Chapter 14: Main Character (I)
It was barely dusk, the sun sinking at the horizon while the moon steadily rose. A girl stood at the entrance of the main school building. An eerie, mystical energy had descended upon the entire area.
She barely breathed in the stench of cold death sinking deep into her lungs.
Pssh... pssh...
The eerie chatter of whispers called to her, yet even with the strangeness of it all, she remained calm. This, after all, was far from abnormal in her life. Her brown eyes glinted with something strange as an almost imperceptible spirituality passed through them.
She took a long look at the building that housed her days.
"I am, after all, a student of Hanseong Academy. I owe it to my fellow students to rid them of this curse," the girl said as she passed through the threshold of the entrance.
As she did, she felt a wave of eerie, almost malevolent energy wash over her. Goosebumps sprouted all over her body. Her heart quickened slightly, yet her face betrayed nothing. She wore that cool expression—one that was either her only way to guard against the eeriness of it all, or perhaps just a mask to bite down the fear that came with dealing with malevolent spirits.
She wasn’t sure anymore. She had been fighting these spirits for so long that she had forgotten she was still a teenager.
She turned right as her eyes caught the movement of something against the cold red glow of the moon.
Chiching.
The brass bells on her hands started shaking and chiming aggressively as the whispers of something unseen drew her in a certain direction.
She walked through the empty halls as the soft chiming of her brass bells echoed through the area. She quickly passed various classrooms, the pull from her bells calling to her. She moved through several corridors and up flights of stairs until she arrived at the area of influence.
Her brass bells were now rapidly shaking, her own intuitions blazing through her body as messages from the beyond flooded her mind.
She stepped forward slowly, the stench of death, hate, and malevolence filling her lungs.
She approached the stalls, opening them one by one—the first, the second—moving through each and every one of them. There was nothing.
Yet the ominous energy still overflowed.
She reached inside her bag and removed several talismans, plastering them around the area before she began chanting and dancing while rhythmically shaking her bells. She was channeling the powers of her patron deities. Today, she would make sure to break the curse plaguing the entirety of the school.
She continued chanting and dancing as the lights around her began to flicker. An almost spiritual field descended upon the area as she moved through her ritual. As she did, the sound of whispering grew louder, and forms of black mist began to dance around the room.
Yet she wasn’t fazed in the slightest, sinking deeper and deeper into her dance as some kind of divine power descended upon her.
The whispers became screeches.
The mirrors in the bathroom suddenly started to fog over as the image of a woman began to blink across their surfaces. Then, without warning, the mirrors burst outward, shards barely grazing the shaman.
A faint silhouette covered in black mist materialized from the fractured reflections before appearing in the real world—only to dissipate moments later.
"And cut," a female voice reverberated through the area.
A teenage girl with black hair and dark eyes walked toward the main character, her face beaming as she opened up a webcomic.
"Cha Hwa Rim, I didn’t know you were so gifted. I got literal goosebumps just from filming these scenes. You really brought your character to life."
"Just look at this scene," the girl said as she scrolled through an episode of the webcomic The Great Shaman Cha Hwa Rim.
Cha Hwa Rim remained vacant as she looked around the area. The team of amateur filmmakers huddled around a phone as if it were a treasure, yet her worries lay beyond that.
She turned toward the moon. It hung overhead, red and ominous, beaming down upon the area with all its might.
She shifted her gaze to the edge of her vision.
Hopefully, the timer had risen. Otherwise, she would be devoured.
Yet just as the timer was about to blink to life, it shrank away, and her system was no longer accessible.
Dan Woo frowned, trying to summon his system again. Was his new body hindering access to it?
"Cha Hwa Rim! Cha Hwa Rim!" a female voice called as slender hands grabbed her shoulders, shaking her vigorously.
"What?" Dan Woo answered in a detached tone.
"The moon—"
"What about the moon?"
"It’s... it’s blood red."
Of course it’s red. The eerie domain has descended.
But before Dan Woo could retort, he caught himself digesting her words.
"Did you say the moon is red?"
"Yes. Look."
She turned Cha Hwa Rim’s body toward the window.
Dan Woo tried to act surprised, yet deep down he questioned how this was possible. He turned to the rest of the crew, ready to ask if they could see the red moon too.
Only to find that the crew was gone.
"Im Nari?"
"Yes?"
"Where is everyone?"
Im Nari, still mesmerized by the red moon, whipped her head toward the direction where the crew had initially been standing, only to find no one there.
Before that realization could sink in, the bells on Cha Hwa Rim’s hands began to shake violently as she felt something pulling her toward the exit.
She wrestled against the unseen force while Im Nari watched in confusion, caught off guard by Hwa Rim’s sudden movements. To her, it looked as though Hwa Rim was struggling against something invisible.
"Are... are you okay?" she finally asked.
Yet Cha Hwa Rim couldn’t answer. The bells were already pulling her away.
Was he experiencing another type of anomaly? Dan Woo couldn’t help but ask himself. He had felt there was only a slim chance that filming a short horror adaptation of Cha Hwa Rim’s webcomic would be met by an anomaly, yet this had been the only option remaining.
He had been confident that, even though he wasn’t powerful, his abilities would definitely help him escape any anomalies he came across.
But now...
He tried summoning his system in every way he could, but there was nothing. It was as if his new body didn’t allow such a connection to exist.
He let the bells lead him.
Maybe he should have taken the gamble with For the People. Lee Hyun Ju must be furious with him, he thought.
His mind drifted back to the events of the day. It had been exhausting.
Then his awareness shifted to his current body.
It was female, and it felt strange.
But hopefully, through it, he had saved a life—and perhaps gained a little more.
He just hoped the devouring wouldn’t be too literal for this subject.
Suddenly, as Dan Woo wrestled with these thoughts, he heard the whispers of something unseen.
A ghost, maybe.
A patron.
She had to exorcise the spirit.
The realization came to him intuitively.
That was the only way to get out of this situation, wasn’t it?