Occult Romantic Comedy! Chapter 15

Jonathan, who had stepped forward a few paces after brushing off the centipede, quietly looked back at Timothy. He seemed to be checking Timothy’s expression, perhaps thinking that after undergoing ordeal upon ordeal, Timothy might be discouraged or infuriated by the fact that he couldn’t expect a clean punishment or a tidy epilogue.

Timothy stared blankly at the face of the unconscious David before speaking. His voice was not loaded with resentment.

“Are you going to start the exorcism work immediately?”

“Yeah. You guys help, too. While I’m working, I need eyes to watch that human.”

“That will be difficult. I have something else to do separately.”

“This son of a… wait, what?”

Lio seemed to have expected the refusal to naturally come from Jonathan’s mouth. He stopped mid-curse and stared at Timothy. Timothy took a deep breath in and out, checking if all his belongings were in place. Then, holding the flashlight he had brought, he moved toward the passage he had used to enter. Watching that departing back, Jonathan moved his feet.

“…I’m going too.”

“Hey! What am I supposed to do alone?!”

Lio’s panicked voice echoed loudly through the underground corridor, making one worry that David might actually wake up. Timothy looked back at Jonathan. Jonathan wore an expression that was hard to tell if he was dissatisfied or suspicious.

Does he think I’m going to go burn down David’s house or something? Timothy smiled slightly as if to reassure him.

“I’ll contact the others once I get up there, so you stay behind for a bit.”

“Where are you going?”

“Tasha’s house. Come slowly. It won’t end right away.”

“To do what?”

Jonathan’s mouth tightened a bit, as if he would decide based on the answer. However, at Timothy’s response that followed, the corners of his mouth—rarely enough—lowered. Just like Timothy’s expression when he was full of questions after encountering an unsolvable problem.

“My job.”

🎃

The Governor, who had been shouting at Tasha and threatening her in front of reporters and cameras for a long time even after the press conference ended, suddenly collapsed. Amidst people insisting they take him to the hospital immediately, claiming it was surely due to his chronic high blood pressure, Tasha joined them.

Scott helped Lio tidy up the inside of the corridor and watched the exorcism. Max, Jun, and Andrew dragged David up to the entrance leading down to the underground corridor and kept watch. The rain, which had thinned to a drizzle before anyone noticed, soaked David down to his underwear, but no one cared.

It was Max who blocked Jonathan when he was looking for a timing to leave at any moment. She threatened him, asking if he thought Timothy would stay still if he left them like this and a problem occurred. Conveying that Timothy had gone to do “his job” was a bad move. Max wouldn’t let Jonathan go, saying then there was even less to worry about.

Ultimately, Jonathan was only able to return to Tasha’s house after everything had reached some degree of conclusion.

It was midnight. The night of the apocalypse, for which no exact time had been specified.

The inside of the house where the other family members were sleeping was quiet and dark. As he went up to the second floor, he saw a faint light leaking from under the door of the room where Timothy and Jonathan were staying. Jonathan slowly opened the door.

“You’re here?”

The light was coming from a laptop screen. Timothy, who had placed a coffee pot directly on the desk, greeted him lightly while pausing from drinking a cup of coffee of an unknown count. Hiding his grievance that the caffeine would undoubtedly turn Timothy’s stomach inside out soon, Jonathan slowly closed and opened his eyes.

Timothy looked clean, as if he’d had the leisure to wash up—looking perfectly fine and even relaxed—unlike when he’d seen him in the underground corridor. His eyes, fixed on the laptop screen, sparkled.

“How was it?”

Jonathan relayed what had happened in the meantime in detail. It would have been nothing to just skip over it with a “It went well,” but he intended to save time because he knew that would only increase Timothy’s follow-up questions. After all, one never knows when the world might end.

Timothy, who listened until the end to the story told by Jonathan as he stood with his back against the door, hummed and nodded before finally turning his head to look at Jonathan.

“But why are you standing like that?”

I wonder.

He thought he didn’t know the answer himself, but he didn’t say it out loud. Timothy wore an expression indicating he hadn’t the slightest clue why Jonathan was acting like this again. Every time he saw that look from Timothy, he thought that the gap would never be narrowed—the gap between Jonathan McStars as the mystery Timothy was so easily enchanted by, and the Jonathan McStars who was just boringly the same as anyone else.

It wasn’t once or twice that Jonathan had fallen silent. Timothy soon smiled, slightly narrowing his brow, and turned the laptop screen toward the corner of the desk by the bed. Then, Timothy tapped the top of the bed with his palm.

I didn’t know I was a person who moved back and forth at the wave of a hand twice. Jonathan went and sat on the bed, thinking of a self-deprecating joke. From where he sat, the laptop screen was visible from the front. On it was…

“How is it?”

Timothy, who had been looking expectantly at Jonathan as he pressed only the down arrow key for several minutes, finally couldn’t hold back and asked first. Even after reading all the words on the screen, Jonathan could only blink; he couldn’t easily open his mouth.

