Thud...
Thud...
The blood-stained figure walked slowly toward them. Despite her slender frame, each step echoed heavily through the pitch-black night.
Chiharu couldn't stop shaking.
Compared to all the horror movies she'd watched before, this ghost girl was way more terrifying!
"D-don't come any closer..."
"RUN!"
A chill shot up from the soles of her feet straight to her brain.
The big guy didn't hesitate for even a second before bolting.
"Kazuya, run!"
He couldn't care less about the others, but he at least remembered to grab his friend. The tall guy yanked the otaku along as they charged up the stairs.
"W-wait for us too!"
Chiharu scrambled after them, her boyfriend not far behind.
Within seconds, all four of them had vanished.
"Hayato-kun, we should also..."
Fujibayashi Ryou started to follow the crowd, but Hayato grabbed her wrist.
"We need to go now! She's... she's coming closer!"
Fujibayashi Ryou's anxiety ramped up with every passing second.
"This way!"
After pulling Fujibayashi Ryou up to the second floor, Hayato turned in a different direction instead of following the group of four.
"We're not going with them?"
In Fujibayashi Ryou's mind, more people meant more safety.
"There's no point. We need to collect clues, and we can't count on them right now."
If those four had managed to stay even a little bit calm instead of just running away in a panic, Hayato wouldn't have minded working together. But given their reactions just now, he figured it was better to let them do their own thing.
Their independent actions might actually help trigger more rules and reveal useful information.
"Besides, I think having more people in one place might actually increase the chances of being targeted!"
"Huh?"
Fujibayashi Ryou blinked in surprise.
"But... but what if she comes for us first? The odds of targeting smaller groups aren't exactly low either!"
"Trust me on this, Fujibayashi-san. I'm basically a professional when it comes to this stuff."
That reassurance actually helped calm her nerves a bit.
Hayato stopped in front of a classroom on the second floor.
"Year 2, Class C."
Hayato flipped the light switch. The fluorescent lights flickered on, illuminating the entire classroom. The fact that this obviously abandoned school building still had electricity was pretty much a miracle in itself.
"Let's look around for anything unusual."
"Okay."
Fujibayashi Ryou stepped inside, her heart uneasy as she began searching. Her eyes constantly darted around the classroom, taking everything in.
The long-unused room was covered in a thin layer of dust. The air carried a faint musty smell that made her nose wrinkle. The desks were completely empty, not a single book or notebook in sight. At first glance, there was nothing particularly noteworthy.
It only took them about two minutes to search the entire Year 2, Class C classroom.
"Hayato-kun, I didn't find anything useful."
"Next classroom, then."
The entire school building was their search area. Based on that scope, Hayato figured the clues wouldn't be hidden too obscurely, like behind blackboards or tucked into corners where they'd need to search repeatedly to find them.
Year 2, Class B.
Hayato tried the door handle, but it wouldn't budge.
Rattle rattle rattle...
The handle refused to turn, no matter how hard he tried.
"It's locked. We need a key."
Fujibayashi Ryou's gaze kept sweeping back and forth down the hallway, terrified that the ghost girl would suddenly appear.
"Fujibayashi-san, step back a bit..."
"Okay."
Hayato took a step back, then kicked the door hard.
THUD.
THUD.
The door didn't budge even slightly. The force rebounding from his kick felt like he'd just tried to break through a concrete wall. Hard as iron.
"So we can't use brute force to break in. Good to know."
Hayato's eyes shifted to the glass window between the front and back doors of the classroom. He rushed forward and threw a punch at the glass.
THUD.
Same dull sound. The glass didn't even crack.
"Year 2, Class B is either an unexplored area with some kind of invisible barrier blocking us, which would narrow down our search zone..."
Fujibayashi Ryou could understand that logic, but treating this place like a game when it was literally a deadly supernatural scenario seemed a bit... cavalier. This wasn't some casual gaming session. People could actually die here!
"...or it requires a specific item to enter. Meaning a key. And whatever's inside is probably information we need."
Fujibayashi Ryou's eyes lit up at that possibility. If there were clues in there, all they had to do was find the classroom key.
"Let's check the next one. Year 2, Class A."
Sure enough, Year 2, Class A was also locked tight, completely impossible to open.
"AHHH!"
A sharp scream pierced through the air from somewhere above them.
"Stay away from us!"
"This is all your fault! Who said hiding here was safe?! Now we can't even escape!"
The voices came from upstairs, still some distance away. Hayato recalled the aerial view of the school building from the video earlier.
They must've gotten cornered on the fourth floor.
Fujibayashi Ryou clutched her chest, her heart pounding violently against her ribcage. It looked like Hayato had been right after all. The ghost girl really did prioritize attacking larger groups!
Meanwhile, on the other side of the building, the four survivors trembled as the blood-stained ghost girl closed in on them.
The tall guy, Sawano, had somehow ended up pushed to the front of the group. Despite his imposing height, he had absolutely no intimidating presence right now. His face had gone pale, and cold sweat was dripping down his temples.
"H-hey, hey now..."
