Pak Kim Jusa calmly but quickly installed the digital door lock, while we quickly wiped up the scattered apple peels in several spots along the hallway with wet tissues.
He probably sensed something was off, but in the end he didn't say a single word and just finished his task quietly before leaving. In the end, even though there had been chaos, there were still twenty minutes left of CA class.
"…Why did you do something so dangerous?"
After hearing our explanation, Teacher Jang Hwa-eun scolded the club members with a disbelieving expression.
"Stacking one thing on top of another… even if I don't understand science that well! But what if it exploded like a grenade?! What if someone got hurt?"
"…We're sorry, Teacher."
The club members lowered their heads, faces full of regret.
Teacher Jang Hwa-eun put both hands on her hips and stared at Sunah and Hayoon.
"Sunah, Hayoon! If the other kids were reckless enough to try something weird like that, at least you two should have stopped them! Why did you just stay quiet!? Aren't you scared? You just went along with it because you were told to? Jinhee and the boys are always acting without thinking, but you two are supposed to be calmer! If you two don't stop them, who will!?"
Sunah kept her head down, then shot Gyeong-won a sharp sideways glance.
Gyeong-won, who seemed to have run out of excuses, just scratched his head, ears flushed bright red.
Hayoon simply stared at the desk in silence.
'Seeing Hayoon get scolded feels kind of weird.'
And for some reason, I wasn't scolded at all.
"Haa… At least no one got hurt. But from now on, all of you need to plan everything two or three times more carefully. Prepare your tools properly too. Who does an experiment with just a wooden stick like that? Even conspiracy-theory scientists would be more meticulous. What you did earlier was pure suicide. Even if Joon sacrificed himself at the end to fix it, it's still too much if you have to keep sacrificing everything over every little thing, right?"
"…Yes, Teacher."
"Alright, Teacher's done talking. Now go back to what you were doing."
The kids raised their heads with awkward expressions.
Actually, I was also one of the main culprits behind what happened earlier, but only the other club members got scolded.
In the awkward silence that lingered for a while…
Gyeong-won, the main cause of the incident, looked at me with his ears still red.
"…So, Leader."
"Yeah."
"Did the message about the ghost story being exterminated appear?"
"Ah, right."
Only then did I check the floating screen in front of me.
But there was nothing there.
"No. It didn't appear."
"…What?"
Sunah and Jinhee immediately shuddered.
"Hah, no way. Don't tell me that thing is still inside the wall? Still crawling around and sticking to stuff?"
"…No. I don't think that's it."
I shook my head. I had clearly seen the creature get completely torn apart, like it had been swallowed by a shredder.
"I saw it myself, right behind Mr. Kim Jusa. It really got sucked in and died."
"Hiiih, that's insane~! Sucked in like that!?"
Instead of calming down, Jinhee suddenly stood up and started shaking her skirt while making a fuss.
"What if pieces of its body got stuck everywhere inside the walls and are still crawling around!? What if they're moving inside the concrete, laying eggs and spreading!? Shiiit!"
"Ah~ seriously, enough!"
"Stop talking about disgusting stuff like that, please!"
Gyeong-won, looking grossed out, glared at Jinhee and snapped at her. Sunah covered her ears too.
I also frowned and scolded her.
"It's not like that. When this space expansion resets, it probably cleans everything automatically. Think about it — we always eat in the club room and never clean up the crumbs, but now it's spotless, right?"
"So what~!"
"That weird creature, even though it looked like it got sucked under the floor… it doesn't mean it's buried inside the building. Most likely it got torn apart and sent to some other dimension we don't understand. That makes more sense. Look at the desks, chairs, and blackboard here. None of them came with the building — they were created by the system."
"…I guess you're right."
"Just like those objects, that creature was probably sent somewhere else too, so… well… I can't explain it precisely, but… basically that's it…"
I started stumbling over my words, and suddenly the image Jinhee mentioned — bugs crawling inside the walls — flashed through my mind, making my whole body crawl.
Disgusted, I slammed the desk.
"Agh, damn it! The point is it moved somewhere else, okay!? Like spaceship waste getting dumped into space, or garbage that gets automatically ejected during loading! Let's just think of it that way so we can stay sane! Enough, stop talking about it! Forbidden! From now on, anyone who brings this topic up again and keeps making people think about it gets kicked out of the club! Especially you, Lee Jinhee! If you keep running your mouth, I'm cutting off your allowance!"
Jinhee, who had been making noise earlier, immediately shut her mouth tight and sat down quietly.
"If you're still grossed out, next time we do a space expansion, we can pour water into the club room and see where it drains. That could be an experiment. But for now, enough! Jinhee, because of you I can't stop thinking about it and it's making me feel worse! Ugh, so creepy!"
"…I already stopped talking…"
"Be quiet!"
Jinhee pouted but only grumbled in her heart after being scolded.
"…Huff. So, Gyeong-won. What does this mean?"
I calmed myself down and looked at Gyeong-won.
"What we did earlier was just stacking one apple on top of another. A simple, ordinary action. But because of that, a weird creature like that came out. What was that really? And even though it was completely destroyed, why didn't the 'exterminated' message appear?"
"Hmm… well, Leader…"
Gyeong-won pushed his glasses up, as if he already had a theory.
