ho’s range of emotions increased. Should I say that I feel like my emotional threshold, which only ranged from 1 to 5, has increased to at least 10? Even when Jung In-ho returned to reality, he tried not to forget that feeling. This was because I knew that such emotions were necessary to form a deeper and more solid relationship than just business.
Even Jeong In-ho could not help but be swayed by irrational emotions when he saw Lee Jae-heon.
“How long until class ends now? If that friend was hit by a monster, we would have to rescue him quickly. Are there any disadvantages to joining class in the middle of class?”
“There are probably about 30 minutes left. Then there is a 10-minute break. Park Da-hoon has organized the rules, so go in and check them before moving on, mister.”
“okay. “The kids are waiting here… Actually, I think I can go alone.”
In-ho Jeong called Jae-heon Lee.
“Boss?”
“what.”
“Are you serious?”
“If you were serious, please cancel, Mr. Lee Jae-heon.”
“Why doesn’t the detective say the right thing? Please take care of yourself.”
“I don’t know why everyone tells me to be careful when they see me.”
“Hahaha….”
Lee Jae-heon had a knack for making people’s emotions intense.
‘It’s okay in real life, but now you’re talking nonsense again.’
That person was a typical type of person who ‘understands other people’s feelings but cannot sympathize with them.’ Being duller than Jung In-ho, who was naturally less empathetic and suffered abuse from his parents, meant that he was an incredibly crazy person. Maybe this time too, I’m talking about rationality and efficiency in my head.
“Honestly, wouldn’t that be much more efficient? After listening to the kids, it seems like there is a monster wandering around in the hallway on the 4th floor, so it would be more maneuverable and reasonable to be alone…” “You
son of a bitch.”
“What man?”
“I’m sorry. Stop saying what I’ve been keeping inside.”
“Are you saying this wasn’t a mistake for so long?”
“The manager needs to say something.”
Jeong In-ho looked at Lee Jae-heon with sad eyes.
‘How can you have such no learning ability?’
How can you choose such wrong things to say? It would have been less offensive if he had been a little less confident in what he said, but I was very annoyed because he seemed to have no doubts that what I was saying was obviously right and that it was wrong. At best, it has the effect of making any desire to be cooperative disappear.
Suddenly, Jeong In-ho thought, ‘How can making people angry like this be any different from when I used to act like a brat?’, but he immediately changed his mind. Anyway, the story of a competent old man and an incompetent old man was a bit different. In the first place, I wondered if it was okay to put the word ‘competent’ in front of the word ‘kkondae’…
“….”
“Jung In-ho? “Are you angry?”
“I’m not angry.”
This is the problem with the underworld. Even if a little time passes, my thoughts keep wandering elsewhere.
“Kids, where is the safe classroom?”
“hey. I’m in the 3rd grade and 2nd class, and probably after this class and recess are over, we’ll have school rules again. Was it originally number 4…? I said it was written down. Right.”
“that’s right. “Friends get along well… let’s bet on that.”
The students who accepted Jeong In-ho’s words in response moved to the 3rd grade 2nd class, led by adults. The two students he saw for the first time today looked at the siblings strangely, asking, ‘What on earth are they so calm?’, but Jeong In-ho was just grateful.
‘They are quick-witted children, so they will be able to prevent the manager from trying to overdo it.’
When he first entered the secret world, In-ho Jeong was very confused and hated the innocent students, but when he returned to reality, he realized how stupid it was. However, that did not mean that Jeong In-ho and the siblings had developed a great friendship or trust with each other.
They had more of a business relationship. The emotions that come and go are dry, and neither of us has any complaints about it. They were satisfied and cooperated because they had a common goal of preventing Lee Jae-heon’s crazy actions.
“….”
Why do I have to do this?
‘Even taking advantage of students?’
For a moment, Jeong In-ho looked around with a sense of self-destruction and skepticism, and realized that Lee Jae-heon was quite far behind. As I kept looking towards the back, it seemed like they were on guard for a monster coming down the stairs or something coming out of the classroom. I was very thankful for that, but it was also frustrating.
“…Boss?”
“What’s wrong?”
It was even clearer when I saw him ask a question with his eyes wide as if he was slightly surprised. It is true that the group let down their guard for a moment, but it was a bit complicated to just thank Lee Jae-heon for something he usually did.
“No, I thought you were behind, so I called you.”
“Do you get anxious when I’m out of sight? Are you really treating me like a dog now…?”
“It can’t be. “I know because I have friends who have dogs, and dogs obey people better than the manager.”
“It’s amazing that you have a friend.”
I really don’t give up on a single word.
“…I guess you’re doing this because you’re worried.”
