Author's Note:

This chapter is three-pages long in Word *wince* I'm sorry for the shortness but this is the best I could do in weekday. The next chapter will be a few days later, depends on how fast I can update my other long-since-opened fic. Have to ask, though. What kind of ending do you want? Going by the original song this fic is based on, it'll be, of course, bad ending. Just a heads up^^

Chapter 4

Blessed Messiah

It must've been a mistake. There was no way that abomination was real.

Yet, even as he tried to convince himself, Junpei knew that the bone-deep ache that gripped him so readily was too real for a nightmare. A nightmare which was like an endless pantomime of false memory. It must've been false, because he knew that he wouldn't accept anything else.

So why did his body wouldn't stop trembling?

The vision forcibly settled itself in the forefront of his mind like a chain. Even when he closed his eyes, the cold feeling that seeped from the tips of his fingers to his knuckles wouldn't stop. Junpei pressed his palms into his eyes and tried to erase the dreadful sadness it brought him.

The haunted figure that appeared in place of that miserable fragment, the sharp contrast it brought to the silver moonlight around it... Without him noticing, his body has already slumped onto the wall to support the weight of his realization, of who the figure that was standing so still as if the world itself has just stopped gravitating.

It was Arisato, and yet, maybe it wasn't.

It was no different from who Junpei had last seen the night the bastard died, except that it was like a paler version of him. With dark hair blacker than what black could be and the smell of death clinging to it like a second skin. It cradled something bundled in a dark clothes with utmost care, as if afraid that something unknown would harm it.

But this... This vision wouldn't have been possible! Arisato was dead like a common man, Junpei was there with the rest of his dorm mates as the casket went down six feet under the ground. Arisato was dead. He wasn't supposed to be here, or anywhere on the surface of earth.

...Maybe it was true that it was just a ghost. Something that was told from time to time as stories between friends. Like the result of an overactive imagination and make-believe that would disappear if people ignore it often enough.

It stood in the middle of an immense, gilded cage surrounded by darkness. The cage was polished black, icy against his palms. The very air of the place itself was tainted with hopelessness and Junpei's breath came out with a strangled cry as it looked at the bundled figure with deprived, purest despair. The expression shifted into one of resigned acceptance.

Then, as if it was an afterthought, it mangled a broken smile into its human-like face.

"I won't leave you alone,"

But the words weren't speak aloud, though its mouth moved. The words echoed in Junpei's head like a linked thought instead. There was a wistful quality to its young voice, but maybe it only sounded so young because it was the first time Junpei has heard Arisato's voice in seven long years.

Junpei tried, raising his voice. "W-Who are you?! "

But the thing that resembled Arisato didn't hear him and he only watched as it sunk to its knees, hugging the bundle as if it to fight the suffocating cold that permeated around the atmosphere. Its face fell like crumpled paper and it sobbed, shaking like a fallen leaf in that enclosed space.

"I will stay here, so please don't return to their world again."

Junpei's throat was clogged with horror and he couldn't breath, the foreign fear quickened his throbbing heartbeat. It was twisted to see someone he barely know suffered so much yet he knew that it was just a nightmare.

"Stop this!"

But it wouldn't stop. It only stood up with renewed determination and took another shaky breath. Junpei wanted this to end- Fuck it, this was sick and he wanted to deny what he has seen, because it was so much easier to hate Arisato for showing him something like this. Whatever lunacy or trick he was in should end sooner or later.

But then, it does.

Wherever they were in has changed abruptly, as if abiding his wish. The gilded cage they were in spread into a building steeped in blood. A full moon has begun turning everything around them a sickly green, instead of a natural pale silver. The ruined building was dirty with dust and caked blood, giving way to only a barren wasteland. Fragile pillars towered over them, intertwined with carved stones that rose to support a ceiling that was now lost in the void. The green moonlight cast morose, sorrowful shadows through the strange place.

Then, his line of vision was surrounded by light.

The thing that looked like Arisato grew, the human-like form melting into darkened flesh. Fragile limbs hugged by threads darker than ink and thinner that spider's thread. But it wasn't just its wrists, even its body was littered with them. Its sobs has stopped but the trembling hasn't, giving it the appearance of a neglected child.

The changing shadows fluctuated and danced around the figure, colouring everything that the light touched with flashes of black and white. It was inhuman.

Still, it looked up to the nothingness with something akin to resignation. It shook its head twice, and smiled a genuine, though pained, smile. And he knew that he would never forget that face. That it would show up in his dreams, in the ones where it was holding the darkened sky on its shoulder until every bone in his body snapped.

And he could only watch as two pairs of great, black wings sparkled within the darkness. He was speechless as Arisato's form changed, transformed and molded into something he had never seen-

-Into the features of a lonely, forsaken God.

