GENRE: Horror x Mystery x Friendship

A/N: So this is my homework for English class again lol. Finally, my first aqours fanfiction! I got most of the ideas from Danganronpa Twilight Syndrome! Enjoy~ Also feedback would be awesome because I want better grades ;^; Okay let's get this started!

Friends are supposed to help each other when in need. Friends are supposed to care for each other. Friends are not supposed to not harm each other. You lose friends as you grow older. You make new bonds as you grow older. However the greatest friends stay together forever no matter what. Even if an angel that had sinned possesses one of the friends. Some friends would do anything to stay with their soulmate. Anything.

This is a story of hope that ends in despair.

It was a miracle. It was the best day ever for us, Aqours, as we had successfully performed our song, MIRAI TICKET which allowed our group to be entered into the LoveLive! The audience had joined us and cheered us on as we stepped from zero to one. It was truly a wonderful performance.
"We did it! We did it Aqours!" Chika exclaimed cheerfully as we all put our hands together and celebrated the evening together: playing games, watching movies, and even having a massive sleepover in one of the classrooms at school together!
Though there was one person who didn't participate who disappeared right after we performed 'MIRAI TICKET' which made me extremely worried. She said that she had some businesses to take care of even though we were all celebrating and playing around together. However without the 9 of us, I can't say that we're together. I believed that there's an unbreakable bond between the nine of us. Though it was just a belief as that one day came and destroyed all the shards of hope we had built together.

"Ruby and Yoshiko aren't turning up today again? I wonder what's going on... We won't get any practice done for the LoveLive!" The idol-nerd student council president, Kurosawa Dia paced up and down the room, worried sick for her sister. "Where on earth are they..."

Yoshiko and Ruby are my closest friends. I had known Yoshiko-chan since kindergarten but we went separate ways once we graduated from elementary school and middle school was the place where I met my dear friend, Kurosawa Ruby. "Yoshiko-chan told me that she's going to look for her feather and Ruby-chan is going to the chemistry lab to ask the teachers about the work we did today, zura..."

"Again? I think I'll need to be her private tutor for a few weeks at this rate! Can't she ask me if she has any problems? I'm her elder sister after all..."

"We're going home again I guess... The second years are on a field trip anyway and I also need to-" Kanan was cut off mid-sentence as suddenly, there was a deafening crash that had come from a few corridors away.

"What was that?!"

"ZURA!"

"I'm sure the teachers just dropped something in the chemistry lab..." Dia replied calmly, trying to put out the flames of panic that had risen in us even though anyone could tell that she was also worried. Though she made everyone panic even more.

"You could tell it was the chemistry lab? Maru, didn't you say that was where Ruby was?" Hurriedly, Mari grabbed her school bag and dashed towards the source of the sound, closely followed by Dia and the rest of us. Mari was the director of the school and so all of the students were her responsibility, despite being a student herself. "If something happened to someone, I swear..."

"I'm sure nothing happened to her. She was probably on her way home but knocked a glass beaker on the floor," Kanan reassured the three of us.

Once we reached the chemistry classroom, we were met with a locked door. "This is strange, zura. If Ruby-chan was in here, it shouldn't be locked..."
The classrooms in the school could only be locked from the inside and you need keys to lock it from the outside.

"Maybe it was locked so she was going to look for a teacher and get the keys off them? It could be a possibility! We always have to look on the bright side of things right?" The optimistic, blonde haired director squealed positively. "We might as well go to the faculty room and get the keys too and hope to bump into Ruby on the way..."

"I got it! I'll be back in a second!" The fittest member, Kanan laughed and sprinted off towards where all the teachers were.

"Hey Kanan-san! No running in the hallways! It's against school rules!" Dia yelled after her but Kanan completely ignored her. "Oh well... It's can be an exception this time..."

"Dia-san... What if something really did happen to Ruby-chan. What if she got hurt and locked herself in there by accident? What if she banged her head on something and fell unconscious? What if... She died zura..."

"No no no Maru! You can't think like that. This is a school. My school. Something like that could never happen! If it did, this school would definitely be closed down... Even after all our efforts to save it, it would be shut down... Well we just have to wait for Kan- what was that sound..."

There was a crackling noise coming from inside the room. It's the kind of sound you hear when a rope is being pulled to its limit. The kind of sound you hear when someone hangs themselves...

The skies had instantly started to be flooded with grey clouds and the pitter patter of rain started to be audible.

Finally, after a few minutes of waiting -which felt like years to the three of us- Kanan had returned, carrying a huge grin on her face as well as shaking the keys that were in her hand. "The teachers had all left and so getting these were a piece of cake!"

