In Arican schools, class breaks usually lasted only four or five minutes—just enough ti for students to change classrooms. If a student needed to use the restroom during class, they could simply stand up and slip quietly out the back door. So when Mr. Miller saw Everly wandering outside, he didn’t scold her.
He was, however, puzzled by the sudden silence in the teaching building.
During his patrol, aside from a few classrooms engaged in interactive activities, every other room—teachers and students alike—had fallen into an eerie hush. Everyone had their heads lowered, sitting perfectly still, as if frozen. No one knew what they were doing. In the corridors, only the faint, out-of-place laughter drifting from the interactive classrooms echoed hollowly.
Everly’s appearance gave Mr. Miller soone to question. He called out to her and asked what everyone was doing.
“Mr. Miller, they’re all watching a video,” Everly replied. “The video is very strange. After watching it, everyone acts like they’re possessed—they forget they’re still in class and keep replaying it over and over… I felt a little scared, so I left the classroom.”
Mr. Miller was rather old-fashioned. The mont he heard this, he flew into a rage.
“What?! This is class ti! The students are one thing, but how can even the teachers join in this nonsense? Absolutely not, I must put a stop to this at once!”
Everly hadn’t expected the little old man to be so headstrong. She hurried to persuade him. “Mr. Miller, don’t go in. I think sothing is very wrong. We should call an exorcist to handle this!”
“An exorcist? Everly, I thought you were a firm materialist. How can you be as superstitious as those parents? Witches, curses—those were nothing but coincidences. Back then, our school simply had an outbreak of infectious disease…” Mr. Miller sternly rejected her suggestion. Muttering about past events, he stepped around the girl blocking his way and strode toward a nearby classroom.
Everly couldn’t stop him, nor did she dare follow. She could only stand outside and watch helplessly as Mr. Miller pushed open the door, walked down the aisle, and marched up to the podium. He curled his fingers and knocked forcefully on the desk.
Yet despite his aggressive entrance and the considerable noise he made along the way, not a single teacher or student in the room looked up. They remained fixed on the phones before them, utterly motionless.
“Ms. Laura, please raise your head.”
Miller first directed his reproach at the teacher, Laura.
Laura stared straight at her phone screen without moving in the slightest, as if she hadn’t heard him at all.
“Ms. Laura! It’s not break ti. You should be teaching your students, not behaving like an internet addict and staring endlessly at so aningless video!” Miller raised his voice and warned her again.
Laura still showed no reaction. If not for the occasional blink of her eyes, Everly might have thought that what sat behind the podium was an eerily lifelike wax figure.
Only Miller failed to sense the strangeness of the situation. His chest heaved violently, his gaunt cheeks flushed red with anger. After shouting “Ms. Laura!” one more ti, he grabbed a history textbook from nearby and slamd it down over Laura’s phone.
That action finally had an effect.
The instant the screen was covered, it was as if she had abruptly awakened from a long dream. Ms. Laura’s whole body jolted, and the wooden stiffness on her face suddenly ca alive.
She blinked, first looking in confusion at the history textbook in front of her. Then, following the hand holding the book, she lifted her head to look at Mr. Miller and asked, puzzled, “Mr. Miller? What’s wrong? We’re still in class, why did you suddenly co in?”
“Ms. Laura! How dare you ask that? Have you been watching videos so much that you’ve lost your senses?! You’ve been staring at that video the whole ti and forgot to even teach your class. I ca in to remind you, and this is your attitude?!” Miller roared without regard for his dignity, looking as though he might explode from anger.
“Video?” The keyword seed to trigger her mory. Ms. Laura froze for a mont, and tears quickly welled up in her dark brown eyes. “…Right, the video! Seradiya—Seradiya is dead… Ah… Seradiya… I have to hurry—hurry and watch the video…”
As she spoke, she lowered her head again and tugged forcefully at the history book, trying to move it away and continue watching the video beneath. To Everly, this was an obvious sign of possession. But to Miller, it looked like Ms. Laura was deliberately humiliating him.
“Pull yourself together!” he shouted, slamming his palm hard against the lectern with a loud bang.
The explosive sound echoed through the spacious classroom like a clap of thunder, shattering the heavy silence that had filled it. The students below the podium, who had all been sitting with their heads lowered, jerked simultaneously and lifted their heads in unison. Their eyes were filled with confusion as they looked toward the source of the noise.
“Mr. Miller? Why did he suddenly co into our classroom…”
“Ms. Laura’s crying, did the old man just scold her?”
Once their gazes left the video, most of the students seed to have completely forgotten what had just happened. They began whispering and pointing at the two teachers on the podium, their hushed gossip tinged with excitent at the unfolding drama.
Among the crowd, only a handful of students stood out.
While the others waited eagerly for a dramatic clash between teachers, these few seed completely cut off from the outside world. Their faces were stricken with grief, their eyes dull and unfocused. Large tears stread down their cheeks as they repeatedly murmured Seradiya’s na.
As they chanted, their once-raised heads slowly drooped again. They lowered their gazes and returned to watching the video with the sa sorrowful obsession.
“Seradiya? …Right, Seradiya is dead…”
“The video… the video… where’s the video? I need to watch it…”
The words “Seradiya” and “video” functioned like so kind of trigger. The mont they were ntioned, those who had already watched the video would instantly recall it and feel an overwhelming urge to view it again. Centered around the few tearful, muttering students, the impulse spread outward. One by one, the people around them were affected—lowering their heads again and becoming engrossed in the videos on their phones.