"Like you said earlier, it doesn't make sense that the creature was completely destroyed but the 'exterminated' message didn't appear. That probably means the creature really is dead. But even so, there's still no message. Which means…"
"..."
"…That weird creature. It wasn't part of a ghost story."
"Not a ghost story?"
"That's right. Because it wasn't a ghost story, the extermination message didn't appear."
Gyeong-won nodded while adjusting his glasses.
"Normally, even if the creature survived, the message would still appear. But this time neither happened. So there's only one possibility. The strange creature that appeared because of the stacked objects… wasn't a ghost story, wasn't a supernatural phenomenon, wasn't anything like that."
"…?"
I still didn't fully understand, so I asked again.
"So what do you mean? If that wasn't a ghost story… then what was it?"
"…It was just a very normal scientific phenomenon. An ordinary natural phenomenon. That's all I can really say…"
Gyeong-won ended his sentence hesitantly, as if he didn't want to continue.
Hearing that, my head started spinning.
He was right.
If it had been a ghost story, the system would have given us a message and points for surviving.
But even that didn't appear?
If that's the case…
'…According to the system, that terrifying creature that suddenly appeared wasn't a strange phenomenon at all.'
On the contrary, it was something very ordinary and completely normal. It was a natural phenomenon, a scientific one.
Something that didn't violate the laws of the universe or its basic principles — a phenomenon that had existed from the very beginning.
That's what he meant.
"…Good grief."
I didn't know how to process any of this. My mouth fell open without me realizing it.
A moment later, Gyeong-won touched his glasses and pushed them up again.
"Leader. So what we just experienced… what's called Project Rainbow, or more commonly known as the Philadelphia Experiment, this space-overlap phenomenon… there are actually two types. May I come to the front for a moment?"
"Ah, yeah. Go ahead, explain."
"Okay. Look here…"
Gyeong-won stepped forward and started writing on the blackboard.
① Deokhun's pants + TV delivery box
② Apple + apple
"We just experienced two cases of space overlap like this. But in the first one, when the end of Deokhun's pants overlapped with part of the TV box, nothing happened. The overlapping part just became something sticky. No weird creature appeared."
"…Who knows, maybe it could suddenly change,"
Jinhee muttered with a pouty face.
Immediately, everyone's eyes turned toward the TV box.
Its corner was still that strange blackened part from before.
I let out a sigh, stood up, walked over quickly, and kicked the blackened section hard with my foot.
Sunah was shocked.
"Eh, eh, Joon… that thing costs two million won…"
"It's fine, Sunah. I only kicked it a little. See? Nothing happened, right?"
I rubbed the blackened corner with the tip of my shoe.
"Nothing weird. Feels like rubber. Just a bit sticky."
Only after that did the club members nod slightly, looking relieved.
Gyeong-won also nodded and continued his explanation.
"So. You understand the difference between the two incidents, right? Pants and TV box, then apple and apple. What's the difference?"
"…I don't get it."
"Listen carefully. This is about the difference between overlapping non-living objects and living things."
Gyeong-won started writing on the blackboard again.
"Deokhun's pants. That's made of fabric, right? And the TV box is made of cardboard."
"…Hmm."
"In other words, fabric and paper. Both are non-living objects without life. So when they occupy the same space, only their molecular structure changes further. Even at the atomic level, they just turn into a different substance."
"…I see."
"But what about the apples?"
"Those are also non-living objects, right?"
Teacher Jang Hwa-eun asked while tilting her head, but Gyeong-won slowly shook his head.
"Of course apples are also considered non-living. But we can't treat apples the same as fabric or paper. Because apples have seeds inside them."
"…Seeds?"
"Only something living can give birth to new life. Animals reproduce through eggs, plants through seeds. So from the perspective of a seed or sprout, an apple can't be called completely dead. Because if you just give it water, the seed can grow and become a living thing."
"…Hmm."
"Paper or fabric, even if you leave them for a thousand years, won't turn into a living creature. But plant seeds are different. They say date palm seeds found in Herod's palace in the Bible, over 2,000 years old, were successfully germinated in modern times. Because those seeds contained life."
The club members looked like they were thinking hard, probably because the concept was quite complicated.
But I was starting to understand where Gyeong-won was going with this.
The point was: overlapping two non-living objects… versus overlapping two things that carried the seed of life.
"Now that I think about it from that angle, what happened earlier makes a bit more sense. Fabric and paper are already dead, so even when they overlap, they only change into new matter with a different molecular structure. But an apple, just from its seed, already contains the seed of life. When two sources of life overlap in the same position, maybe an extremely explosive biological reaction occurs."
I pictured the strange creature I had seen again.
It had tentacles, but also wings. It had sharp protrusions, but also a shell and insect-like legs.
And even then, the creature kept changing, growing, and transforming in real time into all kinds of different forms.
Overlapping two forms of life, triggering an explosive biological reaction…
The club members still looked confused and deep in thought.
It seemed like only Gyeong-won, Hayoon, and I truly understood the core of this explanation.
I raised my hand and asked:
"So… from all this, what can we conclude? Okay, if two living things overlap, a weird explosive biological reaction happens. But what lesson are we supposed to take from that…?"
"Leader, you might not have realized it yet."
Gyeong-won pushed his glasses up with a serious, sharp expression.
"Everything I've been explaining and emphasizing… all of it is a teaching from the Dogma of Void (Church of the Void)."
"…WHAT!?"