I didn’t want to worry about a man in his 40s named Inho Jeong. This was all Lee Jae-heon’s fault, who had been talking nonsense all day and night even though he was injured. The fact that it was a truly meaningful sacrifice made Jeong In-ho even angrier.
“I don’t have anyone to worry about….”
“I’m worried because I have something to worry about. “I will check the back, so please come to the front.”
“How long do you say the hallway is?”
“Come on.”
In the end, when Jeong In-ho grabbed his arm and pulled him forward, Lee Jae-heon looked at him with a bewildered expression, as if he was dumbfounded, but he wasn’t particularly angry. I just sighed and stood in the middle of the group.
Jeong In-ho looked at Lee Jae-heon closely.
“….”
No matter how much I thought about it, my gait was a little awkward.
‘I encountered a small monster on the way, but I wasn’t hurt.’
Lee Jae-heon had a good walking posture and straight back, so his steps were wide and straight. It’s not much different now, but the more I looked at it, the more I could see that my abdomen was shrinking and the width of my steps was irregular.
Sure enough, Kim Yeon-woo, who was walking in the same line as me, quietly asked.
“Maybe I am. “Has Jaeheon Lee ever suffered an injury to his abdomen or legs?”
“…Well, you didn’t say anything special.”
“…It’s just a little bit, but his walking form is strange… I think it would be good to be careful just in case. “I’m embarrassed to say this because it’s so personal, but there’s no harm in being careful.”
“Thank you for your attention.”
Even Kim Yeon-woo, who has good observation skills, says this.
Jeong In-ho internally gritted his teeth. Lee Jae-heon, who used to only wear formal suits, has recently been wearing only light coats and polar T-shirts. Injuries were confirmed to his neck and hands, but judging from the fact that he lost his footing in the last episode and his current gait, it was clear that there were injuries elsewhere as well.
‘Is he really crazy?’
In the first place, if you get a cut on your hand, you should put as little strain on it as possible so that it can regenerate quickly. What kind of idiot wears gloves to hide an injury? Jeong In-ho could not hide his laughter as he entered the classroom and carefully closed the door.
Are we that untrustworthy?
“Dahun, can I see the notes you have organized?”
“Ah yes. Here…”
“Oh, it was neatly organized.”
“thank you.”
“….”
I really thought Jinseong was a crazy person, but seeing him being generous to children like that made me soften again. At least we are certain that it was not hidden with malicious intent.
“Deputy Jeong, come this way. “I think we should watch it together.”
“…going.”
I took a hard sigh.
‘I’m thinking about it again…’
Jaeheon Lee may not be said to be good, but he was a good person. Although the cause and process of action were selfish, the result was a choice that benefited an unspecified number of people.
‘I guess the reason he hid his injuries was because he didn’t want us to worry.’
Jaeheon Lee was just used to solving everything on his own. Everyone gave him responsibilities and obligations and told him not to care even if he was in danger of death, so he couldn’t learn how to rely on others. It would have been better if he had been so incompetent that he couldn’t meet other people’s expectations, but Lee Jae-heon was even capable.
So, as I tried to solve everything on my own, take responsibility for everything, and protect others, I became such a frustrating person. It seemed that he was completely convinced and lived in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘rationality’ that he always talked about.
“If you look at it, there are about 5 of them… but the sentences are so implicit that I think I need to do some interpretation.”
“…But Dahun organized it well. “Did you write down what you felt after experiencing all the rules?”
“Yes, I didn’t write much because I avoided things that I thought were really dangerous.”
“Good job. “There’s no need to risk finding out.”
Even while spitting out praise with his mouth and scanning the notepad with his eyes, In-ho Jeong recalled the voice that Jae-heon Lee uttered as he died. Although the time is now gone, Jeong In-ho could not forget it.
―…It’s okay….
Until the end, Jaeheon Lee worried about others, not himself.
It was fortunate that In-ho Jeong received the power to go back in time. It was an opportunity. I was definitely grateful to be able to realize a better future by having opportunities that others did not have. If it weren’t for this power, Jeong In-ho and the other survivors would have died long ago.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel like this was a curse.
“Mr. Jeong In-ho?”
“…Yes, Manager.”
“Are there any bad places?”
“no.”
Jeong In-ho, who was fiddling with his tie, smiled and shook his head.
“That can’t be right.”
“…If you feel strange, please let me know in advance.”
“The manager should do the same.”
“Tsk, that’s gross.”
“Haha….”
Glass windows resembling fog and a classroom’s unique white ceiling. Stretched desks. Jeong In-ho, who was looking at the classroom with plain colors and no special features, slowly closed and opened his eyes.
He muttered softly.
“…It’s really okay.”
