A/N: Before we get into the first chapter, thank you for reading! I'm very excited about this and hope you'll enjoy it! And second of all, I made a map of the island and the dorms to help you, readers, in the story. But sadly, fanfiction doesn't seem to allow images to be placed inside stories. But I'll have them up on my story in AO3 though if they allow it. If you want to see them, go look there. Same username, same story name. Anyway, ENJOY!
Chapter 1: First Victim
"So, Arthur," Francis annoyingly slides into my personal space, bumping my shoulder with his hip for attention, "what do you think of my new jacket?" He asks. I turn my head slightly away from my book to glance at him as he slides backwards again so I can look. He then starts tugging at said new jacket and turning slowly. The jacket is a soft light blue colour like his eyes and is a little short on the torso, but I'm guessing that it's been bought like that on purpose.
"As obnoxious as always," I reply, turning my eye back to the pages of my Chemistry book. I don't like admitting it when Francis actually buys clothes I like. Perhaps because it feels like losing to him in some way. I can see Francis hang his shoulders in the corner of my eyes.
"Nothing else?" the French boy asks, sounding both disappointed and irritated.
"Say, don't you have homework to do instead of buggering me about a jacket, Francis?" I retort, avoiding the subject. The blonde sighs heavily and lays himself dramatically on the table as he falls down on the chair beside me. I don't pay mind to him and just keep reading.
"It's already bad enough we can only wear our own clothes in this stupid academy on the weekends or on holidays. And when I was finally able to get new clothes, you won't even compliment me?" Francis wails a bit too loud. "Don't get me wrong, the dark blue uniform jacket really makes my blonde, wavy hair stand out. But sometimes, I just want to wear what I want!" he continues on with his self-pity. "Not as if a fashion disaster like you would understand," he then adds. That does make me look up from my homework.
"Why did they ever think it would be a good idea to pair your narcissistic arse with me," I look up to the roof of our dorm room. Room number 113, the first floor, left-wing of the building, the third room on the left side.
"N- nar- narcissistic?" Francis splutters. "It's not like you're wrong. But Arthur, really, ouch. How dare you hurt my poor heart like this?" Francis dramatically leans back in his chair, his hand over his heart. I give him an annoyed look.
"Don't be so dramatic, frog," I give him a 'playful' push, so he'll tip over a bit in his chair. Francis panics and flails with his arms as he feels himself keel over for a second. But he's able to quickly right himself again. And then he gives me a nasty look.
"How funny," he says coldly. I can't help but snicker at that.
"Yes, I found that quite humorous actually," I say dryly before turning back to my chemistry homework.
"I hate you," Francis pouts and turns his back to me. I chuckle again.
"No, you don't," I quip back. Francis sighs and turns to look at me over his shoulder, a smirk visible on his face.
"Unfortunately," he throws back. We both snicker at that.
I wake up in the middle of the night, sweating profusely and panting heavily. I haven't the slightest idea what I was dreaming about, but I know it was a nightmare. I sigh and look up at the ceiling. What a way to wake up. I slowly turn my head to the side to see Francis still sleeping soundly, only his silhouette visible to me. I can hear he's snoring slightly. That frog, he always denies it when I tell him he snores. I should record it and play it to him tomorrow morning. Prove him wrong. But in the end, I decide not to do it.
I look back up at the ceiling. I wonder what my nightmare was about. Zombies? A murderer chasing me? A fire? Homework? I shrug to myself. I probably won't ever know.
Anyways, I need some air, I'm sticky from all that sweating and could use some night air to clear my head. The yard beside the dormitories is always a good place to do that.
"Alright," I mutter to myself as I quickly slide into my shoes, without socks, and grab a random jumper. It's only the beginning of October, the second to be exact, so the nights aren't warm just yet. Spring has only just begun here in the Southern hemisphere. This means that going outside without a jumper or jacket is risking freezing to death.
I try to be as silent as possible as I shuffle to the door of our room. I quickly glance at the clock on my phone as I grab it on my way out. A quarter past two. The perfect hour to perhaps do some stargazing while I'm at it. I slide my phone into the pocket of my jumper and slowly push down the handle of my door. Once outside of my room, I look around to see if anyone else is awake. I can't spot any open doors or shadows walking through the dark hall.
