A/N: This is where it starts to get good :)

I don't own Corpse Party, except in my alternate reality.

You'd searched almost every inch of the school building, but you and Kizami never came into contact with another soul. You stood in the 3rd floor west hallway, outside of a locked reference room. It was the last place for the two of you to look and when you'd found out it was locked, your hopes crashed to the ground.

You sagged against the wall. "What do we do now?"

Kizami opened his mouth to answer, but you'd never know what he was about to say.

"AHHHH!"

You shot up off the wall, your entire body going tense. The scream had come from downstairs, most likely the 2nd floor from the sound of it, and you recognized the voice. You'd heard a version of that scream a thousand times before, although it had always been playful before. This time, though, it was dead serious. Life or death serious.

"Hania!" you screamed, going for the stairs. You heard Kizami yell your name and run after you, but your adrenaline had started pumping, so you were running as fast as you could. You could feel that Kizami wasn't far behind you, but he never caught up.

As you came to the last few stairs, Hania screamed again, causing you to jump to the bottom of the stairs. The bottom of your feet stung when you hit the ground, but you barely noticed it. As you came out of the stairwell, you turned to your left, where you'd heard Hania's shout.

There she was, running toward you. She was about halfway down the hallway and she looked terrified. Her long, red hair looked disheveled as it swung back and forth with the motion of her footsteps. When she saw you, she yelled, "[Name]! RUUUUN!"

It didn't matter what she said, though, you weren't going anywhere, not now that you'd found her. You took a few steps forward, wanting more than anything to hug her. You heard Kizami's footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs just as Hania was a few feet from you.

You closed your eyes, bracing for her impact. A dull thwack followed by a splatter sounded in the air just before Hania fell into your arms. But something was wrong – she wasn't hugging you back. Instead, she had gone limp in your arms, causing you to hold her up. Her head had come to rest on your shoulder. Maybe she'd passed out…?

You opened your eyes and looked down. The first thing you saw was the blood that pooled at the bottom of your feet. Your own blood ran cold as you looked at it, your mind going blank. In fact, it was as if your brain had simply stopped working. There wasn't a single thought there, not a single whisper of one.

Still without thinking, you pulled Hania's limp body away from yours, finding her surprisingly heavy. You could easily see the red liquid that leaked from her head, flowing all the way down to the floor. Just as your eyes were lifting up to her face, Kizami yelled out to you, "[Name]! Don't!"

But it was too late. You could clearly see the metal pipe that protruded from Hania's head. It had gone right through the back of her head and into her left eye. Her right eye looked up at you, lifeless, but with tears still in them. She was here in your arms, but she wasn't. She was…gone. She was dead.

"No…" you whispered, clenching Hania in your hands. "Hania… No! No!"

Your scream echoed through the halls, drowning out any other sounds, if there were any. Your feet fell out from underneath you and you landed hard on your bottom, Hania's body leaning on you. Her blood dripped from her body and onto your legs, but you didn't care. You didn't care about anything. One of the people you loved most was gone…forever.

"Why?" you cried, tears flowing down your face.

Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped themselves under your arms and tried pulling you up. You resisted them, shaking back and forth violently.

"[Name]! Listen to me! We have to leave, right now!"

"No!" you yelled right back. "I can't leave her! Hania!"

With one hard yank, Kizami pulled you up off the ground and scooped you into his arms. You tried to flail around, but Kizami had a tight grip on you, holding your arms down at your sides. Your head poked around the right side of his body and you suddenly realized why he said you had to leave.

A blue glow had appeared in the hall behind Kizami, becoming brighter as it came closer. A little ghost girl – not the one you'd seen in your dream or earlier, but another one – came around the corner. She held a pair of scissors in her hand as she skipped over to Hania's body. Another ghost followed, one that was missing most of its head.

"Nice throw, Tokiko!" the one with the scissors laughed. "Not quite perfect, but close enough."

