I'm really sorry for another late update! We had a family day today and I was really tired. Please, have a good time reading! Thank you for all the support so far everyone!

Phantom

Chapter 5

I'm Scared

He was hugging her tightly—to the point Aki thought she'd break in half. Tenma buried his face into her chest, his body trembled and he cried. Without even looking, Aki knew that Tenma was now a teary mess. She tried to soothe him by rubbing his back. "Sshh, it's going to be alright," she whispered into his ear as she rocked him back and forth. "I'm scared Aki-nee. I'm so scared," his voice sounded muffled against her chest. "They tried to kill me, all of them tried to kill me!" he bawled.

Aki would be lying if she said she was surprised. She knew exactly who 'they' were. She didn't know what to say to him. Deep inside her heart, she prayed everything would turn out okay.

To say he was reluctant to go to school the next day would be an understatement. He absolutely refused and tried all the reason existed to not go to school. But Aki knew better. No matter how terrified Tenma was, Raimon was still the safest place for him to be in this current state.

"Tenma, you're like a brother to me," she said, holding Tenma's chin. They were in the doorway—Tenma was in his school uniform, albeit he looked nervous and ready to sprint to the next town if he could. "I promise you, nothing will happen while you're there, okay? If you have any troubles you can go to Coach Endou, he'll help you," she smiled softly. "And Aoi-chan too,"

It seemed to calm Tenma a little bit, if the relaxed shoulders were any indication. He gripped his school bag and turned around. "I-I'm off!" he said as he disappeared around the corner and into the streets. Aki reluctantly closed the door.

Aoi was walking among the small crowd of Raimon Junior High students when she spotted Tenma a little bit off to the side. "Tenma!" She jogged towards him, waving as she did. The brunet's body tensed but relaxed after he realized it was Aoi's voice. "O-Oh, it's just you, Aoi…" he greeted her and his gaze turned to the side. "Are you feeling any better?" she asked with quirked eyebrows. "You weren't here yesterday," He laughed nervously. "Aki-nee made me come to school. If I could, I'd hide myself in my bed all day," Tenma scratched his cheek, still not looking at her in the eye.

The girl stared at him and she was about to ask about his behaviour when a surprised voice called them from behind. "Tenma?!" She turned around and saw Shindou with Kirino, both of them having shocked expressions on their faces. She looked at Tenma and noticed that his posture had frozen again—this time he didn't relax.

"Shindou-senpai, Kirino-senpai." Aoi bowed slightly. "Good morning," she greeted them though she was ignored as Shindou stalked towards Tenma with a somewhat crossed expression. "What are you doing here?!" he grabbed the brunet's wrist—much to Aoi and even Kirino's surprise. "After what happened that night, you're supposed to—" but he was cut off when Tenma jerked his hand away. "LET ME GO!" he screamed, for the first time finally looking up. There were baby tears in his eyes—there but barely noticeable. And if one examined them, they would see the flecks of fear swirling around in them.

The little fiasco attracted a few spectators, much to their embarrassment. Tenma's pupils dilated after he had realized what he had done. He ran away from them without a second glance.

Tsurugi first noticed something was wrong when he walked into the clubroom to change into his uniform for morning practice. For one, Tenma wasn't there. Two, Shindou, Kirino and Aoi were wearing solemn faces. And three, everybody else seemed to notice too.

"What happened?" he asked the closest soccer club member to him. Kariya shrugged his shoulder. "I don't know, I got here five minutes before you did," he explained. They both stared at each other and then nodded—silently agreeing that this was another thing about Tenma. Tsurugi sighed and closed his locker door. Practice wasn't the same without Tenma, even if the only thing he did was sit at the benches. "I'm going to look for him," he said.

Kariya gasped. "But what about practice? And morning classes?"

"Who cares?" 'when your best friend could be in trouble', Tsurugi wanted to add but since he was talking to Kariya, he decided against it.

He looked high and low, through and through. No clues of Tenma at all. He knew Tenma was at school, he saw the brunet dashing in from the main gates.

The teen checked the toilets, the rooftop, the soccer fields—he was nowhere. Tsurugi finally admitted defeat when he was caught by a teacher during third period and was forced to go back to class. He didn't know where else he could check anyway—Tenma wasn't even in his classroom when Tsurugi walked past it. "Where could he be?" Tsurugi whispered. He opened the door to his classroom and casually walked in like he owned the place. Silence befell the room. The teacher was a wimp—he didn't dare to scold Tsurugi for coming in late—especially not with that deadly purplish aura surrounding the teenager.

