Edit: Fudge. FF took out my paragraph breaks. DANG YOU! Hope people don't end up spammed with alerts from me trying to fix it, eheheh. Sorry if you do! And ignore the little words (Break.) because those will temporarily be the paragraph breaks.
Rima wasn't quite sure how she ended up in Nagihiko's bedroom on a small fold-out cot, or how she could get out of that situation either. The boy had insisted that Rima come home with him rather than stay in her house alone with a killer, and while Rima agreed that she didn't want to stay in her house any longer she didn't really know why she had had to to with Nagihiko of all people. It was kind of like a bad fanfiction she thought. But, she supposed, it was better than nothing and she at least knew that she could rely on him now.
But yet something nagged at her. Why would Nagihiko, a boy she claimed she hated and abused on a daily basis, come and risk his life to save her without a second thought? It would certainly make his life a lot easier if she were to die, and he probably assumed that she wouldn't give a damn if he were to be killed in his attempts to rescue her. Heck, he might even assume that she wanted him to die and purposely led him there. So why risk everything for her?
"Why did you come to save me so willingly?" Rima asked Nagihiko as she laid down on the cot, her blonde hair falling across her body as she picked at a piece of lint on the sheets below her.
Nagihiko answered her question with one of his own. "Why did you call me of all people to come help you?"
Honestly neither one of them could answer the question the other posed, even though the answer to both was surely the same exact thing.
Instead of answering this question, Rima asked him something of much more importance.
"How about this… why did you take me upstairs? Why didn't you let me leave?" Nagihiko pondered this question, and realized he didn't have a logical answer to this one either.
"I'm not sure. It was as if the killer had called to me or something… it was as if I could feel it."
Nagihiko stared at Rima blankly. His mind was spinning as he tried to make sense of the words coming out of his own mouth, not quite knowing what exactly he meant.
"Feel it?" Rima looked as though Nagihiko was taking the drugs that the cops thought he had been earlier that day. Nagihiko bit his lip.
"I can't explain it."
"Nagi, man, you've totally lost it," Rhythm sighed with an ashamed shake of his head. Temari gave him a fierce glare.
"No, Rhythm. I felt it too. The weird attachment to that thing. It was as if it it were speaking to me," Temari said in a deep, yet oddly serene voice. It was odd, but she was even more calm then usual. It was as though the gruesome murder she had witnessed didn't faze her in the slightest.
Kusukusu blinked at her fellow guardian character with wide eyes. "I felt its presence, like with guardian eggs but… I didn't feel it calling to me or anything like that."
"Rhythm is right… you've lost it." Rima directed this snarky comment towards Nagihiko, who in turn frowned over at the vaguely smirking girl.
"I think anyone would lose it after seeing what I saw." Nagihiko regretted the words the second they left his mouth. He wanted her to forget about her mother's death, and bringing it up would surely make that impossible. And if he could allow her to think her mother's death had not left him totally shaken, that it wasn't as horrific as he had initially made it out to be, then that was all for the better.
"Yeah, Rima! You're lucky you didn't see the carnage in there! It was nasty! There were guts and blood everywhere!" Rhythm spoke excitedily, almost as if he were enjoying the whole horror movie type experience, obviously not taking note of Nagihiko's attempts to distract Rima from her mother's death. As he talked Rima's expression dropped and she grew even more pale, although Nagihiko had no idea how that was possible. He, taking note of the girl's worsening mood, smacked his guardian character out of the air harshly with a hateful glare.
"Too soon?" Rhythm moaned from the sheets of Nagihiko's bed. Nagihiko scowled harshly at him in response.
"It's fine. I was never really close to my mother so it's not really a huge deal," Rima rolled over so that she was facing away from Nagihiko, not wanting him to see the weakness in her quivering lip or wet eyes.
"Liar," Nagihiko muttered, knowing full well that Rima was currently in quite a lot of distress, "You just don't want me to see you cry."
Nagihiko received no response from Rima, which was a sure sign that he had been correct.
Rima pressed her face into the pillow under her, muffling the tears silently into the cool fabric. She knew Nagihiko knew she was crying, and she really didn't want him to see her do so, but she couldn't contain herself. Her mother had just been brutally killed, her body stolen away, never to be seen again. She would never get to hug her mom, or argue with her mom, or spend time with her mom ever again. Her mom, who she had just recently started to get close to again, was dead. She would never see her turn into an adult, or get married in the far future (to no one in particular, of course) and she would never get to have grandchildren.
Her mom would never tell her she loved her again.
Rima let out a huge, uncontrollable sob into the pillow, all attempts to stop herself forever lost. Nagihiko rubbed her back in what he hoped was a soothing manner as he looked down at her with a heartbroken expression. It killed him to see Rima in so much pain. So much so that he killed the nagging feeling in his chest in his tracks.
The attraction to the killer, the notion that somehow the killer was linked to him, the feeling that something incredibly horrible was happening... he dismissed it all. He had to be tired, or maybe he was shocked after what he witnessed.
Kairi was full of crap. Nothing was going to happen and tomorrow everything would be normal and nobody was going to try to hurt Rima.
…Yeah, right.
(Break.)
The sound of footsteps roused Tadase from the depths of his dreams, plunging him straight into the dark night. He lay still in his bed for a second, straining to make out what had woken him up. The room was eerily silent for a moment, and Tadase, deciding his mind was playing tricks on him, lay his head back down to fade back into his dreams.
But then he heard it again. There were clearly footsteps echoing against his walls, and they were clearly coming from his room. But who would be in his room at this hour? Tadase spent a moment wondering who it could possibly be before deciding it must be his mother.
