ReLife Player

Unlocked chapter (1/1) Thanks to Tom!

[When the Fox Rain Stops (3)].

«I must have said it before. Don’t bring valuable items to school.»

The sound of a wooden club swishing through the air resonated.

A short, sharp sound echoed through the classroom at regular intervals.

The kids who were hit on their feet couldn’t bear the pain and burst into tears.

But Im Dohon didn’t lower the club until he had hit the predetermined number of times.

«Starting tomorrow, anyone caught bringing valuables to school will have them confiscated immediately. If you lose them, it’s your own responsibility, so keep that in mind!»

Im Dohon struck the club equally on all the kids in the class.

Seona was no exception.

Kneeling on the desk with her hands on the desk, Seona kept her head down, trying not to show her crying face.

Even when she was hit by the club, she bit her lips and held back her cries.

«Next!»

«Next!»

«Next!»

Hayang and Eunhyuk too.

Both endured the pain as they were hit with the club.

«I’ll say it again.»

Im Dohon passed by the kids who had collapsed on the desks, unable to withstand the pain, and said, «Stealing someone else’s belongings is undoubtedly a bad thing to do. But I don’t care if you stole a wallet or not, or if you did it as a prank.

The reason I’m hitting you all is one and only.»

«I don’t want to suspect that there’s a thief in our class who stole a wallet.

Do you want to doubt your classmate you have to spend a year with?»

A kid who had fallen down after being hit raised his hand, signaling he had done something wrong.

Im Dohon suppressed the crying kid with his strength and swung the club.

«Don’t suspect your classmates.»

Im Dohon looked down at Minji after hitting her.

Eunha closed his eyes as his turn came.

He frowned as he took a hit.

Im Dohon was a former player.

Even if he was slapping with force, it was more than a normal slap.

Still, he endured the pain.

After receiving a total of five blows, Eunha slowly lifted his eyelids.

Im Dohon stood at the teacher’s table, looking around at the children who couldn’t make eye contact.

«I’ll speak for the last time.»

Im Dohon scraped his foot against the floor and spoke to the crying kids and those who had collapsed on the desks as if they were falling down.

«Don’t confuse difference with being bad.

You and Ain are the same people.

You are just different from each other; it’s not about who is right or wrong.»

«There are no wrong people in this world.»

«There are just different people.»

«I hope you see those who are different not as objects of criticism but as subjects of understanding.»

To the children who couldn’t answer, Dohon left them with his final words.

«Please don’t try to mold the world you will live in like this.

«─I hope something like today will never happen again.»

That day, the children were punished for the rest of the afternoon.

☆

The incident in the third class of fifth graders spread throughout the school during the day.

It couldn’t help but spread.

Not only did the children raise their voices to the point that the other children in the class were prying, but Im Dohon made them serve the punishment without giving them a recess.

Now it wasn’t just one class, but the whole school.

«Hey, what’s going on?»

«Seona stole it, didn’t she?»

«Did the teacher hit her?»

Eunha frowned as the other kids from other class came to ask questions as soon as school was out.

They talked to the ones they knew, and spied Seona organizing her backpack with her head down.

«Minji, I need you to walk Seona home today.»

«I’ll do it even if you don’t tell me, but what about you, where are you going?»

«To the teacher’s office.»

Eunha left his friends behind and headed out of the classroom.

«Did you hear about it? an Ain, who was drunk yesterday, suddenly stabbed a person on the street with a knife.»

«Really? Why did he do that?»

«I don’t know. I heard it on the news; they didn’t ask, it’s a murder, they said.»

«So, he stabbed someone without any reason? That’s scary.»

«Someone told me that an Ain has some of his monster nature left in him, and he gets easily agitated.»

It was annoying to hear.

Kids in the hallway were gossiping about the Ains.

Eunha glanced back.

Unnoticed, the kids walked on, talking amongst themselves.

They weren’t the only ones.

«Did you hear about it? Class 3 of the 5th grade was in chaos today, right?»

«I knew something like this would happen someday. It’s Jin seona, that Ain. Ain lives in the slums, you know.»

«I passed by the slums once, and the people there looked really scary!»

«I saw an Ain player arguing with a convenience store owner before. He looked really scary when he got angry.»

Kids were talking about Ain everywhere.

I wondered why I hadn’t noticed until now.

I didn’t notice because I wasn’t interested in school.

I didn’t realize that the speculation about the Ains was so prevalent in the school.