Endou didn't exactly know what to say or do when he found Tenma hiding under his desk that morning but remembering Aki's phone call from yesterday, he knew he couldn't force the teenager to attend morning classes. He did however manage to persuade Tenma into promising him to go to classes after lunch.

The brunet sat at the spare chair Endou had in the room with a mug of hot chocolate in his hands. He blew the heat away from it softly as he waited for the time to pass by. "S-Sorry for troubling you, Coach Endou," he apologized to the adult who was doing some paperwork on his desk. "This is nothing," Endou smiled. "The things you've been through are far worse," he tried to be careful with his words; just in case he said something he wasn't supposed to. Right now he knew one topic he had to avoid: the soccer team.

Tenma looked a little different, he noticed. He looked less energetic and more timid. He seemed to stutter in his speech too. 'The same effects huh,' Endou thought to himself. Even in the safety of the brunet's company, Tenma still looked uneasy and ready to bolt. "So, how are you feeling…?" he asked slowly, putting his pen down.

The teenager didn't look at him in the eye. He stared at the floor in silence. Endou quickly panicked, believing he shouldn't have asked. "A-Ah, it's okay if you don't want to answer!" the adult stood up. "I'm going to go to the nurse's office for your note to the teacher, okay? Don't go anywhere while I'm gone!" Endou quickly left the room after he nodded slowly.

Bringing the mug to his lips again for a drink, Tenma whispered to no one, "Scared."

"I'm scared and lonely."

Aoi in class was so worried she couldn't focus during lessons. She kept glancing at the empty table next to her, somehow wishing for a miracle that Tenma would suddenly appear in that chair and smile at her, like he usually did.

'Tenma's smile…' she frowned. 'Tenma's smile lost its shine…' the pencil tapped against her desk in a slow and quiet rhythm. 'I wish I knew how to bring it back…' her eyes closed. She stood up and bowed like the rest of the class as the teacher left and another one came in.

Kariya wasn't sitting that close to Aoi but he caught glimpses of her sighing and staring at Tenma's seat. He himself was worried, to be honest. He heard from Kirino what happened earlier morning before they reached school and now his determination to know about this 'curse' went stronger.

He had tried to find out more on the Internet. He found a bunch of stories and old newspaper articles—he even had to scroll through one blog for a few posts about it—that had a somewhat similar story to theirs. Kariya printed out the ones he thought was important—all of them being newspaper articles. He recalled one article talking about how a whole soccer team disappeared and a few others about an increasing number of deaths among soccer team captains no matter the age.

One thing he was sure of, everything he had found out about this curse online had a relation to soccer.

A figure walked about Endou's room, a mug in his hand. He chuckled softly as he traced his finger over Endou's desk. Tenma started to laugh slowly, his eyes losing its light more and more as he did. He sat on the desk and crossed his legs. A voice spoke from nowhere that was not the brunet's, a crooked smile upon Tenma's lips as it said the following, "Tenma trusts him too much. Tenma needs to learn that the only person Tenma can trust is Tenma." It sounded like the voice of a ghost, a phantom—the voice of a hundred demons.

The voice laughed, Tenma's body shook as if he was laughing with it. His crooked smile didn't change nor did his wide eyes. The brunet snapped his fingers together and a hurricane of dark blue aura covered him before it exploded with a big burst in less than a second. "That's much better." The voice said. A large number of photographs were flying all around Tenma, floating slowly towards the ground.

"This way Tenma will definitely come to me."

The teenager's head rolled back and he moaned, feeling his head. Was he getting another headache? He closed his eyes when he stood up again. "Why was I… sitting on the desk…?" he asked himself when he realized his position. Tenma frowned when he saw the mess that used to be Endou's room. "What… happened…?" he was confused, very confused.

But his confusion died when he picked up one of the photographs lying on the ground. He gasped and dropped the now-cold mug of chocolate, spilling it all over the carpet. Tenma didn't hesitate to run through the door and away from Raimon Junior High—the fear clutching him was almost visible to the naked eye.

Endou regretted his decision of leaving Tenma alone immediately upon his return. His room was a mess, with photographs lying all around. The mug Tenma had used was on the carpet, a dark brown patch right next to it. The adult picked up one of the pictures and he immediately groaned.

He picked up all the photographs and didn't question why Tenma had run out. All of the photographs here were fake pictures of him turning a blind eye to the Raimon team bullying Tenma and fake pictures of himself hurting Tenma. Endou dropped into his chair and rubbed his temple.

"You won this round, Phantom."

Everyone was gathered in the clubroom after school, much to Kariya's appreciation. Tenma was the only one absent and he had to restrain Tsurugi from going on another hunt for the brunet, giving the excuse that he had something important to discuss with everyone today, with or without Tenma, and that Tsurugi would be very interested to hear it. The striker, eaten by curiosity, gave in.

