An Exorcist Magical Girl! Chapter 117

The night was still.

 

So much so that I could hear voices murmuring to themselves from far below, all the way up to where we were.

 

Through the crack of a half-open window, I could see the inside of the bus, the same gray-blue color as the outside, and…

 

“…. Choi Hee-young.”

 

Yes, Choi Hee-young, the serial killer.

 

Her full bangs cascaded down to her eyes, her eyes shining through her yellowed and bleached hair, and her back hair falling loose and disheveled on her chest.

 

She looked exactly like the pictures on the Internet.

 

“You assholes think you can pull this shit off and get lucky? I want to kill you both.”

 

Choi Hee-young got off the bus cursing and stared at the villa from the ground floor.

 

“…Hide.”

 

Following Seo Jun’s example, I quickly ducked under the window.

 

Hiding wouldn’t make any difference since Choi would know exactly where I lived anyway.

 

‘Why hadn’t it occurred to me that Choi would be on the bus?’

 

I double-checked the locks on the front door and returned to Seo Jun’s side.

 

“I’m sorry, Baek Iri. I should have thought more deeply when you asked, “Why a bus?”. “

 

“I didn’t notice either. We were both equally stupid, so why apologize?”

 

It was our fault for thinking that Choi’s reason for cursing the phone was limited to the original use of the phenomenon.

 

Choi Hee-young wasn’t trying to kill Seo Jun with an old urban legend curse.

 

She knew that Seo Jun, an A⁺-rank exorcist, would not take kindly to a curse cast by Choi Hee-young, an F-class exorcist.

 

The bus with the destination “Seo Jun” was only a means of access.

 

An easy way to get into our locked house.

 

She wanted to do the killing herself.

 

“And… By the way, if you hadn’t created an alter ego, you’d be dead, Seo Jun.”

 

Seo Jun slipped her cell phone through the window, snapped a photo, and sent a text message to the police.

 

There was nothing she could do now but hope that Choi would continue to hang around the neighborhood until the police arrived.

 

I realized later that I should have hoped she would leave the villa sooner rather than later.

 

“Hey, what the hell are you doing? Go back to what you were doing until you bring me to room 602.”

 

Choi Hee-young impatiently kicked open the bus door and shredded the wad of paper that was Seo Jun’s alter ego. 

 

Seo Jun’s cell phone vibrated as her alter ego came to an end.

 

─Restricted Caller ID

 

The curse that targeted Seo Jun wasn’t completely over. It had only been temporarily redirected.

 

─“This stop is on the first floor of Building C. The next stop is behind you. Behind you. Behind you. Behind you? Behind you? Behind you? Behind you? The next stop? Is the next stop behind you? Looking behind you? Looking behind you? Where is the next stop? Where is the next stop?”

 

The bus lurched and lurched, unable to locate Seo Jun, perhaps because of the amulet that hid all signs of life.

 

“Iri, this is working.” Seo Jun replied with a smug look.

 

“Oh, shit. Room 602, room 602! It’s so close, but you can’t find it.”

 

Choi Hee-young’s impatient yell was immediately followed by protests from the villa residents.

 

“Hey, shut up! Do you know what time it is?! It’s 10:30, 10:30!”

 

“He’s an old man on the fourth floor. If you make too much noise after 10:00, he’ll yell at you.”

 

“Ha.”

 

I was a little surprised that Choi Hee-young was so reckless.

 

She ran away from everyone and screamed for the whole neighborhood to hear.

 

Maybe she knew she was going to get caught, so she let it all out.

 

I’m sure she knows we called the police the moment her burglary plan failed, and it’s too late for her to run anyway, so I can understand if she’s just trying to be mean.

 

“Won’t she just throw a tantrum and leave? Then we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed. Should I go down and catch her now?”

 

“Wait, the cops will be here soon.”

 

Again, at this point we should have hoped that he would give up and leave.

 

We realized that right after she set off the bus clock.

 

HONK!

 

The loud sound of the horn startled me and I looked out of the window and locked eyes with Choi Hee-young.

 

Instead of a glazed look, there was life in her eyes.

 

“Little sister, you’re so cute, I want to tear you to pieces! I wanted to give you a clean slate, but you ruined everything. You brought this on yourself, so if you blame me later, I’ll tear you apart!”

 

Choi Hee-young shouted as she glared at me.

 

Gone was the false ease with which she had first called me.

 

***

 

 

The whole bus began to wrinkle like a crumpled piece of paper.

 

The gray-blue walls were torn to shreds and the darkened windows shattered.

 

“Did you hear anything?”

 

“Some crazy bastard drinking and cursing.”

 

“No, not that. It sounded like something exploded…”

 

“All I heard was a woman’s voice.”

 

“Hey, mister. Who keeps yelling?!”

 

“Is there an accident somewhere? Did a construction site collapse next to me?”

 

It was enough to wake up everyone in the villa.

 

Most of them just looked out the window to hear Choi screaming at the top of her lungs, but some of them could even hear the bus disintegrating.

 

Everyone was upset, but no one was willing to go outside the villa in the middle of the night to see what was going on.

 

In the neighboring building, some people stuck their heads out of the windows, but everyone closed their windows as if they could hear the explosion but not see the bus.

