Ch. 22 - Fifth Ghost Story - The Neverending Fourth Period (4)

“Also! Those Japanese b*stards would settle down on our country’s lands and dampen the spirits of our forefathers! People are participating in the ‘No Japan’ campaign! Let’s all boycott Japanese products, please?! Look into it more……”

[T/N: The ‘No Japan’ campaign was an organized boycott of Japanese goods that was started in the summer of 2019 by South Korean citizens.]

As the hanbok-wearing national history teacher shouted, overly excited to the point that spit was spraying out of their mouth, I was silently lost in thought.

‘He told me to think of the solution this time……’

‘What method will allow me to do this?’

Then again, I was the one to force him to think of a solution in the first place.

‘Fuuu.’

Whether or not the teacher saw me, I stretched and let out a sigh.

Ahn Gyeongwon.

When I had the opportunity, I was going to punch you just once.

‘But what can I do right now? I don’t know any ghost stories.’

That was something that Gyeongwon, who had been with me up to that point, would know very well.

What did he hope to get by testing me, despite knowing that fact?

Was it that the situation could be solved with normal logic?

Also, he had said that I was wrong from the very beginning.

All the assumptions that I had made so far were incorrect. I started to think back on what I had said about the situation so far.

First, I said that the clock had stopped.

Then, I said that the entire class had disappeared. The ghost stories would appear randomly, and when we died, time would turn back to the beginning.

What if I reversed everything, thinking of it in the opposite way? The clock didn’t stop. The entire class did not disappear, and time wasn’t turning back when we died?

‘How is this possible?’

None of it made sense. No, that wasn’t the only thing that wasn’t making sense. The Demon King would be revived in three years, at graduation. I should have survived when we were just sitting in that classroom during the blackout. And just where did the Laughing Woman pop out from?

Also, why was it that all four of us were regressing instead of just me alone……?

‘No, this isn’t regression.’

Considering what Gyeongwon had said, I tried to consider it from a different perspective.

That was right. Although I wasn't sure why or how, we weren’t regressing.

What else did I say while I was grabbing that b*stard by the collar?

‘No way.’

I stood up on the spot.

“Let’s break Nintendo… Huh? What is it?”

“……”

“… Student?”

The teacher was startled by my sudden actions during his rant. The attention of all the students turned to me.

“Who is he?”

“I think his name was Lee Joon?”

“Why did he suddenly stand up?”

“I don’t know.”

The students continued murmuring. I didn’t care what they were saying and walked between the desks up to the front, where Gyeongwon sat.

“Excuse me, student? Student?”

Ignoring the teacher, I stopped right where Gyeongwon was and started to talk to him, despite facing his back.

“So. This isn’t reality, huh?”

“…Keke.”

Gyeongwon started to chuckle softly as he continued to look forward.

“Then? What if it isn’t reality?”

I took a deep breath and responded.

“This… It’s a dream. This teacher, too. The school, the students, all of it.”

“Keke.”

“Except for you, me, Sunah and Hayoon. All of us are just cast members within this dream.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Yeah.”

The b*stard kept chucking, his back still facing me.

“Prove it.”

“……”

I’ll prove it in a way that will force you to recognize me. Even if you completely disregard everything I experienced before, I have abilities that you don’t. Someone like you, who is the type to face everything with logic and reasoning, can’t do what I can.

“… Excuse me, student?”

The other students continue to whisper as they stared at me.

“Student? This isn’t a dream. Just go and sit down. Ahem.”

The teacher made an embarrassed face as he spoke.

“No matter how much you hate studying, to claim this is all a dream… Huhu, my word… Huh? Please be seated.”

The whispers continued.

The other students began to look at me in an annoyed fashion. Sunah looked at me with surprise on her face. Next to her, Hayoon also seemed to be focusing on me.

“Stop just standing there and return to your seat. And calm down. We need to finish talking about Japan.”

“Why do I have to go back to my seat when this is all a dream? I’ll just do whatever I want, since this is a dream.”

“I’m saying it isn’t a dream, so go back to your seat.”

The teacher was calmly trying to get me to return to my seat. I pretended to be shocked as I decided to play around a bit.

“Is that so? It isn’t a dream?”

