A light.

A sparkling light out of the darkness enveloping myself.

I can't feel anything nor hear anything.

I can only see the light before me.

Will this light guide me where I go?

Or is it just an illusion out of this dark chaos?

The light increases in intensity as it starts to fill out the area around me.

I can only see a silhouette.

A figure of an entity.

An entity with a red cape.


CHAPTER ZERO: THE BEGINNING

'We'll end here for today,' the booming voice of the lecturer sounded through the auditorium. Within seconds, the scurrying sounds of the students within followed as well.

'Shirasaki.'

'Yes! Professor!'

A brown-haired girl pushed the last of her writing materials back inside her small haversack. With a quick grab, she came down from the flight of stairs to approach the teaching platform in the auditorium.

'I see you were sleeping again.'

'I'm very sorry!' She exclaimed loudly, bowing before her professor to extend her apologies.

'If you're not very interested in my lesson, you can leave immediately.'

The professor stomped off, leaving her still in her deep bow figure. As he bumped into her, her glasses slipped off her ears falling onto the wooden planked floor.

'Really...' she muttered to herself, bending down to pick up the pair of glasses. Rummaging through her haversack, she picked out a small black leather box, opening it to reveal a piece of cloth.

'He should have at least watched his way!' She cursed to herself as she began to polish the lenses of her glasses with the emerald cloth.

In her jeans, she felt a vibration loud enough to be heard in the silent auditorium. She was the last one for every student had already left the room. Pushing her hand into the pocket, she withdrew her hand back to take out her handphone.

'Hello?'

With a single flick, she opened the handphone cover. Pushing her right side bangs to one side, she brought the receiver portion of it to her ear.

My name is Shirasaki Miyuki. Some people call me 'Shirasagi' for some unknown reasons.

I'm a university student. To be exact, a student of the famous Tokyo Technological University. The campus occupies a fifth of the city.

Recently lectures have turned out to be very boring for me. For unknown reasons, I have been sleeping through classes.

And just like how that idiot Professor treated me, that is yet one of the many cases I have been encountering.

'You're late!'

A girl clad in a purple windbreaker folded her arms, leaning by the pillar of the corridor just outside the auditorium. She opened her dark blue eyes to meet the brown eyes of her friend.

'I've got stood up again, sorry,' Shirasaki answered. A cold breeze blew through the empty corridor. It was no surprise. The season had already turned to late fall.

The other girl wrapped her arm around the brown-haired bespectacled person.

'Yui-chan?'

'It's on you today,' she responded back with a rather seemingly fake smile.

'What?!'

'You'd better pay for standing me up!' Yui looked back at her, trying to give her the evil eye. 'Right, Shirasagi?'

'Hey! Don't call me that!' Shirasaki retorted back at her.

'Well well,' Yui gave a chuckle. 'Let's see how.'

The campus of the university was big. But it was not long before the two girls made their way through to the main gate.

'Say,' Yui blurted out suddenly. She gave a close-up at Shirasaki's face.

'Now what?'

Shirasaki's eyebrow twitched, curious to know Yui's next unpredictable move.

'How long has it been since you've changed glasses?'

In an instant, Yui took off Shirasaki's glasses.

'Hey! Give it back!' She shouted back at Yui, trying to get back her glasses. But Yui was agile enough to avoid her friend's grabs.

'Circular glasses, eh?' Yui stared at the pair of spectacles in her hands.

'Give it back, Yui-chan~!'

'There.'

In yet another moment, the ponytailed-girl placed the glasses back on her friend. She giggled uncontrollably.

Shirasaki folded her arms.

'It's amusing to see you act like that,' the other girl opened one eye at her. 'Shirasagi.'

'That doesn't matter now,' Shirasaki responded coldly. 'I'm going home.'

'I was just joking!' Yui ran after her as they moved along the road leading down to the nearby town area.

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'Hey!' Yui was throwing a tantrum as she stood outside the apartment corridor. 'That ramen shop only serves that dish for an hour!'

