"W-w-w-would you like to-uh... b-be f-f-fr-friends with m-me?"

Arthur opened his mouth to respond to Alfred's question but after that statement...

Alfred's world shook.

"Friends? With both of you" Arthur's words rang.

This line made chill run through his spine, both of him? What does that mean?

"Who's that behind you?" Arthur continued.

"Who-who do you mean?" Alfred asked.

Arthur lifted a finger and pointed to something behind him.

"Him,"

Alfred hesitated but convinced himself to turn around, only to find a pair of similar but tired eyes looking back.

"Don't tell me you do not recognize your own brother?" Matthew sighed.

"MATTIE!" Alfred flung his arms around the boy. "Where did you came from!? Why didn't you tell me you'd miss morning classes?!"

"Now easy there cowboy. Sorry for disturbing your conversation. I just came to check up on you before going to class," Matthew said as he forcibly pushed away from the elder.

"Umm.. I must be disturbing something," Arthur said in a small voice.

"Oh, no wait. Sorry, I'm the one who's disturbing you two. Let me go down and leave you two," Matthew said as he left.

"Mattie!" Alfred's tears threatened to drop.

"Do you still need something?" Arthur asked.

"I.. uh.. want your reply?" Alfred said.

"I'm not the one to be choosy so I'll say yes," Arthur lowered his head.

"R-really?"

"Yes, really,"

"Oh, great," Alfred took a seat beside him all while minding his distance from the boy.

"I should go, the bell shall ring soon enough," Arthur stood up.

"I see. I'll head out in a bit so go on ahead," Alfred forced a smile as Arthur walked away.

That was a big blow to Alfred's self-esteem. He was known to be the friendliest person in school and he never felt so awkward in his entire life. Sure enough, this boy is a challenge, a challenge even Alfred himself doubts he could carry out.

With that aside, the school bell rang and Alfred went off.

XxXx

"Mattie!" Alfred hugged his brother.

"Stop it, Alfred!" Matthew blushed to his brother's affection.

"I'm so sorry for pissing you off! I promise I won't ever do it again!"

"Well, that's reassuring," Matthew sighed.

"Seriously! I'm going to make it up to you, just you wait!" Alfred grabbed his brother's hand and off they went.

Soon enough, they were at their bedroom with loads of ice cream. Alfred was treating his brother to amazing ice cream and he almost blew his allowance on it. This was, after all, the only thing the brothers shared in common, their love for ice cream.

"So, what was your business with Arthur earlier? Weren't you scared of him?" Matthew asked while he scooped up some ice cream to his mouth.

"Oh, uh, that?" Alfred gulped "Nothing, just wanted to you know, make friends? I don't want any awkward silence between us." Alfred sat beside his brother.

"If you're gonna lie make it a decent one," Matthew eyed him.

"FINE! Mr Bonnefoy told me to be friends with him," Alfred admitted.

"He forced you?"

"Kinda but I sorta agreed to it at one point,"

"Are you sure about this? Will you not faint in every single thing he'll do?" Matthew teased.

"Oh peeshaw Mattie! I handled your ghost stories before, I can surely handle Arthur!" Alfred declared, oblivious to its consequences.

"Really? So you wouldn't mind if I told you a ghost story right here, right now?" Matthew gave a challenging look.

"Go," Alfred accepted the challenge.
"I am not sleeping with you tonight nor will I let you disturb me, is that understood?"

"I said go, didn't I?"

"Okay, so there was this girl in our school. Every Friday night, she would go home late at around, I don't know, 8 perhaps?"

"Why would she stay at school?! Like that's so lame!" Alfred interrupted.

"I'm telling the story here, can it or I'll stop,"

"Fine," Alfred pouted.

"Okay so she and her club mates were working on the horror room for the school festival. The windows were sealed and there was a small and movable blackboard by the entrance where you have to crawl under to go out. They just kept the door opened to let the air come in."

"This is getting boring!" Alfred whined.

"Can it, Alfred. So, they started to finish things up until they heard a small child's cy. Then that cry turned to a high-pitched singing. All of them were spooked of course, and they started crawling under the blackboard to get out but the girl left her phone besides a doll, which was their prop,"

"Twinkle.. twiiiiinkleeeee.. littleee. staaaaaar..." Matthew started singing.

"Mat, don't sing, please," Alfred suddenly felt a bit cold but much to his dismay, Matthew didn't let Alfred stop him from telling the story.

"The singing got louder and louder. The girl hesitated on getting her phone but she doesn't want to go home and have her mom shout at her for her carelessness so she pursued with her objective,

Twinkle.. twinkleeeee.. littleee. staaaaaar...

She successfully achieved her phone without anything spooky happening. She crawled under the board and was about to go out but she was curious to see if it was really the doll that kept singing, she looked and then..."

"STOP IT! STOP IT MATTIE! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Alfred shouted as Matthew threw a doll to Alfred's direction.

"Hahahahahaha! You're so ridiculous Alfie! You should have seen your face! HAHAHAHA!" Matthew laughed hysterically.

"Ha ha, Mattie. I was so not scared!" Alfred pushed the doll away. "Where did you get this anyway?"

"Ah, just found it outside. It's cute, isn't it?"

