"I told you to hurry," a familiar voice whined, "Now look what happened, idiot,"

"I'm older than you, show some respect," another voice teased.

Wonjin and Hyeongjun? What were they doing here?

A snap of Hyeongjun's fingers made the residual light disappear. The monster looked almost stunned by the sudden appearance of two not-really-problem students.

"Oh my God, Minhee, I am so sorry," Hyeongjun gasped, holding a tree for balance, "I-I thought I had more time. Otherwise, I would have stayed,"

He'd just... appeared out of thin air. How was that possible? That shouldn't be possible. And how had Wonjin gotten here? Seoul to this dump was more than an hour away, factoring in traffic.

"Hey lady," said teleporter smirked, "You've been giving our friend a hard time,"

He made a dorky peace sign, pointed his two fingers at the snake mermaid and made a violent downwards stab with him. Like a perfectly coordinated circus act, the ground beneath the beast's feet sank in a perfect rectangle.

The more it thrashed, the deeper it sank until a bead of sweat appeared on Wonjin's forehead. His heavy breathing and shaking hands were a telltale sign of thinly veiled exhaustion.

"Hyung, don't push yourself," Hyeongjun warned, kicking some of the stray dirt into the hole, "Taeyoung told you to be careful,"

Taeyoung? As far as Minhee knew, Hyeongjun didn't have any friends aside from him and Wonjin. He didn't even know a Taeyoung, for God's sake.

"Let me out!" the monster cried, "Let me out!"

Wait. Ignoring the craziness of the past half hour, were they about to kill their homeroom teacher?

"Don't do that," Minhee said desperately, "Yeah, she's a literal snake, but... but she's our teacher! Won't we get in trouble?"

Wonjin looked at him like he was crazy, shook his head.

"Nope," Hyeongjun shrugged, "Not our teacher. She's a monster. An echidna, if you want to be technical,"

Echidna. That was impossible. The half-snake maidens only existed in Greek mythology. They didn't even live anywhere near Greece.

"That's... that's impossible," Minhee breathed, choking down a wave of bile. A headache pounded in his head, and he swore he was seeing spots.

"Shouldn't we stab it?" Hyeongjun asked, kicking in a large branch. Wonjin frowned, pouted.

"You should've told me that earlier!" he groaned, running a hand through his hair, "It's too late now,"

One sweeping motion of his hand brought all the dirt back, burying their homeroom teacher alive. The screams were deafening as the pile of upturned soil grew filled and filled and filled the gaping gap in the earth. Soon, the shrieks subsided and Wonjin collapsed, holding his head like he'd had a concussion.

"Get up, hyung," Hyeongjun commanded, "I've got ambrosia in my backpack,"

Ambrosia. What was ambrosia? Wonjin... Wonjin got up without much difficulty, miffed. Ms. Go was buried alive in her snake mermaid (echidna, he chided himself) form, never to be seen or heard from again, and God, they'd get arrested, and this would stick on his permanent record, and--

"We just killed our homeroom teacher," Minhee said, eyes wide and breath caught in his throat, "She's... she's dead, right?"

"Hopefully," Wonjin spat, "God, I told them we should have gotten you out of there faster. But no, stupid Park Serim said we should wait till break,"

Park Serim, Taeyoung. So many new names. Wonjin and Hyeongjun barely spent two seconds on anyone who wasn't him, Kang Minhee. So how did they know these people?

"Serim? Who is Se-"

"Boys!" the parent chaperone called, "Boys, the bus is here. Let's hurry it up,"

What was going on?

"Wait, what about Ms. Go? We can't just... what?" Minhee asked, puzzled by the chaperone's own puzzled expression.

"Ms. Go? Yujin's mom?" she asked, "She didn't come,"

"No, no, Ms. Go, our homeroom teacher,"

She shook her head, looked at him like he was insane.

"Are you talking about Mr. Lee?" she asked with a raised eyebrow, eyeing their dirt-dusted uniforms with particular distaste, "There's no Ms. Go teaching here this year,"

What? But before he could question anything, Hyeongjun linked their arms and marched him wordlessly to the waiting bus.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

Nothing added up. His teacher's legs turned to snakes, Hyeongjun and Wonjin teleported like sixty miles and killed her, and then everyone acted like she didn't exist. What the actual hell?

But it was very real. Her screams echoed in his dreams. He'd wake up in a cold sweat, swatting away thoughts of snakes and spiders and being shredded to ribbons. Occasionally Wonjin would join this strange menagerie, Force-choking him with a stonily cold glare.

Mr. Lee, a soon-to-be-retired man with white hair and a no-tolerance policy, had apparently been teaching them this entire year. Every time he asked about Ms. Go, everyone would shake their heads and ask if he was feeling alright.

Hyeongjun had been especially fidgety lately. Constantly staring into space, dozing off in class, not responding to texts... the works. They'd been talking at lunch earlier and Minhee had to violently shake him to get a one-word response. Then he'd ghosted him for the rest of the day. None of the usual stonk memes and cute dogs. Just radio silence.

Straight studying like this wasn't as fun without the occasional distraction. Four hours in and he was starting to mix up mitosis with meiosis.

11:30. He could take a break.

Minhee bookmarked the page in his textbook, clumsily threw colorful highlighters and pens and pencils into the open desk drawer.

Maybe he'd call Wonjin. The older, sassier boy seemed to be awake all hours of the day. Often Minhee wondered what exactly he did during those dark hours. Whatever it was, it wasn't studying. His test scores reflected the poor effort he put in.

"Hey, Min," Wonjin's playful yet exhausted voice hummed over the phone, "What's up?"

The background noise was deafening. Not riding-a-bike-in-traffic deafening, or late-night-party deafening, but... different. A crackling fire, bubbling laughter, metallic clinks from an unidentifiable source. Where exactly was he?

"Hyung, where are you?" Minhee asked. He swore he could see the realization dawn on Wonjin's face at that moment.

A sound like static, odd bits of sound.

"Shut up, I'm on the phone!" he shouted, "Okay. Okay, I'm back. What's up?"

"Nothing much, just finishing physics homework. God, does Ms. Yoon think we don't sleep?"

A normal phone call, chatting about online games and teachers and sports ensued. But even hours after he'd hung up, staring at a ceiling of peeling glow-in-the-dark stars, an odd niggling sensation fluttered in his chest. Uncertainly nervous like a video game door puzzle: one door led to imminent doom, the other led to safety.

His figurative hand hovered over the doorknob, ready to push open the door. But was it really a door meant to be opened?