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A warm breeze passed by Moe, gently rustling through her hair as she waited for Ai and Shou to arrive. Her watch read 11:09 PM, nearly ten minutes after their set meeting time. She wasn’t particularly surprised at being the first to arrive- this was her job, after all, and Shou was certainly no fan of spirits, while Ai was a very popular idol. All things considered, Moe thought she was quite lucky that her friends almost always made the time to accompany her on article excursions. She shifted the bag on her shoulder slightly, looking around the empty road.
A few minutes later, another figure approached from the darkness; out came Shou, looking less than pleased. Despite being on foot, he wore a black riding jacket and gloves.
“Hi!” Moe grinned widely. “It’s warm tonight, isn’t it? Good for spirit hunting!”
Shou rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. As if I’d be here if there were actually any damn spirits,” he leaned back against the fence around the apartments. “Not real sure why I showed up anyway.”
Moe shrugged. “I dunno,” she replied, looking over at him. Shou’s face was turned away from her, facing off in the direction he’d come from. “You didn’t have to. I would’ve understood.”
He didn’t reply. She turned back towards the street, scanning for Ai. In the distance, Moe could faintly hear cars passing by, though she figured there wasn’t much danger of being seen on the small side street they waited on. More closely were cicadas and crickets, chirping loudly in harmony in the nearby trees. She sighed.
In that moment, the sound of footsteps appeared, and with it, Ai. Her hair was still tied up in her usual twin tails, but her stage outfit was replaced by a more casual dress, notably still crimson. She smiled as she approached, waving a hand.
“Sorry I’m so late!” she said, resting her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. “My manager was really nosy today, so it took a bit to get away.”
Shou laughed, straightening up from the fence. “Your babysitter, huh?”
“Hey!” Ai’s face twists into a pout, folding her arms. “Just ‘cause my manager is all over-protective now after the Mark stuff doesn’t mean you get to make fun of me!”
To his credit, Shou did stop laughing, though he still had an amused grin on his face. Moe moved between them, shaking her head.
“Come on, no need to fight,” she teased. “It’s already late, so we should get going.”
Shou’s face immediately darkened, but he didn’t argue as Moe pushed the gate to the old apartment building open. Ai and Shou followed closely behind her, nearly matching her brisk pace. She’d been to plenty of haunts while working for OOPArts, but the anxiety that came with them never really went away.
“Hey Moe,” Ai’s voice nearly made her jump. “This building doesn’t seem that old. How’d you hear about this spirit, anyway?”
“Someone at my high school used to live here,” she explained as they walked towards the door of the building. “She said that when they were moving out after the building got condemned, she could hear some yelling.”
“Yelling,” Shou echoed with a scoff. “We’re here over some dumbasses arguing in a condemned building?”
“I didn’t say that it was arguing!” Moe turned to him, one hand on the doorknob. “And neither did she! For all we know, it was a spirit who made them yell. Or made the building uninhabitable!”
She swung the door open, and all three of them stared down the dark hallway. Moe fished a flashlight from her bag and shined it into the doorway. It revealed very little- mostly, it was a long hallway, and a wooden staircase to the left. Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside.
All of the noises from outside seemed to vanish as she stepped over the threshold of the door, silencing even the cicadas. She shined the light over the staircase, nothing in particular caught her eye, though the stairs didn’t appear to be faring well after years of disuse.
Moe gingerly placed her foot at the edge of the first stair, pressing down. The wood groaned slightly, but otherwise seemed to hold, so she began to slowly climb up.
“Man, these’re gonna collapse under me,” Shou said from behind her. “Wasn’t this place shut down for bein’ about to crumble?”
“The sign on the fences said ‘structurally unsound,’ I think,” Ai replied. “Just don’t step in the middle and you probably won’t fall through.”
The second floor wasn’t quite as dark as the first floor; light from the moon and some of the streetlights that still worked shined in, showing some of the splits and gaps in the aging and rotting floorboards. Moe made her way to the first door in the hall, trying the handle to no avail.
“Um, Moe, do you know which apartment it was supposed to be...?” Ai asked, taking a step forward. “There’s a lot of apartments here.”
“Well... no,” she admitted, looking down the hallway. “But it’s definitely on the second floor!”
Shou sighed loudly, walking past the two girls. “Guess we better start lookin’,” he made his way to the next door, pushing forcefully. Similarly to the one Moe tried, it did not open.
“It looks like this is gonna take a while,” Ai said with a half-hearted laugh. “Come on, Moe.”
The three began to make their way down the hallway, trying to open each door that they came across. Some did open, but only to empty rooms with some spiders and the occasional rat, much to Moe’s displeasure. Spirits, she could handle. Rodents? Not so much.
Near the end of the hallway, Moe pushed an apartment open; instead of dust and emptiness, this one looked completely trashed.
“Whoa, looks like someone didn’t bother movin’ out,” Shou said from behind her. “Or like, cleanin’ anything at all.”
