An Exorcist Magical Girl! Chapter 160

“I don’t think there are any more in this classroom, do you?”

 

 After looking under desks and chairs just in case, we finished searching our assigned classroom.

 

 “Let’s go help somewhere else.”

 

 As Jiyoon opened the back door and started to leave the classroom, someone shouted from the far end of the hallway.

 

 “Yaaaaaaaah!”

 

 It was the search team from the other restroom.

 

 “We found it!”

 

“It’s “Ch”! “Ch”!”

 

 They’d found the third letter.

 

Listening to the chatter, they realized it was written on the inside of the toilet tank lid.

 

 “You guys are amazing.”

 

“We practically cleaned the toilet. Ew, that sucks.”

 

“Go, hard work.”

 

 The three letters we found were “b,” “i,” and “ch”.

 

 “Hear? Hear, yi, ching? Hear, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching…”

 

 As I rattled off the letters as best I could, Seo Jun stopped me.

 

 “Why?”

 

“The other letter, I know what it is.”

 

“Really?!”

 

 Min Jiyoon, who had also been chanting “inhale inhale inhale” like a mantra, stamped her feet in excitement.

 

 “What is it? What is it?”

 

But Seo Jun’s expression was dark when she realized that she had figured out the word. No, not dark.

 

 “What, Seo Jun…?”

 

 Pure rage was controlling her facial muscles.

 

One corner of her mouth twitched and lifted slightly into a smile.

 

 “Jiyoon, can you go tell the others that the door will be opening soon?”

 

 The voice was calm again. There was only a slight tremor in it that would be impossible to detect if you weren’t listening carefully, and Min Jiyoon’s ears, excited at the prospect of getting out of there, couldn’t pick up the nagging anger that had been emanating from Seo Jun.

 

As soon as she received Seo Jun’s instructions, whether a request or an order, Min Jiyoon sprinted down the hallway with excitement.

 

 “Guys, move, move, move, move!”

 

 As Min Jiyoon ran away, Somael dragged me toward the nearest staircase.

 

 “What’s that last letter?”

 

“T.”

 

 What?

 

I was stunned for a moment.

 

I mean, the four letters to make up the code word… are ‘b’, ‘i’, ‘ch’, and ‘t’?

 

 “…these. Idiots, idiots!”

 

 My first thought was, “Wow, has she ever been this vocal?”

 

But the gradual increase in volume didn’t faze me.

 

My own head was soon reaching a fever pitch.

 

 “What the f*ck, you idiots, you idiots! Are you f*cking crazy?!”

 

How could they f*ck with me like this?

 

 “Hahaha, hahaha, f*ck you, hahahahaha!”

 

 I couldn’t help but chuckle as I realized once again that the purpose of the fourth floor isolation was just for fun.

 

If you were going to send two exorcists into hypertension, you succeeded, you f*cking asshole.

 

 The mere fact that the “idiots” knew exactly what the password was, and said it out loud, was enough to fulfill their escape requirements, and she could feel the massive barrier surrounding the fourth floor slowly begin to lift.

 

But Seo Jun didn’t have the patience to wait for that, so she ran to the next classroom and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. While I watched in horror, she scribbled an amulet and taped it to the side of a hole barely big enough for a man to fit through.

 

 “Here, hit this.”

 

Then she urged me to hit the amulet.

 

 “Hit it?”

 

“Yes.”

 

 

❰Skill: ‘A Craftsman Wears No Tools’ is active❱

 

 

The pen Seo Jun had been holding while she applied the amulet was imbued with my black aura.

 

Bam!

 

With a downward stroke of the pen, the lines drawn on the amulet stretched across the barrier and cracked.

 

Kurrrrrrrr-!

 

This accelerated the speed of the barrier’s collapse.

 

 “Shouldn’t this have happened sooner?”

 

 I asked, and the answer was that there’s a difference between adding to a collapse that’s already underway and starting it from scratch. It wouldn’t have been so simple if they had tried to destroy it by force from the beginning.

 

 The barrier that isolated the fourth floor is more than half destroyed, and the darkness fades with it.

 

Cheers erupted from all around.

 

 “Yay, it’s finally over!”

 

“Escape, escape!”

 

 While the other kids seemed to be more excited about their escape than the fact that they’d gotten one shot at the ghost, Seo Jun and I were grumpy, feeling like we’d gotten two.

 

 “This sucks, man.”

 

 The bartering ghost of the study hall had long since been put out of our minds.

 

Seo Jun called out to me in the middle of the hallway, the bright sunlight streaming in.

 

 “Come back here.”

 

“What?”

 

“Don’t take any requests related to today’s work.”

 

 Her low voice continued.

 

 “I’ll take care of it.”

 

“What—”

 

“I thought so.”

 

“…Yes. I’m out.”

 

I nodded obediently, not sure if it was a declaration or a notification.

 

Seo Jun’s flame, which had always been burning inside of me, was about to spread outward.

 

I’m not too shrewd to back down at a moment like this.

 

 It’s strange, by the way.

 

Seo Jun always seemed so nonchalant because she didn’t bring out the flames burning inside her. The dull-colored fire that burned for Chun Chan-young had only ever burned in the deepest recesses of her heart.

 

 What the heck turned that spark outward.

 

Was it pride?

 

 “What do you see?”

 

 Seo Jun’s curt comment made me look away curiously.

 

Well, one of these days I’d get to hear the real story.

 

I won’t interfere with Seo Jun’s healthy stubbornness.

