Prologue — The Day I Confessed to Red Mask
“Our adorable grandson.”
“…Yes.”
“This is the last thing this old woman will ever tell you, so listen well.”
My grandmother, once a famous shaman in South Korea, left me these final words when I was still in elementary school, moments before she died.
“If you ever see something that isn’t human….”
“……”
“…Never let on that you know.”
But with my head bowed low, I could hardly say I listened to her last wish.
I know, Grandma...
For one thing, ever since I’d suffered a high fever as a child, I’d long since realized that this world was the same one as the exorcism manga I used to devour in my previous life.
“Heehee…”
“Hahaha….”
“Now he’s all alone…?”
And for another, there were things that weren’t human laughing as they watched me from outside the hospital window on the seventh floor, where no person could possibly be standing.
“Um, am I pretty?”
About ten years after that day—
“I said, am I pretty?”
Walking alone through the city streets at night, I stopped in my tracks at the voice of something not human that reached me as if by habit.
“Hey, you can see me, can’t you.”
A girl wearing a red mask blocked my path, tilting her head to one side with a chilling smile.
“A-m I p-r-e-tty?”
And that day, for the first time, I broke my grandmother’s warning and fixed my gaze on something that wasn’t human.
“Pretty?”
“……”
“Yes. Beautiful. Extremely beautiful!”
Honestly, I still didn’t really know why I’d suddenly done something like that.
Maybe it was because the fear and stress that had slowly built up ever since I was born with the ability to see things that weren’t human had finally exploded.
“Even your skin is so pale and gorgeous I’m losing my mind, and your eyes are exactly my type! Your hair is always flying around in front of me like you’re trying to show off, and it smells incredible!”
Or maybe it was because that happened to be the day I was being transferred to a school I’d never wanted to attend in the first place, for a whole mess of reasons, and my brain had simply broken.
“And the long sleeves you always let hang down are totally my type too! Your neck is pretty, your nose bridge is high, your fingers are pretty, and also….”
In any case, I grabbed the red-masked girl by the shoulder, shoved her back against the wall beside us, and kept spilling words at her for what felt like ages.
“…Whenever you lean your face toward me and give me that smiling-eye expression, it’s so pretty I just fell in love at first sight!”
With that, I let out a rough breath and dropped my head.
“Hah… hah….”
Only then, with my mind turning colder by the second, did I fully realize what I had just done.
I’m so fucked, holy shit.
What would happen to me now?
Would I be killed with my mouth torn wide open, just like in the urban legend? Or had I gone and done something so absurd to something not human that it would do something even more horrifying to me?
“…U-um.”
As dread began tightening around my body, I bit down on my lip and broke out in a cold sweat. Then, at the faint voice that reached my ear, I slowly lifted my head, dazed.
“T-thank you for the compliment….”
The girl in the red mask had turned her gaze aside. Pressing the tips of her fingers together, she fidgeted awkwardly, her face flushed red.
The Red Mask urban legend has been cleared.
Red Mask wants to become your Guardian Spirit.
Do you accept? Y/N