Is it because of my mood?
I felt a little frustrated.
* * *
Lee Jae-heon thought about the small, round fruit he secretly put in his pocket.
‘I thought I was fucking caught.’
Lee Jae-heon looked around the classroom and internally breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the main character looking at the notepad again.
It looks like he was so distracted by something else that he didn’t see Lee Jae-heon’s dexterity, but I hope he continues to do so in the future. Lee Jae-heon nodded, hoping that the future nagging that would come someday would come as late as possible. It seemed like he didn’t even think that he wouldn’t be nagging.
“Is number 9 the end of this rule? “I can’t see the number after this.”
“Maybe… well, I’m not sure. “The only ones I remember in detail enough to write down are all 5, and there were 3 more that seemed to be different rules… but I don’t think I saw a number greater than 9.”
“Is it fortunate? If it was more than double digits, it would have been quite difficult…”
Lee Jae-heon looked at the two police officers who were talking to the standby team outside the school and sharing information with each other, and then looked at the notepad that Park Da-hoon was holding out. As expected of the quick-witted Park siblings, the rules were written in a clumsy but fairly accurate level.
‘Especially rule number 9.’
He asked, pointing to the part where [Principle 9. Do not clink.] was written.
“It says to be careful not to get trapped?”
“Ah… I found out about this thanks to Park Da-young… What should I say? When you enter a certain room… If someone doesn’t wait for you in the connected space, you can’t come back out. Even when leaving, you have to ask permission from the person waiting outside. “It was the same with hallways and stairs.”
Da-hoon Park told us about the situation when he had just entered the underworld.
I came out of the classroom and climbed the stairs to the 4th floor to meet Park Da-young, but the middle part of the stairs was blocked by an invisible wall.
In the end, it was only when Da-young Park and her friend escaped from the classroom and went out into the hallway on the 4th floor that Da-hoon Park and her friend were able to go up to the 4th floor as well.
“So, just in case, I put a friend down on the third floor, and Seong Ji-ho and I went up to the fourth floor…” “I
guess the friend who was left alone was the student who was taken away?”
“Yes, she said she was hiding in a classroom with no school rules and was there even after recess was over. Then, a student mannequin came rushing in, and as he ran away, he bumped into the mannequin and lost his jacket. He ran out into the hallway and was able to come down from the 4th floor to the 3rd floor, but he ended up getting caught by the teacher’s mannequin…” “
Huh.”
“It is true that if you stay in one space for a long time, you will turn into a plaster monster, but still, there was no problem when you just came to the other side of the world and left the classroom… Seeing that the guys just came up, I guess they looked after me for a while after I moved for the first time.”
No, rather, it is a matter of perception.
‘The rule is not called ‘Don’t clink’ for nothing.’
When survivors proceed without awareness, they are not stopped, but as they become more familiar with the school and become aware of a certain space, the school rules are enforced. However, since it was impossible to forget a space that had already been recognized, the benefits of ‘first progress’ had to be seen as being overshadowed as time passed after entering school.
Jeong In-ho, who was quietly listening to the story, asked.
“Then how do I get up to the fourth floor? “Aren’t we already trapped in this classroom?”
“It’s not the case in other classrooms, but it seems like you don’t get locked up in a classroom without school rules.”
“But this is the third floor… Unless that friend is in the hallway…”
“Oh, that’s okay! “You can just take the elevator!”
Jeong In-ho widened his eyes and blinked at Park Da-young’s words.
“Can I ride that? “It wasn’t working…”
“I helped the teacher’s mannequin and was allowed to ride it once.”
“…You said you helped me?”
When Jeong In-ho frowned at the remark that young matches were not possible, Park Da-young stabbed her younger brother in the side.
“Hey, that. “How many times is that?”
“Listen carefully to what teacher number 5 says…. The teacher’s mannequin is a student in the class. I ordered them to hand out paper to the monsters. “I did that and they gave me something like this.”
Park Da-hoon took out a small piece of paper from his pocket.
“…one-time elevator ticket…?”
“No more than three people using more than two floors. “I tried to use this to go out to the first floor, but it didn’t work.”
“No, you can communicate with the mannequin before that?”
“It’s not like a real language, it’s more like a mime… but I was able to roughly understand the nuances.”
Lee Jae-heon gently swiped his hand over his mouth and checked the entire notepad.
“…I really found a lot of rules up to number 9. Good job.”
What they found were rules 1, 2, 4, 5, and 9.
Number 1: Dress neatly. Number 2, sit down when the class bell rings. Number 5: Listen carefully to the teacher. Number 9 is no clinking. And number 4 was [Getting along well with friends]. The notepad said, “If you attack the student mannequins except when the class bell rings, you will be harassed by them,” and “It’s still a guess.”