You took one last look at Hania's body as Kizami carried you away. She lay there, blood pooling around her as the ghost children bent over her.

Hania…I'm sorry…

And with that thought, Kizami entered the staircase and you never saw Hania again.

Kizami

I carried [Name] in my arms as I ran down the staircase. She barely weighed anything, she was so small. I didn't take the chance of turning around to see if the ghosts were following us; all I cared about was getting us to safety.

Once I made it to the bottom of the stairs, I ran around the corner and –

Stopped. There was a hallway going straight in front of me…one that hadn't been there before. I knew what awaited us if I turned left, so I went ahead and ran forward, knowing that anything – any place – that was new had to be where we went. We'd already searched the rest of the school for any other living being and came up short. Sort of.

The moment that pipe had gone through [Name's] friend's – Hania, as [Name] called her – head, I'd felt…enlightened. As her life snuffed out, I saw – really saw – who she was. A scared girl, frightened for her life. Of course, the death of her friend had left [Name] in a catatonic state, leaving me to protect her.

But I didn't mind. I knew I had to keep her safe, if only for a short time…

There was something different about [Name], but I needed to watch her more before I could determine what it was. One thing I already knew was different about her? I could stand her. As in, I didn't think of her as a nuisance, which most people were.

When I came upon her in the classroom she'd hid in before, I knew exactly what she was doing. She hadn't tripped - although she had lied pretty convincingly and probably would have fooled anyone else - and fallen on the corpse. No, she was intrigued by it, the same way I was intrigued.

And that made me want to see more of her.

I kept running until I reached a door I had never seen before. I pushed on it, as hard as that was with [Name] in my arms, and it surprisingly opened. I burst through the door, letting it shut behind me.

The rain was the first thing I noticed. It was pouring outside, so hard that it would probably soak me if I stepped out in it. Luckily, there was a roof hanging over the small walkway to another wing of the building, something I didn't know existed. But, for some reason, I had this nagging thought in my mind that I had been here before, explored this new building…

I shook my head and looked down at [Name]. She was staring up past my face, at the roof above us, but I could tell that she wasn't really seeing it. Her friend's death had completely taken her over, poor thing.

Poor thing? I thought. Since when have you referred to anyone as "poor thing"?

I shook my entire being this time, setting my head straight. I needed to get us to a hiding place, quickly. I ran forward again, putting [Name] down for a moment as I opened the doors to the 2nd wing. I had to hold her up as I did so or she would have fallen down. As soon as I had the doors open, I picked her back up and ran inside as fast as I could.

You didn't know when you'd fallen asleep. Actually, you had no idea that you'd fallen asleep until you woke up in a room you'd never seen before. You sat up, wiping the sleep from your eyes.

You were in what looked to be a bathroom, stalls lining the wall. There were a few sinks next to the stalls, but they all looked broken. You realized then just how thirsty you were.

How did I get in a bathroom? you wondered. I don't remember ever seeing this room before…

That's when everything came back to you.

"Hania," you whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't save you. I wish you were here…" Putting your face in your hands, you began to sob. You stayed like this for a long time, letting the sorrow you felt gradually leave your body with your tears, but it never completely went away.

It wasn't until you felt so numb that you didn't think you could cry anymore that you noticed it. A thin mist had developed in the room, floating a few feet over the ground. As you watched, too tired and hurt to care, the mist turned into a fog so thick that you couldn't see through it. You could make out general shapes, but nothing more than that.

"Hania," you whimpered. "W-why did you have to go?"

It was soon so cold in the room that you began to feel it through your numbness. A shiver ran through your body, causing you to gasp. You were surprised to find that you could see your breath in the air.

Finally, your brain realized that you were in danger, but it was ultimately too late.

As you stood up to run to the door, something slimy wrapped around your ankle, pulling your leg out from underneath you. You hit the ground hard on your back, bouncing off the floor. This caused your head to whip back down at an alarming rate. You heard a crunch from the back of your head and felt your body go limp.

