172 – An Untimely Graduation Ceremony # 1

172 – An Untimely Graduation Ceremony # 1

Baek Yeoul sat in a chair and continued to watch Hanamjin as he slept.

Because, for some reason, she felt concerned.

“Seeing as you’re going to sleep anyway, wouldn’t it be better to lie down in bed than doze in a chair?”

Baek Yeoul knew it to be true: sitting was better than standing, and lying down was better still. Even if sleep wouldn’t come, simply closing your eyes while prone helped the body recover its strength – basic human design.

“Should I wake him up and tell him to lie down?”

Baek Yeoul sat watching Ha Namjin, asleep in the presidential office chair, wrestling with this dilemma for a long, long time.

And then, as time trickled on…

Slithering, creeping…

The shadows lurking beneath Ha Namjin’s chair began to stretch out appendages in all directions, like living things.

Like the tentacles of a monstrous octopus.

They began to nudge and break things throughout the office.

Crack, crunch-.

Baek Yeoul, who had been lost in thought and then briefly dozed off, snapped awake.

“What in the world! The shadows are…moving!”

Ha Namjin’s shadow now filled the room. Baek Yeoul figured it was all because he had fallen asleep sitting down.

“This is why you need to rest properly when you rest! A half-hearted break just leaves you feeling more tired! Ha Namjin! Wake up! Ha Namjin!”

Baek Yeoul shouted, but Ha Namjin remained stubbornly unconscious.

Baek Yeoul sighed, concluding that slapping the boy’s cheek was the only way.

But as Baek Yeoul tried to approach Ha Namjin, the shadows lashed out like angry blades, making it impossible to get close.

“Ha Namjin! Wake up! Ha Namjin! Ugh…!”

In the end, the presidential office was completely engulfed in Ha Namjin’s shadow, turning everything black.

Yu Yeoreum, having noticed the commotion, ended her meditation in the garden and appeared in the hallway of the presidential residence. But even the hallway had already been invaded by the shadows, which had dyed everything a deep, ominous black.

“This is just like the ‘Crimson King’s’ shadow I saw in the Great Labyrinth. Which means…”

Was Ha Namjin finally becoming the Crimson King?

Perhaps it was something that was always destined to happen.

The problem was that there was no heir to take over the position from Ha Namjin just yet.

“Yeoreum, brace yourself!”

Zwaaang-.

Yu Yeoreum unleashed a light from her eyes, driving back the encroaching darkness.

But the darkness poured in like water rushing through a dam breached beyond repair. She alone was not enough to stem the tide.

In the end, Yu Yeoreum and Baek Yeoul led the people away from the Presidential Residence.

Slithering, creeping…

In an instant, the Presidential Residence was swallowed whole by shadow.

The greater problem was that, looking up, the sun high in the sky had begun to lose its light.

A situation akin to an eclipse.

With the atmosphere plunging into night-like darkness in a flash, Baek Yeoul felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

“What do we do!”

She didn’t know what to do.

If this were Hanamjin, he would somehow find a solution and stride forward, taking the lead.

But now, that very boy, Hanamjin, had become the problem, and the predicament felt all the more dire.

Still, Baek Yeoul slapped her own cheeks, *chak-chak*—snapping herself to attention.

She had resolved to step forward this time and somehow sort out the situation.

She had mostly received help from Hanamjin; now it was her turn to act.

─*Kieeeek.*

Just then, a grotesque monster emerged from the darkness that blanketed the Presidential Residence.

Its surface was pitch-black, like ink, and had a sticky, viscous quality; its form resembled a mantis, but it was the size of an elephant.

─*Shaaak!*

An obsidian mantis lunged toward Baek Yeoul.

Yu Yeoreum repelled it in one blow with light erupting from her eyes.

*Chwaaak!*

The problem was that this was not the only mantis.

Seeing fiends stirring everywhere, Yu Yeoreum decided to retreat, for now.

“But! Hanam-jinnie is still in there!”

Baek Yeoul couldn’t bring herself to back down so easily.

The boy was still asleep inside the residence.

Uncomfortably seated in that chair, no less!

Yu Yeoreum understood Baek Yeoul’s feelings, but her thoughts differed somewhat.

“There’s no need to worry about Hanamjin.”

In Yu Yeoreum’s estimation, Hanamjin was a man of firm resolve.

Even though he was currently becoming a demon, having swallowed the Conceptual Stone of “Immortality,” if he was a fellow with a strong will, he could surely endure and gain control.

Which is to say, Yu Yeoreum thought Hanamjin’s current rampage was only temporary.

Therefore, she needed to worry about those outside, more than Hanamjin himself.

And so, Yu Yeoreum raced to the department store and met the Espers garrisoned there.

Captain Kang Cheolmin, the commander of the garrison, brightened when he saw Baek Yeoul and Yu Yeoreum.

“You two! What in the world is going on! The sky suddenly went dark! Even the sun is obscured!”

“Cap’n!”

Seeing her teacher’s face seemed to melt away some of the tension that had frozen Baek Yeoul’s heart. Captain Kang Cheolmin was a teacher from Yeongsa High’s Class 3-D, a dependable adult.

Even if he wasn’t an Esper himself.

“So Hanamjin finally went and did it, huh?”

Captain Kang Cheolmin, after hearing Baek Yeoul’s rambling explanation, roughly grasped the situation. Now was the time to figure out a solution.