The compulsion quickly rippled through the entire classroom. Even Mr. Miller, standing at the podium, accidentally glimpsed the phone screen beneath the history book—and fell into the sa dazed stillness.
Before long, the room returned to its earlier silence. Only the faint rustling static of the video—shala, shala—echoed repeatedly, stirring an inexplicable irritation in the heart.
What is this… It’s just like a contagious virus…
Watching from outside, Everly felt her scalp prickle in alarm.
She hadn’t watched many films in her previous life and had never seen a plot device quite like this—brainwashing people through a single video. Thinking carefully, though, the mode of contamination felt sowhat similar to the “gan Clinic” incident she had encountered at age ten. In that case as well, the “anomaly” had spread through video, and those who watched it exhibited signs of brainwashing. She couldn’t tell whether there was any connection between the two.
So far, Everly had not seen the video herself and therefore couldn’t draw any conclusions. Of course, she had no intention of watching it—no matter how curious she felt. Who knew whether viewing it might once again connect her to so malevolent deity? She had already learned that lesson the hard way.
But how was the contamination caused by this video supposed to be dealt with? Sure, for now the students were only deeply obsessed with watching it. But if they kept going, who knew what other changes might occur—suddenly becoming violent and grabbing knives when forbidden to use their phones, or perhaps turning into zealous followers of so obscure deity, causing chaos…
Just as Everly fretted over these possibilities, whoosh!—the silent school building seed to wake up all at once, and noise erupted from every direction.
“What’s wrong with ? Why was I staring at my phone the whole ti?”
“‘This video has been deleted’? …Ah, that’s right, Seradiya posted a farewell video—she committed scide.”
“…Seradiya, Seradiya!”
“I want to watch the video, I want to watch, I want to watch, I want to watch…”
…
Everly stood bewildered in the now bustling, marketplace-like hallways of the school. For a mont, she almost thought she had fallen victim herself and was hallucinating. Otherwise, why had all the students who were just monts ago hunched over their screens, hypnotized by the video, suddenly co alive again—chattering and laughing as if nothing had happened?
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down, and listened carefully to her classmates’ conversations. That’s when she realized what had happened: the Chatter page had automatically refreshed, and in the refreshed feed, Seradiya’s video had been urgently removed and was no longer viewable.
Of course—it made sense. Chatter was a global social platform. If the video truly caused harm, it wouldn’t just affect tiny Fino Academy. With so many potential victims, Everly didn’t need to worry—soone competent would naturally intervene.
Relieved, Everly let out a long breath and, amidst the normal bustle and lively chatter of her classmates, returned to her classroom.
Even after the video had been removed, the classroom remained noisy and chaotic; order never returned. Not even the teachers could focus. Students huddled together, whispering about the video, exchanging guesses about Seradiya’s scide, or muttering back and forth, piecing together theories. A few students, deeply affected by the video, ignored everyone around them entirely—faces streaked with tears, jittery and desperate, holding their phones and obsessively pressing “refresh,” trying to watch the deleted video one more ti.
Finally, the morning classes ended. With the students released, news from the outside world—delayed by a few monts—finally flooded into the semi-isolated middle school.
Seradiya was a world-famous singer, and the impact of her video was far greater than just a single school.
On May 23, 20X0, at 10:06 a.m., the video was officially posted. By 10:19 a.m., it had been taken down. During those 13 minutes, anyone in the United States—or anywhere within Chatter’s coverage area—who watched the video fell under its spell. They, like Everly’s classmates, beca obsessed, ignoring everything around them and trapped in an endless viewing loop. Only obscuring the screen or producing a loud noise could break this trance. But as soon as soone ntioned “Seradiya” or “video,” the overwhelming urge to watch returned, dragging them back into the cycle.
Statistics show that during those 13 minutes, thousands of traffic accidents occurred across the United States, causing over a thousand deaths. Countless workplace accidents were also triggered by the video. At a local lumber mill in Micano, one worker glanced at a colleague’s phone during a break and imdiately fell into a trance, reaching his hand into an active wood chipper.
In Hedward State, a plane crashed shortly after takeoff, killing the entire crew and 98 passengers. Although the airline had yet to release an official accident report, rumors claid the crash occurred because the pilot had opened and watched Seradiya’s Chatter video just before takeoff…
#OfficialBanSeradiyaChatterVideo, #ChainAccidentsInXXState17Dead, #CivilPlaneCrashSuspectedFromVideo…
All sorts of news flooded the trending lists. But even with so many lives lost, none of these stories ca close to the heat of the top trending topic: #SeradiyaDead.
According to students who had seen the video, it was a scide video.
Amid the faint, almost imperceptible shshsh static, Seradiya appeared in a pure white robe, smiling gently. Like a bird in flight, she leapt lightly from the rooftop. The video was shot from a top-down perspective, capturing the entire process—from stepping onto the terrace to hitting the ground. It was unclear what equipnt had been used; the image was grainy, filled with the white “snow” and noise typical of old 20th-century footage. For a few seconds, the screen even went completely white, yet the shots retained a haunting beauty.
After a brief descent in midair, the cara abruptly zood in, freezing on Seradiya’s body.
Even though she had fallen to her death, the scene was not horrifying at all.
A young woman in white, with blonde hair and blue eyes, lay on her back in a spray of blood, eyes open, smiling. The crimson liquid flowed outward from beneath her, tracing upward along the edges of her robe. Thick pools of blood on the ground ford two wing-like shadows, which, at a glance, resembled a butterfly poised to take flight.
The video ended with a screen filled with repeating numbers.
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