No, ‘pretending to cry’ would be a more accurate description.

  The witch teacher's crying was the most artificial crying in the world.

  "Sob sob sob sob."

  "Professor, um... I'll leave you to have some time alone."

  "Yes, I would appreciate that."

  "...Just make sure to lock the door with the padlock when you leave. And keep the key in a safe place."

  Upon hearing this, Rumi and Raoul moved away from the door.

  Shortly after, Professor Myers left Medina's room and strode away down the corridor.

  Rumi and Raoul seized the opportunity and scurried back to the dormitory room door.

  This time, Rumi grew bolder and pressed her face close to the door crack to peek inside carefully.

  At that exact moment, the witch teacher's sharp nail suddenly shot out through the crack and snatched the red thread near Rumi's neck.

  "...!"

  Rumi was so startled she grabbed her neck and fell backward, but Raoul caught her.

  "Ugh..."

  As Rumi and Raoul stood there frozen, unable to make a sound, fortunately, there was no reaction from inside, suggesting Professor Francesca hadn't noticed Rumi's presence.

  Rumi calmed her racing heart and pressed her face to the door crack once again.

  Somehow, Professor Francesca now held a small golden metal doll in her hand, and she was carefully tying the red thread that had been hanging on the door around the doll's neck.

  Her movements were as methodical and precise as if performing a ritual, eerily calm and detailed.

  "So this is what that senile old hag is up to. Tsk tsk tsk..."

  She muttered something incomprehensible while taking out a bottle of black liquid and pouring it over the doll.

  Then the witch teacher grabbed the red thread and began swinging the doll by its neck.

  "Keeheehaha!"

  After laughing like a true witch, she suddenly let go of the red thread.

  The doll flew somewhere into the room and hit the wall with a 'BANG'.

  After a moment, Professor Francesca took a deep breath, sniffed the air, then smirked and said:

  "Hide and seek..."

  Rumi and Raoul briefly moved away from the door and whispered to each other.

  "What is she doing?"

  "I don't know... It looked like black magic... But more importantly, we need to find a way into that room while we have the chance."

  "Yeah... at least if we could get the padlock key-eek!"

  But just then, Professor Francesca was casually coming out of the room.

  Rumi and Raoul quickly backed away once again.

  Rumi tried to calm her pounding heart again while hoping Professor Francesca would forget to lock the padlock.

  But the witch teacher was locking the door with the padlock.

  "Ah, this is driving me crazy... Don't tell me we have to steal the key too?"

  Rumi and Raoul could only helplessly watch as the witch teacher locked the padlock.

  They were at least trying to see the which teacher’s pocket where she would keep the key in, but, The witch teacher suddenly just tossed the key onto the corridor floor.

  "...?"

  "Oh my? I seem to have lost the key."

  Rumi and Raoul looked at each other, confused about what was happening, then looked back at the witch teacher.

  But the witch teacher made direct eye contact with Rumi before turning away.

  "Wh-what? Did she know we were here...?"

  After that, the witch teacher left.

  Raoul hesitated for a moment before stepping forward to pick up the dropped key.

  "What's going on...? What is that teacher trying to do..."

  Raoul muttered while examining the key.

  Rumi stood dazed for a moment before approaching Raoul.

  "Well... whatever happened, looks like we can get into Medina's room now..."

  "Yeah... I really don't understand, but that seems to be the case."

  "Then can we go in now?"

  Rumi said with a smile.

  "Yeah, let's go in right now."

  Raoul held the key and looked around.

  Then he unlocked the padlock and they slipped into the dormitory room when no one was watching.

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  Rumi and Raoul could finally properly look around inside Medina's cursed dormitory room.

  The first thing they noticed upon entering was salt scattered everywhere in the room.

  But the problem was that the room was completely empty, as if all of Medina's belongings had already been moved out.

  "What? There's nothing inside. Did they take everything for the investigation?"

  "Hmm... Looks like it. Judging by the scattered salt, they must have performed an exorcism ritual too. At this point, they probably don't even need to keep the door locked!"

