An Exorcist Magical Girl! Chapter 138

*Shatter*

 

Damn it.

 

Before she could finish her sentence, the monster broke the window and stuck its head in.

 

“Run!”

 

 I hadn’t realized that the barricade in front of the door would be our undoing.

 

At least the barricade at the back door had been hastily and sloppily built to let me and Seo Jun in.

 

 “Just throw it!”

 

 I threw a relatively light chair into the air as the kids near the back door pushed desks to clear a path.

 

I know I’m no match for this monster, but I’ll try to stop them.

 

 Bam!

 

 The chair I threw hit the monster right in the nose.

 

 “Kaaaaaaaaaah!”

 

 The monster, its feet barely clinging to the window frame, lost its center and flailed around. Unfortunately, the blow didn’t result in a fall, but it bought time.

 

“I, I can help-“

 

“Don’t do this, get out, now!”

 

I grabbed the chair out of Soo-yeon’s hands and pushed her back into the hallway.

 

If ordinary people like us tried to fight it, we wouldn’t even scratch its skin. Fighting back was like dying willingly.

 

Boom, boom!

 

I threw another chair and hit him in the left eye, then grabbed the arms of Yang Ji-won and Seo Jun who were still in the student council room and ran out into the hallway.

 

On the right after leaving the student council room was the staircase that the monster that fought with the magical girl earlier had gone down.

 

If we go down that way, it’s only a short walk to the front door.

 

“You can’t come down here!”

 

At the bottom of the stairs, the monster was still fighting with the magical girl.

 

 “I’m sorry, sir. Please go somewhere else!”

 

A flash of orange cut us off at the same time as the urgent voice.

 

Up, or run to the left.

 

There was no time to think.

 

 My friends and I were sprinting down the hallway that ran to the left of the student center when another monster poked its head out of the right corner at the end of the hallway.

 

 “Aaaaahhh!”

 

“Hey, turn, turn!”

 

 With one last look at my friends half-rolling and turning into the left corner of the hallway, we ran upstairs.

 

 Bang! Bam! Blag!

 

 Thanks to the clutter of desks, it took a while for the hulking monster to catch up with us down the hall, allowing the three of us to put some distance between us.

 

 “Let’s go upstairs.”

 

Yang Ji-won gestured for us not to stop at the third floor, but to continue to the fifth floor, where the third-grade classrooms were located.

 

 The third floor housed the first-grade classrooms and the fourth floor housed the second-grade classrooms. Since there were only first and second graders left in the school, those two floors would have the most people hiding.

 

In fact, I was told earlier that four of my sophomore classmates were hiding in the bathroom on the fourth floor, and my drama club teammates would still be on the fourth floor if they hadn’t moved on purpose. There is a small science room on the fourth floor that hasn’t been used for classes in years, and the classroom next to it is the new club room that the drama club was given last month after being kicked out of the audiovisual room on the second floor. Lately, all of the club’s activities, including after-school rehearsals, have been held in this classroom.

 

 Running in with a monster on our backs and searching our friends’ hiding places was the least of our options, so we decided to head up to the fifth floor, which would be empty except for the faculty office.

 

 “Go, go, go…”

 

 The monster climbed steadily after us.

 

 “It’s open! Here!”

 

 Yang Ji-won pulled open the door to a nearby classroom.

 

There was no time to barricade ourselves or cover the windows like we did in the student council room on the second floor. It was best to sit against the wall under the window and pray that the monster didn’t see us.

 

 Finally, the monster entered the fifth floor.

 

Yang Ji-won covered her ears with both hands and trembled like a bush, and Seo Jun was still as emotionless as ever, but obviously still scared. 

 

The monster’s lips were uncharacteristically tight and its teeth were white. His skin was already pale, but his lips were bleeding, making him look like a sick man.

 

 Its sense of smell is inferior to that of humans, and it’s not intelligent enough to spy on every classroom. As long as we don’t make too much noise, we’ll be fine.

 

 I wrote this on a notepad and showed it to my two friends on either side of me.

 

A faint glimmer of relief appeared on Yang Ji-won’s face as she read it. Just then, the monster ran past the classroom where we were hiding.

 

 I felt as if a layer of tension had been lifted from my heart.

 

As soon as I got over the moment of crisis, my rational mind, which had been suspended in the rush to survive, started working again.

 

The “we have to run” sentence that had dominated my brain was pushed aside and afterthoughts took over.

 

 “I wonder if the others are safe.”

 

 I think I had originally planned to go to the end of the hallway and turn right. If I rounded the corner to the right, I could go straight down the stairs that led to the field.

 

 “It just so happened that a monster appeared from that direction at that time…”

 

 The monster was probably the same one that was wandering around the student council room on the second floor and then went upstairs.

 

I’m not sure, I just want to believe it was the same one.

 

I’d be pretty desperate if the three I’ve seen so far weren’t the only ones.

