An Exorcist Magical Girl!

“Did that sound come from the shopping bag?” “I think so…?”

 

Hana looked down at the shopping bag in her hand with trembling eyes.

 

Then, with a jolt, she realized her mistake and threw the bag away.

 

“Oh, shit!”

 

Hana jumped up and down, dusting her hands off.

 

“I was holding it! I was holding it with my bare hands!” “Oh, Hana, why did you throw it?” “Does it matter now?” “Didn’t it just say Yoonju? It called Kang Yoonju, right?” “Kang Yoonju, crazy bastard. If you’re going to transfer schools, you have to do it nicely, what the hell did you do?”

Hana mumbled.

 

Meanwhile, the shopping bag kept repeating

“Yoonju”

like a broken record.

 “Wait a minute. Calm down, everyone.”

 

Angela, the club’s president, stepped forward to calm the chaos.

 

“Let’s calm down and put aside our prejudices. Just because this place is supposed to be haunted doesn’t mean we should jump to the conclusion that ghosts are behind everything. Maybe it’s just a tape recorder or something?” 

With that, Angela picked up a shopping bag from the floor.

 

The students all started screaming and tried to stop her.

 

“Put that down!” “Don’t open it! If you open it, you’ll die and I’ll die!” “Prez, don’t open it!” “Don’t touch it!”

 

Amidst the shouts, Angela hastily explained that she hadn’t meant to open it.

 “Well, I thought maybe if I touched it, I could get a rough idea of what it was.” “So what does it feel like?” “Well, first of all, it’s lighter than I thought it would be. It’s fluffy. Is it a cushion?”

 

Angela continued to speculate, pressing firmly on the outside of the shopping bag.

 

It was like watching one of those

“guess the object by touch”

games on TV.

 

“Uhhh, it’s kind of shaped like a doll. These on either side are the arms, and this is the head… Hey, it’s a doll!”

 

Angela’s words caused the entire team to swallow their saliva in unison.

 

“It’s a doll…?” “Isn’t it Anabelle?”

Angela muttered, shaking, jiggling, and pressing the shopping bag again.

 

“I don’t think it comes with a recorder, though. There’s no way a recorder would just turn on at the right time after all this time of silence. I’ve been watching too many movies.”

 

After a long pause, Angela declared with conviction.

 

“Guys, I guess I didn’t have to be so prejudiced after all, it’s a ghost!”

 

At the same time, Angela threw down her shopping bag.

 “Ugh, creepy.”

 

Once it was clear that it was a ghost, the uncomfortable feelings came flooding back.

 

The group quickly began discussing what to do with the shopping bag.

 

“Let’s throw it away.” “Can’t we ask Kang Yoonju to take it?” “I doubt she’ll pick it up.” “Aren’t those things usually burned?” “Yes, but what if we just throw it away and then come back for it?” “My classmate has a flamethrower!”

 

Yuri remembered Yeon-seo’s flamethrower from the bug incident and quickly called her.

 “Hey, it’s Yuri, do you still have your flamethrower in your locker? Yes, I’ve suddenly found myself in need of it. Can I borrow it? Ah, sure, send me your locker combination in a flash. Thanks!” “Why does she have a flamethrower in her locker?”

someone listening in on the call asked.

 

“I’ll go to the classroom and get the flamethrower!”

Yuri said, and rushed to the classroom.

 

The others put their heads together and tried to figure out where to burn it.

 

Since it was a simple matter of burning something, presumably a doll, whole, it seemed like they were going to leave it to me to figure it out.

 

I remembered something I had read in a book not long ago.

 

Burning a possessed object doesn’t destroy the core of the spirit, but it does break the connection with the spirit that led to the object.

 

In other words, the spirit would no longer be able to possess it.

 

Part of me wanted to ask them to request an exorcism from me, but I didn’t.

 

My friends in the club quickly decided,

“Let’s just go outside and burn it before we get in trouble for setting the school on fire.” 

It wasn’t a special case like the bug incident, and it was a club that was already out of the teachers’ sight, so they didn’t want to get in trouble for playing with fire.

 

I listened to the whole conversation in silence, and then I raised my hand.

 

“Hey, guys, can I ask a question?”

 

Everyone’s heads snapped around to look at me. The members of the club nodded, as if to say,

“Anything goes”

.

 “Who the hell is Yoonju?”

 

“She’s a freshman on the art team that was here before you,”

Hana said in response to my question.

 

“Everywhere there are crazy people who do things outside of common sense. Kang Yoonju, the only freshman on the art team of the Mukgyeong Girls’ High School Theater Club, was a crazy person.”

 

Next to her, Ha Min-ju, the head of the writing team, narrated, while Sung Joo-yeon and Kim Min-ji from the art team provided background music.

 

“She has no common sense.” “Honestly, it’s better to be understaffed than to have her.” 

Angela and Hana gave a sour assessment with a straight face.

 

Sung Joo-yeon and Kim Min-ji nodded eagerly in agreement.

 

“Do you know what the first thing Yoonju did when she entered Mukgyeong Girls’ High School was?”

Hana asked me.

 

“Well, it must have been something pretty serious for you guys to go to such lengths. Did she steal something?” “The correct answer is necromancy! What the hell kind of mind did you have to come to the conclusion that you would do necromancy in this school?”

 

You faceless Yoonju, you should have just stolen.

 

“Now, what do you think is the second thing that Yoonju did after entering Mukgyeong Girls’ High School?”

