An Exorcist Magical Girl! Chapter 90

“It’s a shame, because it doesn’t really solve anything… But there are teachers who really want to protect their students from this kind of unorthodox behavior.”

 

“And you’re one of them…”

 

“Yes, I am.”

 

Mr. Jang said the school, where young students in their late teens must spend a third of their day, should be a comfortable and safe place, not a fear-filled space like the current unguarded girls’ high school.

 

“Like-minded teachers and the PTA have tried many things, but they have failed. We couldn’t even get a small exorcism company to come in, and then you transferred.”

 

The PTA and some of the teachers were thrilled to hear that I was an aspiring exorcist, and they had been waiting for an opportunity to offer me an exorcism on campus.

 

“I was going to ask you to exorcize only as many ghosts as the aspirant line can handle, but since you’ve just transferred to the school, we decided not to burden you until you’re more settled.”

 

He said he had made a similar offer to Seo Jun last year and had been rebuffed, so he was waiting for the right time to make the request, hoping to be more discreet with me.

 

“But I didn’t know you were going to start a whole school exorcism business first…”

 

They hadn’t even asked her to do it, but she had started it.

 

I wanted to ask him how he felt, but I was still too scared to joke around with this teacher, so I kept quiet.

 

“We want to support you as much as we can, but for now we’re going to pay you for all the exorcisms you’ve done at Mukgyeong Girls’ High School. The students don’t know what they’re getting into, so it’s only right that we adults get paid for our work.”

 

“What? Oh no, you don’t have to pay me for all the work I’ve done so far…”

 

The exorcism request was originally a way to speed up the progress of the defense work. It wasn’t exactly a losing proposition.

 

But the teacher, who didn’t know the situation, wouldn’t budge.

 

“This is not a job for a drink and a thank you. What you’ve done for me is worth more than that, and it always will be. When students refer you, we’ll make sure they get what they deserve.”

 

“Uh, yeah. Thank you…”

 

“And…, there’s one more thing I’d like to ask of you.”

 

“Yes, please tell me.”

 

“I don’t know if I should ask you.”

 

Mr. Jang thought for a moment, then spoke.

 

“Do you think you could take an exorcist’s eye on the roof to see if there is anything unusual?”

 

“The roof? Isn’t the roof locked right now…?”

 

“Yes. I put a new lock on the roof after the self-study incident last Friday night, and I heard that Heo Kyung-wook was the one who kept the key.”

 

According to the story, Heo Kyung-wook, the son of the president of Mukgyeong Girls’ High School, had a negative attitude about locking the roof, saying, “Why bother locking the door inconveniently?”

 

However, he finally agreed to lock the door on the condition that he would keep the key himself instead of leaving it with the security office.

 

This meant that Heo Kyung-wook had to have a reason to be able to get on and off the roof freely without anyone in between.

 

“Maybe I’m being too suspicious about something that doesn’t mean anything.”

 

“No, you’re not being too suspicious at all. I think it’s totally suspicious, there’s definitely something to it.”

 

Maybe he didn’t keep the keys just to light a cigarette

.

I’m suddenly intrigued.

 

“Just leave them with me.”

 

“Thanks. I’ll figure out a way to get in and out of the roof.”

 

“Oh, that’s okay, I can just disembody.”

 

If I disembodied like I did today, I could go in and out of the roof freely without a key.

 

However, when Mr. Jang heard this, he became very confused.

 

“…I don’t know if it’s right to let a disembodied person go out on purpose.”

 

“Oh, it’s not dangerous. Wouldn’t it be more dangerous to go up theremyself? You don’t and I don’t.”

 

I wonder what he’ll say when he finds out I disembodied for the Head Collector  incident today, too.

 

I argued that disembodiment was far preferable to being found on a rooftop for “investigative purposes,” and he finally agreed.

 

“Do you want me to go up there now?”

 

“No, you don’t have to. There will be a more appropriate time.”

 

“A more appropriate time?”

 

“Right after Mr. Heo goes up on the roof. There are a few days a month when Mr. Heo comes to work before dawn, usually on Mondays. Anyway, on those days, he would leave his luggage in the faculty office and stay there for a while, then come down from the roof around eight o’clock.”

 

Heo regularly visits the rooftop in the morning.

 

He says he used to go there just to get some air or to smoke.

 

Since the rooftop blockade, it’s been speculated that people go to the rooftop for more than just “passing time without meaning.”

 

There was a reason why Heo had to go to the roof twice a month on Mondays.

