とこ, ってやつ, sneezing and other considerations

Question

I'm having trouble with a bit of dialogue. I'm pretty sure I have the first part nailed down, but I am wondering about the choice of words in it.

It all starts with character A "saying" this: へくちっ

After some searching, apparently this is onomatopoeia for sneezing? It fits the following bits but I'm not sure.

Then comes this exchange:

B: もしかしてナツカゼってやつ？

A: いや～これは誰かが噂をってやつですね

Which I think is:

B: Is it maybe something like summer cold?

A: Nah. This is someone talking about me

The problem for me is twofold here. For one, is it a Japanese superstition that when someone talks of you you sneeze, similar to Western where you would have hiccups when someone is talking about you?

And secondary why the use of ってやつ. What function do they serve here. Previous question on this mentioned this expression being rude and being used to reffer to a person, which makes sense given that やつ=奴. But why use it here for a virus? And it's even used in the reply?!?

The last bit is this:

B: それならよかった ここのとこ毎日来させちゃってるから さすがに負い目がね

B: Oh, then it’s okay. I dare say I would feel indebted to you since I have been making you come here every day.

The basic jist is that B would feel responsible/bad if her making A come to her every day recently got A sick. I have just noticed as I was typing this in that ここの所 is apparently an adverb? that indicates this has been happening recently. I guess my google fuu has failed me on this one. Probably because ここのところ form is used pretty much allways for this.

Or am I mistaken here?

PS: I am sorry for making this basically a three part question, but I gathered that it would be better to put it in a single one, since it really is part of a single context rather than scatter it throughout different questions. If it's a problem, I'll gladly split it.

Answer 1

In response to your first question: yes, the へくちっ represents sneezing, and yes, it's a very common superstition in Japan that you sneeze when someone talks about you behind your back.

As for the usage of やつ, this is indeed the same rather informal word as 奴, but it has more uses than just referring to people. It can also refer to a thing or concept. ～というやつ or ～ってやつ in particular is a common casual expression similar to the English "that thing called..." or "that thing where...", ie. it's used for describing/identifying a familiar concept. So in this case, ナツカゼってやつ is "that thing they call a summer cold", and 誰かが噂をってやつ is "that thing where someone's talking about you", referring to the familiar superstition about sneezing.

As for your third point, I'm not sure exactly what your question is, but your understanding seems pretty much on the mark. ここのとこ does indeed mean "lately" here (though I agree that it's a slightly unusual form - I feel like it's more common either as the full ここのところ or the further abbreviated ここんとこ), and B is indeed saying that they're glad A isn't sick because they'd feel a little guilty if that were the case.