Chapter 10: The Clue in the Video

I casually dismissed the system and took my seat, the one marked with the number 29.

The white cloth covering the computer was lightly draped over the monitor, held in place only by its own weight. It was to prevent any light from leaking out.

Seo Yi-han, reading my intention immediately, adjusted his grip to make sure the cloth wouldn’t fall.

“Hold it steady.”

“Mm-hmm.”

My faithful lackey—no, Seo Yi-han—replied. Yoon Soo-ah stood near the door, her entire demeanor tense as she strained to listen for any sounds outside.

She had volunteered to keep watch, saying she’d alert us if she heard anything strange.

‘They’re decent kids, I’ll give them that.’

Having actually experienced it, Kim Ji-ho was bearable… so far. The others went without saying.

Especially Seo Yi-han. He was so kind and gentle toward me that I often wondered if he’d eaten something wrong. He was always amiable to everyone, but with me, he was particularly so.

If Seo Yi-han were a girl, I might have suspected he liked me.

‘Get a grip. This face gets girls lining up.’

Even I found the assumption absurd, and I let out a snort as I glanced up at Seo Yi-han, who stood like a stone statue holding the cloth. Our eyes met, and he flashed me that damn eye-smile again.

If he had a girlfriend, she must be boiling with jealousy… A boyfriend who eye-smiles at everyone as a habit? I purposefully looked away and pressed the power button on the computer tower.

I had no idea why there was electricity in a building no one used. In this game, whoever overthought things like that lost. A vintage Windows logo flashed across the screen as the computer booted up at a snail’s pace, true to its junk nature.

‘Video, video…’

I opened the file explorer, and a video file with a familiar title caught my eye.

<080428>—clearly a combination of year and date. I clicked it, and a video with the grainy quality of a feature phone camera started playing.

-Hey, look here! It’s the loser, I’m filming you now!

-Oh? Face not showing? Kim Joon-soo, look at the camera right now if you don’t want to die. Execute.

Accompanied by low-grade profanity and snickering, three male students were visible only from the neck down.

Their name tags flashed briefly before the focus settled on a male student named ‘Kim Joon-soo,’ who had his face buried in his knees.

As the laughter from the video played, Kim Ji-ho, still wearing his taped-up glasses, and Han Bo-bae came over to watch alongside me.

The video was only about two minutes long, so the viewing ended quickly. As soon as it finished, Han Bo-bae, her expression rigid, fumed.

“Who recorded something like this and kept it? That’s so cruel!”

“It was a time without things like school violence committees…”

The video clearly showed a group of male students harassing a student named Kim Joon-soo, laughing and jeering.

They kicked him, stole his money, and in the end, poured milk over his head. Kim Joon-soo never lifted his face, and the faces of the perpetrators were never captured.

“Is the victim in this video that male ghost?” Seo Yi-han asked, having only grasped the content through the faint audio.

Typically, it was believed that those harboring grudges couldn’t ascend and became ghosts, so Seo Yi-han’s question made sense.

But I shook my head.

“Not yet.”

The Agwi wasn’t the victim—it was the perpetrator. Among the group of male students, the one who led the bullying, snatched the wallet, poured milk over the head, and cackled—that was the Agwi’s living form.

Originally, the term Agwi referred to beings who lived greedily and committed sins in their past lives.

As dead bodies, their greed was strangely manifested as an insatiable appetite, wandering endlessly in search of food, yet always feeling the pangs of starvation no matter how much they ate.

But this was information I only knew because I had completed up to the second boss fight—something I couldn’t tell Seo Yi-han. So I gave a vague denial, and a system window appeared.

[Sub Quest: Failed]

[Insight +1 increased due to appropriate answer.]

I had found everything I could in one go, so the sub quest had likely failed. I brushed myself off and stood up, asking Han Bo-bae for a favor.

“I have bad eyesight, so can you see the name tags of those three perpetrators? Can you write down their names?”

In the game, clicking the computer would instantly acquire the video item, and a list would appear on the screen. But this was reality… It was too inconvenient to check each one from the grainy video.

At my words, Kim Ji-ho quickly went back to where he had gotten the tape earlier and brought a pen and a yellowish piece of paper. Han Bo-bae took it and meticulously wrote down the three names.

Seo Yi-han murmured the names on the list once, then immediately started thinking and summarized the next steps.

