The fluorescent lights of Classroom 3-B hummed with a low, grating frequency that seemed to vibrate directly against Seo Ye-jun’s skull. It was Monday, a day characterized by the stale scent of floor wax and the suffocating pressure of impending midterms. Ye-jun sat at his desk, his eyes fixed on the ink-stained wood grain, his eidetic memory cataloging every imperfection in the surface.He blinked. A fraction of a second ago, he had been watching the second hand of the wall clock stutter toward the twelve, signaling the end of the school day. He remembered the sickening, wet thud that followed, the sudden darkness, and the abrupt, visceral sensation of his own life being extinguished at precisely 17:23.And yet, here he was. The clock ticked again.Tick.The sound was sharp, rhythmic, and impossibly familiar. Ye-jun looked up, his pulse spiking into a frantic, uneven tempo. The classroom was a perfect, sickening mirror of his last moment. Han Seojin, seated two rows to his left, was

The boy standing in the doorway was a ghost of a reality that, by all accounts, should have been rewritten. His uniform was tattered, damp with a sickly, ashen residue, and his eyes—hollow, burning, and accusatory—fixed onto Seo Ye-jun with a precision that chilled the marrow."You did it," the boy rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering over pavement. "I remember. You’re the one who killed me."The classroom erupted into a frenzy of confusion. Lee Ji-hwan had stopped laughing, his chair skidding back as he stood, hand hovering near his desk as if looking for a weapon. Han Seojin, usually the voice of scientific reason, had turned deathly pale, her glasses slipping down her nose as she stared at the apparition. But Ye-jun didn't look at the crowd. He looked at the student—Kim Min-seok—whose death had been announced over the intercom mere hours ago, and who was, according to the laws of this cursed loop, supposed to be dead."He died," Ye-jun muttered, his mind reeling. "

The figure in the doorway stood motionless, a mirror image of Ye-jun, yet carved from a different, colder reality. The double wore the same uniform, its fabric pristine, but its eyes—hollow, depthless voids—stared back with an intensity that made Ye-jun’s skin crawl. In the doppelgänger's hand, a jagged shard of metal caught the flickering fluorescent light, turning it into a shimmering, lethal blade."Ye-jun, move!" Seojin screamed, her voice cracking as she scrambled backward, knocking over a stack of papers.The double didn't charge. It didn't speak. It merely tilted its head in a mockery of curiosity, the silence in the classroom growing heavier, denser, as if the air itself were curdling.Ye-jun didn't think; he reacted. He lunged across his desk, sweeping his arms out to clear a path, and collided with So-ra, shoving her toward the back exit. "Run! Don't look back! Just get out into the hallway!""But you—" So-ra began, her face pale, terror warring with her instinct to stand he

The digital chime of 17:23 died away, but the hum in Ye-jun’s skull remained, a low-frequency vibration that seemed to be echoing the decay of the building itself. The atrium was eerily quiet now, the sunlight hitting the floor at an angle that felt staged, like lighting for a play that had just ended. So-ra and Seojin were still looking at him with that same mixture of concern and bewilderment."Ye-jun? You’re scaring us, seriously," Seojin said, her voice tight. She reached out, but he stepped back, the leather-bound book held firmly against his chest. "You’ve been staring at the wall for a full minute. What Hyun-woo? Who is that?"Ye-jun didn't answer immediately. He looked down at the book. The ink was dry, the words Try to remember the ending this time still echoing in his mind, though the text had shifted to a simple, cryptic map of the school’s basement archives. He couldn't explain it to them. If he told them about the eraser, about the erasure, would they even remember the co