"Are you sure about this, Akira?"
"I'll be fine, Hina"
"Just so you know, I never volunteered to come here..."
"And yet, here you are, Yano!"
"BECAUSE YOU DRAGGED ME HERE BY THE DAMN SCRUFF OF THE NECK, YOSHIDA!"
"CAN YOU TWO KEEP IT DOWN?! I'M HAVING A MOMENT HERE!!"
...
The air was thick with soot and smell of rotting iron. The sound of energy generators humming in the foreground as birds came to perch down on the abandoned building before them.
Akira lifted her finger and a soft violet glow emanated from the tip.
"Ahem, let yours truly do the trick for you..." Yoshida said, walking in front as his entire body coated itself with a warm bright golden aura that traced the outline of his body.
He looked back with the proudest grin in his face, "Ah? Haaa?"
They all shook their heads, Yano walked right past him, her eyes glowing a bright red, "I can see just fine, Golden boy."
Hinasuke just smacked the back of his head, "Let's go."
Akira smiled softly, patting Yoshi's back with sympathy, "I thought that was cool."
"At least you're nice to me, Yano just borderline hates me." He mopped, bottom lip sagging.
"Would it kill you to shut up?" Yano said, voice rougher.
Yoshida hid behind Akira, "See? She's such a meanie!"
Akira laughed and Hinasuke, for a brief moment, smiled before he kept walking.
"According to Ayanaki's new law," Hinasuke said, looking around at the multiple rooms that once housed Students of Kyoto High School, "Most buildings that have an unkept standard should be demolished and removed...I wonder why they haven't done that with this one yet..."
His deep voice reverberated between the halls, the small squeals of the rats scurrying making everything seems all the more...wrong.
"Well that's supposed to be the case if the building had any unkept standard..." Yano said, approaching the stairs, "As far as standard goes, This building had the highest Energicule safety grade in the entire 5th prefecture."
They went up to the first floor. The smell of decay hit their nostrils like an unwelcomed guest, pungent and distinctly unpleasant.
"Damn it smells awful in here..." Yoshida said, through a blocked nose, "...how the hell did this place get to be so bad?"
"As far as I know, after the incident happened, a lot of students were traumatized from it and fled in a massive panic, some students accidentally caused an outage with the students that refused to get out of their way. Some died and their bodies were trampled and dismembered so badly that by the time everyone was evacuated, they were far beyond recognition," Yano paused, her voice becoming grim as she gripped the metal railings harder, "Not even using any Electrolytes could help identify the bodies."
"Yano..." Hinasuke intervened, but not rudely.
She turned over her shoulder, her eyes flickering when she saw the guilt on Akira's face, "Oh, sorry, Aki, I didn't mean to—"
"It's okay...I get it."
For a long time, they mostly moved around the building, looking at old friends rooms, finding skeletal remains of people they might have known and trying to piece together what could've happened that day.
"Strange, for a place with so many bodies and so much potential for a brain eating amoeba to develop, this place doesn't have any police or guards or anything."
"It's an abandoned building, Yoshi, no one wants to be near a dead body..." Hina commented.
Yoshida chuckled, "Yeah, except for us, am I right?"
No one laughed at that.
"Not cool."
"S-Sorry..."
They finally reached the fourth floor. The scent of dead flesh was strongest here, so bad there were bugs crawling on the surface, some glowing and probably radioactive, some burrowing into the walls.
Yano shivered, "Bugs..."
"You scared?" Yoshida said with a smug grin, getting up close.
"Get outta my face." Yano said, shoving his face a way.
They walked past a dead animal, foaming from the mouth—what looked like a yellow bubbly liquid.
Hinasuke glanced over his shoulder, "You okay?" He asked simply, "You've been kinda quiet since we got here..."
"Yeah, I'm...okay. Just...this place brings back memories." Akira hugged herself a little, "Really good ones...but also some bad."
"Hey." Yano said from ahead, "You wanted this, so you gotta be strong enough to face the truth you're searching for, okay?" She looked ahead, seeing the growing room numbers, "There's no time...to be weak, Aki..."
They continued walking, until they passed into the room 400's mark.
"This is it." Hinasuke muttered, hands in his pockets, jaw clenching a little, "Time to put a nail on this coffin..."
They walked passed the large slab that elevated the other rooms, and walked straight back into the world they once called home.
No one spoke, not when the air was so tense. The pungent scent of decay and rust became stronger the closer they went.
Akira glanced at her left, a broken down door that still had that same stupid star that she'd carved beneath the doorknob.
"402..." Yoshida said softly, his eyes softning a little as he stopped in front of it, "I wonder if...my sock's still in there, the guards never really recovered everything anyway."
Akira placed her hand on his shoulder, "Let's go..."
They passed room 403, a room that held significance to Akira, but she kept on moving.
The soft crunch of the debris beneath their feet, accompanied by the soft distant hum of the generators filled the already tense and pungent air with a heaviness as they finally neared room 408.
She closed her eyes, feeling the tears coming back again.
No, she couldn't afford to cry, not now. Not when she hasn't even gotten to her room yet. Not when she had to uncover the truth.
She opened her eyes just before she bumped into the wall. Don't walk with your eyes closed. She smiled a little bit, looked at the others who hesitated once they reached 407.
Hinasuke's room.
It still had that same old dent on the door frame from when he'd punched his doorframe when Akira rejected him. And unfortunately for him, that was the only thing that remained there, the rest of the room had collapsed within the room underneath his, coincidentally, that room being Yano's.
"Seems like fate's trying to send a message..." Yano said, her eyes side eyeing the collapse, "Come on, we're here."
The other picked up the pace, but Akira...
Her heart was pounding in her ears, eyes burning as the memory came back fresh and unwanted again.
Running through the halls, screaming Akashi's name, screaming for help.
It was all too much.
But
{ "Life's too short to be scared, Aki..." }
She opened her eyes, the faint underglow of violet in her iris as she straightened up and walked...
{ "... remember that." }
"I will, Shi..." She whispered, finally stopping at the still closed, but rotting door, "I promise."