Let’s get this straight.
Chief Lee Jahaeon is trapped in an urban legend about a lunatic boarding school that runs groom lessons.
He’s even been selected as a groom candidate.
And as part of the preparations for the wedding, he’s drawing off a bowlful of blood every night, so in four days he’s going to collapse.
Lastly—
—...the wedding is also in four days.
“That is correct.”
I’m going to lose it.
Why are you so damn calm!
He should know perfectly well that in this kind of legend, “the wedding” gets redacted with a big fat CENSORED stamp at the end!
I held back the throb at the base of my skull.
No—there was no need to hold back. Right now I only exist as a mental process linked into Chief Lee Jahaeon’s head; I don’t have a body. ...Not that what I usually ride is a human body anyway.
In any case, first things first.
Blood.
—Space Mall—so... could you get “us” to supply an item and replenish the missing blood, at least?
“Yes.”
Why not!
...Of course, true to a lizard-chief, he had a rational, reasonable answer.
“If the current method of bloodletting is deemed ineffective, there is a high probability they will order an act with even higher mortality risk.”
In other words, from the legend’s perspective it’ll be “Why isn’t this working? Let’s try something else,” and they might just drain him dry overnight.
Fair enough.
Even if it makes me want to sigh.
[That my friend should spend time on a swordsman this passive and devoid of creativity!]
......?
Brown!?
Why is he—hang on. Back in Segwang Special City, Brown was judged to be a part of my mental system and accompanied me on VIP shopping at the Space Mall.
And this time too, I used an item made by those aliens who run the Space Mall to project only my mind into Chief Lee Jahaeon’s body.
High chance it’s the same mechanism.
If so... did it give the same ruling?
[Oh, correct answer, Roe Deer! A very astute deduction.]
Y-yeah.
The problem is this:
“Mr. Roe Deer.”
Chief Lee knows Brown very well...
Because he’s the reptilian alien who responded to my item use by half-destroying Brown’s studio.
“Is that remark from the late-night talk show’s Host of Darkness?”
—It... is, actually.
“I see. Do you require advice?”
—...Uh, ahem. Are you going to advise me to cut him off?
“Yes.”
[Oh, hardly surprising. Such taste and rhetoric from a rude swordsman who bombed my studio and tried to kidnap my crew!]
I think I’m getting stomach cramps...
We’re in a deranged legend where a trainee got his soles sliced open for noisy footsteps so they could pack in soundproofing, and we’re doing this...
—......Anyway, Chief Lee’s situation is more urgent, so let’s table that discussion for later.
“Yes.”
Literally, you’re on track to die in four days at most.
I’m going to scream....
After smoothing Brown’s ruffled fur, I swallowed my groan and thought.
Chief Lee really has no intention of handing over bodily control.
And the conditions are way off from what I prepared for.
I came to take the trial for him so he could pass the groom lesson. But he’s not just passed—he’s been selected as a groom candidate, an official trainee who has to escape from inside the program.
That changes the game.
Rather than picking the “answer key” to this groom-school legend, our odds go up if we dig into a structural exploit under the answer key.
I checked at once.
First... in the Darkness Exploration Record, it only said the school’s policy forbids leaving the bedroom at night.
—Is it difficult for you to leave the bedroom at night? If so, please also explain why.
“Yes. At night, structural anomalies are observed in the building, and in sections without anomalies there are watchers.”
In short, the school at night is a labyrinth with twisted architecture, plus patrolling inspectors. A bespoke nightmare.
—Have you tried going out yourself? If so, please tell me your objective and destination.
“Yes.”
And Chief Lee did not open his mouth.
...What?
But the next moment—
He told me.
“...!”
A block of information shared.
No—call it memory, sensation. Raw values of sight, smell, touch, sound—sensory data fed into my thought system.
As if they were my own memories.
I am moving down the academy’s dark corridor without a sound.
The curtain stirs, and as a patrolling inspector is about to emerge, my body flips up to cling to the ceiling and evade the gaze.
I modulate my physical strength so as not to damage the ceiling lights, slide my hands into the brick grooves, and move again.
The destination is the front gate.
I know.
During the trial period in this legend, if you’re about to fail, as a last resort you can try fleeing through the front gate.
In rare cases of success, you wake up near your registered address... which the Darkness Exploration Record also notes.
And Baekilmong Corporation’s database says much the same, so from context I could infer that Chief Lee tried this method based on that knowledge.
The thing is—
He didn’t need to tell me.
...I just knew.
Naturally, I knew that Chief Lee—we—had judged based on similar background knowledge.
Because it was shared.
A terrifying sense of unity.
—...So “we” share information like this?
“Yes.”
Do these reptilian aliens always run this process in the background?
It’s definitely not a form of transmission a modern human would recognize. Not transmission so much as fusion of experience...
Even as I thought, my memory reassembled.
