Chapter 65
'Alice isn't sleeping in class today... Has her anger not subsided yet? For some reason, she's frowning.'
Alice was monitoring mirrors throughout the school with her senses.
Therefore, it was natural to frown while concentrating.
Shin Ha-rim, who did not know this fact, mistakenly thought that Alice was still angry.
POV Switch - Ha-rim
'She might be in a bad mood because the person who made her angry is sitting next to her!'
I tore up a page from my notebook and made a note.
The content of the note was that I was sorry and wanted to go eat something delicious together later.
I passed it to Alice, who read it, then made a note herself and handed it to me.
[Be careful with mirrors.]
'...?'
I looked at Alice with questioning eyes, but she was frowning again.
I realized that Alice wasn't actually angry, but rather focused on something else.
Does Alice have a 4D personality?1
...I quite like it!
I wondered what Alice was concentrating on.
Of course, I was also paying attention to class.
I would feel bad for the teacher if I didn't.
But I couldn't figure out what she was focusing on.
'Now that I think about it, she told me to be careful with mirrors, right?'
Why do I need to be careful with mirrors?
Is it related to the Alice ghost story?
I took the mirror I had brought for the ritual out of my bag and fiddled with it.
For some reason, Alice flinched every time I touched it.
Like she's being tickled.
She glanced at me and handed me another note.
[I'm sorry, but would you mind focusing on class or doing something else? Stop touching the mirror. Please.]
"...?"
The request was quite questionable, but wouldn't it be a good way to foster a relationship by giving and receiving favors?
I smiled and nodded.
"Ahem. I have urgent business today, so we'll end class here. It's okay to move around outside the classroom, but please don't make a lot of noise!"
Wow! Are there any students who don't like long recess times?
I asked her if she wanted to go eat something delicious after school.
"I'm sorry, but I don't think I can. Ah, I'm not angry anymore, so don't misunderstand."
"I see. Okay... So, you know. Me and the others are going to gather and do necromancy together. Do you want to come too? We are a club that explores the supernatural and urban legends. If there's nothing else to do, let's do it together!"
Alice seemed worried.
I don't want her to say no.
I stared at her with sparkling eyes and put my hands together.
She sighed and nodded.
"...Okay. Instead, if you do something strange to me again, I will scold you guys."
"Hehehe. Of course."
I wrote down the things to do in my notebook. Then, without any sense of distance, I took Alice's soft hand and led her to the club room.
Kyeong-min and Suho came late after going to the bathroom... Eun-jeong isn't here?
"Suho, where is Eun-jeong?"
"She's watching Alice over there by the door."
She really is.
Her pigtails are slightly visible.
After Alice's scolding, Eun-jeong seemed to realize she went too far.
"Eun-jeong! Alice isn't angry anymore, so come out!"
Eun-jeong stuck her head out and looked at Alice.
Then she walked slowly and cautiously, glancing at us.
Alice slowly closed her eyes and didn't glare at Eun-jeong, so she seemed to have taken this as a sign of reconciliation and stood next to her.
"What are you going to do with necromancy?"
"What we're going to do today is mirror necromancy."
"Mirror..."
Alice: 'It's a mirror. It's dangerous near mirrors... But can something pop out of this small mirror? I might be able to do it, but I don't know if he can do it too... If anything looks suspicious, I'll destroy it.'2
I left Alice, who was deep in thought, and turned off the lights in the room.
Then I took out the candle I had prepared in advance and lit it.
After that, I took out the occult supplies that I had purchased with the money me and the other members pooled up.
"What is that?"
"It's a crystal ball we bought at an occult shop a while back. If you look closely, you can see the beach. Isn't it amazing?"
"What do you need it for?"
"I just bought it because it was cheap. I put it here because I thought supernatural things might happen around supernatural things."
Alice: '...Then it's not really an occult item.'
It seemed like Alice wanted to say something, but it was probably just my mood.
I ignored it and chanted the spell.
It's a common spell floating around on the internet.
But since there is nothing else besides this, there is nothing we can do.
After reciting the spell, I looked in the mirror.
"As expected, nothing happened."
"How many times did we ever succeed?"
"None~"
It was then.
Music flowed from the crystal ball.
"What is this?"
The music echoed in my ears.
It penetrated my mind and whispered to me.
Be honest.
