【Japanese Horror】The Digital Priestess — Episode 24: I Never Chose This | Haunted Kaidan Tales
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Episode 24 – “Never Chose This” (Full Text)
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The Digital Priestess — Episode 24: I Never Chose This
“Don’t screw with me…!”
Kenichi glared at his phone, hand clenched so tightly around it that the screen looked ready to crack.
He couldn’t delete the app.
He forgot things.
Things were being erased on their own.
It was his life, and yet it felt like someone else was controlling it.
The anger inside him finally burst.
“Why me? Why the hell is it me!?”
His trembling finger tapped the Miko Weather icon.
The app launched.
The shrine maiden appeared, filling the screen—
white robes, crimson hakama, the faint jingle of bells, and that familiar, eerie smile.
“Your future… is no longer yours.”
That line again.
The one he’d heard so many times—
as if it were just a default message.
Kenichi couldn’t take it anymore.
“What the hell does that mean!? My future’s mine!
Who gave you the right to say that!?”
Still smiling, the shrine maiden responded like she had foreseen everything.
“This application initiated a binding agreement upon your consent to ‘desire the future.’”
“Consent…? All I did was open the app! Don’t give me that…!”
Sweat beaded on his forehead.
He gritted his teeth.
“You drag people into this, erase them, force them to ‘choose’—
and call that a future? I never agreed to this. Not once!”
The shrine maiden tilted her head slightly.
“You may feel as though you were ‘forced’ to choose.
However, each selection has always been made by your own hand.”
“Then undo it!! Bring back my mom—bring back the people I lost!”
He shouted—then stopped.
He couldn’t remember.
Who had disappeared?
Who was gone?
(…Wait… who…?)
There was a gaping hole in his memory.
Someone had been there.
But now, even the fact that he was forgetting—he couldn’t grasp anymore.
“Restoration is not possible.
All records have been corrected.
History, memory, relevance—normalized.”
“…Memory too? Normalized…?”
He didn’t fully understand the words.
But he knew—this had passed into a realm from which there was no return.
The shrine maiden stared at him.
Her gaze held no mercy, no anger—
just mechanical stillness.
“Preparation for the next optimization is complete.”
Kenichi’s eyes widened.
“…Optimization?”
Her voice rang cold and clear.
“To return everything to its original state,
your existence must be optimized.”
Kenichi stumbled back a step.
“…What are you saying…? That means—”
The shrine maiden said nothing.
Only a line of text appeared on the screen:
“Please make your selection.”
It was smooth.
Final.
An unmistakable command.
Kenichi’s fingertip trembled.
He didn’t want to choose.
But if he didn’t—this wouldn’t end.
Inside his chest, it felt like something was already breaking apart.
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The Digital Priestess is an original Japanese horror story about a mysterious app that starts off as a weather forecast — but soon, things go very wrong.
What would you choose?
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