That they would turn into knives aimed at Seona as if they had been waiting for this moment.

«…Eunha.»

Entering the staff room, Eunha found Im Dohon leaning back in his chair and rubbing the corners of his eyes.

He looked tired.

«Teacher, did something happen?»

«It’s none of your business.»

Im Dohon didn’t answer.

Eunha left him to take a long breath and listened to his surroundings.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened.

It seemed like he had been reprimanded severely by the vice-principal.

Apparently, they received calls from parents claiming that the punishment imposed on the kids was excessive.

«Are you okay?»

«I’m just a temporary teacher… At least I won’t get fired. It’s not something you need to worry about.»

«…I guess so.»

Eunha swallowed the unnecessary words.

It wasn’t what he wanted to ask.

Im Dohon, who usually didn’t reveal his emotions, had a dark expression on his face.

He was a former player.

But four years had been enough time to turn him into a teacher who cared for the kids.

The emotions he must have felt today were beyond words.

«I’m tired. Just get to the point. Why did you come here?»

«I want to check the school CCTV footage. For the last three days.»

«CCTV?»

Im Dohon frowned.

Turning his chair, he looked around at the other teachers before replying.

«Why?»

«Teacher, you know too, right? The incident where Seona’s indoor shoes disappeared. Today, Seona was even accused of being a thief… «

«…….»

«Trying to find out who the culprit is. Won’t it be on the CCTV footage?»

«No use.»

After entering the password on the laptop screen, Im Dohon opened the folder on the desktop.

It was full of video files.

«Is this CCTV footage?»

«It was recorded from yesterday to today, but…, as you can see, it looks like this.»

«The quality is really bad.»

It was a recording of the hallway.

The quality was such that you could barely see the color of the children walking in and out of the hallway.

«There are two CCTVs on each floor, one at each end of the hallway. The exception is one in front of the staff room.»

«It doesn’t capture the inside of the classrooms?»

«As you can see. There are concerns about privacy violations.»

Im Dohon chuckled as he played the video of the 5th-grade hallway.

The footage on the screen did not reveal the crime that must have occurred during lunch.

«What about the ground floor? The closest CCTV to Seona’s shoe rack in the hallway…»

«It only captured the front view of the entrance. You can see the students who came to school in the morning, but since I don’t know the time of the incident…»

«Eunhyeok said he found the indoor shoes in the boys’ restroom on the ground floor today…»

Eunha stopped talking in the middle.

The specific time couldn’t be determined. They couldn’t know when the indoor shoes were lost.

They might be able to narrow down the suspects, but it wasn’t conclusive. It would take some time to find the culprit.

Moreover, they couldn’t even determine if the culprit acted alone or not.

His intuition was certain that it was a crime committed by multiple people, but why?

The problem was that he couldn’t understand the intentions of those who orchestrated this incident.

Eunha sighed.

Im Dohon’s smartphone vibrated.

«…not again.»

He, showing an annoyed expression, stared at the ringing phone for a while before finally answering the call.

He changed his tone when talking to the parents and waved his hand dismissively.

Eunha bowed his head and excused himself.

He left the teacher’s office.

«For what purpose?»

An unanswered question.

I wanted to ask as soon as I found the culprit.

On his way back home, he recalled the events at school today.

He thought about the kids who showed hostility toward Seona.

Soon, he lowered his head.

All the kids in the class didn’t think highly of Seona.

Moreover, they were afraid of him.

«….»

The way home felt infinitely long.

☆

«You’re here early, Captain.»

«How long have you been here?»

«Since I woke up this morning.»

Early morning.

Eunha and Minji met Eunhyeok, who was guarding Seona’s shoe rack.

Apparently, Hayang planned to come to school with Seona today.

«What about Seona’s indoor shoes? Are they okay?»

«They’re fine. I checked them as soon as I came this morning.»

«What about checking inside the shoes? What if there’s a trap or something?»

«Oh, wait… I haven’t checked that….»

Minji chewed on her pencil anxiously.

A flustered Eunhyeok quickly opened the shoe rack.

After reaching down and feeling the soles of her shoes, Minji assured him that everything was fine.

«You didn’t see any suspicious kids, did you?»

«No, I didn’t!»

While Minji checked to make sure Eunhyuk hadn’t missed anything, Eunha deployed his sensors.

He felt a presence nearby.

It was Yoo ha. He was using <Invisible> and guarding Seona’s shoe rack.

