"How are things going with PokéCart right now? How have you all been handling the situation? Has everything been taken care of? Also, regarding the upcoming shopping festivals and promotions, remember, our discounts must be big, direct, and straightforward. That's the only way to keep our customers. Don't play around with complicated rules, stacked vouchers, or those convoluted deals that only ruin our reputation."
Sitting in his office chair, Edward spoke to the Devon Corporation executives in front of him about the current state of PokéCart.
This project was something Edward himself had launched, so naturally he placed great importance on it. What he wanted was absolute control over the market, slowly eroding the existence of competing software until they completely lost their original user base.
But Edward also understood that this goal would not be easy. For now, he was taking a go-with-the-flow approach. In truth, he mainly wanted to use the project as a probe to test the League's attitude toward him. If the League allowed him to swallow up the market or even helped him, then that would be a very telling sign, a sign of something serious beneath the surface.
"At present, all operations related to PokéCart are progressing normally. As for the shopping festival, we've already discussed a series of aggressive and impactful compensation events with participating merchants. However… 'Certain-Mart has indeed begun feeling pressured by our presence. Competition has intensified a lot. So, the current situation for PokéCart is admittedly somewhat difficult. Still, we're confident we can handle it."
A project leader stood up and reported. Edward nodded lightly, then continued giving instructions. There was no need to follow the competitor's pace, just do their own thing. PokéCart was already firmly established, and with Edward modifying it using experience from his previous life, it had become a product with its own advantages.
Still, the problems it aimed to solve were quite complicated, and pushing things forward would require slow, careful probing. Edward knew this, yet he was determined to see how far he could go.
After finishing business with Devon Corp, Edward went to have dinner with his father. Recently, the old man had not been obsessing over digging for stones every day. But Edward knew better, his father was still extremely fixated on that hobby. He had simply changed his approach.
Lately, the old man had become fascinated with undersea excavation.
But in truth, this was even more troublesome. After all, digging out a cave underwater, preventing collapses, and stopping seawater from flooding in was extremely difficult. The pressure under the ocean was immense; if a human went down without protection, they would die instantly. To explore the seabed, one needed either shallow enough waters or professional diving equipment. Yet this time, his father wanted to challenge an unusually complex undersea cavern. The amount of preparation needed beforehand was no small task.
"I have a friend whose daughter has always wanted to enter the film industry."
These words came suddenly over dinner. Edward paused mid-bite. Was someone trying to use a personal connection through his father?
But it wasn't surprising. Anyone who knew Edward's identity also knew that getting in through Joseph's connections had a very high success rate. Edward himself didn't care much. Though he disliked social favors, he had to admit—human relationships were a necessary part of living in this world. Arranging a small role wasn't hard. Whether the girl could shine was another matter entirely.
Just as Edward was about to agree, his father added another line:
"She wrote a script."
"…She's a screenwriter?"
Edward nearly sprayed the soup out of his mouth. He was genuinely surprised. He had assumed his father's friend's daughter wanted to become an actress—after all, most girls dreamed of that—so he naturally thought the same. But instead, she wanted to become a screenwriter. That twist left Edward both shocked and amused.
Still, he was curious. What had she written? Assigning an acting role was easy, but for a screenwriter to emerge successfully… that was difficult. Making a movie cost real money. That was why most celebrity children were pushed toward acting, and even in the directing world, only kids with genuine talent could continue down that path.
"You can look at it later."
Joseph's father handed him a script. Edward didn't refuse. After finishing dinner, he sat on his sofa, sipping juice prepared by the old butler while flipping through the script.
The moment he saw the title, he paused—
Whispering Corridors.
That immediately caught his interest. After all, "Whispering Corridors" was an unavoidable classic series in the realm of Korean horror. Many films had been made under that name, and some had even become legendary. But how would this version fare? With curiosity rising, Edward continued reading.
