Chapter 2

"What the fuck?"

"What?"

"What's that woman doing over there at this hour?" Sendoh stepped aside so that Rukawa could get a chance to look out the tiny window, which seemed deliberately designed so that anyone standing in front of it during the day would block all light out of the room.

"I don't see anything."

Sendoh pushed past Rukawa and saw to his immense consternation that the woman was no longer there and the window to the classroom was dark like all the other windows in the main building.

"I don't understand." Sendoh swallowed as he tried making sense of the whole thing. "There was a woman standing at that window, right over there. She stuck her head out and just stood there like some sort of a crazy person. She couldn't possibly have vanished so quickly."

Rukawa shook his head and sighed. Evidently Sendoh was on the verge of losing it, and there was little anyone could do about it. Rukawa often suspected that he had never met a saner person than himself, and it was interactions like this that tended to confirm his suspicions. He admittedly didn't know a whole lot about women, but even he knew that they didn't wander around classrooms in the middle of the night, sticking their heads out of windows for no earthly reason.

"You were dreaming," he said; then a better idea occurred to him. "Or hallucinating."

He drew back the covers of his bed before Sendoh could engage him in further conversation, and was in the process of sinking into the mattress with an air of finality, when Sendoh did something so insane that Rukawa's jaw dropped visibly.

"I'm going outside to look for her," said Sendoh, striding over to the door without even pausing to reflect on the craziness of such a course of action. "She couldn't have gone far."

"Wait," said Rukawa, but Sendoh was already out the door, hydraulic door closer shutting the door behind him with a defiant slam.

Rukawa sighed. They both knew what Sendoh really meant when he said "woman". Maki had made sure that none of them would be able to look at a woman after sundown for a long time to come without at least subconsciously entertaining the notion that she might be a disgruntled spirit in the guise of a living person. And now Sendoh, as if to spite anyone who was inclined to defend his sanity, was out chasing after one, without so much as a blunt instrument for protection. Rukawa was loath to think of himself as Sendoh's babysitter, but there are moments in a man's life when he must take on the most disagreeable responsibilities in the name of doing the right thing.

He got out of bed reluctantly, and decided to go after Sendoh. He paused in the courtyard between the residence hall and the main building and looked around. No sign of Sendoh.

"Sendoh," he called out uncertainly, though he knew full well that the only way Sendoh would have been able to hear him was if he had been hiding somewhere close by—perhaps in one of the tall bushes that marked the boundary of the courtyard. Glancing at the tall bushes made Rukawa realize just how spooky it would be, if it turned out that someone was actually hiding in them. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

"Sendoh," he called out again, with a bit more urgency than before. Still no sign of him.

A gust of wind blew in Rukawa's face, eliciting goose bump-inducing sounds from the surrounding bushes and trees, as if they were collectively warning Rukawa against going further.

Rukawa was beginning to get a little creeped out, but he steeled himself, and decided to keep looking for Sendoh. He began walking toward the back door of the main building, half hoping as he looked at the flickering green exit sign on the other side of the glass door, which was the only visible source of light inside, that the door would be locked, when something broke with a crunch under his foot. Bending down, he saw that it was a wristwatch. He swallowed. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he picked it up and examined it in the dim illumination of the waning crescent, though he didn't need to look at it too long to recognize it. It was the one he had seen on Sendoh's wrist countless times over the months, when they had played basketball or when Rukawa had accosted him at his favorite fishing spot on days when he had failed to show up at the basketball court at the stipulated time. This was Sendoh's wristwatch.

He looked up at the glass door once again, wondering with a mounting sense of dread what Sendoh had got himself into in his foolishness. He was considering going in and looking for him, when the flickering green exit sign suddenly went out; and though it produced no sound when it did so, Rukawa felt as if a dam broke somewhere inside his head as blood rushed into his ears. He suddenly came into the grip of fear such as he had never known before. His heart raced and his vision went black at the periphery as he scrambled back into the residence hall, not daring to look back lest he suddenly see Sendoh's lifeless and bloodstained body pinned up against the glass door, or worse—the thing that did that to him.

He slumped down onto his bed when he reached the room, gripping his knees with shaky hands till his knuckles turned white.

That idiot! He had tried stopping him, but he wouldn't fucking listen.

Rukawa knew that he shouldn't feel responsible for whatever Sendoh had brought on himself. That is, assuming something bad had even happened to him. Rukawa didn't have much to go on besides a broken wristwatch, which, for all he knew, might have ended up on the ground for some ridiculously stupid reason, knowing how flippant Sendoh was about everything. It didn't necessarily mean that some paranormal creature had come along and swept Sendoh up into the demon world.

On the other hand, if something bad did happen to him…

Perhaps Rukawa should have been more forceful…

No way. He snorted contemptuously. Sendoh was grown up enough to make his own decisions, no matter how stupid they were. And ghosts were something that only children were afraid of.

Rukawa managed to convince himself that Sendoh would be all right, and would no doubt sheepishly admit in the morning that Rukawa had been right all along, and there had been no suspicious women hiding out in Kainan's classrooms. He got into bed, and fell asleep within the minute.

