An Exorcist Magical Girl! Chapter 119

“Oh, ugh… Fuck…”

 

“Get up.”

 

I stomped on Choi’s foot as she lay there, showing no sign of getting up.

 

“Get up when I say so.”

 

“You fucking…, eh? Eh?! What the hell?!”

 

Choi, who had been reflexively angry as soon as she opened her eyes, realized what was going on and stood up in surprise.

 

“Baek Iri, you fucking sister…”

 

“Oh, right. Speaking of which, let’s get this out of the way. I was wondering why I couldn’t hear you before.”

 

“Is that what you’re wondering about in this situation, you crazy b*tch. I don’t know why Father coddles you.”

 

Choi gritted her teeth and said that if it wasn’t for her father, she would have killed me.

 

“Where the hell is this thing going? Hey! Stop, stop, stop. Let me see where we’re going.”

 

The bus was rattling along, going somewhere.

 

Choi staggered to the driver’s seat and nervously grabbed the steering wheel and turned it.

 

“I said stop! Doesn’t this dog listen to me?”

 

In a fit of frustration, she slammed the front door and tried to break the window.

 

But when the bus refused to obey her commands, no matter how much she fussed, she fumbled in her pockets, sensing something was wrong.

 

“It’s not here. It’s not here!”

 

Choi crawled across the floor of the bus with a rare look of fear on his face, searching every nook and cranny under the chairs, and finally caught my scowl.

 

“Is it you? You hid it, didn’t you?”

 

“Hide what?”

 

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. Where did you hide it? My amulet!”

 

“You spilled it all over the place, why would you grab a living person?”

 

“Spilled it? It’s all your fault, you damned little sister. You suddenly jumped off, and now I’m the one…!”

 

“Wow, you blame me for that.”

 

“Fuck you!”

 

Choi stamped her foot in frustration.

 

“You don’t have to look, do you? I envy you. I can trust my father.”

 

“If you don’t want to explain, don’t say whether it’s your dad or your ass. You don’t even know who he is, and you keep bringing him up.”

 

At this point the conversation was going nowhere.

 

“Tell me what happened. Tell me everything you know.” 

 

I threatened, holding a nailed club I had made with my skill. 

 

Choi searched the floor for something that could be a weapon, but finally gave up and opened his mouth.

 

“Ha… It seems that in my haste to save you from falling, the space formed so quickly that I, who was right in front of you, got caught in it and was trapped.

 

“I had a rough idea of that, but more than that, the windows and doors won’t open, and the ghosts are so tightly packed that there’s no way out, so what the hell am I supposed to do now?”

 

“I don’t know, damn it. I need my father’s amulet to control this bus, and I’ve lost it. If you ask me, I don’t know where we’re going, and I don’t know when we can get off. Okay?”

 

“What was the amulet supposed to do?”

 

“You think I know that?”

 

“You’re an exorcist.”

 

“What the hell do you want me to do… I’m just told it gives me some control over the bus ghost.”

 

Even as I listened, the bus began to take shape.

 

The all-white interior was gradually turning a gray-blue, and the blank details were being filled in.

 

The windows, made of the same opaque material as the walls, were now translucent.

 

“I can see outside now.”

 

“Ha, you’re being nonchalant. What difference does it make if you can see outside?”

 

Choi Hee-young grumbled as I pressed my forehead to the window and looked out.

 

It was a normal street. A deserted road without a single car. I couldn’t read the signs, so I didn’t know what road we were on.

 

Maybe they didn’t give me a chance to get off the bus because they were moving. 

 

I was afraid that we would fly away like Choi Hee-young when she got on, but this time we were still on the road.

 

I vowed to try to escape again when the bus stopped, and I turned back to Choi.

 

“What the hell are you looking at?”

 

I ignored her breathless question.

 

“How the hell did you get that thing?”

 

“I had to command it with an amulet. Why do you suddenly want to fly?”

 

“Hey, Choi Hee-young.”

 

“What!?”

 

I don’t know if she can’t stand it if she doesn’t stop being sarcastic, or if she’s lost her mind to cowardice.

 

She tapped the nailed crown of her head as a sign to stop talking uselessly. It was an exorcism skill, so even if it was weak against the living, it would still hurt.

 

“You’ve been a half-wit since day one you stupid bird brain.”

 

Choi glanced in my direction and fell silent, her stare still venomous but at just the right level for conversation.

 

“Shall we continue our conversation then?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“I told you to tell me everything you know. Do I need to hear anything else?”

 

“Ha…bird brain is persistent. What more do you want me to say?”

 

“Don’t play dumb. You left out the most important part.”

 

Oops, I’d gotten impatient, but there was no stopping it, no going back.

 

“Why are we “family”?”

 

I could only think of two things I had in common with Choi Hee-young, and I had to know which of them made us a family.

 

“I didn’t know my sister cared so much.”

 

 Choi smiled and didn’t give me an easy answer. She knew I cared, and she wanted to use that to her advantage.

 

“You know, firstborns lose all the love and attention they’ve gotten when a second child is born.”

