An Exorcist Magical Girl! Chapter 152

The study sessions leading up to the exam were quieter than ever.

 

There were a few empty seats, but even with nearly thirty students in the room, there was no whispered chatter like there had been two or three weeks ago.

 

The only sounds are the careful turning of papers and the sharp clicking of pencils. The chairs, desks, and lockers were all new over the break, so they don’t even make the usual squeaky noises. 

 

It’s eerily quiet, Yuri thought to herself as she worked on the practice questions for the English supplemental textbook.

 

After three hours of reading English, she felt her eyes strain.

 

 Beneath the silence was a pent-up fear that seemed to vibrate at any moment.

 

The ghost of the study hall had never shown its face or spoken, and that made it all the more frightening.

 

What you don’t know, your imagination fills in the blanks.

 

 “He’s not a thief.”

 

“Wow, he’s got great taste. He doesn’t take junk.”

 

“That’s why I leave my expensive stuff in the classroom. I’ll give you my earbuds and you can take my iPod.

 

“Is that why you don’t listen to lectures in study hall anymore?”

 

 These joking, mocking remarks were actually an attempt to quell their anxiety.

 

The anxiety of not knowing when this mysterious ghost would turn at any moment.

 

 The anxiety was caused by the ghost’s behavior, which was both regular and irregular.

 

 The pattern was always the same: foreshadowing a theft by offering an object from the vague past, followed later by a similar object.

 

But no one could predict when the same thing would happen again. It would happen four days in a row, and they’d wait nervously to see what it would take today, and then nothing would happen for a week, and then it’d be quiet for a week, and they’d be relieved that it was over, and then it’d show up the next day.

 

The fact that the time to exchange the two items was getting shorter and shorter, like a countdown, added to the anxiety.

 

 A sense of foreboding, as if something was about to happen.

 

With only the occasional sound of friction from the thin blade moving across the paper to distract her, Yuri tried to concentrate.

 

 But just as she managed to refocus…

 

Thud!

 

 The dull thud of something falling made every head in the palm room turn toward the source of the sound.

 

“…What was that?”

 

 It was a long communal table that separated the first- and second-years’ quarters, and from a distance it looked like a frozen hunk of meat.

 

 “Oh, crazy.”

 

“Oh, my God. What is that…?”

 

 It was the foot of a plastic human muscle model.

 

The big toe was broken, the toes were crudely wrapped in yellow duct tape, and each of the not-so-detailed muscle branches was numbered in black ink

 

 The mutterings that came out of their mouths in surprise were muted, and an uncomfortable silence fell over the room.

 

 Perhaps everyone was thinking the same thing.

 

Everyone froze in place, gazing downward.

 

 And then,

 

 “There, there.”

 

 A small, frightened voice broke the silence.

 

“Aahh! My ankle, please—”

 

 The voice belonged to Yuri’s classmate in the back seat.

 

A classmate she wasn’t close to, but occasionally passed in the hallway and awkwardly exchanged glances.

 

 Yuri and a brown-haired girl sitting right next to the classmate in question looked up at the same time.

 

Her eyes still scanning the floor under her desk,

 

 “This, this, uh, what should I do, I…”

 

 A pale hand grabbed her classmate’s ankle.

 

 “…aahhhhhhhhhhh!”

 

 The brunette girl screamed like she was having a seizure. As soon as her brain realized what was happening, she let out a raw, unfiltered scream.

 

 That was the catalyst.

 

 The screams spread like wildfire throughout the study hall, and even the sophomore girls in the corner, who couldn’t even see what was happening, reflexively jumped and ran out of the study hall.

 

 “Aaaaaaaaah!”

 

“I knew it!”

 

“What the hell?! What was that?!”

 

 Similarly, Yuri, who bounced up from her seat like a spring, grabbed her classmate with the last of her sanity.

 

And they ran outside. She couldn’t tell if she was pulling her by the hand, wrist, or sleeve. She could only feel the weight of the person being pulled by her hand.

 

Bang! Bang! Bang!

 

 “Did you see that?! Did you see that?!”

 

“Holy fucking…!”

 

 The noise of tumbling chairs and disjointed shouts swept through the hallway like a hurricane.

 

 “Is that– is that what it’s doing? Trying to trade a haunted, human foot for that…?”

 

 As the commotion died down, someone stammered, then looked around and gasped at the sight of a student clinging to Kwon Yuri’s hand.

 

 “You-your ankle!”

 

 Dozens of eyes snapped to their direction at once.

 

 “……!”

 

 The 9th grader’s right ankle is covered with a nasty handprint.

 

It’s not necessarily “things” that ghosts want to exchange.

 

It was a moment of clarity for everyone.

 

 

***

 

 

 

“Well, technically, the school didn’t close the study hall because they packed up their stuff and said they’d never study there again. No one was using it, so it was naturally closed.”

 

 Hanbyul added quietly.

 

Yuri’s face was as white as a sheet of paper.

