The elaborate room had been completely ruined.
Top of the line silk wallpaper had been torn from the walls as if it was worth nothing.The small shiba inu figures that were gifts from family lay smashed in the corner and the gorgeous furniture had been destroyed in an obscene fit of rage. In the centre of the choas was a trembling, furious Megami.
She had concocted everything perfectly, she had planned every damn inch of her plan from the right people involved to the actions needed to prevail. It had been prefect in theorybut victory, for the first time, had evaded her grasp. The burn of hatred flowed through her like nothing had done so before. She was the best at everything so why had this not worked?! What had gone so wrong?
Tightening her fists to the point that her knuckles turned white, she had honestly thought herself the heroine of the story. This was her story after all, right? There was no other way to explain it. Yet everything seemed to go wrong for the young woman as she sat on the ground and flickered over everything that had happened in the past nine weeks in her mind.
Osana Najimi was an annoying, squealing brat who needed to be shut up. She had been the first to fall for Taro. Yet another man had entered her life and the rest was history. Amai Okayaka was not a young lady who Megami thought would go far with her lack of ambition, she often wondered why she hadn't just applied into a cooking school; yet again, another man waltzed his way into her heart but what Megami had not expected was for Ayano Aishi to directly introduce them both.
Kizana Sunobu was a real mystery. Megami knew of her identity crisis thanks to Shion but had no idea as to why until it made the rounds in the upper class. The Chikanari family had tragically lost their heir in 1989 and no children had been born in the family since so they were searching for a possible heir in their branch families but only girls had been born; Kizana, being a second cousin to the deceased heir, was finally selected.
She would have to give up her dreams of becoming a movie star to be the head of the noble Chikanari family one day, Megami had personally 'congratulated' Kizana upon hearing the news. "I guess, you won't have the time to star in all those movies you talked about…" she had uttered smugly to a tearful Kizana. While she held nothing against the girl, reminding her of the shattered dream she longed for tasted like the sweetest wine.
Then, Kizana had appeared one day looking rather similar to the deceased heir saying that she had fully accepted her role but wished to enjoy what short freedom she had. The cause of the change in mentally? None other than Ayano Aishi. She had veered off path yet again and had become unpredictable. It was at this point that she had told Shion to encourage the bloodlust within the Aishi line but to no success.
Cue cute, quiet Oka Ruto. Megami had personally hoped that Aishi would slice her pretty throat open just so she had an excuse to close that damned occult club. A waste of time in her opinion, and her opinion was fact. This time, Ayano ended up making friends with Oka after apparently saving her life in the gym. Word was that she had tripped on the wires and had cracked her head open, Aishi's quick thinking prevented Oka from bleeding out
Of course, saving someone's life is a good way to make yourself look good in the eye of others so Aishi's reputation had shot up rapidly after that.
Asu Rito had been a ridiculous affair. How Ayano had gotten away with that, she had no idea.
Everyone, even her council, were convinced that she was the innocent party but Megami knew better. There was a reason she was student council president with the best grades in the whole school. Better genetics simply made her smarter, faster, better looking even.
Either Ayano was the greatest manipulator in history or she was actually harmless...
Asu had been sentenced to ten years in prison for attempted murder though she tried to plea insanity. That was certainly odd, surely she would have declared that Aishi attacked her but, why didn't she? They would never find out now, Asu had killed herself in her prison cell with her bedsheets.
Muja Kina was also an odd case. When Ayano didn't appear to view her as a threat, she had leaked the information about Muja's medicine to Hoshiko. Hoping she would cause a stir and get Ayano to bully her out. Aishi didn't appear to be involved at all somehow as Muja ended up saving the life of Musume, who had developed a stroke.
She wondered whether Aishi had killed Hoshiko as a distraction from the bullying but the lime haired gyaru reportedly had snapped and threw herself from the roof. Muja was now at an elite nursing school, being sponsored by Musume's grateful father. Musume, however, had lost most of the function in her legs and would be attending physiotherapy for the next several years. Not that Megami cared a bit for the newly disabled gyaru girl.
Mida Rana. She had sorely wished that she hadn't killed Shion when she did now. As bad as it was, she was hoping that Mida would have her way with Taro Yamada so he would be more pliable when the time came. Mida was found dead and badly decomposed in her own classroom, cause of death had been declared as a heart attack. A heart attack of all things!
Osoro Shideu. She had debated long about if she should let her even return to Akademi. Megami figured that she could use the desperate lamb. She had paid someone off to damage the window so the bird would fly off and possibly die, which would make her more volatile than normal. Yet again, Aishi was the saviour of the day and had managed to catch the bird's attention meaning that Osoro was in her debt.
The sob story attached to Osoro had bored her to now end. She really could have made something of herself either way, a deceased parent was no excuse to be a pest to your betters.
