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Chapter 6

Ran forced himself to walk along the long hallway towards the garden. His mother had called him earlier to remind him to water the plants, especially the petunia flowers that she had hung in the gazebo. He had to leave in twenty minutes to his part time job in Koneko no Sumu Ie. He, Yohji, Ken and Mamoru had been working there for almost three months. He could understand why he himself, Yohji and Ken wanted to work there, but he could not understand why Mamoru wanted to work too since his family was rich and influential. His uncle Takatori Reiji was one hell of a prominent man in the politics of Tokyo.

He had finished watering his mother's plants and looking at his watch, he quickly ran towards his room and changed into his favorite orange sweater and blue jeans when the phone in the hall suddenly rang.

Ran creased his eyebrows and shook his head. Sometimes his mother should just trust him to take of the house. It's not that he was some juvenile delinquent son that would tear down the house with his friends with booze and coke.

He picked up the phone.

"Hello, Fujimiya residence."

The line on the other side remained silent. Ran said hello again and, thinking that it must be a wrong number, he almost put the phone down when he heard breathing and a voice.

"Dead boys don't tell any tales." Ran dropped the receiver and heard a loud thud on the floor. He could still hear mechanical laughter from the other side of the receiver before he was left with a cut off tone. Ran could feel the blood draining from his face and he reeled backwards.

He waited for a few minutes, letting himself calm down before he called the store, informing them that he was feeling a little too much under the weather to go to work today. Yohji, who picked up the phone, had asked if anything was wrong since his voice sounded different. Ran told him not to worry; it's just a little cold that he was catching. Yohji had told him to rest well.

Ran put down the receiver and ran towards every door in the house making sure that they were locked and he walked as fast as he could towards his room and locked himself in, before securing himself on his bed. He didn't notice when he started to cry, his ears kept hearing strange sounds and he kept imagining that his bedroom door was being forced open and he could not see any face, only a very shiny hunting knife, coming in to carve his face like what had been done to one of the bodies that he had seen in the woods. He didn't realize it when he fell asleep. When he woke up, it was already morning and he had to go to school.

It was two days after that phone call and he had not received any other calls again, except from his parents. But still, his hands would be shaking, or he gasped and jumped every time the phone rang. Every time he in the house alone, he felt that the evenings seemed to be long and depressing. But the call never came again.

Ran was reading his book when he was on break, but his mind was filled of something else that he's been thinking about from the last phone call. Maybe they were trying to torment him, to see when he would break and then they would fix him to keep him quiet. He was still reading the first paragraph when Ken approached him. He put down the book and gave his friend a small smile, waiting for him to speak.

"Are you free this evening?'

Ran thought for a second. Of course he had nothing to do except his chemistry revision or his English Literature assignment and he would like to escape from this suffocating feeling.

"Yes, why?"

"Yohji had this horror movie that he wanted us to watch together. I can't remember the title but he says it's good, I asked Mamoru too, but it seems that today his father had some family gathering with his powerful uncle that he can't get out of."

"Sure." Ran said. "But I hope it's not some dirty or stupid horror movie that he wants us to watch."

Ken laughed at this. "You never know what our 'brother' is thinking. He might end up renting some C Class horror movie like Snakes on a Plane or maybe Black Sheep."

Ran rolled his eyes. "I hope not, I will buck-wash him if he did rent that kind of crap."

Ran glance at his watch, it was almost eight pm, He could not shake the uneasy feeling that he was being watched. Like a pair of unseen eyes followed him, glaring at his back. Watching and calculating his every move. He could imagine the look of the eyes, huge, white pale, with a luminous black tail floating on his eye level, unblinking like in the horror movie he had just watched with Ken and Yohji.

Ran could not help but hurrying his pace. In his heart, he cursed Yohji and his brilliant ideas to watch the horror movie. Ken always had nightmares after watching one of those horror movies but he never learned his lesson; he used to laugh at Ken's childish antics, now he admonished himself for acting the same. But he had himself to blame; he refused to let Yohji send him home because he was not like some kind of a girl that needed company to see him home. Furthermore, it only took ten minutes shortcut walk from Yohji's house to his. Yohji had told him to be careful and promised that the next time Ran came to his house; they would watch a porn movie instead of a horror one.

He felt nervous, like he was being stalked by something invisible. And he could not shake off the feeling no matter how hard he tried. Gathering his courage, Ran turned around in a fast move, expecting something behind him…. But there was no one there. He could only hear water dripping from the nearby drain. His eyes cast through the garbage bins and he could hear heavy breaths clearly.

It was not the first time that he walked past this back alley and Yohji knew this route very well too. That man, no matter how he was supposed to be mature, sometimes still acted childish and loved to pull pranks on others. "Yohji!!!" He yelled out. "It's NOT funny!"

There was no answer. Instead the breathing was getting heavier. He was now sure that it was not Yohji and had not realized that his hands had started shaking.

Ran turned to run, but halted. Damn it! He thought. I am what they refer to as the Demon Orchid in Kendo tournaments and now I am trying to run away like some kind of coward. His rivals would laugh their heads off if they ever knew that he was running away like a small child after watching a horror movie.

But then trying to be stupidly brave was not a good thing either. So, he turned and walked as fast as he could, ignoring the eerie feeling that he was still being watched. He refused to turn around when he heard a loud thump, but when he felt a single breath on his neck, Ran halted and froze and turned…