Chapter 89
Yang Juhee generally has an easygoing personality.
Of course, she had a prickly cat-like side too, but as long as you didn't touch her reverse scale, she was mostly laid-back.
That's why even Jung-seok and I, who aren't used to women because we're from an all-boys school, could chat comfortably with Yang Juhee, occasionally cracking jokes and laughing together.
But today's Yang Juhee was all irritation, as if someone had not just stroked her reverse scale but thoroughly messed it up.
"There are too many women!"
Complaining about too many women when she's a woman herself. It's obviously because of the quirk.
Right, I gathered them all today because of this quirk. I tapped the table to clear the air.
"Anyway, one of you three will have to keep the quirk for a while today. I'll cure the quirk of the other person as soon as I accumulate points, but you'll have to wait a bit."
Now, when we don't know when or how random matching will occur. Living with a quirk was like hugging a time bomb.
Who are we going to put the bomb necklace on?
In other words, we now had to push one person onto a plank precariously balanced over a sea where sharks lurk.
As everyone started eyeing each other, Jung-seok raised his hand.
"I'll keep the quirk. Cure Bong Ji-yeon and Yang Juhee."
"...Really? Hey, you might be saying that because you're not thinking straight right now."
Love-crazed Jung-seok might be trying to sacrifice himself for Bong Ji-yeon. When I spoke seriously, Jung-seok also put on a serious expression.
"I'm being serious. This is an opportunity for me to research the quirk. We don't actually know much about these quirks, right? And look at me. Do I seem abnormal?"
I looked at Jung-seok.
Compared to Yang Juhee and Bong Ji-yeon, who looked uneasy as if they'd taken some drug, Jung-seok's attitude hadn't changed much.
Jung-seok's attitude unchanged whether he had a quirk or not.
In other words, Jung-seok's usual obsession with Bong Ji-yeon was already no different from a quirk. At this point, it feels impressive.
"Hey, I'll definitely cure your quirk somehow, no matter what."
Jung-seok was an indispensable strategist for me.
If he went crazy like Kwon Suho, I definitely wouldn't be able to break through the Nightmare Corridor.
The same went for Yang Juhee.
Right now, Yang Juhee had become like a drug addict... but actually, Yang Juhee could have escaped with the talisman I gave her. She gave that talisman to me and asked me to remember her.
Yang Juhee's brave ability would be a great help in breaking through the corridor.
In the end, is Bong Ji-yeon the only useless one?
Bong Ji-yeon! Get out of my pirate crew! I wanted to say that, but I couldn't because I was conscious of Jung-seok. Jung-seok said:
"So, can't you see ghosts these days? Fighting ghosts earns you points well, right?"
"Well... I can't see them these days either."
The ghosts that used to bother me weren't showing up much these days. It was fortunate for me, but also unfortunate in a way.
Unfortunate because I can't meet ghosts. As I was thinking what a strange situation this was, Bong Ji-yeon said:
"If you can't see ghosts, you can go find them, right? Like when we found Gu Hyena's body at the lodge. Can't we just go to places where ghosts appear and take them down?"
Ding-
It felt like a spring popped in my head. Bong Ji-yeon added:
"I've been interested in horoscopes and talismans lately, so I've been looking into it. Ghost hotspots? I looked into things like that. Like Jang Hee-bin's tomb. The one that's supposed to boost your love luck? You know?"
Jang Hee-bin's tomb! The place where the laughing dancing ghost appears!
In other words, it was like a dungeon where high-level ghosts appear.
"...We're going there? I heard even shamans avoid that place..."
Just then, Yoo Dahee shuddered. She seemed reluctant, but I thought it was a great idea.
A ghost that even shamans avoid. That must mean it's a powerful boss ghost. And I needed such a boss ghost!
"...The second floor ghosts were really tough. If we had powerful ghosts in my mercenary group too, it might help in tackling the second floor ghosts."
We needed powerful ghosts and a lot of points.
Hunting ghosts by going around─.
Like Pokémon trainers traveling around the country collecting Pokémon!
It was a really good idea. Who would have thought Bong Ji-yeon, who I thought was useless, would come up with this?
