An Exorcist Magical Girl!

Author: Dakku-san

Thump, thump, thump!

Rattling windows and doors locked from the inside with the intention of ripping them off.

“Hey, didn’t you hear the announcement? You’re not allowed in the classroom!”

“Please come out. Please.”

“What do you think you’re doing, you crazy people, do you want to get us all killed?”

Thump, thump! Thump!

“Hey, Choi, if you can hear me, come out in the hallway, please.”

It was the voice of Lee Soo-yeon from the student council, class 1.

It wasn’t enough that she was banging on the front and back doors and windows as if she was going to break them, but now she was calling out her name.

Choi Jeon was startled by the sudden call and covered her mouth with one hand, rolling her eyes. However, Sung-eun was more surprised than she was, so Choi Jeon had to cover her mouth with her other hand.

“Sung-eun, if you yell, we’ll all be dead.”

Choi Jeon glared at Sung-eun.

And it was the right choice, because shortly afterward, someone outside yelled Yoo-sung’s name.

“Sung-eun, Sung-eun, Chae-young, Chae-young!”

“Please come outside guys, it’s dangerous in the classroom…!”

I cowered like a crumpled ball of paper, wondering if my name would be mentioned.

I exchanged a glance with Seo Jun as our schoolmates desperately tried to ignore the vibrations that were traveling through the window frames and walls.

—I wonder if their names are a clue? I’m putting the last names of all the kids so far in order. What’s Chae-young’s last name?

I wrote it down on my phone’s notepad and showed it to Seo Jun, who mumbled something like, “Chae-young…?” as if she didn’t know.

“Jinseon! Hwang Jinseon!”

“Hey, Jinseon! Minchae! Are you sure you can hear me? You’re not responding at all!”

I thought it was a good idea, but it was automatically dismissed when the number of names shouted went beyond four.

As I stared bitterly at my scribbled “Choi, Moon, Yu, ?”. Seo Jun took the phone from me and wrote something under it.

─An-na-ya-na-bok-ner, What?

“……?”

─I only picked up the first letter from what I heard outside, but I missed the middle.

Wow, this is either ridiculous or amazing. She listened carefully, thinking that if she collected four letters at a time, she might see a repetition or a rule.

─Ya know what you think, e-ba-ji?

Seo Jun nods with a nervous expression when I laugh at her in the text. She must have wondered what she was doing. She waves her hand in the air as if to pretend she didn’t see it, and immediately erases the eight letters she just wrote.

And then another idea flashed through my mind.

─Ah, maybe the most mentioned word is the key?

At that, Seo Jun whispered, “What is that?”

─”Please” and “come out”. Wow, they’re only four letters together.

Just when I thought I’d gotten it right this time, I was tackled by a tackle about the overuse of “ya”.

─Ya, please, come out. Now it’s five characters.

She’s really good at adding a “heh” to a topic I’ve written about, like a losing kid.

Well, that’s it.

I don’t think there’s a hint of a clue in the hallway chatter. There’s nothing plausible about it.

Seo Jun, too, has turned her head completely away from the door, as if the combination of the four letters in the shouting outside didn’t make sense.

The small movement startled the rest of the class.

We were the only two people in the room calmly scribbling away amidst the shouts to get out.

The hallway and classroom were pitch black, and we could only see a few human-like shapes through the glass windows.

The shapes were running around, rattling the doors and windows, trying to lure the students inside Class 6 out.

But something was wrong.

Once I let go of my obsession with trying to figure out the four letters in that crucible of chaos, it was the “strangeness” that bothered me.

Apparently, Seo Jun felt the same way.

“…….”

“Hold on, let me check.”

❰Skill: ‘Light visible only when eyes are closed’ activated❱

I scattered the black energy around the hallway again, but I still couldn’t detect anything.

“…Eh. I think those are the people from classes 1 and 2?”

Before anyone could stop me, I stood up and walked toward the back door.

“……?”

“Hey…, can you do that?!”

The muffled voices gasped in horror, but I didn’t let that deter me from flinging the door open.

“What the fuck guys?”

At the same time, a barrage of screams is directed at me.

“You think we’re kidding?! Huh?! You’re supposed to answer when people call you!”

It’s a person.

A real, live person, not a ghostly impersonation or anything.

It was our actual schoolmates from classes 1 and 2 who were trapped on the fourth floor with us, causing a ruckus in the hallway.

When I turned around and told my schoolmates in class 6, their jaws dropped.

“So, what was that broadcast?”

“Really…?”

My schoolmates looked at me suspiciously.

They’re looking at me, trying to figure out what’s going on and if they can trust my reaction.

I’m sure they’ll figure it out when they see me talking to them normally.

Lee Soo-yeon stood out among the familiar faces I’d seen once or twice in the hallway.

She looked even paler than when she first came to me, claiming to be haunted.

“Shut up, everybody, shut up!”

Lee Soo-yeon shouted as she caught up with me. She sounded relieved.

“Uh, what’s going on? How long did we call out for? Didn’t you hear us from inside?”

“Let me ask you something first. Why did you guys suddenly rush in here?”