  "Nooo... this won't work. We need Medina's belongings..."

  Rumi searched the corners of the room just in case something remained, but strangely, even the golden doll that the witch teacher had thrown earlier seemed to have vanished.

  "But why can't I even find that doll from earlier...?"

  "Yeah... this is really weird..."

  "Ugh, does this mean we have to collect Medina's hair or something?"

  "If we really can't find anything else, we might have to go looking for Medina's belongings. If they're still being stored somewhere."

  "I really don't want to do that, it would make things way too complicated... Let's just look for some hair and go."

  In the end, Rumi searched intently for hair.

  First, she examined the four desks to identify which was Medina's, but Medina's was very easy to find.

  Anything that looked dirty was definitely Medina's.

  Medina's desk was covered in all sorts of stains and marks, despite her having been enrolled for only a few weeks.

  But there wasn't much hair.

  This time, when they looked for which bed Medina had used, it took less than a second to find it.

  Medina's bed was also covered in black writing scribbled all over.

  And the content was all either self-praise or what looked like black magic spells.

  This cursed furniture was probably why they had to close off the entire dormitory room.

  At least there was plenty of Medina's dirty hair in the corners of the bed, which gave Rumi some relief.

  "Raoul, there's some hair here."

  Rumi collected everything that looked like hair while dusting it off.

  "Oh... good. That should be enough... Any more might be ugh... dangerous..."

  With that, they had completed preparations for the summoning ritual that everyone would perform in this room tonight.

  Night fell.

  Rumi strongly advised the kids not to drink holy water tonight.

  Also, there was no need to wait until 2 AM for their operation tonight.

  Niel, who was keeping watch in the dormitory corridor, carefully confirmed that Professor Myers had disappeared behind the corner during his patrol.

  "Professor Myers is gone."

  "Right."

  Rumi nodded meaningfully and looked at Eve, who was sitting uncomfortably on the bed.

  "Are you really not coming? Medina's dormitory room is right there."

  "Sigh... I told you. Summoning an evil spirits at night is ridiculous."

  "No, but you're the best at dancing. Now that we know that, we can’t just leave you here. The room is literally right in front of us, not even 30 meters away."

  Eve squeezed her eyes shut.

  "No, if we keep going like this, something really bad is going to happen."

  "Rumi, let's just go without her. It’s understandable why Eve doesn't want to come. and we can’t force her."

  "Hah... fine. Then we'll just go stumble through the dance ourselves and come back with some heavy curses."

  "What...?"

  Rumi finally stood up, expressing her dissatisfaction.

  "Let's go, guys."

  Everyone except Eve - Rumi, Raoul, Niel, and Malcolm - left the dormitory.

  Eve remained alone in the dormitory room, sitting with a worried expression.

  The destination was really close. It was a room not even 30 meters away from Rumi's dormitory room.

  There were no obstacles in the corridor.

  The kids exchanged glances and started running toward the sealed dormitory room.

  Raoul immediately picked the lock and entered the dark dormitory room first.

  Except for the darkness, it wasn't much different from when they had entered during the day.

  Just in case, Rumi checked for Medina's spirit using her ghost detector made of litmus paper strips, but there didn't seem to be any ghosts in the room.

  "There's no one inside. That means we'll have to try summoning her through the ritual."

  "But... shouldn't we sweep up this salt first? Salt is used to ward off ghosts."

  "Oh, good thinking, Niel."

  Raoul replied.

  Niel left the dormitory room alone and quickly returned with a broom.

  She started sweeping from the salt near the door.

  Meanwhile, Rumi and Raoul set up the lantern and silver plate as they had learned from Senior Sariya, and drew the sacred site map by liberally sprinkling holy salt water, trying their best to imitate the complex pattern.

  Finally, they placed Medina's hair on the silver plate and lit the lantern.

  The lit lantern rose up before being caught by the tied red thread.

  Now they just needed to dance while quietly singing the hymn 'Following the Stream'.

  "Now we begin."