"Bong Ji-yeon, you can stay in my pirate crew."
"What are you saying? Hmph-."
As Bong Ji-yeon snorted annoyingly, Yang Juhee glared at me and Bong Ji-yeon with blazing eyes. I should cure everyone's quirks except Jung-seok's first.
Anyway, today is Saturday. Weekend. I said to Ms. Hong Mi-ri:
"Then teacher, let's all go to Jang Hee-bin's tomb quickly!"
Ghost exorcism and capture and point acquisition! Let's go!
***
"Um. Will this really be okay?"
I asked Ms. Hong Mi-ri, who had rented a van, with a slightly worried look. Ms. Hong Mi-ri was a novice driver who hadn't been driving for long. I wondered if it was okay for her to suddenly drive a van that seats over 10 people.
We have to drive on the highway. If something goes wrong, won't we all be done for? We'd become ghosts while trying to catch ghosts.
"Hey, everyone get in!"
But Ms. Hong Mi-ri was confident. In the end, we all got into the van that felt quite spacious.
I sat in the front passenger seat, Yang Juhee and Yoo Dahee sat together in the back, and Jung-seok and Bong Ji-yeon sat in the very back seats.
Yoo Dahee chuckled.
"It feels like we're going on a field trip...!"
A field trip? I guess you could see it that way if you thought about it, though I wasn't sure if going to Jang Hee-bin's tomb to meet a terrifying ghost could be considered a field trip.
Soon, Yoo Dahee added a few more words.
"Later, let's definitely go to the pond at our villa too! They say there's a water ghost there too!"
Is a water ghost appearing something to be said with such a bright expression? Soon, Yang Juhee snapped at Yoo Dahee.
"You crazy girl. We're not going on a fun trip, you know? And Jang Hee-bin's ghost and the water ghost are rumored to be ghosts that even shamans avoid, so why are you giggling about meeting them?!"
Yang Juhee's words were a complete fact bomb. Even Yoo Dahee, who had always been smiling, frowned.
But either not knowing how to get angry or just not wanting to, she just moved her lips a few times before closing them tightly without saying anything. She was sulking. Yoo Dahee's emotions are easier to read than I thought.
I used to think Yoo Dahee was a girl with many secrets and hard to figure out, but now that I've gotten to know her better, few people show their emotions as easily as Yoo Dahee.
Come to think of it, Bong Ji-yeon was also an easy-to-understand type.
"Hey! Why are you crushing our Dahee's spirit! Since we're going to a scary place anyway, isn't it better to go with a good mood?! Don't you know that what's good is good?"
Bong Ji-yeon volunteered as Yoo Dahee's handmaid. People are really easy to understand.
Of course, Bong Ji-yeon was only kind to Yoo Dahee.
"Hey! Jung-seok! It's cramped! Move over there a bit! And you're hot, so stay away!"
Bong Ji-yeon still disliked Jung-seok. Jung-seok moved away from Bong Ji-yeon, looking deflated.
Come to think of it, Jung-seok's favorability had plummeted because he doubted Bong Ji-yeon in the principal's office, but since everyone didn't remember, that incident had become as if it never happened.
I guess that's fortunate for Jung-seok.
However, even though Bong Ji-yeon spoke as if she disliked Jung-seok, she was also the one who first noticed that Jung-seok had been reversed into a ghost in the science lab. Maybe Bong Ji-yeon actually likes Jung-seok?
As I was thinking about this, the car started moving.
Geographically, Gaeryong Metropolitan City was located in the central part of South Korea.
So it had excellent transportation and roads open in all directions, making it good for traveling here and there.
Being from Seoul, I thought the only famous thing in Gaeryong Metropolitan City, known as a boring city, was Jeongsim-dang bread, but it had more good points than I expected. I guess a metropolitan city is still a metropolitan city, even if it's rotten.
Soft soft my heart─
Like clear stream water-.
Stream stream stream water─.
"What's with these songs these days? Geez."
Ms. Hong Mi-ri clicked her tongue at the song but seemed to be in a good mood. Honestly, it was probably fun driving on the highway with the car audio blasting music.
Even Yang Juhee, who had scolded Yoo Dahee earlier saying "We're not going on a fun trip, you know?", was enjoying herself, singing along to the loud music.
