"Eh? ... Mayu!"
She was walking towards him, slowly, but the way she was doing it wasn't normal. It was almost lifeless, nothing more than a weak limp.
"... Eh?" Satoshi noticed something was off, and continued. "Are you OK?"
Mayu's head slowly turned to face his. Satoshi's expression immediately turned to one of horror. Her eyes were lifeless, yet she was wearing an evil, almost demonic smile on her face. It almost looked darker than it did when he last saw it.
Satoshi could only stare, bewildered, the sound of rain clamoring outside coming into clear focus as any kind of rational thought escaped his mind. By the time his senses returned, she was gone.
............................
Ayumi woke up, again - but this time, it wasn't prompted by any sort of noise coming from another person. She had rested enough to regain her strength.
Almost immediately, she noticed the lack of anyone else waiting for her - not Yoshiki, nor Satoshi. She wasn't sure how long had passed, but she estimated she was probably out for about an hour or so.
"... Yoshiki! God, I knew something like this would happen. What the hell is he thinking?! He always does crap like this."
Her relaxed state immediately turned into one of panic. She immediately shot out of the bed she was resting in - almost inhumanly quickly - and started moving. Knowing Yoshiki's history - she had seen his delinquent behavior multiple times, and even had to stop him from hitting a teacher the first time she met him - she knew this couldn't be good. And then it got worse:
''... And Satoshi isn't here, either?! Crap ..."
That was when she heard a voice coming from outside the door.
"Hey, Seiko? Do you think this room changed at all since the time we last saw it, too?"
"Hmm, it might have. This school seems a lot different than the one we were in before. That entire second wing seems to be completely gone! Let's check it out."
Ayumi knew who this was immediately. So as not to surprise them, she made her presence known.
"Seiko? Naomi? Are you out there?"
"Ayumi?!"
The door slid open, and the two girls outside stepped through. After a joyous reunion - almost as if Ayumi had been able to entirely forget about Yoshiki's safety for a brief moment - they all started trying to figure out what to do, a sense of reassurance filling the room.
It didn't last long.
"... EEEEK!"
Ayumi suddenly screamed, clutching her head out of reflex. A shooting pain had suddenly started attacking her head, and it wasn't letting up anytime soon. She knew what this meant - the same thing had happened when she first as Yoshiki. She was sensing the presence of a vengeful spirit again. Her supernatural sense told her that this was the same one as before, except it wasn't quite right. Plus the pain in her head was noticeably worse than it was the first time. She collapsed to the ground, unable to move or even form coherent thoughts for the most part.
The look of concern on Naomi and Seiko's faces was serious - and well justified.
"Both of you, hide! Get behind the partition!"
Without pause, Naomi and Seiko did so. This was serious, and their intuition knew that listening to her was the right choice.
Ayumi was in the process of getting up when she heard the sliding door open. A blue light emanated from the doorway. A sinking feeling appeared in her stomach; she knew what was coming wasn't good, and she didn't have any sort of means of protection.
"Thee, hh ... Tokhi...kooo? I...thhld you ffhere'hh ...... be hhomeone waihhing for ... uhhff thh phhay wifff ... !"
It was a boy's voice, probably no older than ten or so. There was something horribly wrong about his words - as if he had to try really really hard to force them out. He appeared to be referring to a girl, but there was no second voice with them.
Then she saw a second light appear behind the first one. She immediately screamed, jumping back - this girl was way worse off then the boy could have been. Where her head was was instead a huge, bloody hole, spanning the entire length of her jawline. It was replaced with an ominous blue light. There was blood dripping down from it. Ayumi presently lost her footing and wound up landing backwards on the floor with her hands under her back.
Suddenly, a sadistic smile appeared on the boy's face. His eyes lit up with some sort of demonic excitement.
She took a closer look at his face, meeting his eyes. An overwhelming sense of fear pierced her body. She tried to move her legs to get up, when ...
... "HUH?" She attempted to sit up, but again, nothing.