“Yeah, it’s a total wreck in here,” Moe stepped through the door, noting that the room had a distinct chill from the hallway outside. “If there’s a spirit anywhere in this building, it’s gotta be in this one!”
She shined the flashlight around the room, finding mostly cobwebs and some garbage among the dusty furniture. So far, nothing to indicate a spirit, but it was too early to give up hope on the article entirely. Moe pulled out her camera, looking around the room again.
“Guess a kid lived here?” Shou said, gesturing towards the window. Under it, a small doll lay discarded on the floor. “Kinda weird it would get left behind when they moved, though.”
Ai walked over to the doll, gingerly picking it up with one hand. “It’s kind of sad to think about that, isn’t it?” she said, looking down at it. “It’s pretty beat up, seems like the kid really played with this thing.”
Moe wandered towards a half-open door, slowly pushing it out of the way to look inside. The room definitely belonged to a child, now with a thick coating of dust. Followed by Ai, Moe gingerly stepped inside. She handed the flashlight to Ai, moving to take a picture of the room.
“Looks like she was an artist,” Ai shined the light across a mess of papers on the floor, covered in crayon drawings. “This one kind of looks like my stage outfit, actually, but the hair is different.”
Shou knelt down next to the papers, picking one up. “Yeah, don’t think that’s you,” he said, setting it back down. “Could be the kid. I wonder why she drew so many damn birds, though.”
Moe looked at the drawings. Most of them consisted of the same girl in a red and black dress with short brown hair, and all of them had several birds. One taped low to the wall looked like the girl, but she had big white bird wings, and her feet were replaced by talons. She took a picture before turning back around to the other side of the room.
Though it was dark, a stain was faintly visible near the window, dripping down the wall to a dark puddle on the wood floor. “Hey, come look at this,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I think I figured out why that kid didn’t take the doll with her...“
Her friends stepped behind her, Ai pointing the light towards the wall. The stain was a dark, rusty brown color. Some drag marks were visible, going towards the center of the room.
“That’s... that’s blood,” Shou said quietly, turning his head away. “Shit, man.”
The three went silent, a deep chill settling over the room. Moe’s chest tightened as she looked around again, the little girl’s remnant life and joys visible nearly everywhere she turned. This wasn’t meant to be disturbed, and now guilt began to creep its way into her conscience.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, eyes burning.
“Maybe... we should go,” Ai said, her voice small. The other two just nodded.
As they walked out into the main room again, Shou stopped dead a bit away from the bedroom door.
“Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Ai asked, turning to look at him. “I don’t-”
Her words were cut off by a loud screech, the noise sounding somewhere between a bird’s cry and the sound of a tantruming child. In the doorway, a small spirit had appeared- she was thin and skeletal, save for just above the ankles where her legs had become pink bird feet, a stark contrast against the paper white skin mottled with deep reds and purples. From her shoulder blades, long and twisted dove wings grew out; they were dirty, partially stained darkly near her neck. Her head did not hold itself up, instead laying near parallel to her collarbones. Her hair- short and brown, just as the crayon drawings had been- was matted and dirty, sticking to her colorless face.
Shou didn’t turn around to look; with wide eyes and a bloodless face, he began to sprint, leaving the other two behind. Moe felt frozen to the spot, hands glued to her camera. She pressed down on the shutter, the flash lighting up the room. The spirit screeched again, and lunged towards her. From the corner of her eye, she saw the doll that had still been in Ai’s hands fly through the air and into the side of the spirit.
Moe felt Ai grab her arm, and the two fled the apartment. The sounds of the spirit could still be heard as they ran down the stairs, but it did not seem to follow them.
Outside where they’d met up initially stood Shou, looking somewhere between utterly pissed and really, really worried.
“Goddammit!” he yelled, slamming a fist against the chainlink. “Thank god you’re okay, but fuck, that was horrifying! And when you didn’t come out after me- god, I was so worried!”
Moe stuffed her camera back in her bag, breathing heavily. “Sorry, guys, I mean it,” she looked between them. “I’m not used to my leads being real spirits. But hey, I have great stuff for an article now!”
Ai began to laugh, doubling over slightly. “Yeah, you sure do, Moe,” she said, still grinning. “Hey, what are we gonna do about that spirit? It’s probably not safe to let it stick around.”
“Hm...“ Moe paused, looking down at the ground. “I bet Mr. Yashiki and Mr. Mashita can take care of it. I think this is a little above my paygrade.”
“What, those old bastards still at it?” Shou looked down at his watch. “Shit, it’s late. I’m going home, I gotta shift at the bar tomorrow.”
“Oh my god, is it already after one?” Ai turned back the way she came, glancing back over her shoulder. “My manager is going to kill me, so I should get going. See you later!”
The three parted ways there. Moe walked back to her house with the flashlight nestled between her head and shoulder, scribbling notes. She stopped for a moment, tapping her pen against her temple.
“What to call it...“ she mused. “Oh, I know!”
The Little Bird.