Bunshin Saba (1)
Bunshin Saba (1). Papers marked with different letters: 『A』 and 『C』. Ha-eun and I locked eyes, our gazes trembling.
"Seorin, we got separated...?"
"Ha-eun, we got separated...?"
No way. They were actually splitting us up? I was the one who brought Ha-eun here in the first place. I shot Hwang Min-cheol a glare of protest, but he deliberately looked away, pretending not to notice. That bastard... Did he rig it so we'd be separated?
"Seorin..."
"Ha-eun..."
"...Yeah. Nothing we can do about it. It was a fair draw, after all." Ha-eun sighed, quickly resigning herself to the result. I clicked my tongue, unable to argue back. Complaining that I didn't like the outcome and demanding a redo or to be on the same team would lack any real justification. I hated it, but I had no choice but to accept it.
...Wait. If that's the case, who's the leader of my team? I whipped my head toward the team leaders. There stood Monk Bohyeon holding the paper marked 『C』, Father Johan with 『B』, and the female shaman clutching the one marked 『A』.
I looked down at the paper in my own hand. It read 『A』.
"...Hah." My luck with teams today was absolutely cursed.
"Alright, everyone, gather with your teams!" At the MC's call, I trudged toward the female shaman. She greeted her other two teammates warmly, but the moment she spotted me approaching, her face stiffened for a split second before relaxing again.
"Oh my, Seorin, you're on my team too! Let's work well together~"
"Whoa~ Teaming up with Lady Wolhwa? You've got insane luck today!"
"Seorin, consider yourself lucky this round! Lady Wolhwa is no ordinary shaman, you know!"
The two teammates didn't seem to pick up on the tension between us and simply smiled as they welcomed me. I quietly studied them. I'd caught their introductions during the opening, so their names came back to me faintly. The tall, handsome man was Lee Ha-neul. He'd been an idol whose ghost sighting story blew up, earning him the nickname "Ghost Idol." Apparently he'd quit idol life and was now working as an actor. The other man, who wasn't exactly overweight but had a soft, plump build, was Yoo Jin-woo. He ran a horror radio YouTube channel.
"...Yes, nice to meet you all." While greeting my new teammates, I glanced over at Ha-eun.
"M-Monk Bohyeon? Please take care of me!"
"Hoho. No need to be so tense, my child."
At least that was a relief. Monk Bohyeon seemed to have the best personality among them, so I could trust him on that front. Still, I had no idea how skilled he actually was, so I'd already prepared insurance.
'Lee Seol-ah, stick with Ha-eun. Watch her closely and protect her at all costs.'
<Got it! Leave it to me!>
Lee Seol-ah slipped out of my body, saluted once, and flew over to Ha-eun's side. That was when it happened.
"Hup!" When I turned my gaze toward Wolhwa, I saw her covering her mouth with her hand. Her trembling eyes were unmistakably tracking Lee Seol-ah. Father Johan and Monk Bohyeon were also glancing sideways, their gazes following Lee Seol-ah's movements exactly.
"...Lady Wolhwa? Is something wrong? Is there something over there?"
"H-Hoho, it's nothing! I just felt some strange energy for a moment..."
"Eek! Don't tell me there's a ghost in this studio too...?"
"N-No, I must've been mistaken."
Wolhwa brushed it off and quickly turned her attention back to her teammates. ...She saw it.
"Now that the teams are set, we'll move on to the mission briefing!" Hwang Min-cheol pulled out three brown envelopes. "Inside these envelopes are the details of the exorcism requests we've carefully selected. Each team leader, please take one."
Wolhwa stepped forward first and received one of the envelopes, followed by Father Johan and Monk Bohyeon. Lee Ha-neul and Yoo Jin-woo approached Wolhwa.
"Ooh, what's it say?"
"As long as it's not another abandoned hospital like last time..."
"Right, that place was terrifying. Oh, and please not a graveyard either!"
"Lady Wolhwa, where would you prefer?"
"Hoho, the location doesn't matter to me. I simply do my best to comfort any lost and wandering souls. Though... I'd prefer somewhere hygienically safe. I can't treat ordinary illnesses, after all. Hohoho."
"Haha, if she could cure diseases too, she'd be a total cheat character!"
"Even doctors need to eat, don't they?"
They were really hyping each other up like it was some kind of show. Acting all buddy-buddy while completely ignoring me. Well, maybe they felt closer to each other because I wasn't joining in. Still, I had a reasonable suspicion that Wolhwa in particular was deliberately excluding me.
"Alright, let's open them!" When Wolhwa pulled out the papers from the envelope, the very first page showed a photo of a building with large text printed across it.
Cheongil Girls' High School
※ "Everything began one month ago."
