Chapter 15
015 – I Am an Army (4)
#There may be a scary illustration!#
While following the footprints with Jo Se-na,
I noticed they climbed the wall and continued all the way across the ceiling.
I casually raised just my eyes, acting as if I hadn't noticed it.
To describe what I saw then, I might need several pages.
I had neither the time nor the nerve for that.
For now, all I could think was that I had to get Jo Se-na behind me.
“Three!”
“Hey, you son of a━─!”
Jo Se-na toppled backward behind me at my hurried countdown,
but that was probably for the best.
Ssssk─.
Something like a long strand of kelp had dropped down from right above where she'd been and tried to wrap around her.
I had no doubt that if she'd been even a little slower, it would have caught her.
I didn't want to imagine what would happen after that.
“Aah, what the hell is that?!”
Jo Se-na's face, as she landed on her butt and looked up at the ceiling, turned even paler.
Between her ragged breaths, strands of hair spread across the ceiling like a spiderweb.
And between those strands of hair,
a woman was grinning so widely her mouth stretched to her ears.
My eyes met hers.
I saw it,
and it saw me.
Watching its eyes dart around made every drop of blood drain from my face.
The only reason I didn't turn and run right then was that I had at least a little faith in my aluminum-foil clothes and holy water.
Let's do this.
Let's do this.
“Kihihihihihihi!”
Swoooooosh─.
The long strands of hair stretching in every direction lunged at me─.
─or so I thought, but they wrapped around Jo Se-na's neck as she was awkwardly getting back up.
“Guhk, urgh!”
Jo Se-na was instantly hoisted into the air, flailing.
She clawed at the hair coiled around her neck, eyes bulging as she kicked her legs beneath her dress back and forth like she was swimming.
Her high heels flew off, and yellow urine streamed down her thighs.
Was that what a person being hanged looked like?
“Kghk, ghk—kh—urk!”
For one second, I was overwhelmed by a sight I'd never seen before and froze without thinking.
Fwip─.
Something moved quickly beside me.
It was Bori-bori.
Bori-bori had rushed beneath Jo Se-na's wildly thrashing feet and grabbed hold of them.
“Restes! Restes!”
Bori-bori shouted a word I couldn't understand at the top of its lungs, clinging to Jo Se-na's ankles with its tiny hands and desperately pushing her upward.
Its whole body trembled, and its face was so red it looked like its veins might burst.
Only then did I snap back to my senses.
“Sis!”
I ran over too, wrapped my arms around her legs, and lifted them high.
That should make it a little easier for her to breathe.
Crack, craaack—.
But the hair around her neck kept tightening, making an ominous sound. At this rate, her neck bones would snap.
Once I realized that, I understood that holding up her feet wasn't doing much.
So I drew the Opening magic circle on the cap of the water bottle I'd just pulled out, and opened it.
“Die, you ugly bitch!”
The liquid inside the water bottle.
My special homemade holy water.
Hoping to God it would work, I splashed every last drop onto the woman hanging from the ceiling.
Splash, splash—.
The droplets wobbled as they flew through the air.
The instant they touched her, everything changed.
“━━───!!!”
An astonishingly shrill sound burst from the woman's mouth as she grinned.
It reverberated like a bunch of animals and people had all been crammed into a single cave and were screaming.
It was probably a scream.
She let out that scream and dropped to the floor with a thud.
Ssssss─.
As the mass of black hair lost its strength, Jo Se-na fell to the floor too, like a marionette with its strings cut.
“Aah, shit… cough!”
“Sis, are you okay?”
“I… I wet myself….”
“You’re joking, so I guess you’re okay.”
Jo Se-na grimaced as she rubbed her neck.
She adjusted her sunglasses, then pulled something like a spray from her handbag and spritzed her neck.
There was a sharp smell for a moment, then Jo Se-na spoke in a much better voice.
“Cough, was that holy water in the bottle? Ugh, it reeks, but it works. What was your name again?”
