WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 5: Accidental Killing

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I could see ghosts.

And had there really been this many ghosts in the world?

What kind of world had we even been living in?

Crunch, crunch!

Was it because the sun was setting?

It felt like I was seeing more and more ghosts.

Munch, munch!

What a terrifying truth.

Did that mean the whole world was full of ghosts?

I could see animals too, not just people. Thinking about how many living things were born and died every day...

Crack, crunch!

"Gari."

Clack?

"Is it good?"

Clack!

Gari nodded hard enough for their whole body to shake.

A ghost was flailing between those grotesquely huge teeth, trying to escape as it wailed.

【S-save me...】

Clack!

【Ack! Ngh! Agh! Kyaaaaaah!】

The ghost was being chewed to pieces.

It was kind of pitiful, but I didn't feel sorry for it.

That bastard had made eye contact with me, opened its mouth wide, and charged.

Most of the ghosts Gari had eaten on the way here had been like that.

Anyway, this was all because I'd settled down in a neighborhood with bad energy.

I followed the smell and hunted evil spirits, but there were places where the stench still wouldn't fade.

The evil spirits had been eaten, so why was the smell still here?

If anything, it felt worse.

I walked around on guard, wondering if more evil spirits were nearby, and soon found the culprit.

There was damp mud near Tancheon Stream.

I picked up a stick and dug around, only to find a stake buried there.

"Ugh... Gross."

Snakes and bugs were coiled around a huge iron stake.

Snakes in the middle of Seoul? I mean, they probably existed, but this was my first time seeing one...

Just in case, I poured the holy oil I'd brought all around the iron stake, then gathered branches and set them on fire.

Whoosh!

The flames spread.

Since we were by the river, I was worried it wouldn't catch, but it went up in an instant. Nice.

It was warm, and it smelled good too.

The surprising part was that the fire I'd started to kill the bugs and snakes was melting the iron stake as well.

Was it made in China?

It melted in a campfire just because I poured on some oil.

By the time the firmly planted iron stake had melted away and the fire was dying out, the foul smell had vanished without a trace.

I found several more stakes afterward.

Once I dealt with all of them, I had run out of the holy oil I'd made. That was when I realized I needed a new exorcism item.

Holy oil smelled way too bad... What about holy water?

Yeah, holy water.

Let's make holy water.

"Gari, do you know how to make holy water?"

Clack!

Gari nodded, teeth clacking.

This time, Gari brought me the Bible and hymnbook from inside the house.

Gari didn't point to a specific Bible verse like last time, so...

"Do you mean I should draw some water, pray over it, and sing hymns?"

Clack!

Gari also brought over the salt from the kitchen.

It was coarse sea salt. Come to think of it, I'd once heard that holy water in the Middle Ages was usually saltwater.

To make as much holy water as possible, I filled the big red basin we used for making kimchi with tap water.

The salt... I could probably just dump in the whole container, right?

There were two kilograms of it. Once I poured it all in, the water turned cloudy before the salt quickly dissolved.

"A prayer and a hymn over this... Hmm..."

The problem was that I was alone.

I couldn't pray and sing hymns at the same time...

"Ah!"

I thought of a way.

I could do a hymn prayer.

It was a style of prayer where you recited a hymn with prayer-like lyrics, praying and singing at the same time.

In Protestant circles, especially Pentecostal churches, there was a way of praying out loud.

It was called a collective outcry prayer, and when paired with hymns, it became a hymn prayer.

With that settled, I opened YouTube.

What hymn accompaniment should I play?

Since this holy water was for fighting evil spirits, I should choose something combative.

"All right, I've decided."

(Recommended BGM: Fight Against the Devils.)

I started clapping along with the familiar hymn accompaniment.

Twenty-six years as a cradle Christian.

Matching a hymn accompaniment by myself was easy.

"Fight against the devils, brothers who have cast off sin!"

"Fight bravely against the evil enemy troops ahead!"

"Judgment Day and the day of destruction stand before your eyes~"

"It shall soon. Ap. Proach!"

That was when Gari's teeth began clacking one after another.

Clack~ clack clack, clack clack clack~ clack!

Clack~ clack clack, clack clack clack~ clack!

Gari, you little...

Could it be?

"Glory, glory, hallelu~jah!"

Clack~ clack clack, clack clack clack~ clack!

"That's it, good job! Glory, glory, hallelu~jah! Soon. Victory. Shall. Cooome!"

Clackclackclaaaaack!

It was a moving moment, passionately offering a hymn prayer with an angel.

That was when I remembered all over again that Gari was an angel.

Since Gari was an angel, maybe Gari had something useful?

"Gari, hold on a second."

Clack?!

Gari jumped in surprise when I plucked a feather from their body.

It was a little small, but I'd obtained an actual angel feather.

Clack! Clack clack!

Maybe plucking the feather hurt, because Gari kept clacking their teeth.

"Verse two! Fight against the devils, brothers who have cast off sin! Aren't those shouting crowds hideous devils themselves?!"

Cl-clack?! Cl-clackclack!

I casually moved past the fact that I'd plucked one of Gari's wing feathers and continued the hymn prayer.

After thirty minutes of hymn prayer, which lasted until the song ended, I looked at the quiet red basin.

Had... anything changed?

The saltwater in the basin looked no different than before.

But I believed.

I had made it with my strong will to fight devils and a real angel feather.

The holy water had to be complete.

Otherwise, I was in trouble.

Seeing was believing.

Now that I'd made holy water, I had to try it out.

"Gari, let's go."

Clack!

Gari jumped around happily at the word go.

This wasn't a walk, though.