The doll looked pretty old. It was a little dusty and an eye was missing, the clothes were also dirty and smudge with all kinds of stuff he couldn't make out. Alfred couldn't see how that thing could be cute.

"That could be someone's doll!" Alfred pointed out.

"Yeah but finders keepers," Mattew combed the hair of the doll. Alfred's spine just took a shot of chills.

"Yeah, so I'll be going to sleep now," Alfred said as he placed the empty cartoon of ice cream on his bed side table.

"Awww but the story doesn't even end there!" Matthew pretended to be disappointed. "Chicken,"

"I'm not chicken! I'm just really really tired!"

"So the horror opened for business for the whole week and it was their last day. Unfortunately, the last day ended up on Friday the 13th," Matthew started telling.

Alfred groaned and tried to ignore.

"To be safe than sorry, all of them inside the room prayed and business was springing. The girl who always hid behind a cloth at one corner of the room, where she is completely alone, started feeling cold. The room was tightly sealed, not much air could breeze into it so she wondered why would it feel so cold.

Remembering all the ghost stories she was told about feeling a chill, she quickly got out of her spot and went where the others were hiding. She hurried along and slipped upon hearing a child's ear piercing screech.

That sounded so wrong to her. Of course she would be used to hearing screams but this scream was so desperate, so scared that one of her club mate shouted to turn on the lights. Once it was on, they comforted the child who wouldn't stop crying. The child's friend asked the people in charge,

'How many of you are here?'

They answered 5 but the other shook her head.

'No, there were six of you here. The guide was what scared the child' the girl answered.

All of the, were shocked upon hearing it."

"Why should that freaking child be scared of a guide!?"

"Patience, the story is almost done. So, they all escorted the guests out and gathered together,"

"Just get to the point, Mattie," Alfred complained, hiding his fears.

"Oh fine, well the thing is..

There was no guide,"

"Ha, not scary at all!" Alfred grinned.

"Nope, not at all. But that guide the child saw was different. They said that if you ever saw the child, you would..."

"I"M GOING TO SLEEP!" Alfred cuts and placed a pillow over his ears.

"Turning off the lights now," Matthew said.

"C-can we just leave it be for tonight? You know? The doll right there might not like the dark," Alfred muffled from the pillow.

"Oh, little Annie will be fine! Here she might want to sleep with you," Matthew held it out.

"NO! I like sleeping alone thank you very much," Alfred buried his head deeper into the pillow.

"Whatever you said, chicken," Matthew giggled.

"Is this your revenge or something?" Alfred cried.

"Psssh. You were the one who told me you won't be scared, weren't you?" Matthew smiled. "Night, Alfie. Just leave some space, Annie might want to switch beds,"

"SHUT UP!"

With one last snicker, Matthew went to sleep.

XxXx

6:00am.

His phone displayed the didgital numbers. He didn't get much sleep, with Matthew's story and that doll right across. Alfred sneaked a peak, the doll was motionless but sat on an upright position.

PARTY ROCKING IN THE HOUSE TONIIIGHT!

Alfred jumped to the sound of his phone.

"Who would text me at 6:00 in the morning?!" Alfred complained.

A unkown number flashed upon the screen.

"Hello!"

"What the hell?" Alfred groaned but started replying anyway.

"I don't know who you are or what you want but I'm not in the mood for 'guess who is this'. okay? Tell me who you are or don't. I don't really care."

Alfred puts down his phone and gets out of bed until it rang again.

"Sorry, I just wanted someone to text to and I thought you were fairly suited. If it's such an inconvenience then I shall stop."

Alfred sighed. He took out his frustration on a stranger and that is not how he rolls. He quickly replied to the number.

"No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have bent my frustration on you. Let's start over. Okay, before anything else, how did you get my number?"

Few more minutes another reply came.

"Oh, some upperclassman gave it to me when I politely asked. Don't worry, I go to the same school and I'm not some teenage kidnapper or anything of that sort. I can assure you that you can trust me."

Alfred smiled. He doesn't know why but he just did. He went sat on his bed and stared at the message. So formal yet so discreet, just who is this? Is it a girl? A girl who likes him! It did mention on going to the same school.

"Cool, bro! I mean, sis! I mean.. Ugh, genders aside, what's your name?"

Another reply came after a few measly moments.

"Well, um.. Can we just skip that detail?"

Alfred shook his head. This girl must be shy, with him so handsome after all! Every girl would shy away before telling their true intents.

"All righty then. Should I see you in school later?"

Few more moments later.

"Yeah, I think we will surely cross paths somehow."

Alfred kept grinning like an idiot through the small exchange. It's like he knew this person (by person he means girl) and he felt his mood suddenly change.

"This is sooo gonna be a good day," Alfred decided.

So yeah, really failed on the ghost story part but just so you know all of those were true but were just tidbits of my sister's, my brother's and my own experience. We all had some experience in making the horror room of our school and well, it was really spooky. Especially the doll part but it's a little edited. The doll didn't sing and I did leave my phone beside it but as I got my phone, I turned around and saw the doll move it's head to look at my direction, the singing part happens in my dreams after I saw the doll move it's head. Some crazy shit, huh? More things happened but don't wanna bore you so new chappy~ Hoooray~ Who do you think is texting little Alfie?