Chapter 21 – Curse (5)

Translator: Yonnee

—

Leo looked anxiously at Julia as the door closed with a resounding tak. As Julia glanced behind her blankly, Leo walked closer to her and placed a hand over the crown of her head, leaning forward slightly.

“Are you alright? Did something happen?”

“……”

Noticing his presence only when she heard his voice, Julia shifted her gaze and looked at him. Then, she opened her red lips to speak.

“Human beings are so desperate.”

“What?”

“I already know that greed is the essence of humanity, but… I didn’t know it would be like this.”

“What are you talking about?”

Julia narrowed her eyes as she recalled the girl’s words just now.

*

‘I told them we shouldn’t do it! Isn’t it terrifying to offer people as food?! And I didn’t even have a wish that I wanted to fulfill! But… But they said I should do it if I want to fit in with the social circles. I was just scared of that… Sister… Sister, I want to live! I didn’t do anything wrong! I didn’t—I don’t want to use people as offerings! I don’t even have a wish, how can I give up?! Please!’

‘…I heard that if you make someone else do the ritual, the dead and the curse will be transferred at the same time.’

‘R-Really?!’

*

The girl had an overjoyed expression as she looked at Julia, who then told the girl that she should rest and immediately called her maid.

Selfishness and simplicity, on top of desperation. Julia never thought it would be like this, but the girl didn’t hesitate to act this way.

Reminded of this desperation hidden beneath human masks, Julia turned to Leo and spoke.

“I think we need to talk.”

She went forward and took the lead, and Leo followed her out the door.

As they entered the lounge, an exhausted Patrick greeted them.

“Hello, Milady.”

“You’re here?”

“Yes. Oh, that’s right—I prepared everything you ordered, and I listened to the other children’s stories and organized them. Should I bring you the report now?”

“You can just bring it to me, and I’ll get to it later.”

“Alright.”

Patrick nodded and went outside, passing by Leo who greeted him with a pat on the back.

“Have a seat.”

Leo sat down with a gloomy look on his face.

“What did you ask of Patrick?”

“Some research in another academy. The other academies are also trying to investigate similar incidents like this…”

“But can Patrick also see the dead?”

“It’s possible for a second.”

When Julia responded curtly, Leo stopped speaking. It didn’t seem like she wanted to talk much. He waited quietly for her anyway because he knew that he made a huge mistake this morning.

“The curse is…”

“Huh?”

“Curses are originally violent. If someone curses another person and causes bodily injuries, it’ll be doubled or tripled when it comes back to the caster. That’s why curses are just like pointing a knife over your own neck. Even if it’s not right away, the knife would someday come back to the original caster and perhaps cut down everyone in its way as it returns. What do you think? Isn’t it funny? That’s what a curse is.”

“But the curse in this incident…”

“It’s indeed a curse.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Julia pursed her lips and bit her lower lip, which stung at the sensation. Because of the cold weather, her lips often cracked due to the dry wind.

Frowning at the stinging pain, she licked her lips before she spoke.

“First of all, to summarize my findings from yesterday and today, this ritual is used to summon the dead. However, the ritual is strange—in exchange for fulfilling a wish, it’s necessary to offer a living human every month. This can be seen as the price for granting such wishes, but it’s no different from human beings signing contracts with demons who want their souls in return.”

Leo nodded at the easily understandable explanation. Then, he leaned forward and listened more as Julia continued.

“But if you don’t pay the price and if you change your mind halfway and want to avoid the situation, you can just surrender the granted wishes you’ve received so far. If that doesn’t work, then that leaves no other choice—you’ll have to find someone else to perform the ritual and transfer the dead to that person. That’s why…”

Julia winced and muttered as though the next words were disgusting to her.

“For those who don’t know anything, it’s like a hit and run. But what’s interesting about this is that… They just pass on the ritual while also telling the next person that the way to get out of the situation is to pass it on again. Isn’t it interesting? Perhaps it’s something akin to guilt, that’s why the original caster is compelled to tell the next caster how to get out of it. But in the end, they’re just doing it out of self-preservation—that’s how humans are.”

Leo stared blankly at Julia as she clicked her tongue. Sometimes, whenever he listened to her speak, it felt like she was someone who wasn’t from this world. It was like she was speaking as an outsider.

“That’s why it’s important to pay attention now. As time passed by, more of the kids taught and transferred the ritual to the next person, and so the scale of the ritual just continued to grow. As a result, the students from each of the three academies just rushed and hurried to pass it on to the next person, and now we don’t know who started it. Then… What do you think would happen if all the students end up being involved in this?”

Suddenly, Julia clapped once, spread her hands with her fingers splayed, then made a sound with her lips.

“Boom! It’ll all explode. Do you get it? If those children spread the ritual outside of the academy, the strange barrier surrounding the school will be lifted and an enormous number of ghosts will be released. Then, just like an infectious disease, this would spread to the general public as well. It’ll be serious.”

Leo grasped what Julia was saying. The very fact that there’s a promise for wishes to be granted was going to be dangerous because it’ll tempt people.

This ritual would get in the hands of adults who had a lot more greed that these students… And apart from that, the power they’d wield would be on a different level.

If anyone would want to win a war, they would not hesitate to devote hundreds of thousands of people, and not just one person, to fulfill their wish. And all the while, they’d label this wish as something ‘for the greater good’.

