Chapter 0 Prologue
Prologue
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 0
Chapter Title: A Half-Demon's Life
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Sometimes you hear stories like that, don't you?
"They say the Yi Sun-sin statue starts moving at midnight!"
"I heard our school was built on top of a cemetery?"
"Move aside. Someone at our school even saw a human anatomy model running around!"
Stories for fear, by fear, made of fear.
But what if they became reality?
Click.
Fwoosh.
"......"
The fluorescent light in the bathroom, which had been working fine, suddenly started flickering.
This school always had issues with the toilets in the dead of night.
"Ugh."
I let out a sigh laced with irritation and started to get up from my seat.
But the toilet paper that had been right there moments ago was gone.
"Here we go again."
I narrowed my eyes, and at the same moment, the bathroom lights went out completely.
Soon after, a eerie metallic scraping sound echoed.
"Blue toilet paper... or red toilet paper...?"
The voice was coming from right below the toilet I was sitting on.
I sighed and glanced down.
"Can't you just butt out? I'm in the middle of taking a shit."
The so-called Blue Toilet Paper, Red Toilet Paper Ghost.
A urban legend born from people's whispers, a yokai manifestation.
No matter which option you pick, it's a type of water ghost that drags people into the toilet bowl.
"Hee hee hee... Huh?"
The metallic scraping from the toilet suddenly stopped.
Our eyes met.
Through strands of wet, long black hair, the creature's eyes locked with mine.
The emotion in the water ghost's eyes was 'fear'.
In its trembling pupils, as it saw my face, icy blue eyes blazed fiercely.
And then,
"Kyaaaaahhhh!!!"
With a short death cry, the Blue Toilet Paper, Red Toilet Paper Ghost met its end.
Well, whether such words suited a being that was already dead was another matter.
"Whew."
I stepped out of the stall and washed my hands.
Only then did the barrier over the area lift, and the neighboring stalls opened.
Out came students in the same uniform as me.
They peeked into my stall, saw the dead yokai, and cheered.
"As expected of the Chief Student! I knew we could count on you, damn it!"
"Phew. Thank goodness. I thought we were done for, about to get turned into water ghosts ourselves..."
"Lucky Bihyeong was in the next stall. Feels like we've used up all our luck for the year?"
I ignored their sparkling eyes as best I could and left the bathroom.
My steps seemed leisurely at a glance.
But that wasn't the case inside.
Ugh. This is really burdensome.
The gazes of the 'exorcists' watching me.
Every time I felt them, I was reminded of my situation all over again.
I'm not some genius who catches yokai well. It's just...
Just because I'm a 'half-demon', the yokai submit on their own.
If the exorcists found out, it wouldn't end easily.
Of course, I wasn't originally a half-demon.
Like any other guy my age, I graduated high school, despaired upon realizing campus life wasn't all that exciting, and lived as an ordinary man.
How did I end up playing that game...
Then I encountered a certain game,
and spent my mid-twenties immersed in it.
A game featuring exorcists who hunted and subjugated all sorts of yokai.
I got isekai'd into that world.
...Half yokai, no less.
Yokai are yokai too, so from the exorcists' perspective, aren't they just targets to hunt all the same?
With that one thought, I put on my best act every day to avoid getting found out.
This is the story of a half-demon living among exorcists.