 

Hana didn’t wait for my answer.

 

“The correct answer is soul breathing! By the way, there’s only one good thing Yoonju did when she entered Mukgyeong Girls’ High School, and that was transferring schools!” “What?!” *** 

 

Soul Breathing.

 

It’s a type of necromancy in which a doll is stuffed with rice, hair, nails, flesh, blood, etc. and sewn with red thread to summon ghosts, then played hide-and-seek with.

 

So is that the doll in the shopping bag that Kang Yoonju used? I don’t know if she couldn’t be bothered to dispose of it or if she just sealed it up because she couldn’t afford it, but either way, it was a big X-factor.

 

Necromancy twice in this haunted lair.

 

“Then why did she transfer schools?” “Well, it was right after the whole soul breathing thing, so I’m guessing it’s more of an “impatient” thing.” “Oh.”

 

So, she was doing necromancy without realizing it, and when things got out of hand, she got fired.

 

Anyway, in that situation, it was understandable that the doll was desperately calling out Yoonju’s name.

 

It must be crazy for her. Yoonju invited her to play and then suddenly ran away.

 “But I didn’t realize she left that thing behind. Can’t you just call Kang Yoonju and have her pick it up?”

 

Hana  muttered, glaring at the shopping bag.

 Thump, thump, thump!

 

The doll in the shopping bag is now pounding on the walls of the shopping bag.

 

“What if that thing rips?” “Oh, no. It’s all taped up, though. Do you think the doll will break through the tape?”

 

The club members exchanged anxious glances.

 

Meanwhile, Yuri returned with the flamethrower.

 

“Guys, let’s go burn it right now!”

 

The members of the club, led by Ha Min-ju, rushed outside.

 

Angela quietly grabbed a fire extinguisher from the back.

 

“Just in case.”

 

She shrugged, locking eyes with me.

 “Where are we going, anyway?” “Anywhere outside the school, where the teachers won’t see us.”

 

I swallowed hard, knowing that it would be impossible to go unnoticed if there were students running around with flamethrowers and fire extinguishers.

 

The doll in the shopping bag continued to make noise as we made our way down the stairs.

 

“Yoonju!”

 

Bam!

 

“Yoonju!”

 

Thump, thump!

 

I was put in charge of the shopping bag because I was the only one who could handle the situation, but it was so annoying that I wanted to throw it halfway down the stairs.

 

Luckily, there were still not many people at the school gates because we had been doing club activities so early in the morning.

 

As a result, our theater club didn’t get much attention.

 

Just as we were exiting the school gate.

 

“Yoonju.”

 

The puppet stopped freaking out.

 

I wasn’t the only one who noticed the sudden change.

 

My friends ahead of me turned their heads.

 “What’s going on? Why is it suddenly so quiet?” “You’re not doing what you’re doing, and that makes me nervous.”

 

The rest of my friends throw in a word or two in a shaky voice.

 

“Do you mind if I take a look at this?”

 

I asked them, thinking I should check it out for myself.

 

They looked at each other, nodded, and backed away quickly.

 “Well, an exorcist will open it, so it should be okay.” “Hey, be careful!”

 

I ripped the tape off the outside of the shopping bag.

 

Inside was a branded character doll.

 

As I turned the doll around, grains of rice and nail clippings fell out of the torn fabric on its belly.

 

The fabric hadn’t been stitched properly to accommodate the items.

 

The red thread was loose, to say the least.

 

I’d been told that in order to separate the spirit from the object, you have to find the connection between the object and the spirit.

 

A link, like the grain of a bamboo tree.

 

But as I examined the tiny doll, there was no connection anywhere.

 

I was told that when a doll has a spirit, it usually has a link in the eyebrows, the corner of the mouth, or the hair.

 

This doll’s eyebrows, corners of the mouth, hair, ears, jelly parts of the hands and feet, tail, and even the brand logo embedded in the butt had no trace of the twisted link.

 

That meant the ghost had completely disappeared inside the doll.

 

All the way down to the school gate, I kept my account open. If there were any surprises, I’d have to deal with them immediately.

 

I can guarantee that the ghost didn’t slip out of the shopping bag, because I was watching the whole time.

 

And if the ghost was able to free itself from the doll and the shopping bag in the first place, it would have done so from the fourth floor classroom.

 

Anyway, the ghost evaporated the moment I walked out the door.

 

I first informed my clubmates that the ghost was completely gone.

 

Yuri and Angela looked puzzled and relaxed their grip on their flamethrowers and fire extinguishers, respectively.

 

“Still, it was haunted once, so let’s burn it down now.”

 

Hana said as she looked at them. The other members chimed in, agreeing with her.

 

“I think that would be a good idea, too.” “Yeah, but it’s too dangerous to just throw it away. What if a more evil ghost gets inside?” “I’m with you. I’d actually like to see it blow up with a flamethrower.” “Look at it.”

 

Everyone seemed to agree, so Hana took the doll from me and led the way.

 “Let’s go to the alley behind the convenience store. There’s no one there at this time of night.”

 

Hana skillfully leads the group.

 

Right behind her was Yuri, who looked like she was in for a surprise. Her face seemed to stiffen with the responsibility of carrying the flamethrower.

 

The other members followed them, looking as if the ghosts had been exorcized.

 

I walked slowly, tearing open the shopping bag.

 

“Where I can exist forever.”

 

The words I’d spoken just before the ghost that had lured me into this escape from hell had vanished, and for some reason, they echoed in my head.