Nothing is owned by me
Chapter 1
In the old capital of Atlas, Mantle, a young man with albino hair sighed as he listened to recent visitors' complaints about his establishment.
"You call this place a haunted house. There is nothing haunted here."
"Even our dorms are scarier than this un-scary Haunted House."
"The props are too fake; I didn't feel scared at all. If anything, it all felt like a joke to me."
"Is this place really owned by Schnee? Do they even know some swindler is using their name to run a haunted house, for god's sake"
A team of students from Atlas Academy grumbled in front of Mantle's Schnee House of Horrors before they left on their bikes. Whitley Schnee, who held a stack of advertisement flyers for the Haunted House, shook his head despondently when he saw this.
Yes, this place is really owned and managed directly by a Schnee. Maybe to any other person in Remnant, an idea to run, or even visit a haunted house would be like the greatest joke they will ever hear, but to him, it was his entire life.
"Boss!"
A clear female voice erupted from behind him. Whitley turned around and saw a slender 'grimm' in a nurse outfit running out of the Haunted House in a fit of anger.
"What's wrong, Fiona?" The grimm's name was Fiona; she was one of the temporary actors he hired recently for the Haunted House.
"Those few ruffians earlier, they tried to take advantage of me!" the girl hissed through gritted teeth, her fists gripped tight.
So, it is merely to complain…
"That's horrible; they wouldn't even leave a grimm in peace." As the boss, naturally, Whitley was on Fiona's side. "Later, I'll pull and send the surveillance footage to academy officials. They will surely take some action."
"There's no need for that. When I realized their intentions, my punch went flying straight at the boy's face." Fiona pointed at the bloodstain at the edge of her fist, and exclaimed, "See, this isn't fake blood."
"Good, good, a girl should learn how to protect herself." Whitley wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. Then, as he looked at the setting sun, he said, "I suppose it's time to call it a day. We probably won't have any more visitors, so help me go and tell everyone that we can get off work early today."
However, he realized the girl in grimm makeup didn't make an attempt to move away.
"Is there anything else?"
"Boss…" Fiona hesitated before pulling two letters out from her pocket slowly. "These are the resignation letters from Zen and Azure. You've been a great boss to them, so they didn't have the face to give these to you in person and had me pass them to you."
"They're quitting?" Whitley asked the obvious question as he accepted the letters, then he added, "Everyone has their own dream to chase, so be it. Fiona, you can leave now if there's nothing else."
"Okay, I'll go remove the makeup first."
After the cute little grimm left, Whitley sat on a nearby bench, looking at the letters in his hands as he started contemplating his current situation.
The Schnee haunted house was an inheritance left to him from his uncle after he disappeared 1 year ago.
He was the most famous member of the Schnee family, liked by both faunus and humans. He has also been elected to the atlas council five times in a row.
He fondly remembered his uncle and his time with him. When he was small, his uncle used to take him to the haunted house every day. He told him the history of the haunted house and how it was present in their family for generations. As per him, the house is the true inheritance and ancestral home of the Schnee family, not some fancy dust company. So, it's a Schnee duty that this house is always ready to scare visitors and help wandering ghosts and spirits. They worked together in designing the props, doing maintenance, and planning the scary scenarios; he was the one who taught him all about the haunted house.
They were very close, closer than any other member of his family. Without realizing his eyes started to become wet.
Thinking about his family, he clenched his fist in anger. He knows it was that man's fault. Everything was always his fault, even this. Saying that his father and uncle never went along well, would be the greatest understatement of the year. They fucking hated each other to the core, and him being in leagues with his uncle, his father hated him too. He never realized that hate, but it became pretty clear when his father disowned him, and kicked him out of the house a week after his uncle's disappearance.
He was sure his mother had not even realized that he had not come home since last year. That old goat was drowning herself in alcohol before uncle disappeared, and after his disappearance, the only thing that would have changed in her life would be adding 10 Gallons of alcohol more each day. His sisters would also be unaware, Winter had already abandoned them a long time ago by becoming a puppet of ironwood, and Weiss is probably still busy preparing herself to become the perfect heir and huntress like always. She does not have time for him. The last thing he remembered that she was planning to go to Beacon Academy instead of Atlas.
Even without his father and family support, it's not like that his life would be in misery, he is a Schnee, and at the age of 15, he has saved enough pocket money to easily afford a home in the upper district of atlas and live a life of luxury. But that would mean abandoning the haunted house and also abandoning the last memory of his uncle, he is not ready to do that. So, he decided the best option would be to move to mantle and live in the haunted house, try to run it like his uncle and make living from it.