"Hey! Play another song! Try playing Nympfinity Love too!"
Honestly, it felt like we were going on a trip. Boys and girls mixed, driving on the highway under a teacher's guidance.
Although it was filled with fear and horror, if you thought of it as a scene of youth, it felt quite romantic.
We stopped at a rest area, bought ramen and sausages for lunch, got some walnut cookies, and before we knew it, it was lunchtime. We were getting closer and closer to where Hee-bin's tomb was said to be. Jung-seok, who was looking at his phone, said:
"Hee-bin Jang, Jang Ok-jeong was a concubine of King Sukjong of Joseon, and she became even more famous for appearing in historical dramas. Maybe because she was a woman with such strong energy, they say a tree grew through a rock at her tomb."
Jung-seok's brief history time. It was a story about how Jang Hee-bin was such a fierce and terrifying woman that she was given poison and died. There were very strange stories about jealousy, court slander, and so on.
Yang Juhee, who was listening to the story, clicked her tongue.
"Isn't Sukjong, who had multiple wives, more of a problem than Jang Hee-bin? If Sukjong hadn't been with multiple women in the first place, wouldn't those things not have happened?"
"It was customary for kings at that time to have multiple wives for succession. You can't understand that time by today's moral standards. They say the Joseon kings deliberately left their women to fight among themselves."
Leaving women to fight among themselves to... solidify their own power more? These were stories I couldn't understand.
The important thing was that Jang Hee-bin was the epitome of a woman with incredibly strong energy.
A woman with strong energy...
I glanced at the people sitting in the back through the rearview mirror. Soon, my eyes met Yang Juhee's.
"What? What is it."
"......"
I felt like I could understand King Sukjong's feelings a bit. Why are there only women with strong energy around me?
As I was thinking this, Jung-seok added:
"At some point, a superstition spread that Jang Hee-bin's tomb would help single women with their love lives. They say if you bow in front of the tomb and do a crane dance, your love luck will increase. It's about receiving energy."
There really are all kinds of stories. That's what I thought, but Jung-seok's impression was a bit different.
"Bowing and dancing. I think it might be a kind of summoning ritual. It's an act of calling out the ghost from the tomb. Whether it works or not, I don't know... but the probability is likely high. Actually, the problem is what happens after summoning the ghost."
A ghost so powerful that even shamans avoid it.
To exorcise and capture such a ghost after summoning it... it meant we needed some kind of countermeasure. We can't even use the dinosaur ghost that was our trump card anymore.
Thinking about it again, I really missed the dinosaur ghost. If we had the dinosaur ghost, we could have easily conquered the hellish second floor of the Nightmare Corridor.
Wait... should we be going to a dinosaur fossil site instead of Jang Hee-bin's tomb? Didn't dinosaurs become ghosts after they died? Did the meteor ghost kill all the dinosaur ghosts?
Anyway. My thoughts had wandered.
"...Teacher, you'll handle it somehow, right?"
"What? I don't know much about that stuff. Not at all when it comes to exorcism."
Ms. Hong Mi-ri, whom I had been counting on, shook her head.
It was a disappointing moment, as I had been secretly hoping that Ms. Hong Mi-ri would fight and defeat the dancing laughing ghost. But... with the strong-willed Yang Juhee and Yoo Dahee, the daughter of a shaman, here, we should be able to manage somehow.
With that feeling, we arrived at the cemetery when the sun was high in the sky. We had to pay 1,000 won to enter the place with various tombs. I was relieved that they didn't forbid us from entering, which I had half expected.
It was quiet, perhaps because there was nothing to see but tombs, even though it was a tourist site. There were a few young women who looked like they had come to see Hee-bin's tomb like us.
Are they trying to receive love luck?
"It's here."
The tomb looked rather shabby for someone buried as a great villainess.
But... it's eerie somehow, even in broad daylight. Maybe the ghost really does appear.
Thinking that, I asked the girls:
"Then bow to the tomb and do the crane dance."
Pretty girls' crane dance time. Honestly, I was looking forward to that as much as the ghost.
"You have to really imitate a crane, okay?"