An Exorcist Magical Girl! – Chapter 76

Author: Dakku-san

It’s Wednesday morning.

Yin Charang boarded the bus that was heading in the opposite direction from his school.

In two days, today at the most, he would be done going to the cemetery instead of school.

The Grim Reaper’s deadline was Friday.

He’d already looked everywhere.

Even in the trash cans and clothes bins around the cemetery.

After several days of searching, there was not a hair on the doll’s head to be found.

Maybe the garbage truck had already taken it away.

Three days, including today.

He knew he couldn’t complete the request if he tried for a few more days.

So he changed his goal.

To comfort the child as much as possible, so that she could leave this world with as few bad feelings as possible.

From now on, that was all he could do.

Before boarding the subway, he walked along the busy street near the station.

He wanted to buy a doll.

He thought if he could buy her a new doll that was as close as possible to her favorite doll, she’d cross over to the other side feeling better, because children love gifts.

Charang wrestled all night with thread, needles, scraps of cloth, and cotton balls to give the doll a new head, but I realized that it would only add to the haunting.

He walked a little further into town and saw a doll shop.

He thought, “Oh no, they’re all cartoon characters.”

They didn’t have the design he was looking for, so he walked out. It wasn’t that he was never good at picking out dolls.

The cute little prop store right next to the doll store didn’t have the doll he was looking for either.

There was a soft brown furry stuffed animal, but it was too small, and most importantly, it wasn’t a rabbit.

Then Yin Charang went to DaXo.

It was a big store with three floors, so there was a wide variety of dolls.

“Oh, there’s a rabbit doll! I finally found it.”

He eagerly picked up the rabbit, but quickly ran into trouble.

“But the color is… It’s pink, but… It doesn’t matter what color it is, it’s just the right size, and it feels the same to the touch… Oh, what about the color?”

He asked the staff if they had any brown bunny toys, but they said that was all they had in stock.

Yin Charang put the pink bunny in his cart.

“I really, really, really hope she likes the new stuffed animal, and I hope it magically cures her. Please.”

He knew it was unlikely.

“Who knows, maybe she’ll let me know how much it means to her and let it go? No, but I hope it’s not something she’s held dear in her life.”

He wondered if it was better to give up hope or to keep hoping for a miracle.

Yin Charang thought for a long time.

Then he remembered that the little ghost had cried for a rabbit, so he added rabbit-shaped stickers, notepads, a bag with a rabbit on it, and a pen with a rabbit on it to the basket.

“The more gifts the better.”

He paid and was about to leave DaXo when his phone rang.

“Seo-Seo Jun?!”

The name on the screen startled him for a moment, but he didn’t hesitate to answer.

“Hello, Seo Jun?”

But the voice on the other end of the phone was not hers.

—Hello? Hey, Yin Charang. Are you going to the cemetery again today?

“Why would you…?”

After a moment of cognitive dissonance, he realizes that Baek Iri and Seo Jun were in the same class at the same school and immediately asks why.

“What’s going on?”

—Can you check something for me later?”

Baek Iri’s voice continued.

***

That morning at Mukgyeong Girls’ High School.

As the students entered the school through the main entrance, they casually looked at the trophy and noticed something different.

“Where’s the head?”

Soon, students in each classroom noticed the change as well.

These were the classrooms where yesterday’s puppets had been destroyed with red lines.

“Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t that Kim Yu’s puppet?”

“It’s psychotic. Why only the head? Does she have a grudge against dolls?”

“Chae-young, come here quickly. Didn’t you leave your doll at school yesterday? You’re in trouble!”

“Hey, hey. Let’s stay outside. It’s scary. I don’t want to be in the classroom.”

“Are you accusing me of being the first in my class? Are you out of your mind? The whole school is going crazy right now, and you think I’m going to crawl into the second and third grade classrooms to do this? I’m like, “Screw you, you’re trying to beat people up over some lousy doll”.”

All the heads of the dolls they’d left by the classroom window were gone.

On the windowsill was the body of the doll from the neck down and the remains of the cotton that must have been pulled out of it.

Upon hearing what had happened to the trophy and the dolls, the head of the art department and several other members rushed into the art room.

In the back of the room, against the easels, in the top cabinets of the closet, they kept class materials in boxes.

The woodcarving dolls would go back there after class.

“I need a chair.”

“Be careful.”

She stepped on the chair and climbed up to get the box.

The dolls’ heads had been ripped off.

The red line around their necks now looked like real blood.

Like the blood that colored the cuts made by the guillotine when the heads were removed.

The missing heads were nowhere to be found.

***

Arriving at the cemetery, Yin Charang immediately removed the doll from the urn.