After a long, suffocating game of hide-and-seek combined with measured force, I—
—I arrive at the site of the front gate.
Two hours, forty-eight minutes, and fourteen seconds from the bedroom to this point. If I forgo sleep, retries are possible.
But we knew there was no need.
Because where the front gate used to be—
I kept myself from cursing.
—there was only wall.
Night exploration terminated. Return to bedroom.
This damned boarding school had sealed every formal entry and exit.
No one in, no one out.
Final chapter of a horror game, basically.
Looks like they’ve collected all the groom candidates and entered some ritual phase.
Preparing for the “wedding.”
Is that why the trial period has ended?
And even if you smash doors or try the windows—
The school grounds are ringed by fog and cliffs, with forest carrying the sound of the sea from somewhere; every explorer who fled that way was never seen again.
That ending.
In short, this urban legend is a high-tier type that doesn’t pair well with Chief Lee’s usual specialty of physical exorcism.
And there’s a bigger problem.
...This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Chief Lee—Employee D—being in this situation is not in any record I read in the Darkness Exploration Record.
Butterfly effect?
By my coming here, did the composition of Team D change and create a brand-new death flag for Chief Lee?
...I had a bad feeling.
Which meant I needed to cooperate even more with this escape.
—Thank you for explaining all of that.
“Yes.”
Soon, Lee began to draw blood.
It’s better to do it now and at least sleep afterward rather than do it in the morning, but I was on edge.
It’s too much.
...Honestly, I could see the hand in my field of view turning paler.
A visceral survival alarm.
Sharing the same body made it hit even harder.
I need to carve out an exit vector as fast as possible.
Merged with the drowsing Chief Lee, my consciousness blurred; I resolved to gather intel tomorrow...
And the next day—
[The menu is tediously old-fashioned.]
At breakfast, they served lily-of-the-valley, apples, and... boiled brain.
The whole brain sat there under an apricot-colored sauce.
Please...
At least it looked smaller than a human’s. Haa...
I wanted to bawl and look away from the taste; maybe it was a mercy I didn’t have to slice it and eat it with my own hands...
Focus...
I tried to collect other information that entered Chief Lee’s field of view.
First priority... the trainees.
There were more than twenty silhouettes around the long table, but dress made them distinguishable.
Not the clean, plain formalwear worn by groom candidates; about a dozen wore tougher, humbler-looking shirts and trousers.
Trial trainees over there?
People caught in the legend.
Since no new trainees were being accepted, they were probably the leftovers who had failed in the previous round and were stuck repeating the trial life.
...I also saw that more than seven among them bore injuries tantamount to torture; a few even had to be actively carrying out those acts on themselves as they sat there.
Into the placid, static calm of the school meal, that grotesque spectacle slid like it belonged.
...Hoo.
It was so unnervingly serene it felt colder.
......
Stay calm.
Drawing the image of a deep breath, I shifted focus to other data in view.
This time, the other side.
The groom candidates.
Those wearing the same formalwear as Chief Lee sat at the head of the table, conversing smoothly...
...and their faces looked strangely blurred.
Not just faces—anything beyond the uniform was rejected by the brain, refusing to resolve.
As if passed through a filter.
[Oh, Mr. Roe Deer. Isn’t that one of this swordsman’s traits?]
A trait?
[We have found one reason this reptile knows nothing of art and aesthetics.]
[A sensory system that only interprets what it deems necessary. Oh, how arrogant and primitive!]
Wait.
So these reptilian Space-Mall aliens... don’t perceive sensory data they don’t need?
Isn’t that a contamination filter?
As in, filtering out harmful input.
Come to think of it, I’ve never seen Chief Lee suffer contamination, or even show signs of being affected by legends.
Must be a property of “us.”
That tracks!
With one mystery resolved, I took my eyes off the groom candidates.
So, those aren’t human...
In this type of facility legend, it’s common that the place wasn’t designed for humans to begin with. Like The House of the Blind, that exhibition legend.
...Which explains why, until now, no one ever went beyond passing the trial to be selected as an official groom candidate.
Maybe Chief Lee was selected because, fundamentally, he isn’t a normal human but a reptilian alien.
......
All right. Noted.
Next I focused on the long, lanky figure seated at the very head of the table.
The inspector.
This school’s educator.
—Chief, is it relatively safe to ask the education inspector wedding-related questions, provided we’re not overly persistent? Blink once for yes, twice for no.
Lee’s view closed and opened slowly.
Yes.
—Then please ask this.
The inspector looked at me kindly.
I filtered explosive phrasing out of the question.
First, exclude direct questions about the bride.
—Mm... He’ll deem it rude... Someone who went in with me had their mouth sewn shut with a crochet hook... as “discipline”...
Exclude digging questions about the institution, too.
