Chapter 2

The pungent, rotten stench immediately made Rian's stomach churn even more. Behind the half-open storage-room door, a body lay sprawled among a pile of broken wooden desks. The white school uniform was soaked in dark red blood around the chest and neck.

Bona, who had just approached the doorway, immediately stumbled backward two steps until his back hit the wall. His face had gone deathly pale.

"Jesus Christ... is that real blood?"

"Don't touch anything!" Aris snapped quietly. His voice was trembling, but he still managed to grab Rian by the sleeve of his uniform and pull him away. "We're leaving. Go find Mr. Hendra or anyone else out front. Now."

The three of them hurried down the increasingly dark corridor. Rian walked at the back, his head still throbbing violently. The bleeding from his nose had stopped, but the dizziness made it difficult for him to keep his balance.

Near the basketball court, they encountered Mr. Hendra, who had just finished putting away the balls. The sturdy-built man looked startled when he saw three of his students running toward him, gasping for breath.

"What are you three still doing here this late? Got into another fight?" Mr. Hendra asked sternly.

"Sir... the storage room at the back," Aris said, pointing toward the corridor they'd just come from with a trembling finger. "There's... there's a dead body."

Mr. Hendra's expression changed instantly. The stern look on his face gave way to wide-eyed shock. Without saying another word, he hurried toward the storage room beneath the staircase, followed by Rian, Aris, and Bona.

When they reached the door, Mr. Hendra turned on the flashlight on his phone and shone it inside.

The yellowish beam illuminated the victim's body.

It was a girl from the neighboring class, someone who usually sat in the front row during school assemblies. Her eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the ceiling.

"Don't come inside! Everyone, get back to the field!" Mr. Hendra ordered in a raised voice.

His left hand slipped into his trouser pocket, pulling out his phone to call someone.

Standing near the doorway, Rian accidentally caught sight of Mr. Hendra's back pocket. A pair of rolled-up black leather gloves was sticking out of it.

Rian froze.

The image that had flashed through his mind when he'd touched the hair clip came rushing back.

The hand covering the girl's mouth had been wearing black leather gloves.

Exactly like those.

"Rian, come on!" Bona grabbed Rian's jacket roughly and dragged him away from the storage room.

---

An hour later, the school grounds were filled with police cars. Yellow crime-scene tape had been stretched around the rear corridor. Several students who were still at school were being held at the security post for brief questioning, including Rian and his two friends.

"You three just found the door open and saw the victim inside?" asked a thick-mustached police officer as he scribbled notes in a small notebook.

"Yeah, sir. Rian was feeling dizzy earlier, so we stopped near there for a bit. Then Aris noticed the door was slightly open, and when we looked inside, we found... that," Bona answered nervously.

The officer nodded several times.

"All right. You can go home now. Don't spread any photos or weird stories about this on social media, understand? This is a suicide case. The victim was suffering from severe depression."

Aris, sitting beside Rian, immediately frowned.

"How could it be suicide, sir? Her neck was—"

"That's enough, kid. The police know what they're doing," the officer interrupted curtly.

His flat tone made Aris feel even more uneasy.

By the time they left the school gates, the sky had turned completely dark. Aris pushed his automatic motorcycle along the road, grumbling the entire way.

"How the hell was that suicide? You've gotta be kidding me. She was obviously murdered," Aris muttered when the three of them stopped at the roadside near a small convenience shop.

Bona drank half a bottle of mineral water in one go.

"I'm still getting chills, man. But seriously, Yan, how did you know there was blood inside the storage room? The door was practically closed before."

Rian remained silent for a moment, struggling to come up with an answer.

If he told them he'd experienced a vision after touching a pink hair clip, Aris and Bona would probably think he'd suffered brain damage from Farel's beating.

"I... I could smell the blood. The metallic smell got stronger the closer I got to the door," Rian lied, improvising an excuse.

Aris gave him a suspicious look but didn't press the matter.

"But seriously, this is all so damn weird. Yesterday, a senior student suddenly went missing, too. They said he transferred to a school in another city. Why have so many strange things been happening at our school lately?"

"Forget about it for now. The important thing is getting Rian home. He already looks like a corpse," Bona said, patting Rian on the shoulder.

---

When Rian finally reached his room, he immediately collapsed onto his mattress without even changing out of his school uniform.

His room was cramped, containing nothing more than a fabric wardrobe, a small study desk, and a thin foam mattress on the floor.

He raised his right hand and stared at his own palm.

"Is there something wrong with my brain, or what?" he murmured softly to the ceiling.

Everything that had happened that day was far too strange.

The sensation he'd experienced when touching the hair clip had felt terrifyingly real. The girl's fear, the metallic smell of blood, even the pain in her neck—all of it had seeped into him as though he himself had been the one experiencing her final moments.

Rian pulled his phone from his pocket.

The WhatsApp group chat for his entire grade was overflowing with thousands of messages. Everyone was talking about the girl's death.

But what puzzled Rian even more was that most of the messages were blaming the victim.

Some claimed she'd been stressed because her grades had dropped. Others speculated that she'd been having family problems.

Not a single person mentioned murder.

Rian rolled onto his side and stared at the peeling paint on his bedroom wall.

His mind kept returning to the black leather gloves sticking out of Mr. Hendra's pocket, the police officer who had rushed to close the case, and the strange pain that suddenly emerged whenever he touched someone else's belongings.

For the first time, Rian began to wonder whether the strange episodes he'd been experiencing weren't simply symptoms of an illness.