The principal burst in during lunchtime and shouted, “Who has this red backpack?”

Chapter 1: The Interruption of Lunchtime

The St. Jude High School cafeteria was as noisy as a marketplace. The smell of greasy fries mingled with the expensive perfume of the rich kids. Outside, the November snow fell heavily, blanketing the ancient Gothic school grounds.

I, Ethan, a scholarship student from the slums, sat in the most secluded corner of the dining hall, trying to swallow my ham sandwich. I always tried to be invisible. At this school, attention was a death sentence.

Suddenly, the double doors of the cafeteria burst open with such force that they slammed against the wall with a deafening crash.

The entire dining hall fell silent. Hundreds of eyes turned toward the door.

Principal Marcus Vance stood there.

He usually appeared in his impeccably tailored Italian suit and perfect social smile. But today, he looked like a madman. His hair was disheveled, sweat dripped down despite the sub-zero temperatures, and his tie was askew.

In his hand, he clutched the strap of a backpack.

A bright red backpack. Old. Tattered. And soaked with mud.

Marcus strode into the middle of the room, breathless, his wild gaze sweeping across each student’s face.

“WHO?” he yelled, his voice cracking with fear and rage. “WHO HAS THIS RED BACKPACK?”

No one answered. The silence was so heavy I could hear the ice machine in the kitchen clattering.

“I’ll ask again!” Marcus shouted, raising the backpack. Mud dripped from the small bag onto the spotless floor. “Who sneaked into my office? Who put this damn thing on my desk?”

I looked at the backpack. My heart skipped a beat.

All the students at St. Jude knew the legend of the red backpack. It belonged to Leo.

Leo was a student who had gone missing five years ago. He disappeared one winter night after the school prom. The police concluded he had either run away from home or slipped and fallen into the frozen lake. The case was closed. Leo was never found. And neither was his red backpack.

So why was it here, covered in fresh mud, in the hands of the esteemed Headmaster?

Marcus began pacing back and forth between the rows of desks. He stared intently at each student’s face.

“It was you, Jason, wasn’t it?” He grabbed the football captain by the collar. “You tried to blackmail me?”

“No… sir… I don’t know anything,” Jason stammered.

Marcus pushed Jason aside and lunged toward me. Perhaps it was because I was poor. Perhaps it was because I was always so quiet. Or perhaps it was because my gaze didn’t droop like the others.

He slammed his soaking wet backpack down on the table in front of me. The smell of damp earth and… decay assaulted my nostrils.

“It was you,” Marcus hissed, saliva splattering on my face. “You scholarship rat. You dug it up, didn’t you? How much do you want? Tell me!”

I looked him straight in the eye. His pupils dilated. He wasn’t angry. He was utterly terrified.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Vance,” I said calmly. “I’ve been in the library all morning.”

“Lies!” Marcus yelled. He was about to slap me.

BOOM!!!

The “Lockdown” alarm blared throughout the school. Emergency lights flashed repeatedly.

“Red Code! Red Code! Armed intruder on campus!” The automated voice boomed from the loudspeaker.

The students began screaming, scrambling under tables as usual. But Marcus didn’t. He clutched his red backpack to his chest, his eyes darting frantically towards the window.

“They’re here… They know…” he muttered.

Chapter 2: What’s Inside

The cafeteria door swung open again. But this time it wasn’t an intruder.

It was the town’s Sheriff and a SWAT team.

“Marcus Vance! Put the bag down and raise your hands!” the Sheriff yelled through the megaphone.

Marcus recoiled, bumping into a vending machine. “You don’t understand! Someone set me up! This bag… it just appeared!”

“Put it down!”

Marcus trembled as he dropped the backpack to the floor. The police rushed in, pinning him to the ground. Cold handcuffs snapped onto the powerful Headmaster’s wrists.

I remained seated, my hands on the table.

The police chief, wearing rubber gloves, cautiously approached the red backpack. He unzipped it.

The entire room held its breath. Everyone was curious to know what was in the bag of a male student who had been missing for five years that had driven the principal so mad.

The police chief pulled out a school uniform jacket. It was stained a dark brown – the color of dried blood.

Next was an old flip phone, kept in a waterproof zip bag.

And finally… a pistol. A Smith & Wesson revolver.