After inserting the rusty key, the door swung open and the four of us patrolled the room and to our relief, nothing was found... However the sound of the crackling rope was still there.
"Ruby's not here..."
"I think everything's okay then!"
"But Maru thinks that we might be missing something... Listen, zura!"
I cautiously made my way towards the source of the noise which lead me into the classroom next door.

"T-This can't be... Mari-san we're in a dream right? There's no way..."
The sight and stench of the room next door was horrific which made me run towards the sink and throw up.

"Huh Dia? What's up? Don't tell me there's zombies or something in there haha. You're still such a baby Di- Oh my god," Gaping, Mari stepped into the room covered in blood.

In the room, there were chemistry equipment scattered everywhere across the floors and on the tables like an ferocious monster had just walked in and smashed everything to bits. One of the thick windows had also been smashed to tiny fragments of glass. However in the corner of the room, there was a young girl with pig-tails hung up to the ceiling, her insides ripped out. Around her neck, there wasn't a rope. It was her intestines that had been pulled out from her body and attached to the ceiling. Dia let out a muffled cry as she saw her sisters dead body and ran out of the room, followed by Mari and Kanan. My legs, too shocked to move, felt heavy and refused to budge which left me in the room by myself, staring at my best friend's corpse. It can't be happening. It shouldn't be happening.

I heard a commotion outside the room and thought that it was the third years at first but then there was also another voice that I recognised. A voice that belonged to my childhood friend, Yoshiko. Tsushima Yoshiko. I eventually was able to leave the room and joined in the conversation.

"Oh Zuramaru! You're here too? I was wondering where you and Ruby were..."

"Yoshiko-chan, what are you doing here, zura!"

"I-I was just passing by and heard this crash and wondered where it came from! Why are you guys here?" She yelled while holding her demonic black feather, "I found this so let's go home!"

"Yoshiko... Have you seen inside the room yet?" Kanan murmured while pushing the younger girl in.

Even though Yoshiko was a fan of dark magic and loved the occult, she was just as shocked as the four of us were and dashed out a moment after she saw the dead Ruby. "A-Alright... What do we do then?! Should we just leave the body there and wait for the teachers and the police to come?"

When someone discovers a mysterious and intriguing murder, would they just leave the crime scene without telling anyone? I was always taught that if you don't report something strange, you're just as bad as the people who made it happen. My instincts told me that I should report it to the teachers immediately. However no one agreed with me and everyone else decided to leave it.

Two days had passed since the incident and I couldn't get my mind off it, nor could anyone else. As soon as the teachers had discovered the tragedy, school was closed for two days and so today is the first day back since the discovery of the corpse. The body had been moved and buried Dia had wanted ; she was the closest person to Ruby as their parents were working past midnight and left before six in the morning.

I decided that I needed to play my part in uncovering the murder. Ruby was my precious friend ; we had gone through many hardships together and so, it was my duty to find out what had happened.

Silently, I slipped into the chemistry lab after school, avoiding all the teachers. I couldn't believe that the murderer had escaped from the window. It seemed extremely possible but I felt that there could have been another object that could have created the sound and maybe the killer smashed it purposefully so someone could discover the corpse. Luckily for me, my instincts were correct and I managed to find a broken vase behind one of the tables in the corner of the room. I was confident that the source of the sound was due to this vase. I wanted to ask Yoshiko where she was and what she was actually doing at the time of the murder because I felt that she was leaving out some information.

I whipped my brand new phone out and tried to take a picture however, I could not understand how to use one of these devices due to living in a temple without electronics all my life. Yoshiko had taught me how to use these and bought me one but I had completely forgotten. I somehow managed to play around with it and found the 'camera' app and snapped a blurry picture of the broken vase. I then immediately set off to look for Yoshiko-chan.

I wandered around the school aimlessly, looking for my best friend and found her sitting by the fountain in the school courtyard. She was chucking stones into the beautifully carved fountain that contained glistening, liquid-crystal-like water. "Zuramaru... What's up..."

Startled, I jumped and backed away as I had no idea that she knew that I was there. "Oh... Um... Yoshiko-chan! I found this in the room next door to the crime scene... Do you have any idea about what it is? I also have a printed cop-"

She snatched my phone and crushed the photo with her bare hands which made me yelp. "Oh I don't think you'd want a picture like this... And haha, you shouldn't shake your hands when you're taking a picture Zuramaru... I-I had no idea about this though..." Yoshiko stuttered while slowly shuffling away to the nearest trash bin.

"Yoshiko-chan. You did it didn't you?"

"I didn't!" She tried to escape but I grabbed her wrist just before she could. She was much better at athletics than me and so if she ran away, I'd have no hope in catching her.

