The Boy of Cheongan (靑霧)

Episode 8: Prison of the Deep Sea

As I kept climbing higher and higher through the suffocatingly dense fog, the screeching cries of the wooden stairs behind me gradually faded away. The heavy blue fog, like soaked scraps of cloth, pressed in as if to fully crush my skin, swallowing and erasing the distant, muttering voices of the crew lingering below the stairs.

When I reached the end of the flat corridor at the top of the stairs, the familiar cabin-like wooden architecture vanished in an instant and was completely replaced by something far colder. The narrow corridor was built from smooth, seamless, intricately cut stone blocks, and its surface gleamed coldly with a faint, artificial luminescence.

Right ahead of me, a sharp, geometric corner bent at a jagged angle and completely blocked the path, sealing off even the slightest glimpse of what might be lurking deep inside this annex.

The closer I got to that corner, the heavier and more rhythmic my boots sounded against the stone floor. The silence in the world above here was utterly absolute, with no sound at all except my own breath, drawn in shallowly as the stiff laces of the corset mercilessly pressed in. That inexplicable, eerie physical pull that had been piercing my chest now tugged at every nerve with even greater force and violence, finally drawing me violently around that sharp bend.

Once I turned the corner completely, the corridor suddenly opened out in all directions into a sterilized, dry, cold metal passage.

Three enormous glass isolation chambers were embedded directly into the dark blue stone wall, flickering faintly beneath the low, periodic hum of recessed glowing tubes.

I slowed my pace. I lightly traced the cold glass surface of the first isolation chamber with my fingertips, staring into it with dark eyes. This was by no means an ordinary classroom or faculty office. It was a highly precise, state-of-the-art cell block and a clinical prison in itself, thoroughly hidden within the school’s old, faded wooden exterior. And the beings precariously sealed inside those transparent glass chambers were grotesque aberrations completely unlike anything human.