He needed time to understand the document he read—that is, the text Timothy wrote, specifically the draft of the article to be published in Non Occultam. He thought Timothy was acting leisurely even though they didn’t know how much more the second hand would tick until the end, but strangely enough, after reading this, his heart wasn’t as rushed as before.

Jonathan took his eyes off the screen and looked at Timothy. He looked like a student waiting for a homework check, and also like a student who wanted to brag about a vacation project. Somehow, he kept seeming like just a young boy. As if he had been thinking that if he had met such a classmate, his life would have changed entirely.

“I think I know why a high school first love is a permanent romance.”

“What? What are you talking about…”

Timothy grimaced and turned the laptop back toward himself. Even at the response that was more than indifferent, Jonathan knew that Timothy was merely concentrating. The tip of Timothy’s finger was constantly fiddling with his lower lip. It was a habit he knew well.

“…When are you going to use it? Starting now?”

“Yeah.”

“On the day of the apocalypse?”

“Yeah.”

Even though the expected reaction didn’t come from Jonathan, Timothy’s will did not waver. Timothy looked through from the top once more, checking the framework of the article he had set up. On the top line, the working title of the article was written. It was the result of a fierce battle with the desire to write a mocking title that would increase clicks.

‘Nolite Timere: What do those who do not fear death actually fear?’

He was going to deal with NT publicly.

The laws of the land where Timothy lived and breathed, and the laws of the occult that were utterly bizarre. Neither side alone could impose a rightful punishment for what David Weiner had done. NT might have chosen the means of anomalies with that in mind from the start.

However, if judicial processing is difficult and putting on handcuffs made of attention and silver is impossible, then it was possible that David or the remnants of NT would change their names in the future and resume other activities. It was as clear as day that they would use even more vicious and clever methods based on this experience.

Filled with the thought that he had to do something, the decision to write an article was perhaps natural for Timothy.

Timothy organized his mind from the moment he turned on the shower after returning to Tasha’s house. After that, it was type, type, and more typing. It was a process of organizing the things NT had been doing within the maximum range he knew.

Due to the limitations of the amount of information, he had no choice but to write focusing on the events he had experienced. He also didn’t forget to take care so that real names were not mentioned, from Clubber, Eugene, Benjamin, Max, Andrew, Scott, Lio, Jun, to the many people he had met in the meantime, and even Jonathan.

Maintaining anonymity and hiding identifiable information was much harder than he thought. In the first place, it was a matter that started upon meeting Jonathan, and the more concrete names were erased, the more the article resembled a mystery novel. This was particularly severe in Jonathan’s case. As the draft went on, the “certain collaborator” became more like a character in a novel in the sense that his actions and moods fluctuated.

Still, it was okay. In any case, the center of the article was not the M.C.E.E., Jonathan, or even Timothy. What was really important was the inside story of what these idiots with the grand name NT had done. Just as the M.C.E.E. wasn’t hiding them because they were pretty, the reason for targeting NT was clear.

Timothy could not forgive NT.

Non Occultam always strove to find the “real,” but because of that, it had to drag numerous “fakes” into the light and dismantle them before people. After repeating that for years, he had finally witnessed a “real” anomaly.

However, NT used that “real” to exploit and drive people with irrational fear. The occult that Max loved and Timothy had chased should not have ended up being used in this way by idiots like NT.

Therefore, he had to write the article.

Irrational fear loses its power the moment it becomes crystal clear. People do not see darkness itself in a darkness where outlines cannot be discerned; they see what they want to see. Who would be gripped by fear if they knew that the blurry shadow was actually a trash bag?

‘Well, at least the M.C.E.E.’s goal is… not world domination, right?’

Timothy, who brushed aside the question that was too late to bring up now, began to write the article in earnest, while Jonathan just sat beside him in silence. It was like that throughout the time Timothy wrote proper sentences and rummaged through previously investigated materials.

The sound of Timothy, focused on the screen, occasionally letting out a sigh mixed with the clicking sounds for hours before dissipating. It was so quiet outside that one couldn’t tell if it was raining or not. Only after a long silence that no one felt anxious about did Jonathan open his mouth again. It was around the time Timothy, who was revising, was agonizing while writing and erasing the final sentence several times.

“No one will believe it.”

It was a voice a bit tired and a bit desperate, as if submerged in that calm pool of water in the underground corridor.

“Even if you tell it exactly like this, no one will believe it anyway.”

Even if I put in some kind of warning message, it’ll just seem like a common internet ghost story. Timothy repeatedly typed a period and erased it, wondering if he should delete it after all.

“It’s not like it’s going to be posted on some major news site. Not many people visit Nono as it is, so who’s going to see this and think they should be careful of NT, or that they shouldn’t be fooled by humans like Python.”

“True, well…”

Period, period, period, backspace, backspace, backspace.

“Anyway, only people originally interested in this field will see it, and in their eyes, it will all look like a lie. If you think you can condemn Python with this, it’s a really big delusion.”

“Condemnation, that’s too grand… And since the video went up, the view count has increased a bit, you know? Why are you saying such things when you say you’re a Nono fan?”