Chapter 220: School Rumor
“Uncle, you’re so bold, doing this openly at school… *cough*…” Misaki Naomi realized he had deliberately quickened his pace and immediately shut up and followed him.
At night, Kisaragi High School, after teachers and students had left, appeared exceptionally desolate under the cold moonlight, as if the flowers had lost their vitality and color, and a dead, chilling, and eerie feeling permeated the air.
In such a dim and unlit school, two figures were walking unhurriedly down the corridor. Their footsteps echoed in the silent building, and every soft whisper between them sounded like a roar resonating through a valley.
Misaki Naomi followed He Jia’an with some panic, looking at the empty classrooms they passed. Occasionally, she heard the dripping of water from the faucets in the corridor’s restroom. Every detail could trigger her infinite nightmare fantasies, and she was constantly on alert, as if afraid something terrifying might suddenly leap out from a dark corner.
He Jia’an walked swaggeringly down the third-floor corridor and said calmly, “It’s just a bit quieter than during the day, is it that terrifying?”
“That’s because you haven’t heard the horror rumors about this school!” Misaki Naomi clutched the back of He Jia’an’s clothes, following him closely, and nervously stepped on his heels from time to time.
He Jia’an remained unfazed. He could maintain his balance, but to match Misaki Naomi’s speed, he slowed down. Hearing her words, he turned his head and asked curiously, “Besides Miyako’s Curse, are there any other rumors about this school?”
“There are plenty, like Hanako of the Toilet, the biology classroom that you can enter but never leave, and that the school was once a mass grave… Every story is terrifying!” Misaki Naomi said with great conviction, her bright, almond-shaped eyes wide open, more beautiful than the moon that night.
He Jia’an burst into laughter. As he walked, he asked with interest, “Then tell me, let’s see if you can scare me.”
“No way, telling ghost stories at a time like this would mean I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight when I get home,” Misaki Naomi strongly refused.
“However, the school you attend does have some unusual aspects.” He Jia’an stopped teasing her. His gaze swept across the surrounding dark corners. Although the New Year’s red envelope was helping him avoid the intrusion of evil spirits, he could still vaguely sense that in some parts of this school, there seemed to be peering eyes.
He was too familiar with the feeling of being watched. After all, for the several years he lived in the mental sanatorium, he had been constantly spied upon by eyes from other dimensions.
Misaki Naomi finally abandoned her reserve and directly grabbed He Jia’an’s arm, staying close to him. “Uncle, don’t scare me.”
“I’m not scaring you, it’s the fact,” He Jia’an shook his head. “I don’t know how abnormal knowledge is taught where you are, but in the Shenzhou Region, such courses are only introduced at the university level.
Generally, abnormal factors refer to various supernatural phenomena. Since they are supernatural, they naturally come with some weird phenomena that exceed current human cognition. These weird phenomena are often limited by the range of activity of the source causing these anomalies, and this range is what we investigators call an ‘anomaly domain.’ Some of these domains have restrictions on entry and exit, some do not, some exist anywhere in our reality dimension, and some exist in dimensional spaces that ordinary people cannot perceive with their senses.
In my opinion, Kisaragi High School, where you study, is now almost no different from a common anomaly domain. It is indeed inhabited by some abnormal factors that are beyond the scope of human cognition.”
Misaki Naomi shivered. “Did you discover something?”
He Jia’an didn’t answer her question but stopped. “We’re here.”
They arrived at Mano Daichi’s personal office, which was next to the laboratory classroom where students usually conducted chemistry experiments.
He Jia’an tried to open the office door but found it was firmly locked.
“Do you know any other way to get in?” He Jia’an looked at Misaki Naomi.
Misaki Naomi thought for a moment, “Maybe we can climb through the window, but I don’t know if the laboratory door is locked either.”
The two walked one behind the other to the front and back doors of the chemistry laboratory. After trying to pull the door panels, He Jia’an found that the front door was locked, so he said to Misaki Naomi at the back door, “This is locked, you…”
He saw that the back door was completely empty, and Misaki Naomi had vanished. He vaguely heard the sound of a door roller being pushed, as if the door had been opened.
Thinking Misaki Naomi had already entered the laboratory, He Jia’an quickly followed. But as he stepped into the classroom, which was filled with the smell of chemical reagents, he found to his astonishment that Misaki Naomi was not there either.
Misaki Naomi had disappeared!
…
“Uncle, the door here isn’t locked, I’m coming in first, hurry up.” Misaki Naomi, overjoyed to find the back door unlocked, shouted to He Jia’an outside the classroom as she walked in. But when she turned her head, she was bewildered to find there was no door behind her. Glancing around, she realized this was definitely not a chemistry laboratory.
This place was filled with the smell of formalin and various decaying biological matter. Rows of shelving units were neatly arranged to the end of the classroom, and on each shelf were transparent jars filled with the flesh of unknown creatures. The semi-turbid liquid was greenish and murky like spoiled pork bone broth… This was clearly a biology laboratory!
Misaki Naomi felt her head buzzing, and her breathing became rapid. She realized the environment of this classroom was wrong. The classroom had four walls with no exit, and the lighting was also wrong!
Hesitantly, she walked to the window and looked up at the sky. A giant, scarlet moon was approaching the ground like a colossal eyeball. Its red light shone through the glass into the classroom.
Following the direction of the red light, Misaki Naomi covered her mouth in terror, wanting to scream. The things soaking in the jars on the shelving units were not animal body parts or corpses, but clearly various human tissues!
“Uncle, where are you…” Misaki Naomi wished more than ever that she could hold onto that sickly-looking uncle again. But she also knew she couldn’t just wait to die. She had realized she had likely stumbled into the “biology classroom that cannot be escaped” from the school’s horror rumors.
Misaki Naomi knew the legend of the “biology classroom that cannot be escaped,” but unfortunately, this horror legend was like a eunuch, lacking a complete ending. Only the terrifying parts were circulated. As for the method to escape this place, it was unknown whether the person who first spread the rumor did it intentionally, or if later people, to make the story more interesting, deliberately weakened or even cut out the “escape method,” so that no one knew it now.
“If the rumors are true, then the person who first spread this must have been the first person to escape from here. Being able to escape means there is an exit,” Misaki Naomi forced herself to think and remain calm.
