Chapter Text
Everyone gathered in the kitchen for breakfast, which they made themselves after the housekeeper never returned.
Kirari, accompanied by Sayaka – she wasn't about to let the President go into the dark basement by herself – had indeed come searching for Ririka after she and Mary had failed to show up for breakfast. Mary had never been so happy to see either of them.
A key had been found hanging on a hook in the kitchen, and the two of them were free at last.
After eating, the girls sat around the living room, waiting for the car to come get them.
“See, that's me,” Runa said, and pointed at herself on the screen, the small figure bringing a blanket with her from the bed and falling asleep on the rocking chair.
“I'm telling you, I was spooning you!” Yumemi shook Runa by the shoulder. “I woke up in the night and you were in bed next to me!”
“Nyahaha, really?”
Runa got a look of absolute glee and fast-forwarded through the tape until there again was movement in the room.
“There!”
The two of them watched as the Yumemi on the screen sat up on the bed, looked at the empty space next to her for a couple of seconds, then laid down again on her side and pulled the duvet up to cover the empty mattress in front of her.
Yumemi squealed. “Then what the hell was I spooning?!”
Sayaka rolled her eyes, this was just the kind of delusions she expected someone to come up with during their stay here. Still, she wondered who that woman from last night was, and why she was in the attic.
“There was something creepy in the basement too,” Mary said and shuddered slightly. “It was like something walking around in the complete dark. It even tried to get into our room!”
“Something visited us as well,” Kirari said and sipped her tea.
Runa sighed. “Did you at least record it?”
“My footage was compromised, unfortunately,” Kirari said.
Sayaka hid a smile behind her cup of tea, feeling her cheeks turning pink. That footage certainly needed editing before it could be shown it to others.
“We did,” Mary said and took her phone out.
She found the recording from last night and pressed play.
The recorded sound of the prison door clanging against its frame reverberated around the room, making goose bumbs appear across her back as she relived what happened during the night. Ririka shivered and scooted a bit closer to Mary.
“It's too dark to see anything,” Mary grumbled.
“You need to change the...” Yumemi trailed off, it was easier to adjust the video herself. She reached her hand over the table. “Give it to me, I'll see what I can do.”
She tinkered with the phone for about a minute, then pressed play again. Once again, the eerie clanging sounded from the phone until she pressed pause and stared intently at the screen.
“Is that..?”
Yumemi handed the phone back to Mary with a frown and looked all the way to the end of the table. Mary and Ririka soon followed suit, while the others bent down to look at the screen.
“What?” Yuriko said as everyone stared at her.
“It's you,” Yumemi said hesitantly.
Mary held her phone up for Yuriko to see. At first she only glanced at the still, then her eyes opened wide in shock. It was indeed herself, standing around in a dark basement, one hand on the prison bar and the other around an axe.
“W-what?” She looked around at everyone and held her hands up in innocence. “I don't...”
“Why were you going around the house in the middle of the night with an axe? We... I mean, Ririka was so scared!”
“Nice save,” Runa whispered.
“I don't remember...” Yuriko was visibly confused. “I had this awful nightmare... But I don't remember leaving the room at all until this morning.”
“Maybe you were possessed!” Runa said excitedly.
“Oh! Lucky you!” Midari said enviously.
“Or maybe,” Sayaka interjected with a roll of the eyes before everyone could start spouting nonsense, “you were sleepwalking.”
Runa and Midari turned towards Sayaka and booed.
“What? It's the logical solution!” Sayaka protested.
“But I've never sleepwalked before,” Yuriko muttered, almost to herself.
This was all a bit much to her. She pressed her hands against her temples and tried to remember what had happened last night. She had woken up from a strange dream, covered in sweat, her feet had been filthy and there had been...
“Oh, that explains why we woke up with an ax in our bed,” Yuriko muttered. “I just thought that was Midari playing around.”
“You did what now?”
“Yeah! That's Ax-chan right there!” Midari said and pointed at the paused video.
The other girls frowned at the two of them.
“I... I guess I must have been sleepwalking,” Yuriko conceded. There was no other way to explain why she was on that video.
Something didn't sit right with her, however, but she couldn't figure out what it was. Why couldn't she remember what had happened after she had gone upstairs last night?
“Well, it seems that has been sorted out,” Sayaka said, feeling somewhat vindicated.
“There was also this creepy moaning going on,” Mary said, thinking back on the night.
“Did you record any of it?” Runa asked. She was very disappointed with her findings, the sensors had turned up basically nothing.
“Yeah, we did that! Ririka, play the recording,” Mary said.
Ririka took her phone out and pressed play. There was indeed some moaning going on, but it didn't seem like the ghost kind.
“I can't hear anything,” Runa said. “Turn the sound up.”
Ririka obeyed and the moaning intensified. Everyone around the table blushed a deep red, while staring at an oblivious Ririka who continued to let the sound play.
“Are you two playing us your sex tape?” Yumemi asked incredulously.
“W-what?” Ririka stuttered.
“Oh, President,” the voice on the tape said suddenly, and all the eyes in the room blinked once before moving simultaneously toward Kirari, and then to a beet-red Sayaka.
“T-turn that off!” Sayaka stuttered and marched quickly out the front door.
Kirari sipped her tea with a devilish smirk.
“Maybe delete that,” she said to Ririka, who nodded and blushed from ear to ear.
Sayaka stood outside in the yard, looking up at the house. Now that she saw it in daylight it seemed even more crooked, but the chimney somehow looked to be standing straight. Something wasn't right about this house.
Kirari joined her wearing a coat a few minutes later and stood next to Sayaka while she stared up at the building.
“Do you like the house?” Kirari asked after a little while.
“Not one bit.”
Kirari chuckled. “What are you looking at?”
Sayaka was staring intently at the structure. “I'm trying to figure out how the house can be standing like that. What do you think, from an architectural standpoint?”
Kirari smiled mysteriously. “Maybe the framework of the house is enforced with steel throughout, and then anchored underground? Who can say, really?”
Sayaka looked up at her suspiciously. “And then I also wondered how our voices could travel all the way down from the attic to the basement.”
Kirari held a hand up to her face in wonder. “Perhaps there's an air vent especially designed for that to happen?”
“That would be absurd,” Sayaka said, and looked at Kirari out of the corner of her eye. “And also somewhat voyeuristic.”
“At least the cat's out of the bag now,” Kirari said with a shrug. “A draw, is it?”
“Oh, that's right!” Sayaka had forgotten about their bet in the embarrassment. “What does that mean?”
“Well, it depends. Either we both win, or we both lose,” Kirari mused. “What do you think?”
Sayaka blushed and looked away as she answered. She did have something important riding on this after all.
“Let's just say we both won.”
The wind blew by, making them huddle closer together. Kirari smirked.
“In that case, do you want to come over to my place this weekend?”
Sayaka looked shyly up at Kirari and nodded.
“I'll bring the cat ears.”