Captain Kang Cheolmin looked around.

He saw the students he used to teach.

Having faced the apocalypse together, rescuing citizens and taking down monsters, they’d shed their former selves of whiny adolescents complaining about the lunch menu, and had become seasoned professionals.

Though their faces still held onto a youthful look.

“What do you think we should do?”

Kang Cheolmin asked the students of Class D.

The students immediately started to discuss amongst themselves.

“First, we need to get people into the shelters.”

“They’re saying monsters are coming out of the Presidential Residence? It’s more important to eliminate the source.”

“Okay, then let’s divide people up─.”

The stronghold quickly became noisy.

Pangdaengi, who had been watching this scene, said.

“We need to wake up Hanam-jjin! The problem is that Hanam-jjin is asleep! If we wake him up, he’ll definitely do something about it!”

Wake up Hanamjin─.

Baek Yeoul had no doubt that waking the sleeping Hanamjin would quell this chaos.

And because Baek Yeoul was the one who had watched Hanamjin for the longest time amongst them, everyone listened to her opinion.

Which is to say, Baek Yeoul’s plan was this.

“I need someone to go with me to wake up Hanam-jjin!”

Baek Yeoul had come to ask for her friends’ help.

“Of course, it’s going to be dangerous. We might even die…”

It was plain, though, that this would be as dangerous as plunging into the eye of a typhoon, so Baek Yeoul held no grand expectations.

One’s own life, after all, is rather important.

But contrary to Baek Yeoul’s thoughts, the children began raising their hands, all vying for attention.

“Let’s go!”

“Just defending the base was getting dull.”

“We’re not going to have to fight Namjin, are we? That’s a little scary.”

“They said we just need to wake them up, not fight.”

“I’m confident I could win if we had to fight right now.”

Everyone was brimming with enthusiasm.

Watching them, Baek Yeoul was bewildered, and class president Cheon Yura began to explain to Baek Yeoul.

“It’s not like you guys are the only ones who’ve been fighting. Of course, your side might have faced tougher and crueler opponents, but we’ve also been fighting while worrying about our families and people.”

In that moment, Baek Yeoul was deeply moved.

To think there were still people who hadn’t lost hope and moral goodness, even amidst an increasingly difficult situation.

And he felt proud that they were friends who had studied in the same classroom as him.

“I wish we could keep going to school.”

Baek Yeoul had been bullied often because of his “misfortune”.

There were many times he hadn’t wanted to go to school.

But now, he regretted more that he couldn’t attend school with such amazing friends.

Then, Captain Kang Cheol-min spoke.

“Alright, decided. If this is resolved well, let’s hold a graduation ceremony. You all diligently attended school for about three years, so you should at least have diplomas.”

A high school diploma.

He wondered if such a thing was even necessary now.

But everyone wanted one, all the same.

# # #

“Hanamjjin! Wake up!”

I heard someone calling my bum, but I couldn’t answer.

My mouth wouldn’t move.

Everyone has had an experience like this at least once.

A state where only your consciousness is awake while you are sleeping.

Your mind is fairly clear, but your body won’t move, like it’s become a giant prison.

It was, simply put, sleep paralysis.

That was precisely my predicament.

As if my very flesh had become an immense prison, refusing to obey.

My consciousness, at this moment, was a prisoner trapped within the ramparts of my body.

For, in truth, my soul was not seated in the office chair, but elsewhere.

Here, flowers blossomed in exquisite beauty, a stream trickled through fractured earth, and butterflies danced, a veritable spring day in paradise.

Truly, an endless expanse of springtime field.

A world as dazzling as a sun painted by Munch, so moving it threatened to bring tears to my eyes.

The problem was, there appeared no escape from this place.

I wandered this dreamscape for what felt like an eternity, yet I remained unable to discover a path leading outwards.

And as I floundered, someone began to mock me.

“It is futile. This is a prison of the mind, wrought from the Immortal Concept Stone. Once you set foot here, there is no turning back.”

“No matter what you do, you cannot leave.”

“Now, you are one of us.”

They were the elders, those who had arrived in this hopeful prison before me.

To put it plainly, my ancestors.

They ridiculed and jeered at my attempts to escape this place.

It was enraging, to say the least.

“Even if I don’t prepare the ancestral rites, is it acceptable to mock and ridicule your descendants? Those who truly benefit from ancestor’s legacy are the ones who skip ancestral rites and go on overseas trips.”

To have ancestors who wouldn’t even reveal lottery numbers in my dreams, mocking the struggles of their striving descendant.

Such a thing was simply not done.

Of course, they bristled at my words, clenching their fists and lunging at me.

“Did everyone hear the insolence of this wretch?”

“Let us beat this ill-mannered brat senseless!”

“How fortunate! I was growing bored!”

Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud-.

A situation in which nameless ancestors were mercilessly beating me with fists and feet.

I refused to yield, striking back with all my might.

“You lunatic!”

“Dare you strike your grandfather’s grandfather?”

“How old are you!”

Not long after, they quickly lost interest even in hitting me, simply slumping down here and there across the field.

This eternal spring field was, after all, a place where anything and everything was boring and monotonous.

If one had to live forever in a place like this, they’d surely go mad.

But their sudden docile behavior didn’t seem to be solely due to boredom.

“What in the world is that?”

I gazed at something particularly incongruous with this beautiful field.

The former fairy kings, who just moments ago had been so haughty, were now trembling in fear.