 

And uncovering that reason is what I have to do in the future.

 

 

***

 

 

With the mass out-of-body experience officially “off the books,” the atmosphere in the school after lunch could not have been more peaceful.

 

For the students of Mukgyeong Girls’ High School, the palm incident and the missing head were already in the past.

 

This brought to the surface a story that had been rumored but not much talked about.

 

It was about a “traitor” in the PTA who worked with Heo Kyung-wook to prevent the school board from intervening in school affairs.

 

The unidentified parent and her daughter were called scumbags, worse than Kang Yoon-ju, and talked about countless times.

 

Some even brought up Kang Yoon-ju to criticize them.

 

“Do you think they would have sided with Heo Kyung-wook out of their own mouths? They would have made it a condition that he leaked the test papers or falsified the results. Our Yoon-ju may have done some classified things, but she didn’t commit a crime.”

 

“Kang Yoon-ju needs to be re-evaluated.”

 

Of course, Kang’s reputation hadn’t really changed for the better.

 

From the time of the palm incident until now, the number of vicious accusations piling up in real time in her anonymous question box on social media hadn’t decreased at all.

 

It occurred to me that maybe the unidentified “friend of Kang Yoon-ju” who did Bunshin Saba with her was the daughter of the PTA traitor.

 

I heard that the first person to discover Bunshin Saba was Mr. Choi Wan-beom.

 

Like Park Eun-kyung, Choi Wan-beom was famous as a teacher of the Heo Kyung-wook lineage.

 

If Kang Yoon-ju’s friend was really in cahoots with Heo Kyung-wook, then Choi Wan-beom must have known about their relationship. 

 

It’s impossible that the boss didn’t know who the student he cared about was. 

 

That’s why he turned a blind eye at the crime scene so that Kang Yoon-ju’s friend could get away with it. 

 

Oh, that makes sense, that is a possibility?

 

It is a plausible enough scenario, right?

 

But I didn’t go around telling other people about it.

 

I was afraid that if I made more noise, it would get to Heo’s ears.

 

He was already keeping an eye on me because of my exorcism business on campus.

 

I didn’t want to draw more attention to myself, so I decided to keep quiet.

 

There’s no point in raising his guard unnecessarily, it’ll be really annoying.

 

Thinking about it, I slowly fell asleep.

 

The tiredness from the morning’s work hit me all at once.

 

I looked over and saw that Seo Jun was in a similar state.

 

After the mission at the Rapid Transit Station, she said.

 

“Let’s not have dinner tonight and sleep at this time.”

 

Seo Jun glanced over the sentence I’d scribbled on the desk and nodded.

 

Her eyes narrowed.

 

 

***

 

“Exorcist…”

 

He muttered, habitually tugging at the neck of his trademark red socks to stretch them.

 

His elderly father was the chairman in name only, but all the real power in the school rested with his son.

 

Because Heo wielded power so stubbornly, he was inevitably called names.

 

From speculation that he embezzled the budget and didn’t have enough money to hire an exorcism company, to the fact that he didn’t realize that the school was already rumored to be a graveyard school nationwide and still stupidly believed that keeping his mouth shut was the way to protect the school’s reputation, to the fact that he was so deeply involved in the cult that he welcomed ghosts.

 

He didn’t bother to correct these myths.

 

He was happy with the situation where misconceptions were more convincing than the truth.

 

The more so, the further the truth is pushed into the darkness.

 

He hoped that the truth would never see the light of day.

 

He wanted to be forever shrouded in lies that seemed real.

 

He found the exorcists, Baek Iri and Seo Jun, quite frightening and annoying.

 

At one point, he thought about gently nudging them to change schools, or worse, grabbing them by the pods and expelling them from school, but he knew better than that, knowing full well that it would be a waste of time and effort.

 

“Seo Jun doesn’t give a shit about school, which is fine, but her stupid ass is a pain in the ass, and she’ll get an exorcism as soon as she transfers. Damn thing. You never know where it’s gonna pop up.”

 

Well, he didn’t want to sanction his heroism.

 

What Baek Iri is dealing with are the ghosts on the surface, the ones that are in direct contact with the students and are trying to harm or inconvenience them.

 

…Well, he was able to silence some of the students’ complaints, so he should forgive her for that.

 

He thought to himself.

 

As long as Baek Iri doesn’t cross the line first.

 

As long as he didn’t approach “it”, he wouldn’t interfere with them.