Threads protruded from the torn cloth in a chaotic mess.

He turned the doll over and over, examining it carefully.

“Oh, there it is!”

He spotted something and quickly called Baek Iri.

“Hello? Baek Iri, I was just looking for it, and it’s really there, just like you and Seo Jun said.”

─Really? After all…

A very thin, fine trace of red meteor magic remained on the edge of the cloth where the head would have been attached.

He hadn’t noticed it before because the fur was dark brown.

“You said that the dolls in your school also lost their heads, right?”

—Yes. The culprit who ripped off the heads of the rabbit dolls must have been hiding in our school.

“Well, did the rabbit dolls lose their heads as well?”

—Maybe they’re with the doll heads at my school.

“I’m coming to your school right now.”

He hung up and prepared to run out the door.

But a hand stopped him.

“Big brother, where are you going? Are you going to pick up the rabbit?”

It was the ghost of a child.

***

“Hey, hey, hey! Yin Charang? No, don’t just say what you have to say and hang up. Seo Jun, Charang is coming.”

When I told Seo Jun the news, her reaction was that she knew it was coming.

I think her eyes rolled when I said, “The rabbit head is probably with the doll heads from our school,” but she insisted on listening to the whole thing.

I said, “They’re probably together,” but who can find them?

We haven’t even found the puppet heads from our school yet!

Even if they are with the rabbit head he is looking for and the missing heads from our school, we still don’t know where they are!

How many classrooms are there in a high school?

I dialed the number again, hoping to stop him in his tracks.

—Hello? Baek Iri?

“Hey, I’ll call you when I find the doll heads. I haven’t found any yet. I don’t even know where it is.”

—Really? Then I’ll go find it myself!

“Is he coming?”

“Uh, he said he’d find it himself.”

“He’s not even allowed in the school building.”

“I know. The atmosphere is bad enough, why let outsiders wander around in class?”

“I have to tell you. They can’t do anything.”

“Uh, wait. I’ll call him. I’ll tell him not to come.”

Seo Jun wanted to call Yin Charang, but I told her I’d call him back.

‘Charang, be thankful that you have a sensitive friend like me, because it would break your heart to hear “don’t come” directly from your crush.’

Ring…. ring…..

“Why don’t you answer your phone?”

He hangs up, but doesn’t answer.

I don’t know what he’s doing or why he hasn’t picked up after ten rings.

What is he trying to do, even if he’s really here, he won’t even set foot on campus.

I hope he hasn’t gotten on the subway yet.

I’ll try another call and if he doesn’t answer. I’ll just leave a message.

Ring…. ring…..

Then,

“Hello… Is there a Baek Iri here?”

The back door slid open and I heard a voice asking for me.

A girl with short hair and a cute face looked around carefully, and when she saw me, she let out a small gasp.

“You must be Baek Iri, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

I handed my cell phone back to Seo Jun, which was still ringing, and walked over to the student who had called me.

“I’m Kim Hae-yoon, freshman class 5, and I was wondering if you’re still accepting clients…”

“Uh, yeah. Of course we are. Are you here to ask for a referral?”

“Yes…! It’s about a doll’s head…”

‘You’re asking me to find a head, right?’

“Can you look at this doll’s head…?”

“I see. I’ll do my best to find it…, hmm? What?!”

Kim Hae-yoon said the exact opposite of what I expected.

“Uh, it first appeared yesterday and I threw it away because it didn’t seem to have an owner, but when I came in this morning, it was on my chair again…! I threw it away, but it keeps coming back. I even buried it earlier in the garden behind the building, but it’s back again…! It’s back in its place…!”

When she finished, Kim Hae-yoon was almost crying.

“Calm down. Where is the doll now?”

“Oh, it’s still in its place, I’m too scared to touch it now… It’s even scarier now that it’s only the head. I think I’m going to be really traumatized. Earlier, I dozed off and even dreamt of a giant rabbit head flying at me…”

What? What kind of head? A rabbit?

“You had a dream about a rabbit’s head flying at you?”

“Yes… Didn’t I tell you? It’s a stuffed rabbit head, the one that keeps appearing on my chair. It’s a brown stuffed rabbit head.”

A brown rabbit doll head.

Surely the rabbit doll in the picture we saw yesterday was…

“…with the fluffy fur and the tiny little green ribbons in its ears?”

“Huh? That’s right! How did you know?”

“Hae-yoon, wait here for a moment.”

I left Hae-yoon alone in the hallway and hurried back to Seo Jun.

“I just got off the phone with him. I told him he doesn’t have to come.”

“Awww, great timing!”

“…What’s wrong?”