An Exorcist Magical Girl! Chapter 113

The talk with Seo Jun went well.

 

Or to be more precise, it went well until I confirmed that Seo Jun was receiving death threats.

 

Five minutes past five in the morning.

 

“SEO JUN”

 

—”What?”

 

Seo Jun read the message as soon as I sent it.

 

It was almost as if she’d been waiting for me to send it or had opened the chat window just in time to send me a message.

 

When I told her it would be a long story to tell over chat, she called me.

 

“I was hoping you’d be awake, but I didn’t think you’d actually be awake.”

 

—”No, I woke up around three o’clock and couldn’t sleep. Why would you be up at that hour?”

 

“I was up all night.”

 

Seo Jun seemed a little surprised that I contacted her at this time of the morning.

 

“It’s a good thing you’re not asleep because I had something urgent to tell you.”

 

—”From this morning?”

 

“Oh, yes. At school. Well said. Why don’t you take a few days off from school and hide, maybe travel abroad without anyone knowing?”

 

I was in a hurry, so I just said what I had to say and left.

 

Maybe it was because I didn’t sleep well that night, but I thought I was sane enough.

 

I didn’t have anything to say, even when I was called out at the crack of dawn for talking nonsense.

 

I thought she would hang up right away, but luckily Seo Jun has the patience to put up with that kind of nonsense.

 

—”Heh… Interesting.”

 

Seo Jun sighed in disbelief. 

 

What did she mean by interesting? Did she mean that this was the first time she had ever heard such a crazy thing?

 

“Oh, sorry. That was a bit abrupt.”

 

─”No, what…”

 

I had no idea where to start or how to explain it.

 

So, I ended up doing the same thing over and over again.

 

“But I’m serious, you should really think about it. You think you’re going to get some fresh air for a few weeks. Oh no, I think I’ll just stay here. Do you want to come live with us for a while?”

 

Even when I thought about losing, my mouth kept running.

 

I thought I would be hung up and blocked this time, but to my surprise, it wasn’t Seo Jun who hung up on me, but my words.

 

“I’m sorry, but this is more dangerous than you can imagine. You’re targeted by a serial—”

 

─”I could get killed by a serial killer?”

 

“Yes, you could be killed if you do something wrong— uh, how do you know?”

 

─”That’s what I want to ask you, Baek Iri, how did you know?”

 

‘Is that what she means by curious?’

 

─”Okay… Who do you want to explain now, you or me?”

 

Seo Jun paused for a moment, then decided to go first.

 

─”Huh…, first of all, I’m a little surprised because I was just about to tell you something similar.

 

I see, that’s why she read it as soon as I sent it, right?

 

─”You said you were curious why Choi Hee-young was near our mission site that day? I’ve been thinking about it, but there’s only one thing I’m not sure about, and if that one thing is right…”

 

Apparently, Seo Jun had gone through a similar thought process as me and had come to the same conclusion.

 

“Excuse me, but can you guess what that “one thing” is that I’m still not sure about?”

 

─”If you have a hunch. Tell me.”

 

“You think she can see ghosts like the rest of us, don’t you?”

 

─”Yes.”

 

It was a calm answer, but it didn’t hide my surprise.

 

Frankly, I was surprised too. I hadn’t realized that we had the same hypothesis, though from a completely different starting point.

 

I felt a strange sense of exaltation and my voice rose.

 

“Shall we begin with the conclusion? Choi Hee-young has the talent of an F-rank exorcist, damn, I don’t know how it fits so well, really.”

 

─”What? That was real…?”

 

Seo Jun couldn’t hide her embarrassment as what had been a mere speculation became an unpleasant fact.

 

I hastened to add that my aunt is a status bar expert who works in the United States.

 

─”Then my “reason” is correct. You see, we had it all wrong from the beginning. It wasn’t that he was hanging around near our mission site, it was that we were on a mission to a place she visits every week.”

 

It was just as Seo Jun said.

 

It was an easy question to answer when we connected it to why the spherical articulated doll appeared every Wednesday night in a large garbage dump near an apartment complex.

 

Why did the door to the otherworldly space open there on a regular basis and at a certain time?

 

The quiet voice continued slowly. 

─”Do you know, the Exorcism Association has been receiving reports of spherical jointed doll sightings since mid-January this year. That’s when Choi Hee-young started killing in earnest.”

 

“Wait. Isn’t it possible that the report was orchestrated from the inside, just like the search of Banho Mall and Park Tree, and that she deliberately set a trap to lure students like us?”

 

When I questioned her, Seo Jun insisted that there was nothing wrong with the tip itself.

 

─”The tip for the March mission was neither a fabrication nor a trap. We met the informant in person while preparing for the mission. He told us that he used to jog along a path in a vacant lot every day, but after seeing the dolls for two weeks in a row, he got scared and changed his route. I even checked the dates on the photos he took.”

 

“That’s right…”

 

Seo Jun finished my sentence.

 

─”Yes, the vacant lot was the meeting place between the “Master of the space” and the serial killer Choi Hee-young.”

 

The outline of the mysterious knot finally became clear.

 

It wasn’t the Master of the Space himself who appeared at the meeting point, but a doll.

