The Self-Changing Fortune Cookies
In the suffocating silence, I opened my mouth.
"What time exactly did it say you'd die? And when did you get that cookie from Yeolbinru?"
Edward answered in a trembling voice, barely managing the words. "Th-there was no specific time... It just said 'Wednesday.' I went to Yeolbinru last night with friends as a dare and ate it then."
Just Wednesday—a vague prophecy without an exact time. The uncertainty of when it might strike must have been terrifying.
Rone shot to her feet as if she might bolt out the door any second. "Teacher! Then we have to go to Yeolbinru right now, don't we?! It's already four in the afternoon! We need to find that fortune cookie and destroy it before it's too late!"
Elaine, Rozalia, and Aurora didn't say a word, but I could tell they felt the same. Still, I held Rone back and made her sit.
"Calm down. We can still gather all the info we can from Edward first before acting. It's not too late."
If things go south and he dies, we can just rewind anyway.
"Has there been any other customer at Yeolbinru before you who got a prophecy about dying, or any student who actually died?"
"N-no. There have been students who got seriously hurt before, but I'm the first one to get a prophecy about straight-up dying."
"So other students have gone to Yeolbinru for dares too, right? What kind of prophecies did they get?"
"Th-the fortune cookie was just for me. We had a bet, and the loser had to eat one."
So Edward here is the first victim of the fortune cookie—at least as far as we know. That was good news.
If victims had already appeared somewhere we didn't know about, we couldn't save them even with a rewind. But if he's the first, protecting him means we can resolve this ghost story without any casualties.
The reason I could brush off a few deaths while dealing with ghost stories was because I knew they'd come back alive after a rewind. It didn't mean I was okay with people actually dying for real.
Feeling much more at ease, I pressed Edward with a few more questions.
"Can you tell me in detail about past cases where other students' prophecies came true? Not just what the prophecy was, but exactly how it played out."
Edward racked his brain and shared a few examples. A student whose textbook vanished right before class, leading to a failing grade. Another who twisted their ankle falling down the stairs, after a morning fortune cookie saying 'You will fall.' And most recently, someone who got 'You will fight with a friend' and ended up in a huge blowout with their bestie over a silly misunderstanding.
Individually, they seemed like everyday coincidences. But with a 100% hit rate, it was no wonder rumors spread among the students.
"So it's Wednesday today. Has anything special happened?"
Edward's face drained of color at my question. From his reaction, something had definitely happened.
He swallowed dryly and stammered on. "Actually... I've nearly died several times already, even before coming to the club room..."
His body began trembling faintly again, his gaze darting anxiously through the air.
"This morning on the way to school... a brick from the dorm wall suddenly collapsed and almost crushed me. Then during riding class, the horse I was on went berserk and I nearly fell off. And at lunch, while I was eating, a student carrying utensils tripped nearby, and I almost got my head pierced by their knife and fork..."
He shuddered, reliving the close calls.
"My friends all said it was just coincidence, that I'm overreacting because of the fortune cookie I ate yesterday. But I don't think so."
Neither do I.
Each incident could happen on a run-of-the-bad-luck day—pure accidents with no intent or planning. They couldn't have intent or planning.
But that's exactly why they had to be the work of the ghost story.
"I absolutely don't believe all this was coincidence. This is definitely the fortune cookie's prophecy—no, a curse! Because I treated Yeolbinru's prophecies like a joke and disrespected Eastern traditions, an Eastern shaman cursed me!"
No, an Eastern curse is a bit much. Oriental fantasy has its limits.
But setting that aside, Edward's judgment that it wasn't coincidence was spot on.
"I was panicking, not knowing what to do... then I remembered the club Teacher Lydia mentioned, the Paranormal Investigation Club. If it's ghost story-related, this club is perfect... You're my only hope now! Please believe me!"
So he'd come here grasping at straws.
"Don't worry. I don't think what happened to you was just coincidence either. Sometimes, life throws things at you that logic and science can't explain. But dismissing them as illogical isn't wise. There are still countless mysteries humanity hasn't unraveled, and who knows what connections they might have that we just haven't figured out yet. So we can't ignore human intuition just because it's illogical—it might cut straight to the truth beyond logic."
"T-Teacher...!"
I ignored Edward's touched expression and stood, turning to the club members.
"Alright. We've heard enough. Shall we head to that Yeolbinru place?"