…
Cherry blossom petals from Hoenn Girls' High School drifted around the corner of the hallway, swept by the wind into the third-floor music classroom window. Yoon Jae-yi sat before the grand piano, her fingers hovering above the keys, unwilling to press down. In the distance outside the window, the track club's whistle echoed. She glanced at her watch—twenty minutes left until free period.
When the stall door in the restroom swung open, Yoon Jae-yi was tapping lightly on her thigh with her fingers, mimicking a piano rhythm.
"You're hiding from the physical exam too?"
The unfamiliar girl's voice scraped like sandpaper across a rusty pipe. Yoon Jae-yi peeked from the stall and saw the girl wiping her sweaty palms on her gym pants. She was half a head taller, her uniform collar crooked, and white powder clung to her collarbone—probably residue from PE class chalk.
"I—I don't like crowds."
Yoon Jae-yi heard her own stammering voice, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
Track team ace Heo Eun-young froze for two seconds, then grinned.
"What a coincidence. I can't stand those nosy nurses."
She pulled out a carton of milk and tapped it crisply against the stall door.
"Want some?"
From that day on, the grand piano in the music room became their secret hideout. Yoon Jae-yi taught Heo Eun-young how to read sheet music, while Heo Eun-young demonstrated how she could hop over an entire vaulting box on one foot.
Heo Eun-young always said the piano sounded like raindrops hitting a tin roof. Yoon Jae-yi secretly cut the A-string so the notes became hoarse and fractured—
"Now it sounds like our voices."
The two laughed, promising to be best friends forever.
Their exchanged diaries were filled with codes only they could understand:
"Skipped choir practice again today," followed by crooked five-line staffs.
"Knees hurt after running 3000m," annotated with: "Needs a hot compress = wants a hug."
One rainy night, Yoon Jae-yi wrote at the end of her entry:
"If one day I'm gone, come get me on a rainy day."
Heo Eun-young's red-ink response bled across the page:
"Dummy. We promised to be best friends forever."
The turning point came during the autumn physical exam. Yoon Jae-yi noticed Heo Eun-young always angled her head to hide her right ear when answering the doctor. When the nurse loudly read numbers for the hearing test, Heo Eun-young suddenly grabbed Yoon Jae-yi's wrist.
"Don't look at me."
Under the fluorescent light, her amber eyes trembled.
"The low notes of the piano… they sound like thunder, don't they?"
Yoon Jae-yi brought her to the music room, lifted the piano cover, revealing the broken A-string. She tightened the tuning pin, creating a sharp scraping sound from the hammer. Heo Eun-young's pupils contracted—this was the only pitch she could hear clearly.
"I'll practice this note every day."
Yoon Jae-yi wrapped the snapped piano string around Heo Eun-young's wrist.
"When it rusts, our promise will expire."
After that, Heo Eun-young began avoiding her touch. During morning exercises, even when Yoon Jae-yi stood behind her on purpose, all she felt was the stiffness of Heo Eun-young's shoulder blades. At lunch, the bento she offered was always pushed back mid-air—the metallic clash of stainless steel heartbreakingly crisp.
One snowy dusk, Yoon Jae-yi left a warm milk carton in Heo Eun-young's desk drawer. The next day, the milk reappeared beside the hallway trash can, untouched, with a sticky note:
"I'm allergic."
But in truth, Heo Eun-young swallowed antidepressants that night. In her diary, she wrote:
"Her eyelashes tremble when she plays the piano, like a butterfly caught in a spider web."
Ink smeared beneath the word "spider web," spreading into a river of blue-black.
On Christmas night, a sudden downpour struck. Passing the music room, Park So-young heard piano notes—Frédéric Chopin's "Raindrop Prelude," played in a broken, fragmented way. The discordant buzzing of snapped strings mixed with strangled sobbing.
She pushed the door open a crack and saw Yoon Jae-yi curled on the bench, piano wire rusted dark red around her wrist.
"Where's Heo Eun-young?"
Park So-young's voice startled the sparrows outside. Yoon Jae-yi lifted her head slowly, damp bangs sticking to her forehead.
