The rest of the week passed by with no incident. School started up again, but no one could concentrate properly. Haku and Luo spent most days hanging out together, fearful and cautious.
Qingxian, Sugar and Piko got more frustrated with their investigations appearing to be steadily approaching a dead end.
The families continued to grieve.
The news reporters kept sticking their noses where they really didn't belong, especially one in particular.
Then, on the first Friday since school started back up again, all four parties would be brought together. Reporters, families, investigators, and killers.
Even if no one knew who the killers were, exactly.
Friday morning, Haku woke up from a fitful sleep and was greeted by dreary grey clouds that darkened the outside world.
The atmosphere was somber as she dressed in her most respectful black dress, then slowly descended the stairs into the kitchen and mechanically ate a bowl of cornflakes. Her father kissed her forehead before leaving for work.
She walked to school as the temperature dropped, shivering as a gust of wind rushed past her. The wind scattered several leaves. They crackled and scraped against the cracked pavement.
Luo met her outside the school gates as the first few drops of rain started to fall. They rushed into a nearby classroom alongside other classmates, also clothed in black dresses and suits.
It was a perfect day for a funeral.
There would be only one class that morning: maths. Everyone filed into the classroom and sat down at their desks. They all moved slowly and silently, as if making even the slightest of sounds would be of great disrespect to the dead. If it weren't for the raindrops spattering against the windows, the room would be as silent as the graves.
The teacher stated that if anyone needed to leave, she wouldn't stop them. She told her class of sad-faced students that it was okay to grieve, it was okay to take a moment to yourself. Everyone needs to be supportive of each other.
Haku couldn't focus. The symbols in her textbook blurred into squiggly, undefined shapes. The pattering of the rain melted together into a noisome sound that drummed in her head, making it throb.
She felt like she was going to throw up. She was going to attend the funeral of four of the five people that had died because of her. It seemed sacrilegious. It seemed… wrong.
Their voices screamed at her inside her skull, cursing her, damning her to hell, burning for revenge. Their faces swam in front of her eyes every time she blinked.
A few tears rolled down her cheeks.
She just wanted forgiveness.
After the bell rang to signify the end of class, the entire student body piled onto the buses that would take them to the graveyard.
Haku sat up against a wall, shivering as her shoulders made contact with the cold, damp windows. Luo sat next to her, gently taking her hand in her own and squeezing it.
As the bus trundled along the streets, the students remained quiet. Except, however, for Miku and Luka, who were sat at the back of the bus having a moderately loud conversation about who had the ugliest hair in the whole school. It was to nobody's surprise that Haku was, apparently, the worst offender.
Their comments were still as mean as ever.
Haku bit down on her lip to stop herself from crying out loud. She couldn't stop her tears, however, as silent as they were.
They reached the graveyard a short while later. From the other side of the fogged-up windows, the tombstones were barely visible. There were a few dark, undefined shapes, and nothing else but white.
The students exited the bus in pairs and were given an umbrella. As Haku and Luo collected theirs, Haku could see that it wasn't just the windows obscuring her vision; the graveyard was draped in a blanket of fog.
The grass around them was trampled down and the ground was muddy. Their footsteps made unappealing squelching noises. The air was bitingly cold and the atmosphere was dreary. Haku just wanted to go home, but knew that she could never forgive herself if she did.
The student body huddled around four graves: one for Rin, one for Len, one for Fukase and one for Emma. All their bodies had been released to their families, who decided to all hold a funeral together. Kill four birds with one stone.
The family members were in various stages of grief. Rin and Len's parents were the worst off, having lost both their children in the span of minutes. Emma's mother was crying softly and Fukase's parents were stony-faced, holding back tears.
Gumi's mother was there too, having come to support the family of her daughter's friends despite being grief-stricken herself.
Haku bit her lip again, hard enough to draw blood.
In the crowd, respectfully clothed in a beautiful black dress and clutching a notepad against her chest to protect it from the falling rain, was a reporter that few people liked. The average reporter already tends to be nosy, but this one in particular was capable of going far beyond that. Why abide by the rules of "personal space" when there was a story to be told?
Her name was Xingchen Zhiyu, or Stardust, as she was more commonly known. She was someone who constantly aspired to write popular front-page news articles, despite the fact that her only notable achievement was writing a vicious gossip column for her high school's newspaper.
Still though, she could do it. And this tragedy would be perfect for getting her name out there!
Stardust shifted about uncomfortably as the funeral started. A normal person would think it was because she was wearing heels in a muddy field. It was actually because her heels were muddied and the rain was soaking her brand-new dress! Honestly! Couldn't the weather just, like, stop for a moment? Was that really too much to ask?
It was distracting her from taking notes!
Ah, well.
She'll have plenty of time for note-taking after the funeral is over.
Standing a little ways back from the rest of the crowd were Piko, Qingxian and Sugar. They huddled under their own small black umbrellas which did little to stop the rain from falling on them. They watched the proceedings with mixed feelings of sorrow and frustration.
Qingxian in particular was feeling agitated by the lack of progress. Right now, at this very moment, she wanted nothing more than to just solve this goddamn case already. The families all desperately needed answers and closure.
She watched the tears pour and the cries fill the air. She knew how they felt.
She had lost a loved one once, after all.
The rain cascaded down her face and she wiped the droplets away the same way she would wipe away tears.