I led the club members out of the academy with Edward in tow. Of course, I'd left someone behind in the club room as rewind backup for emergencies—Elaine.
Her Gift was Strong Mental Power. Perfect counter to mind-attack ghost stories, though this fortune cookie one didn't seem mental-based.
Truth be told, I'd never encountered a ghost story where Elaine's Gift shone. Maybe there were no mental-attack ghost stories at all?
"Sh-should I come too?"
"None of us have been to Yeolbinru. It'll be easier to gather info with you there, since you've at least been once."
Edward, facing a second trip to Yeolbinru after last night, asked anxiously, but I reassured him with the explanation.
Honestly, the real reason was it was better to keep him in sight where we could step in if something happened, rather than leave him alone in the club room out of view and risk him dying unexpectedly.
Not that what I told him was a lie.
And so we arrived at Yeolbinru.
It was a more upscale Eastern restaurant than I'd expected. Red exterior with gold lettering, dangling bamboo curtains, and wooden statues out front—it reminded me of fancy Chinese places from my past life. Bet there's a lazy Susan inside.
But despite the fancy look, Yeolbinru felt eerily quiet, almost devoid of human presence.
Quiet? No, it seemed like they weren't even open for business.
It wasn't prime dinner time yet, but they should at least be prepping. A "Closed" sign hung out front, and through the windows, I saw staff sitting stiff-faced or idly wiping tables.
All that talk of booming business from fortune cookie hype felt like a joke now.
I ignored the sign and stepped inside.
"We're closed today~."
"Ah, it's not that. We came to ask about the fortune cookies. Heard they're famous among students."
The staff's face hardened instantly at my words. He slammed his rag on the table with a thud and snapped back gruffly.
"Fortune cookies? Are you messing with me, sir? That damned cookie ruined our business, and now with those creepy rumors keeping customers away, even a grown adult comes sniffing around believing kid stuff!"
His unexpectedly heated reaction threw us off. I tried calming him down.
"Easy there. I'm a teacher at Everlight Academy, just checking on weird rumors among the students. If you know anything about the fortune cookies..."
Revealing I was a teacher softened his attitude a bit, but it didn't yield much.
"Know anything? We're the victims here! At first, academy kids loved 'em, so we sold them for fun. Then suddenly, everyone starts complaining about bad prophecies! Some even said it's an Eastern shaman's curse on rude students treating our traditions like a game! How unfair! So we thought it was weird and started stuffing only good fortunes inside. Know what happened next?"
Only good fortunes? That's not what I heard.
"What happened?"
The staff opened his mouth to vent, then froze. He snapped it shut, shook his head, and forced an awkward smile.
"Ah, no. Nothing. Just... bad rumors. We were just upset about losing business."
He was obviously hiding something. But he wasn't about to spill easily.
This won't do.
"Aurora. Can you help?"
"Sigh. Shouldn't have told you about my Gift."
I glanced at her, and she sighed like she'd expected it, removing her glasses.
Grumbling aside, she did her part. The moment the staff met her eyes, he froze, captivated. When she smiled, he went full blank-stare, entranced.
"We put only good fortunes in the cookies, so why are the opposite rumors spreading at the academy? I'd appreciate it if you told me..."
The effect was immediate. He spoke in a dazed trance.
"W-we definitely put only good prophecies in... But after serving them, they'd turn into ominous ones like 'You'll get badly hurt tomorrow' or 'You'll lose something precious'—like ghosts changed them! It got so creepy we pulled them from the menu. They were popular once, but not anymore. And yet... customers would notice, and suddenly a fortune cookie's on their table! By itself! We stopped making them!"
"..."
His rant was pure nightmare fuel. Prophecies changing on their own, cookies appearing unbidden—that was leagues beyond lucky hits.
And they kept quiet while mystery cookies popped up on tables? No wonder they're closed today.
But their response came too late. Edward's face was ghostly pale, beyond bleached.
We questioned the head chef and other staff, but reactions were similar. They all seemed wary or scared of the mystery cookies, and even forcing them with Aurora's Gift yielded nothing new.
We left Yeolbinru realizing we knew even less about the cookies' origin.
This is trouble. Didn't expect the trail to go cold at the source.
I hadn't banked on destroying the cookies triggering resolution, but hoped for real info on them. Ordering food to see one ourselves? No dice if they're closed.
As we left feeling stumped, we soon realized the cookies' origin wasn't the key issue at all.