«Let’s stop here. We don’t need to guard it anymore. It’s okay here. Yoo ha is monitoring it.»

«Are you sure we can trust him?»

«If Yoo ha’s here, then… well…»

Having heard the words that Yoo ha was present, Eunhyeok left without any lingering attachment to the shoe rack.

The three of them asked Yoo ha, who was using <Invisible>, to watch over them and went upstairs.

There were a few kids who had come to school early in the classroom.

Minji awkwardly greeted them and went straight to Seona’s spot.

«Why Seona’s spot?»

«I want to check if there are any insults written on the desk. Even if it’s written with a pencil, it might not be visible from a distance. It could have been written in small letters.»

Minji carefully examined every inch of Seona’s desk for any meaningless scribbles.

After checking the desk, she moved on to the chair.

Minji thoroughly inspected it, even looking under the cushion, and then proceeded to rummage through Seona’s desk.

Minji, feeling under the insole of the indoor shoes with her hand, conveyed that there was nothing unusual.

«Why there?»

«I don’t know what might be inside the desk. Um…, there are no textbooks. Maybe they’re in the locker.»

«Why are you unfolding the notebook?»

«Just in case. The notebook could be torn to pieces. There might be strange insults written on it…»

Minji’s inspection continued afterward.

She checked the path from the back door of the classroom to Seona’s seat for anything that might trip her up, and went to check the girls’ restroom for any buckets.

There was a suspicious bucket, so she emptied the water and decided to remove the bucket itself to the downstairs restroom just in case.

«…Captain, what do you think Minji saw? Why is she checking if a vinyl umbrella opens properly when there’s no rain? Why is she taking it to the restroom?»

«Don’t think too much. I don’t know either.»

Eunha glanced at the kids standing at the end of the classroom while standing near the window.

He checked if there were any kids showing odd signs.

So far, everything seemed fine.

«Seona’s late.»

«Yeah, why is she so late?»

She didn’t show up to school, even as the empty seats began to fill up and the number of kids passing in the hallway increased.

«Hey, hello.»

«Hello…?»

«You’re late today?»

«…Sorry, I overslept….»

Hayang and Seona were the last to arrive at school.

Seona cowered momentarily as soon as Hayang opened the classroom door.

Carefully stepping inside, she avoided the gazes of her classmates and greeted them.

«Is everything okay?»

«Yeah…, but Seona seems a bit down.»

Eunha grabbed Hayang.

Hayang replied next to his ear.

Seona still seemed down today.

Her tail and ears were drooping weakly.

Her appearance, anxiously watching the kids studying in the morning, was clearly visible.

«Still, it’s good that she has indoor shoes today.»

«That’s true.»

Seona was wearing indoor shoes.

But Eunha couldn’t think positively about it.

The kids in the class avoided Seona.

Not only the kids in the class but also the misunderstanding about the Ains was still spreading in the school.

It was impossible that Seona, who had sharp ears, didn’t hear it.

…It’s frustrating and irritating.

His chest felt tight, and his stomach felt hot.

He wanted to somehow vent his frustrations, but he didn’t know how or what to do.

«Seona, can you lend me your locker key?»

«…Huh? Why…?»

At that moment.

Minji extended her hand to Seona, who was starting morning self-study.

Seona, with her pointed ears perked up, showed a bewildered expression.

«You’re doing morning self-study. I’ll get the first period textbook for you.»

«…No, I’ll do it.»

«It’s okay. Just listen to me.»

«… .»

Seona couldn’t say anything.

She avoided giving her locker key to anyone since she had it forcefully taken away by the kids in the class yesterday.

After much deliberation, she fished deep in her bag for her locker key.

«Stay here. I’ll get it for you.»

«…Thanks.»

Seona felt deeply sorry.

Minji, who responded as if it was nothing, headed toward the back of the classroom.

«Do we need to check the lockers too?»

«Did you forget what happened yesterday?»

Eunhyuk whispered in a small voice that the other kids couldn’t hear.

Minji retorted irritably.

She opened the locker.

«»……»

They weren’t the only ones with their mouths open, unable to find the words.

The other kids in the class turned their heads.

Not just petals fell from the locker.

Several insect corpses the size of a thumb were mixed in.

«Who is it─?»

Eunha broke the silence.

A petal fell from a locker.

It was a white flower.

«─Who is it?»

His voice was filled with mana.

He pulled out something tangled and knotted inside his stomach that he couldn’t stand anymore.

A suffocating pressure covered the entire space.