My friends in the hallway looked at me in disbelief.

“That’s because they said on the air to get out of the hallway…”

‘On the broadcast?’

“Didn’t it come on in 6th period? They told us to wait in the hallway because it’s dangerous to be in the classroom… Hey, hey. Didn’t someone record it earlier?”

“Oh, I did. Wait a minute.”

Lee Soo-yeon said that she had recorded the audio anyway.

—Please leave the classroom. I say again, please leave the classroom immediately. Please escape to the hallway. We cannot guarantee your safety if you remain in the classroom.

It’s hard to make out the voice over the muffled noise, but the announcement in the video clearly tells them to exit to the hallway.

—Please wait outside the classroom until further instructions. We cannot guarantee your survival if you remain in the classroom.

That was all that was said in the broadcast to classes one and two.

“Listen carefully. That’s the voice of the broadcasting department. Ooh, we checked with our friends on the other floors. Are we sure they’re on the air?”

Classes 1 and 2 went through a similar process as class 6 after the broadcast started.

When we told them that our broadcast was also the voice of the broadcasting department teacher and that we had also contacted our friends and received confirmation that we were still broadcasting, Lee Soo-yeon was confused.

“We were told to stay in the classroom no matter who called us from the hallway. Don’t answer, don’t leave, and don’t go outside.”

Choi Jeon, who had followed me out into the hallway, added.

“What? What’s right? Are we supposed to be out in the hallway too…?”

“That means they’re not real people, right…?”

Other students who had been listening to our conversation from inside the classroom hesitated and then crept over.

It didn’t take long to decide which of the two broadcasts was the work of a ghost.

The broadcast to class 6 was a hoax. Contrary to what we had heard in class, the people calling us from outside were not dangerous.

“You mean the broadcast to our class was fake?!”

“Wow, who was the first one to say it was real? We were crazy. We felt bad.”

“You know what, I’m embarrassed as shit right now, too.”

“It’s like a dog. We were the only ones who got scammed.”

“Damn it, that was so close to being dead! Let’s get out of here. Quick.”

The students, realizing the situation, rushed out of the classroom.

I went back inside against their wishes. Seo Jun was still sitting in her seat, whether they had escaped or not. She looked both relaxed and deep in thought.

“Contemplating?”

I sneak up on her, but she doesn’t seem surprised.

“Yeah, I thought you said it was dangerous to be here.”

“I thought so.”

“Well, this is a good place to think.”

Seo Jun leans back in her chair, as if that’s what she was hoping for. I had come back into the classroom with the same purpose as Seo Jun, so I took a seat next to her.

This was our chance to come face-to-face with the ghost that kept us trapped on the fourth floor and still refused to show itself.

Some might say it was reckless, but it was a risk worth taking.

There’s no way out if you just run away.

“But why are we safe?”

Seo Jun asked quietly.

“What are you so scared of?”

I spit out a bark of laughter, sympathizing with Seo Jun’s question.

“But the truth is, it took me a while to figure it out.”

It had been at least fifteen to twenty minutes since we were stuck on the fourth floor. Not a short time at all, and during that short time, the students had been in the “classroom” the whole time

If the classroom was really dangerous, why hadn’t anything happened to us yet?

Twenty minutes is plenty of time for a ghost to do something.

“I don’t even know why it only tricked class 6. Why didn’t it let classes 1 and 2 escape? Or why did it isolate the entire fourth floor if it were only targeting one class anyway?”

“So.”

There were more than a few oddities.

As Seo Jun and I pieced together what didn’t make sense, we came to a final question.

“There’s no guarantee that the broadcast was real, that it was broadcast in the first or second class, right…?”

Damn, my mistake.

Since Class 6 had been scammed, they’d naturally concluded that what Classes 1 and 2 heard must be “real”.

Forgetting the possibility that they were both being played by a ghost.

“Hey, guys!”

I called out to my schoolmates, who were tapping their feet in the hallway.

“Who was the one who asked the kids on the other floor if they were on the air?”

I asked, and one by one, the ones who had reached out to the outside world raised their hands.

“All the ones that got replies,” I said.

“……?”

Six students, including Min Jiyoon and Choi Jeon, raised question marks above their heads.

“You said you were assured that it’s in the process of being broadcast. Look at the message. Quickly.”

Min Jiyoon was the first to respond to my urging.

She turned on the chat with Cha Hanbyul and read the reply she had received earlier.

“She said, “Yes, I’m broadcasting now.”.”

“What? Hey, wait a minute.”

Choi Jeon suddenly shouted, “Wait! Wait!” in a panicked voice.

“Wait a minute, Min Jiyoon, did you read that without making any mistakes?”

“Huh?”

“Wow, crazy.”

Choi wasn’t the only one who let out an embarrassed sigh. The faces of the students who had been in charge of contacting outside people were all colored with horror.

“Why, why, why? What’s going on?!”

Min Jiyoon clung to me as she realized the situation was serious.

The other five raised their cell phones with trembling hands.

─Yes, it’s broadcasting now.

Each screen they showed me had the same reply.