Chapter 77
Chapter 77
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 77
Chapter Title: Ghostly Commotion (2)
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Our hastily assembled evil spirit special forces team seemed to wield plenty of influence just by the three of us charging around together.
Or maybe it was because I and the group including me—we three—were all huge celebrities at the wooden cross dormitory.
As soon as we stepped into the hallway, the cadets who had burst out of their rooms in alarm at the untimely wailing turned their eyes toward us.
The dormitory had a structure where long hallways were lined with rooms facing each other, excluding the first floor with the entrance and reception room, so it was easy to see at a glance which doors were open and which were closed.
‘A senior collapsed in the hallway, sobbing…?’
Even amid the chaos, what caught my eye were three cadets in the middle of the corridor, clutching their heads and letting out wails.
“Hic, hic!”
“Yeah, Cookie. Shh.”
Cookie, thinking all the attention focused on us was directed at her (which, in a way, it kind of was), wagged her tail excitedly.
I gripped her leash tightly to keep her from lunging at any other cadets.
“What happened?”
As Arthur approached the sobbing cadets and asked, a round-faced blonde girl with gentle eyes, sprawled on the floor and shaking with sobs, answered through hiccups.
“Can’t you hear it? The crying… hic…”
“Crying, huh.”
Arthur put on a deliberately serious expression as he listened intently to the girl.
Come to think of it, Arthur was one of the more popular cadets at the academy—not just for his looks and build, but also his gentlemanly demeanor, which earned him a good reputation with everyone, men and women alike.
‘So why’s he so rude to me?’
It felt like some Eastern ethical mindset I’d never learned from anyone was squirming in my soul.
‘Not without reason, though.’
Thinking about it, to Arthur, I must seem like a walking bomb who got tangled up with his sleepwalking friend Theodore by sheer accident.
He’d tried to look after his friend out of noble intentions, only to get no reward and even punishment in return, so his attitude toward me was understandable enough.
“Well, I can’t hear it. I doubt Theodore or Senior Arma Cruz here can either.”
Arthur must have noticed I was lost in thought, because he deliberately mentioned me.
I shouldn’t be thinking this kid is insolent for standing there with his legs crossed while others are crying.
I quickly bowed my head toward the sobbing cadet.
“I haven’t heard anything like that, Unia Loph.”
“Hic, hic, h-how do you know my n-name…”
There was a very sad backstory to that.
Just a few days ago, to neutralize the cadets being forced by power or bribed to come to me for fake curses, I’d memorized the faces and names of about three hundred of them.
“Anyway, can I call you Unia? I’ll be in the senior class next year.”
“Y-yes… of course…”
“Right, Unia. The three of us were holed up in that room, and we didn’t hear any crying—hell, not even a single breath. It’s pouring rain out there.”
At my words, Unia began shedding tears like chick peas again as she replied.
“But! Then what about this blood?”
“Blood, huh… Let’s take a look.”
“If Senior Cruz looks at it, I’d feel relieved… You’re Aegis’s enforcer, after all.”
“Ugh… Yeah…”
I’d have to personally apologize to Lady Aegis about this.
Only then did I push through the murmuring cadets chanting about “Aegis’s enforcer” and head toward the room of Unia Loph, Santa Maria Luis, and Donna Hadley.
“Could the rest of you head inside? We’re going into the ladies’ room, so it doesn’t seem right to just stand around gawking.”
Truth be told, I was worried they’d start spreading nonsense idolizing me as some enforcer or whatever, but most of the cadets nodded in understanding at my words and shut their doors.
Not that they wouldn’t be pressing their ears to the doors to eavesdrop on what was happening outside.
‘Just like I did a moment ago.’
To help calm Unia down, I gave a look to Cookie, who was panting with her eyes wide open.
Cookie was a genius dog whenever there was a chance to be petted or fawned over.
Catching my signal, she immediately started prancing around Unia’s legs and acting cute, bringing a bit of color back to Unia’s pale face.
After making sure Cookie’s leash wouldn’t tangle, I entered Unia’s room, fully closed the door, and soothed the dog.
“What’s wrong? Oh.”
No sooner had I spoken than I spotted the anomaly in Unia’s room.
It was red streaks that reeked of iron, trickling down the wall between wooden moldings.
‘No wonder she called it blood…’
Even plain water would be startling, but red liquid smelling of iron? No surprise Unia had freaked out.
With Unia’s permission to keep Cookie from bolting, I tied her leash to a guest chair and approached the wall.
“What does this look like to you?”
Theodore, who had been silently following behind me with his mouth shut tight, stepped up to the wall and rubbed it with his finger.
‘Eek.’
Did he know what that was to touch it so casually?
Theodore didn’t stop there; he rubbed his fingers together, then sniffed them.
Arthur watched Theodore’s actions closely before starting to scan the room.
Checking for security issues or animal carcasses, that sort of thing.
