Chapter 28: Words on the Blackboard

At this hour, the school gates were locked and the security guard was nowhere to be seen. We circled the perimeter several times before finding a spot to climb over a tree and drop inside.

Most of the lights on campus were extinguished, leaving only a few flickering in the hallways. In such a massive building, the two of us were the only ones present; even with our cautious movements, every sound we made echoed throughout the floor. Our classroom was on the third level, but the door was locked, and the class monitor held the key.

We dragged an unused desk from the corridor, climbed onto it, and slipped through the window into the classroom. Darkness swallowed the room. During the holiday break, the school cuts the main power to the classrooms to prevent accidents when they are unoccupied.

I switched on my phone. Its faint glow illuminated only a tiny patch of space, leaving everything else in deep shadow.

"W-Wang, do you think the dorm leader is in here?" Chen Yuming asked, unable to bear the suffocating silence.

"I don't know. Let's check his desk." We crept toward the dorm leader's seat. The closer we got, the more chaotic the area seemed. After what felt like an eternity, we finally reached it. Just as we prepared to get a closer look, my phone screen suddenly went black.

"Ah! What happened?" Chen Yuming shrieked.

"It’s fine, the screen just timed out. I’ll turn it back on!"

I reactivated the light, and we held our breath. A closer inspection revealed nothing.

"Phew... he’s not here!" Chen Yuming patted his chest, letting out a long sigh of relief. I relaxed as well. The atmosphere was too eerie; if the dorm leader had actually been here, I doubted I would have handled it any better than Chen Yuming. Just as we were about to check other areas, I spotted a black object on the floor. I bent down, picked it up, and realized it was the back cover of a mobile phone.

"Don't celebrate too soon. Look at this." I handed the casing to Chen Yuming.

He took it, his pupils dilating. "This is the dorm leader’s phone! Could he really be here?"

"Let’s look around!" My own breathing turned ragged. The dorm leader had called me last night; logically, his phone should have been with him.

Chen Yuming followed close behind as we checked the rest of the room, but we found nothing.

"Wang Yu, y-you... look over there..." Chen Yuming suddenly tapped my shoulder.

I followed his gaze to the blackboard and saw two large, white characters. It was the dorm leader’s handwriting. Judging by the script, he must have been in a state of extreme terror when he wrote them; every stroke was jagged and trembling.

"It is Li..." That was all there was.

Staring at the characters, I formed a hypothesis. The dorm leader must have encountered "that thing" before entering the classroom. Once inside, he had called me, but before he could finish, his pursuer caught up. He had seen the person’s face, but his phone was snatched away, forcing him to leave those two words on the board. If this were true, it meant he had already seen the entity before reaching the classroom, but hadn't been able to make out its features until then. I walked to the teacher's podium and found the other half of his phone on the floor, but the dorm leader was gone. He must have been standing exactly where I was now.

The classroom door was bolted shut. The only way out was through the window. Since neither the dorm leader nor the pursuer was here, they must have both exited that way.

"Let's go! We have to keep looking!" I was certain he wasn't here anymore. We climbed out the window and searched the entire building, but found nothing. Only the cafeteria and the dormitory building remained. We bypassed the cafeteria and headed for the dorms. All the lights there were out; because the materials were highly flammable, the power was cut completely when the building was empty.

"Do we really have to go up there?" Chen Yuming asked, standing at the base of the building. The hallway inside was a pitch-black abyss, devoid of any light.

"What other choice is there?"

"Fine, but you go first!" Despite his fear, he agreed.

"Never expose your back to the enemy," I said, mostly to lighten the mood. To my surprise, my remark made Chen Yuming jump.

"Aaaah! Something just touched my back!"

His blood-curdling scream gave me a massive jolt, even though I was trying to stay composed.

"Damn it, what are you doing?" I spun around.

"Something... something really touched me!"

Looking at his expression, he didn't seem to be lying.

"You go in front," I said. It was too dangerous to expose my back to an unknown threat.

He remained there, trembling, unable to move. I had no other choice; I couldn't expect everyone to be as steady as I tried to be.

"How about this? You stay downstairs, and I'll go up alone."

"No... that won't work!"

"Then you lead the way."

Chen Yuming hesitated, then stepped into the lead.

The dormitory hallway stretched out like a bottomless pit, deep and unfathomable, as if it were about to swallow the very night itself. Relying on the weak light of our phones, we entered the void.

The silence was absolute; I could hear my own breathing. The dark doors on either side looked like gaping, bloody maws. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have bothered me, but the feeling was disturbingly real now.

It felt as long as a century before we finally reached our old dorm room.

Unlike the others, our door was wide open. School regulations required all doors to be locked before leaving to prevent theft. The fact that ours was open meant someone had definitely been inside.

Suddenly, Chen Yuming insisted on walking behind me. I agreed; the dorm leader was likely in here, and there was a high probability the other person was, too. I was nervous now, let alone Chen Yuming. I wasn't fearless, and facing these events made me anxious as well.

We pressed our backs against the wall and inched forward—it felt safer that way.

We checked every bed. When we reached the last one and still hadn't found him, only the bathroom remained. My breathing grew rapid. Everything pointed to the fact that the dorm leader had come to the school, and his most likely destinations were the classroom and his dormitory.

We had ruled out the classroom and the main room of the dorm. There was a ninety-percent chance he was in the bathroom.

We shared a silent understanding and held our breath, waiting for the few seconds it would take to see him.

I lunged forward, shining my light inside, but to our dismay, it was empty.

I couldn't describe my feelings—I wanted to find him, yet I was terrified of finding his corpse. I didn't know whether to hope or despair.

After searching the entire room, there was no sign of him. However, I discovered a drag mark on the floor. It looked as if someone had been hauled out of the room. We knew, of course, that the victim was likely the dorm leader.

We followed the trail to the stairwell, where the marks became erratic, suggesting a struggle had taken place before the trail vanished.

My theory now: the dorm leader first encountered that thing in the dorm. It dragged him toward the stairs, but he fought his way free. Seeking safety, he chose the classroom, thinking the locked door would protect him. He called me, but heard a noise, panicked, and tried to hang up to avoid discovery. But it was too late—his pursuer appeared, and in his final moments, he left those two words on the board before being taken.

This theory fit everything we had seen, with one glaring flaw: the dorm leader was nowhere to be found. If the classroom was the final battleground, he should have been there, dead or alive. That loose end made my deduction incomplete.