Chapter 114 - Ghostbuster 2 (4)
9 min read ·
Afterward, the police arrived at Smith's house, along with 'CRT', the Creature Response Team, the U.S. division in charge of Anomaly Incidents.
Drake, who'd grown worried when she couldn't reach Smith, had connections of her own and had made a separate call.
But the Fake Mona Lisa Anomaly had already been exorcised by Yo-han, so the CRT focused on protecting Emily and handling the aftermath.
Emily glossed over the Magic Yo-han had used with a few suitably vague answers.
And then, draped in a blanket and leaning on a female CRT agent, she was partway out the door.
The paintings the Fake Mona Lisa Anomaly had torn to pieces, sprawled across the hallway....
'Artwork – Yo-han Gripping Emily's Leash'
And so on and so forth.
".........."
Looking at the scraps of artwork, ripped to shreds too thoroughly for anyone to guess what the originals had been, she let out a sigh of mingled regret and relief.
"Whew...."
At the very least, there'd be no scenario where a special unit carted off paintings of her raw, naked desires as evidence from the scene.
At any rate, so it went.
When Smith came to, he pulled Emily into a hug, relieved that she was safe.
He passed along his thanks to Yo-han, and with that, the Fake Mona Lisa Anomaly Incident came to an end.
Though if there was one small, trivial problem....
Emily's darkened room, the lights switched off.
Emily, in comfortable pajamas, lay under the covers of her plush bed and deliberated for a moment.
".........."
Then she pressed the play button on the recording file she'd transferred from Smith's phone to her own.
Click-.
[Emily, it's all right. I'll help you.]
Yo-han's voice flowed out, low and calm and soft.
[You must have been scared. You held on so well.]
"Uuu...!"
Emily, feeling happiness and embarrassment all at once, went red to the tips of her ears and covered her face with both hands.
Painting pictures of the person she liked? ...Okay, that much, she figured, was understandable.
But splicing together audio recordings of that person's voice and listening to them before bed?
This... this... was not so easy.
Mortified at herself, Emily wriggled and rolled beneath the blankets.
"Haah...."
Then she lay on her side, curled herself into a ball, and parted the fingers cradling her face.
Through that gap, she gazed at her phone.
[Emily.]
...She listened to Yo-han's voice as it flowed out.
'Still, I really do love listening to Yo-han-ssi's voice.'
Emily lowered the hands covering her face, softly bit her pretty lip, and gazed with a wistful, aching expression at the phone glowing in the dark.
Without meaning to, she found herself imagining what Yo-han might be doing right now.
'Yo-han-ssi must be so busy with Ghostbuster work, running around all over the place....'
After the job was done. Yo-han, returning with a tired, languid face to his sleek, tidy, darkened studio apartment.
Oh, but the room didn't actually need to be sleek.
Maybe when he was alone, he surprisingly let things slide, so unlike his flawless image.
Or maybe there'd be things he'd been too busy with work to put away, exorcism tools strewn about in disarray.
...That would be nice in its own way.
Emily's cheeks colored faintly.
Wasn't it possible a situation might arise where she went over to Yo-han's place to clean for him, or cook for him?
'Honestly~ Yo-han-ssi, even when you're busy, you have to eat properly.'
...She'd try out lines like that, too.
Anyway, the fantasy unspooled onward.
The sight of a weary, dark-eyed Yo-han shrugging off his coat, tossing it over a chair, roughly working open the buttons of his dress shirt as he opened the refrigerator door.
(For some reason, in Emily's head, the inside of Yo-han's fridge was stocked wall-to-wall with Evian.)
Yo-han pulled out a bottle of water, twisted off the cap, and put it to his lips to drink.
Glug- glug-.
His Adam's apple bobbed, and a stream of water slipped past his lips, trickling down his throat, toward his collarbone and his chest....
"Aaaaaah...."
At how explicit the fantasy had gotten, Emily cut it short, buried her face in her pillow, and let out a muffled scream of embarrassment.
"Haah...."
Emily let out a sigh and lay on her side.
".........."
She watched the faint glow of the phone screen in the darkness and, listening to Yo-han's voice, slowly closed her eyes.
She'd been through an Anomaly Incident only recently, but she was fine.
The evil spirit that crawled beneath her bed, the monster that burst out of a painting....
Because none of it frightened her, so long as she thought of Yo-han.
For some reason, the image of Yo-han cracking a whip at the Boogeyman and the Fake Mona Lisa monster came to mind, and a faint laugh slipped out of her.
"Hoo... haha...."
Maybe because sleep was close, silly daydreams flickered through her head.
And so, with Yo-han's flowing voice for a lullaby, Emily fell into an easy sleep.
".........."
Yes, the Anomaly Incident had been safely resolved, but....
Emily's fetish had only gotten worse.
***
When the Ghostbuster's wallet ran dry.
There was a story that Smith-ssi, the wealthy painter, would find himself swept up in an Anomaly Incident.
