A Small Wish (1)
I was completely thrown off because of Jang San. Honestly, it was only natural to be flustered. How could I not be when she suddenly announced she was coming over to my house?
“What are you talking about?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“Why would you come to our house?”
“There’s something I want to check.”
What kind of check?
“I won’t do anything weird. Really. I’ll leave right after I confirm it.”
“Confirm what, exactly?”
“I’m not completely sure yet, so it’s hard to say right now.”
…Then why bother confirming it at all?
“Once I’m certain, I’ll tell you right away.”
I had no idea what she wanted to confirm… Still, she wasn’t a yokai anymore. She was a proper spiritual beast now. She probably wouldn’t do anything strange.
“That’s not what’s important!”
The one who shouted was Baek Seol-hwa, who had been checking the gallery on her phone. I glanced over, wondering why she was reacting like that, only to see her frantically jabbing at her screen.
“Someone left a comment saying they’re right nearby!”
“Why are you in such a rush? Did something happen?”
“The person’s condition looks pretty bad…”
“Looks bad?”
What did that even mean?
“Let’s hurry and go see.”
“Where?”
“Just follow me!”
Baek Seol-hwa took off, eyes still glued to her phone. I followed after her. As I did, I wondered how she could tell the person’s condition was bad just from the gallery. That was when Jang San spoke to me.
“It does seem strange.”
“Huh?”
“Look at this.”
“…What is this?”
It was hard to even make out the meaning. If I looked closely, it seemed like “I want to do it, let me do it”… but why write it like this?
“Spirits who can’t maintain their sense of self usually write in this weird, broken way.”
“Is it because their minds are broken and they make a ton of typos?”
“It’s more that the device they’re using is affected by their mental state. That’s why the keyboard layout itself gets distorted.”
“So then…”
“Yeah.”
Jang San sounded certain.
“The condition does seem serious.”
“…Is the spirit turning into a malevolent ghost?”
“It’s possible. We should hurry.”
I nodded in agreement with her opinion and quickly caught up to Baek Seol-hwa, who was already ahead of us.
“Where are we going?”
“Your school!”
Our school again? Before I knew it, I was following Baek Seol-hwa and we had arrived at the school gate. I never expected to be back at school at this late hour, especially after the toast stall famous for its simple meals had already closed. I wasn’t even a dorm student…
“Where exactly are we meeting?”
“We agreed to meet near the main gate.”
“…So communication is somehow working?”
“It’s hard to understand, but yes.”
Since Baek Seol-hwa could communicate with the spirit, it seemed like the entity hadn’t completely lost control yet. Knowing I’d have to face another spirit, I lightly touched my necklace. My vision shifted.
…Whoa. At night, there were even more spirits wandering the mortal realm. The sheer number of them triggered my old trauma, and I flinched without meaning to. A cold sweat broke out too. I hadn’t shown it openly, but both Baek Seol-hwa and Jang San seemed to notice the change in me.
“If it’s hard for you to look, you don’t have to. We’re here.”
“Are you okay? I thought an exorcist clan member would be used to this.”
“…I am used to it. It’s just… there are other reasons.”
The silver lining was that the presence of spiritual beasts nearby kept the spirits from easily looking our way. If all those things had turned to stare at us, it would have been rough.
“Ah.”
Baek Seol-hwa suddenly reacted as if she had spotted something. Following her gaze, I saw a spirit approaching us from the other side.
“That one’s condition…”
“It’s really bad.”
Half of the spirit coming toward us had already mutated into something like a malevolent ghost. Its right arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, and the right side of its face looked completely dried out, as if all the moisture had been sucked away from the nose outward. Its right leg had stretched to an abnormal length compared to the left… In every way, it didn’t look good.
Yet it still seemed to maintain some sense of self. Unlike other malevolent spirits, it wasn’t harming the other wandering ghosts around it.
“Are you okay!?”
Baek Seol-hwa had already rushed over and asked with genuine worry in her voice. The spirit looked at her—at someone who was actually concerned for it—and its mouth opened slightly.
“H...he...llo...”
The words came out broken and the pronunciation was off, but I could tell it was trying to greet us. The “llo” at the end came through clearly.
“What happened to you?”
“G...got... h-hurt... by a m-malevolent... s-spirit... a-after that...”
It seemed another evil spirit had injured its soul. Most beings turned into malevolent ghosts because of their own desires or grudges, but cases like this did happen sometimes.
“Yoo Se-hwan! Can’t you do something? It hasn’t completely turned into a malevolent spirit yet!”
Baek Seol-hwa looked at me with a flicker of hope. Unfortunately, I couldn’t meet her expectations. As painful as it was, there was only one thing I could say.
“…I can’t.”
If it were complete soul destruction, maybe. But restoring a spirit in this state to normal was impossible. Most exorcists would classify a spirit like this as a malevolent ghost and simply exorcise it. After all, if left alone, it would become one.
“What about that ritual you used to wash away calamity last time?”
“This isn’t calamity.”
Calamity was like what Jang San had been burdened with—an “evil karma” that yokai or humans could be covered in. It could attach to spirits too, but it was an entirely different category from turning into a malevolent ghost.
“Even being half-mutated like this ultimately happened because this spirit wished for it.”
Of course, it probably hadn’t wished for it willingly.
“It looks like the wound to its soul caused it pain, and that pain led to the corruption… but it seems to have regained its senses late.”
“Y...yes... that’s... r-right...”
“Then what do you want? If you came here hoping we could fix your condition… that’s impossible.”