"Yoshiko-chan... You can tell me anything. Yohane-chan did it, didn't she?"

An incident like this had happened before when we were much younger, in kindergarten. Back then, Yoshiko had formed a contract with a fallen angel. She had prayed for something however the fallen angel wanted something in return. Being young at the time, she didn't understand what were fallen angels and so she accepted it's terms which caused a huge massacre. The fallen angel had possessed Yoshiko's body and slaughtered the whole of the kindergarten, only leaving me. As I was born into a family of exorcists, I tried to cast a seal on the fallen angel in Yoshiko's body however it was not very strong and could not seal her forever due to the fact that I was around four years old.

"Yohane didn't do anything either! Zuramaru, why do you think you know everything..."

"Please just tell me... I'll keep it a secret!"

She sighed, gave up on running away and finally confessed, "Okay Yohane did it... I didn't know what was going on but Yohane just took over my soul and I felt an urge to murder Ruby..."

It was decided that we would tell no one about our conversation and so we parted ways and went home, promising to never talk about it again. Throughout the whole night, I hadn't stopped thinking about Yoshiko doing such a deed to my pure angel, Ruby. I felt that I couldn't let Yohane-chan roam free again ; I must seal her again, with a much more powerful seal. It still might not be possible for someone like me to seal her for eternity but for another couple of decades would be great. My eyes scanned through my exorcism book as I revised the technique of exorcising fallen angels again, my last revision being over ten years ago.

It was two hours before I had to prepare for school. I could not get any sleep at all during the night as sealing Yohane is my top priority. If Ruby-chan was still alive, she'd be angry at me for not getting any rest. Promptly, I packed all my books and set off to school while wondering what sort of mischief did Yohane get up to again if she did.

It was apparent that I had arrived to school early and around the time Aqours used to meet up to practice at. After the late Ruby, I was sure that we had practically disbanded. There would be no way that anyone would consider continuing after all, we aren't Aqours without all nine of us. I heard that the second years had not been able to return as there was a huge typhoon which would never end.

I thought that there might had been the possibility that Yoshiko was already at school as she always turns up early and so I rushed to my form room as fast as I could, even though I felt that I had the least stamina in the whole school. My heart was beating like it had never had before. I took a deep breath, thought of Ruby which made me smile, and slid half of the door open and took a peek inside.

At first, I saw a perfectly normal classroom which made me sigh in relief. Nothing had happened and I would be able to reseal Yohane easily. Though after I blinked, I saw blood. Blood was everywhere. The entire room was dyed red, even the undersides of the tables and chairs. I gulped heavily and slid the door completely open.

"No way, zura..."

There in the back of the room, I found the dead corpses of Dia, Mari and Kanan. There had been a huge butcher knife stuck in Dia's head who had a severed leg that laid on my table next to a severed head of Kanan's. The body of Mari's seemed to have gone through a human shredder as all there was left of her was a couple of her gold locks and a hand. The rest of Kanan's body had been stabbed hundreds of times, like when someone releases their anger on their loved one due to some silly incident. Standing in the middle of the room, blood smeared all over her face and clothes was my best friend, Yoshiko, who had been possessed by Yohane once again.

"Yoshiko-chan what the hell zura... What the hell!"

I thought to myself: "I have to stay calm..." and prepared my seals and mouthed the spell to seal the deadly fallen angel.

"Zuramaru... You won't tell anyone... Right?"

I panicked and nodded subconsciously as I continued with the sealing. If I stopped, all my efforts would have gone to waste. I was so close to the end when suddenly Yoshiko lunged at me. My heart felt like it had flown out of my body and stopped my chant immediately. However she did not attack me with the knife that was currently in my hand but embraced me. "You won't tell anyone right...?"

"..."

"Right...?"

"..."

"Zuramaru, have you gone mute? Do I need to pull your tongue out and saw off your fingers for you to speak?"

I knew that I wouldn't have any time to restart chanting the spell and so I completely gave up. In the past where I had encountered Yohane-sama, I couldn't do a thing. I had been sick and so I missed kindergarten that day and so when I did seal her, she was the normal Yoshiko. There's no hope for one when you've encountered Yohane-sama and I know it, as no one has ever left her clutches alive. "Yohane-sama... Please return Yoshiko-chan..."

"I am the thing you call Yoshiko!"

"Please..."

She seemed to start to calm down a little and dropped her knife. My throbbing heart started so lower it's pulse rate and we just hugged each other like we did ten years ago, right after I sealed her. I prepared to start the ritual again until she whispered the words. "Traitor..."

The furious demon in my beloved friend stabbed desperately through my heart repeatedly and then... Nothing...

A/N: Done! Enjoyed it? Leave a comment please!