Of course, if there were something like that, Cookie would’ve gone berserk by now, but Arthur’s approach wasn’t wrong.
I’d done the same the moment I saw the state of the room—naturally checking the window frames, door sills, and looking for unfamiliar footprints.
“This is…”
Theodore finally spoke.
“Blood after all!?”
“Those people came for revenge—”
“I don’t wanna hear it!”
The three roommates shouted out their theories.
As excited as they were, their voices were loud.
But Theodore responded to the three girls yelling right in his face with his characteristically dry demeanor.
“It’s rust water.”
“Rust… water?”
“Rust water.”
“Even though it’s trickling down the wall!?”
“Rust water trickling down the wall. Arthur, press there for me.”
“…….”
The spot Theodore pointed to was a corner of the ceiling, obviously the source of the worst red water damage.
Arthur, looking none too pleased, prodded it with the scabbard of his sword, and swollen plaster burst, spilling red liquid through the wall cracks.
“Looks like water pooled somewhere and is dripping down. High chance the gutter’s the culprit.”
“The gutter? Then what about that crying—”
“We’d have to go up to check, but probably the same issue.”
With that, Theodore stared straight at me.
I had no desire to crawl across the ceiling in this storm just to inspect the gutter while upholding my dignity as Aegis’s enforcer.
I glanced at Arthur as if passing on Theodore’s gaze, and his eyebrow twitched faintly.
“…I’ll check.”
Arthur brushed past me and Theodore, stepped out briefly, and returned holding his Thorn Crown Class robe.
To check the gutter, wouldn’t he need to go up to the roof? Why’d he come back? As that thought crossed my mind, Arthur opened the window, leaned out, and looked up at the pouring sky.
“We’re on the third floor here. There’s a storage above, but it goes up to the fourth.”
“Gonna get wet either way. Faster this way.”
Before I could stop him, Arthur stepped onto the window frame and leaped up toward the dormitory roof.
Come to think of it, he’d once jumped from the ground floor straight up to my third-floor room.
“Arthur—how is it?”
Theodore, hating the rain, just raised his voice from the window.
—Krarung!
Startled by a sudden thunderclap, Cookie dove under Unia’s bed.
Good thing I’d tied her leash beforehand.
Cookie thrashed under the bed, but the chair caught on the bed frame, restricting her somewhat.
“Sound—coming… from?”
Arthur’s reply came muffled through the rain.
“What—?”
Instead of Theodore, who had no intention of sticking his head out, I leaned forward.
Visually, the gutter near where Arthur was touching was badly corroded.
That was the moment the mystery of the red ceiling water was solved.
Confirming my head out the window, Arthur asked again.
“Sound—this the one?”
—Kiiik.
Arthur shook the gutter lining the eaves to a certain angle.
—Hiii… hiuuu—
At the perfect interplay of wind strength and rainwater pouring through the gutter, a eerie sound like a young man sobbing echoed out.
“Oh, crying sound.”
“That’s the one… huh?”
The three who had been clinging to each other in fear finally let go.
Arthur jumped back down from the roof and came in through the window, just like before.
Water dripped from his soaked robe as he wrung it out the window, flashing us a grumpy look before instantly reverting to ‘gentlemanly Arthur.’
“The gutter’s rusted and twisted. Got holes too. The gap let rainwater seep into the ceiling. Dana Wood’s room…”
“Is on the same line.”
That solved every mystery.
Rainwater leaked through the hole in the rusted gutter, seeped through tiny building cracks, pooled in the ceiling, and eventually trickled down like blood in Unia’s and Dana’s rooms.
“Time to replace it, so tell the squad leader or call a servant. For now, waiting out the storm comes first.”
“What the… I thought…”
Drained, Unia staggered to her bed and flopped down.
After all her wailing about ghosts and curses, it was only natural.
And so, we wrapped up the clumsy ghost commotion, pretending not to notice Arthur’s hands stained red with rust water.
.
.
.
We returned to our room.
Soaked Arthur said he’d use the bathroom and disappeared with his loungewear.
I was drying my slightly damp hair by the fireplace while indulging Cookie’s antics.
‘Even accounting for the salt influence, it was pretty badly corroded.’
The gutter’s corrosion couldn’t be explained unless something salt-laden had been constantly touching it.
Plus, Unia’s room next door was practically adjacent to mine, so if the weak spot extended to my room, I would’ve been the one causing the ghost commotion, not her.
‘Yeah, that makes sense. Ghosts my foot.’
It was a bit anticlimactic, but actually a relief.
The ‘North Sea’s Nasty Whim,’ the sea storm unique to the waters around Hazard Island where Aegis Academy sat, wouldn’t fully pass for another week.
In this isolated dormitory, I’d rather pass on such lame incidents.
I forcibly shifted my train of thought, trying to ignore one nagging question rising in my mind.