Author's notes:
Warning: Horror fic, there is character death in every chapter, some bloody descriptions, and suicidal themes.
Yu-Gi-Oh and it's characters, the references I have made to Aokigahara Forest, the books belonging to their respective authors, the mythology, Mount Fuji, or anywhere that is included in this story do not belong to me.
The locations and their myths are facts. Aokigahara Jukai really does exist, and so does it's surrounding villages. The myths are researched and will be explained in greater details in the next two chapters.
Talk about getting inspired by the creepiest of things. I find that Aokigahara is a really interesting place, even though its very sad and depressing. I kind of conveyed all my feels in a short fanfic. After this chapter you probably will have alot of questions, but I assure you that probably a whole lot will be revealed in the next two chapters. I like it when my stories go around in a circle.
Oh and just a tip, I wouldn't read this at night because when I was typing this yesterday in my room I actually started shaking ^.^;; and it may not be so scary for some of you guys but for me it was just too much.
Pairings : Thiefshipping (Marik I. x Y. Bakura), One sided: Tendershipping (Ryou x Y. Bakura), Gemshipping (Thief King x Ryou)
Enjoy lovelies~
If you would like some links to resources (Or just google Aokigahara) feel free to PM me ^.^
Aokigahara Forest.
Situated at the bottom of Mount Fuji.
This beautiful forest is not just littered with leaves on the ground,
But also with bodies.
The second most popular destination for suicide in the entire world,
Many people have decided to end their lives
Amidst these dense sea of trees.
With the rising concern of suicide becoming apparent to the government,
Signs have been put out to warn people and beg them to reconsider.
"Please turn back.
Think about your future.
Your family."
But to some people, these signs say,
"Welcome.
You are at the right place.
Please form a line here."
-0-0-0-0-0-0-
The sun started to set behind fading mountains that I often mistaken for clouds silhouetted in the horizon. The beauty of the heavens left me in awe, the colors of a day's end danced before my eyes, spinning, bursting into different shades, dancing with the fading light. So distracted and amazed by nature's beauty I almost took the wrong turn on a winded path down Mount Fuji.
"Bakura!" Marik shouted in the seat beside me. "If you keep looking at the landscape for a moment, you'll get us killed!"
I shot him a menacing glare, catching his feline indigo eyes, bathed by the rays of sunlight. "You shouldn't be one to criticize me on my driving."
His bronzed lips turned into a sneer, then a pout at my scolding. Folding his arms, he looked at the map again.
"Fujigoko lake resort should be around here somewhere." He muttered, sneaking a quick look at me.
"Are you sure we're going the right way? We've been driving for so long now."
"I thought you were one for the scenery. Where are those two stars that you always looked out for huh?" He teased, grinning to reveal his teeth.
"Marik…" I warned, clutching the steering wheel, eyes trying to adjust with the changing environment as I drove into the path into a forest.
"Why don't you ask your friend who told you about this place?" Marik wondered out loud.
"He never responded afterwards." I shrugged at the memory. "I hope he's alright, we were planning to meet up today."
"Alright." He turned back to the map. "The resort should be near the base of the mountain, so just keep going down…"
"Hn," I grunted in reply, glancing behind my shoulders to check for passing cars. The forest came out of nowhere, swallowing us up in the deepening darkness. The great oaks scattered the sunlight in between their leaves, leaving little droplets of colour on the road. I could feel Marik shift nervously beside me.
"We're still going down aren't we?" I asked, trying to reassure him.
"Yeah. Sorry, I'm not so good at reading Japanese." He sighed, looking up at me. He turned the paper sideways, leaning on the palm of his hand.
"You're still learning."
I narrowed my eyes at an object in the near distance. The sun had probably already set by now, no help thanks to the thick canopy overhead. It was strange… A lone truck with leaves scattered over its hood almost hidden by the long shadows perched at the side of the road. I slowed the car down beside it, rolling down my window.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to ask if we're on the right track."
I pulled up beside the ominously perched rust red truck, craning my neck over to see if anyone was in the driver's seat. As I guessed, the truck was empty.
"Hand me the flashlight, Marik." I said, and he reached back to take out the item. I shone the light on the front seat, revealing a guide, a map and a book.
Kuroi Jukai
I felt a tap on my shoulder and I spun around, flicking the switch off of the light.
"I see something out there." Marik slowly opened his door. "It looks like a tent."
"You think we've arrived at the camping grounds then?" I asked, following his actions. I stepped out, pulling up the collar of my black trench coat against the evening chill. I turned to the abandoned truck again, giving one last suspicious gaze.
I followed Marik into the thick overgrowth, carrying nothing but a flashlight in my right hand and the map in my other. Lighting the way, I did indeed see a tent perched upright between two thick trees. Silence fell around us, and with it, a horrendous shiver shot up my spine.
I shook my head, blaming the feeling on the fatigue from the hike we had earlier.
