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

  "...?"

  The boy stood there for a long while, fag away from Rumi as he seemed to be in a staring test 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 bck 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, o 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 't hurt to know all of them."

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

  Despite his tired appearao Rumi's eyes his face had a refreshingly pleasant quality.

  Ohing that caught her attention was the rge fsk-like bottle hanging at his chest.

  "What's that big fsk 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 gnced briefly at his fsk before looking back at Rumi.

  "You don't have any sacred relics?"

  "Ah, I don't hem... 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 umbrel.

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

  "Today it's bck 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 er, making sounds like a broken engine.

  'Kreek kreek kreek'

  Seeing a bus even worse thaual ghost bus, Rumi was vihis one must be fake too.

  "Here es the school bus."

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

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

  Raoul watched Rumi's eyes as he reassured her.

  "Oh..."

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

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

  Looking around after b, 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 dowo him.

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

  Rumi looked at him for a moment befng around again.

  The bus interior was damp and uling.

  'Ting tong tang tong'

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

  "'t you feel it?"

  "Feel what?"

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

  "What? Is this bus cursed too? I k. Quick, take my hand a'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 uand. 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 oricity produced by the dam up in the mountains. There aren't maric cars, and si'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 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 toowered 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 bck rain.

  All the students b in the rain wray 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 sihey'd ehis town together.

  Niel anese-Ameri mixed girl who always wore her hair in red braids and had an incredibly gentle-looking face.

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

  Niel approached where Rumi was sitting.

  Their eyes met.

  "Rumi..."

  arted to greet her but covered her own mouth and walked past.

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

  Holy, sihat i, 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 isoted 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 amoue 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 pined several times that they o make an exception, but this stupid school..."

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

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

  "My aunt teaches bck 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 unwaory like background noise, she kept feeling someone's gaze.

  The talkative girl kept gng at Rumi betweereams of words.

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

  "She seems beyond just being iive 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 bck magic."

  "What, there's a family like that? Does practig bck magic make you that iive to curses? Wait... what was bck magic again?"

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

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

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

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

  "Hmm... I see...? Still, she's not pletely 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 plete opposite. It looked gloomier and mhost-ied than any building in town.

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

  It was absurd that the most sacred p North America had mhosts than the residential area.

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

  Rumi instinctively khat what Bertin had said was true.

  This school held terrible secrets.

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

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

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

  Professor Myers, revealing his face from uhe bck raincoat, appeared to be quite a young male teacher.

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

  The students listeo the expnation 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 g and a bare hand shot out.

  The bck raindrops that fell on the hand sizzled with white smoke as they burhe skin.

  The hand quickly withdrew bato 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, ughing as Raoul pulled her along.

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

  Though Rumi herself was immuo 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 bck puddle.

  'Spsh'

  "What's with her? Pfft!"

  Rumi almost burst out ughing 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 betedly stopped too.

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

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

  "Ouch!"

  Without hesitation, Rumi ran to the gsses-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.