When the vision ended, it made him wonder what he looked like afterwards, when his body lost its strength and tremor ran through his limbs or when he didn't even bother to stand up anymore or when he just wanted a touch of reality to anchor him. He stayed there, curled up so long until the first tint of daybreak touched the empty room.

Then, he tucked his head down and couldn't lift it up again. His eyes were wet.

Junpei was aware he was obsessed.

He knew he would ended up opening the rusted front door again and again, watching as the empty first floor would transform into a barren wasteland where Arisato's fragment would sprout those pure black wings that seemed to absorb the green moonlight, come midnight. He grew acquainted with the solemn air, with the mysterious place they were in, with utter feeling of abandonment etched in the fragment's face and he wanted to know more.

How could his other dorm mates told him to ignore this?

It drew him in, it made him felt a tingle of familiarity that led to nowhere, it was a piece of something that was larger than life itself. It was more than a melancholic atmosphere he cannot change, only watch. It was more than a stranger he barely knew with dark blue hair and silver eyes-

-This broken, shattered fragment was all that was left from a stranger named Arisato.

And something changed.

Tonight was the first time he braved on and climbed to the second floor. Junpei's senses flared, expanding within each exhale he took as he slowly took another step.

Up. Up. Up.

The creak of abused wooden staircase was loud against the stillness and his own consciousness. The mold that reached the far edge of the handrail was stark green on what used to be brown paint. The pile of toadstools on the corner of the staircase where a rat hole was nearby grew disgustingly as it filled whatever space that was damp enough for its spores to land on and spread.

Remains of a dead rat greeted him as he touched the final staircase, Junpei only wrinkled his nose and stepped aside it, noting that the seating room that connected the second floor to the stairs that led to the third floor was literally in the state of total ruins after years of not visiting.

It was sad to see the destruction, especially since he spent many late hours there. Gaming on and snacking as his pastime, teasing Yuka-tan's famous prudishness while his buddy was leaning over, trying to nudge his arm so he failed the stages.

Junpei blinked.

Tsking quietly, he squatted over and inspected the old machine. The vending machines were broken in. The fractured glass made a smattering of tiny pieces as the light bulb flickered on and off, the cable was done in by rain water and hungry rodents. Junpei stood up and walked to his old room, expecting it to be the same as he left it.

What he forgot was that after they moved out, the dorm was used for the first few years until Gekkoukan High School announced that it would have another dorm built next to the school, so typically their old dorm was an empty place after that.

It felt weird to see his old room so bare, he used to hang naughty posters on the wall that got him in trouble with the former Student Council President and threw dirty shirt wherever it landed because he was too lazy to clean up. Well, in a way he still was.

Satisfied, he closed the door and was about to move on to the first floor's staircase. Until something tugged at him.

Junpei rubbed the back of his neck. His eyes were drawn to the last door to the right. Straight on the door of someone so isolated and distant.

...Should he?

That little thought gnawed on him and he didn't like this. It only started with a bout of curiosity. Nothing more, nothing less. Once he return to the States, he was going to compete in a major league, with his team's adoring fans cheering on and girls waiting just outside their quarter, begging for photographs and phone numbers.

He had nothing in Japan anymore. Who did he owe beyond that? He reached this point by his own strength, by his own skills and nothing to back him up. And obviously, he owe nothing to Arisato. He didn't have to come here anymore.

So why did his thoughts insisted he did?

Exhaling another breath, Junpei gave up and moved forward slowly. Not pausing because he knew that he would go back once he do. Besides, this place was not his stage. There was no one to disappoint and no ball to save, he was alone.

Unbeknownst to him, he already stood in front of Arisato's room. He stalled, touching the frail doorknob with hesitant fingers. It was cold, a result of years upon years of being exposed to elements as the room itself was the closest to the windows, which now laid broken and useless.

He tried to push the door open, but something unseen blocked his effort. Junpei thought that maybe it was a sign that his exploration has to stop there or risk something he didn't know, so he let his fingers off from the steel doorknob.

What shocked him was when a black thread connected his wrist to the knob.

"What?!"

Suddenly, he didn't want to know.

He didn't want to know why. He didn't want to know why. This was beyond him. It scared the shit out of him. Something terrible has happened there. Something unspeakably inhuman has been done there. Arisato's death was unnatural and maybe it was the truth that ghosts do exist to lead people to hell.

Junpei didn't want to know.

But he had to. He had to know.

A strong compulsion drove his hands forward as an unexpected surge of dread took hold in his chest. With icy fingers, he latched his trembling digits to the knob and gave it a shaking twist.

He pushed the Pandora's Box open.