CHAPTER 07

After letting out a breath, I set the diary down for a moment and leaned back against the chair.

‘Literally… a diary written in blood.’

Even just the feel of the paper told me enough. Countless hands must have read and recorded in this notebook.

How many of them managed to escape the Citadel? Over all this time, how many “Amelies” had been replaced?

But there was no time to dwell on sentiment. I kept turning the pages.

“I still have no idea what the escape conditions are. There’s no contact from the administration office either. For now, I just have to earn credits diligently.

These are the ways I’ve found to earn credits:

1. Attend lectures and get at least a D grade.
2. Receive extra assignments from faculty members.

If I find any other methods, I’ll continue writing them below.”

And beneath that, a different handwriting continued:

“3. You can also do volunteer work in the city.

I heard some shops are participating in programs for students. But I’m not sure if this is a good option.

I still don’t have a way to go into the city alone, and I don’t really want to take a bus either.

Still no contact from the administration office. They said they’d help sincerely someday, but you really can’t trust civil servants.”

I turned the page. A printed sheet, folded in half, was tucked inside.

Hello, students of Guanglun Comprehensive University.

Below is the course registration procedure prepared by the administration office in response to repeated inquiries from students.

Please note that details may vary depending on the timing of application.

The registration procedure for this semester is as follows:

1. Obtain the required form from the administration office and fill it out carefully and without error.
2. Submit the form to the professor whose lecture you wish to attend and obtain their signature and seal.
3. Submit the signed form back to the administration office.

※ All forms must be submitted before the deadline without exception, and all students must take at least one course per semester.
※ Students who are not enrolled in any course after the semester begins may be expelled immediately upon discovery.

My head tilted on its own.

“…That’s strange.”

At first glance, it looked like a simple procedure.

The part about needing a professor’s signature was unusual, but considering how few students might be here, it wasn’t entirely incomprehensible.

But what did they mean by “expelled immediately upon discovery”?

Was that just a warning? Or did it mean you could skip classes as long as you weren’t caught?

No—why would that even be possible? Without attending lectures, you couldn’t graduate.

But the moment I turned the page, the confusion was answered.

“These are the currently confirmed lectures.

Cancelled courses are crossed out.

○ Grand Fundamental Premise
└Failed. I don’t think it’s even possible to complete this.
Even I, someone fairly well-educated, couldn’t do it, so don’t try unless you’re extremely confident.

○ Advanced Search for Relatives
○ Pruning Overgrown Branches in Bulk
└Lost two fingers because of this. Not sure if I’ll even have a successor, but be grateful.

○ Unmentionable
○ 10054th Krampus March
└Barely canceled. Don’t even look at it.

○ 42
└I heard this is the easiest course. But competition is so intense that it’s better not to try at all.
└Who’s the professor? ヾ(・◇・)ﾉ
└This record is written in a personal diary, not an internet board, Amelie.
Asking won’t get you answers, and even if a kind successor responds, you won’t be able to verify it.
└Lmao this person replying to everything is actually hilarious

○ Dracono…pides Recital
○ Light of Life
└There was no cancellation mark, so I asked the administration office and was told it had already been completed last semester.
All students who took it were replaced upon completion.
Apparently it’s a course you can only take once in your life. Anyway, good for me.”

I flipped through more pages, but there were no further course lists.

Even so, there’s no way a university curriculum would only have this many courses across four years. Either later Amelies stopped recording, or…

Still, the number of completed courses felt too small.

‘Course registration… was in a week, right?’

Kwon Taehyun had told me I should prepare myself properly.

Maybe the Amelies hadn’t avoided enrollment—they had been unable to enroll at all.

If even registering courses was difficult, let alone completing them…

Then the “expelled upon discovery” warning started to make more sense.

As for alternative ways to earn credits besides course registration…

“Volunteer work in the city” seemed like the most realistic option.

Either way, I also had someone I needed to find. Which meant I would eventually have to go into the city anyway.

I tried to look for more information about the city in the diary, but with so many fragmented notes from different people, it wasn’t easy to find anything useful.

Rustle.

I turned another page.

And this one contained the most important information so far.

※ FOOD SUPPLY LOCATIONS ※

Getting food on campus is not easy. Stock up whenever you get the chance.

You can use the refrigerator on the first floor of the dorm. Anything placed inside is said to be preserved permanently. (Do NOT put living things inside. You will not like what happens.)

○ All drinks and desserts sold at the café next to the student center are safe.

Except for one thing: the “Lychee Smoothie.”

All I can say is that the white, round things inside are not lychee.

Café hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

It may be open outside those hours, but you won’t be able to communicate with the part-timer. Avoid it unless absolutely necessary.

○ Some food at the student cafeteria is also edible.

But it’s not worth forcing your way through that hell just to eat it.

└Why? Cafeteria food is the best lol. The new menu is actually really good٩(∂‿∂)۶
If you avoid peak lunch hours, you can minimize encounters with “students” too!
I’ll go again tomorrow!╭( ･ㅂ･)و╭( ･ㅂ･)و
└This Amelie stopped recording after this note.
We can’t determine exactly when she was replaced, but please note: the cafeteria’s new “cheese pork cutlet” is not actually cheese pork cutlet.”

Today was Tuesday, 7:20 a.m. The student center where the administration office was located wasn’t far. So maybe I should go to the café first…

“Ah.”

I had no money.

The small change I had until yesterday morning had been taken by the loan sharks, and I wasn’t even sure if money was valid in this place.

I needed to find a way to earn money. But how do university students usually make money? I wasn’t sure—I hadn’t even graduated high school. Something like… work-study programs?

For now, I decided to go down to the first floor of the dorm. There might be something left in that permanently-preserved refrigerator.

It was ironic that the most reliable “people” in this world were my predecessors—people I didn’t even know were alive or dead.

When I opened the wardrobe, neatly arranged clothes hung inside. Mostly plain, colorless everyday wear.

I took off the dirty T-shirt I’d been wearing since yesterday and put on a thick hoodie.

Had the previous Amelies worn this too? How many of them had managed to escape alive? The thought left a complicated feeling in my chest.

When I stepped back into the corridor, the campus view outside the window—one I hadn’t seen clearly yesterday in the dark—came into view.

A walking path, a plaza, and four lecture buildings. It looked like a fairly normal college campus.

But beyond it, dense forest completely surrounded everything, blocking any view outside.

Come to think of it, somewhere in the rules there had been mention of the Citadel’s origin.

Most of it had been speculation and rumors, and I had skipped it since it didn’t seem useful for survival.

But as far as I remembered, most structures in the Citadel were said to be copies of real-world places—distorted versions of locations scattered across the country, gathered here.

But… there isn’t a single person around.