“Ha Yu-seong.”
“Ha Yu-seong, honestly… cough, I’ll admit you helped me. But you’re not cut out to make a living as a magician in this line of work.”
“Why say something nasty right after admitting it?”
“If it’d been you in trouble, I wouldn’t have saved you.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
As I frowned, Jo Se-na kept clearing her throat and said,
“It’s not just me. Choi Jang-gun, and probably Mr. Yoo Ga-in too, would’ve done the same. The fewer people there are, the more the rest of us get to split the reward. That’s how magicians are.”
Her serious expression and voice made it clear she wasn't joking.
Pssht, pssht, pssht─.
Jo Se-na began spraying the woman lying on the floor, too.
“I’m going to set up a barrier around that girl now. If we finish before Choi Jang-gun or Mr. Yoo Ga-in gets here, we’ll get more credit, which means we can get a bigger cut.”
Fwoosh!
She took out a few candles and lit them,
then poured a circle of holy water she'd brought herself.
# # #
The long-haired woman didn't move inside the bizarre barrier we'd made.
She was simply lying face down.
Jo Se-na tied her wrists and ankles with rope.
Perhaps in revenge for having her own neck squeezed, she knotted them so tight─.
“If this were a Dusk-class anomaly, the spray I used should've exorcised it by itself. This is probably Hohwan-class. And I don't think there's only one spirit inside that girl.”
“What if there’s more than one?”
“There are several spirits inside her. Even if you spent your whole life deliberately wandering haunted houses and abandoned buildings, it'd be hard to end up like that. What on earth has she been doing?”
Jo Se-na let out an irritated sigh.
“Hah, I'm an alchemy-type magician, so I can't exorcise a Hohwan-class anomaly with the equipment I have now. We need to get that shaman or Mr. Ga-in here.”
Alchemy-type.
Another word I didn't know.
“I'm going to get Mr. Ga-in. Stay here and keep watch. If whatever's inside her talks to you, don't answer it. Got it?”
“You're going alone? Will you be okay?”
“Just answer me. Got it or not?”
“Yes. I'll be careful.”
Jo Se-na lit a cigarette and blew out a puff of smoke.
The smoke turned into butterflies and fluttered away somewhere, and Jo Se-na followed them, her heels clicking.
When she was out of sight,
Ssslither─.
The woman who'd been lying inside the candlelit barrier got up.
Then she rubbed the back of her head and groaned.
“Ugh, my head. Where am I…?”
When she swept aside her hair with a bony hand, the face of a slightly gaunt woman appeared.
She looked to be in her early twenties. Her eyes were sunken and her skin dull, but her features were beautiful.
“Wh-who are you? Is this… a basement? Ugh, it's freezing!”
She looked at me with wide, deer-like eyes, behaving like an ordinary woman.
“Why am I… tied up? Untie me! Please, untie me! Daaad! Mooo-m! Somebody help me! Is there nobody heeere─!?”
“……”
“Who are you, anyway? Why are you doing this to me?! Please, just untie me! H-help me, please….”
Tears streamed down her face, and she looked genuinely wronged and terrified.
Like a young woman who'd been kidnapped.
A few days ago, I might've been taken in.
“Urrrrr….”
Bori-bori was staring at the woman, its tail bristling straight up.
It wrinkled its nose and growled like an angry beast.
So I decided to ignore her.
Then the woman, who'd been crying for a while, suddenly began screaming as if she'd gotten angry.
“What have I ever done to you for you to treat me like this?! Stop tormenting me! I'll kill youuu!!”
She'd cry, then scream.
She'd beg in a thin voice, then rage in a deep one.
Her wildly shifting behavior gave me a serious chill.
Just then, Jo Se-na appeared again.
Kim Man-chun was panting beside her.
“Shit, I can't find that shaman or Mr. Ga-in! Looks like we'll have to handle this ourselves!”
“Ye… Yeon-seo!”
Mr. Kim's eyes grew as big as giant candies.
