Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The afternoon flew by in a blur, my mind fixated on the words from that slip of paper.

[1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7. One number ran away.]

What did that even mean?

The more I thought about it, the more I doubted my own memory. It was like staring at a single word for too long until it starts to look foreign and unrecognizable.

Then I thought back to that other sentence.

[Those who follow the rules will die; those who break the rules will also die.]

What if I followed the rules and broke them at the same time?

Maybe that was the way out. I couldn’t just be a lamb to the slaughter; I couldn’t let myself be labeled as nothing more than a victim.

[You must selectively kill the rules.]

The rules I chose to “kill” were:

[Hold out for seven days. After seven days, the school lockdown will be lifted. Board Bus Route 17 and leave this place.]

[Do not leave the school before the lockdown is lifted!!!]

So, when exactly should I leave the school?

While I was lost in thought, someone else in the classroom died.

They were stuffed into a Box in a most brutal fashion. The Student Council were the ones who did it.

A girl sitting nearby fainted from the shock. I hoped she would wake up before the end of class; otherwise, she was a dead woman walking.

Why did the Student Council act?

On the podium, the teacher continued the lecture with a wooden expression. Any student who made a sound was promptly hung up.

Among the students dangling from the ceiling, one was… abnormal. That student had already been killed earlier, but because he made a sound, he had been hung up again.

He struggled in mid-air, his neck stretched to a terrifying, unnatural length.

When class ended, he was let down. His body returned to normal, and he walked out of the classroom laughing and chatting as if nothing had happened.

I left the classroom and hurried to my next one.

As luck would have it, the guy who had been hung and then released in the previous period was in the same class as me. Only a few minutes into the lesson, he started acting up again.

From the front row, he performed a B-box routine for the teacher.

Impressive. I was absolutely floored.

Naturally, he was hung up again.

Is he going to do this every single period? Talk about dedicated.

Just as I was mentally mocking him, the rope holding him suddenly snapped. Class wasn’t over yet-what was going on?

I watched as he floated onto the podium and produced a Box.

The Student Council!

[If you die enough times, do you become part of the Student Council?]

He stuffed the teacher into the Box and then turned to face the rest of us from the podium.

What was he planning?

A surge of tension gripped me. Was the Student Council going to start attacking unconditionally now?

Instead, he launched into another B-box set.

“Clap,” he said. “Anyone who doesn’t clap goes into the Box.”

Thunderous applause erupted from the students.

Seriously, this guy was such a troll.