Then, like an air bubble rising from the bottom of the sea, something inside me began to rise.
"I don't want to go to cram school!"
"I want to be a tank in LoL, but it's annoying when they tell me to be support!"
"Eh~! I want to act silly! A bit more!"
Kyeong-min, Suho, and Eun-jeong, respectively.
'Bubbles flooded my inner thoughts, and words poured out of my mouth.
"I don't want to be lonely anymore."
Alice was hugged by Eun-jeong.
Alice was not completely unaffected by the music, either.
She also tried to hug Eun-jeong with both arms, but then shook her head and threw the crystal ball out the window.
There was a sound of something breaking, and my mind went blank.
"...What just happened?"
Just as Alice was about to say something to Suho's mumbling.
Alice's cell phone rang.
Beep...
She took out her cell phone.
Since I was right next to Alice, I saw the contents of the message. The contents were The movement lines overlap exactly. and The guy suddenly stopped.
Who are they referring to?
"..."
A chill runs over my skin. I looked to the side. A man wearing a wooden mask and black clothes was standing there.
"A beautiful song awakens the mind, haa... Yes. People must be honest about their feelings. Even if it leads to destruction."
The man spoke to me in a creepy voice.
He pulled out a knife from somewhere.
I realized he was something other than a ghost. I unconsciously took a step back.
"Killing children is really fun."
He trotted over.
"Four people. Unfortunately, I don't have time, so I'll have to settle for just two people."
"There are five people, mister."
"...?"
It's Alice's voice.
The man looked towards Alice.
He didn't seem to have noticed her presence.
Even though she was right next to him.
"Rather than appearing inside the mirror like me, you have the ability to teleport around areas with mirrors. This is so unexpected. There was no point in paying attention to the mirrors in the first place. That's kind of annoying."
"You..."
"What? Are you going to run away?"
The man swung his knife at Alice's provocation.
However, Alice was standing behind the man in the blink of an eye.
"How?!"
"I just moved quickly. Now, what is in front of your eyes?"
A mirror... There was a full-length mirror in front of the man.
"Mirror... Sounds familiar, right? To you and to me. So, for a special first time, I'll show you around."
[I'll show you the world in the mirror.]
Alice kicked the man with her thin leg.
The man was unable to resist and was sucked into the mirror, and Alice followed him in.
We couldn't make sense of what had happened so quickly... But we couldn't contain our growing curiosity, not knowing if it was the song's effect that was still affecting us.
We looked into the full-length mirror that suddenly appeared.
The space reflected in the mirror was a different space than here.
Ah.
There, Alice walked towards the man.
POV Switch - 3rd Person
"Shit. Damn Workshop... They had never said anything about this!"
A petty thief who stole property from the Institution.
The psychic Jin Myung Suk cursed.
He only entered a mirror, but a different world unfolded.
Although the environment was similar to the original, if you looked a little closer, you could see that this world was a crazy place.
"The Workshop? So you came from there? Or maybe you received a request. Well, it doesn't matter. Either way, I will hand you over to the Institution."
Alice walked lightly and stood in front of the man.
The man realized that this girl was the master of this world.
He didn't know what the girl could do to manipulate this space, but he wouldn't be caught so easily.
"If you think I will be caught that easily, you are mistaken."
The man took something out of his chest. It was three wooden dolls.
"Is that something you got from the Workshop?"
Alice showed interest in the three wooden dolls the man brought out.
"No, it's stolen goods."
"You're really crazy."
Alice shook her head as if she were fed up. The man cut his own skin with his knife, bled, and sprinkled his blood on the dolls.
Then the wooden dolls rattled and grew in size, becoming about 1.5 times larger than adults, and chainsaws grew from their hands.
Iron and wood.
Alice has a feeling of dj vu. She saw something similar among the Institution's isolates. It seems like it was made in the same place.
Creak- Squeak-
The man, now with strong wooden dolls as allies, smiled. Alice just had an expressionless expression.
Alice asked a question to the man who looked triumphant.
"Mister. Do you think you are a villain?"
It was a fairly unexpected question, but the man seemed familiar with it.
Because it was something he asked himself endlessly. The answer was always the same with his self-rationalization.
"Villain? No! I'm just being honest. You only get to live once, so you have to live according to your own will. What's wrong with pursuing pleasure? If I'm doing anything bad, it's Gods fault who made me born like this."