His daughter, Yeon-seo, cried out to him.
“Dad! Dad, save me! These ropes are so tight, they hurt! And it's so, so, so cold here! Dad, I'm scared! What is this? Dad, save meee! Cough, cough, achoo!”
Seeing Yeon-seo crying and coughing in such a pitiful voice made me think of my younger sister, who'd been sick a lot as a child, and it made me feel awful.
How much worse must it be for Mr. Kim, her father?
Mr. Kim grabbed my shoulder, looking as if he might burst into tears at any moment.
“This is the first time in months that Yeon-seo has recognized me! Can't we untie her now!? She'll catch a cold!”
“Absolutely not, Mr. Kim.”
Jo Se-na said firmly and handed Mr. Kim a candle.
“I called you here to make a triangular formation. Stand over here. You mustn't let the triangle fall out of shape.”
“…A triangle?”
“You've heard of the Holy Trinity or the Bermuda Triangle, right? In magical theory, a triangle is a solid framework. But if even one vertex disappears─.”
Jo Se-na fell silent.
Somehow, her silence and omission seemed to say more than a long explanation could.
She held out a branch to me.
“This is a peach branch. Looks like Choi Jang-gun dropped it.”
“Why are you giving this to me?”
“You could see the footprints of those spirits. You probably have a strong aptitude for mediumistic magic. And since you could make holy water, you likely have an aptitude for alchemy and ritual magic, too.”
“So?”
“Exorcism magic works best when performed by someone with an aptitude for mediumistic or ritual magic. Since that shaman and Mr. Yoo Ga-in aren't here, you'll have to do it.”
What was I supposed to do with this peach branch?
Still, I wasn't a complete beginner.
After Bori-bori became visible to me, I'd watched a few movies about exorcisms.
And I did have a ‘secret weapon’ I'd brought along with the bottle of holy water and the aluminum foil.
If I used it, maybe I could manage somehow.
“Sis, I have one condition. Do you have any cloth? Use it to cover Mr. Kim's and your eyes. You absolutely must not open them.”
My secret weapon was something I didn't want other people to see, if I could help it.
Especially magicians like Jo Se-na. I wanted to keep it secret from them.
“…Huh? You want me to cover my eyes?”
Mr. Kim looked close to tears as he glanced back and forth between me and his daughter.
Then, perhaps seeing the resolve written all over my face, he accepted a towel from Jo Se-na.
He must've been desperate to save his daughter, willing to grasp at even a straw.
“…Yu-seong, what are you planning to do? Are you sure you can handle it?”
Jo Se-na covered her own eyes too and asked me in an uncertain voice.
I could feel how full of distrust her voice was.
When everyone had covered their eyes,
I took my secret weapon out of my pants pocket.
The moment Yeon-seo saw it, her hair stood on end and she shouted.
“Ah, D-Dad! This man is touching my breasts! Aaaah! Dad, this man is━─!”
Yeon-seo screamed until her throat nearly tore.
“Aaaah! You pervert! Daaaad! Daaad, save meee! This man is touching my butt! Aaaaaaah!”
Starting with that?
Mr. Kim was so flustered his whole body trembled.
“Y-Yeon-seo!!!! Hey!!!! What are you doing to my daughter━─!!!”
Mr. Kim reached for the cloth covering his face.
I hurriedly grabbed his hand.
“Absolutely not! You must not open your eyes!”
I hadn't expected her to react like that, so I was a little flustered too,
but one thing was clear now.
Those things—no, those entities—were afraid of my ‘secret weapon.’
A pad of sticky notes that cost 2,000 won.
The magic circles densely drawn across every page.
The hour I'd spent making it─!
Rrrip─.
I tore off a page bearing an Opening magic circle and slapped it onto Yeon-seo's forehead.
“You filthy ghosts.”
“U-geh!”
The woman's eyes flew wide open, and her black pupils rolled back.
“Get out of that poor woman's body!”