An Exorcist Magical Girl! Chapter 116

“What a dick.” I said, pissed off.

 

“It’s a curse.”

 

Seo Jun was calm, unlike me, who was pissed to the bone.

 

“Did you just say it was a curse? Shouldn’t I have answered the phone? What did you do…!”

 

“This is not the kind of curse where you can get away with not answering the phone. If I hadn’t answered it and left it alone, it would have connected automatically.

 

Seo Jun punched me in the shoulder, wondering why I’d shrunk so much.

 

“You’re an exorcist and you’re shaking like a dog with a curse?”

 

“Uh, come to think of it.”

 

There was no reason to be upset if she was cursed. We’re both exorcists.

 

I suddenly relaxed as I realized that this was a lot easier than having a crazed killer come at us with an axe.

 

“You’ve heard of these things, right, like Mary’s phone calls and the 1212 eyes?”

 

“…ah! I know that.”

 

Both were famous curse phenomena associated with telephones.

 

The idea was that a spiritual being would approach the scapegoat and live-stream its location in real time.

 

As the spirit got closer and closer to the victim’s location, it would make a new call to let them know, until it finally killed the victim with a call that said, “I’m behind you now.”

 

“There’s no point in locking the door, is there?”

 

“Probably not.”

 

From the moment the phone rang, the curse with the target set to “Seo Jun” was in effect.

 

All the people who had died under such a curse weren’t foolish enough to open their doors wide to welcome a spiritual being. 

 

It was inevitable that they would be hunted down wherever they hid.

 

“But what’s coming? It looks like a bus announcement…”

 

Seo Jun nodded. “Yes, it’s probably a bus.”

 

I was about to ask her if she was wondering why it was a “bus” at all, when her phone vibrated again.

 

— “This stop is Haewan Primary School. The next stop is the pharmacy three-way intersection.

 

“Haewan Elementary School? That’ll take about 10 minutes.”

 

“Well, shouldn’t that be calculated as the actual bus speed?”

 

“Oh, right. Because it only took me about a minute to get from Guldari to the elementary school. So that’s about three minutes, but isn’t that usually haunted by abandoned dolls or ghosts or something? What kind of bus is this?”

 

“Have you ever heard that you’re not supposed to ride the bus in your dreams?”

 

“Uhm, no.”

 

“People often dream about a bus that carries the dead. If you get on it, they say you’ll never wake up and die.”

 

Seo Jun said that the bus coming toward us now might be the bus carrying the dead.

 

“I don’t think they’ll let me get on, they’ll just push me off. Yeah, I guess it’s easier to carry the dead than the living.”

 

“Ugh, Seo Jun, please don’t be so casually creepy.”

 

Seo Jun looks smug and insists that she only mentioned a possibility.

 

Granted, that’s the most common image that comes to mind when you say “buses” are on their way to kill people. 

 

Still, it’s hard to believe she said that with a straight face.

 

“Oh, another call.”

 

—”This stop is at the three-way intersection by the pharmacy. The next stop is in front of the Church of Love.”

 

“Damn.”

 

The bus was getting closer by the minute.

 

“Wouldn’t it be uncomfortable to fight inside, so why don’t we lure them to a place where it’s easier to exorcize them?”

 

Seo Jun added, “Why don’t we go outside and wait in a park or playground where there are no people?”

 

She suggested that she would rather be in a place where she could move around freely than have to deal with a giant bus in the middle of the house.

 

She also added that in a house with walls on all sides, one will never know when or where the bus is coming, so it’s a perfect place to get run over without knowing.

 

“Hmm, you’re right, it’s hard to see when you’re inside…”

 

When I gave her a look of agreement, Seo Jun slipped her foot into her shoe.

 

“Dude, wait. It could be a trap to get us out.”

 

Seo Jun stopped dead in her tracks.

 

“I suppose it could be.”

 

“Is there any way to block access to this thing altogether? Seo Jun, you could try to cast some kind of spell with the amulet.”

 

“That would take some time. Oh, I have another idea.”

 

Seo Jun pulled out her notebook and started drawing a familiar amulet.

 

“That is an amulet that hides the signs of life, right?”

 

“Yes. You have a good eye.”

 

Seo Jun drew two amulets and handed one to me.

 

When Seo Jun finished the amulet that hides the signs of life, her hands didn’t stop.

 

She had to cut off a lock or two of her hair to create an alter ego.

 

“I would have done this sooner if I had known he was going to attack me spiritually.”

 

Seo Jun clicked her tongue slightly, not that she was upset about the haste with which she had done it.

 

What she was attempting now was a form of deception. 

 

One that would trick the curse into following Seo Jun’s alter ego instead of her true self.

 

“I only had to do this much to fool the man-eating ghost at the train station, so this should be enough.”

 

“I hope so.”

 

Clutching the amulet tightly in one hand, Seo Jun threw her hastily constructed alter ego out the window.

 

A wad of paper with a few strands of hair fell onto the flowerbed on the ground floor.

 

“Now we’ll see what happens.”

 

Before I could catch my breath, her cell phone rang again.

 

—”This stop is in front of the Church of Love. Next stop is the white dentist’s office.”