“Yes, that’s right. It isn’t a dream. I’m not sure why you thought it was, but please return to your seat.”

“It really isn’t a dream?”

“I’m telling you that it isn’t.”

The other students went from whispering to laughing at me.

“Look at him.”

“What is this, he’s so weird.”

“Are you telling me the truth? It isn’t a dream?”

“You're starting to annoy me! This isn’t a dream, but reality! Reality! Please just sit!”

“But what if it is a dream? I don’t want to be studying in a dream!”

“You p*nk! What will you do if this is reality, then? This is reality, so go back to your seat!”

“You’re only insisting that this is reality because you’re someone from within the dream!!”

“Hey, you p*nk! I’m saying it because I’m real! Go back to your seat!”

“I don’t want to! I’m just going to believe this is a dream!”

“Go back to your seat! What is a seventeen-year-old doing, acting like a kid!”

“This really isn’t a dream, but reality?”

“YEEEEEESSSS! THIS IS REALITY!”

“You guarantee it?”

“Yes, I can guarantee it.”

“Really?”

“I cross my heart and hope to die! This isn’t a dream but reality!”

“Then what time is it?”

“Isn’t it obviously thirty-six thousand five hundred eighty o’clock?!!!!!!”

“What time is it?”

“Twenty-eight thousand nine hundred thirty-six o’clock! I can tell you that as many times as you want.”

“I see. Then can you tell me the date and year as well? I apparently have a bad memory.”

“Of course I can!”

The teacher started to shout, to the point that redness began to spread across the entirety of the face.

“It’s the zero six seventy-nine hundredth day of the hundred twenty-fourth month of the thirty-one thousand five hundred twenty-third year!!!!”

“……”

Suddenly, silence filled the entire room.

Hayoon then raised her hand and spoke with a clear voice.

“Teacher, your numbers are weird.”

Then the teacher began to look far into the distance.

“Is that so? I guess I was caught.”

Tap, tap, tap.

Swing.

The teacher just packed up the textbook and left without a word.

“……”

Sunah looked at the open classroom door with a dumbfounded expression.

“Whew.”

I let out a sigh and moved to the seat next to Gyeongwon.

“You. Move it.”

“Okay.”

The Class President moved away with a neutral expression.

“This good enough for you?”

“… Club Prez.”

Gyeongwon smiled with a satisfied expression.

“I see you use your wits well.”

Hayoon and Sunah got up as well and headed over to where we were seated.

Hayoon proceeded to motion for the two students seated behind Gyeongwon and me to get lost. The two blankly moved away, leaving the seats for the girls.

Gyeongwon and I turned our chairs around so that we could all talk together.

The other students continued to stare blankly at the four of us.

“Uhhh, what exactly happened? I didn’t quite get it……”

Sunah was feeling very conscious of the other students’ staring, to the point that she was sweating bullets. I tried to explain it to Sunah very clearly, by slowly making her think of what had happened.

“Sunah, do you remember when we first noticed that something was off?”

“That was… While we were swapping scary stories in the clubroom, we looked at the clock and saw that it had stopped……”

I nodded.

“And how did we get to that clubroom?”

Sunah tilted her head, thinking my question was weird.

“After we ate, it was Club Activity period… So didn’t we just go upstairs?”

“Nope.”

“……?”

“If we went up because it was Club Activity period, there’s something that’s off.”

Sunah took some time to ponder on it but did not seem able to figure it out. Making a curious expression, she asked.

“A weird point? What is it?”

“The other members.”

“Other… members? … Ah!”

Having realized what I meant, her eyes widened.

“Jinhee!”

“Right.”

I nodded and mentioned someone else.

“Not to mention our club teacher, Teacher Jang Hwaeun.”

That was right. Although we hadn’t met yet, that person was officially written in as the advisor for our club.

For our first club meeting, she was definitely supposed to show up and check up on what we were doing.

Also, Jinhee. Even if she was secretly added to our roster, other than those with special exceptions—like Hayoon—she should have shown up for club activities.

However, neither of them had shown up.

We originally hadn’t noticed, as the three of us had spent the last week together becoming friends. But with the official start of club activities, Jinhee and Teacher Hwaeun not showing up was definitely unusual.