My footsteps thump softly over the carpet on the floor of the hall as I make my way to the lift, too lazy to take the stairs at this time of the night.
"Arthur?" a soft voice suddenly calls out for me; I turn my head around to see Feliciano also walking out of his room. I smile as I recognize the cheery Italian in the moonlighted hallway. His curl, on the right side of his brown hair that always sticks out, recognizable even in the night
"Hiya, Feliciano," I wave to him as I wait for him to catch up with me. The younger of the Vargas twins does a weird sort of run to try to be as silent as possible while running towards me. I try my very best not to snicker at it.
"Where are you going at this hour?" Feliciano questions softly once he has caught up with me. I gesture for him to follow me into the lift while we talk.
"Outside for a moment," I reply, pushing on the button to call the lift.
"What a coincidence, me too!" Feliciano chipperly exclaims in a whisper shouting voice. So, in other words, not as silent as I would like us to be. The lift arrives and we step in. The ride downwards is silent. Luckily, I'm not a conversationalist like Feliciano is. Otherwise, we wouldn't be as silent as we are. And we would wake people up.
We step out of the lift and out of the entrance. Once we step outside the dorms and the cool night air surrounds us, I take a very deep breath of it. I let it fill my lungs and make the cold run all the way through my lungs before sighing happily and releasing the cold air again.
"There are a lot of stars tonight," Feliciano points out as he looks at the sky. "Let's go a bit more towards the dark, you can see the stars better from there," the brunette exclaims while grabbing me by the arm and dragging me forward towards the small park in front of the dorms. It's an excellent spot to hang around or study in when the weather allows it. I reluctantly follow the enthusiastic boy into the dark.
"Feliciano, careful, the ground isn't even here," I warn him as he drags me onto the grass field in the middle of the park. He seems to completely ignore me. I roll my eyes but keep following. He drags us all the way to the centre of the park which is marked by a giant cherry tree. It's already a very old tree and blooms very beautifully at the end of the winter here on the island. This tree is the most known because of its blossoms. Kiku, my friend from Japan especially loves it, it reminds him of home, he says. Its blossoming always happens when the school term starts in September.
"Look, you can see Lupus from here," Feliciano suddenly breaks me away from my thoughts and I look at whatever he's pointing at. I notice he's indeed pointing at Lupus.
"Since when do you know so much about the constellations?" I ask the Italian as he gazes up into the night sky with a small smile.
"I'm learning it to impress someone," he confesses far too easily. "Do you think it would work?" he then looks at me with a hopeful look and I panic a bit. I'm frankly the last person you should ask for dating advice. I have no experience.
"I suppose?" I shrug. "I would at least be pleasantly surprised," I reply honestly. Feliciano is pleased with my answer and smiles brightly. I look back at the dormitory as I see movement. But when I inspect the entrance, I can't see anything anymore. Weird, must have been my eyes playing tricks on me.
My first victim. They're perfect, the silhouette thinks to themselves as they sneak into room 113. The first room on their hit list, the room where it happened.
"Arthur, is that you?" the boy in the bed questions softly and sleepily. The silhouette doesn't answer. Instead, they casually walk up to the victim. Underneath their far too long sleeves, they hide a knife. Sharpened and ready to strike.
"No, not Arthur," the silhouette replies. This is my chance! The silhouette thinks as they suddenly jump onto the unsuspecting boy. They slam their gloved hand in front of the boy's mouth, muffling their desperate cries for help. The silhouette has trained for this. Endless times on dummies and even on real victims. They know what to do. The knife slides out of the sleeve, into the silhouette's hand. A flash of silver. A desperate last struggle. Blood. Another flash of silver. Another stab.
"Sleep well, monster," the silhouette whispers into the dying boy's ear. They wisely avoid the blood streaming out of the boy, even though a lot has still splattered onto them. They look to the other bed. Oh, the roommate isn't here, they think. Oh, well, he'll follow eventually, they shrug. And then they disappear into the night again. Their first job has been done. A step closer to their goal.
