Samuel Grant felt as if his heart had stopped beating. His gaze instinctively shifted upward, and soon he saw Henry Clark's face.

The eyeballs bulged, tongue half protruding, face a purplish-black—clearly, he was long dead.

"Ah... ah... cough... ugh..." Samuel Grant collapsed to the floor, scrambling backward until his back pressed against the corridor wall. At first, he wanted to scream, then to vomit, but in the end, he clamped both hands tightly over his mouth, stifling both the cry and the bile.

He couldn't shout, because if security came, he wouldn't be able to explain why he was at school in the middle of the night; nor could he vomit, as that would leave obvious traces at the scene.

Samuel Grant himself didn't know why his mind was so clear and logical at this moment, why such calm judgment would emerge in such a terrifying situation. Was he inherently cruel, or simply numb to death?

He couldn't dwell on it; the pressing question was, what should he do next?

"Judging from the situation, Henry Clark most likely committed suicide. But if I call the police, there's no way to explain sneaking into the school at midnight. Even if the investigation eventually proves Henry Clark's death has nothing to do with me, the school will definitely expel me." After weighing his options, Samuel Grant pounded his thigh a few times, then forced himself to stand up. His legs were still a bit weak, but at least the pain brought back some feeling, enough to walk.

Samuel Grant entered the staff office, deliberately avoiding Henry Clark's horrifying face. He hurriedly skirted around the hanging corpse, quickly grabbed a pen from the pen holder on Henry Clark's desk, and ran out without looking back.

He dashed from the third floor all the way down to the first, arriving at the window he had climbed through. Just as he was about to climb out, he suddenly noticed something—there were two different sets of footprints on the windowsill!

Earlier, the backlight and his own shadow had obscured the sill, so he hadn't noticed. But now, under the pale moonlight, the discovery sent chills down his spine. There were two shoe prints on the sill, both toes pointing toward the corridor, but one was clearly larger than the other. The smaller one was probably his own, but what about the larger one?

Even in this situation, his mind was surprisingly sharp. Samuel Grant quickly deduced that the larger print must have been left by Henry Clark. Around seven or eight in the evening, the security guard would check every room in the school building and gym before locking up for the night. So Henry Clark couldn't have killed himself before then; he must have snuck into the school after eight and died afterward. This also explained why there were only prints leading into the corridor, and none going back.

Once he understood this, there was nothing left to fear. Samuel Grant climbed out the window, carefully wiped away his own footprints, and even erased his fingerprints from the window frame, but he left Henry Clark's prints untouched.

Feeling confident he had left no trace, Samuel Grant tucked his hands into his sleeves and gently closed the window, restoring it to its original state. Then he quickly fled the campus, sprinting all the way home.

Meanwhile, in the pitch-black corridor of the school building, a shadowy figure stood silently, watching Samuel Grant's departing back.

Chapter Three: After the Incident

Around one in the morning, drenched in cold sweat, Samuel Grant finally made it home. He was in a daze the whole way, only calming down a little when he saw his familiar front door.

There was light inside; it seemed his father had come home drunk.

He tiptoed into the house and tentatively called out, "I'm back."

No response—only his own heavy breathing.

Samuel Grant went to the lit room, slid the door halfway open, and was relieved by what he saw: his father was passed out drunk under the kotatsu, several empty bottles scattered around him.

"Comes home in the middle of the night to find his son missing, and still sleeps without a care," Samuel Grant muttered under his breath as he turned off the light and closed the door for his father.

He took a shower, then returned to his room. Though he lay in bed, he couldn't sleep at all. Every time he closed his eyes, the image of the body hanging from the rope and Henry Clark's tragic face would replay in his mind.

By the time dawn broke outside, Samuel Grant was still staring at the ceiling, his bloodshot eyes wide open.

He had spent the whole night thinking, but understood nothing. All he gained was a mind in chaos, a splitting headache, and a feeling of utter exhaustion.

Why did Henry Clark commit suicide? And why hang himself in the staff office—did that have any meaning? What was the deal with that strange bookstore? Who was the owner, really? Why did he insist I steal something from Henry Clark's office at midnight? Could Henry Clark's death be connected to him?

After tossing and turning for a while, Samuel Grant glanced at the clock. It was about time to get ready for school. Though exhausted, he didn't dare call in sick. Maybe out of guilt, Samuel Grant felt that being absent on the very day a body was found at school would look extremely suspicious.