The School With No Escape

Episode 2: Witchy

After that awkwardly cold introduction, I quietly stepped down from the podium and dragged my feet toward the empty desk tucked away at the very back of the classroom (personally reserved for me by Khôi).

The desk looked like it hadn’t had an owner in a long time. The wooden surface was scratched, one corner chipped off slightly, as if it had witnessed countless generations of students before eventually being forgotten there. I sat down, trying to shrink into myself as the noisy classroom slowly returned to its normal rhythm.

A few curious gazes immediately darted toward me.

Some looked for a moment and then turned away. Others stared openly without any attempt to hide it. One student even subtly raised their phone, pretending to scroll through the screen, though the camera was clearly pointed straight at me—like I was some newly excavated specimen from an archaeological site, strange yet worth documenting.

To be fair, that comparison wasn’t entirely wrong.

Alright, since I’ve already been dragged into this mess, I guess I should briefly tell you about my so-called “glorious” background before things go any further.

Fair warning so you don’t get shocked: I’m a witch.

A real one.

Don’t laugh. I’m serious. But hold on—don’t start imagining Harry Potter or Doctor Strange just yet. Forget the flashy wands and cool cloaks.

I’m a witch in the… hereditary sense.

I belong to the thirteenth generation of the Trần family—a very small branch of a witch coven whose origins trace back to Salem. Yes, that Salem in the United States, the place that went down in history for the infamous witch trials of the seventeenth century.

Back then, people only needed the slightest bit of fear to start blaming anyone who seemed different… and once they were accused, the easiest solution was simply to burn them and be done with it.

After those chaotic years, my ancestors and several others were forced to abandon their homeland. Some went to Europe, hiding behind the façade of astrologers or fortune tellers. Others followed merchant ships all the way to Africa, wandering through life like drifters.

As for my own ancestor—whether it was because he developed a taste for fish sauce, liked the climate, or simply thought the feng shui was favorable—he chose to dock in Vietnam… and ended up staying for good.

From that point on, the Trần family lived under the cover of a household practicing traditional Eastern medicine. By day, we took pulses, prescribed herbal remedies, and performed acupressure for people in the area. Occasionally—if someone begged hard enough (and paid well enough)—we would also handle the occasional exorcism. Everything was done quietly and discreetly, like an unspoken agreement between my family and the outside world.

My grandfather—Trần Huyền Cơ, the twelfth-generation head of the family—was, in everyday life, the respected owner of a well-known herbal medicine shop. People admired him for his skilled hands and the sincerity he showed toward his patients.

But the moment you stepped through the door of our house, another side of him emerged.

Every night he would light incense sticks that burned backward and sit before an altar covered in talismans, murmuring ancient Latin incantations under his breath. The smoke curled around his wrinkled face, making him look uncannily like an old water buffalo smoking a pipe (sorry, Grandpa)—strange, yet so familiar that I grew up seeing it every day without finding anything unusual about it.

My father is, quite literally, a “poison specialist.” If you wanted to make it sound more modern, people today would probably call him a detox drink maker. The bottles and jars in his workshop—if you slapped English labels on them and added a few lines about “cleansing the body”—would probably fool anyone.

My mother, on the other hand, is the complete opposite: a middle school literature teacher who loves books, loves poetry, and absolutely hates the smell of dried cinnamon—something my father constantly insists is “essential for maintaining spiritual warmth.”

The two of them met through an incident that, every time it’s brought up, leaves the whole family unsure whether to laugh or apologize.

That day, my father brought my mother a cup of lotus tea, hoping to impress her with a gentle and refined gesture. Unfortunately, while brewing it, he “accidentally” added a few drops of a traditional sedative. (Believe it or not—I don’t.)

The result was that my mother slept for seventeen straight hours.

When she woke up, her mind felt unusually light and refreshed, and, for reasons no one quite understands, she agreed to go on a date with him. From there it became a habit, and eventually it turned into love.

A very strange love story, indeed.

I, on the other hand, was different.

I never had any grand ambitions or lofty ideals. All I wanted was to be a normal teenager: eating instant noodles on lazy days, playing video games late into the night on weekends, occasionally forgetting to do homework and then scrambling to copy from friends the next morning, and every now and then hanging out at cafés just to chat like people our age do.

But fate didn’t seem particularly interested in granting such a simple wish.

On my shoulder, just beneath my collarbone, there’s a red birthmark shaped like an eye. It doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t itch, yet it’s the reason the entire Trần family looks at me with a mix of pride and worry.

It’s the mark of the heir who carries the strongest bloodline.

It sounds impressive when you hear it like that, but living with it is far less glorious than it seems.

So while other kids signed up for drawing classes, music lessons, or extra tutoring in math, physics, and chemistry, I had to learn how to call spirits by name without getting cursed into oblivion. I practiced reciting incantations rhythm by rhythm, carefully enough that even a single mispronounced syllable might backfire on me.

I learned how to distinguish between wandering spirits, souls, and the kinds of things that are best left unseen if you still want to sleep peacefully at night.

And little by little, I also had to get used to things that are very difficult to explain—like the fact that inside the drawer of my study desk, between notebooks and pens, there is always a special space reserved for a three-tailed cat skull wrapped in red cloth.

And the most ironic part of all this?

I’m afraid of ghosts.

That’s right. Me—the legitimate heir of the Trần family, the person everyone expects to become the future pillar of exorcism and demon hunting—has the instinct to flinch whenever a white shadow flashes across a television screen.

That time, I screamed like someone had grabbed my throat. My heart nearly leapt out of my chest.

Later I found out that the “white shadow” was just the noodle vendor lady at the end of the alley, wearing a towel over her head while pouring water in the evening.

But let me tell you: that truth didn’t help at all. The memory of that panic has clung to me stubbornly ever since.

So when my grandfather called me over and solemnly announced:

“You need to enroll in a place filled with strong yin energy, so your potential can awaken and your courage can be tempered,”

I thought he was joking.

He wasn’t.

“You need to learn how to face your fear,” My grandfather said, his tone calm in a way that was almost frightening. One hand tapped a porcelain skull lightly against the table, as if keeping rhythm, while the other flicked open a dragon-shaped lighter. A greenish flame burst out with a thin curl of smoke, and he lit a stick of incense with practiced ease—like he was making tea, not discussing the fate of his own grandson.

I tried everything.

I begged. I cried. I explained that I had a weak heart, that I panicked easily, that all I wanted was to live a quiet, peaceful life. I even threatened to run away from home—despite the fact that I had absolutely no plan for what that wandering life would look like.

None of it worked.

My family isn’t the kind of people who are moved by tears.

In the end, I still had to pack my suitcase and leave home. Around my neck was a protective charm hidden carefully beneath my collar. In my pockets were all sorts of strange little items whose exact purposes I honestly didn’t want to know.

And that’s how I ended up here—sitting hunched inside a shabby, run-down classroom of Bach Da High School, a place infamous for being the most haunted school in the southern region. Around here, people whisper that the rate of students who “go missing” is higher than the university admission rate.

Now that I’ve officially set foot in this place, I understand that every possible route of retreat has already been cut off.

Which means my survival goal has been reduced to something painfully simple:

Pretend to be a normal student…

In a school that is anything but normal.