 

The speed was frightening.

 

The White Dentist was only one crosswalk away from my house.

 

“Maybe he’ll show up at the next stop.”

 

“Let’s see.”

 

Seo Jun nodded slightly.

 

It was an eerie mechanical sound, by the way, no matter how many times I heard it.

 

The phrase itself was in the form of a bus stop announcement, but the voice that spoke it was a high-pitched male voice with no pitch, unlike a real city bus.

 

“…You know what?”

 

Seo Jun, who had been quietly looking out the window, spoke slowly.

 

She sounded hesitant, as if she was thinking.

 

“You know what, what?”

 

“About the dream about the bus ride.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“If I was on the bus and the Dreamer told me I shouldn’t be on the bus then I should get off right away, right?”

 

“Right.”

  

“Baek Iri, what do you think it would be like if we were together? You’re a long-lost person I’ve been dreaming about for a long time. I don’t know if I should thank you for trying to save me, or if I should regret that we had to part like we were being chased away when we just met again… Hmm, I think I’d feel a lot of regret at that moment, though. What about you?”

 

Seo Jun asked, still looking at the doppelganger she’d thrown out the window.

 

“I’ll call you an asshole if you try to throw me off the bus, or I’ll tell you to get off with me or just shut up.”

 

“Oh… Me too.”

 

The phone rang a few times in the middle of our uneventful conversation.

 

“I didn’t know it would include the grocery store in front of the villa as a stop. I didn’t know it would go straight from the dentist to ‘I’m behind you.’“

 

“Seo Jun, what if the bus thinks it’s you and takes that thing away? What do you do then? Do you stay where you are, or do you go after it and exorcize it?”

 

“That’s a problem.”

 

“You stay here, and I exorcize it?”

 

“I don’t want to.”

 

“Yes, I thought you might—”

 

“Shh, look.”

 

Seo Jun leaned down and pointed somewhere out the window.

 

I could see two red dots floating in the dark sky. Just as I realized that the red dots were getting closer and closer, the last call came through.

 

* * * 

 

 

— “This stop is behind you. There is no next stop.”

 

I realized we must be a bunch of assholes to listen to this in silence.

 

I turned the volume down to the minimum to see if it would say anything more, but it just kept repeating “no next stop” so I cut it off.

 

At that moment, a dark gray-blue bus landed on the flower bed where Seo Jun’s alter ego had fallen.

 

“…it’s here.” Seo Jun whispered in a low voice.

 

It might not have been the right word for a bus, but it literally “landed”.

 

It was a literal “landing” because the bus came out of nowhere and plummeted straight down.

 

In retrospect, I realized that the two red dots in the distant night sky that came closer and closer were the front headlights of the bus.

 

The bus was about the size of a small city bus, but it had both front and back doors like a regular bus.

 

The windows were all blacked out so you couldn’t see inside, and the outside, where the bus number should have been, was covered in burn marks.

 

The places where advertisements and the names of major stops would normally be placed were also left blank.

 

The wheels of the bus rattled against the fence of the flowerbeds, and the red glow of the headlights illuminated the dirt of the flowerbeds and the exterior walls of the villa, creating an eerie atmosphere.

 

The silence of the villa’s residents, who would have wondered who was shooting lights in the middle of the night, seemed to indicate that we were the only two exorcists who could see the bus for the dead.

 

***

 

The exterior of the bus, which was supposed to be covered with advertisements, was dented and repaired over and over again.

 

We both watched with bated breath.

 

Soon, dozens of long, gnarled arms shot out of the battered billboard.

 

The arms, thin and twisted as if they were nothing but leather over bone, were the same dark gray-blue color as the bus.

 

The arms flailed about and littered the bottom of the flower bed. 

 

As the myriad arms moved and tangled and bumped into each other, they made a very unpleasant sound, like the grinding of metal against metal.

 

“Seo Jun, I think they’re looking for you.”

 

“Yes.”

 

One of the flailing arms picked up a wad of paper with a lock of Seo Jun’s hair in it.

 

*Peeeeeeee─*

 

*Pwoosh…*

 

The front and back doors of the bus swung open with a distinctive beeping sound and the sound of air being sucked out.

 

The wads of paper were thrown into the doors, and as soon as the bus doors closed, all the arms slipped inside and disappeared.

 

“…so easily fooled.”

 

“Hey, where are your man-eating ghost trick skills during the Rapid Transit Station mission?”

 

The bus hadn’t left yet, but I was relieved to see that it had completely mistaken the wad of paper for Seo Jun’s body.

 

‘What the hell was Choi doing sending such a lame curse to an exorcist anyway? ‘

 

I’m sorry if we thought we could get away with it.

 

There’s no way he didn’t know that Seo Jun was an A⁺-ranked exorcist when he got her phone number, and since he’s an F-ranked exorcist himself, he couldn’t judge the other exorcists’ abilities properly… Or maybe it was too risky for him to make the move himself, and this was his next best option?

 

But the questions that floated dizzily through my mind soon faded into nothingness.

 

*Squeak─*

 

The bus window opened, and a wad of paper was thrown out.

 

“Ah, these assholes…”

 

A familiar voice came through the window.