'That's not my problem,' Shirasaki walked into the hallway of her apartment unit. It was dark inside since she had always closed the curtains covering the main window. As she stepped in, she could feel her socks stepping on pieces of documents.

'Eh?'

The bespectacled girl bent down, picking up the pieces of paper she could feel. They were indeed crumpled up.

It was probably junk mail again. There were some crazy estate agents trying to offer ludicrous prices to force the residents around here to give up their land.

As her hands felt through the documents, she could feel a single letter. There was something hard inside the letter. But it was too dark to see the contents of it.

'Oh what the heck,' she thought to herself as she tore open the cover. Unknowingly, the hard piece within fell out of its protection, falling to the floor with a small impact on the tatami carpet.

'It's gone?' She could not feel the piece within the envelope. Shirasaki bent down, trying to feel her way for the small artifact within.

'For goodness' sake, Shirasagi!' She heard the loud voice booming from the entrance. 'There's something called electricity!'

As Yui stepped in, she flipped up the switch but there was no response. She turned it up and down a few more times but there was no reaction from the light above.

Shirasaki emerged from the darkness, dressed in a normal shirt and jeans covered with a brown longcoat.

'The landlord doesn't advocate any turning on of lights until half past six.'

Yui could only stare blankly at Shirasaki's calm reaction.

'Do you really have a life?'

'That's enough,' Shirasaki pushed Yui out of the entrance of the apartment, locking the door behind her. 'Don't forget about the limited ramen.'

'Oh darn!' Yui exclaimed immediately as she sprinted down the apartment corridor.

'Seriously...'

Shirasaki muttered to herself, closing her eyes to catch her breath for the moment.

As she walked away from her apartment, little did she know of a certain light was emanating from the dropped artifact in her room, beginning to draw a unique circle around itself.

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'Yuppie!' Yui clasped her hands together before the hot bowl of ramen. 'Itadakimasu!'

Shirasaki sighed as soon as Yui had said the unique word for appreciating food.

Her friend was one weird person.

The ramen store was noisy. The workers inside were working hard at producing the ramen and shouting out orders from the customers. Both girls were the odd ones out since the shop was filled with no one but businessmen clad in black suits.

Of all places, Yui chose to go to one which was a working district, smack right in Marunouchi district.

Since the shop was also located in a business district, there was a holographic television by the wall displaying the latest news.

'Residents are advised to be home by eleven in Setagaya ward,' the newscaster read aloud the news before a piece of paper on the desk. "There have been strange cases of mysterious disappearances of people. The police are currently investigating into this.'

'That's bad, isn't it?'

Shirasaki was strangely too engrossed in looking at the news when Yui interrupted.

'Say,' Yui put down her chopsticks on the ramen bowl. 'Have you heard of the Hell Gate?'

'The Hell Gate?'

'Yeah,' Yui's face turned serious. 'I heard it is responsible for the myseterious disappearances.'

Shirasaki adjusted her glasses, looking in the direction of her friend.

'Where did you get that from?'

'Uncle Kamata from the convenience store.'

Shirasaki hung her head down in defeat. Of all people, Yui chose to listen to the owner of the neighbourhood convenience store or rather actually the gossip store. The Kamata family was quite the noisy family specialising in much rumours.

'That person talks nonsense!' Shirasaki exclaimed.

'Well...' Yui pondered for a while.

'Eh..?'

'He gave me a discount anyway,' her friend gave back the dumbest reply ever.

'Really...' Shirasaki muttered to herself as she proceeded to rip out one piece of tissue from the nearby box.

'Eh?'

'Now what is it?' Shirasaki looked at the peculiar look on Yui's face.

'Shirasagi,' Yui looked at her. 'Why do you have a tattoo on your arm?'

As Shirasaki looked closer at her arm, indeed there was a strange tattoo. It was reddish, sort of like a scratch mark but it was not one.

Yui wrapped her arms around the spectacled girl again.

'Are you one of those tattoo enthusiasts, eh?' There was a sinister look on her face again.