 

 I took the left fork in the middle of the hallway, so the six sophomores, including Soo-yeon, should be standing in a line across the middle garden by now. The line was what the students called an “annex”. It’s not really an “annex” because it’s a whole building, but that’s what they call it for convenience because of the small number of classrooms.

 

 Now, there is a way out of the annex. You can go down the stairs to the kitchen garden at the back of the building, or to the central garden that forms a “D” around the building, and then climb over the wall to escape.

 

 My friends have been at the school a year longer than me, so they know all the escape routes.

 

‘…I hope you made it out safely, my friends.’

 

 Yang Ji-won and Seo Jun had also recovered from their life-threatening experience and were now clutching their cell phones and tapping away at their keyboards.

 

Yang Ji-won was busy checking on the safety of her student council friends and other first and second year students, while Seo Jun was typing away at…

 

 ─Sir, there’s a monster in the school, I think I’ll be late for class, I might not be able to make it, both me and Baek Iri.

 

 She was texting Mr. Kang In-joo at the training center.

 

Seo Jun, noticing my gaze, whispered.

 

 “You don’t have to text. I told him you’re with me.”

 

“Uh, thanks.”

 

Looking at the two people on either side of me, I remembered who I needed to call.

 

 Narea.

 

 She must be out there, too.

 

Even if she hadn’t been on the scene, she had some idea of what was being said about the situation.

 

 I was afraid to open the chat, but Narea’s message arrived first.

 

 ─Hey, I’m on my way to your school.

—I’m so worried… I heard there were no casualties. Are you sure you’re okay?

 

 I replied that I was fine, leaving out the part about the monster coming through the window.

 

─Thank God! I’m so glad.

─I heard you had a lot of problems.

─When is the time to say that A-grade is enough…, I just got permission to go out.

─If you’re going to do this, you should have let me go from the beginning!

─I said I’d keep going!

 

Narea must have realized that the monster was at Mukgyeong Girls’ High School and insisted on going there herself. The higher-ups hadn’t detected even the smallest crack, let alone a gate, so they must have dispatched the right people with the possibility of false reports in mind.

 

 Eventually, even Narea showed up.

 

─The students are mostly on the third and fourth floors.

 

 I’m sure they’ve already been briefed, but I shared our information with Narea one more time. Like where the other students from the student center ran off to, and where the monster was last seen.

 

 ─Thank you, Iri.

—If I learn anything new, I’ll let you know.

─I’ll be there in five minutes.

 

I know how powerful Narea’s magic is, and I know how devastating a single shot of it can be.

 

Even then, she’d taken out four of them single-handedly.

 

‘But what’s this tingly feeling?’

 

I should be relieved that Narea is coming.

 

I should be happy she’s alive.

 

No, stay with me. Let’s not turn away.

 

It’s a bad habit.

 

I know it all, but I put it off endlessly to put it into a sentence, and I pretend I don’t know it because it’s unorganized.

 

It was my brain’s way of avoiding something it didn’t want to face. Even if the photo is so blurry that I can’t make out the subject, I can’t stare at it for those few seconds and avoid it. I don’t want to recognize the shape in the photo.

 

 ─Don’t come. Narea.

─No, if you do come, don’t try to fight the monsters, just get the kids out of the school. Please.

─Don’t do more than that.

 

 I’m trying to dismiss my worries as useless. It’s ridiculous for me to say this, when I’m the one who couldn’t even reach my own feet, the one who eventually gave up on the path.

 

 I can only hope that Narea is a friend whose reason prevails over her foolish determination.

 

I swallowed hard at the deep sigh that threatened to escape and called to my friends.

 

 “Hey, guys.”

 

 My voice was a little loud.

 

Seo Jun and Yang Ji-won’s heads snapped around reflexively.

 

 “…the magical girl who was appointed this year’s prefect, will be here soon.”

 

“Come on, how do you know that?”

 

“Because that magical girl is a friend of mine.”

 

 Yang Ji-won, who didn’t know that I was a magical girl, narrowed her eyes as if she had seen someone who was friends with a celebrity.

 

Seo Jun, on the other hand, was dumbfounded.

 

 “So?”

 

 Seo Jun added, “Did you mean to say that we can relax and wait? I don’t think so.”

 

 I was dumbfounded for a moment by her sharp point that seemed to see right through me.

 

 “You’re right, it’s too soon to breathe a sigh of relief.”

 

 Yang Ji-won’s face darkened instantly.

 

 “Why…? You said you’re friends, isn’t she a very strong magical girl?”

 

“That’s true, but the problem is that the monster doesn’t seem to be ordinary… It’s not like any other monster I know.”

 

 When I ran out of the student council room, I had a brief glimpse of what was happening at the bottom of the stairs.

 

 Until I witnessed it, I had assumed that the monster was surrounded by a shield, either a protective spell strong enough to deflect attacks or a chaos spell that would reroute attacks off target.

 

 If that was the reason why the magical girl’s attacks hadn’t worked so far, then all she had to do was crush it with overwhelming force.

 

 But it was neither.

 

 What I saw was a spear of orange magic that the magical girl threw, and it went right through the monster.