 

“Well, I’m an only child, so I don’t know.”

 

“That’s why I hate you, because I wanted to be an only child for once.”

 

The conversation went around and around, never getting to the point.

 

My stomach burned with impatience, but I knew there was no point in interrupting, so I listened.

 

“I didn’t really like my brother, who died at City Hall Station, when he was alive, but isn’t it the fate of the firstborn to love their siblings in the end? It was sad when he died because he was always there and suddenly, he was gone.”

 

 Choi Hee-young sobbed.

 

“It is sad to leave. Even when my parents died. I cried a lot, but so did my brother. Ahaha…”

 

Choi’s bright eyes sparkled at the end of her self-help laugh.

 

“When I realized that I would see my brother again, I was so happy.”

 

“See him again…?”

 

“If I could only do this right, I could be with the things I love forever. But because of you, Baek Iri, why can’t the things that are my brother bend to my will?! Huh?! All you had to do was sit back and watch your friend die! I wanted to kill her right in front of you! You should have stepped in!”

 

It was more of a scream.

 

Choi banged her head against the window, her face glowing.

 

She had called me to warn me about the murder, just to keep me close to her target, Seo Jun.

 

To imprint Seo Jun’s death on my cornea and the helplessness of the unprotected on my heart.

 

“You are completely insane.”

 

I didn’t stop the self-inflicted gesture.

 

The bus shuddered and Choi lost her center and fell backwards.

 

“Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

 

Choi scrambled to her feet, rubbing her head where she’d hit the window earlier.

 

I crouched down in front of her and locked eyes with her.

 

“You even bothered to call me, but you didn’t even think about the possibility of your failure? Was that stupid or arrogant?”

 

“Stupid? Arrogant? No, no, no. I was desperate. I was desperate to fool you. The stupid one is Koo Young-chun and the arrogant one is Eom Jingyu. Oh, you’re both arrogant and stupid.”

 

Choi Hee-young, who had been rambling on in a monologue, suddenly changed the subject.

 

“Koo Young-chun was doomed to be a burden from the moment he chose Eom Jingyu instead of me. Why doesn’t he realize that he will only do the tasks that Eom Jingyu asks him to do, and in the end, he will die with the responsibility of his failure.”

 

 So Koo Young-chun was killed that day instead of Eom Jingyu.

 

“Only Eom Jingyu is sicker than him. He thought he could do what Father asked without a drop of blood on his hands. What an arrogant bird. He’s been an exorcist from day one. He pretended to be so noble, but he didn’t have any intelligence. Of all the birds, he tried to trap Baek Iri in the room. I told him to bring anyone, but he chose father’s favorite child.”

 

This seemed to be a story from the search for the gourd wood in the park.

 

Apparently, I had been treated as a “daughter” by the Master of the Space even before that.

 

What about Seo Jun? Is it possible that he targeted me on purpose? Seo Jun has been tracking the room for four years. It is possible that the mirror anomaly in the park was planned to deal with Seo Jun.

 

But Choi Hee Young quickly denied it.

 

“Ahaha, you sick bastard, it’s the other way around! Seo Jun was only noticed because she was with you that day! If it hadn’t turned out that she was close to you, he wouldn’t have ordered her to be killed so quickly.” 

 

The Master of the Space had noticed on the March mission that a girl had a lot of hostility towards the room, but it didn’t bother him right away, so he let it go.

 

But it was a different story when he realized that this girl was cozying up to his second daughter.

 

He was trying to seduce his second daughter and make her hate space as much as she did.

 

So, after a final conviction that he shouldn’t let Koo Young-chun’s spirit mix with his daughter, he came to a conclusion.

 

That he should be killed as soon as possible.

 

“This man, my father, seems to be an unworthy parent.”

 

“He deserves to be called a father after all the trouble he put you through, right? You should be grateful. Someone only got the position of first daughter by sacrificing a few souls.”

 

Choi Hee-young muttered as she twisted her yellow hair into a bun. Aware of my attention, she couldn’t bring herself to curse out loud.

 

“Ha, shit. This bus is an asshole… I asked it where it was going, and it said it was going back to his dad. Shit. If I go back empty-handed like this…”

 

She had decided to give up on answering my questions, and now she was just mumbling and complaining.

 

“Damn, why did I throw away the most important amulet, but this shit is still there?”

 

Choi Hee-young pulled something out of her pocket and threw it as hard as she could at the windshield of the bus.

 

Thud!

 

Such a light blow didn’t even scratch the windshield. A small piece of wood hit the windshield, bounced off, and fell to the ground.

 

It was a gourdwood. A piece of wood that traps ghosts.

 

She must have brought it to kill Seo Jun and take her soul easily.

 

Seeing it gave me an idea.

 

“Hey, Choi Hee-young.”

 

“What?”

 

“If you answer everything, I ask you straight, I’ll get you off this bus before we get to where your father is.”

 

I picked up the gourd Choi threw at me.

 

It wasn’t strong enough to absorb the soul of a living person, but it was enough.

 

“If you don’t want to, I’ll go alone.”