I liked that story.
Of course, obviously, it was a joke.
Even so, I didn't go so far as to hope other people would get tangled up in Anomaly Incidents just so I could make money.
...Still, I did think it was a relief that money had come in.
Seeing as I'd torched my funds on that stock venture with Soo-ah.
I checked the ten million won Smith had sent to my account and smiled in satisfaction.
I could have squeezed out a higher fee if I'd pushed for one.
But honestly, by my standards, it hadn't been an especially strong Anomaly.
And if a situation ever came up where I had to bolt for the States, Smith's help would be indispensable, so it was worth keeping the relationship warm.
Better not to get greedy over nothing.
Playing the dependable expert, the Ghostbuster, was the more profitable move in the long run.
And now, inside a café I'd deliberately chosen for its scarcity of customers.
A man in a white coat with a composed air about him, Yo-han.
An old man with the gravity of a seasoned martial master, Lee Mun-ryong.
And Kim Se-geon, a touch naive-looking, but handsome and kind-faced, all seated together at a single table.
The bizarre spectacle of the three of them watching a VTuber livestream on a laptop unfolded.
[Aah! Thanks for donating to Riko again today!]
A cute, high-energy voice rang out.
Lee Mun-ryong looked from the screen to Yo-han's face and said,
"What is this?"
"It's called a VTuber... but you wouldn't really get it even if I explained. Just listen."
Lee Mun-ryong's face scrunched up all on its own.
"Ehh... I know plenty, I do! This is, whatchamacallit! The singing and the dancing! It's like that Miku, isn't it!"
Where would I even start explaining? I decided to just keep it short.
"In a way, sure, it's similar... but with this one, there's a person inside."
Lee Mun-ryong looked back at the laptop screen and said,
"So what's this cyber-wench supposed to do, then?"
And then, out of nowhere, Se-geon cut in cautiously.
"I don't think that's a very nice way to put it... And she has a perfectly good VTuber name, Rikoriko."
Lee Mun-ryong's gaze and mine swung to Se-geon at the same time.
"You seem to know your stuff. You a viewer?"
"...I watch now and then. That signature high energy of hers, it kind of picks me up when I'm feeling down."
Well, whether Se-geon kept up with Rikoriko's streams was no business of mine.
Lee Mun-ryong listened to Se-geon's rundown of VTuber culture, then said,
"So you're telling me, you send money, this 'donation' thing, and she laughs and reacts for you?"
"Yes, well, that is...."
Lee Mun-ryong's eyes flew wide as he said,
"What is that! It's a cyber room salon [TL: a Korean hostess bar]! Why're you making a simple thing sound so complicated."
"It is not! It's absolutely nothing like that!"
Se-geon's voice shot up, and all at once, Lee Mun-ryong drooped.
"My apologies... teasing the young folk is just too much fun at my age, I got carried away...."
I chimed in from the side, just enough to help.
"Yelling at the old man who protected you from Mercenaries, all to defend a VTuber whose face you've never even seen. What a jerk."
".........."
Se-geon trembled, unable to say a word.
At any rate, leaving Se-geon in Lee Mun-ryong's care had been a solid choice.
The old man being the completely unguarded sort he was.
At the very least, there didn't seem to be any awkwardness in them living together.
[Ah, I'll end stream a little early today~ Sorry, everyone!]
With that high-energy voice, Rikoriko's stream came to a close.
"Our client's off work now. Let's get going."
It was time to meet the client, so I rose from my seat.
"So that's what this was."
Lee Mun-ryong stood up after me, putting the situation together, while Se-geon tilted his head.
"Uh... what do you mean?"
"The client for this job is Rikoriko. I watched one of the streams just in case, to pick up some information."
Not that it seemed likely to be much help.
So is this what they mean by riding the wave? Though with an Anomaly Incident, it's not exactly a wave worth catching.
Not long after Emily's job ended, a request had come in from Rikoriko's office.
Se-geon was startled, and Lee Mun-ryong fell into step beside me as he spoke.
"Hmmm~ Not that I mind, but you're calling in me and the boy both. It a strong Anomaly?"
"Not exactly."
I stole a glance at the yellow-covered book in Se-geon's hand, <The King in Yellow>, and said,
"Think of it as a test, of sorts."
Either way, once a job was taken, it had to be done right, so we headed to the client's office in time for the appointment.
And if there was one surprise, it was that the person inside Rikoriko was a man.
"Ah, hello."
A man with an unremarkable face bowed his head in greeting.
A woman who looked like a manager spoke, worry written on her face.
"You absolutely must keep this a secret."
Well, whether the person inside Rikoriko was a man or a woman made no difference to me.
What mattered was exorcising the Anomaly and getting paid.
I gave a soft smile and held out my business card.
[Ghostbuster – Kim Yo-han]
"Of course, don't worry. What matters here is exorcising the Anomaly, after all."