Chapter 7 - Let's Learn Magic (4)

When I contacted the man who had posted the night-security job, he urgently told me to come right away, offering to cover my taxi fare. I arrived outside the building he had named.

Since it was supposedly haunted, I had expected a run-down, abandoned building on the outskirts of town. Instead, it was an ordinary building of the sort you could find anywhere near the university's bar district: a café on the first floor, an internet café on the second, and study rooms on the third and fourth. The lights were off in both cafés, though, as if neither was open for business.

As I looked up and surveyed the building, the man who had posted the job approached. He looked like an ordinary man in his forties. In contrast to his nice clothes, his tired-looking skin and hollow eyes stood out.

"You're Kim Yohan, the one who contacted me, right?"

"Yes, that's me."

"Thank you for coming on such short notice. The previous guy ran off without a word, which really put me in a bind."

He spoke with a smile, trying to lighten the mood, but his words came quickly and there was something anxious about his eyes. Anyway, after talking to him, I learned that his name was Park Cheolmin. He owned the building and personally ran the internet café and study rooms.

"I only called it security work for convenience. It's nothing professional. It's more like standing watch or being on overnight duty. Have you done your military service?"

"No, I haven't. But I think I get the general idea."

I was exempt from military service because I was an orphan, but I didn't bother mentioning that.

As I followed Cheolmin upstairs, I stole a glance at the firmly shut entrance to the internet café. Ten at night might be late, but it was certainly no time for an internet café to close. Well, if the owner said it was his choice, there wasn't much I could say.

Perhaps noticing my gaze, Cheolmin offered an unprompted explanation in a mutter.

"Ha... Well, business has been slow lately because of some silly rumors."

"Rumors?"

"That the building's haunted."

He said it as though it were nothing. His speech was still hurried and anxious, though.

"That's why I'm hiring someone to stand watch. Drunk college students and people with nothing better to do keep trying to barge in to see the ghosts..."

Cheolmin started to say something more, then stopped. We arrived at the study-room office on the third floor. Some dust had accumulated, as though no one used it, but the office itself was decent.

"Your job is simple, Yohan. Sit here and watch the security-camera feeds for anything unusual, and occasionally patrol the study rooms on the third and fourth floors. Here's the flashlight. You absolutely must not run away or quit halfway through. You have to stay right here until six tomorrow morning. Do you understand?"

Ever since we had entered the study rooms, his words had been practically pouring out. His eyes kept darting around, and I could tell he wanted to leave immediately. My eyes narrowed of their own accord.

... Well, I had come to test my holy water, so I didn't really mind. But his entire body was practically screaming, 'There's something wrong with this building! I'm withholding information!'

I could see why the previous worker had fled. You'd have to be an idiot not to.

Anyway, Cheolmin left as though fleeing the place. Left alone in the silent office, I watched the gray security-camera feeds. There were six in total, each showing nothing but dark study-room corridors, desks, and chairs. Nothing looked particularly wrong.

'Come to think of it, wasn't there a genre of horror games where you checked security cameras like this?'

Of course it would be quiet, but an unpleasant stillness hung in the air.

And then—

CLACK—CLATTER-CLATTER-CLATTER! CLANG! CLANG!

Suddenly, I heard something rushing up the stairs, banging on the railing loudly enough to reach inside the office.

"—!?"

Startled by the noise, my eyes widened as I looked at the camera feeds... but there was nothing on the stairs.

"..."

Then again, seeing something there would have been a problem too. From a part-timer's perspective, a drunk pounding on the railing and charging up the stairs like a maniac would be horror enough.

JINGLE... JINGLE... JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE!

As though the action had moved from one screen to the next, the bell on the fourth-floor study-room door began ringing madly on the feed beside the one showing the stairs. The door was still closed.

I let out a small sigh at the sight.

"Hah..."

I had come prepared to test my holy water, but the sheer blatantness of it made me sigh involuntarily. That didn't mean I was terribly frightened, though.

I reach out and turn off the security cameras. Getting to my feet, I took the grimoire from my bag and held it instead of the flashlight.

After all, I had something invisible with me too.

THUD... THUD...

I leave the brightly lit office and climb the darkened stairs. A little monster bastard of my very own.

When I opened the door to the fourth-floor study rooms and stepped inside—

JINGLE!

—a chair greeted me.

RATTLE... RATTLE...

A wheeled chair slowly approaches me down the dark corridor.

"..."

Oh, I was just going to faint from fright...

A wild Ghost appeared!

So I decided to call mine out too.

"Grizzly, come out."

"Haaah...!"

At its master's call, the Invisible Vampire that had been waiting inside the grimoire emerges, exhaling a cold breath. Though unseen, its overwhelming presence fills the space.

RATTLE...!

The chair clearly faltered.

WHOOSH!

Grizzly thrust out an arm toward it, snatching something and gripping it tightly.

It was something like faint smoke, now visible even to my naked eyes. From certain angles, it looked like a human face.

"Gyaaah."

Then Grizzly clamped its mouth around what looked like the face of that hazy something and tore into it.

CRRUNCH!

That was the end of it. The hazy ghost lost its strength, broke apart, and scattered, vanishing completely.

"Gyaa?"

Grizzly looked around, opening and closing its mouth in an attempt to eat the dispersing wisps of smoke, but it was no use. They had been utterly annihilated.

'... It looks like a raccoon that washed its cotton candy in water.'

As that thought crossed my mind, three hazy shapes darted past Grizzly and me, flying toward the door.

"Grizzly, don't touch them."

It was good to know Grizzly could deal with ghosts so easily, but the goal this time was to test the holy water.

JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE!

I approach the hazy ghost ringing the bell like mad. Opening the water container hanging at my waist, I take out the holy-water sprinkler that has been soaking inside.

I called them ghosts or spirits for convenience, but I didn't believe they were human souls. I had paid tuition and studied philosophy, after all.

... Though I had no idea why I'd learned any of this.

Anyway, to borrow the words of Mr. Plato, who just loved his teacher so very, very much: the human body and this world are merely skins that imprison the soul. When a person dies, their soul goes to the proper, true world of the Forms. What remains here on earth, therefore, is not a soul. It is a by-product of the soul, residual thought, data.

I swung the holy-water sprinkler, scattering droplets over the hazy ghost blocking the door.

Solomon, son of David, takes up hyssop, and behold, it is a holy-water sprinkler.

The droplets of holy water touched the hazy smoke, and that was the end of it. There was no sizzling sound of something being seared, no agonized scream. It simply lost its strength, dispersed, and vanished. The bell stopped ringing.

JINGLE!

I opened the door, stepped outside, and looked up the stairs leading to the roof. I climb them without hesitation. I felt no fear. Not because I was particularly brave, but because I had the means to fight back: a powerful familiar, the grimoire's knowledge, and magic.

Darkness was no longer a place where something unknown lurked.

THUD... THUD... THUD...

Climbing the stairs, I swing the holy-water sprinkler at the two clumps of hazy smoke gathered before the rooftop door. Once again, that was all it took.

And so the series of incidents that had worn down a building owner and spread rumors of a haunted building was resolved with a few drops of salt water made by reciting an incantation.

I took a gentle, deep breath.

"Whew..."

Feeling a comfortable quiet rather than that unnatural stillness, I finally understood a little of the discipline called magic.

Just as Edison and Nikola had trapped God's lightning and turned it into energy, it was a discipline that could plunder and exploit strange phenomena—the uncanny itself.

That was magic.