Endou was a little bit later than usual—they noticed he looked frustrated when he walked in—and much to their surprise, Kidou and Gouenji walked into the room after him—looking just as frustrated.

"Coach Endou," Kariya walked up to the round table Endou was sitting at. His action caught everybody's attention, since he didn't exactly interacted with the coach a lot and they were curious. "Yes?" the adult looked up.

A thick folder landed on the table in front of Endou, Kariya being the one who threw it there. His golden eyes narrowed at Endou's confused face. "Please explain to me all of this. Or better yet, please explain everything to the team, Coach Endou." His tone sounded threatening.

Most of the other teenagers gasped at Kariya's hostility. Kirino would probably be scolding Kariya right now if he didn't know what Kariya's true intention was.

The brunet, along with the two other adults, skimmed through the folder Kariya had prepared. Their faces fell and Haruna, who was standing not far, could tell they weren't amused.

Endou forced out a chuckle. He looked at Kariya with a grin. "Did Hiroto tell you all of this?"

"No. He didn't say anything. I looked it up on the Internet."

"You're not supposed to believe everything the Internet says."

"Only one over four of the things in that folder is printed out from the Internet. The rest came from the old newspapers I found from the orphanage. Hitomiko-san keeps the papers in the attic."

"You have a bright future as a detective."

"Please don't change the topic, Coach Endou."

By this point, everybody had sweat drops on their heads. They had no idea where this conversation between a soccer player and coach was going. Nishiki was the most confused one among them. He lowered his body and whispered to Kurama, "What's going on here?" in an exasperated voice. Kurama shook his head, showing that he had no clue either.

Everybody went silent as Kariya and Endou went through a stare-off. Neither of them blinked—Kariya with his narrowed sharp eyes making him look like a feline predator and Endou with his stern face trying to scare Kariya off with his adult aura.

The adult closed his eyes with a loud sigh. "I guess there's no helping it. You already knew too much anyway," he opened the folder Kariya brought again. The defender smirked in victory and laid back to sit on the sofa behind him. Kidou shook his head while Gouenji had his arms crossed with an expression that said he couldn't believe that just happened. Shindou, Kirino, Sangoku and Kurumada were smiling with relief for they were finally able to know what Endou meant the other night.

"Kidou, Gouenji, you guys wanna join in the storytelling?" Endou offered with a goofy forced grin. "I'll pass," Gouenji waved his hand. Kidou shrugged. "I guess,"

"Ten years ago, after the Aliea Academy incident, another horrible incident happened," Endou started off, his hand flipping through the pages of cut out newspaper articles. Every teenager listened attentively. "We called it 'Raimon's Curse',"

"Raimon's… curse?" Tsurugi lifted an eyebrow. Kariya was right about this one. He was interested in this. "The reason we called it that was because Raimon was the first place the curse fell on. As you can see in these articles," Kidou took out one of the newspaper strips that had the biggest headline about a missing soccer team from Australia, "the curse went worldwide."

Everyone gasped at this. "So… uhm… what happened…?" Hikaru asked. He had never heard of this incident at all and he was really curious. "How come we never heard of this curse?" he continued.

"That's a good question, Hikaru," Endou smiled. "It's because the soccer community tried our best to make sure the real truth behind these accidents weren't found out by public. Only active soccer players at the time knew what really happened while the rest of the world was oblivious."

"We call the entity that brought this curse to us—" Kidou was cut off by Gouenji. "The Phantom." The red-clad adult propped his head up using his hand on the table. "It's called 'The Phantom' because it doesn't have a solid form and most of the time is invisible. Nobody knows its origins or its purpose of spreading this curse among soccer players only."

"Gouenji's right." Endou looked at him with a grin, glad that his best friend decided to join in as well. Gouenji looked away. Kidou smiled a little. "Because of its invisibility, it can curse a soccer team anytime and anywhere." Kidou decided to sit down too after a long period of time standing.

"What's the curse? I mean, what does the curse do?" Hamano asked, starting to get a little bit impatient.

"It starts off by seizing a team's treasured player." Gouenji voiced. "In Raimon's case, it was Endou." His voice broke a little.

Another round of gasps echoed throughout the clubroom. "Coach Endou?!" they looked at one another, disbelief around them. Endou merely nodded his head, unfazed by the teen's reactions. "Yup! Me!" he said cheerfully, as if it was the greatest thing in the world. Kidou coughed. "You should have seen how scared we were of Endou when the Phantom got him." He sounded a little embarrassed to admit that. Haruna, who sat next to him, giggled.

