Post by Sachi on Nov 2, 2024 15:29:30 GMT -6
#s://i~imgur~com/yJ8ithk~png
“Hurry, Gamotan!”“I-I’m trying!”
We were being chased by one of the spirits from the older school building. It took us completely by surprise, so we were doing our best to try and find one of the candles. We’d been chased by a lot of spirits since we found each other, but it never got any less scary, even when we had ways to defend ourselves. The worst was the huge man with the hammer. He could appear anywhere without making a sound, and whenever he did, the only thing I could think to do was run. The talismans we found, the poya gun…. None of it had any effect on him. We were basically helpless whenever he appeared. I guess that’s why the two of us were taking things super cautiously. Gamotan came up with the idea of never going in a room unless there was more than one exit, so even if he did show up, he couldn’t cut off our path. That idea had been pretty good so far, but it did mean there were a lot of places we couldn’t go if we followed our rules to the letter.
Oh, the poya gun! I sort of got ahead of myself, didn’t I? As it turns out, it’s actually pretty effective against a lot of the spirits we find! I did it the first time without thinking, but after that, we used it wisely and kept ourselves safe, at least from the smaller ones. There still wasn’t much we could do against the spirits of the children, or like I said, the big guy with the hammer.
…Oh, I got ahead of myself again. Gamotan and I were running from something, weren’t we? That’s right! It was the spirit of a little girl missing part of her head. We must’ve really made her angry somehow. She was chasing us while carrying some super huge scissors, and she wasn’t letting up! The poya gun wasn’t going to be any use, so we had to run! Thankfully, there was a glowy classroom really close to the walkway, and we didn’t waste any time getting in and slamming the door behind us. There was a warm candle burning bright next to some dead plants by the entrance. Safe!
Gamotan collapsed and kept gasping for breath like he had been running a marathon. We really didn’t run that far… just one building to the other. He really needs to work on his stamina. “Ryo…tas,” he looked up at me.
“Hm?” I responded back. I was looking around to see what kind of classroom we’d stumbled into. It definitely wasn’t one I’d ever seen before.
“There was something weird about that ghost.”
“Poya? The girl?” I turned back to him and tilted my head. “What do you mean?”
“We saw her before, but she never chased us like that.”
“Yeah, so we must’ve done something really bad, huh?”
“I guess. She didn’t do anything before - she just kinda followed us for a while. But this time, as soon as she laid eyes on us… Er, I mean…where her eyes… should be… you know…”
“Hmmm… Did that happen?” I’m certain it did. I was just using the question as an excuse to think about what might have changed. I really did think we angered her, but what did we even do? We’d barely gotten into the second building at that point. We were just looking around the first floor…
“Something weird must be going on with the ghosts. It might be that the school is changing in more ways than we thought.”
“But she’s just one spirit, Gamotan. You can’t say that for certain if just one spirit is acting differently.”
“Yeah… That’s why as soon as we’ve rested up, I want to pay more attention to the child spirits.”
“You want to see if the others have changed just as much?”
“Exactly! We’ve gotta gather all the information we can on how this place works! We already know that the layout swaps around after an earthquake. Maybe something about the ghosts does too. If we can find a correlation between the two, we might get a better idea of how the changes work.”
“And if we can understand how they work… maybe we can find a way to make those changes happen on our own!”
“That’s right! We’ll find a way to game the system!”
“Wow, Gamotan! You’re amazing!” I clapped for him.
“Heheh… I’m the author of KiriKiriBasara. Of course I’m amazing. Anything less would be an insult to my site’s reliability!”
I was glad he had so much hope, but I’d still been here a while longer than he had. I’d seen the school change a few more times… and there wasn’t any kind of pattern I could see. It really did feel like it was just doing whatever it wanted in a way we couldn’t understand. There are some occultic things that can be explained with science, so they have a method and reason behind them… but I don’t think this school is one of them.
Still, Gamotan seemed really pleased with himself, so there was no way I was going to shoot him down. That didn’t fit my personality, anyway. We had to support each other. He must be trying so hard to keep a smile for me, so I’ll do the same for him!
“It’s a plan then, poyayaya!” I saluted, then sat down next to him. “Are you feeling okay? You sound really out of breath.”
“Nothing to worry about. I-It’s a mere flesh wound! Heheh!”
“Hm…If you say so.”
After that, we didn’t say anything else. We stayed together in that silent classroom for a little while until Gamotan was feeling better. In hindsight, I think I really needed that time to be alone with my thoughts, too.