"...."
A pungent and musty iron smell penetrated my nostrils, settling in them as if it were always their home
My eyes were met with the same old and wrecked school that looked far from modern, only this time I was prepared to face anything
Or so I wanted to delusion myself thinking that as long as I followed the thin White line I'd somehow survive but-
"there...Is no white line...."
A sense of helplessness filled my entire being, my lips quivered
And my face paled like a ghost's
There was nothing guiding me, I was like a sheep without its shepherd stuck in a place where a single mistake could cost me dearly not only that-
'It's also different...'
the entire atmosphere of the School changed like day and night with every light source being tainted and illuminating with red, The sun or what I believed looked like the sun was no exception to this change, The giant moon that stayed dangling in the sky was the only thing not affected by the change
The school also looked even more run down, almost like an abandoned building with no lifeform in sight, However I knew
'This place is teeming with them'
Thud
Thud
Thud
I heard countless footsteps in every direction left, right, up, down and-
'Behind me...'
The only reason I even thought for a second I could survive and kept myself calm and collected was one simple hope.
The White Line that seemed to want to guide me to safety
All I could see around me were Pitch Black Lines littered everywhere In the vicinity, I could feel a prickling in my skin, it was as if it were telling me and whispering in my ear 'that danger Lurks everywhere so exert extreme caution'
as I was about to move, The pitch black lines also reacted with my movements and I also started to hear a faint pulse from the pitch black lines.
I took a step
Step
Creakkk
The floor creaked heavily under my weight, the sound reverberated throughout the entire school
Several gazes locked directly at me the instant I took a step, the pitch black lines also grew Immensely thicker than before making me feel like I took a step closer to a guillotine than a step closer to survival.
The pitch black lines pulsated like veins
"ha-ha am... I perhaps... screwed?"
To cope with this hopeless and utter ridiculous situation that Cale somehow found himself in, he tried chuckling and think positively, but it only made him less calm, more scared and everything else that shouldn't be happening right now when one's life is in danger
'what should I do now?'
Every step he took basically alerts them, giving Cale virtually no way to move without them noticing.
Neurons shot and fired as he pondered on what course of action he should take right now
However, he didn't have to do think long before-
CRASH
BOOM
RATTLE
"?!"
A Loud Deafening piercing sound broke the suffocating Silence and almost made Cake jump out of sheer fear
"h-huh?"
Cale was confused by the sudden shaking of the building
Almost Immediately after, all of the pitch black lines started to dissipate one after another at an alarming rate. Not wasting this golden opportunity he started sprinting towards the staircase. 'I don't who or what it was that did it, It can be a natural phenomenon for all I care just the fact that I have a shot at surviving this crap is all that matters right now, nothing else matters!'
The thought of going out of the school and climbing out did pop up and surface in my brain, but I knew from my previous observations that trying to do so would almost certainly lead to my death. So, I racked my brain for a solution, any solution
"Huff Huff" I went down the stairs and went down a floor.
"wait"
Realization struck me as I racked my head for survival in order to find a way out of this situation, my movements stopping and coming to a complete halt
"This School..."
It has similarities with my School
The most noticeable one being
'Carlos Ashen'
And
"What the voice said when I first got here"
The voice said to go to Class A3
'Why would Gardenia assign me to the same class as my school?'
What other common thing did those two facts have with each other?
'Carlos, Voice, Carlos, Voice'
Those thoughts kept on repeating in Cale's mind, trying to see the commonality between the two, he looked at it from a different perspective and-
"!"
He realized what it was, the two things that seemed interconnected with each other
Carlos was in charge of class A3, the voice had told him to go to where class A3 was, so what was commonality between the two?
A schedule,
to be more specific class A3's schedule
Carlos followed his schedule and was put in charge of class A3, and Cale needed to go to class A3 because that was his schedule, In following his schedule, he was 'safe' in the classroom and returned back to his world, a thought-no a theory surfaced in his panic driven mind
A theory formed out of his previous experience with Gardenia
'They also follow a schedule....'
There was no proof, but then nothing would make sense
If the strange creatures in Gardenia didn't follow a schedule, why is he still alive?
They must be following a schedule, a set of rules that they can't bend or break
Cale didn't know why they followed the a schedule, he wasn't even sure if he was right or wrong in that regard, it was simply a logical theory, and theories aren't always right
But the only thing he knew right now based from his train of thoughts
Is that they can't go against their schedule which copies his schedule of class A3 , he theorized that they can only go against the 'schedule' when he breaks the rules like-
'climbing the school walls to avoid classes'
Which means, in order to survive
To reach the 'other' temporary safe zone
'I need to go to classroom 23 In order to survive!'
That was his next 'class', and his last class for today
If Cale was right, going into the classroom his schedule needed him to go in, likely meant that it would be his 'temporary safe zone' until the next class started, no evidence backed this but coincidences kept on piling on top of each other, which made this theory hold some ground
Desperately running through the Hallways, Cale looked at the classroom numbers at both of his sides, the air in his lungs leaving and constantly burning with intensity and panic
'5, 7, 6, 8 ,9'
"You've got to be kidding me", Realizing that Classroom 23 was on the floor he was previously at
He quickly sprinted to the end of the Hallway In order to use the wide stairs that was on the left side
"Ug!"
Crack!
The floor broke, causing me to tumble over and fall down
"Damn it..."
The foot that fell through the floor was quickly raised from the floor, it felt damp and it stung for some reason, but Cale didn't linger any focus on it
He had reached the end of the hallway and next to him was a staircase
'It really did have a staircase at the end of the hallway!'
Recalling the times of running up the stairs in school as a little kid and the times of going to middle school where the staircase was always at the end of a hallway or at the middle of it
Cale judged by the size of the school building that it would have a staircase in the middle and at the far end
'Never have I thought a useless fact like that would help m-'
He turned to face the stairs, while also complimenting his past self for being curious for the most random things ever, but instead his face paled, his eyes shook and tremored
'Is that...blood?"
A giant puddle of flowed from the stairs, inside the puddle
"Ukh!"
Were intestines, just the sight of it made me nauseous and ready to puke
And
Rustle
They were wiggling and struggling as if they were still alive