Chapter 221: Alternate Dimension
Turning around, Misaki Naomi saw that someone had once drawn an incomplete pattern on the blackboard in the biology classroom with white chalk. It looked like a windmill or a spiral, and the missing part seemed deliberately erased. Faintly, it resembled a question posed by the teacher during class, for the students in class to fill in the blank.
And regarding this pattern, the more she looked at it, the more familiar it felt.
Suddenly, a spark flashed through her mind. She clapped her hand and pulled at the chest of her jacket, where the Kisaragi High School school badge pattern, if viewed upside down, strikingly matched the unmissing part of the blackboard pattern, with the extra part instead completing it.
She tore off the school badge pattern from her chest. Since it was nylon and additionally pasted on, it came off easily.
Misaki Naomi flipped the pattern to the back and stepped back until the school badge in front of her aligned with the pattern on the blackboard. She became even more convinced of the correctness of her guess.
“Does our school’s school badge have some special meaning?” Misaki Naomi wondered in shock. Due to the events happening now being too eerie and fantastical, her attitude toward the school had completely changed.
At the very least, the old principal of Kisaragi High School was definitely no good; he had founded this school for some unspeakable dark secret.
Perhaps the school’s other horror rumors were also true. Kisaragi High School had indeed been built on a dangerous site, and Hanako of the Toilet, Miyako, and the people injured or killed due to these two legends were all sacrifices under that dark secret.
Kana had died because of this, and she herself was about to follow in her footsteps.
Thinking of this, Misaki Naomi suddenly felt unwilling. If she died just like this without knowing why, she would die with her eyes open. She immediately resolved to find the truth.
“If this pattern on the blackboard is a special mechanism that needs me to complete it, then I’ll try completing it.” Misaki Naomi muttered to herself. She wanted to reduce her attention to the terrifying environment she was in by talking to herself and actively tackling the problem through thinking.
Misaki Naomi found a broken piece of chalk in the inner edge seam of the blackboard, casually picked a relatively thick section from it, ran back and forth comparing the details of the school badge’s back pattern, and repeatedly drew and etched the pattern with the chalk, ultimately completely filling in the pattern on the blackboard.
The moment it was completed, Misaki Naomi felt the earth under her feet begin to shake. Then, the body parts samples on the shelving unit fell down one after another with the shaking, smashing all over the floor. The foul smell and the hard-to-endure formalin odor wafted out, gradually filling the entire biology classroom.
“Cough cough.” Misaki Naomi was choked by the pungent smell, feeling dizzy and lightheaded, coughing nonstop. She could only raise her arm and use the clothes on it to cover her mouth and nose, trying not to inhale these foul-smelling gases, and blankly watched the changes on the blackboard.
She saw the blackboard shake violently with the earthquake, starting to crack from the center of the pattern drawn with chalk on it. From a small opening, it gradually spread dense spiderweb-like cracks outward, purple-red demonic light seeping from every fissure, and decadent whispers emanating outward from the unknowable place behind those cracks.
Just hearing a little of the sound and glimpsing a bit of the demonic light, Misaki Naomi felt as if she had already seen a terrifying existence that brought despair crawling out from behind the cracks.
Swish!
Suddenly, Misaki Naomi heard the sound of a door opening. That nonexistent door seemed to finally appear and be opened, but her whole body was as heavy as if filled with lead, unable to move. Her two eyes, gradually bulging with bloodshot veins, could not blink or shift, only watching helplessly as the light behind the blackboard grew stronger and stronger, despair gradually devouring her reason, yet she couldn’t even manage a collapsing shout.
“Run!” At that moment, a figure flashed rapidly in front of her. Without a word, it picked her up and rushed straight toward the classroom door on the wall, which was being squeezed smaller by space.
Roar—
Just as that heaven-destroying roar was about to shatter everything in the biology classroom, two figures pressed tightly together burst out from the rapidly shrinking spatial gap, and the terrifying roar was also perfectly cut off by the timely closure of the spatial gap.
“Are you okay?” He Jia’an didn’t care about his waist hurting from crashing into the cement pillar, nearly unable to stand steadily. He got up and went over to check on Misaki Naomi’s condition.
Terror lingered in the girl’s eyes, her whole body cold and stiff. Only her eyeballs could barely move. When she saw that it was He Jia’an’s sickly face, with the wig on his head tilted to one side, she finally burst into loud cries.
“Why did you take so long to come!”
He Jia’an gave a bitter smile, letting the girl ram and pound against him in his arms.
Just as the girl couldn’t foresee that she would accidentally step into the biology classroom with no way out in the legend, He Jia’an also didn’t know how to find the door to get in.
Fortunately, both persevered relentlessly in searching for the door to get out（ and get in） in their respective spaces. When Misaki Naomi completed the mysterious pattern, triggering the mysterious monster summoned by the pattern, He Jia’an finally found a classroom door that suddenly appeared. Opening the door, he just happened to see Misaki Naomi who was forced to await the descent of death, and hurriedly saved her out at the moment her life hung by a thread.
After crying and shouting for a while, Misaki Naomi calmed down and looked at He Jia’an while sobbing: “Are you really an uncle?”
“Alive and warm.” He Jia’an took her hand and placed it on his heart, letting her carefully feel it.
Through the clothes, feeling the hot male skin and the regular rising and falling heartbeat under the chest, Misaki Naomi finally felt completely at ease. She suspiciously looked around and suddenly discovered that the scenery here was still unusual—dim and dark, yet covered with a layer of dark red light permeating the campus. Looking up at the sky outside the corridor window, her breathing quickened again.
“We… we don’t seem to have returned to the reality world. This place… what exactly is this place!?” Misaki Naomi looked at the surroundings in terror. Strange yet familiar, though the scenery was very similar, it absolutely wasn’t the Kisaragi High School she knew. It was old and dilapidated, scarred and battered, wounded all over, with a decoration style full of the aesthetic sense of the Showa period last century.
He Jia’an grunted, supporting his waist as he stood up. His sharp, eagle-like gaze scanned the surroundings, and he said: “This place is indeed not Kisaragi High School. To be precise, it’s not the current Kisaragi High School, but the past Kisaragi High School.”
“Could it be a parallel spacetime…” Misaki Naomi had never dreamed she could time travel.
“That’s not accurate. This should be an abnormal dimension reflecting a certain time node in reality.” He Jia’an explained, “I’ve been to a place similar to here before, but far more dangerous than here. That was an outpost of an abnormal race branch on this planet. That abnormal race is cunning and detestable, fond of catching children… In short, although I don’t know how we got here, there should be a chance to get out.”
Actually, no matter what He Jia’an said, Misaki Naomi now only felt that as long as he was there, she had a safe haven, enough to feel secure.
