Chapter 35 - Daisuke KuroganeWednesday, October 18th The st time I’d willingly stepped foot inside a library was back in elementary, when Chinami dragged me along to check out some of the new Laser Cats comics they’d just had delivered.

  I was secretly as ecstatic as she was. I didn’t tell her about the nights I’d spent watching and rewatching episodes, practically learning the entire damn script by heart, or that I’d been practicing Whiskerboom’s signature move, ‘Boomcw Blitz’ in my room where I was sure nobody could see me, thinking it might earn some cool points with the guys in my css.

  I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how well that went. I was starting to feel apprehensive about seeing her again tomorrow, and that Furusawa guy’s disappearance made it all the more real to me that any of us could bite the dust at any moment.

  If I wanted to see the sun rise tomorrow, I’d have to fight for it - and that was fine by me.

  After all, I’d seen all this coming from a mile away; as soon as that ‘leaderboard’ shit was introduced, hence why I needed to enhance my strength as much as possible.

  Furusawa made only one fatal mistake, and that was thinking that he could trust anybody besides himself.

  Pretending I didn’t notice any of the surreptitious stares and whispers my way, I made my way towards the back of the room, turning right and walking along the row of study carrels. I settled on the st one closest to the wall, and decided to get to work.

  By ‘work’, I don’t mean school-reted junk, of course. Not with yesterday’s vision of ‘Minami-kun’ and ‘Kenjiro’ still fresh in my mind. I didn’t get the chance to speak to the others about what I saw, and I doubt they’d be willing to hear me out anytime soon, but who knows – maybe they’ve gone and figured it out too.

  Didn’t matter.

  There was clearly a mystery to be solved here, and I was hoping that by looking into what happened in the previous Hollow Night, I could get some information about the one I’d stumbled into myself.

  I was hoping that, someway, somehow, I could change the fate that I was starting to believe awaited me once this week was over.

  Thankfully, a few completely healthy teenagers dropping dead out of nowhere over the course of a week tends to grab a headline or two.

  26th March 2018

  Shinsei News

  Mysterious Deaths Following Sudden Hospitalizations Among High School Students!

  After a week of unexpined, sinister hospitalizations ciming ten students, we are deeply perplexed and saddened to announce that all ten, have been decred deceased this morning by doctors…

  It had taken a great deal of time, precision, and several SafeSearch filter viotions, but I eventually found a lead.

  In Osaka, about five years ago, ten perfectly healthy teenagers, who all attended the same high school, just happened to fall into comas one after the other. Over the space of a single week.

  The articles that followed documented the extensive investigation that had taken pce at Kasumi High, including student and staff testimonials, allegations of food and water poisoning, and even whisperings of a wsuit against the school by the victim’s families.

  However, that was as far as the discussions went. For the st three or so years, the phenomenon ter referred to as ‘The Kasumi Incidents’ was seldom brought up anymore. In fact, I don’t think I had even heard of it up until now.

  The only remnants of the sensationalist coverage of the entire debacle would be the emptiness in the homes and the hearts of the families, I’m sure. But who gives a shit about those guys, am I right?

  With that uncovered, I kept the article open in one tab and began to cross-reference the date and location with any others I could find, and it wasn’t very long before I came across what I’d already been expecting to find.

  First, I looked into the names of the Kasumi kids who’d died in the ‘incidents’. There were ten of them, as stated in the Shinsei article, and though the names themselves were littered across different reports, I managed to gather them all together:

  Yoshida AsahiKawasaki InjaTakeda KinKemono OsamuFujiki KazuyaReihai ShikaKaneko AkaneRyugetsu AsunaKanade RindoAkibara TetsuyaKnowing what I know now, these guys had to have been in the Hollow Night. Nothing else aside from targeted poisoning, or group suicide, would make sense – and even in those cases, there was no trace of any harmful substances found in their blood upon admittance to the hospital, nor physical wounds.

  Based on the student testimonials, none of these people were even in the same friendship groups, though according to one, he started seeing them “talk to one another a lot more often, sometimes really enthusiastically, which I thought was surprising!”.

  I had no doubt in my mind that these were my predecessors, and if they started dropping into comas one by one, I could only assume they bit the dust while they were still in the Hollow Night.

  Interestingly enough, none of them had actually died until the following Monday, where all ten of them became unresponsive at around the same time.

  In other words, if you die in the Night, your comatose body stays active until the end of the week? What was that about? Still, I couldn’t guarantee that the rules of their Night would be the same as ours. Whatever happened to that Furusawa guy was beyond me at this point. I needed to ensure my own survival.

  Speaking of survival, there was no mention of Minami or Kenjiro anywhere in these articles. Seeing as how they were my two biggest leads, having (kind of) met them already, I began to tailor my search for those two. Kenjiro in particur, since I suspected 'Minami’ was some kind of nickname.

  Using special keywords from the Kasumi Incident articles alongside Kenjiro's name, I'd hoped to find at least one or two further avenues of investigation.

  By the time I’d come across a year-old, cryptic-looking YouTube video from a channel with Kenjiro’s name, titled ‘I was wrong’, the sun was already beginning to set. Not to mention the incessant murmerings of those further toward the front of the library had thankfully ceased altogether.

  I don’t know what compelled me to click on the bnk thumbnail. But as soon as I did, the image of him staring back at me through the monitor now enrged and brought to life, I sensed that I was plummeting into something I’d never climb back out of.

  The first thing that jumped out to me was the background. Clothes were strewn across the floor, textbooks and papers littering every surface, and empty food containers overflowing from the trash bin in the corner.

  The once-white walls were marred with what could’ve been scribbles or diagrams. The window was covered with drawn curtains, blocking out any natural light and casting the room into a dim, eerie atmosphere.

  For the first thirty seconds of the two minute long video, he was just staring bnkly at the camera. Or rather, at something far beyond the camera that perhaps only he could see. Either way, by the time he’d opened his mouth to say something, his voice was hoarse and broken, as though it was his first time speaking in weeks.

  “…I’m sorry.” Were his first whispers. “You were right.”

  Another minute or so of silence. I got the impression that he’d begun to regret even turning on the camera and going through with this entire thing, but perhaps he felt it was too te to stop.

  He didn’t say anything again until the video was fifteen seconds or so from ending.

  "...I never wanted any of this. But I had to win. I had to survive. And now... now they're coming for me. I can feel it. I can hear them whispering in the shadows, waiting to drag me down into the darkness. I'm sorry, Kenjiro. I'm sorry, everyone. I didn't mean for it to end like this. But I can't escape. None of us can.”

  Then, Minami took a deep breath, and looked the camera – no, looked at me – dead in the eye.

  “They're watching me, Daisuke. They're watching you too. Be careful...they’re coming."

  Then the recording snapped to bck.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I grappled with the implications of his words. Who were "they"? How did Minami know my name? And why was Kenjiro's name absent from the list of previous participants if he’d perished?

  I tried to rewind the video to that part in particur only to find it missing entirely! All that remained was the other minute and fifty-five of Minami’s apologies. What the fuck was going on here? Did Katoru shove me harder than I thought?

  I could practically hear the panic surging through me as I hastily packed my belongings, my heart pounding in my chest. Exiting the building did fuck all to ease my distress; if anything, the sensation of being watched only intensified.

  Something was terribly wrong, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being hunted.