The School With No Escape

Episode 3: No Eye

I let out a long, deep sigh, forcing myself to calm down. Just then, a sudden gust of cold wind slipped through the half-open window, sweeping across my spine like someone’s hand brushing lightly against it. Goosebumps rose across my skin. The icy air carried with it a feeling that was hard to describe— and amid the thin whistling of the wind, I heard something else.

A whisper.

Very faint. Very slow. Each sound stretched out deliberately.

“L… u… a… n…”

My heart jolted violently, skipping half a beat. I shot to my feet and spun around by instinct, my eyes scanning the space behind me.

But there was nothing there.

Just a bare, empty wall.

Up on the teacher’s platform, Khôi was still perched casually on the teacher’s chair, his legs swinging back and forth in an easy rhythm. He looked at me and curled his lips into a grin, like he had just watched something hilarious on a screen.

“Careful there,” Khôi said casually. “A moment ago there was a girl standing right behind you, staring at you the whole time.”

“W-what…?!” I almost screamed, my voice cracking.

“Yeah.” Khôi shrugged, his tone light as if he were talking about the weather. “Probably just a ghost. Don’t worry—she only stands there and watches. She’s never snapped anyone’s neck before.”

Never.

Snapped.

Anyone’s.

Neck.

I sat there frozen, my mind completely blank. At that moment, I seriously reconsidered every life decision I had ever made, and had to admit one painful truth:

Running away from home suddenly sounded like the most reasonable plan I’d ever had.

*****

Wait, let me guess first. I already know what you’re thinking.

“Wait… witches exist in this world?”

The answer is: yes.

And believe me — there is far more than you think.

We — witches — live interwoven among ordinary people, quietly and naturally, like fish swimming beneath the river’s surface. If you don’t look closely, you’ll never notice. Some choose to hide completely, living their entire lives like normal people: going to work in the morning, eating dinner at night, their magic carefully concealed. But others enjoy showing off a little — opening tarot shops with neon signs, selling “imported” feng shui bracelets, livestreaming spirit readings at midnight with candlelight and eerie background music.

Even though I’ve always wished for a normal life, I can’t deny the fact that I carry the bloodline of a pure-blood witch. According to my grandfather, my blood is “so dense with spiritual energy that if I ever truly lose my temper, the lightbulbs around me might spontaneously burn out.”

So far, if I had to take inventory of myself, I do have quite a few “skills” — like cheat codes in a video game, except every time you use them you lose health, get dizzy, and suffer long-term side effects.

First: clairvoyance.

Basically, sometimes when I touch an object, flashes of memories connected to it pass through my mind. It sounds cool at first, but that feeling disappeared the day I accidentally touched the toilet in the school bathroom back in eighth grade and witnessed a series of images that the human brain was never meant to store. Since then, I’ve learned an important life lesson: never touch random things in public places.

Second: basic barrier magic.

I can use chalk, salt, or anything similar to draw a circle and chant a spell to create a barrier that blocks negative spirits. In theory, it’s meant to defend against ghosts. In practice, sometimes I just use it to protect my breakfast bread from the other kids in class — who can be about as vicious as a pack of undead soldiers.

The problem is that the barrier only lasts for about three minutes, and that’s when I’m perfectly calm. If I panic even a little, it shatters instantly — as useless as a soap bubble.

Finally — and most troublesome of all — temporary spirit possession.

I let spirits borrow my body for a few minutes so they can fulfill their last wishes. It sounds noble, but ninety percent of the time I just get forced into confessing love on behalf of teenage ghosts. The last time I regained consciousness, I was standing in the middle of the schoolyard holding a bouquet of wildflowers, shouting at the top of my lungs in front of a crowd:

“Trâm, will you die together with me?!”

Without any consultation with the body’s owner.

So yeah — I’m not some overpowered movie witch. Every time I use my abilities, it drains a significant amount of mental energy and comes with plenty of side effects: headaches, low blood pressure — or worse, passing out completely.

My grandfather always comforts me by saying it’s because I’m still too young.

The average lifespan of a pure-blood witch ranges somewhere between one hundred and fifty to three hundred years. Most witches only begin to fully develop their powers around… thirty years old, maybe.

And me?

I’m sixteen.

My magic is still immature, my experience practically nonexistent, and most importantly — I’m a coward.

Whenever I cast a spell, I have to keep my mind perfectly stable. If my heartbeat slips out of rhythm or my thoughts waver even slightly, the incantation will fail immediately. In the spiritual world, chanting a spell incorrectly isn’t just a simple failure — the results can be completely unpredictable.

One incident was a perfect example.

I had only intended to use a small spell to brighten the room — a beginner-level support spell. But I lost concentration, my spiritual energy went off course, and the unfinished incantation created a thin c***k in space.

Too small to see.

But big enough for something on the other side to notice someone “looking” through.

For the next few days, the house felt… wrong.

The lights flickered occasionally even though the electricity was perfectly normal. At night, the hallway became noticeably colder, as if wind was blowing in from a place that didn’t exist. And late at night, I began hearing knocking.

From inside the wall.

Slow, steady knocking. Rhythmic. Like someone patiently tapping brick after brick, searching for a way out.