The truth he realizes just after one month of operations, is that the haunted house business was always a sham, his biggest competitors the creatures of grimm, had already taken market monopoly on negative emotions, fear included. The fear market is a tough crack and it's pretty hard to convince normal people to pay for the same services, which grimm kind are already providing for free 24X7, with some conditions applied like dying or getting permanently injured.
The only sales he was getting were from some suicidal fools who thinks this is the best place for suicide, for reasons, or some academy students who wanted to challenge the haunted house for fun or make fun of it.
He has understood that most of the haunted house expenses were covered by his uncle's pocket, not by actual ticket sales. Whitley assumed that even when running everything from his own pocket, he should be able to last for four to five years, giving him time to look for other venues, but again, he was wrong as the "great council of atlas" for the safety of "general populace" issue him some hefty fine for running a "factory of fears." The seat in the atlas council must have worked very well for uncle to avoid these fines too.
Starting from a few weeks ago, His account has been in the red. He does not have enough lien to pay for water and electricity expenses, and he is barely covering even his own food, needs, and employee salary. The only way he keeps the haunted house running is by taking "loans" of dust crystals from the Local Schnee Dust Company Dust Shop by using his status. He knows exactly why his employees left; they don't want to be a burden on him. If those White Fang zealots hear this, they will surely have a field day with it.
"I wonder how long I can hold on."
After wiping tears from his eyes, Whitley was prepared to return to the Haunted House; a middle-aged man wearing a uniform with the SDC logo walked toward him. When he saw him, Whitley increased his pace like a mouse spotting a cat.
"You think you can pretend to have not seen me?" The middle-aged man clamped his hands on Whitley Schnee's shoulders. "Today, we definitely need to talk it out. You've owed me the payments for dust crystal for two months already. The top brass is breathing down my neck to pursue it, so pay up!"
"Uncle Chen, it's not that I don't want to pay you, but I really have nothing to pay you with. Can you please give me another month?"
"That's what you told me last month!"
"I promise, this is definitely the last time! a Schnee promise." Whitley Schnee patted his chest as he promised with pride and sincerity.
"Are you really? Son, I know this haunted house is important to you, but it is not going to work." When the middle-aged man named Chen saw the letters in Whitley's hand, the force on his shoulders gradually lightened. "I have been here my whole life and have always seen this haunted house just as a part scenery. I guess your uncle was also running it just so he could help some disabled faunus and humans, by giving them good pay and getting some votes out of pity, but now he is not there, and so is the faunus he was helping, so why are you doing this to yourself? You're so young, and your family practically owns the dust. You can still begin anew with yourself. I can surely believe with you as their leader SDC can take a direction for good"
"That's not the path for me, Uncle Chen, I know you're just looking out for me, but this Haunted House carries a different meaning for me. I guess I'm still unwilling to let the last memory of my uncle go" Whitley Schnee uttered in a lowered voice as if he was afraid that other people might hear him.
The middle-aged man knew about Whitley's situation. He didn't answer immediately. After a few seconds, he sighed and said, "Fine, I can understand how you feel. I'll try my best to talk to management for you and see if they can give you a few more weeks."
"Thank you, Uncle Chen!"
"Don't thank me so soon; you'd better make sure you can increase the ticket sales, or the ending will just be the same."
After sending the dust shop manager off, Whitley Schnee returned to the Haunted House and started his daily routine of checking the equipment, maintaining the items, and cleaning.
"The fake blood in the maintenance room is almost empty; I have to buy a new batch.
"If this corridor could be made slightly more slanted to the side, it'll create a better blind spot to scare the visitors.
"Oh no, this puppet is broken already; I'll have to repair it later.
"F*ck! What happened to the lightbulb I installed here last week? Who has stolen it‽."
In the eyes of an outsider, he was the owner of a Haunted House, a young entrepreneur in a way, but only Whitley Schnee himself could understand the difficulty behind maintaining a Haunted House. Haunted Houses were a kind of entertainment. Caught within a scary environment, one's physical and mental situation would be maintained at a heightened state, but when the stress was released, it would lead to a sense of relief and satisfaction; it was not unlike a massage in a way.
At the same time, Haunted Houses were one-trick ponies. The most effective business method for a Haunted House was to have it be mobile so that it would constantly attract fresh batches of visitors. A Haunted House that was stuck at a certain location like Schnee's had to have immense popularity to lure in the crowds, or else they wouldn't be able to survive for long without any external funding. The fact that he had managed to hold on for so long was already, in a way, a miracle.
Dragging the puppet that was ruined, Whitley entered the maintenance room. He had studied design in his school, and the machinery and traps used in the Haunted House had been all personally designed and built by him. The maintenance process, which included sewing and repainting, was dry and repetitive.
"Still missing some fake blood. If I remember correctly, there's still some stock in the attic." The Haunted House was separated into three floors; the first and second floors were for living, while the third was a storeroom. Haunted scenarios were present in underground floors. Currently his haunted house has two scenarios which were present in first and second underground floors.