"Hello?" Marik called to whoever was inside the tent.
No response.
He tried again.
"Are we close to the camping grounds?"
With no one responding, I shined the flashlight on the lemon yellow tent, exposing the shadows inside.
"No one's inside!" I inhaled a breath of icy air.
Marik moved towards the tent, unzipping the cover. He suddenly stepped backwards, covering his mouth in disgust.
I quickly caught scent of the odor that emitted from the inside, doubling over.
"Bakura!"
I reached for his arm, clutching at his wrist I led him away from the tent. Gasping for the sharp air of the forest, I caught his questioning eyes and nodded.
"The stench of death."
"What is it doing there?!"
"I don't know. We should get out of here." I looked around in the tenebrous wilderness, looking for the path we came through, but everywhere mirrored itself. There was no way to clearly distinguish the landscape around them.
"Damn it…"
"Bakura." His fear stricken voice echoed around us. "There's a… string. Over there."
"A string?" I turned my head slowly to where he was pointing. Indeed as he said, a thin red string laced around a tree trunk, over some fallen branches, and continued down one way. "Maybe it's a trail for lost wanderers like us."
"We don't really have another choice do we?"
I grasped the string with my right hand, skinning over the thread, trailing it wherever it went. Although I had no idea where it was leading us, it felt like we ventured deeper inside the forest. I made sure Marik was close behind, looking back my shoulder every once in a while, checking if he was alright.
Without warning, his footing was lost amid the tangled bracken, knocking something heavy aside. A hollow noise followed from where he kicked it. I quickly held on to him, preventing his fall. He gave me a shaky smile, his hand cold to the touch.
"Come on." I pulled him up to his feet, holding on to the thread again.
"Wait." His grip on my shoulder made me flinch unnaturally. I stared straight ahead at what I knew he was staring at as well. The thread grew thinner now, heading towards a clearing where the black mass laid.
Without thinking, I turned on the flashlight again, shining it towards the clearing.
A figure crouched next to another one lying on the ground, examining it intently. The person sprawled out on the forest floor wasn't moving, a pale glow emanated from his raw skin colour.
On a closer inspection, the boy lying on the ground had rope burns, blood trickling down his neck. The snapped rope's other half dangled from a thin branch overhead, split harshly in two. A red yarn laid beside his hand.
"Get away from him!" I yelled to the suspicious man bending over the boy, shielding him from my view.
He looked up straight into my light, his dark violet eyes catching the glare for a moment before dashing away into the overgrowth in a wild frenzy, shattering the silence.
"Oh my God." Marik ran over to the body, inspecting it. He kneeled down beside him, beckoning me over.
"Who was that man do you think?" I asked him, making my way over.
"A-A grave robber maybe, they come to graveyards, mass burial places, to rob their bodies. I'm sure it was one; he w-was holding something when he fled."
"Graveyards, the stench of death, a huge forest. Of course how could I have forgotten?"
"What? WHAT?!"
"Aokigahara Jukai." I responded much more calmly than I should have. "The Forest of Death. Many people come from all over Japan to end their lives in this infamous Suicide forest."
I pressed two fingers at the boy's throat, already predicting the inevitable result. From what it looked like, his weight must have been too much for the branch, snapping it violently in half.
"He's dead." I whispered. "Oh God… That red thread he laid out must have been for him to get out of the forest if he ever changed his mind… But I guess he came to his final decision."
"Look…" Marik said sadly, brushing a snowy white lock away from his closed eyes. "He has the same white hair colour as you… It's strange, but I think you two almost look like twins."
My heart was in my throat, realizing how young this boy was, just a few years younger than I was. Tears flowed into my eyes at the confrontation of the sight of this poor boy, trying to release the noose around his neck. My fingers shook, breath hitched, coming out in short gasps, fumbling uselessly at the hard rope.
"Damn it!" I shouted. "He made this too tight!"
Why?
Why?!
What made you do this?
Wasn't there anything you could have lived on for?
Damn it!
"What are you two kids doing?"
A loud commanding voice knocked me out of my thoughts, my fingers dropped from the rope, holding myself as I trembled. I looked up when I felt light hit my face.
Two forest guards stared down at us, then quickly to the body.
"S-Sirs," Marik stuttered, his native accent blending in with his Japanese. "W-We were just lost and then we-we stumbled i-into this, this body…"
"A suicide?" The younger guard asked, he bowed to the two of them. "You kids seem like you've been through hell and back…"
"Don't worry, we'll take care of this body. Come with us and we'll bring you to a hotel in a nearby village. No charge." The senior guard with a thick bushy mustache shined his searchlight on the corpse. "Do any of you by any chance know this person?"
"No." Marik replied definitely.
I hesitated for a heartbeat, looking down on the boy Marik related him as his twin. A bold suggestion.
I felt my heart tear apart in pieces.
"No."
"We'll come for the body after we've escorted you to the village. Did you guys come here on foot?" The older guard asked.
