[Serialized Novel] "Honeybee Caprice" Episode 10

At the same time, Shirayuki, who had lied to Miyu and the others saying she had "beautification committee work," was sneaking into the old school building located at the edge of the high school's west wing.
The old school building was a wooden structure, far older and smaller than the current one, with ivy covering the closed windows and one side of the wall. Perhaps it was thanks to this plant, which had been quietly stretching its reach, that the walls hadn't rotted and collapsed yet. It seems that even after it stopped being used as a school building, it was used as a night duty room for teachers until about ten years ago, but now no one approaches it, and it quietly holds its breath, listening to the faint voices of students.
When she arrived at the garden of the old school building, where the sun didn't reach and weeds grew thick, a damp sweat broke out on her forehead even though it wasn't summer. Shirayuki stood in front of a door labeled "Service Entrance," where the letters were about to fade away, took a deep breath, and turned the doorknob.
It was last month that she realized the lock was broken. After managing to get the idol magazine Clara Hinozaki had ordered and handing it to her, she was thrown into this old school building for "being slow to bring it."
That said, at first, Nana and Aika had blindfolded her, so she had no idea that the place she was in was actually here. Even after she was able to take off the blindfold, she crawled around crying in the darkness, and somehow managed to find one door that wasn't locked. When the sunset shone through the gap in the opened door and she finally managed to roll outside, she heard the 6:00 PM chime urging students to go home from a distance, and she finally realized she had been locked in the old school building.
Even though it was still daytime, today, as soon as she stepped inside, a world of darkness spread out as usual. After turning on an emergency flashlight she had borrowed from the science lab, she slowly closed the heavy door behind her, which let out a rusty "creak."
In the first-floor hallway of the school building, there were three rooms lined up on the left. The large room at the front had a plate that read "Staff Room," next to it was the "Infirmary," and the small room at the very back had a plate that read "Janitor's Room," with each plate covered in a thin layer of cobwebs.
"Where should I start looking..."
Judging from the layout of the rooms, the classrooms seemed to be on the second floor, and the other minimum necessary functions for a school were gathered on the first floor.
Shirayuki decided to start by checking the room closest to the entrance on the first floor. Remembering the events of last month, the darkness was still terrifying. Suppressing the urge to run out into the sunny outdoors, she took a step forward.
—No matter how scared I am, I have to search. As long as I can't deny the possibility that "that thing" is here, I don't want to turn back.

"I found a 'Red Suggestion Box' in the high school building."
It was when I was a third-year in middle school that I heard Ran Ooide say that. Ran had been my classmate since the second year of middle school, and although she wasn't bullied by Clara, she was a girl who always talked about things in an exaggerated way and was a bit out of place.
If what Ran said was true, it must be "major news," but the "Red Suggestion Box" is a legend, even counted among the Seven Mysteries of the Academy. There's an old rumor that "someone disappears every year because of the suggestion box," but no one has ever seen that box, and no one has ever heard of anything written in the suggestion box coming true. Her words, as she was prone to being a big talker, were dismissed as just a joke by Nana and Aika, who said, "There she goes again, the pathological liar."
It was before the summer vacation of that year that we were suddenly told by our homeroom teacher that such a pitiful girl had "transferred schools." No one regretted not being able to say goodbye to her, no one showed any signs of sadness that she was gone, and no one said that her disappearance had anything to do with the "Red Suggestion Box."
However, only Shirayuki thought this in her heart.
"—Surely, Ran found the 'Red Suggestion Box.' She must have written something there. That's why she disappeared somewhere."
Rather than what the homeroom teacher said, which I couldn't believe at all, "this reason" was much more credible.
According to rumors, the suggestion box is only placed during the spring. Since the day I entered high school, I have been searching every corner of the school under the name of the "Beautification Committee." However, even as mid-May approached, I couldn't even find a shadow of it, and all that remained was this old school building.

When I opened the sliding door of the "Staff Room," the inside of the room was unexpectedly clean. This place must have been used as a night duty room. The floor had been renovated with tatami mats, and a writing desk, a bed, a bookshelf, and a large European-style full-length mirror that looked out of place in this room were placed irregularly.
Of course, there was no TV or radio, and about thirty old Western books that I didn't see in the library were lined up on the bookshelf equipped next to the bed.
When I pulled one book out of the bookshelf, wondering what kind of books they were, I had a strange feeling.
Almost no one approaches the old school building, the sign plates are covered in cobwebs, and when I went out of here last month, my uniform should have been dirty with soot. However, now, even when I pulled a book out of the bookshelf, not a single speck of dust flew up. Even when I shone my flashlight on it, there wasn't even a fingerprint where I had touched it. It was as if the cleaning had just been finished this morning...
"Is someone still here...?"
Thinking that way, in a sense, was more chilling than thinking there were ghosts. Shirayuki shuddered just by seeing her own shadow reflected in the full-length mirror, and after quickly confirming that there was nothing like a suggestion box in the drawers of the writing desk or the gaps in the bookshelf, she left the room.

(To be continued)

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