Inside the van heading toward the mission location, Wolhwa's low, quiet voice filled the space.
"I had two friends. We'd been close since our first year of high school—practically inseparable. Back then we were second-years, and we figured that once we became third-years, we'd be too busy with college entrance exams to see each other much. Since we were aiming for different universities, we decided to make as many memories as possible while we still could."
It started out completely ordinary. Like the prologue of some high school youth movie.
"We made memories everywhere. We went to amusement parks, tried famous restaurants, and relaxed by the sea. It was truly fun."
But if it had ended like a typical youth story, the client wouldn't have sent an exorcism request.
"Still, no matter how many memories we made, we couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. We wanted something more special—memories so special they'd stay with us even years later. While we were tossing around ideas about what to do, someone suggested..."
Wolhwa paused to catch her breath before continuing.
"Wouldn't it be fun to sneak into school at night and tell scary stories?"
"Aigoo..."
"Tsk tsk, that's not something you should do..."
Lee Ha-neul and Yoo Jin-woo clicked their tongues in dismay.
"So we hid in the bathroom after school and waited until midnight to come out. That day, the school felt especially eerie."
Suddenly, Wolhwa's gaze turned to me.
"Seorin, you're a high school student too, right? Have you ever done something like this?"
"No? I always went straight home."
What would be the point of staying at school at night to tell scary stories? I'd already experienced every kind of horror imaginable in another world.
"Heh, that's surprising." Wolhwa narrowed her eyes. "I got the feeling you'd be the type to pull pranks like this a lot."
"Me? What makes you think that?"
"Hoho, I must've been mistaken. Anyway, let me keep reading."
After cutting the conversation short, Wolhwa turned her attention back to the papers. What was her problem with me?
"So we went to school and stayed up until dawn telling scary stories. But since none of us knew many scary stories, by 1 a.m.... we ran out of things to say."
Up to this point, it didn't seem like much of a problem.
"It would've been fine if we'd just gone home then, but we wanted to make more special memories... and ended up doing something we absolutely shouldn't have."
Wolhwa swallowed hard.
"Yes. Like idiots... we decided to do Bunshin Saba."
"Whoa!"
"Oh man, that's the worst."
Lee Ha-neul let out a shocked cry while Yoo Jin-woo covered his face with both hands, as if he could already imagine what came next.
"Bunshin Saba..." I'd heard about it before. Two people sit facing each other with a white sheet of paper marked with OX or numbers, hold a pen or pencil together, and chant an incantation. Then a ghost supposedly moves the pen and answers every question—a common form of necromancy in Korea.
"We tried it exactly the way it was described online. 'Bunshin Saba, Bunshin Saba, please come.' My two friends sat facing each other and recited the chant. I recorded them with my phone, thinking it'd be a nice memory to keep. We asked, 'Are you here?'"
A sigh escaped me. Why did people love stirring up trouble like this? Even if you're an expert in necromancy like me, what good could possibly come from messing with spirit summoning?
"Right then!" Wolhwa shouted. Lee Ha-neul and Yoo Jin-woo flinched and leaned back.
"The pen moved by itself. It pointed toward the circle."
"No way..."
"Did they actually succeed at the summoning...?"
"And I... I screamed and ran out of the classroom right then and there, dragging my two confused friends with me."
"Huh? Why?"
"Don't tell me..."
"After running for a while, when my friends asked why I'd suddenly bolted, I showed them the video on my phone and said, 'Just now... in the recording, a ghost was moving the pen between you two.'"
What happened after that was obvious to anyone.
"From that day on, strange things started happening whenever we went to school."
More and more students claimed to have seen ghosts in the classroom. The friends who'd actually performed the Bunshin Saba began hearing strange voices from time to time. One of them started acting oddly, as if someone else had possessed them. Another kept feeling like someone was watching them and grew terrified.
"I haven't experienced any strange phenomena myself yet. But I don't know when it might happen. That terrifies me. Please, help us solve this problem."
After finishing the request letter, Wolhwa quietly set the papers down.
"What do you all think?"
"Hmm..." Lee Ha-neul stroked his chin. "From what I've heard, it sounds like the ritual succeeded but they never performed the sending-off ceremony, so the spirit stayed behind at the school."
Yoo Jin-woo nodded in agreement. "I've heard plenty of similar stories while doing horror radio. Performing a summoning and then just running away is like inviting someone over and then ignoring them. Of course the ghost would be furious."
This time, Wolhwa turned to me.
"What do you think, Seorin?"
"I..." I turned my head and looked out the window. "We'll have to go inside to know for sure."
Outside the window, the eerie silhouette of the school was slowly coming into view.