"We had a car. It's parked on the side of a road but we can't find it like this." I said, looking back at the body nervously.
"It's fine, we'll help you search for it tomorrow in daylight." He responded, and I immediately thought of decaying flesh.
"He just died didn't he?"
"Huh?"
"There's no scent, no sign of rotting. He just hung himself right before we came didn't he?"
"Sharp senses, kid. What are you, an expert in death?"
Marik put a hand to my shoulders, before responding to the guard. "We've had a long night, could you please just escort us to the village?"
They turned to each other. "Alright, just follow us."
We were escorted to their car near the base of the forest. Our breathing slowly returning to normal when we realized we were finally out of the devil's nest.
"Right, one of us has to stay here for the body." The two guards stayed outside, discussing something as I listened into their conversation.
"How about a classic game of Jan-Ken-Pon?"
"Alright. One, Two, Three. Go!"
"Ah, curses!"
"Haha, sucks to be you sonny boy."
"Shut it gramps."
"Just something important that I need you to remember. You sleep in a bunk bed, top or bottom, I don't care, you must leave the body on the one of the beds."
"What? That's absurd."
"I'm serious. If you don't, they crawl around all night. They will end up searching for human company."
"A-Alright, sleep in the same room as the corpse. Whatever."
"See you in the morning." He started up the car, and drove out of the forest.
I sat shaking in my seat at what the old guard said. My mythology was good enough to know what they were talking about and I didn't want to think about it. Instead, I turned to Marik, taking off my overcoat for him when I saw his breath evaporate into the thin air.
"W-What? Bakura…" His eyes widened at my gesture.
"You're cold." I wrapped my arm around him, pulling him into a warm embrace. "Just take it."
He blushed slightly in the moonlight, leaning into my shoulder after a mental quarrel with himself.
"Kamikuishiki village is coming up in a moment." The guard announced, eyes fixed on the road.
For once I was glad for the silence that surrounded us both. After a while, Marik put my coat around him, peacefully looking out the window. I followed his gaze towards the bright full moon, its colour reminding me of the deceased boy's hair and pale skin tone.
"I wonder if he's happy wherever he might be…" Marik whispered, reading my thoughts.
The car stopped at the inside of Kamikuishiki village, letting Marik and I get out. I suddenly had a strange wave of nostalgia crash over me. It was such a small place, without any tall buildings or crowded streets from noon to midnight. We entered a fairly new building, Marik still warming himself up with my jacket.
I sneaked a look around the village. Most of the buildings still had their lights on, since it wasn't so late at night yet. There were two, almost side by side of each other that didn't.
"Take a look at this flower Bakura." Marik beckoned me over to the small table beside the bed. Inside the vase was a small pink flower, split in the stem into two petals. "I've never seen anything like this."
He peered over the vase and read a small card attached to it. A signature of two names that he didn't recognize.
"There are a lot of plants and animals around Fuji, all strange and kind of amazing." I couldn't stop staring at the flowers, feeling as if I should have known what it was called. I shrugged and pulled up the covers on myself, trying to let go of the images from earlier today.
"Things will be back to normal tomorrow." I heard him mumble, not bothering to take my jacket off. I held him close to me.
"I sure hope so…"
-0-0-0-0-0-0-
"Stupid old man ordering me to do something as disgusting as this."
Yashitaro Matsumoto dragged the corpse of the young teenager into the cabin he was staying at overnight as a patrol for the Cursed Forest. He eyed the body once and almost threw up on the spot. At least it wasn't decaying like some of the other bodies littered around the undergrowth, but there was no way in all of the levels of hell was he going to keep the body inside with him sleeping in the same room as he was.
He dumped the body outside carelessly, rolling on its back. He eyed it one more time, groaning as he realized he would have to take the body back to one of the nearby villages in the morning for someone to claim the identity and to burn or give it a proper funeral.
Poor sod.
Sleep came easily for Matsumoto, since the pillow was quite comfortable, and the forest was silent as ever.
.
..
…
warmth
The door's creak dragged on in the quiet clearing. The heat was so inviting, it beckoned it in, like…
a loving embrace,
a passionate kiss.
love
Flare!
WARMTH!
Matsumoto had no time to react as he was dragged off the bed, clawing on the wood desperately to remain where he was. He felt the icy fingernails of the demon dig into his skin, raking at his flesh, making it's way to his head…
"No! STOP! NOOOO!"
At the same moment a demonic howl as black as the abyss it crawled out from erupted from the Forest of Death, shattering the souls of the spirits that crawled underground, making the air tremble, falling, crying, unheard by many, intended for only…
Two.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-
I woke up in the dark room drenched in cold sweat, shaking from head to toe, gasping as I realized I could barely breathe. I clenched at my chest, looking out the window at the full moon whose light no longer felt comforting.
The scream rattled inside my head.
"I know that voice"