                                                           。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。

Shirasaki walked home on the quiet road to her apartment. As cheap as it was, her own residence was rather far from the nearest train station. And more so, the apartment was in Setagaya, which was the subject of much strange happenings of recent.

Bright lamp posts illuminated the quiet area but it was not enough for one to feel safe walking back. The mention of the urban legend related by Yui was sending shivers down her back.

The neighbourhood was far too quiet and it was now a new moon night, which added to the darkness of the night.

'Of all places, why Setagaya...?'

Shirasaki muttered to herself, buttoning up the longcoat as a cold wind blew by her body. She slowly walked down the asphalt road, praying for nothing to happen until she reached home.

She could hear footsteps.

They were footsteps of something coming her way. There was no reason to panic as it was not approaching her quickly.

Nevertheless, it still gave her the creeps.

'Now what...'

She whispered to herself, praying nobody or nothing could hear her.

The footsteps were getting louder as she was getting nearer to them.

They were going to meet at the next lamp post.

Shirasaki slowed down her steps. The other person was still neverthlessly continuing the same pace.

At the lamp post, the figure revealed itself.

In Shirasaki's mind filled with hallucination, she would have imagined another schoolgirl covered in blood and gore.

But it was just a normal schoolgirl carrying her schoolbag by her left shoulder. The brown long hair of the girl flowed with the wind but she was walking as if Shirasaki was not there.

Heaving a sigh of relief, Shirasaki continued her route back home.

It was not long before she laboured herself up to the third floor of the five storeyed apartment block. As she was about to approach her unit, the door next to hers swung open.

A middle-aged lady stood before her.

'Good evening, Mrs Hatena,' Shirasaki bowed before her neighbour.

'Hmph,' the old housewife stared at her younger neighbour. 'I had something coming from your room.'

'Huh?'

'Are you rearing a pet or something?' Mrs Hatena interrogated her.

'No I don't,' Shirasaki answered back firmly.

'Well whatever,' her neighbour folded her arms. 'You do know we don't allow pets here. If you happen to have one, I'll complain to the landlord.'

The door slammed back before her.

Taking a few more steps, she took out her key from her pocket to open the door.

She could hear movement from within her unit.

Shirasaki froze.

There was definitely something in her room. Mrs Hatena was right after all.

Even if it was an animal, it wasn't hers. There was a strict rule to abide that no pets were allowed in the apartment.

She opened the door, facing the greeting darkness.

The light from outside, now shown through the curtains revealed a black figure in the room. She was a little nervous at what exactly was in her room.

Reaching for her bat which she had always placed at the side of the door entrance, she raised it up, preparing to attack if the figure was going to strike at her.

'Easy now...'

She tried to calm herself down.

Her eyes were now used to the darkness within her apartment. She could see that the figure had got up and began to approach her. It was strange since she was expecting an attack.

As the distance between both of them close up, she swung her bat outwards to prevent the figure from reaching her. With a second swing, she could feel it hit the figure.

But the figure was unfazed by the attack.

The figure gave a sighed, revealing it was the voice of a man.

'I see I have yet another uncompetent...'

'Die robber!'

She screamed out at the figure, charging at him. As her hand reached for the wall, she could feel for the switch connecting to the main hall of her room.

As she swung the bat to hit the figure, she turned on the light in the room.

Just before her was a towering man who had just stopped her bat attack with one palm.

She looked closer at the man.

He was dressed in the most peculiar clothing. A red cape over his shoulders with some black vest and trousers on the inside covered his body.

Her eyes turned up to look at the dark brown eyes of the man who had blocked her attack.

'What are you trying to do?'

He closed his eyes for a moment, smirking.

'Are you some maniac?'

'Well well,' he lowered his arm down to place them on his hips. 'I never seen a Master ever trying to strike her own Servant before.'

She readjusted her spectacles to look closer at him. No doubt, dark-skinned with white hair and clad in some crazy outfit.

'Who exactly are you?'


END CHAPTER ZERO

TO BE CONTINUED

DISCLAIMER: all characters of fate/stay night and its concept belong to TYPE-MOON