 

Considering that the spirit in the spherical jointed doll is under the control of the “Master of the Otherworld”, it would be correct to say that it was a meeting between the “Master of the Otherworld” and Choi Hee-young, who represented the doll.

 

It makes sense that Choi Hee-young would go there every Wednesday night for that meeting, and that’s why she was near the apartment complex that day.

 

The biggest question is what was the purpose of the weekly meetings, but Choi Hee-young had the talent of an exorcist.

 

Considering that Eom Jingyu and Koo Young-chun kidnapped souls and tried to sell them to the owner of the room, Choi Hee-young’s work must have been similar.

 

“If she’s an F-grade talent, she should be able to put the souls she just killed into a gourdwood.”

 

On the other hand, if you don’t even have an F-grade talent, you can’t even do the simple task of trapping a spirit in a gourdwood.

 

You can’t voluntarily see or touch ghosts.

 

The fact that Choi Hee-young can see ghosts is the final key to the tangent’s purpose.

 

Choi Hee-young had killed people and transferred their souls to this space.

 

Soul transfer.

 

Choi Hee-young had killed seven people to give their souls to the “Master of the space”.

 

─”The reason why the spherical jointed doll was searching through the abandoned furniture that day was to find the wood that Choi Hee-young had hidden at the contact point… It all makes sense now” 

 

“There was no gourdwood left at the mission site, right?”

 

─”Yes. It must have been transferred to the space.”

 

The door to the other dimension had been closed so hastily that the hand holding the gourdwood was inside the other dimension, and the top half of the doll had been cut off.

 

Or maybe it was because they had secured the gourdwood in that dimension that they closed the door so ruthlessly.

 

─”It is so clear now. The purpose of Choi Hee-young’s escape was to kill me. Yesterday, he sent a doll to kill me and failed, so this time he sent Choi Hee-young.”

 

That was the end of Seo Jun’s story, and it was exactly what I thought it would be.

 

At that point, I was convinced. On the day of the evaluation, I realized that the owner of the space had deliberately created a door in front of Seo Jun.

 

He must have hated the presence of Seo Jun, who had been following his space for four years.

 

He wanted to kill her.

 

─”I will stay inside and not go out for now. I don’t want to get screwed by a serial killer. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared… but I have to survive somehow.”

 

“Oh, right. That’s the thing…”

 

Now it was my turn to get to the point.

 

“All you have to do is stay with me and never leave my side. If you do, I can protect you.”

 

And with that, our conversation went off the rails.

 

I was wrong. I should have been more careful, but I jumped to conclusions.

 

I didn’t want to expose what might have been my weaknesses. A stupid desire to hope that Seo Jun would understand me, while leaving out all the important context.

 

─”Huh, what the hell…”

 

Seo Jun made a pained sound, then suddenly raised her voice.

 

─”No, you’re going to stick by me in this situation, why?”

 

I know how Seo Jun will look at me.

 

She’ll think I’m a reckless fellow, even more reckless than Yin Charang, who’s gone mad from playing the hero.

 

“Don’t be angry, listen. It’s for the best, I don’t even know where to begin to explain this, so just wait a minute.”

 

─”Best? Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not planning on using you as a meat shield to survive. I’d rather…”

 

Seo Jun trailed off, unable to finish her sentence, but that didn’t diminish her determination to die alone if she had to.

 

─”I can’t watch you die, too. Don’t pretend we know each other anymore. Pretend we never knew each other. Do you understand?”

 

It won’t work.

 

Choi Hee-young already knows that we’re close. Besides, we’re already in the same class at school.

 

“Seo Jun, I know it sounds strange, but I’m not saying this for no reason. You’ll be safe with me, I promise. Even if you go into hiding, it’ll be less dangerous if you stay with me. I’ll explain why in a moment. Don’t hang up, I’ll explain why in a second.”

 

─”Don’t be stubborn, Baek Iri”

 

“I’ll tell you why I’m being stubborn.”

 

I tried to calm Seo Jun, who acted as if she was going to disappear any minute, and tried to figure out how to make her understand the situation.

 

But I couldn’t think for long.

 

I had to say something, anything. Before she went half crazy.

 

At that moment, Seo Jun compared me to Chun Chan-young, who had sacrificed himself in front of her four years ago.

 

─”Baek Iri, you told me earlier that it was dangerous for me to stay at home, so why are you─?

 

“Choi Hee-young.”

 

I felt my voice crack.

 

“Choi Hee-young called me, trying to subtly foreshadow the murder she’s about to commit, but you know what? She can kill and hurt people around me, but she can’t touch me.”

 

With that, Seo Jun stopped sobbing.

 

“I have already saved your life once, Seo Jun. Yesterday, after the evaluation, in front of the caravan, why do you think that puppet backed down instead of trying to kill you? Because you were outnumbered? Because you were at a disadvantage? No.”

 

The words that came out of my mouth felt like an echo, echoing from somewhere far away.

 

What am I saying? Shouldn’t I have kept this to myself?

 

“You’re alive because I got in your way. Those damn spherical puppets can’t kill me, not the ones with the swords, not Eom Jingyu, not Choi Hee-young, because…”

 

My mouth went dry.

 

“Because the master of the space and “father” of me and Choi Hee-young ordered it.”