By the time I filled some plastic bottles with the holy water and headed out, it was already pitch-black outside.

Perfect.

After hunting evil spirits for the past few days, I'd realized that ghosts showed up especially often at night.

During the day, I had to search hard before I saw one, but at night, they sort of wandered around like people.

【Eek!?】

I ran into an ordinary ghost almost immediately.

"Hello, sir. Could you come over here for a moment?"

Ordinary ghosts freaked out the second they saw Gari.

Evil spirits were the weird ones. This was probably the normal reaction.

"Gari! Fetch!"

Clack!

Gari quickly chased down the fleeing ghost and bit it.

Since it wasn't an evil spirit, Gari wasn't especially hostile toward it, but...

【Kyaaaaaah! Kiiiyaaaaaah!】

The ghost looked ready to pass out instead.

I immediately poured holy water over the poor ghost.

Trickle!

The holy water ran down the ghost's spirit body.

"Hmm..."

Nothing changed?

Was there no effect because I'd made it through some sketchy method?

Had I just made a perfectly fine ghost wet for no reason... Huh?

The ghost was wet.

Water was running down its body.

Ghosts were spirit bodies.

Normally, even if you tried to touch them, your hand would pass right through.

But the holy water had run down a spirit body, which meant...

I'd made something, at least.

Besides, this ghost wasn't an evil spirit. It was just a ghost.

Maybe holy water didn't work on it because it hadn't done anything evil or wicked.

It might work on an evil spirit.

Which meant I had to find one...

"Hmm. They've been wiped out."

Had I hunted around ten evil spirits over the last few days?

I wasn't sure if it was normal for one neighborhood to have that many evil spirits, but I caught every one I saw while wandering around, so they were gone.

Should I expand into another neighborhood?

Just then, I caught a faint foul smell.

"I told you this neighborhood has bad energy."

Anyway, first I needed a subject for my holy water field test.

I got on my bicycle and rode toward the smell.

The place I arrived at was familiar.

Tancheon Stream, where I'd found the iron stakes around this evening.

A person in a black hoodie was standing there.

A ghost in a hoodie?

It wasn't as if every ghost I'd met so far wore hanbok. Since they had probably become ghosts in modern times, they all wore modern clothes.

"Excuse me? What are you doing there?"

I decided to speak to them first.

You could tell from a ghost's face.

The more evil a spirit was, the more vicious its face looked. You could tell at a glance that it was an evil spirit.

But the man's eyes looked like those of an ordinary person.

He looked a little hollow and gloomy, but aside from the fact that he smelled bad, he was human.

No, seriously, did he never wash?

Now that my sense of smell had improved, I could even smell people who didn't wash properly.

"...!"

I frowned in disappointment, but the man's reaction was even more dramatic.

"Y-you...!"

Then he suddenly made something with his hands and urgently muttered.

"O one who spreads black wings, answer the contract. Beneath the sign of the stars, gather and take form according to my will!"

An eighth-grader syndrome spell in this day and age?

He wasn't just unwashed. He was an unwashed otaku?

A moment later, though, crows appeared right in front of his nose.

No, their forms were faint and distorted.

They weren't crows. They were crow spirits.

That man's cringey spell was real?

"I command you as one who has received the mediation of the pentagram's contract! Peck out and devour my enemy's eyes!"

With that vicious spell, the evil crow spirits flew at me.

But...

Gulp!

The evil crow spirits weren't even a mouthful for Gari.

"What?!"

The man in the hoodie stared in shock.

After swallowing the crows, Gari immediately bit the man.

"Huh? No!"

The man Gari had bitten thrashed in midair.

It looked like Gari had bitten his neck, and it would only take a second to tear it right off!

"Gari! Wait! Wait a second!"

It was true that he had attacked first, but that didn't mean I could let him die.

Of course, I wasn't enough of a pushover to easily forgive someone who had tried to kill me.

Still, if I were him and came across a freakish monster like Gari, I probably would have attacked first too.

It was survival instinct, I guess.

If I could clear up the misunderstanding, I wanted to resolve this peacefully.

"Let go! I said let go! Come on!"

Clack?

When I desperately stopped them, Gari let the man go.

"Gasp! Gasp! Gasp!"

"Are you okay? I mean, why did you attack me out of nowhere?"

I was shocked when I saw the man's condition.

Blood was seeping from his neck. His neck had nearly been severed.

"Gasp! Gasp! Gasp! Gasp!"

After realizing he had almost died, the man was hyperventilating and couldn't calm down.

This was when I needed to keep my head straight.

First, I should clean the wound and wrap it in a bandage.

"This might sting a little."

I took the water bottle full of holy water from my pocket.

It was saltwater, but would that be okay? Well, salt had a disinfecting effect, so it should be fine.

In the military, they treated most injuries with Albothyl.

Medicine was supposed to hurt a little if it was going to work.

The moment I sprayed the bottle of holy water onto the man's neck...

"K-kyyaaaaaaaaah!"

Smoke suddenly rose from his neck, and it began to melt!

"Uh...?"

I'd only seen human skin melting in movies.

Faced with that insane sight straight out of an adults-only slasher film, I stood there dumbfounded.

"Gurk! Grrk! Grrrrrgh!"

The man clawed wildly at his melting skin with his nails, writhing in agony.

But struggling was useless.

The holy water that had run inside his clothes rapidly melted his body down until only the clothes remained, filled with a mushy slurry.

Drip!

The man's neck dropped into the runoff, which looked like liquid gelatin.

It was a perfect, indisputable death.

"I-I... killed someone!"

Clackclackclackclackclackclackclack!!

Gari... Why are you, an angel, so happy that someone got killed?

Footnotes:

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