“It’s like a dream within a dream.”

I tried to explain it in a simple manner.

“Did you see the movie Inception?”

“No.”

“It’s a movie where the main concept is about dreams within dreams. So, you didn’t see it… Then, have you ever had sleep paralysis before?”

“Yeah, I have a couple of times……”

“In that case, have you ever had a dream where you thought you had already woken up, only to realize you were still dreaming?”

“Dreaming… in a dream?”

Sunah looked up while thinking, then she replied.

“Several times… No, very often. I’ve had cases where I woke up, washed my face… Even brushed my teeth. But it was all a dream… And while I was rushing to get prepared, it was a dream again……”

After telling us that, Sunah began to blush red. Because her sleep cycle was such a mess, to the always late Sunah, that must have been a common occurrence.

“What we are going through right now is like that. Every time we wake up from a dream, we are returning to the starting point. The easiest way of waking up from a dream is by dying in one.”

“……?”

“We died multiple times, thinking that we had gone back in time after each death, but that wasn’t true. We were actually waking up from each dream after death, and dreaming the same dream all over again.”

“……!”

Sunah’s jaw dropped.

We weren’t regressing. The definitive proof was my system.

[You will restart at your previous checkpoint.]

[Loading…]

I vaguely remembered seeing that screen before each regression whenever I died.

However, it didn’t show up at all this time, even though I had died several times.

“A dream? Together? How in the world does that happen……?”

“Sorry. I’m not too sure about that.”

I shrugged my shoulders and looked at Gyeongwon. Gyeongwon nodded his head, as if he were satisfied.

“Huhu. Club Prez, nice explanation.”

Then, as if he had received the baton, he adjusted his glasses in preparation for finishing the explanation.

“Seeing the clock stop and the weird actions of the teacher earlier, those are called RCs.”

“RC’s?”

“It’s short for ‘Reality Check’. It refers to moments used to check if your situation is real.”

As the explanation character’s true instincts began to surface, I could almost see his glasses begin to shine.

“As the brain goes to sleep, various aspects of it begin to rest. Among them, situational awareness is by far the most inaccurate. No matter how reasonable things seem while you’re dreaming, when you think back on your dream after waking, none of it makes any reasonable sense.”

“… So?”

“The aspect where this shows up most often is numbers. Using numbers, you can check whether what you are going through is a dream or reality.”

Gyeongwon proceeded to take his phone out of his pocket.

“Now, what time is it?”

The phone’s clock showed the time as 11:35.

“11:35… As expected, time has stopped.”

“It’s not that time stopped. This time, try checking it continuously.”

Gyeongwon covered only the numbers and then showed it again.

“……!”

The clock showed 12:28. And that wasn’t all.

05:73.

13:24.

75:52.

Every time I looked away and checked the time again, the numbers changed.

“You get it? While you are asleep, the brain becomes especially weak against numbers. While the emotional flow feels very similar between dreams and reality, anything mathematical becomes very inaccurate within dreams.”

“How in the world does this happen……?”

As if she couldn’t believe what was happening, Sunah kept blinking her eyes while checking the clock.

“11:35 was probably the last time that someone saw before entering the dream. Because that time is in someone’s memory, it’s the first thing to show up when you check the clock. If you continuously check it, the numbers begin to change.”

“How interesting.”

“That’s why you often find that you can’t remember your family members’ phone numbers or remember the passcode to the entrance in your house while you’re dreaming.”

“Wow!”

Sunah listened to the explanation with a lot of interest.

“What Club Prez did to chase away the teacher just now was to use this RC. Quite impressive, actually. I can’t help but acknowledge it.”

“So Joon knew about this too……”

After Gyeongwon stated this happily, Sunah began to look at me with a respectful gaze.

Hayoon also looked in my direction with her hand on her chin.

I sheepishly replied to the attention.

“Well, it wasn’t much. What’s really important is what we’ll be doing from here on out.”

“Yes, that is the issue.”

Gyeongwon then let out a sigh.

“What should we do, Club Prez?”

“What?”

At Gyeongwon’s words, all the attention turned to me. What was that? Why was he asking me?

“Why are you asking me? You knew ahead of time that it was a dream. You tested me, saying I should find out on my own. Didn’t you also know the method of escaping?”