“Now we take those names, find the attendance register, and compare faces with that male ghost we saw earlier?”

“Sounds plausible.”

Whether the system was up to its tricks or not, the kids didn’t question my actions. How I found the computer with the video in one try, or how I was certain that one of the men in the video was the ghost.

It was convenient for me, but watching them act as one-dimensionally as game characters made me feel strange. As if reading my mind, a system window popped up.

[Applying Perception Blur Effect]

“What’s that?”

For once, it appeared when I needed it and provided a useful explanation. When I asked for more details, the system spewed out a long message after a moment.

[Reality perception ability slightly reduced. They will not question your actions for the time being.]

The phrase ‘for the time being’ was quite irritating, but it was a very welcome and necessary measure for me right now. For the first time since talking to the system, I ended the conversation without muttering any curses, feeling satisfied.

“What now?”

Yoon Soo-ah, who had been watching us with curious eyes from the door at a distance, finally gave up on keeping watch and approached.

In response to Yoon Soo-ah’s question, Seo Yi-han proudly presented me.

“Jae-yoon found a video containing the people presumed to be that male ghost. We also got their names, so we can go to the staff room and check.”

It felt like whenever I acted, Seo Yi-han did all the reasoning and explaining… Well, he was originally the protagonist.

And no matter what he said, he always praised me and boasted about me in a strange way. Even now, he was explaining my achievements with a triumphant smile.

‘It’s not like I’m his family, what’s the point of bragging…’

Was it that joyful to see a friend do well? One thing was for sure: I didn’t find his attitude particularly annoying. If I sensed even a hint of pretense, I would have told him to cut the bullshit, but Seo Yi-han was sincere.

Anyway, it was weird. I ignored the restless feeling that surfaced whenever I thought of Seo Yi-han and turned off the computer. Seo Yi-han, no longer needing to hold the cloth, stood close beside me again.

Unable to find an excuse to shake him off, I ended up walking to the staff room side by side with him.

The building rumbled with every step we took on the stairs, creaking ominously. No matter how carefully I placed my feet, it was the same. Even if it had been abandoned for a long time, it was made of concrete—what was this?

“Was it closed because they got caught doing shoddy construction?”

“Yeah, probably?”

I had just muttered out of frustration, but Seo Yi-han agreed. It was strange that only the high school had a new building while the elementary and middle schools stayed…

Hopefully, the old school building didn’t collapse during the third or fourth boss fight.

Just the thought that the system, which seemed intent on screwing me over, might include a disaster movie scenario like that sent a chill down my spine.

“Careful.”

Seo Yi-han quickly steadied me as I shivered. His hand wrapped around my waist as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

It felt a bit strange… I couldn’t bring myself to grab the railing covered in dust and rust, so I just leaned on Seo Yi-han’s arm.

The stairs were littered with glass shards and broken green soju bottles, as if someone had had a drinking party. One wrong step would not only make a loud noise but also seriously injure someone.

While I left him be, Seo Yi-han let out a questioning ‘Hmm?’ and started moving his hand. That is, he was kneading my waist. The unfamiliar sensation made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“Jae-yoon doesn’t seem to gain any weight…”

“What?”

“Compared to when you first came to our house, you’ve grown taller, but your weight is the same.”

Suddenly whispering against my ear like a pervert, Seo Yi-han made my body tremble. I shook off his arm and looked up at his face.

In the dim light of the phone, there was no trace of a lecherous perv on his shadowed face. Instead, it was a kind expression filled with genuine concern.

Interpreting my shocked gaze somehow, he continued in a tone dripping with worry.

“You were on the thin side even when you were younger, right? Still, I thought you’d gain some weight as you grew taller.”

When I was young, my frame itself was small. My father used to dress me in a dress as a joke and take me out. Even as a child, I found it so embarrassing that I think I turned the house upside down crying.

Perhaps that incident, more than being teased by peers, was what made me seriously think about growing taller.

Anyway, I drank the milk provided at school without fail, and I worked hard on chin-ups and jump ropes. As I hoped, I started growing rapidly from middle school onward.

My weight also increased enough to fall into the normal range. Even now, I often hear that I’m moderately slim rather than being as skinny as Kim Ji-ho.

‘But more than that… he knows my weight?’

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