"Did the Phantom change Coach Endou into a monster with fangs and superpowers?!" Shinsuke asked in a scared voice. Endou laughed. "Me? Turned into a monster?" he shook his head. "No, no, nothing like that. The Phantom doesn't change a person's physical appearance or ability. The Phantom attacks a player's mind, thus enabling it to have full control of the player's body and consciousness."

"The effect of being possessed by the Phantom is that your personality takes a 180 degree turn," Gouenji said. "Now imagine this coach of yours the opposite of how he usually acts. Scary, isn't it?" he smiled when half of the team literally shivered—most of them being the first years.

"After the Phantom gains control over the team's treasured player, it'll begin to ruin the player's life," Kidou took the folder from Endou and was now the one skimming through the articles. He remembered every single one of them from ten years ago. It's nostalgic rereading all of this. "It'll try its best to make the player hate or fear his other teammates."

"And Coach Endou was…?" Shindou shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. A bad feeling emerged in his heart.

"The Phantom made me so afraid of my teammates, to the point I even skipped school!" Endou laughed. "When I think about it today, it's a little humorous actually," he chuckled. The teens flinched when Gouenji gave Endou a smack on the head. "How can you find that humorous?!"

Kidou sighed. "One method the Phantom uses to make the player hate or fear his teammates is by memory alteration and false beliefs." He flinched when he came across the article he had been looking for. It was about a team that had argued a lot after the Phantom got their captain and altered said captain's memories of his teammates. The team went missing and was never found.

"The Phantom made me believe Gouenji hated me to the point he'd hurt me," Endou shamelessly admitted. Gouenji jumped at the 'he'd hurt me' part and Tsurugi noticed that. "It also made me forget all the great times I had playing soccer with everyone,"

"But that's not the only thing the Phantom does." Gouenji continued. "After it takes over a player, it'll start to slowly get into the minds of the rest of the team too." He frowned. "If the Phantom succeeds, the team will become nothing short of a queen and her bees. The first player that the Phantom took over is the 'queen' while the rest are the 'bees'."

"In that case, the first player is the leader to the others, right?" Shindou questioned. "Whatever the players orders them to do, they'll do it without doubt?"

"Much like mind controlled minions, yeah. He will also be the Phantom's main base." Kidou answered. "There are, however, rare cases where the first player is able to fight the Phantom from the inside. He'll try to get the Phantom out of him. When this happens, the Phantom will move its base from the first player to the player that has the closest relationship to the first player, since the move will be easier."

Gouenji looked at the team's confused faces and he sighed. "For example, if the Phantom got Shindou and he's fighting it—the Phantom will move to Kirino, who is his best friend."

Both mentioned teenagers looked at each other and frowned. They did not like the idea of being possessed by the Phantom at all. A thought came across Aoi. "Did Coach Endou fight it then?"

Kidou smirked. "Oh, he fought it alright. Till the very end." But his smirk faltered. Gouenji stood up and walked towards the door. "Sorry guys, I have an appointment. I'll call you tonight, Endou." And he left without another word. Endou stared at the door; his expression was filled with regret and sorry. "Ah, anyways, that's basically what happened to a lot of soccer teams ten years ago. After a couple of months, the Phantom suddenly disappeared and all the chaos stopped." Endou turned his attention back to the teenagers in front of him.

"Then what about the missing soccer teams? And the deaths?" Kariya recalled reading about a lot of them murdered. His eyebrows furrowed. It didn't make sense. What was the purpose of all of this?

"Sadly, they are the teams and players who couldn't pass the test." Kidou closed the folder and handed it back to Kariya. "Test?" Kirino's ears perked. "Like the test that Coach Endou talked about the other night?" he got nods from both adults as answers.

"What test?" Shinsuke asked Kirino. "A test that determines how strong your bond is with each other—how much you care for each other." Endou answered on behalf of the defender. "That's why all of you have to be ready to face anything. The Phantom has many tricks up its sleeves."

"Are you saying we're going to go through this test?" Kurama scratched the back of his head. "How are you so sure? I thought you said the Phantom disappeared."

"Because the Phantom is back—and its new target is the new Raimon." Kidou said with a stern voice. "Wait, wait, so does this mean one of us is already, you know, possessed by the Phantom? Who is it?" Nishiki flailed around. He started to panic. This wasn't good at all.

A single gasp sounded from behind everyone. All eyes turned to Tsurugi, who had a horrified expression on his face. His mouth was agape and his pupils dilated in fear and worry. His voice sounded shaky and insecure, almost as if he was threading on a thin line.

"Tenma. The Phantom's targeting Tenma."