 

*Bang, bang, bang!*

 

Within seconds, the bus was shattered beyond recognition.

 

Its pieces lay in a heap outside the entrance to the villa.

 

I stared at the scene in disbelief, not knowing what Choi Hee-young was trying to do, but soon I noticed something strange. It’s so dark that I doubt my eyes at first, but when I focus again, it’s clear.

 

“…It’s moving, isn’t it?”

 

The pieces of the bus were torn off and wriggling around.

 

“Hey, hey, hey, do you see that? Why is it moving?!”

 

“No, what the hell is that?”

 

Seo Jun was stunned by what she saw.

 

But the strangeness didn’t end there.

 

Arms and legs began to grow from the rubble on the ground.

 

No, I shouldn’t say “grew,” I should say the arms and legs that had been flattened into a squatting position began to regain their shape.

 

Each fragment was a soul.

 

The bus was the final form of countless souls stitched together.

 

The souls that made up the bus began to scurry up the outside walls of the villa.

 

It was obvious where they were going.

 

“No, has the spell worn off already? How did they even know you were here? Hey, I’ve got mine!”

 

I handed the amulet I was holding to Seo Jun.

 

But even two amulets couldn’t prevent Seo Jun’s body from being recognized.

 

“Why?!”

 

“I think it’s because there are too many of them. Too many ghosts are looking for me at the same time, and the amulet can’t stop them.”

 

When it was a bus, there was only one entity trying to find Seo Jun, but now that the bus had split into dozens of souls, each of them had a “will to find”.

 

“I’ll close the window. Do you have any salt?”

 

“Wait, I’ll get it!”

 

Seo Jun struck a cord that was just the right size for the window. She said she could make a grate of that size quickly.

 

But it was only a temporary solution. The ghosts crawled everywhere, through the ceiling, the walls and the floor.

 

It was impossible to keep them all out of the house.

 

Each soul was weaker than most, but there were too many of them, and worst of all, each one lacked a core. The souls rose again and again, their forms shattered.

 

“Ah, headlights…”

 

In retrospect, we realized that the headlights of the bus that were emitting a reddish glow were the crystals of all those ghost cores.

 

There was nothing we could do about it. We had enough trouble keeping the ghost away from us.

 

“But they don’t really attack you.” Seo Jun exclaimed.

 

“Yes, they are. You’ve been tricked.” I replied.

 

“How does it feel to be invisible to them?” Seo Jun asked.

 

“Well, it’s comfortable, but not great.”

 

The spirits were relentless in their pursuit of Seo Jun. 

 

No matter how hard I hit them, they never resisted me. In fact, they seemed to be protecting me. 

 

Our paths intertwined, and Seo Jun’s dagger almost grazed my arm, but one of the ghosts threw itself out of the way and caught the blade instead.

 

“Sorry. I’ll be careful.”

 

“No, it’s okay, he died for me.”

 

“Oh, I thought you were invisible, but I guess you’re not. Overprotective?”

 

“I don’t feel too good about being protected by ghosts.”

 

I knew that they wouldn’t attack me, but I didn’t realize that they would actively prevent me from being harmed.

 

I’ve never felt so unwilling to be safe.

 

I was much more agile than Seo Jun, so I wondered if it would be better for me to go down quickly and destroy those headlights.

 

But I was afraid that Choi Hee-young would take advantage of my absence.

 

‘What could Choi be up to?’

 

The police will be here soon and it won’t do her any good to stay here.

 

She may annoy us, but she won’t achieve her goal of killing Seo Jun.

 

Like zombies, the ghosts are just bugs, except they’re infinite. You can even make funny jokes while killing them.

 

“Hey, hey, hey, hey.”

 

Seo Jun called to me as I mechanically swatted away the ghosts.

 

“Why? What is it?”

 

“Well, they’re not attacking me right now.”

 

“What do you mean?” I asked, stunned, and Seo Jun stopped twirling her dagger in one hand and pointed to the ghosts at her feet.

 

“Look. They’re clinging to me, but they’re not really touching me.”

 

Seo Jun was right.

 

The ghosts were circling around her, preventing her from moving, but they weren’t attacking her directly. 

 

The biggest problem right now was that if she left them alone, they’d build up enough to completely block her vision.

 

“I don’t know what it is, but it’s annoying, so I’m going to get rid of it…”

 

I waved away the ghosts surrounding Seo Jun and looked down at the window.

 

“It’s been five minutes since I called the cops, right? The cops aren’t here yet, which is crazy.”

 

There was no Choi Hee-young downstairs.

 

I hoped she’d been taken away, but I doubted it.

 

I quickly looked around the villa, but there was no sign of her.

 

I wondered if she had fled before the police arrived or if she had been caught and was still cursing like she didn’t care if she was arrested.

 

But soon after, I caught a glimpse of a familiar figure with yellow bleached hair walking out the front door of the villa. I couldn’t see her because she was inside the villa and not running away.

 

Sensing my gaze, Choi jerked her head and looked up.

 

Our eyes met again, just like before.

 

“This won’t end well.”

 

A can of gasoline was in Choi’s hand.