𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵

It’s midnight, made darker with the power outage and clouds hanging in the sky. The hallway is a vortex to nowhere and Yosuke wonders if he’ll be swallowed up whole. A fear of the dark is something primal, said a horror novel he had picked up on a whim years ago and then put down because even in broad daylight, that alone was enough to scare him.

The longer he stares, the more Yosuke thinks about monsters in the dark and under his bed, where he cried one night in first grade because he got spooked by his own jacket hanging on a hook.

Which is stupid because he isn’t a kid anymore and has the power of rational thinking and maturity on his side—which his friends debate on but that isn’t the point.

Because it’s stupid and he isn’t going to shit his pants, he sucks in a deep breath and walks, floorboard creaking and croaking as he does. Both hands move around this way and that, feeling for walls and tables and other things he couldn’t fucking see because of the power outage.

A hand bumps into someone, pushing them forward. A single creak. “Sorry,” he says, in the quietest voice he could muster.

Nothing.

“Hello?” When he moves his hand forward, there’s nothing but empty space and the feeling of dread and more dread crawling his skin and bones and stomach. The atmosphere becomes heavier, rushing torrents of rain in his ears, constriction in his chest.

He turns around. A pair of eyes, staring at him from inside the dark. When he blinks, those eyes also blink.

Fuckthisfuckthisfuckthis!

The darkness is a blur as he runs down the halls and rounds a corner. The racket he’s making is worth two hours of lecturing from Mom and Dad but he doesn’t care right now because he just wants to run run run away from whatever the hell is in his room and whatever the hell he touched.

By sheer luck, he makes it down the stairs in one piece. He heaves and pants steps closer to the kitchen. Yosuke doesn’t even remember why he had woken up in the first place but that doesn’t matter. He’ll spend the night out here because nothing w-

creak

He sees two-

He bolts out the front door and slams it shut and runs, forgetting shoes, wincing as pebbles and sharp rocks attack his feet. He makes it to the opposite end of the small street, back towards one of the neighbor’s walls as he stares at the front door to his haunted hell house.

The clouds disappear and reveal a sea of stars and the moon, all of it shining down upon his house. Half an hour passes by and nothing comes out.

He approaches.

A hard swallow. He turns the knob, pushes the door open, and-

Nothing.

Nobody’s there to chase him or give him a lecture running in the halls and slamming doors at such a godforsaken hour.

There’s nothing.

He stands in the kitchen for a few seconds.

--

It’s morning when he comes down stairs, hair perfectly combed because he spent an extra ten minutes in the bathroom today. Dad is gone, Mom is at the table, quietly sipping her tea.

Yosuke rubs the back of his neck and laughs awkwardly. “Sorry for the racket last night. Might’ve fallen down the stairs.”

She stares at him like he’s grown extra arms, then laughs. “It’s too late for April Fool’s, Yo-chan. If you were running around and making a racket, I would have heard it.” She stands up then and places a hand on her hip, while the other points at him accusingly, but he knows she’s just playing a part. “And you’d never hear the end of it, young man!”

...

She laughs again and he laughs along with her.

After a breakfast of orange juice and waffles, he returns to his room, ready to scoop out the things needed for class today. Something stops him, though, that something being a taped up photograph of him and Saki, the same one he found in the TV World version of Konishi Liquors.

“I...”

He distinctly remembers returning there once, and that was to retrieve some liquor Yu needed for some reason and a weapon. He’d left the picture on the counter alone.

But it’s here now.

He swallows, picks it up, turns it around. I wish we talked more, Hana-chan is written on the back, and he knows for a fact it wasn’t there before.

His heart stops in his chest and his hand starts to twitch because.

The writing.