"... I can't move?! Why the hell is this happening?!?!" She asked it rhetorically, screaming, but she knew the answer - she couldn't move because the ghost was paralyzing her. It did not surprise her that such a spirit would have such a power, but she was caught off-guard by it, nevertheless.
Naomi and Seiko were just watching in horror. They had no idea what to do. Do they attempt to save her, risking almost certainly getting caught, or continue hiding? Or do they just make a break for it? They continued hiding behind the partition and put all their willpower into keeping as much of their composure as they could. It was difficult for them to not just begin screaming. Naturally, they didn't see the second spirit waiting at the doorway.
"To ... khhii ... kooo? O ... khhen ffat drawer anff ... rrring me the khhair of ... hhhi ... hhhorrhhh ... in ... khiiide."
That was when Ayumi noticed he, in fact, had no tongue. Where it was was instead some kind of bloody... stump thing?
He motioned to the desk, which was previously entirely unmovable, including the drawers. Listening to him speak caused an immense sort of pain to her ears. Almost as if his words were sharp, rusty nails poking into her.
She couldn't exactly make out what he had said. The other ghost, apparently named Tokiko, did so. She heard the sound of a drawer opening, although she wasn't sure if it had actually been opened or not.
Tokiko handed a bloody pair of scissors to the ghost, and stepped towards Ayumi. Despite having no facial expression to speak of, Ayumi could tell that her motions were tentative at first, although it wore off quickly enough.
Tokiko then grabbed Ayumi's arms and restrained her from behind, as if her being paralyzed wasn't enough. The force she applied was immense, far too much for any kind of child to be able to apply. Ayumi started screaming, half out of pain, half out of outright fear.
The ghost was suddenly right in front of Ayumi, holding the pair of scissors right up to her face. To stop her face from shifting, he grabbed her chin and held it in place. He moved the pair of scissors towards her mouth. She attempted to close her mouth on reflex, but as she figured, the muscles in her face didn't comply. The ghost inserted the pair of scissors into her mouth, surrounded her tongue, and snapped the blade shut.
"... EYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!"
Ayumi's eyes shot open. She screamed even louder than before, to the point where it was difficult to call her voice human - it was pure instinct. She was still in some disbelief that what she perceived as happening to her actually was, in fact, happening to her.
Naomi and Seiko, at this point, were on the verge of tears. With no words exchanged, the two made a break for it after a simple nod. But they didn't get very far.
"What the hell? It won't move?! It doesn't even appear to be locked, it's like those other doors where it can't even open!"
...
"But we just opened it a second ago? How the hell does that make any sense?!"
Naomi couldn't hold it anymore. The realization that they couldn't escape from this torture broke her composure, along with Seiko's, who started panicking in a similar manner.
Ayumi's screams flooding the room didn't help anything at all. Eventually, Naomi gathered her resolve and ran straight at the ghost, but as soon as she came into contact with him, her momentum immediately reversed and sent her flying onto the floor. It was obvious where this was going to go, but it was difficult for them to approach either ghost, or to move Ayumi, so they weren't able to do anything.
Eventually, Ayumi felt her consciousness fading. She felt nothing but the agony of her tongue slowly being cut away, and her mind had finally given up. Her scream faded, turned to a grotesque gurgle of some kind, and the life left her face.
"... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!"
Naomi and Seiko were, quite obviously, horrified. But worst of all was that they had no way of escaping the exact same torture.
They found themselves holding hands as their fate closed in on them.
............................
Elsewhere, Satoshi heard a rather loud series of footsteps heading towards him. Whoever this was appeared to be running.
He then saw a rather large figure running towards him.
"An ... adult? Hey, are you OK?!"
It was somewhat shocking to see an adult in this building - he had figured the Sachiko ritual was done primarily by children or students like himself, with only an occasional adult in on it. What was more shocking was what he heard.
"Follow me! Hurry!"
The man's words were hard and direct. He spared no time for introductions - it was clear this was a dire situation.
