When Rumi looked ahead, she saw the back of a tall boy standing there.

  "...?"

  The boy stood there for a long while, facing away from Rumi as he seemed to be in a staring contest with the bus driver.

  After a moment, the bus door closed and the bus departed. Only then did the boy turn around to face Rumi.

  The boy had wavy black hair and smiled with pretty but somehow tired-looking eyes.

  "...!"

  Rumi suddenly felt her cheeks grow hot.

  "That was a ghost bus. Even if nothing too terrible would happen if you got on, it would take you outside the town. Didn't you read the guidelines?"

  "I skimmed them... but who are you? Are you starting school today too?"

  "Yeah, nice to meet you. I'm Raoul Lenoir."

  Raoul extended his hand to Rumi.

  But Rumi hesitated to take it.

  "You're not... a ghost too, are you?"

  "Not yet..."

  Rumi stared into Raoul's eyes before taking his hand.

  "I'm Rumi. Thanks for earlier."

  "It was nothing."

  "But did you actually memorize all those long guidelines?"

  "Yeah, I didn't enjoy reading them either, but it can't hurt to know all of them."

  Raoul spoke with a constant gentle smile, and strangely, Rumi couldn't take her eyes off his face.

  Despite his tired appearance, to Rumi's eyes his face had a refreshingly pleasant quality.

  One thing that caught her attention was the large flask-like bottle hanging at his chest.

  "What's that big flask on your chest? What's inside?"

  "Ah, this... you could say it's like my lucky sacred relic. It's very important to me, so I always carry it around."

  Raoul glanced briefly at his flask before looking back at Rumi.

  "You don't have any sacred relics?"

  "Ah, I don't need them... But did you used to live around here? Why haven't I seen you before?"

  "I don't live around here."

  Just then, raindrops began falling from the sky.

  When a raindrop fell on Raoul's head, smoke rose from it.

  Raoul quickly opened his umbrella.

  And quite naturally, he held it over Rumi's head as well.

  "Today it's black rain."

  Raoul said this as he took a step closer to Rumi.

  "... ..."

  They waited for the bus like that.

  Shortly after, a decrepit-looking bus came around the corner, making sounds like a broken engine.

  'Kreek kreek kreek'

  Seeing a bus even worse than the actual ghost bus, Rumi was convinced this one must be fake too.

  "Here comes the school bus."

  "What? That's the real school bus? It looks even more suspicious than the last one."

  "Despite how it looks, it's real. And... if anything happens, I can grab you and run."

  Raoul watched Rumi's eyes as he reassured her.

  "Oh..."

  As they boarded the bus, they saw someone in a black raincoat at the wheel.

  Though they gave off an eerie aura, they definitely didn't seem like a ghost.

  Looking around after boarding, the inside was beyond quiet... the atmosphere was as gloomy as a funeral bus.

  Some students even had their heads bowed, trembling as they prayed.

  Rumi wasn't sure if this wasn't actually the ghost bus after all.

  Raoul found a seat first, and Rumi naturally sat down next to him.

  As soon as he sat down, Raoul quietly began to pray.

  Rumi looked at him for a moment before glancing around again.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The bus interior was damp and unsettling.

  'Ting tong tang tong'

  Perhaps because the bus was so old, the sound of raindrops hitting the roof was painfully clear.

  The bus started moving again.

  Rumi had questions for Raoul, who seemed to know a lot, but the bus was so quiet it felt wrong to speak.

  "Raoul, why is it so quiet in here?"

  Rumi asked in a lowered voice.

  "Can't you feel it?"

  "Feel what?"

  "You're... quite insensitive to curse energy, aren't you? Like how you almost got on that other bus earlier."

  "What? Is this bus cursed too? I knew it. Quick, take my hand and let's run."

  Rumi spoke even more quietly.

  "Haha, that's not it... Actually, Saint angelicus' school buses are officially cursed buses."

  "Huh? I don't understand. Why would the buses of supposedly the most sacred school be cursed?"

  "That's because fuel is scarce here. You might already know this, but this town runs on electricity produced by the dam up in the mountains. There aren't many electric cars, and since it's hard to get fuel, they deliberately let ghosts possess the bus wheels. Then the ghosts move the wheels. You've heard of ghost power, right?"

  "What...?"

  Rumi couldn't tell if Raoul was joking or being serious.

  "If you listen carefully, you can hear sobbing every time the wheels turn."

  'Kreek kreek kreek kreek'

  "Ugh..."

  But thinking about it, she realized this world was full of such things.

  Like the motorcycle from yesterday, and even the moving mansion that brought her to this town was powered by ghosts in a way.

  But still, to think they'd use ghosts even for a sacred school bus...

  The cursed bus wound its way through town through the black rain.

  All the students boarding in the rain wore gray raincoats.

  After a while, Niel, whom Rumi hadn't seen in a long time, got on the bus.

  It was the first time seeing Niel since they'd entered this town together.

  Niel was a Japanese-American mixed girl who always wore her hair in red braids and had an incredibly gentle-looking face.

  She boarded with a tall Black boy, and they seemed quite close already, whispering to each other with good chemistry.

  Niel approached where Rumi was sitting.

  Their eyes met.

  "Rumi..."

  Niel started to greet her but covered her own mouth and walked past.

  Since the Bertin incident, Rumi and Niel had agreed not to acknowledge each other as they gather information about the town separately. So Rumi didn't greet her either.