He probably wrote it after seeing the student who had been arrested with his jacket torn, but surprisingly, this was true.
“Did you write this based on the friend who was captured?”
“ah? Ah yes. The mannequins wearing school uniforms really didn’t attack us… I thought it was strange that they tore their jackets like that at that time. And there was a rule to get along well… I guess that’s true, isn’t it?”
“Why does that sound right? “You must have been very surprised when your friend was captured, but you managed to write it.”
At those words, Park Da-hoon and Park Da-young blinked twice, as if they had missed something, and immediately made sullen expressions. It was an eerily similar reaction that made me wonder if they were siblings.
“…Yes… I’m really sorry, but I don’t want something like that to happen again…”
“I wasn’t scolding you. I’m sorry if my tone of voice was offensive. “I said that because I was worried.”
“…I’m sorry….”
“Why do you have anything to be sorry for?”
After the siblings were roughly satisfied, Lee Jae-heon asked.
“Class bell for rule number 2… What is this? From the looks of it, it looks like it was written mainly about things you all have experienced. Is there anything like this?”
“When we first came to the underworld, all the kids who weren’t sitting in their seats were attacked by the teacher monster. “Just in case, even when I was out in the hallway, I sat down when the class bell rang.”
It was the right thing to do. Even if you were actually out in the hallway, you had to remain seated when the class bell rang unless you were confident that you could hide somewhere. Or go into a classroom without school rules or a completely separate space. Like the auditorium in the annex building or the library in the main swimming pool building…
“But wherever I went, there were no empty seats in the classroom… so I pushed the student mannequin aside and sat there.”
“…Aha….”
By now, the 4th floor hallway must be full of student monsters. The monsters that were pushed around by all these students would be wandering around the hallways.
‘If you listen to the story so far, it looks like the plaster monster hasn’t been created yet.’
The situations in which a plaster monster arises are, firstly, when one is trapped in one space for a long time or, secondly, when one is chosen by a teacher monster. I was a little worried about Kim Hee-chan, who was dragged to the 4th floor, but I had never read a story about a captured student turning into a monster, so I felt like I had to escape before something unexpected happened.
“On the third floor, I was lucky enough to be in a classroom without school rules several times, so I stayed hidden until now. “I don’t go to class.”
“Then this… ‘Except when the class bell rings’, which I wrote down next to Rule 4 with my friend, is probably related to Rule 2. “There is no disadvantage to attacking a student monster when the bell rings for class and you have to take a seat, right?”
“I thought so.”
Well, at this level, I understand it really well.
‘All the essential rules have been summarized.’
In addition to these, there are rules 3, 6, 7, and 8, but in Lee Jae-heon’s mind, these were not rules as eccentric as ‘if you don’t know, you’re already dead.’ I don’t remember the phrase or the exact content, but it was roughly something like being careful about your phone ringing or not attacking the monster first.
“….”
Lee Jae-heon thought for a moment and glanced at the window.
“…Was there any student among the students who escaped through the window? “I think there were students who panicked and tried it.”
“Wow, how did you know? When I had just arrived in the other side of the world, someone in my class opened the window and threw themselves, and they suddenly disappeared. “I don’t know where it was moved, but it was so ominous that I couldn’t try it.”
Lee Jae-heon thought about Park Da-young’s words.
‘It wasn’t moved, it was deleted.’
I remember school rule number 8 [Dismissal from school after dismissal time]. It is a school rule that if a survivor attempts to leave the school building before the dismissal time set by the school, the survivor will be ‘deleted’. It may seem cleaner at first glance in that it disappears without leaving behind a body or a monster, but that does not make it a less heinous rule.
And there was another scary thing about this rule.
“I can only use the elevator once, so I’ll have to call some people from the standby group to save the student and go down. That way, we will be able to wait for you on the second and first floors.”
“…I guess so.”
The dismissal time set by the school is only 1 minute.
‘I think it was a one-minute time attack right after the 8th period.’
I don’t know what period it is now, but if you want to leave school, you have to wait on the stairs on the second floor, even if you can’t go to the first floor. Even in this case, the student monster and the teacher monster grabbed the ankles of the survivors trying to leave school, so they needed to have quick wits to avoid the monsters.
The good news is that at that time, it doesn’t matter whether you hit the monster’s head or strangle it.
“….”
No, no matter how much I thought about it, it wasn’t fortunate.
“Class time is slowly coming to an end, Director. Shall we prepare?”
“…I really think I can go alone.”
“Please don’t say such nonsense.”
“No, really…”
I promise… I won’t be able to finish this within two rounds.
Fuck making a living.
