Midnight in Seoul : 'Appropriately Inappropriate'

3 | White Night (2)

"...Wait a second, guys! Isn't that a line from the classic version of Hamlet? I'm sure I saw it in our assignment!"

Chang pulled out a copy of Hamlet from his desk and flipped through it before continuing.

"Look here! Act 1, Horatio's line:

'Form of the thing, each word made true and good, The apparition comes!'

See? It's exactly as written in Hamlet!"

"Hmm... Contextually, it's hard to call it a direct quote. It seems they've picked out the necessary words to use. This is a trick often used in mystery novels to create codes. It's commonly used when the code writer wants to hide their identity by masking their unique writing style, or when the themes or characters from the specified book are closely related to the content of the code!" Da-Yeon said.

Da-Yeon deducted as if to prove her passion for reading.

"We've been saying that the Red Girl ghost exposes secrets, right? But if you think about it, the ghost in Hamlet is pretty similar."

Chang, true to his exemplary student image, knew Hamlet well.

"The ghost revealed to Prince Hamlet the secret that his uncle had poisoned him and disguised it as an accident. In this sense, you could say that the Red Girl ghost and Hamlet's ghost essentially play the same role. And the Red Girl is hiding her identity. So, doesn't this satisfy both elements you mentioned, Da-Yeon? The close connection to Hamlet, which the Red Girl is using, and hiding one's identity by not exposing their writing style?"

Chang shared an impressive assumption. Da-Yeon pondered for a moment before snapping her fingers.

"The connection to Hamlet doesn't stop there. Hamlet is fundamentally a play, right? As something that unfolds on stage, the setting of the events is crucial."

I had only recently learned this fact myself. Hamlet wasn't a novel, but a play. For the theater.

"Most of the events in Hamlet take place in the confined space of the Danish royal castle where all the characters live together. Doesn't that resemble our isolated dormitory? The fact that all parties involved in the events live together in a specific space is definitely a factor we can't ignore!"

Da-Yeon found a similarity in the fact that Hamlet was essentially a play.

"Oh, Da-Yeon, great point! So, to sum it up, the Red Girl in our dorm is basically a reproduction of the ghost from 17th-century Hamlet. Isn't that kind of creepy? A resurrection of a ghost from 400 years ago!"

I felt like my mind had been hacked and exposed. My friends had almost exactly retraced the thoughts I had while creating the ghost story. Perhaps my closest friends posed the greatest threat to keeping my identity as the Red Girl's creator a secret.

"Hey, so how does Hamlet end anyway?"

"That's so like you, Hoon. How can you not know the basic plot?"

Everyone wondered how Hoon had managed to get accepted to our school.

There was a popular theory that he had knocked out the director of admissions and broke into the school, thanks to his muscular build.

However, as Hoon's roommate, I've noticed that there are few people whose raw brain power is as impressive as his. While Chang relies on meticulous self-discipline and effort, and Kai and I use our wits, Hoon just needs to focus and flip through materials for a few hours to get good results.

It's just that he seems to need some kind of recharging time, so he literally 'turns off' his brain like a computer in sleep mode most of the time. That's why he usually appears no different from the neighborhood simpleton.