Chapter 6: The Absolute Suspect

“Kyahhh!”

“Get back! Everyone, get back!”

“An ambulance! Someone call an ambulance!”

“Mr. Kim, hurry and get the students back into their classrooms!”

“Hey! Get inside! Now!”

Until just moments ago, the school playground had been filled with laughter. Now, it was consumed by the screams of children and the frantic shouts of teachers.

In a word, it was utter chaos.

There was no other way to describe what was happening.

“Oh, my God! What do we do? Is he dead?”

“Ugh… I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Hey, look at all that blood!”

“What on earth happened?”

Every teacher and student in the school rushed toward the child lying on the ground, covered in blood. But whether they were children or adults, this was a situation none of them had ever experienced before.

Faced with such a horrific incident, everyone seemed frozen in place. Not a single person could bring themselves to act. All they could do was stand around helplessly, unsure of what to do.

“Please move aside! Make way!”

Just then, In-hye pushed through the crowd and rushed toward the scene.

“Is he alive?”

Chief Choi and Chae-rin followed close behind her, both wearing grave expressions.

“He still has a faint pulse. Chae-rin, call 119 immediately. And Chief Choi, please secure the area.”

After checking the condition of the fallen student, In-hye shouted urgently.

The child appeared to have suffered multiple fractures from the fall, and there was a strong possibility of internal bleeding in the brain. Moving him carelessly could cause further injuries, so there was little they could do except use a handkerchief to stop the visible bleeding and wait for the ambulance.

“Hello? Is this 119? There’s someone here… What? Just a moment. It’s too noisy here to hear you properly.”

Avoiding the screams coming from every direction, Chae-rin hurried inside the school building.

“Chief Choi, please clear the area! Quickly!”

Worried that the fallen child might suffer another shock from the commotion or an accidental impact, In-hye urgently called out to Chief Choi.

“Everyone, move back! I’m a police officer! Step away! Move back!”

Chief Choi pulled out his police identification card and waved it high above his head, shouting at the top of his lungs.

However, the children’s initial fear had already begun turning into curiosity, and they were reluctant to leave the scene.

Click! Click!

Suddenly, the sound of cellphone cameras began ringing out from every direction.

Click!

“Whoa, damn! This is insane! I’ve never seen anything like this before!”

“If I upload this, the views are going to be crazy!”

“This is seriously unbelievable!”

“Hey! Turn on the livestream! Hurry!”

To some of the students, the sight of their friend lying in a pool of blood, fighting for his life, seemed to be nothing more than an opportunity to collect likes and views on social media.

“Ah, damn it! What is going on here? I’ve only got a few months left until retirement! Hey! Stop taking pictures! I said stop!”

The principal came rushing over after hearing the news. He angrily snatched cellphones from the students and shouted at them.

“Mr. Choi! Mr. Lee! What are you doing just standing there? Hurry up and confiscate all the students’ phones!”

The principal was terrified that photographs of the incident might spread outside the school. Forget the damage to the school’s reputation—if the authorities accused him of failing to supervise the students properly, he could end up being forced into an early and disgraceful retirement.

His voice grew sharper and louder with every passing moment.

“I’m warning you! If even one of you uploads anything about this incident onto the internet, I’ll track you down no matter what it takes! Do you understand?”

It seemed that protecting his position for the remaining few months mattered more to the principal than the life of the child whose strength was slowly fading away.

Click! Click!

But the more he shouted, the louder the camera shutters became.

“Principal, who fell?”

A moment later, Dong-gyu’s homeroom teacher came running toward the scene, his face drained of color.

The moment he heard that a student had fallen, only one name flashed through his mind.

“Do I look like I know? You should be helping me stop these kids! Hey! You little brats! I told you to stop taking pictures!”

But the principal was too busy snatching phones from the students to spare even a glance at the child lying on the ground.

“Are you his teacher? Do you know who this child is?”

In-hye, who was desperately trying to stop the bleeding from the student’s blood-soaked body, looked up at the homeroom teacher with a pale face and asked urgently.

She needed to know the child’s blood type, which would be recorded in his student file. That way, she could contact the hospital in advance and have the necessary blood prepared for surgery.

The child’s life was hanging by a thread. In-hye was doing everything she could to reduce even a few minutes of preparation time at the hospital.

