BXBX NOVEL Chapter 43- Careless
"Stop, what are you doing?!"
The only adult in the cafeteria was a middle-aged man. With an apron around his waist and a mesh hat, he came storming over with a stern expression.
"Mr. we have to-"
The youth tried explaining the dire situation to the middle-aged man, but he was cut off.
"Enough, are you in on his prank? Don\'t you kids have anything better to do?"
BANG!
Another loud noise came from the door. The middle-aged man glanced at it and then walked over. Looking through the remaining window at the scene outside, he was suddenly met face-to-face with a snarling zombie.
The middle-aged man frightened by the sudden jump scare leapt back. This also caused the students in the cafeteria to hurriedly retreat in response.
However, after his initial fear, the middle-aged man glared at the female student out of anger and embarrassment.
"What is that makeup? Just what are you kids doing out there!"
The middle-aged man then reached toward the door\'s somewhat large bolt about to open it.
"No, wait!"
The youth cried out, but the middle-aged man had already made up his mind to go out and give these pranksters a good... taste of his blood.
However, just as the middle-aged man placed his hand against the door bolt to wrench it open, an object came sailing across the room to hit the back of his head.
THUD!
"Fu-Who threw that?"
The middle-aged man almost let out a curse if not for him remembering where he was. He glared at the students in the room, however, no one spoke up on who threw the object. Suddenly he felt a warm liquid on his fingers, and he pulled his hand from behind his head to see that it was blood.
"Damn it, what hit me?"
The man cursed once more as he looked down at the object that had hit him. There on the ground, he saw a somewhat small comic book that had a bit of blood stain on one of its pointy corners.
"Fuck, it was a book?"
The man cursed under his breath, while his eyes involuntarily landed on the cover title of this comic.
It read, \'Zom-100.\'*
…
Meanwhile, Jin-woo was running at full speed down the hallway with over a dozen zombies chasing him.
Suddenly, a faint \'ding\' echoed followed by what sounded like metal clattering on the floor. Jin-woo\'s steps momentarily halted as he glanced down at the cigarette box in his hand. The lid was crooked, and the inside was empty.
Jin-woo quickly looked at the ground further behind him and saw a small key, however, it was too late to retrieve it as the leading zombie stepped over it and quickly closed the distance.
"Shit."
Jin-woo could only turn on his heels and continue running. After turning one final corner, he reached the teachers\' office which was the second door to the right of the hall. Without hesitation, Jin-woo opened the sliding door and slipped inside the room before slowly closing the door behind him.
While crouching on the ground against the door, he heard the snarls of the zombies as they passed by. Despite this, Jin-woo kept his posture low as he weaved his way through the teachers\' office desks. This was because of the large windows that could allow someone to have a clear view of the office from the hallway.
He had once been thankful for these large windows in each room in the school but now Jin-woo was cursing their bad design.
The teachers\' office was empty as expected since the teachers were off eating lunch. Like the students, they had their own designated cafeteria on the ground floor.
Along with the teachers\' office and cafeterias, there were rooms for indoor table tennis, the library, the Administrative Office, and a few spare rooms for storage as well as the janitorial supplies on the ground floor. The second floor was where the classrooms were, the east wing specifically had all the first years here, as well as one or two classes for second years.
As for the third floor and fourth floors, the first was the floor that had spare rooms for the various subjects that teachers could book in advance, like the Science Lab and Computer Lab. The nurse\'s station was here as well. The second was for Clubs, like the Literature Club, the Chess Club, and the Gaming Club.
Jin-woo recalled the layout of the school as he wondered why he hadn\'t seen anyone while running here. It was after he did this that he realized why and that was because today was the day most first-year students chose their Clubs. So, if all the first years weren\'t in that cafeteria, then the rest were likely on the fourth floor.
As for the second years and third years on the west wing, most of the second years were back in school, but almost all the third years were still out either studying at home or taking extra lessons for the upcoming Suneung.*
\'Since it\'s like that then it\'s no wonder it hasn\'t spread to the east wing yet. Well, I\'m not sure, but at the very least they haven\'t reached the bottom floors.\'
Jin-woo thought this to himself as he continued to check the name tags on the desks for teacher Park\'s desk. He concluded that he still had time to reach his classroom and even make it back to the gymnasium before the virus spread to the entire school, but he would have to hurry.
Suddenly, Jin-woo saw the standing nameplate \'Teacher Park\' on the desk in front of him and he directly checked the bottom-most drawer among the ones to the side.
Click.
The drawer Jin-woo thought would be locked, was unexpectedly open. Perhaps, whatever Seo-joon wanted him to find was in the other drawers? He just jumped the gun and thought it would likely be in a locked bottom drawer.
However, as Jin-woo was about to close the drawer to check the two above it, he caught a glimpse of something beneath some clutters of papers in the drawer. With just that glimpse Jin-woo knew what it was.
Reaching into the drawer, Jin-woo shifted the papers to reveal a small black revolver gun. It was inside a metal gun holder but from the handle and parts visible, he could easily tell that the gun was a model 60 from the Smith and Wesson company. Why was he able to confidently identify the gun with such little details? Because these were the guns used by the police.
\'But why was it here?\'
Jin-woo wasn\'t surprised teacher Park had this gun. He knew that his father and Teacher Park had a history of being in the army together, but while his father moved up Teacher Park \'voluntarily\' left to become a P.E. teacher.
No, what he was surprised about was that he would actually bring it to school and keep it in an open drawer. And though teacher Park might have been in the army and was technically allowed to own a gun, there were regulations on the type of gun he was allowed to have, and a gun designated for the police wasn\'t one of them.
Well, Jin-woo wasn\'t sure, he hadn\'t been as enthusiastic about guns to study their models and rules on owning them as he once was in the past.
However, he would still criticize this idiot for carelessly leaving it here for someone to easily access it. But, as Jin-woo was doing so in his mind, he turned over the gun holder and suddenly saw a keyhole on the other side.
"...."
"Fuck."
Perhaps he was the careless one.
***
*Zom-100 is a zombie manga/anime.
*Suneung is the entrance exams high schoolers in South Korea take for entering college CSAT. For those familiar with South Korea, it\'s that really important exam that have almost all of the country on \'lockdown per se\' when students take it.