"So you think you're not a villain."
Alice nodded her head, but she didn't look convinced. It just looked like she expected this answer.
"..."
"Well, that's fine, because different people think differently. But it doesn't really matter what you think in the end, because you're not the one judging the wicked on stage, the audience is."
The man couldn't understand Alice's words.
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"A disgustingly evil person cannot be the main character."
If there was a stage like that, the audience would boo.
An unpopular play eventually loses its reason for existing.
That's why the criminal in front of her doesn't even get a chance to try an adventure.
So.
"You need to rot and stay in a corner of the stage."
"What?"
A blade was thrown from somewhere.
It was as fast as a bullet, but the high-performance wooden dolls of the Workshop narrowly avoided it.
Then they spun their chainsaws even more menacingly.
"It's a strange world inside the mirror. No matter what happens, nothing is considered strange... Ah. It's a strange world, but nothing is strange. Funny pun, right?"
Alice smiles. A monster armed with a knife appeared behind her.
"Knife monster... Is it you again? If you only eat iron, it won't be good for your health."
The monster of the fear of kitchen knives expressed denial by shaking his head.
Then the monster rushed towards the wooden dolls, aiming for their iron chainsaws.
The three wooden dolls faced the knife monster and showed their strength to not be defeated.
But that's it.
There are more than just the knife monster in this world.
Step. Step
One by one, the creatures came, screeching, their bodies partly made of iron. Needles. Knives. Spears. And so on... Beyond that, a monster of fire puffed up its great body to melt iron, and from another place, a monster of tetanus rushed for rust.
"The damn ability doesn't work!"
The man, who knew he had no chance of winning and tried to escape, realized that his ability would not activate.
Of course it didn't.
The ability was to teleport around a mirror, but this place was inside one.
Finding the coordinates would be difficult.
Alice kicked the man's leg and broke it before the monsters killed him.
"Argh!! Ah!!!"
"Noisy. Be thankful that it ends like this. I also noticed this recently. There's a powerful monster sleeping here that even I can't bring out unless I meet the conditions. Please don't wake him up for no reason."
"This is way above the agreement... Pinocchio... You son of a bitch!"
Alice tried to find a way to silence the man's noisy mouth.
It's better if he can't use his abilities.
As she looked around to see if she could find anything good, she realized that there was a strange guy with bloodshot eyes and a bushy beard next to her.
"Ah. You came at the right time, Sandman. Please make him sleep while we're here."
Sandman glared at Alice. He seemed dissatisfied.
"I know, it was loud, right? Just make this guy sleep, and I'll go."
Sandman is a sleep fairy. He sprinkled sleeping sand into the man's eyes and put him to sleep.
Alice had no right to judge this wicked man's sins, so she decided to hand him over to the Institution. She had promised them, too.
When Alice came out of the mirror, she had to face the shocked gaze of the club members.
"..."
"Awesome! So awesome! Alice, what on earth are you?"
"You saved us...? As expected, Alice is the Alice from the ghost story!"
Ha-rim and the children, filled with excitement, bombarded Alice with questions, but Alice only made a sad expression.
At this moment, only Shin Ha-rim noticed it and wondered about it.
"...Please erase it."
From the mirror appeared the giant face of an old man with tears in his eyes.
It's the monster of forgetting. The children's memories were erased again.
"Erasing your memories with my own hands doesn't feel good either... To what extent has it been erased?"
POV Switch - Ha-rim
Alice continued to sleep.
She really sleeps a lot.
She slept until the end of the day.
I drew my attention from the sleeping Alice and took out my to-do list to write down.
[To-do list.]
...
13. Go for mirror necromancy with Alice.
...
"When did I write this...?"
I had already finished the mirror necromancy with the club members. Did I make a mistake?
I don't know.
After about 10 minutes, I woke Alice up. She woke up from her sleep and rubbed her eyes. I then said to her.
"I'm sorry for troubling you... I'll buy you something delicious as an apology, so why don't you come with me?"
So to that extent Alice said.
I couldn't understand what she meant, but I guess it was fine because Alice said it was nothing.
I gathered the club members and took Alice to a snack bar that we often go to.
Alice found Tteokbokki spicy, but she didn't seem to hate it.
I'll take her here a lot in the future.
Alice is an unusual girl.
I'm sure if we become friends, every day will become exciting!