It was hard to think straight when you were in so much pain. You could tell that other parts of your body had felt the impact, but they were nothing compared to your head. You knew almost immediately that you had to have broken your skull.

Out of nowhere, a black, inky substance began to pool around you. You couldn't move, though, so you had no choice but to let it engulf you. You tried your hardest to look up and eventually you caught a peep just long enough to tell that the inky stuff was only pooling around you. It had to have stopped right above your head, from the looks of it. Glancing down, you saw that your feet were just in front of one of the stalls, which was where the black liquid was coming from.

Eventually, you could feel the slime all over your body, growing higher and higher by the second. As you finally realized that you were about to die, the ghost girl in the red dress appeared above you, her blue glow lighting up the room.

"This is your fate, you know," she whispered with a smile. "Maybe not this death, exactly, but it's your destiny to die in this school. I should know – I've watched every single time!"

There was now a metallic taste in the back of your throat. You knew without a doubt that it was your own blood.

The girl's smile became sympathetic. "You shouldn't feel bad about getting caught here. It happens to everyone who comes to this place – or, well, most of them. I'm a little sad that you're dying so quickly, though. I was really enjoying watching you and Kizami interact."

As soon as she mentioned his name, you mentally slapped yourself. As best you could at the moment, anyway. Kizami! You couldn't believe you'd forgotten about him. Then again, dealing with your best friend's death had been completely and utterly engulfing.

"Ki…za…mi!" You tried your hardest to call out to him, but your breath came out as a whisper.

The little ghost girl laughed. "There's no point in trying to call him now. He'll never hear you. Even if he did, I wouldn't let him through the door."

"Ki…za –" You tried to call out to him again, but the inky substance abruptly rose, a little of it going in your mouth.

"I told you. He's. Not. Coming." The little girl no longer wore her smile. She looked menacing, absolutely crazy. There was no doubt about it – she was enjoying watching you suffer. "But, you know…I had a really great idea earlier. I was thinking about trying it out… What the heck? Let's do it!"

The smile was back on her face, but you were barely paying any attention now. The slime had now engulfed your ears, making it extremely difficult to hear anything. Every time you opened your mouth to get a breath, it would fill with foul-tasting ink, causing you to choke. You would suffocate any minute now.

The little girl was now directly in front of your face. She looked like she was giving you instructions of some kind, but you had no idea. You couldn't hear her and it was hard to read her lips when she was so close. She must have become frustrated because she suddenly took hold of your jaw with both hands and stretched it open. This caused the ink that had come into your mouth to go down your throat.

It burned when it went down and not just a little bit. It was like drinking a really hot cup of soup, except about a million times worse. You could actually feel the skin on the inside of your throat burning away, swallowing it with the slime. You fought desperately to close your mouth, but the girl in the red dress wouldn't allow it. Soon, you could hear her again.

"Ah-ah-ah! You need to drink enough of it down for it to work!" She smiled down at you as if you were a child, trying not to take your medicine. "I know it hurts. It'll be over in a minute. Almost there…"

You absolutely needed to take a breath now or you'd drown on whatever this liquid was. Pretty soon you would inhale it into your lungs and you didn't want to think about what pain that would cause. If it had burned the skin on the inside of your throat off, who could tell what it would do to your lungs?

"Finished!"

The little girl let go of your jaw, allowing you to close it. Instead, though, you violently inhaled, every inch of your body shaking as you did. Once you'd caught up on oxygen, you noticed that you were no longer in pain. Able to move your limbs again, you brought a hand up to the back of your head. The damage – however bad it was – was gone! You were whole again.

The ghost girl laughed at the expression on your face. "That's right; your skull isn't broken anymore. I can do that." She winked at you. "Unfortunately, you can't remember anything I just told you. Phooey. Oh well." She reached out and touched your forehead with the tip of her finger.

Just as the blackness overtook your vision, you heard her whisper, "Sweet dreams."

As always, let me know what you thought :)

A new chapter will be up tomorrow!