“W-Wait a moment. He’s not wearing his school uniform, so…”

Identifying the child’s swollen, blood-covered face was much more difficult than expected. On top of that, because of the school festival and sports competition, the students were wearing casual clothes, so there was no name tag to help identify him.

“Please look carefully! We don’t have time!”

Kheugh!

At that moment, the fallen child suddenly coughed up blood and began struggling to breathe.

“Kyahhh!”

The students screamed in horror once again.

“Hey… Isn’t that him?”

“Who?”

“Kim Min-jun. Isn’t that Kim Min-jun?”

“Min-jun?”

An unexpected name suddenly emerged from the crowd.

“Kim Min-jun?”

“That’s Min-jun?”

“Wait, you’re right! Look at that bracelet! Min-jun always wears that bracelet. He said it was a luxury brand!”

“Oh! You’re right!”

The golden bracelet glimmering around the fallen student’s wrist turned the children’s suspicions into certainty.

Before long, the screams throughout the school were replaced by one name.

Min-jun.

“What? So he jumped off by himself? Why would he do that?”

“Does Kim Min-jun even have a reason to kill himself?”

“Who knows?”

“Or did someone push him?”

“Who would be crazy enough to push him?”

Naturally, the students’ attention shifted toward the circumstances surrounding Min-jun’s fall.

“Min-jun!”

Suddenly, someone let out a desperate cry and shoved through the crowd, rushing toward the scene.

It was Min-jun’s mother, who had been attending the school event in her capacity as the chairwoman of the organizing committee.

“Ahhh! No! No!”

The moment she saw her son lying on the ground, covered in blood, Min-jun’s mother let out a heart-wrenching scream before collapsing unconscious.

“Ma’am! Ma’am, please wake up!”

The homeroom teacher caught her before she hit the ground and shouted in panic, his face turning pale.

Of all the students it could have happened to, why did it have to be Min-jun?

He couldn’t even begin to imagine how he was supposed to handle this situation.

“Chae-rin! How far away are they? Did you make sure to pass along everything I asked for?”

As Min-jun’s breathing grew increasingly labored, In-hye urgently called out to Chae-rin.

“Yes! They’re almost here… Oh! There they are!”

WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO!

At that moment, the piercing sound of a siren rang out as an ambulance entered through the school’s main gate.

“Make way! Please step aside!”

The paramedics jumped out of the ambulance carrying a stretcher and emergency medical kits. They pushed through the crowd and hurried toward Min-jun.

“Over here! He still has a faint pulse. We need to intubate him first, so please prepare the equipment immediately!”

In-hye tried her best to calm herself and speak as steadily as possible.

The more urgent the situation, the more composed and level-headed she had to remain.

Especially when someone’s life was at stake.

“Are you the person who called us earlier? Are you a doctor?”

One of the paramedics looked back and forth between the unconscious Min-jun and In-hye, who was kneeling beside him.

“Yes. You brought everything I requested, right? We also need to perform a chest tube insertion immediately. Please get everything ready. Quickly!”

In-hye had anticipated what would be needed and asked Chae-rin to arrange the necessary emergency medical equipment in advance, hoping to save even a little time.

“Y-Yes! Understood!”

Overwhelmed by In-hye’s commanding presence, the paramedics immediately began moving in perfect coordination.

“Sixteen French… No, give me a twenty-eight French chest tube!”

“Here you go!”

In-hye and the paramedics worked desperately to save the fading life before them.

Tiny beads of sweat had formed on In-hye’s forehead, and her brows were tightly knitted together. Every expression on her face revealed just how desperately she wanted to save the child.

And a little while later—

“First aid is mostly complete. Please be careful when moving him. I’ll contact the hospital in advance.”

“Yes, understood. Thank you for your hard work.”

WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO!

“Phew…”

As the ambulance disappeared beyond the school gates, its loud siren gradually fading into the distance, In-hye finally felt that the immediate crisis had been dealt with.

She wiped her face, now smeared with sweat and blood, against her sleeve before collapsing onto the ground, utterly exhausted.

“Are you okay?”

Chae-rin, who had quietly approached her, extended a hand.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

In-hye gave a faint smile and was just about to take Chae-rin’s awkwardly offered hand when—

“There’s someone on the rooftop!”

At the sound of a student’s voice from somewhere nearby, everyone’s attention turned toward the roof.

“Hey! Who are you?! Don’t move!”