The sacrifices they’d make wouldn’t include those hailing from aristocracy, and they would treat commoners like nothing. This was a society dominated by status.

Watching Leo’s expression grow increasingly broody, Julia opened her lips to express her thoughts.

“We need to figure out the specifics of this case as soon as possible. What kind of magic is behind it… Who are all the kids who know about the ritual… Who was the first person who did it… And…”

She reached her hand up towards her forehead, pressing down. Leo’s eyes followed the movement with worry.

“And what kind of curse it is.”

“Are there kinds of curses?”

“There are. There’s a lot of them. Depending on the abilities of the caster, it’s the most common to curse someone else using a doll as a medium. Apart from that, there are other curses using a dog’s soul or a cat’s soul.* Each of them have different effects, that’s why a lot of things change depending on the instigator of the curse.”

“There’s such a thing?”

“Yes. And there are more, depending on where it came from, whether it’s western or oriental…”

“Western? Oriental?”

As Leo tried to pronounce the Korean words, Julia just smiled awkwardly and shook her head.

“Never mind that. Anyway, there are curses like that, and more like dyeing the land, or making ghosts haunt someone. There’s a huge variety.”

“You know the topic well.”

“I learned a lot thanks to a certain someone.”

Julia nodded confidently and chuckled as she recalled the onmyouji, who bothered her and preached about curses.

“Then what kind of curse is this?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never heard of passing on a curse. It’s common to curse someone, and for the curse to return to the caster, but it’s my first time hearing about transferring it to another person. And the whole academy is embroiled in it… Anyway, we need to solve this quickly.”

As Julia finished speaking, the door opened.

Patrick came in with an armful of documents. At this, Julia reached out so that she could take them from him.

“I haven’t gotten much details, but the necessary information’s there.”

“It’s alright, I’ll sort it out.”

Julia shrugged, received the documents, then scanned over one. With a curious look, Leo asked.

“What’s written there?”

“Just this and that, like whether the ritual’s incantation and patterns were the same in the other academies, how many students know about the ritual, and the number of people who did it… And more than that, what changes transpired over the campuses when the ritual started—just that kind of research. I was wondering if I could find a lead by looking at the answers to those questions.”

Julia was looking over the documents as she answered. Leo smiled softly as he watched her being focused on reading.

Both in the past and here in the present—it was the same. She did her best in that tenacious way of hers, always doing her best with what she could do with her own two hands and never passing the work onto others.

Overlapping Leo’s view of Julia, he saw a young girl with a sour expression on her face. Recalling these old memories, Leo smiled, but Julia looked up at that moment.

“Duke Epesia.”

“Huh?”

As his trip down memory lane was interrupted, he tilted his head to the side as he heard her voice, then Julia spoke with a serious expression on her face.

“Can you help me? No—you have to help me.”

“Of course. How can I help?”

Julia handed a document over to him.

“It’s a document with the summarized details of Berni Academy… The number of kids who performed the ritual is almost the majority of the student population. There are students who have yet to respond, so there’s definitely more. So…”

“We have to protect the students who haven’t performed the ritual at this academy so that it won’t spread anymore… Right?”

“Yes.”

Leo got up on his feet with a smile, but Julia spoke more.

“One more thing.”

“What is it?”

“If possible, I want you to send people all over the academy to summon the students who’ve gone home. And please encourage some kind of group activity so that they’ll be compelled to sleep at the dormitories. If they stay at home, we won’t be able to monitor them. If we make them do group activities between three or four people, we’ll at least prevent more casualties.”

“Alright. I’ll do as you’ve instructed.”

If someone ordered this, there would be a lot of backlash. But no matter how the people would be dissatisfied, if the Duke himself was the one to command this, then they’d have no choice but to follow.

Julia watched Leo leave the room, then she turned to Patrick.

“Today, those souls… Let’s see if I can send them back to their places.”

“What will you do, Milady?”

Julia looked out the window with a grimace.

“I’ll talk to them.”

“But it didn’t work last time either.”

“……”

Julia bit her lips, then sighed as she contemplated. There was another way, but it was much more dangerous than just talking.

“I don’t want to walk over straw cutters** though…”

Her brows furrowed as she said this. It’s something she’s always avoided, but Julia shook her head, feeling that it was inescapable this time.

“It’ll hurt. Let’s think of another way.”

t/n:

* I can’t find a direct English meaning for the dog/cat soul curse, but if you’re familiar with the Japanese counterpart, it’s called ‘kodoku’.

It’s a kind of curse where the caster would mix several bugs in a jar and let them kill each other until only one is left. That last bug would be used to poison another person that would either control them, cause misfortune or kill them.

The remaining bug could also be used as a ‘lucky charm’ to grant the caster’s wish. However, in return, the caster would need to feed the bug. If it’s not fed properly, the caster will be eaten This insect could also be sent to another unknowing person who just knows about the ‘wish’ aspect to the insect, and not the ‘feeding’ part, so it becomes a death curse.

The dog curse is called ‘Inugami’, and it involves beheading a starving dog and burying its head at a crossroads. This was to make the dog’s grudges grow worse, and so the people passing over its head would be cursed. (There are other more gruesome methods to Inugami.)

I couldn’t find any specifics on the cat curse.

** The ritual Julia was talking about with straw cutters is where shamans walk barefoot over huge blades and dance in order to show that the gods acknowledge the shaman’s spiritual power.