The police chief checked the serial number, then turned to Marcus Vance with a look of contempt.

“This gun is registered in your name, Marcus. It was reported missing five years ago, the same week Leo disappeared.”

“No! I’ve been framed!” Marcus screamed as he was dragged away. “That kid Ethan! It was him! He brought that bag!”

All eyes turned toward me.

The police chief walked over to my desk. “Boy, what did he say?”

I stood up, adjusting the frayed collar of my shirt.

a myself.

“I don’t know, sir,” I said. “But I think you should check the phone in that zip bag. Maybe it still has battery.”

Chapter 3: The Truth Under the Ice

The truth was revealed that very afternoon.

The phone in the backpack contained a final recording. It was Leo’s voice, five years ago, pleading: “Mr. Vance, please, I won’t tell anyone about you embezzling scholarship funds… Don’t…”

Then came the gunshot. And Marcus Vance’s gasping breaths as he buried the body and the backpack in the woods behind the school.

Marcus Vance was charged with first-degree murder and embezzlement. The whole town was shaken.

But the biggest question remained: Who dug up the backpack?

The burial site was deep in the forbidden woods; no one knew the exact location except the killer. Marcus Vance insisted that this morning, when he walked into the office, the mud-soaked backpack was sitting right on his desk, as if Leo had risen from the dead and returned it.

That “ghostly” appearance had driven Marcus to a panic, causing him to run to the cafeteria with the backpack to find the “know-too-much” culprit, inadvertently confessing in front of the whole school.

The police thought Marcus was delusional, or that a mysterious accomplice wanted to blackmail him and then changed their minds.

No one suspected me.

I, Ethan, the shy, poor student.

That night, I returned to my dilapidated boarding house. I opened the closet, pulled out a pair of mud-covered snow boots and a military-grade folding shovel.

I took them to the backyard and burned them.

Chapter 4: The Invisible Man’s Twist

I am not Ethan.

My real name is Liam. I am Leo’s younger brother.

Five years ago, when my brother disappeared, my family fell apart. My parents died from grief and an accident. I was sent to an orphanage in another state.

I spent five years planning. I changed my name, falsified documents, dyed my hair, wore contact lenses, and applied for a scholarship at the very school that had swallowed my brother.

I knew Marcus was the culprit. My brother sent me an encrypted message that night, saying he would meet with the principal to confront him about the stolen scholarship funds – money that my family should have received.

But I had no concrete evidence.

Until last week.

I didn’t find the body. I didn’t dig up the backpack.

The real twist was:

The red backpack Marcus Vance was carrying in the cafeteria… wasn’t Leo’s backpack.

It was a backpack I bought at Goodwill for $5. I soaked it in mud, smeared pig’s blood on an old uniform shirt I’d stolen from the museum.

I snuck into Marcus’s office and placed the “fake” backpack on his desk early in the morning.

My plan was a Paranoia Trap.

I wanted him to see the “ghost” of the past. I wanted him to panic. I wanted him to think someone had found the body.

But I didn’t expect his reaction to be so violent.

When Marcus saw the fake backpack on his desk, he panicked to the point of losing his mind. In his frenzy, he thought someone had dug up the grave and was blackmailing him. He feared the police would find the real burial place.

So, in the 30 minutes before lunchtime (when the security camera recorded him running into the woods), Marcus ran into the woods himself to dig up the real backpack in order to dispose of it somewhere safer.

But he didn’t have time to get rid of it. Panic drove him back to school, carrying both the real backpack (which he had just dug up) and the fake one (which I had ordered), confused between reality and illusion, rushing into the cafeteria to find the person who “knew the secret.”

The backpack that the police confiscated, the one containing the phone and the gun… was the real one.

It was Marcus Vance, in the extreme fear I had created, who personally dug up the evidence of his crime and handed it over to the police right in the middle of lunchtime.

I stood by the window, watching the snow fall.

I took an old photo of Leo out of my wallet.

“Honey,” I whispered. “I didn’t need to look for you. I made him bring you home himself.”

Marcus Vance thought he was hunting down a blackmailer. He didn’t know he was only running from his own shadow, and I was just the one who turned on the light.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll submit my transfer application. My mission at St. Jude is complete.