No one said anything, but everyone understood — something had been “allowed to notice” this house.

No one in my family scolded me.

Grandfather simply sealed off the entire ground floor, placed protective talismans at the four corners of the house, and hung a warning artifact right outside my bedroom door.

The good news: My room got a brand-new desk lamp.

*****

I let out a sigh just as the bell rang for the next class, echoing down the hallway like the distant beat of an unfamiliar heart.

The classroom door opened.

The teacher walked in, followed by a thin boy with his head lowered, his hands tightly gripping the straps of his backpack.

The whole class slowly stood up. I reluctantly pushed my chair back. Before my legs were even fully straight, habit made me step forward, about to walk toward the teacher’s desk to introduce myself again according to the usual “new student ritual.”

And then I froze.

On the chalkboard above — where there should have been nothing but a few old notes that hadn’t been erased yet — a line of messy writing suddenly appeared, as if scribbled in a hurry by a trembling hand:

“Found you.”

I stared at the words. The chalk lines looked freshly drawn, not even fully dry yet. I glanced around the classroom.

No one else seemed to notice anything unusual.

The scraping of chairs, whispers, and the flipping of book pages continued like any ordinary day.

I turned to Khôi.

He was busy arguing with the students nearby, looking extremely serious about a matter of life and death: whether the cafeteria should start selling matcha bubble tea or keep the current menu.

As if no one had noticed the sudden appearance of the strange message.

Oh no.

In my mind, a whole list of worst-case scenarios immediately surfaced.

A ghost capable of directly interacting with the physical world.

Conscious.

With a clear objective.

Class-three entity.

Not the harmless wandering type. Not the kind that just stands around watching before disappearing.

I swallowed.

My hand slipped instinctively into my pocket. The protective charm hanging against my chest suddenly grew warm, then hotter, as if reacting to something very close by.

I clenched my fist and forced myself to breathe deeply, trying to steady my breathing.

Calm down, Luân. You’ve watched horror movies alone at midnight.

You’ve gone to the bathroom during a blackout.

You’re a witch.

You can ha—

“Thiên Luân, right? Please step up to the podium.”

The voice sounded right next to my ear, making my heart skip a beat. I looked up.

The “teacher” standing on the platform seemed taller than normal.

Her body was thin to the point of imbalance, her limbs long and gaunt in a way that felt disturbingly wrong — as if they didn’t fully belong to human proportions. Her long black hair hung down, covering most of her face, but it couldn’t hide her pale skin.

A deathly pale white.

The kind of white, cold and damp, like the skin of a corpse that had been soaked in water for too long.

But the thing that nearly paralyzed my entire body… was her eyes.

Did they have pupils?

Or were they missing entirely?

No.

More precisely — there was nothing there at all.

Just two hollow sockets, pitch black and endlessly deep, as if opening into an infinite void behind the thin layer of skin.

I opened my mouth, but only a dry choking sound escaped, like rotting leaves being crushed.

Inside my head, I screamed: “Luân, don’t faint now. If you get through this, Grandpa will have to acknowledge you. You won’t just be the kid who curls up in fear every night.”

Being afraid of the dark isn’t a crime.

Inside the classroom, nothing changed. The ceiling fan kept spinning with its familiar buzzing sound. Morning sunlight slanted through the windows, falling across chipped desks and casting a thin layer of chalk dust across the blackboard.

A fly landed on the window frame, rubbed its legs together, flew up, and landed again.

No one looked toward the platform.

No one seemed to hear that voice.

Khôi was still leaning back in his chair, arguing loudly with the students in front about who had secretly eaten the buns from Tín’s backpack. The student in the first row was giggling quietly, eyes glued to the phone hidden beneath his desk. A girl at the back of the classroom was touching up her lipstick using the inside of a small mirror, her movements practiced as if she had done it hundreds of times.

Everything was so terrifyingly normal.

As if she didn’t exist at all.

The “teacher” began walking toward me.

Step by step.

Her heels touched the wooden floor — I could clearly see the movement — but they made absolutely no sound.

So cold.

The cold didn’t spread across my skin; it seeped directly inside, as if someone had placed my heart inside a freezer and slammed the door shut.

I wanted to step back. To scream. To turn around and run out of this classroom.

But my body wouldn’t move.

She stopped less than a meter away. A sudden stench hit me — the smell of stagnant pond water mixed with the sour reek of old blood.

She leaned down. Very slowly. Very close.

The distance between my face and whatever hid behind that curtain of black hair was so small that I could feel the cold breath drifting from her skin.

A whisper crawled up from deep inside her throat, like wind hissing through the cracks of rotting wood: “Not… you…?”

Then I felt it.

A finger touching my neck.

Ice cold.

Far too long to belong to normal human proportions.

Its surface slick and slimy, like algae freshly pulled from water. The fingertip slid slowly along my skin, tracing the pulse of my vein.

At that exact moment, the charm on my chest burned hot. A faint glow burst from my sleeve, flickering and trembling like a will-o’-the-wisp in the dark.

Inside my mind, a piercing scream exploded, tearing apart every other thought.

Then everything suddenly fell silent.

In that empty space, another voice whispered slowly and heavily:

“You… will… help… us… find… him…”

I don’t remember when I collapsed.