"Mother, is that you?" Tadase asked in an uncertain voice, as he raised his body up onto his elbows. It was too dark to see much in the room; all he could make out was the faint outline of a woman standing near the foot of the bed.
Tadase waited for his mom to respond, but she didn't. Instead she simply moved closer to him, the old wooden floor creaking under her feet. Tadase squinted ahead of him as he sat up. What in the world was his mother doing in his room during the middle of the night?
"Tadase-kun…" the creaky voice that uttered his name definitely wasn't his mother's. Tadase jerked back against the headboard of his bed, pressing himself far away from the intruder.
"Who, who are you?" Try as he might, Tadase couldn't recognize the intruder's voice. In the back of his head he vaguely recalled hearing it once or twice before, but he couldn't place where that was. He knew that voice though.
"Tadase-kun…" The moans of the intruder sent shivers down Tadase's spine. He didn't have a good feeling about this. His mind shot to the events that took place earlier that day, Rima's mother's murder and the mysterious corpse-like killer that did it. Was he going to be killed like her, his body stolen away in the end?
"Kiseki," Tadase whispered out into the darkness as he pushed himself even farther back, desperate to get away but knowing he wouldn't be able to, not knowing if he were asking for his guardian character or just a miracle. The little king didn't respond though, and when Tadase glanced over at where he ought to be he couldn't even make out a silhouette of his egg. What a lovely time for a midnight stroll.
He had to turn a light on so that he could identify what was in his room. If he could see it he could defend himself against it, or maybe even escape from his room and get protection from his parents. There was nothing he could do in the dark, where he could only faintly tell where the intruder was.
Tadase's hand fumbled for his lamp's switch right before a cold hand grasped his foot. He let out a sharp shriek and thrust his hand towards the lamp desperately, hitting it to the side by mistake. The lamp fell to the floor with a loud crash, the glass body shattering into a million pieces. Tadase stared at the glittering shards lying on the floor in shock, his eyes wide as he realized...
He was going to end up broken just like that lamp.
"Don't worry, Tadase-kun," the intruder said in a cold voice that made Tadase feel as though he was going to be sick. Somehow, having been told not to worry made Tadase's worry increase exponentially.
A sudden gust of wind blew the curtains to the side, letting in a sheet of bright moonlight. Tadase's mouth fell open as he bore straight into a pair of golden eyes he had seen time and time again: Rima's.
"Mashiro-san?" Tadase croaked out, before another hand grabbed his other foot and pulled him down to the end of he bed harshly. He let out a small cry, as he found the face of his good friend's deceased mother inches from his own. It looked different, though. The eyes looked rather unfocused, the skin on the face was bruised, and a slow trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. "But you died."
A small smirk grew on her face. "Dead doesn't mean gone."
Tadase opened his mouth to ask another question, or maybe just scream for help, but he wasn't able to.
Instead, the world turned black.
(Break.)
Mizue knocked onto the door of Tadase's room, perplexed as to why her usually early rising son was still asleep.
"Tadase-kun? Are you awake yet?" Mizue waited a moment, but received no response. She frowned. Maybe he was listening to music and couldn't hear him. He had grown fond of wearing headphones lately.
"Tadase-kun?" She knocked once more, and again received no response. Mizue's heart skipped a beat. Something was wrong, she knew it. Tadase was a good boy, even now in his teenage years. He would never ignore her, and he always managed to respond the second time she called his name even if he had his headphones in.
"I'm coming in, sweetheart," she called as she pushed open the door, somehow knowing that what she found would not be pleasant. But yet, as soon as she saw what was inside she let out a sharp gasp and stumbled backwards, not at all expecting what she saw.
"YUI!" she screamed for her husband as loud as possible, her body quivering from the shock that consumed her.
The sheets of Tadase's bed had been ripped away and lay on the floor, along with the curtains to his window, in a tangled mess, dotted with specks of blood. The lamp that had rested on his bedside table lay on the floor, broken beyond repair. The weird egg decoration Tadase had acquired somewhere and was oddly fond of lay on the floor, a mess of broken, what appeared to be, ceramics. But the worst thing was the wall above Tadase's bed.
In what appeared to be blood was written a cruel message that caused Mizue's heart to drop out of her chest:
You've forsaken me, now I'll forsake you all.
Say goodbye to life.
Only death awaits you now.
Mizue collapsed to the floor, her heart thundering in her ears as her husband and the guest Tadase would have been so happy to see ran into the room at top speed. Her son was gone, gone forever. There was no ransom note, simply a promise of death. There was nothing she could do now, but only if she had been more observant during the night. The lamp must have made such a sound when it broke. How could she have not heard that?
"No!" The guest's blue eyes were huge, taking in the room with utmost horror. His finger's gripped the doorframe as he struggled to steady himself. This wasn't happening. It was all just a bad dream. This couldn't be happening just because he returned last night, right? He wasn't really cursed, was he?
Was it his fault that Tadase was dead?
He saw the egg crushed on the floor and let out a strangled sob. He was the cause of this, wasn't he?
Would he end up killing them all?
A/N: Okay, originally this Tadase stuff wasn't going to go down for a couple more chapters, but this story is moving waaaay faster than I initially thought it would. Slow down, you dang plot development! And i feel like it's definitely not scary enough. Bleh. XP Oh, and the guest, (I added him in spur of the moment), I bet you can all guess who he is, right? ;)
Any advice for how to improve it? It'd be greatly appreciated! And even if you don't want to review (which I understand completely) at least add it to your favorites please! And thank you everyone for your support! I love getting those emails like "so-and-so added you to their favorites" it makes me smile every time! (but I love the reviews even more, hint hint. lol) Anyway, see you soon! :)