He chased after the man, noticing he was carrying a notebook of some kind and a pencil. Although he didn't realize it, this was Kibiki Kou, a journalist. He had, in fact, read this name in one of the notes in passing, although it talked about nothing more than how someone had researched Heavenly Host and wound up disappearing - but as they had not yet introduced themselves, he didn't know this was the man who stood before him and was now running from some unknown threat.
He followed Kou down a flight of stairs and then Kou disappeared around a corner. When Satoshi rounded the corner, there was no sight of Kou anywhere.
"Damn it!"
"... EYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!"
He recognized this voice. It was coming from behind him.
"Ayumi!!"
Having lost Kou's lead, he turned around and started running.
............................
Satoshi saw a figure appear out of the blackness at the end of the hallway. He was expecting this, knowing Kou had to have been running from something, but he figured to just fuck it and deal with it later. Rescuing Ayumi was more important.
What he didn't expect was who this was. A look of shock and confusion immediately covered his face.
Mayu appeared before him, slowly walking towards him, her movements and facial expression the same as before. Seeing Mayu here sent his mind into a state of disarray. Kou was running from ... Mayu?
"... Mayu?"
She didn't respond. Before his senses returned, Mayu had reached him.
She promptly grabbed him by the shoulders, with an immense amount of force. He definitely did not remember Mayu always being this strong.
She looked at him with the same demonic smile as before. Then she spoke:
"Come with me ..... We'll stay together .....
forever
..... "Her voice trailed off into the distance. Her manner of speech was commanding, and her tone was much lower than her usual, cheerful voice. There was an obvious, outright demonic quality about it that made Satoshi shiver. Yet it seemed gentle somehow, even if this directly conflicted how she was forcing him. Satoshi knew something was terribly wrong here - but the more he resisted, the stronger her grip became, eventually resulting in her outright dragging him across the floor. Eventually he gave up and complied.
Despite him accomplishing basically nothing across the past hour, he had actually felt like he was making progress. He was kind of shocked how all of it came crashing down in an instant.
Without a word, Mayu led him through a door he swore he checked at least three times with no success. The sign said "Basement", and there was a warning telling people that there was "absolutely no entry" allowed.
The air below was cool, yet stagnant. But this didn't feel like a basement. The walls were made purely of dirt, with wooden support beams spanning them. He wanted to say that it looked like a bomb shelter. The sound of the rain outside was not remotely audible here.
Mayu half-led, half-forced him into a room that he did not recognize. Almost immediately, however, he knew it was bad news. A horrible smell permeated the air, almost making him vomit on the spot. There were buckets sitting everywhere, some filled with blood, others with ... parts. Whatever parts these were, he didn't want to know. There were several metal chains hanging from the ceiling with handcuffs on the end, obviously for the purpose of restricting people, and a table stained with blood with various instruments for cutting on it. What the hell was this?
"... Mayu? What is this place?" He was holding onto a small glimmer of hope that his friend could be trusted here, even if all logic pointed to the contrary.
Mayu forced his wrists into the handcuffs hanging from the ceiling, and closed them.
"What's going on?!"
"Fufufufufu ~"
He heard a childish voice coming from the doorway. The figure he saw was that of a girl, who looked to be elementary-school age. Her black hair was long and flowed elegantly - as elegantly as possible for a ghost, anyway - and she was wearing a worn-down red dress. He didn't think the red color of the dress was natural, but he couldn't think straight enough to be sure.
"You've done well, Mayu-chan," the girl said, a weak, satisfying smile on her face. This didn't look good.
"What the fuck?! Let me go!"
The girl in red clothes ignored Satoshi's plea and turned to face him, a look of excitement on her face. The weak expression on her face turned to a demonic one, as if he hadn't seen enough of those already. He wasn't really surprised.
"Hahaha! I'm so excited! ~" Her voice was rough, a weak yell, and sounded a lot more mature and forceful than the cute, childish voice he had just heard. This really didn't look good.
"I'm going to enjoy watching you squirm as I cut you into pieces!!"
...
--- WRONG END ---
7. SXTLHGaiden,
Kibiki Kou, Kisaragi Aligned
, was lynched D5
