AN: Thank you to everyone that took the time to leave a comment and I hope you enjoy this chapter.
He was out of the empty blue corridor, and he was scared.
'She was right...'
Mono also felt sad and frustrated. He was curled up on the ground, feeling wrong. He felt weightless yet pulled to the side, while every bone in his body felt out of place by an inch.
'Idiot...'
The feeling wouldn't go away. In fact it felt like it was getting worse. He wasn't surprised, not really. He finally managed to open the door.
Someone was waiting on the other side.
Mono's thoughts were interrupted by a feeling of being shaken. His first thought was that it was that thin man, but he realized that the hand felt too small. With a jolt he snapped his eyes open to see two girls in yellow raincoats. Nausea instantly assaulted him as he tried to adjust his vision and swallow his bile. He had to do something to warn her, so he forced his mouth open and gargled out a word.
"H-Hide."
The girl replied by grabbing him with both hands before trying to pull him up.
"Run," he tried again as survival instincts started to kick in and his eyes adjusted. With his balance somewhat restored he began to stand up, but it was hard. His body felt like it was submerged into muddy waters, except this time something far worse than a hunter with a gun was coming.
Mono suddenly felt a jolt of electricity course through his body, causing every muscle to lock up. He stumbled to the ground, his rat hat falling uselessly off his head. The little girl let him go with a yelp, not being able to hold him up on her own. Regardless, she reached down to try again, but stopped herself with a gasp. Mono didn't need to look to know why, he felt it through his body.
The thin man was coming through the picture box.
Fear began to overtake the pain as Mono tried to rise. Seconds began to stretch into minutes as everything around him seemed to slow down. The act of moving his hands to push off the ground seemed to take him as long as climbing a ladder, and Mono's attempt to grunt dragged on like he was trying to scream it out.
It was as he was getting up that he became aware of the echoed sound of footsteps heading away from him. The girl in the yellow raincoat finally decided it was too late, and began to run away without him. Mono felt hurt despite everything he told her up till this point. He may have said he was prepared to be left behind, but his heart was not.
A dull thud made the hair on his neck stand up, and he turned his gaze to the picture box. The thin man made it in the room in a crouch and began to stand up. Slowly.
Adrenaline dripped through Mono's veins as he began to run to the open door, leaving the rat hat behind on the floor. Despite knowing this was a bad idea, he looked behind him to confirm that the thin man was moving about as slow as everything else was, which gave him a little hope.
Outside of the room was a corridor Mono recognized. It led to three doors, none of which were promising. The door closest to him was locked. The door on the right end of the corridor led to a collapsed halfway. And the last door?
Led to a bedroom with no other exits.
The girl was halfway through the corridor, no doubt aiming for the bedroom, and Mono wasted no time following. It was the only room they could conceivably hide in till the thin man got bored and left. Another glance behind him told Mono the man was easily a head taller than the doors, which slowed him down ever so slightly. He didn't seem to be in any rush, opting to walk rather than run at them, his shoes clanking against the wooden floor.
With a sudden turn, Mono made it to the room, and moved as fast as he could manage towards the bed at the end of it. A flash of yellow in the corner of his eyes made him realize the girl had hid under the small round table. He hoped it was good enough as he slid under the bed with practiced experience, curling into himself to try and make himself smaller.
His mind felt unusually free of the static, yet he was too focused on the thin man's footsteps to notice. He heard them clank as they got closer. He heard the floor creak as he turned the corner, and felt the pause as the thin man bent in order to walk through the door.
And then there was silence.
It took Mono one second before it became too much to bear and he opened his eyes. He could only see the monsters legs, which were standing still but pointing at the bed. The girl on the other hand was leaning into the table's only leg, trying to use the boxes under it for cover.
She accidentally moved the table.
He saw her look up at the thin man, her lips quivering. She turned towards him, causing Mono's heart to jump in fear at being exposed to the monster. Before he had a chance to react, she ran from the table towards him, but in her panic she tripped on the floor.
The thin man began to move, making Mono want to curl up and stay quiet.
The girl raised her hand towards him, making Mono want to reach for her.
'You better not expect me to try and save you just because you're weak.'
"No!" Mono shouted as he jumped from under the bed towards her. He saw the outstretched hand of the thin man aimed her way, but he was closer. He saw her face quirk up as he reached for her shoulders.
He collided into an electric current.
Shocked, he looked up but no one else was in the room.
"Hey!" he shouted to the thin man as he ran outside of the room, but there was no one there either.
"Hey!" he tried again as he looked into the other room. The picture box was on, making a dull scratching sound, while the rat hat lay uselessly on the floor. But there was still no one there.
He stayed there for a couple seconds, his face a mixture of shock that morphed into desperation as he recognized the electric feeling he felt when he dived into the girl. It was the same feeling he got when he touched the ghost kids.
"No." he said to no one in particular as he ran back to the bedroom. Everything was moving at a normal speed yet he still felt too slow as he rounded the corner.
"Hey..." he said with a pleading voice. But the only thing that replied was his thoughts and the returning buzzing.
'You better not expect me to try and save you just because you're weak.'
But she had. It might not have been much, but it was more than Mono felt he deserved. An extra second would have given her the confidence to hide under the bed where it was safe, or it would have gotten Mono captured and sated the thing.
"H-hey..." Mono choked out, as he stumbled on all fours where the girl used to be. No one replied again, so he began to quietly sob.
He remembered how they met, how he was drawn to her room by the sound of her music box. He remembered catching up to her and apologizing for scaring her with the axe he used to open the door, how she looked at him with skepticism but beckoned him to come closer and help activate the switch. He remembered them frantically running away from the hunter, how they fought him off together in the shed near the sea. He remembered them getting separated in the school and the despair he felt when the bullies captured and took her away.
That thought gave him pause. Despite the hopelessness of the situation, he did manage to find and save her. She was bruised and she was furious, but she was ok. But that happened only because he didn't waste any time to try and get her back. If there was any chance she was still alive, there was only one place she could be right now.
Mono took a deep breath and made his way back to the room with the picture box, wiping the tears with his sleeve. He had no way of knowing if she was alive, or even if this would work, but he knew he had to try, for her sake. He paused to pick up the rat hat she gave him and put it back on his head. It was a meaningless gesture, it never managed to block the noise or offer much protection from anything. But it was her gift to him, and that reassured him to follow through with the plan.
His logic was simple if misguided. The static in his head briefly stopped whenever he got dragged to that corridor, meaning the two were connected somehow.
With that in mind, he put his hand on the screen, and for the first time since he could remember, he stopped trying to ignore the buzzing. He let it occupy his head without interruptions, trying to feel it out, and once satisfied he moved on to the next step of the plan. He began to push it, but not away into the back of his mind, he tried to push it into a shape. He couldn't describe what that shape looked like, but he knew how he wanted that shape to feel like.
Blue.
Cold.
Damp.
Lonely.
Trapped.
He could feel he didn't get the shape right, but it was close enough to activate the picture box. Without warning, it grabbed and dragged him inside, and mono found himself falling in a place he didn't recognize towards an unknown destination. He screamed in panic, hoping to survive the fall, and hoping that wherever he landed was closer to where she was.
AN: This was a lot harder to write than I thought, since so many things were happening at the same time. It's only going to get harder in the next chapter but I'll see what I can do.
With that said, thank you for your time, and have a nice day.