 

 “You know, I still get goosebumps when I think about that day, and what if it was a head that fell on the table instead of a foot…”

 

“Wow, wow, I hate that. That’s so horrible.”

 

Ding! Dong! Ding! Dong!

 

 The only good thing is that the ghost never did anything outside of that study hall.

 

 “The bell’s rung. Let’s go upstairs.”

 

 Seo Jun was the first to clear the table.

 

 “Well, guys, thanks for the story.”

 

“No problem.”

 

 I thanked them on the way up the stairs, and Yuri smiled sheepishly.

 

 “Honestly, Yuri, I can’t believe you kept doing it after that. You’re a scaredy-cat, I swear. You should take a psychology test in college.”

 

“Ahaha… I didn’t do it forever; I took a month off and then applied again for finals. I heard the new classroom is fine…”

 

 Yuri interrupted Hanbyul’s words.

 

Probably because that “changed classroom” had been destroyed not long ago.

 

 “Seo Jun, let’s go right after class.”

 

 Seo Jun, who had been climbing earlier, nodded in response.

 

 I might have to disembody myself again this time, like I did when I went up to the roof. The door will be locked.

 

With that thought, I unnecessarily clenched the meal plan in my pocket.

 

 We barely made it back to class and sat down 30 seconds before our sixth period teacher walked in.

 

 “What do you think?”

 

 Seo Jun asked me from the side of the room as I sat idly, textbooks out, in the middle of class.

 

 “What do you think?”

 

“About the study hall ghost. What do you think it is?”

 

“Oh, that? I don’t know…”

 

 The first word that popped into my head when I heard that question was “collector”.

 

And not just because it kept trying to get things into its hands. 

 

It’s because the ghosts in the study hall play by their own rules when it comes to getting things.

 

 Collector spirits have one thing in common: they are governed by an unspoken set of rules. Sometimes these “rules” were conditions, sometimes they were orders.

 

Take the head collector, for example. Before cutting off a doll’s head, he would first draw a red line through the hair.

 

 When I mentioned this idea to Seo Jun, she agreed, saying she thought so too.

 

 “Other than that?”

 

“Hmmm, I honestly can’t tell, I don’t think it’s that bossy…”

 

 The study hall ghost’s extortions didn’t have much in common. 

 

One day it was school supplies, another day books, another day cosmetics… And the last one tried to cut off a living person’s foot.

 

 “Now that you mention it, I don’t think it’s a collector, just a vandal.”

 

“Pfft…”

 

 Seo Jun covers her mouth in disbelief at my tone.

 

 “Hey, there! Don’t eat in class!”

 

 The teacher thought I was sneaking a snack and gave me a pincer.

 

 “I’m not eating—”

 

“Hey, hey, you’re embarrassing the teacher. Chew quickly and pretend to swallow.”

 

“…You’re making me do everything.”

 

 She’s grumbling, but she’s also not doing it, so it’s fun to watch.

 

When the teacher turns back to the board, Seo Jun asks another question in a low voice.

 

 “Did you talk to any of your friends yesterday?”

 

 By friend, she means…, Narea.

 

 “Oh, yeah. She wanted me to tell you how much she appreciated seeing you.”

 

“Really?”

 

 I’m surprised she didn’t ask first.

 

 “I thought you guys didn’t even have full names?”

 

“Does it matter?”

 

“Well, thanks anyway, me too.”

 

“You don’t have to thank me, it was just a division of labor, you’re the monster, I’m the magical girl.”

 

 Seo Jun was going to bury it, even though she knew I was just being forceful. 

 

I wondered if she’d brought up Narea out of obligation.

 

 I put a question mark by mentioning Narea, but basically, Seo Jun is not interested in people named “others”. Or, more accurately, she doesn’t care about them beyond a certain threshold. 

 

 She has a very narrow circle of affection.

 

 I’m probably well within it. Thankfully.

 

Seo Jun didn’t ask me anything, because that’s the kind of attention and care that can only be shown in a non-prying way.

 

 As if it didn’t matter, instead of continuing the conversation, Seo Jun returned to the topic of the study hall.

 

 “Hmmm, a ghost with a mind of its own…”

 

 “Why, what’s wrong?”

 

“Something’s bothering me.”

 

 She mumbles to herself, and this time she looks me in the eye and asks.

 

Her voice was the same as it had been before, just loud enough to be heard only by the person right next to me, but the weight of her gaze was palpable.

 

 “Do you think it was a jibakryeong (Bound ghost)?”

 

“I’m guessing it was… It never left the study hall.”

 

She’d been told that all the things the ghost had stolen had been inside the study hall, and as if to prove it, it hadn’t even followed its targeted classmate out of the study hall on the last day.

 

 But Seo Jun knows all of this.

 

There must be something else, something important, that I hadn’t noticed.

 

 “If it’s a ghost…”

 

 Seo Jun crossed her arms and slowly leaned back in her chair.

 

 “Where the hell did, they get those “things” and how did they get them?”