It was a rather cold thing to say, but it was better to be honest. Better than letting it hold onto false hope.
The spirit shook its head slightly after hearing me. It seemed that hadn’t been its request from the beginning.
“R...re...gret...”
“Regret?”
“It seems to be asking us to resolve its lingering attachment.”
It looked like the spirit wanted to resolve its regret and leave the mortal realm before it fully turned into a malevolent ghost. In that case, we first needed to find out what kind of attachment was keeping it here…
“Can you tell us? We’ll listen.”
Baek Seol-hwa spoke gently, as if soothing the spirit, encouraging it to speak slowly.
“Don’t rush. Tell us one letter at a time. We have plenty of time.”
…We didn’t actually have that much time, but like she said, hearing it one syllable at a time might make it easier to understand. The longer the sentences, the more its pronunciation seemed to tangle.
“…R...ri...ce.”
“…Rice?”
“D...doen...”
Rice and doen… doenjang?
“J...ja...ng.”
“Are you talking about doenjang jjigae?”
The spirit nodded.
“F...fee...d...”
Feed? It wanted to eat doenjang jjigae?
…Was something that simple really its lingering regret? I guess even these days, there were spirits who lingered in the mortal realm because they wanted soybean paste stew. I was thinking it was a rather trivial attachment when the spirit continued.
“T...to... so...meone...”
“…?”
“G...give...”
Listening to the rest, it wasn’t that the spirit wanted to eat it itself. Jang San, who was standing beside me, seemed to have caught on to the spirit’s true regret and said exactly what I was thinking.
“It seems like it wants to feed someone else.”
“…Yeah, that matches.”
When the spirit heard our interpretation, it nodded to confirm we were right. We needed to find out who it wanted to feed.
“Who?”
“……”
The spirit didn’t answer. It opened its mouth and then stopped, as if even speaking had become difficult. Instead, it slowly raised a hand and began moving, gesturing for us to follow.
“…Inside the school?”
“Where are we supposed to get doenjang jjigae from here?”
Exactly.
“Maybe the cooking lab or something?”
“Well…”
There probably was one. The student cafeteria, or the kitchen used for practical classes in the food and nutrition department. …But how were we supposed to get in?
“Let’s sneak in, make it quickly, and leave!”
“Does that even make sense? Where in the world is there a place without CCTV these days?”
“Ah, right… hmm…”
“I’ll take care of that.”
Jang San spoke confidently.
“How?”
“I just need to make all the CCTV in the building stop working for a little while. That much I can do.”
“With spiritual energy?”
“Yes.”
Even yokai or malevolent spirits could temporarily stop nearby objects from functioning, but paralyzing an entire building like she described wasn’t something just anyone could do. Was this the power of a noble spiritual beast?
“Or we could just ignore it. Honestly, it wouldn’t matter.”
I flinched slightly at those words. Her casual remark somehow felt like it had poked me in the chest. …Had I unconsciously thought this was too much of a hassle?
Baek Seol-hwa gave me a rather sharp look after hearing that as well. Jang San quickly flashed a mischievous smile, as if to say it was just a joke.
“I was only kidding.”
“Even as a joke, don’t say things like that.”
When Baek Seol-hwa spoke with a straight face, Jang San’s expression sobered a little. It seemed best to head inside before this turned into an actual fight.
“…Right. Let’s go in.”
“Haa…”
Se-a had left the dormitory and was wandering around campus. She wanted to sober up from the alcohol and shake off the shock she had received earlier.
“I wanted to do weekend shifts with him…”
The reason she had decided to work at Cafe Idea was to create time to be with Se-hwan. If not for that, there would have been no reason for her to take a part-time job. To be honest, Se-a wasn’t short on living expenses. Dorm fees? Free. Tuition? Free. Se-a was an outstanding model student. She covered everything with scholarships, and even her living expenses were more than enough with the small support money from the school, allowance, and occasional prize money from creative competitions.
There was no need for her to spend her precious weekend on a part-time job. If it wasn’t time spent with Se-hwan, it was all meaningless.
“Should I tell him I want to quit now…?”
But if she did that, it would feel awkward to visit the cafe where Se-hwan worked in the future. Still unsure what to do, Se-a grumbled to herself as she walked around—very unlike her usual self.
Then something strange caught her eye. There was someone who had no reason to be at school at this hour.
“…Huh?”
At first she thought she had seen wrong, but that couldn’t be. She had seen that face for years; there was no way she could mistake it. Se-a tilted her head.
“Yoo Se-hwan? And…”
Se-hwan was with two women. Both of them had strikingly pure white hair.
“…It’s them.”
Baek Seol-hwa and her supposed sister, Baek San. She had heard that both of them were Se-hwan’s exorcist colleagues. They were supposed to be doing a shift together today, but it looked like they had started doing something else the moment it ended.
“……”
The fact that they were together like this meant they were doing exorcism work. Se-a knew that much. But for some reason—
Step.
Before she realized it, Se-a’s feet were following after them. She kept a good distance.
Even if the three of them occasionally disappeared from sight, it was fine. Just by watching the direction they were heading, she could roughly tell where they were going, so there was no problem tailing them.
It’s just curiosity. That’s all.
It wasn’t because their relationship seemed suspicious. She was simply curious about what exorcism activities were like. As she continued to follow, the three of them headed toward the Freedom Hall.
“…Freedom Hall?”
Freedom Hall. One of the student dormitories, a newly built one. Its biggest feature was…
“What… what are they doing?!”
It was the female dormitory.