"Don't come any closer! We've never done anything to you! Just let us go, and everyone wins here..."
The ghost girl showed no reaction whatsoever, continuing to advance step by step.
"Think of something! You guys need to think of something!"
"Big guy, rush her! Go fight her!"
"You said it was just a ghost girl, nothing to be scared of!"
"Fine! I'll charge! Kazuya, when I do, you get out of here!"
The tall guy patted his friend's hand. Everyone let go, and in the next instant, he grabbed Chiharu and charged toward the ghost.
It took only a few seconds for Chiharu's shock to transform into pure terror.
"AHHH! Let me go!"
This bastard was trying to use me as a sacrifice!
She struggled and beat against his arms, desperate for Sawano to release her.
"Let go of Chiharu!"
Her boyfriend Kawasaki roared in rage, but fear kept his feet planted in place.
The moment they got close, Sawano hurled Chiharu toward the ghost girl and immediately bolted for the exit without a second's hesitation.
CRASH.!
He'd barely taken a few steps before he suddenly crashed to the floor.
His legs had somehow gotten tangled up in pitch-black hair streaked with traces of blood.
"H-hey... help... me... Kazuya... save me..."
As he screamed with wide, terrified eyes, Chiharu managed to scramble back to her feet. Even with her legs shaking like crazy, she forced herself up through sheer willpower. Her boyfriend Kawasaki was already running too. This was their chance! He'd noticed the ghost girl wasn't paying attention to them anymore.
Only Kazuya, the otaku who'd been called for help, hesitated with guilt. He wanted to help his friend, but when he saw that blood-soaked figure and the black hair wrapping tighter and tighter around Sawano, making escape impossible, his internal conflict resolved itself. Fear won out over friendship in the end.
"I... I'm sorry..."
His body moved on its own, running past as Sawano's desperate gaze followed him until he disappeared around the corner. In the end, all Sawano had left was despair and the agonizing pain of his body being slowly torn apart.
Like being cut with knives.
His body was being pulled to pieces.
His consciousness faded into complete darkness.
Click...
Screams and angry shouts echoed from upstairs, but right at that moment, both Hayato and Fujibayashi Ryou clearly heard the sound of a door lock opening.
"H-Hayato-kun, this..."
Fujibayashi Ryou pointed at the door handle of the Year 2, Class A classroom.
"Yeah, it opened. Has to be connected to what just happened over there."
Someone probably died.
So after a participant dies, do the locked classrooms open? Wasn't that basically forcing them to sabotage each other and kill their own group members?
"Should we..."
"Let's take a look inside."
Hayato carefully opened the classroom door and flipped on the lights. In an instant, Year 2, Class A was bathed in bright light.
The layout wasn't much different from Class C.
Fujibayashi Ryou grabbed onto Hayato's sleeve, following him inside like a timid kitten.
Beep...
The PA system suddenly crackled to life.
A moment later, voices played through the speakers.
"Yuuko is so pretty, and her grades are amazing too. I heard she's also ■■■. I'm so jealous!"
"I wonder who will ■■■ her heart someday. That guy's gonna be really lucky."
"Nobody at our school is good enough for her, though."
"Hahaha, maybe some handsome transfer student will show up out of nowhere..."
Four sentences played, with some words garbled and unclear. Was it the poor quality of the broadcast system, or had the words been affected by some irresistible force?
Either way, it was enough for Hayato.
This was a clue. This was information.
If Year 2, Class A had a broadcast with information, what about the other classrooms?
"Fujibayashi-san, let's do a quick sweep for anything suspicious. We need to hurry."
"Got it."
Fujibayashi Ryou understood the urgency and immediately got to work, her eyes scanning intensely for anything out of place. But she came up empty.
"Let's move."
Based on the direction of the footsteps, Hayato tracked down the location of the other three.
After circling around the first floor, Hayato and Fujibayashi Ryou finally found the three survivors. The tall guy was nowhere to be seen.
Something must have happened to him.
"Where's that big guy, Sawano? Is he dead? Did the ghost kill him?"
The three regarded Hayato and Fujibayashi Ryou with some wariness, as if worried they might be the ghost girl in disguise.
Under Hayato's gaze, the otaku Kazuya gave a trembling answer.
"We... we got cornered on the fourth floor. Sawano, he... he got caught by the ghost girl's hair. And then... then he was just... gone."
Remembering the despair in Sawano's eyes at the end, Kazuya still couldn't shake the image. Guilt gnawed at him. He'd abandoned his best friend. He hadn't even had the courage to try helping.
"Looks like the ghost only deals with one person at a time."
That single observation brought a tiny spark of relief to the three survivors.
Now that he mentioned it... that actually seemed true. If the ghost could handle multiple people at once, there's no way the three of them would've escaped.
---
The illustration is in the comments of this chapter. If you are an old anime watcher, you must have felt familiar with that illustration. It is quite similar to Mekakucity Actors in story, but it's not; an old school romance anime, but not pure romance.
The anime is about investigating the girl's death, the girl has amnesia, or more precisely, what we see in the anime is her good side, while her evil side is roaming around the mountain.