—Ah, someone got expelled for prying into who runs the school. Ended up registered missing in the forest... Rumor said he got a bribe from the research team to ask.
Thus, I chose something more personal, a question suitable to ask as a trainee.
—Is it possible that some groom candidates will be eliminated and not stand at the wedding?
I spoke, and Chief Lee voiced the words.
And the inspector replied kindly yet sternly.
But I cannot render his answer in colloquial speech.
He was clearly responding to me in an auditory manner, yet my thoughts and narration insisted on expressing it as a long, diary-like recollection straight out of the classics.
A peculiar coercion indeed—just like the scene where I tried to speak through a performance and couldn’t form proper sentences.
But in a way befitting the theme of groom-school prose, the inspector’s words were received in my head in elegant, flowing form.
They said—
That all groom candidates are eliminated save one.
—...!
—Then what happens to the candidates who are eliminated?
Kindly, the inspector assuaged the anxiety of a trainee afraid of failing to become a groom, and emphasized once more Saint Anticus Boarding School’s generous motto:
Encouragement and assistance.
Even for mere trial applicants, not official trainees, the school does its utmost to teach the groom’s virtues.
Why, even now, although the roster of groom candidates is full, they wait for trial applicants to complete the course.
They too will attend the wedding.
The eliminated groom candidates as well.
Indeed, the inspector said that the candidates would assume an even more important, honorable role at the ceremony.
—May I ask what that is?
The inspector described it readily.
They become the wedding’s souvenirs.
Beautiful works of art signifying the groom’s growth; as parts of that art, they will accompany the ceremony throughout as essential components.
And when the ceremony ends, they may be distributed as return gifts to the guests.
Everlasting mementos to recall the wedding.
......
......
—Thank you.
The inspector praised my polite thanks and asked the groom candidates to offer words of blessing.
And amid the groom candidates’ graceful well-wishes at the end of breakfast, I thought:
We’re screwed.
If you fail, you’re a souvenir; if you pass, you’re the groom.
Becoming the groom might be the lesser evil, but I can already hear people saying, “Honestly, being a souvenir hurt less.”
No matter what you pick, it’s a sewer...
Damn it!
In the break after the morning lesson, I hurriedly asked Chief Lee to go alone to the restroom, and then asked:
—If we can’t escape before the day of the wedding, would you consider sacred-fire bombardment?
It looked like the cleanest solution.
From what I could see, everyone was going to die anyway. If we hit them with sacred fire and threw the place into chaos, at least a few might survive.
Then we could make it to a safe house, right?
However—
“Yes.”
...?!
—Is there any reason other than potential casualties?
“Yes.”
—Please explain.
“Yes. It is more economical for us to abandon the Lee Jahaeon individual.”
—.......
Hold on.
—What do you mean by economical?
“The location where Chief Lee is isolated has had its point of connection to reality shut; energy input is difficult.”
.......
“In this situation, if we track the site and proceed with sacred-fire bombardment, we predict it will cost more than the value of Chief Lee’s identity and body.”
So.
Apparently, because every entry route has vanished, it would cost even more than when I escaped the Late-Night Talk Show...
If that’s the case—
—Doesn’t Chief Lee earn enough money at Baekilmong? Consider his future value, too.
“There are cheaper alternatives than sacred-fire bombardment.”
—.......
It was a bizarre calculus.
“Us,” those reptilian aliens, seem to regard Lee Jahaeon—an entity belonging to their collective—as a small part of themselves...
And he, himself, as well.
Like a single bee in a giant hive, or a cell in a colossal organism.
Because all experiences and information are shared?
[It’s a concept called a hive mind, Mr. Roe Deer! A twentieth-century sci-fi fancy, yes, but rather convincing, no?]
[Of course, for a fascinating, multifaceted soul like you, it’s only natural you can’t quite feel what those things are.]
.......
I don’t know.
But—
—Chief.
The one I want to save is Chief Lee Jahaeon of Team D.
—You want to live, right? I mean you, not “us.”
A brief silence.
Then:
“Yes.”
Good.
—Then let’s do our damned best.
I worked my brain to the bone.
Combine today’s intel. Trainees, groom candidates, inspector, questions, wedding, we...
We.
That filtered view when looking at the groom candidates.
—...Chief. You are in a state that resists contamination better than ordinary Baekilmong field investigators, correct?
“Yes.”
...If so—
I do have one idea.
[Oh!]
It’s really insane, but—
—If you’re reluctant to hand me bodily control, would you be willing to carry out requests exactly as I give them?
“Yes.”
—Thank you.
—First, starting tonight, stop drawing blood. And then...
And then... yeah.
I swallowed and continued.
—Would you consider handing bodily control, briefly, to someone other than me?
“Who is this ‘other’?”
Mm.
That would be—
—...the late-night talk show host, Brown.
[Oh?]
It sounds crazy, but it’s the best move we’ve got.