"I hope they'll be impressed, I've been studying constellations for a whole month now," Feliciano starts talking. I feel secretly glad, it means I have to talk less. "It was very hard for me, you know. I kept confusing a lot of stars with each other and seeing constellations where I shouldn't," he sighs. "But after my fratello helped me a bit, I finally started to figure it out!" he giggles at that. I imagine Feliciano and his twin brother sitting outside with Lovino pointing at stars aggressively yelling, 'no that's not the big dipper, you donkey!' at Feliciano. They're a comical pair, those two. I still don't understand how they can share a room without breaking things.
"But I know that once I finally have the opportunity to sit outside with them, I'll be able to point at all the pretty stars and call them names and connect them into constellations. And then they will be very impressed!" he's very loud as he says that. And that just makes me glad we're far enough from the dorms to not wake anyone. Lovino and Feliciano Vargas are Italian twins from the same year as me in this academy. Lovino has a rather short fuse while Feliciano never gets angry. It's funny to see the two interact. Complete polar opposites, but still alike in many ways.
"And I am also trying to learn to drive to impress them, did you know that, Arthur?" Feliciano is still not done. But I happily listen to him talk. It's better than freezing on my own in the silence of the night. "But that's also not very easy. Last week, I was driving with my grandpa when we were allowed to go home for the weekend. But I drove through three red lights and almost bumped into two cars," he tells me. I grimace, why doesn't this surprise me?
"But it's also fun to drive a car, you know? You can drive fast and wave at the pretty ladies. But Erzsébet told me today that it is rude to wave and honk at pretty ladies. So now I'll do my best to not do that anymore," he sounds determined. I chuckle at that. A cold shiver suddenly runs up my spine and I realize I'm starting to freeze a bit. I pull my phone out of my pocket and look at the time again. 2:36. We've been outside for about a quarter of an hour. Time to get back inside.
"Feliciano, I hate to break up your story," I interrupt him as wants to start talking again, "but I think it's time we go back inside. We've been outside for a while now. And I'm starting to feel cold," I say to him. Feliciano nods and rubs his upper arms.
"Si, you're right," he then admits. "Now that you mention it, I feel the cold," he adds. I wonder if he wasn't cold because he was so busy talking. We walk back to the dorms in silence. I open the doors for us and push the button to call the lift again, but of course it's still on the ground floor from earlier. Once we arrive on our floor, we turn left towards our dorms. Feliciano's and Lovino's room is only two doors down from mine, at the very end of the hall.
"Well, good night, Arthur. I enjoyed our talk," Feliciano whispers as we approach my room.
"Yes, I also enjoyed it," I politely reply. But as I turn to open my room, I notice it's already open. Did I leave it open? Is Francis awake? But why would he open the door? We have a toilet inside our room. Unless he suddenly decided to take a midnight shower, he wouldn't need to leave the room. Or to have a midnight stroll like we just did. I push our door open far enough for me to enter and cautiously look around. The room is dark, I can barely make out any silhouettes because the curtains are closed.
"Francis?" I whisper in case he's asleep. He doesn't reply. I fumble for my phone to shine softly on his frame with the light of my screen. I lift my phone and point the dim screen at the French blonde. But with the soft light, I can barely make out his silhouette. I frown though, he's lying in a weird position. His blankets are thrown everywhere, his pillow is on the floor beside his bed. And why is there water on the floor? I decide to just turn on my flashlight. I turn my screen back towards me and select the flashlight. It's bright and I have to blink for the dots to disappear from my vision. Once they do-
"FRANCIS!" I exclaim loudly. There's blood. Too much blood. And it's flowing everywhere on the floor of our room. It's flowing out of his throat. His eyes are staring blankly in my direction. His hands limply resting near his throat, probably from trying to stop the bleeding. A scene from my past flashes before my eyes. Two men lying motionless in an alley, blood streaming everywhere. A silhouette fleeing in the distance.
"Arthur?" I can hear Feliciano already running back to my room. And I come back to the present. Feliciano was alarmed by my scream.
"Francis, no. You bloody frog. This can't be," I feel the panic rise to my throat as well as bile. I stare at the Frenchman's lifeless body. I take a lifeless step forward, reaching out. But I'm afraid and I stand there in the middle of the room, just staring.
"Arthur, what's wrong?" Feliciano stumbles into my room. Once his eyes land on Francis… he screams. Loudly.