After pushing open the wooden door, behind the haze of wood chips and dust, there were various kinds of materials and unwanted ingredients left behind by Whitley's uncle from when he had managed the Haunted House.
Unwilling to face the past, Whitley Schnee rarely came up to this place.
Looking at the various equipment, Whitley Schnee was reminded of his childhood. Uncle would leave Whitley alone backstage to accompany the various ghosts, so Whitley's unnatural guts had been trained since he was young.
After all, when his friends of the same age were playing with blocks and puzzles or watching huntsmen and grimm on tv, he was running around with a fake human head.
"These are all precious memories."
Whitley wandered aimlessly before finding himself back at the wooden box that kept the few things that remained of his uncle. Inside sat a black scroll and a rough-looking doll. The doll was the first toy Whitley made when he was a child, but he had zero recollection of the scroll. Both of these items had been found in an abandoned hospital in the countryside, and regarding why a councilman would go there in the middle of the night, even the police and hunters couldn't give him an answer.
"Where are you?" Whitley picked up the doll and pinched its chubby face. Then, with a sigh, he told himself, "I'd better go find that fake blood. If I cannot survive these few seasons, I really will have to bid this Haunted House farewell."
Whitley Schnee was talking to himself, but when he said so, the black scroll, which had been silent in the box, suddenly lit up with a dim, cold light.
"What's going on? Dark technology or supernatural phenomenon?" If this had happened to someone else, that person probably would have raced out screaming bloody murder already, but in comparison, Whitley's reaction was much calmer. He picked up the scroll and inspected it closer.
"This is weird. I've tried opening this scroll more than a hundred times before, but it wouldn't work, so why did it open by itself today? This scroll was found where uncle disappeared, so could it be that he knows he is in trouble and is contacting me to help?"
Whitley swiped the scroll open, and on the front page with a black background, there was only one available app. It had the shape of a Haunted House as an icon.
"Wait… This looks so familiar, just like the front entrance of my own Haunted House!"
With a frown, Whitley clicked the app open, and a row of letters written in what appeared to be blood appeared on the screen—Do you believe there are ghosts in this world?
Objectively speaking, this was a metaphysical, philosophical question; but there are already too many metaphysical questions in Remnant. What are Grimms? Why is the moon broken? What is the origin of aura? It was practically unanswerable.
"There should be," Whitley Schnee mumbled to himself, and a few seconds later, a new sentence appeared on the screen.
"What you believe is the answer. From this moment on, you will officially take over as the new owner of the Haunted House. Of course, this is not something worth celebrating. Before the end of the tutorials, please heed my last advice: suicide is the most cowardice of behaviour, and try your best to survive!"
"What and what? But this pompous way of speech does resemble that uncle of mine."
Whitley clicked on the app again, and a new window appeared.
Mantle's Schnee Haunted House
Status: Almost Closing
Good Reputation: Negative one
Daily Visitor Number: Four
Monthly Visitor Number: Ten
My Team of Ghosts, Ghouls, and Grimms: None
My Item Storage: None
Unlocked Achievement: None
Current Available Scenarios [Set Pieces]:
– Night of the Living Grimm – Horrible props, untrained actors, and the plot has no readable storyline or logic. Scream Factor: 0 Star
– Minghun [Nether World Marriage] – Couple torn apart in the living world, bound together forever in the nether world, sharing the same grave, pursuing happiness in death. Scream Factor: 0.5 Stars
Unlockable Scenarios:
– Murder by Midnight – A dangerous psychotic huntsman wandered about a fallen apartment. Scissors and mallets as hands, he is just wandering outside of your room. Scream Factor: 1 Star
– The Third Sick Hall – There are unexplainable noises coming out from this abandoned hospital building every night. As a newspaper reporter, you're tasked with getting to the bottom of this dark mystery. Scream Factor: 3 Stars
– The Haunted Hearse – Leaving with the hearse carrying the coffin, if you cannot escape within an hour, you'll stay forever inside the hearse. Scream Factor: 2 Stars
Daily Mission: Complete Daily Missions provided by the Haunted House to unlock more scary scenarios. The rewards correspond to the difficulty of the mission.
Haunted House Expansion Conditions: Monthly Visitor Numbers over 100. Good Reputation over 60 percent. (After 3 expansions, the Haunted House will upgrade to The Shivering Maze.)
Haunted Wheel of Misfortune (Expend Fright Points generated by visitors of the Haunted House to spin the Wheel): The Decree of Life and Death is never the decision of man; fortune and misfortune are only an inch apart. We have both Spirit Fruits to increase your life span as well as hatred-filled Baleful specters and man-Eating Grimms!
Other functions: Yet to be unlocked