  At Rumi's words, the four kids started dancing, spinning around the candle while quietly singing.

  But problems arose immediately.

  Rumi tripped over her own legs and fell.

  "Ack!"

  "You, get out. You're just getting in the way."

  Malcolm looked at the fallen Rumi like trash and spoke harshly.

  "Ugh, damn it!"

  Rumi crawled out of the salt path, carrying her sense of defeat.

  But Rumi's feelings of defeat didn't end there.

  Niel, who had received crash course dancing lessons from Eve and Malcolm, seemed to dance way better than Rumi.

  "No way..."

  Then something strange happened.

  Suddenly Malcolm, who had been dancing well, stopped.

  "Hey, Malcolm, what are you doing?"

  Malcolm didn't answer and just rolled his eyes with a serious expression.

  "Wait a moment..."

  "What? Did you just forget the dance moves?"

  "Ahem..."

  "Malcolm, you're such a fake genius. What's the point of being good at dancing if you can't remember it?"

  Rumi seized the opportunity to thoroughly mock Malcolm.

  "I mean, this makes you worse than me who can't dance at all. All that hard work learning, and you can't even use it. Tee-hee."

  "Watch your mouth. This isn't the time to laugh."

  "Oh my, of course. I'm just sympathetic, you see. The second-best dancer after Eve getting sudden memory loss... Hehe!"

  While Rumi found the situation amusing, she hadn't considered the possibility of the summoning ritual failing.

  Anyway, Malcolm was following the dance again while watching Niel, and Rumi watched the remaining two dance while singing along.

  Raoul's dancing wasn't really dancing at all. Though he seemed to have memorized all the movements thanks to his good memory, it didn't matter much. It was impossible to tell what movements he was trying to make.

  "Raoul, you..."

  At least Niel, who had learned from Eve, was dancing normally, but as time passed her movements became increasingly sloppy, as if she was running out of energy.

  This summoning ritual had essentially failed completely.

  "Ah... we've failed..."

  Rumi had a headache from this not-even-funny situation.

  "No... this situation was already predicted, damn that Eve!"

  But then an unexpected ritual reaction began to occur.

  Along with a cool breeze, something like white smoke began approaching from far away.

  "Huh? What? We didn't fail?"

  "Oh, It's working."

  Raoul was also staring with surprised eyes at the approaching soul.

  In the end, whether it was because of the scripture song or something else, this summoning ritual seemed to be working.

  "Hey, just keep singing now!"

  Rumi and the kids stopped dancing altogether and just continued singing the scripture song.

  Rumi smiled with joy at Raoul and Niel while singing the scripture song.

  It seemed Medina's spirit was being successfully summoned.

  And this white mass was forming near the lantern.

  "Ururu urr"

  As the white mass gradually took shape, crying sounds could be heard.

  Rumi took a deep breath and asked.

  "Are you Medina?"

  "Uuuing"

  "...What kind of sound is this? Ghost language?"

  Niel whispered.

  Rumi ignored Niel and asked again seriously.

  "I'll ask one more time. Are you Medina's spirit?"

  "Woof woof!"

  "Woof woof...?"

  "What, dog barking?"

  Rumi and the kids were pondering what sound they had just heard.

  And soon they realized the sound was actually dog barking.

  The school mascot, Winnie the ghost dog, was barking in mid-air.

  "Huh?"

  "Winnie?"

  "Wh-what happened? Why did Winnie get summoned?"

  Niel asked with genuine confusion on her face.

  "Ah, we totally failed."

  Rumi despaired once again.

  "So we really can't do it without Eve? Or was there something wrong with that dirty hair?"

  "Tee hee hee, what are you guys doing summoning Winnie?"

  Suddenly a faint voice was heard.

  "What are you talking about? You think we wanted to summon Winnie?"

  "Huh?"

  "That voice just now... wasn't that Medina's voice?"

  "What?"

  Raoul stared blankly at Rumi as if wondering what she was talking about.

  But suddenly his gaze shifted to beside Rumi, and he muttered quietly.

  "Medina...?"