Chapter 8
“Yes. Melody will be loved wherever she goes. She’s such a lovable child.”
“If that’s the case, you should have let her go earlier. It’s too late now after a year.”
“Everyone actually doesn’t want to let Melody go, right?”
“Oh? I smell Melody.”
Suddenly, the villagers all turned to look at me at once. I met the gaze of dozens of eyes.
My legs were trembling so much I could barely stand upright.
‘I need to use my head. Think, Melody.’
As I was racking my brain, I noticed a window covered by curtains.
The clock on the bedside table had just struck noon.
It’s the village elders’ nap time.
‘Maybe…’
I gauged the distance to the window. It seemed about five big leaps away.
The villagers were still staring at me intently, as if waiting to see what I would do next.
And just as I was about to take a step,
“It’s Melody!!!!!!”
An enormous sound hit my ears. I almost fell over from shock.
There was a ringing in my ears, but I quickly regained my senses and ran towards the window.
The villagers hurriedly got up and rushed towards me in bizarre, contorted postures.
Two steps. Three steps. Four steps.
And,
On the last step, I flung open the curtains wide. Bright sunlight flooded the room.
Aaagh!
The villagers stopped in surprise, then scurried away to find dark places like cockroaches.
It was chilling.
They stood in the dark spots, silently watching me. As if waiting for me to enter the darkness.
I noticed a pool of blood on the floor and remembered what the student council president had said.
“They can’t read red letters written by Miss Hastings.”
What if they couldn’t perceive the color red, rather than just red writing?
I quickly rolled on the floor, covering myself in blood.
Then I stood up, spoke backward, and slowly walked backward.
“?ydoleM s’erehW”
[“Where’s Melody?”]
Fortunately, the people turned their gaze away as if nothing had happened. As if they couldn’t see me at all.
I slowly walked through them and finally reached the door.
The cat that had been quietly following me was looking up at me curiously.
It’s strange that the villagers ignored the cat in all this chaos.
I turned the doorknob with a click.
Luckily, the people in the village chief’s house still didn’t recognize me.
And so I safely moved on to the next location.
Fortunately, there were no villagers there.
I couldn’t sense anyone’s presence. The only living beings were me and the black cat.
That was an even bigger problem.
There were far too many identical doors in the endless corridor. I had no idea which door was the escape route.
“Do you know?”
I finally asked the cat that had been following me after wandering for a long time.
The cat blinked its eyes, then,
Meow—
As if to say, “Why are you asking me such a thing?”
The cat’s blue eyes happened to be the same as the student council president’s.
I didn’t know where this cat came from, but there was no way to know its identity right now.
As I was standing in the endless corridor, peeking at this door and that,
[I can’t believe you escaped from that place alive.]
The voice came from very close by. That is, right below me. Where the cat was standing.
“Aaah!”
I was so startled I fell over.
The cat was talking.
[Intervening like this will incur a penalty…]
The cat sighs, looking at my shocked face.
[If you want to live, follow me for now.]
The cat turns its back and trots off somewhere.
I picked up the bag I had dropped on the floor in confusion and followed the cat.
What on earth is the identity of this cat?
But there was no time to resolve this question either. The cat walking ahead suddenly stopped and turned to look at me.
[Looks like you were much loved in this village. I can guess how you survived. I’ve never seen a human loved by ‘those things’ before. What are you?]
The cat was looking up at me, tilting its head.
Its bright blue eyes narrowed.
When I couldn’t answer and just opened and closed my mouth, it poured out more things it wanted to say.
[I’ve never seen someone as quick to assess the situation and as agile as you. Should I say you’re quick-witted… I thought for sure you’d die in there.]
I almost did. But the cat didn’t give me time to reminisce.
It turned its back to me and nodded its head forward.
[Let’s go.]
I completely gave up trying to understand all these strange phenomena in my head properly and followed the charismatic cat.
After walking for a while with a haughty gait, the cat stopped in front of a door. It was a door marked with an X in red paint.
The cat sat down, swishing its tail back and forth, and looked up at me.
“You want me to go out this way?”
But it just looked at me without answering. Probably a silence of affirmation.
I adjusted my bag and took a deep breath for a moment.
Is it right that I can get out of the village if I open this door and go out?
Can I trust this cat?
‘…No. It’s not about trusting the cat.’
There were tens of thousands of doors stretched out, leading who knows where. Among them, there was only one door that stood out from the others.
The door the cat pointed to.
That door was marked with an X in red paint.
It was the same shape that the student council president had told me to mark on doors when escaping from Chesswind Village.
I took a deep breath for a moment and turned the doorknob.
Click.
The cat follows me to the door.
Creak—
The place I came out to after opening the door was not Chesswind Village, nor the outskirts of Chesswind Village, nor the neighboring village.