Hanako Yamada. Oh, she had thought she struck gold with the little girl. The gold had been a fool's dream as Hanako had made herself apparent enough that people sided with Ayano over her. The peanuts in the bento should have antagonised Aishi enough to push her bloodlust button.
If only the information that she had been acting on was actually accurate, as it had turned out the allergy belonged to the mother Aishi rather than the daughter. Useful information for sure but not at that present moment. Hanako had became desperate and fucked up last minute. The girl was now being shipped of to an all girl's school in America as she commanded the maid to clean up.
The real plan had been to use Jin Otome as white knight of the tale, the knight who had been slandered by his country yet still sought to do right by the law. The plan came to a grinding halt when he had been found with his stomach carved open to the point that when trying to move the body, it had split in two. Shion would have been so useful if her father had survived but with Jin dead, the red haired girl knew too much and had to be dispatched.
The darkened halls of the marble manor seemed to stretch on forever as she grabbed a golden candelabra. She prowled the moonless halls with only the glowing lights at her disposal before coming to a pair of large black doors. A pair of servants opened them and she stepped into her grand bedroom. The large room was perfect for someone so exquisitely creative as her, her grandfather had poured everything into the room.
It was his way of showing his love for her, the perfect granddaughter and heir to his technology empire.
Everything in the room was crafted to the extreme, if it did not impress Megami then it was simply removed and given to her brother. Her brother, she did not care for him that much but it was not out of malice she swore.
They had simply been taught not to care about much at all if it didn't relate to their success, Kencho had developed some unfavourable traits which had led to her being confirmed as the heir to Saikou corporations rather than Kencho. Yet again, she prevailed.
Then, her attention finally drifted back onto the one problem in her prefectly prefect life: Ayano Aishi.
That one girl had gone from a little shadow that could easily be wiped away at any moment to presenting a genuine threat. She needed to deal with Aishi, and quickly. She might no longer have evidence to convict the mother Aishi or have anything incriminating towards the daughter but she could still hurt her.
Taro was the perfect specimen of a young man: Rich, soft spoken, mindful, healthy and so on. Why did Aishi have to try to get her claws into him of all people? She couldn't understand it.
She huffed as she opened a draw in her dresser, she took out a picture of Ayano. It was her school photo, her newest one where she appeared to be smiling slightly. She brought the picture to the flame and watched it light up. As the embers fluttered up into the air, she imagined Ayano letting out a piecing scream…
Rumours a ghost in the third floor girls bathroom had circulated around Akademi for years.
Ayano had been looking through the pictures of the students through the years before landing on the classes of 1989. She had recognised some of the faces, the girls who had died so long ago stared straight back at her like a haunting mirage. It was like she could feel their eyes on her all over again. A clipping fell from one of the pages and floated softly to the floor.
She closed the book and picked up up the clipping. A shy looking girl with chestnut brown shoulder length hair and golden eyes smiled back at her. Sumire Saitozaki. Judging by her stance, she was a shy girl. Someone who could easily befriend anyone due to her tender nature.
A stark contrast to the clipping, which stated that the girl was missed but considered dead as blood had been found in that particular bathroom. The date of her disappearance was listed as the 29th of March, 1989. It didn't take her long to figure out that her mother had likely killed the girl but failed to clean up after herself properly. This was also likely her mother's first victim judging by the rookie mistake.
The fact that she had been taught to effectively clean up everything including blood had suddenly made a lot of sense. A chill ran down her down as she recall her mother teaching her how to clean blood well enough for it not to be caught on a black light. 'You really did think of everything. Didn't you, mother?'
The legend of the bathroom states that should she be found loitering in there after school time, the lights will flickered and show her decaying corpse in the light.
Everyone In the academy steered away from that bathroom like the plague. No one really used it unless they had no other choice. Reports of soft crying coming from that bathroom were rampant too. The Occult club were up for checking it out but the implications put her on edge.
"After what happened in the gym, do we really want to do this?" she had questioned but Oka issued her statement "While I agree with you… Ayano, there has been... reports of the lights… no longer working in there and… I think it had something to do with this... spirit"
They had wondered up once most of school had gone home of the day. The atmosphere getting thicker as they climbed each set of stairs, Ayano was sure she could feel her heart pounding in her head as they got closer. A part of her really wanted to chicken out now. Her legs began to feel heavy...
Finally, the mismatched group of six stood outside the girls bathroom.
"Because… this is the girls bathroom… us girls will… enter… you three boys stay… here and watch…" Oka spoke clearly before the four entered the bathroom. It was dark for sure, the lights no longer worked just as Oka had said. The only thing that stuck out was the eerie silence.
After a moment, Oka flicked a torch on.