  Honestly, since that incident, seeing Niel didn't make her feel happy anymore.

  The bus drove for a long time until it reached the outskirts of town. It was an isolated area, almost rural.

  There, they picked up one girl who turned out to be extremely noisy.

  The moment she got on, the quiet bus turned into something more like a field trip bus.

  The girl talked loudly non-stop.

  What's worse, she sat diagonally across from Rumi, putting her directly in the line of fire of the noise.

  She seemed to be talking an incredible amount despite not appearing to know anyone nearby.

  "I was supposed to enroll several years earlier, but they said there's no such rule in the school guidelines. So I complained several times that they needed to make an exception, but this stupid school..."

  The Latina girl wore round glasses and had her hair tied in messy pigtails, giving her a very scattered appearance.

  Moreover, something that looked like a small human leg was sticking out of her bag, giving off quite a bizarre aura.

  "My aunt teaches black ma— I mean, what was it called... anyway, she teaches potions at the school. I'm the best at that too, but I'm so good at many other things too, hehehe..."

  As Rumi was listening to this unwanted story like background noise, she kept feeling someone's gaze.

  The talkative girl kept glancing at Rumi between her streams of words.

  Rumi desperately avoided eye contact, afraid the girl might try to talk to her directly.

  "She seems beyond just being insensitive to curses..."

  Rumi muttered to Raoul, pointing at the talkative girl.

  "She's quite famous. She's probably the daughter of the Mora family, known for black magic."

  "What, there's a family like that? Does practicing black magic make you that insensitive to curses? Wait... what was black magic again?"

  Come to think of it, Rumi realized she'd never heard exactly what black magic meant in this ghost-ridden world.

  "Black magic refers to the curse rituals that witches use..."

  "What the hell! Isn't that super dangerous?"

  "Yeah, it's dangerous. But here, black magic refers to curse rituals modified for human use. If you think about it, even ghost power uses black magic... She's probably just become desensitized to black magic curses from exposure. Probably..."

  "Hmm... I see...? Still, she's not completely immune like me."

  "...?"

  'Kreek kreek kreek kreek'

  The bus was climbing a hill, making groans like it was about to get sick.

  The ghosts' wailing was clearly audible as they climbed the slope.

  Rumi had images in her head of evil spirits pulling them up this hill.

  The bus finally reached level ground at the top of the mountain, passing a sign that read 'Saint angelicus' School of Exorcism.'

  And then the supposedly sacred school building came into view...

  "...?!"

  It didn't look sacred at all.

  No, it was the complete opposite. It looked gloomier and more ghost-infested than any building in town.

  And indeed, dozens of ghosts and gargoyles were floating around the school.

  It was absurd that the most sacred place in North America had more ghosts than the residential area.

  There was an enormous, tall cathedral building on the left, but even that looked dirty and weathered like some medieval dark ages cathedral.

  Rumi instinctively knew that what Bertin had said was true.

  This school held terrible secrets.

  But thinking about that actually made her more determined to uncover whatever secrets there were.

  When the bus stopped, the driver stood up to introduce himself to the students.

  "New students, greetings. I am Professor Myers, and I teach exorcism rituals at this school."

  Professor Myers, revealing his face from under the black raincoat, appeared to be quite a young male teacher.

  "You have arrived at Saint angelicus' School. It's raining very poisonous black rain outside, so please put on your raincoats and run to the school entrance. Today the weather is worse than usual, making it easy to get possessed, so please follow instructions and for heaven's sake try not to get possessed by ghosts."

  The students listened to the explanation and started putting on their raincoats.

  Rumi also put on the gray raincoat she had prepared as part of her school supplies.

  As the rain poured down, the bus door opened with a clang and a bare hand shot out.

  The black raindrops that fell on the hand sizzled with white smoke as they burned the skin.

  The hand quickly withdrew back into the bus, and soon students in gray raincoats started running out.

  The students ran to the school entrance as if their lives depended on it.

  Now it was Rumi's turn to run.

  That's when Raoul grabbed her hand and dashed out of the bus.

  "Gasp...! Hehehe..."

  Rumi ran along, laughing as Raoul pulled her along.

  The black rain poured down as they could see the students who'd run ahead passing through the open school gates.

  Though Rumi herself was immune to curses and could have just walked in the rain, she figured she might as well go along with Raoul pulling her.

  "Aagh, it's heavy..."

  Just then, Rumi saw that talkative girl running ahead of them with an enormous bag.

  She was running so slowly and awkwardly that Rumi and Raoul caught up to her quickly.

  But the girl was wobbling quite seriously, and finally fell face-first into a black puddle.

  'Splash'

  "What's with her? Pfft!"

  Rumi almost burst out laughing at how ridiculous the fall looked.

  But Raoul, running beside her, didn't seem to even notice the fallen girl and was about to pass right by.

  "Wait Raoul, she fell over there."

  Rumi stopped. Raoul belatedly stopped too.

  "Oh, you're right. We should probably help her up."

  White smoke was rising from the glasses-wearing girl's hand where it had fallen in the black puddle.

  "Ouch!"

  Without hesitation, Rumi ran to the glasses-wearing girl and grabbed her wet hand to pull her up.

  "Hey, quick, get up."

  "Ack, my hand...!"

  "Rumi, don't grab that hand carelessly!"

  Raoul rushed over when he saw what Rumi was doing.