“Well, you see…”

He let out another sigh.

“All of the ghost stories involving dreams within dreams that I know of only have endings where they just happen to escape.”

“Huh?”

At our shocked expressions, Gyeongwon began to touch his glasses.

“While wandering through nightmares, I woke up. All the endings were something along those lines.”

“… You b*stard.”

I really started to get pissed. He was testing me even though he didn’t know the answer himself!

“And you were telling me to find it out on my own.”

“… I apologize, Club Prez. My sense of pride acted out on its own.”

“That’s not how you make an apology.”

I started to roll up my sleeves.

“Take off your glasses and clench your jaw.”

“……!”

After gathering his determination, he simply took off his glasses and closed his eyes.

“Here I come!”

“Joon……!”

Even before Sunah could stop me, I sent my hand flying towards the b*stard.

Swoosh.

Flick-!

“Ow!”

After flinching, Gyeongwon started to rub his forehead with a confused look on his face.

He must have thought I would actually hit him hard.

“Let’s stop testing each other and get along, Gyeongwon. We’re friends.”

“……”

The young master was looking at me calmly. A lazy but witty person would always be above a nerd without life experience in terms of aptitude, so I was sure I wouldn’t lose. But if we kept fighting like that, there was no way that our group could work together properly. It would be best to put an end to this here.

“Let’s shake hands and end this.”

“……”

“Here.”

As I had put my hand out, he calmly stared at me before slowly bringing out his right hand and shaking mine.

“There, it’s over.”

“……”

“Continue where you left off. Why did you think that I would know the answer?”

“Yeah. So, the reason……”

Although he had been staring blankly, the moment it was time for him to explain he put on his glasses and began to speak up, as if he had gotten his head back on straight.

“… I thought that, if it were Club Prez, you would know what to do. That’s because of all the questions that Club Prez has asked me so far. The way in which you think outside of the box when you ask those questions, that was what made me think you would figure out the answer.”

“……?”

Questions? Was that it? During the ‘Broadcasting Announcement' ghost story and the ‘Mother Dilemma’, as well as with the ‘Laughing Woman’—although he wouldn’t remember that one—I asked him many different questions about ghost stories. I mean, I was someone who had no understanding of the horror genre.

“I’m the type of person who simply takes in any given information, then uses that information and some reasoning to try and work things out. That was why, when Club Prez asked questions about some of the missing parts to the ghost stories, I was really flustered.”

“……”

“Unlike people like me, who only accept the information given as it is, I think that Club Prez is able to think about that same information from a fresh perspective that others can’t even dream about. I was hoping that you would be able to use this type of thinking to find the answer.”

After regaining his pace, he adjusted his glasses, coincidentally making the light reflect off them so that it looked like his glasses had lit up.

Although he had very high pride, once he acknowledged someone, he would very quickly accept them.

“The information we need is all there. We know the identity, situation, and story itself for this ghost story. Using those ingredients, I was hoping that you would mix them into a proper solution.”

“……”

“It may be a bit of pressure, but I think you can do it. Think very hard.”

“Me?”

“I think you can do it! I have this feeling you can.”

“……”

So that was what he thought after investigating the information?

‘If it’s me, I can do it, huh……?’

I swallowed and looked up as I began to consider.

Sunah was looking at me with an expectant expression. Hayoon was also looking at me with interest. What he suggested was my unique perspective was probably the things I came up with using my natural wits.

Being praised so suddenly like that made me feel a little embarrassed.

However, he wasn’t wrong. In a situation like this, where we knew everything we needed to, we no longer needed more information. At that point, we needed someone who could take the given information and mix, match, and twist it to find a solution.

‘And he’s saying that I’m the one playing that part.’

Hmm. What should I do? A repeating dream. How do we wake up? Dying isn’t the answer. Even if we were to die, we would be waking up in another dream.

Also, making a mess of things wouldn’t work, either.

We’d already run around a lot, experienced a lot of shock, and were even cut apart in the dreams, but we had yet to wake up.

There was only one solution.

“I do have one thing that I came up with.”

“What is it?”

Sunah was the one to ask, curious about the answer. The three of them were looking at me.

“I think we have to start thinking backwards.”

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