A terrible dark splatter lined the back splash on the sink. The stench of soiled meat blasted the group as Oka dropped her torch in a panic; the torch spun slowly on the floor, revealing more darkened splatters with drag marks clear in them.
Ayano was sure she glimpsed a stray whole fingernail among the dark marks. Their screams bounced off the walls as they turned torun only to find an extremely bloody girl staring back at them. This girl was a wreck.
Her shoulder length hair was coated in a thick layer of crusty blood. The skin had started to peel away at the corners of her mouth, revealing her teeth and jaw bone. The uniform was bloodied and torn, her intestines poured out from a split in her torso.
The four froze as the spirit snapped her fingers, causing all but Ayano to faint. Ayano stuck her hands out to defend herself as she slowly backed into the cold wall behind her. The dead girl approached slowly, like she was having difficulty moving her legs. One of her hands was clearly broken too.
She tried desperately to out flank the spirit by running around her; she felt an ice cold hand grab her neck and her body ceased to move. She was yanked back and thrown to the floor was most of the bloody splatters were.
She blinked, instead of the spirit her young mother stood before her with a terrible grin. She blinked again before getting up, the spirit responded by throwing her so that she hit the mirror. She shook her head and looked back into the mirror.
She was the girl in the photograph.
She looked at herself into the mirror to check if this was some paranoid dream she was having but a soft cackle from behind snapped her out of her confusion. "Oh! Ryoba. I saw the note in my locker, why did you need to speak with me?" A soft voice spoke from her mouth.
"I need you to stay away from that boy from class 3-2. I like him you see… You would be kind enough to do that. Right? I know you wouldn't want to hurt anybody, its not in your nature after all. Surely you won't start now?" Ayano felt herself be pulled away from the body of the girl. She watched to the side with the spirit next to her….
"What? Are you joking? You aren't entitled to him Ryoba! Also, don't try to gaslight me again. Actually, don't talk to me again." She turned to walk away the young Ryoba pulled out her knife and went to slice her throat. Only the girl's reaction prevented that by holding her hands up to her neck. The blood split into the sink and onto the backsplash.
Ayano tried to turn away but the spirit forced her back around "You will watch what she did!"
The girl tried to flee again but Ryoba grabbed her by the hair and slammed her onto the ground towards the back of the bathroom. She put the knife away and reached into her long bag. Ryoba's already dark eyes losing all traces of humanity. "I really did try to be nice…" She spoke grimly, the reflection on the axe highlighted the horror in the girl's face.
"Now…" She twirled the axe menacingly before raising it up "I'm going to enjoy this" She twirled the axe one more time, bringing the blunt end down onto the girl's right knee. It shattered in an instant. The screaming was unlike anything she had heard prior, like a the sound of a fox being torn apart by a pack of hunting dogs. "PLEASE! I'LL LEAVE HIM ALONE. YOU CAN HAVE HIM!"
Ryoba tutted as she brought the blunt end down on the same knee again, catching the girl's hand with it. "Its a bit late for that now, Sumire~" She spoke in a sing-song voice.
Sumire tried to claw away but Ryoba smashed the blunt end of the axe into her back. She cried out in agony as she scrambled to the exit. Ryoba ploughed the sharp end of the axe into Sumire's back twice before stopping to giggle. Blood smeared the floor, Sumire saw the exit was closer than she had thought and moved as fast as she could.
"Ah! Ah! Ah! You're not going anywhere sweetie" Ryoba grabbed her leg with the now broken knee, Sumire clawed at the ground desperately to get away; tearing off a fingernail in the process. The screams continued with the intense pain emitting from her left leg.
Ryoba raised the axe again, and again and again. Each hit came with a sickening thud as metal met flesh. Then came the cracking of bones, Ayano could see that there was very little life left in the husk that was Sumire. The screams had mellowed downs to whimpers as her back turned into a catastrophe of axe marks. Blood and saliva had started to pour from her mouth where she couldn't scream anymore Her eyes rolled back into her skull as Sumire let out a final rattle.
The girl ceased to move.
A severely bloody, insane Ryoba flipped Sumire's body. Dropping the axe, she took the knife back out and carefully removed Sumire's eyes. She plopped them into a small jar. "Ah, just what I was hoping for." She went to wrap the body in plastic bags but as she picked the body up, Sumire's top half separated from her bottom half.
Ryoba, however, shrugged her shoulders and laughed as if it were a joke. "I guess I was a bit overzealous, wasn't I dear?" She asked the top half of Sumire as the bottom half continued to stain the floor…
The flashback ended. Ayano still sat on the floor where she recalled the murder. She leapt up to be met with Sumire's angry spirit once more. "I know you chose not to harm your rivals but that doesn't erase what she did to me!" She spat pointing to her empty eye sockets.
"I want my eyes back! If you want me gone from here, then get me my eyes!" She roared before disintegrating into the darkness.