Chapter 38: Find a Way Out
"..."
'This brat...'
The demon realized at this moment that Calvin was someone unfathomable.
Its instincts kicked in and told it that it was probably better for it to lay low.
"Oh? Out of tricks already? That's quite boring."
Calvin lightly chuckled and turned his attention towards ascending the stairs.
While he was halfway through the stairs, the demon suddenly spoke up.
"Stop..."
Calvin obliged.
"What's wrong?"
"Don't move for the next ten seconds. A comrade of mine is lurking in the next landing ten steps away from your current location. I expect him to disappear in less than ten seconds." The demon explained.
Calvin was amused, "Oh, you're suddenly willing to help me now? I'm glad."
"..."
The demon was speechless and felt aggrieved, 'I just don't want you to cause unnecessary bloodshed and annihilate my kind just because they are standing in your way, you know? I am not helping you! I'm helping them escape from you, you demon!'
Ten seconds passed and the journey continued. Ascending the rusty emergency stairs of Mount Spirit Sword Asylum's Hospital Block was quite scary. Calvin believed that anyone would lose their mind walking on these unsteady stairs.
If not for the fact that Calvin had the ability to control his weight through some breathing techniques, then he wouldn't even dare to climb up these stairs.
Glancing at the demon hiding in his shadows, Calvin felt strange that the demon was becoming quite obedient. He knew that the demon was afraid of him and was willing to obey his orders, but Calvin wasn't stupid.
Even though the demon was afraid of him, he really couldn't blame the demon if the stairs underneath his feet collapsed and made him fall to his death, right? In other words, the demon was being so obedient to him wasn't because he managed to subdue the demon under his power.
Instead, it was because the demon was waiting for him to fall to his death.
Borrowing a knife to kill, indeed, such a method was interesting.
Unfortunately, he was scheming against Calvin.
He was a hundred years too early in this world to even scheme against Calvin.
He was bound to fail.
Just as the demon was wondering as to why Calvin wasn't falling to his death, they finally reached the third floor of the Administration Block. Upon walking out of the landing where the emergency exit was located. Calvin found himself in a corridor similar to a school corridor.
Upon the slight illumination of moonlight, Calvin could see dozens of lockers lining up the corridors. Calvin was standing in a corridor that had two paths the first path led to the Educational Block.
To the right side of the Educational Block was the dormitory. If the fact that a mental asylum had a school wasn't strange enough, then this dormitory was also quite strange. It only had a few rooms, probably due to the low number of students attending the classes here on the third floor of the Administration Block.
Directly across the dormitory was the staff office, from what Calvin could see from the exterior. It seemed to be well preserved. Of course, he didn't go into the staff office for he was unable to open the doors in the first place.
Within the Educational Block were a few classrooms, Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3.
The remaining room was a huge field, a basketball court and a tennis court could be seen inside, as well as several table tennis tables.
The entire third floor of the Administration Block was like this, Calvin was scratching his head for even though he had worked as a custodian for Fivecent before, he had never heard of the Administration Block's third floor having a classroom.
"Man, this is some weird shit." Calvin couldn't help but whisper a complaint.
Judging from what he could see, Calvin was convinced that no patient had used this facility ever since its establishment...
In other words, this was just a huge waste of time and funding.
Just what was the reason why this place was even established?
Calvin entered a classroom.
The classroom was old, and a cloud of dust fell onto Calvin's body as soon as he tried to open the door.
Frowning, he turned to ask the demon, "What's the deal with this place? Why is there even a classroom here? Wait, do you have any idea why there's a school here?"
Calvin didn't receive a reply.
The demon had strangely gone silent.
In fact, everything was silent.
He couldn't hear any movements at all as if he was in a vacuum chamber.
Calvin furrowed his eyebrows.
He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and crumpled it to a ball.
The door in front of him was locked. Calvin took out his flashlight and he could only peer in through the windows with his flashlight. Class 1 and Class 2 were perfectly normal classrooms that had nothing out of the ordinary, yet when Calvin reached the classroom for Class 3.
His pupils constricted in shock for he realized that there were multiple vague silhouettes inside.
Furthermore, what caught his attention were the books, paper, and pens that were placed on top of all the tables in the classroom. There were even some intelligible words written on the blackboard and one could feel from the fresh handwriting on the blackboard that the classroom was recently used.
It felt as if several something or someone had just attended the class here.
Calvin suddenly felt anxious.
Anyone would be anxious not knowing what was about to happen.
Combined with the strange silence of the place, Calvin felt as if he didn't know what to do.
Holding the crumpled paper in his hand, he was about to open the door to the classroom when suddenly...
He paused.
'What if this was a trap? The demon hiding in my shadow is strangely not giving me any answers. There are a few explanations as to why he is not giving me any answers. One, he's deliberately keeping his silence and two, he is afraid of something in this place. He's even afraid of it than me and that is the reason why he's not speaking up...'
'But didn't he say that the Notebook of Secrets That Will Destroy Your Life is useless? Why would he be afraid of it, if he thinks that it is useless?'
'This is weird... Perhaps, I'll be able to get an answer if I keep on exploring this place.' Calvin decided.
He went for the dormitory directly across the staff office.
The so-called dormitory was just a dark corridor behind the door. Calvin swept his flashlight across the dark corridor and discovered a mess that could make one think that this place was abandoned a long time ago. Calvin found a wooden plaque with smudged words that Calvin deduced as "This is a co-ed Dormitory. Loitering is not allowed past midnight.".
'It seems that I expected too much of this place.'
Calvin randomly entered one of the rooms and he discovered that it was filled with textbooks and garbage.
It was obvious from the smell of dust lingering in the air that the place was long abandoned, yet what was the reason why Fivecent still hasn't demolished this place and replaced it with something useful?
This was the question that Calvin had in his mind at this moment.
"Wait, there's something new here..."
Calvin softly uttered.
His eyes were attracted to a small notebook and at a pen sitting on top of it. The two objects were placed inside a cabinet with a glass frame. Calvin tried to open the cabinet, but it was locked. Frowning, Calvin made a sword with his index and middle finger before jabbing the glass frame of the cabinet.
The glass shattered and the smell of accumulated mold struck Calvin like a wave.
Covering his mouth and nose, Calvin retrieved the pen and the small notebook.
The first words that he saw on the very first page of the notebook said...
The second page read —"Why are we still here...? Just to suffer..."
The third page said — "You only know the light when it's running low..."
The fourth page read — "Why is that my friends disappeared when they knew that I had no money?"
And the fifth and final page that had words on it, said — "My right arm is stronger than my left arm!"
"..."
Calvin abruptly stood up.
Placing the small notebook and pen back in the cabinet.
He turned around and was about to get the hell out of the room as fast as possible, but a transparent window suddenly appeared in front of him.
[Midnight has arrived.]
[Find a way out of the school.]
The world around Calvin distorted and twisted.
Before he knew it, he found himself standing in the same room.
The only difference was that the room wasn't full of garbage anymore.
Instead, it now looked like a prim and proper dormitory room.
Standing in front of him was a student being pinned on the wall directly across the door of Calvin's room.
"You poor no-money trash, I've always wondered as to how you managed to enter this private school when you are so poor. It turns out that all the money that you used as your tuition fee were all stolen from somebody else!"
"But that's fine..."
"A few thousand dollars won't hurt my bank account."
"I'll forgive you, so you can stop crying now, all right?"
"However, I will only forgive you if you kneel down, kowtow to me three times, and call me grandpa!"
The elementary student pinning another elementary student on the wall arrogantly declared.