 

 The sound of an iron door opening came from downstairs.

 

Our brief confinement was finally and completely over.

 

 We walked to the third floor where our friends were waiting.

 

 

***

 

 

After school, a cafe near Mukgyeong Girls’ High School.

 

There were three tables for two, and four students in school uniforms sat around them.

 

The atmosphere is pretty heavy for a group of friends stopping by on their way home from school.

 

 “Hey, you ordered the best honey bread, right? Dessert will take a little longer.”

 

“Who are you two? This is an extra shot and this is mild.”

 

 Soon the other two joined us with trays of three drinks each.

 

 “Blueberry smoothie with extra whip, anyone?”

 

“That’s the best.”

 

“Doesn’t the honey bread get whipped too? It’s just a whipped party.”

 

 The six of us are all members of Mugyeong Girls’ High School’s sophomore student council.

 

Song Ju-kyung, the school president, Choi Jeon, the vice president, Yang Ji-won from class 3, Lee Soo-yeon from class 1, Kim Yena from class 2, and Lee Geum-bin from class 7, the same class as Song Ju-kyung.

 

The reason for this meeting at a time when they are busy with performance evaluations and preparing for the final exams is the 4th floor detention incident in 7th period today. There was no big plan as it was just a hasty gathering of people who had time after the bell, and the purpose was to quickly share information and lament.

 

 “Ha… Where to start?”

 

 Song Ju-kyung, the student council president, was the first to speak. She tried not to show it, but there was an unavoidable tiredness in his voice.

 

 “Hey, Song Ju-kyung. You look like you’re under the weather, but we can talk about this in private, so go home. It’s not even a regular meeting.”

 

 Song threw her hands up in the air as Choi looked worried.

 

 “I’m the president, I can’t miss it, and I’m not that tired.”

 

“Of course you are.”

 

 As if she’d expected that answer, Choi held her tongue.

 

 “First, let me explain the details of what happened on the fourth floor.”

 

 Choi, Lee Soo-yeon, and Kim Yena, who were trapped on the fourth floor, recounted the events of the seventh period. Choi Jeon mostly spoke, with Lee Soo-yeon and Kim Yena taking turns adding a word or two.

 

 When they finished, Song Ju-kyung sighed and wiped her forehead.

 

 “Thank you for your hard work, girls…”

 

 That sigh had several meanings.

 

The frustration and regret of not being able to do anything about it, not being able to help, and not being able to find a way to get to the fourth floor, led to questions and self-pity about what the point of being a student body president was.

 

She wished she could have been trapped on the fourth floor as well.

 

Whether inside or outside the fourth floor, she knew that as an ordinary person, she would not have been able to come up with a great solution to the situation. However, the fact that she experienced the crisis with her friends and first-hand gives her a sense of immunity.

 

 Now, Song felt like she was the only one who had cowardly avoided the horror of the situation.

 

She hadn’t been the only one to run away, or to walk away on purpose. By the time she heard about the power outage on the fourth floor, all the iron doors to the stairwell had already been locked.

 

 Choi Jeon could guess what Song Ju-kyung was thinking even if she didn’t say it out loud.

 

Since then, it seemed, Song had lost the ability to distinguish between burdens.

 

 “Gnawing on things is not the same as being responsible.”

 

 After a short sigh, Choi quickly changed the conversation.

 

 “Hey, Soo-yeon, I heard you took a video. Let’s see if it’s good.”

 

 The student council had been secretly collecting evidence.

 

It hadn’t stopped trying to expose the school’s behavior after the parents’ complaint to the district fell through.

 

In the second semester of last year, the student council, led by members who were sophomores at the time, organized a press release.

 

However, they were unable to overcome the subtle pressure of line teacher Heo Kyung-wook to penalize them in the entrance examination.

 

Adults could silence high school students if they wanted to. Cowardly.

 

 Even though it ended without even trying, the documentation of hauntings and student victimizations from that time still existed.

 

Song Ju-kyung had handed over all the data to the previous year’s student council president.

 

Not only Song Ju-kyung, but all of the student members, who are now in their second year, have continued to collect evidence from under the water, following the will of the seniors who stepped up to the plate last year.

 

They believed that even if they couldn’t do anything right now, it would be useful someday.

 

There was even talk of waiting another year and a half and blowing it up on graduation day.

 

 The “video” that Choi mentioned earlier was also intentionally taken in that context.

 

Videos and photos of ghosts and strange phenomena were rare, making them even more valuable.

 

 “Here.”

 

 Lee Soo-yeon, who was in charge of filming, slid her phone to the center of the table and pressed the play button.

 

 

─The lights in the hallway are out.

─Is it a power outage?

—Is it just our floor?

 

The video was taken a minute or two after the fluorescent lights on all four floors went out at once.

 

 “When did they start broadcasting?”

 

“Oh, do you want me to flip back a little further?”

 

 In response to Ji-won’s questions, Soo-yeon quickly flipped through the video until the fourth floor was completely dark.

 

However,

 

 “Uh, why…, why is it bright?”

 

 The fourth floor in the video was very bright.

 

 “What’s wrong with this?”

 

 In a panic, Soo-yeon replayed the video taken during the text search, but it was the same.

 

The fourth floor was bathed in sunlight at an angle around 3-4pm.

 

 There was no darkness, no sound, no text.

 

 Nothing was properly preserved in the video.

 

 The ghost had erased all of its pranks.

 

As if nothing had happened.