A/N: For some reason, this chapter seems shorter than the rest. The action is raised up a teensy bit more, but it gets really intense next chapter. Sorry for the last minute upload guys! Enjoy~
... is a smile. "Purely for emergency reasons", I say rather quickly, and she let's out a chuckle as she scrapes a lone match on the side of the box, lighting the candle. We both steps towards a pinned up newspaper article, using the candle to light the blots of old ink. I read out loud to myself, but just loud enough for us both to hear:
Heavenly Post, October 1971
Ara Kanshina - Serial Kidnapping Leads to Murder
The search for the four new victims of the recent serial kidnappings has come to an end. Last Saturday, as the police department was on it's final day of investigation, the four most recently kidnapped elementary students were found bound in none other than the school's basement. Yuki Kanno, Ryou Yoshizawa, Tokiko Tsuji, and Sachiko Shinozaki were found with bound hands and feet, three of them liberally covered in blood and dead. The murder weapon, a pair of sewing scissors, were found in the hand of none ot-
The page beyond this point is indecipherable (as it was ripped), so I take a deep breath. Ayumi pauses for a moment, her face blank, as we both listen to what sounds like an echo. I recognize it after a few seconds, it's the ha's making themselves known, but it almost sounds like… a child… Could that be…? I wonder, but Ayumi's sudden movement jerks me out of my thought. She bends down and places the candle on the ground, melting the bottom of it with another match, and places the wet wax onto the ground. Her knees reach up to her chin, and she pats the ground next to her and smiles. I sit obediently and notice the room temperature had changed dramatically. It almost seemed romantic, really, with Ayumi curled up next to me in a candlelit room, and honestly, I enjoyed it quite a bit. "Gives off a bit of heat, huh.", I say, and she nods. "I was thinking... everyone knows my candles in the school, right?", she says, and I chuckle a bit. "You're called the occult-rep for a reason", I continue, and she nods, her face flustered. "If we place these around, they'll know we're here. Just… in case we don't run into them", she continues rather quickly, pulling a few more of the wax candles from her skirt pocket. I give her a confused look, but she simply shrugs it off. I use my palms to bring my back to my feet and once again help her up, and wrap my hand around the doorknob. I give it a good turn, but it doesn't seem to budge. In fact, upon closer inspection, it seemed a bit like the windows; nothing but a prop on the wall. I turn on my heel and head for the other door (keeping quiet to hear the pit-pat of her footsteps as to not look back at the corpse), and find it easily opened. Outside the door, Ayumi decides to once again leave a candle by the doorway, and with that, we decide to head downwards rather than upwards this time.
As we walk back down towards the way of 1-A, my mind began to run so quickly that, in fact, I couldn't think at all. It was odd having the class representative to be quiet; she was a rather outgoing girl who spoke her mind. She never truly got scared either, but now her face was white with terror and her mouth was sealed shut. I creak open the door for 1-A and find that there was no trace of anyone being there, though the desk looked oddly more… scribbly. I nod at Shinozaki, and we both continue towards the desk. A bit beneath my own note is another scribbling of a message, almost in such a way that it seemed like Satoshi's…
Glad to know you two are here. We'll be sure to keep an eye out for Mrs. Yui.
Satoshi & Yuka
I see the light partially return to her face as she reads the note, but in my mind, though I was happy, I couldn't help but wonder how they were here. If they had been able to write the note, they would've had to come to this classroom. How had we not seen or heard them? I sigh and run a hand through my hair, while Ayumi tries and push me towards the door. "Hey, hey… could you settle down? What's with the pushiness?", I ask, and she just smiles at me. "We've got to find Mochida-kun!", she says simply, and I step away from her grasp. She loses her footing momentarily, but we manage to leave the room in better spirits than we originally had.
The walks down the hallway almost seem pointless by now. It wasn't that the creepiness factor of it had changed, trust me, more little red stains could be seen everywhere since we saw that corpse, but after walking for what felt like an hour, my eyes had adjusted. More scraps of paper were posted up to the walls, which were seemingly put up by victims, not from before… whatever happened. One particular one pokes at my mind as we come towards something (Thank the heavens), also known as a staircase. The paper seemed as though it was cut square by a kindergartner, with slanted lines as sides and little slices cut through towards the middle. "For my mommy", it said, messily written in purple crayon. Three children were drawn on the paper. The first was a girl, around a 5th grader's age, with light brown hair pulled back into pigtails with bangs, wearing a yellow flower sweater and an orange skirt. There was no expression, as there was no face drawn, except for a pair of blue eyes. Next to her was a younger boy, seemingly no older than a 3rd grader ,with a rather messy shade of brown for a color of his hair, wearing a blue sweater as well as...
