Chapter 9: The Banshee (2)
The more Everly thought about it, the more convinced she became that the banshee might truly exist.
If she compared it to a horror movie, then she and her father, Shelly, were exactly the kind of dull, death-seeking protagonists everyone loved to hate. Clues and warnings were practically being shoved into their mouths, yet they still thought everyone around them was joking. Oblivious and unaware, they turned a blind eye to the lurking danger—and even managed to make things worse by charging straight toward it. From the other side of the screen, the audience would be so furious and anxious they’d slam down their bowls and curse the protagonists as idiots.
She suspected she had seen through the truth. However, tragically, even if she noticed something was wrong, she couldn’t change the situation at all—because she couldn’t speak… Ahhh, damn it! When she got back, she had to practice harder. She was determined to force this disobedient tongue of hers to behave! (╯°□°）╯
Shelly the idiot, of course, couldn’t hear Everly’s violently surging inner monologue.
He simply treated everything explained in the exhibition hall as nothing more than a story. After finishing the account in the second display case, he had already started walking toward the third.
Seeing this, Everly quickly reined in her thoughts and refocused her attention on the exhibits.
The story in the third display case continued directly from the second.
Not long after the banshee was killed, the last placer gold mine in Pukati Town was officially declared exhausted. With no profit left to be made, large numbers of prospectors packed up and left Pukati, heading west in search of better opportunities. Almost overnight, the town fell into desolation, no longer bustling with traffic and noise as it once had been.
The residents who had settled there were unwilling to accept this reality. They sought out the town mayor, Achilles—descendant of the former mayor Sokdis—and hoped that Achilles could, as had been done twenty-five years earlier, hold the […] ritual to call back the gods’ favor and restore Pukati to its former glory.