When he opened his eyes the next morning, he saw that Sendoh's bed was still perfectly made, and there was no sign of him in the room. His stomach turned.

He stepped out of the room in sort of a dazed stupor, and bumped into Maki.

"Good morning!" said Maki pleasantly. "Hope your room was comfortable. Is Sendoh up yet?"

Rukawa inhaled deeply, and decided that the prudent thing to do would be to tell Maki about Sendoh's disappearance, so that it could be someone else's problem instead of his. As he recounted last night's events, he noted with no little irritation that Maki's eyes had been widening steadily throughout his narrative. A part of him had hoped that Maki would laugh and say that the stories about the ghostly woman who wandered Kainan's corridors at night were exactly that—stories—but of course Maki would go and say something horrific to add to Rukawa's sense of guilt, which had returned with a vengeance.

"Rukawa, Rukawa, Rukawa," said Maki, rubbing his temples, as Rukawa ended his summary account of Sendoh's misfortunes. "If something bad happened to Sendoh… then not only would I be personally responsible for dragging him into all of this, but Kainan would probably be shut down indefinitely." He gritted his teeth, and looked away.

"What's the matter? Someone dead?" Fujima shuffled out of his room in a dressing gown with Hanagata in his wake.

"Sendoh, for all we know," said Maki. Everyone had come out of his room by this point, and Maki proceeded to tell everyone what had happened to Sendoh.

Akagi expressed his deepest sympathies.

"I am so sorry." He nodded solemnly at Uozumi. Then he turned to Maki. "What are we doing for breakfast?"

"I saw a fancy-ass diner on the way here," Sakuragi put in eagerly. His mouth had watered at the sight of the diner, and he couldn't wait to try it out.

"This is not the time to be talking about food," Uozumi said loudly. "We have to find Sendoh."

Rukawa, Maki, Fujima, Hanagata, and Uozumi were all out of the residence hall before the others could decide whether to join in on the search for their favorite spikey-haired ace.

"Where did you find the watch, Rukawa?" said Maki.

Rukawa pointed at a spot by the steps leading down from the school's back door.

"Then I guess he tried going inside," said Maki. "He wouldn't have been able to, because the door can only be opened from the inside when school's out. The only way he could have got in is if he had the key, which—"

Maki trailed off as the glass door opened with a soft click, and swung open slowly. A wave of cool air-conditioned air washed over the group as they perceived Akira Sendoh step out of the building with the insouciance of someone who hadn't been chasing ostensibly undead women into empty buildings late at night.

"Hey guys," Sendoh said brightly.

Maki laughed in relief.

"You fucking idiot!" He clasped Sendoh's shoulder warmly. "Do you have any idea how worried we were? How worried Rukawa was?"

Rukawa winced. He had hoped Maki wouldn't bring up that last bit.

"Sorry guys." Sendoh smiled.

Uozumi struck him on the back of the head.

"Don't you ever do something like that again."

"So what the fuck were you up to anyway?" said Fujima.

"I thought I saw someone in one of the second-floor classrooms, so I went in to investigate."

"Hang on," said Maki. "You're saying you were able to open this door from the outside?"

"Yeah." Sendoh was confused. "What's the matter?"

Maki strode up to the glass door and tugged on the handle. The door didn't budge by a fraction of an inch.

"You can't open it from the outside without the key."

Sendoh blinked.

"I opened it just fine last night."

"So anyway, what happened when you went in?" said Hanagata.

"I couldn't find the light switch in the dark, so I tried feeling my way to the staircase. I think I hit my head on something—maybe a low doorframe or something—and the next thing I remember is waking up on the floor in the morning."

"Well, I'm glad you're all right," said Maki. "Oh, and this is your watch. Rukawa found it lying out here, and he sort of stepped on it."

Sendoh stared down at what remained of his wristwatch in horror.

"Well, shit."

"I'll buy you a new one, if you like," Maki offered generously.

"This was a gift from my grandmother." Sendoh shook his head. "She died last year."

A pause.

"Shit," said Maki.

"I'm hungry," said Fujima opportunely. "And I'm inclined to try out that diner Sakuragi saw on the way here."

Kenny's Diner turned to be a bit more upscale than Sakuragi had figured it would be, but he didn't particularly mind, because he had already inveigled Miyagi into agreeing to pay for him.

"Nyahahahaha! This Tensai got you good, Ryo-chin!"

Miyagi grumbled darkly under his breath.

Rukawa sat next to Sendoh in a large semicircular booth, and decided to clear the air between them a little.

"Sorry about your watch," he said.

Sendoh turned and smiled benevolently at him.

"Don't worry about it," he said, and went back to eating his eggs.

Rukawa frowned. Everything seemed fine—excellent, even—but Rukawa couldn't shake the feeling that something was off about Sendoh this morning. His smile seemed a little colder and more distant than usual, in a way that Rukawa couldn't really define, and there was something different about his eyes. It made the hair on Rukawa's arms stand on end.

What had really happened last night?

tbc.


A/N: All right, this is officially a total departure from the original Nights at Kainan, so rest assured that what happens next will be as much a surprise to me as it will be to you.