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Tap, tap, tap…
Soft footsteps echoed from the corridor outside.
The woman sitting quietly on the floor, her heart heavy with sorrow, instinctively lifted her head when she heard them.
She wiped at the corners of her eyes—though there were no tears to be seen—and curiosity nudged her forward.
Cautiously, she approached the window nearest the corridor, peeking out.
Through the glass, she spotted two figures: one tall, one small.
It was Asher, holding onto a little girl named Hutaru-gusa.
Even though a new stranger had appeared, and despite her deep longing for companionship, the woman didn't rush out to greet Asher.
Instead, she lingered in the shadows, watching him carefully.
After all, the timing of his arrival felt… almost too coincidental.
And from the calm expression on his face, there was no trace of fear.
This left the woman in the shadows puzzled. What was Asher doing here with that little girl?
Asher and Hutaru-gusa, meanwhile, had just arrived at the old school building. Right away, they saw Takahashi and a few others screaming and running in panic.
From their terrified reactions, Asher immediately knew they had probably encountered the legendary school ghost.
Fortunately, it didn't seem to attack them. Otherwise, there was no way six ordinary students could have escaped unscathed.
That only made Asher more curious about the ghost haunting this old building.
A harmless spirit? He'd never seen one before.
Activating his spiritual sight, Asher led Hutaru-gusa straight to the third floor, where the spiritual energy was strongest.
"Must be here," he muttered, glancing at a classroom a short distance away.
Through his spiritual sight, the energy coming from that room was the densest.
With that, he started walking toward it, Hutaru-gusa in tow.
The woman inside the classroom watched them approaching, her unease growing with each step.
Strangely, as they got closer, she felt a flutter of tension in her chest.
She instinctively touched her heart, her expression shifting.
After decades of lingering as a bound spirit in this old school, this was the first time she'd felt something like this.
She didn't realize it yet, but the source of that tension was the little girl by Asher's side— Hutaru-gusa.
To ordinary humans, a shikigami like Hutaru-gusa would be completely harmless, invisible even. But as a spirit, the woman's perception of supernatural beings was far more sensitive than a normal human's.
The closer Hutaru-gusa came, the stronger the woman's nervousness grew.
Before she could even understand why she was feeling this way, Asher and Hutaru-gusa reached the classroom door.
The woman, still pressed against the window, instinctively looked up—and froze.
Because she realized…
The little girl and Asher could see her.
Yes, they could actually see her.
"Eh~?"
"Hello there, stranger!"
"You must be the ghost here, right?"
Hutaru-gusa tilted her head, peering curiously at the woman from the window, her expression innocent and full of wonder.
"..."
"Ah—!"
After a moment of stunned silence, the woman finally reacted, letting out a scream before vanishing entirely from the room.
A ghost—frightened by a little girl and a man who could see her.
"Uh…"
"Master, did we scare her away?" Hutaru-gusa asked, looking up at Asher, genuinely confused.
Asher was a bit at a loss. He had never encountered a ghost so timid before.
But regardless of that, capturing her was part of his system task. He had every reason to find her.
"Probably," he said. "We'll know once we track her down."
Scanning the area, he soon noticed a faint trail of energy—a residual trace left by the spirit as it moved to a higher floor.
Following it, Asher and Hutaru-gusa ascended further.
Meanwhile, in a hidden room on the fifth floor, the ghost woman cowered in a corner, shaking with fear.
She couldn't understand how Asher and Hutaru-gusa could see her without her making any move to reveal herself.
Could they be exorcists? Had they come to kill her?
The thought only made her panic worse.
She was just a bound spirit, unable to leave the old school. Encountering exorcists could only end in death.
Back with Asher, he climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.
Carefully, he noticed something odd: compared to the lower floors, this staircase had an extra step.
That reminded him of something a classmate had said about one of the school's "Seven Wonders":
There's a staircase in the school with thirteen steps. The final step leads to another dimension. Step on it by mistake, and you'll never return.
Had they fallen into the ghost's trap?
Asher considered the possibility, but he wasn't afraid. With Hutaru-gusa—his strongest shikigami—by his side, there was nothing to worry about.
Step by step, they continued upward.
Sure enough, at the top, they reached a landing with an old wooden door. This had to be the way to find the ghost.
Asher twisted the handle and pushed the door open.
But the sight beyond it made him raise an eyebrow.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just an empty void, the night wind brushing past.
A low-level trap, only the easily scared would fall for it. Open the door… and plunge four floors down.
Asher shrugged, stepped back, and closed the door.
Yet as he turned toward the fifth floor, a flicker in his peripheral vision caught his attention.
Against the wall around the corner, a half-height hidden door blended seamlessly into the surface.
Without his enhanced spiritual sight, he would never have noticed it.
Curious, he crouched down and opened the hidden door.
"....."