“Where… is this?”
It was a large hall filled with people.
There were dozens of desks in the hall, with people sitting or standing in front of them.
And they noticed my sudden appearance, looked me over, and were shocked.
A middle-aged man standing nearby frowned deeply and scolded me.
“Student, why are you coming out from here? This isn’t an entrance for students. Good heavens. And what’s with your appearance?”
The man clicked his tongue at my outfit. I was covered in blood. I understood why people were looking at me in shock.
“Students registering for the exam should come in through there. First, go to the bathroom and clean yourself up, then register. The smell. Ugh.”
The man pinches his nose and shakes his head, reprimanding me.
I looked in the direction he pointed. There was a line of people at the back door of the hall.
Someone sitting at a long table was receiving something from the people in line and filling out documents.
There was a sign in front of it that read <Saint Gloria Private School Transfer Exam Registration Desk>.
Gloria Island, 118 miles off the southern coast of the Brenden Kingdom. Saint Gloria Private School was built on that remote island.
And I had just directly moved to its transfer exam venue.
I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. I thought it might be a dream, but no matter how I looked at it, this was reality.
Es… Escape?
Did I really succeed in escaping?
🐈⬛
03. Perfect Score on the Transfer Exam
Meow.
At that moment, the black cat at my feet meowed.
The middle-aged man sighed and scolded me again.
“This is the first time I’ve seen someone bring a pet to the transfer exam venue. Student, leave the cat at the reception desk while you take the exam. It’ll disturb the other students.”
“What? The cat isn’t mine…”
“There’s no time. Go to the bathroom and wash up… no, there’s no time, just go register first.”
I was pushed towards the registration desk, bewildered, holding the cat in my arms.
“Haahh. Do I have to help with this too? Don’t you know how to register for an exam?”
The middle-aged man, who seemed to be a school teacher, helped me register for the transfer exam while scolding me in various ways.
I couldn’t tell if he was being unkind or kind.
Thanks to the teacher who helped me even with leaving the cat, I was able to complete the registration on time, quickly wash up in the bathroom, and enter the transfer exam room with a number tag.
Before I knew it, I found myself sitting in a seat to take the transfer exam.
My original goal was indeed to safely escape the village and take the transfer exam for Gloria Private School.
I didn’t expect to achieve my goal so suddenly. Or is this really right?
I was disoriented, sitting in the transfer exam room before I could even realize I had escaped from the village.
This isn’t a dream either, right?
The cat was sitting quietly at the reception desk, receiving lots of love from the reception staff.
‘What exactly is that thing?’
A talking cat.
‘No. Does anything I’ve experienced in Chesswind Village so far make sense? Going back a year? Teleporting from Chesswind Village to the school?’
Am I going crazy?
But if I keep following that train of thought, there’s no end to it. I finally cut off the chain of thoughts.
At that moment, I heard students whispering about me.
“Did you see earlier? She was covered in something like blood.”
“Looks like she just washed up quickly in the bathroom. She’s so messy.”
“But to be that pretty, even like that, imagine how pretty her original face must be.”
“There’s no way someone with that face is a commoner. She must be a noble from the Brenden Kingdom, right?”
“I wonder. It’s a face I’ve never seen before, which family is she from?”
… Is that a compliment?
I heard that students from all over the world gather at Saint Gloria Private School. Then maybe my looks are globally appealing?
Even as I was thinking this, the whispering continued.
“She looks like the Lauderdale siblings. Is she the duke’s daughter?”
“Idiot. Wasn’t the Lauderdale duke’s daughter missing when she was seven?”
“Be careful what you say. Who knows who might be listening to this.”
Someone put a stop to the conversation at the end. Finally, the chatter ceased.
Missing at seven years old. What a strange coincidence.
I, too, had no memories from before I was seven due to a carriage accident.
‘Come to think of it, there was something about the secret of birth in Raven’s letter.’
I shook my head as I pondered the contents of the letter.
‘No. It has nothing to do with me.’
That issue was clearly something Raven had misunderstood.
Anyway, it wasn’t something to worry about right now.
I calmed myself down, ignoring people’s whispers. My heart was still pounding hard.
‘It’s over now. It’s all over. Calm down, Melody.’
I pressed my hand firmly over my chest and took a deep breath.
First, I should take the exam appropriately and then find Raven.
‘Just as I came here from the village in an instant, wouldn’t there be a way to get out in an instant too?’
No matter how I thought about it, it felt so surreal to be sitting here right now.
Surely nothing strange will happen here too? No way. There are so many people here…
The physiological fear I had been suppressing while focusing on escape now came rushing in.
That’s when someone spoke to me.
“Hey, why are you shaking like that? Nervous?”
It was a gray-haired man sitting next to me.
🐈⬛
Thank you for reading! ♡