"She doesn't want me anymore."
She opened her desk drawer. Inside lay two diary books and a bottle of white pills.
"She said… milk tastes like hospital disinfectant."
On New Year's morning, the janitor found Yoon Jae-yi's body on the rooftop. She wore Heo Eun-young's track jacket, clutching half-melted milk candy.
In the locker room, a crumpled note fell out of Heo Eun-young's pants pocket—a birthday message written in highlighter:
"Run faster than the wind forever!"
The ink blurred with water stains.
The horror began on Valentine's Day. Park So-young found half a box of videotapes on the old building's staircase. The footage showed Yoon Jae-yi playing that broken "Raindrop Prelude." Suddenly the camera shook violently, followed by the brittle crack of bones.
That night, a senior student named Kobayashi screamed and sprinted out of the dormitory—she dreamed someone was prying open her skull.
"Those who keep secrets must be punished."
The next morning, as the dean announced investigation results, thunder crashed outside. Park So-young stared at the principal's bald head, recalling Yoon Jae-yi's diary entry:
"Those teachers who mocked Heo Eun-young's stutter…"
The third death happened in the library. When the librarian discovered both his legs missing, musical staves drawn in pencil floated within the pool of blood. At the edge of the blood-soaked sheet music, Park So-young found Yoon Jae-yi and Heo Eun-young's exchanged diaries.
That stormy night, Park So-young gripped the diaries and pushed open the music room door. Moonlight fell through the shattered window onto the grand piano. On its lid sat the rust-blackened piano-string bracelet.
When her fingers touched the expired milk bottle, the tape recorder suddenly played a birthday greeting.
"Heo Eun-young, happy birthday."
Heo Eun-young rushed in just then, wearing the track jacket Yoon Jae-yi had gifted her, clutching a bottle of antidepressants. The moment she saw the rusted piano string, she let out an animal-like whimper. Pouring all the pills into her hand, she prepared to swallow them.
Park So-young tried to grab her wrist—yet froze.
Heo Eun-young smiled, a twisted expression identical to the ones Yoon Jae-yi sketched in her diary.
"We promised to be best friends forever."
Her voice split into two tones, another cold voice echoing from the ceiling:
"Now it's my turn to keep the promise."
The last thing Park So-young saw was Heo Eun-young swallowing the pills and looking toward the window. Rain washed the glass, and a faint silhouette of Yoon Jae-yi stood at the edge of the rooftop. She spread her arms, her skirt fluttering like a dandelion blown apart by the wind. The recorder continued looping that rain-warped birthday blessing.
The next morning, all cherry blossoms at Hoenn Girls' High School had fallen. Behind the rooftop water tank, the janitor found a rusty metal box. Inside were a brand-new diary and two small silver bells—when shaken, they produced the sound of Yoon Jae-yi's broken A-string.
…
Edward finished reading, his expression somewhat peculiar. The script was undeniably good—very good, even. The emotional detail was delicate, the horror genuinely frightening where it needed to be.
However, the writer was still somewhat coy, repeatedly insisting it depicted "pure friendship." That made Edward feel a bit conflicted, though he understood the writer's concerns. It wasn't worth nitpicking. The material was fine as it was.
As for the rest—he didn't bother overthinking it.
In Edward's opinion, the script was excellent. It differed from his own writing style, of course—he wasn't skilled at portraying such delicate emotional layers—but this kind of subtle horror was precisely what made the "Whispering Corridors" series iconic.
Many viewers couldn't understand why the films weren't very scary yet still received high ratings. Most jump scares were simple "in-your-face" moments. But the true essence of "Whispering Corridors" lay in its emotional depth. Those subtle emotional undercurrents were the foundation of the series.
Still, because Edward's own films had taken the world by storm, the horror market had shifted toward direct, visceral terror. This subtle style naturally lost some of its popularity.
"Still, this script is really good. It's worth investing in."
Edward was genuinely optimistic about it, and he planned to find a qualified director to bring the film to life.
(End of Chapter)