Chapter 9 - Darkness (1/2)

Su Min felt that horror was truly everywhere.

He didn’t know when or how long the eyeball had been watching him.

Perhaps it realized it was discovered, because the eyeball quickly turned and vanished behind the bookshelf.

Su Min promptly ran over to the other side, but he found nothing.

Right, it definitely wasn’t a person.

He wasn’t certain if the thing that disappeared was a ghost. In any case, it didn’t appear to have any malicious intentions, at least for the time being.

Su Min continued looking through the files. Right now, this was more important than anything else.

He touched his chin. “The auntie taking care of the dorms has been working here for the past six years. This is an important matter that must be kept secret to everyone, so it should have happened during these six years.”

If it happened before, she wouldn’t have reacted so strongly when he tried to probe for information.

She might not have been there to witness it personally, but the incident should’ve happened somewhere in this school. That would justify her reaction.

He was currently in the second semester of his junior year. It was now 2018, and he had been enrolled since 2015. The past three years had been smooth sailing, so he could rule them out. That left 2012, 2013, and 2014.

After the elimination, the range narrowed greatly.

However, that girl’s graduation year was still unknown. Maybe she was admitted in 2012; maybe 2012 was the year she graduated. All these factors influenced his search.

The school files were divided into admission and graduation.

Despite whatever incident had happened that year, her graduation would’ve still been recorded. After all, she was a student at this school.

The earliest time it could’ve happened was 2012; the lastest was 2014.

So did she graduate or not?

If she had graduated during this period, he would have to search for graduation files from 2012 to 2014.

If she hadn’t graduated and her expected graduation was after 2014, then he would have to search for the 2015 to 2018 files.

Over the years, the school had offered a variety of majors, all of which were further divided into several classes. The file he was looking for would be a hassle to find.

Su Min stood deeply in thought. After a moment, he felt that there should be no holes to his logic.

The school archive was generally sorted by grade and term. Normally, the graduation files were arranged by year.

Su Min eyed the bookshelf from top to bottom. The files were neatly organized, and soon, he found the 2012 section.

This time, when he took the file out, he kept a lookout for any eyeballs that could be hiding in the gap.

There wasn’t.

Just in case, however, Su Min moved further away from the hole to browsed through the graduation records.

Naeda Translations. Do. Not. Re-upload.

Thanks to the network’s development, the school had both electronic files and paper copies.

But, due to his current predicament, Su Min was unable to look online and could only flip through the files one by one.

Because it had probably been stored for so long, the photographs in the files changed slightly, seeming a little bit off. The students crammed together and posed with their teachers. All their faces were quite small.

If one stared long enough, it would appear normal.

Su Min stared hard at the photographs, examining each and every one. As long as the girl he saw was a student in this school, she would be in one of these photos.

Lin Xiao Yan suddenly cried, “Su Min, look at this!”

Su Min quickly put down the file and ran over.

On the corner of the newspaper in Lin Xiao Yan’s hands was a small article recounting a major case that occurred in this school. After a student had been brutally murdered, his parents came here and caused a scene, demanding a compensation for their loss.

“Is this what we’re looking for?” Lin Yiri also scooted over.

Su Min skimmed through everything. When he saw that the story was from seven years ago, he shook his head and answered, “No.”

It wasn’t related.

Realizing that his analysis wasn’t yet known to them, Su Min said, “You guys only need to look at the newspapers from 2012 to 2014.”

He explained what he had just analyzed.

Lin Yiri’s eyes lit up. “That’s much easier. There’s only 12 months in a year, and 36 months in three.”

It was smoother now that they weren’t aimlessly searching.

Su Min nodded and headed back to the archive shelves.

The more he looked at the files, the number he became. The longer he stared at the graduation photos, the stronger the feeling that the people captured inside would jump out.

He found the files for 2013.

To his astonishment, when he flipped to a random page, Su Min found a photograph that contained people with no faces. The blank faces that scattered about the picture were all parts terrifying.

The hair on his arms rose immediately.

Within this graduation photo were dozens of students and several teachers. However, nearly half of the students had missing faces. It was as if their facial features had distorted and disappeared.

How can this be?

If all these students are dead, how did this photo come about?

Bored of flipping through newspapers, Lin Yiri went over to see what Su Min was up to. Upon seeing the latter motionless, Lin Yiri peeked at the file in his hands, then let out a shout of horror, “What the hell?!”

Why do some people have faces while others don’t?

This graduation photo looks just like those paranormal pictures circulating around the internet. Too fucking scary.

Su Min calmed down after his initial fright.

“This photograph is unusual. Those without faces should be connected to the incident,” he mused.

They were in a horror movie, and everything had to be scary, so this was very consistent with the trope.

Placing the file in Lin Yiri’s hands, Su Min took another one out from the shelf and opened it. Inside, he found ordinary graduation photos.