The principal looked up at the rooftop and shouted at the top of his lungs.

The head that had been peering down over the rooftop railing suddenly disappeared.

“Principal, I’ll go check it out. And the rest of you, please guard the entrances so whoever is up there can’t escape!”

Without the slightest hesitation, Min-jun’s homeroom teacher rushed into the school building, shouting instructions to the other teachers.

“We’ll come with you!”

Several male teachers, along with a few curious male students, hurried after him.

BANG!

The homeroom teacher raced up the stairs and flung open the rooftop door so forcefully that it seemed ready to break off its hinges.

He frantically looked around.

“What are you all doing up here?!”

What he saw was one student sitting against the rooftop railing wall with his head lowered, surrounded by four other students.

“You little bastards! What the hell have you done up here?!”

“Teacher, what do we do?”

“Something terrible happened!”

“Teacher, Min-jun…”

“Teacher, Min-jun fell… He fell from the rooftop!”

The four students rushed toward him, their faces half-dazed with shock. They began blurting out their words in frantic, disjointed sentences.

“Quiet! Quiet! I can’t understand anything when you’re all talking at once! One at a time! One person at a time! All right, Hyung-jin, you tell me. What happened? What on earth happened here?!”

After trying to calm the students down, the teacher decided to have Hyung-jin, who seemed relatively level-headed, explain what had happened.

“D-Dong… Dong-gyu… He… Min-jun…”

Hyung-jin’s eyes filled with tears. He could only repeat Dong-gyu’s name before his voice failed him.

“Dong-gyu did what to Min-jun? What happened to Min-jun?!”

The answer already seemed obvious.

But he needed to hear it directly from the students to make absolutely certain.

“D-Dong-gyu and Min-jun got into a fight… Then Dong-gyu suddenly hit Min-jun with a metal pipe…”

“And then? What happened after that?! Hurry up and tell me!”

Unable to remain patient any longer, the teacher grabbed Hyung-jin by the shoulders and shook him as he demanded an answer.

“Th-Then… Min-jun was hit in the head with the pipe. He staggered backward and fell off the rooftop.”

Dong-gyu, who had been sitting against the wall with his head lowered, flinched at Hyung-jin’s words.

But he kept his mouth firmly shut.

Apart from his labored breathing, not a single sound of protest or explanation escaped his lips.

“Lee Dong-gyu! Is what he said true? Answer me! Quickly—”

At that moment—

WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO!

Two police cars entered the school grounds, their sirens blaring loudly.

“Hey! The police are here!”

At the sound of the students shouting from the playground below, Dong-gyu’s bowed head jerked slightly once again.

“None of you move an inch! And from this moment on, don’t touch anything! Do you understand?!”

The teacher decided that preserving the crime scene was more important than pressuring Dong-gyu for an answer right now.

“Mr. Park, I saw a detective downstairs earlier. Please bring him up here. And Mr. Lee, take those students downstairs. By the way, why the hell did you all follow us up here?!”

After issuing instructions to the other teachers in quick succession, the homeroom teacher suddenly turned toward the students who had followed them upstairs and snapped angrily.

Their decision to come upstairs wasn’t even the main problem.

What worried him was the possibility that the students who had witnessed the scene would spread their own versions of events throughout the school, adding all sorts of details along the way.

“I went up to the rooftop myself, and apparently, Dong-gyu hit Min-jun with a metal pipe and threw him off!”

“Seriously! I heard Dong-gyu actually picked Min-jun up and tossed him over!”

“They said Dong-gyu was laughing while watching Min-jun fall! Damn, isn’t that terrifying?”

Just as the homeroom teacher had feared, the stories told by the students who had gone up to the rooftop had changed completely as they spread from one person to another.

And Chae-rin’s classroom was no exception.

While her classmates excitedly discussed the incident, Chae-rin sat alone by the window, her gaze fixed on the playground below.

She didn’t join in or say a word.

She simply watched.

“Chae-rin, did you see what happened earlier? It was seriously terrifying, wasn’t it?”

At that moment, someone approached Chae-rin, who sat apart from everyone else like an isolated island.

“Uh… I guess.”

It was Seung-hyun, the only student at school whom Chae-rin had opened her heart to.

“You don’t look scared at all.”

“I was scared.”

How could anyone witness something like that and not be frightened?

She was simply doing her best to appear calm.