Hideki went home shortly after.  He did his homework before Shion came home from work that evening.  They ate dinner together in the kitchen, before Shion went to take her bath, and Hideki went to his room.  He paused as they passed in the hallway.

“Aunt Shion?” Hideki asked.

Shion paused at the bathroom door, with her pajamas tucked under her arm.   She looked at him and asked, “Yes?”

Hideki smiled just a bit and said, “Thank you for making me feel welcome.”

She was surprised to hear thanks for such a thing, but slowly smiled, and said, “I’m just glad you’re settling in.  Good night, Hideki.”

“G’night,” he replied, before slipping into his room.

At 11:30pm, Hideki rolled out of bed.  He pulled his jeans on, then a plain navy blue t-shirt, before he slipped out of his room and crept down the stairs.   Hideki put on his sneakers and made it out the front door with the most minimal noise, before beginning his walk to the FamilyMart convenience store up the road.

As he approached, he noticed there was a girl in a gray skirt, white leggings, and a soft, lightweight pink hoodie standing next to the bank of six payphones across the street.  Hideki paused a moment, before approaching the payphones, and asking, “What are you doing here?”

Fumi pushed her hood back a bit, and said, “It seemed foolish to let you come here alone.”

“Going to wait to see if I vanish?” he asked with a smirk, looking up at the hands of the analog clock that hung above the payphones.  Hideki was surprised when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fumi move to stand next to him.  He looked down at the slightly shorter girl, standing in front of the next payphone.

“I was elected as the representative of class 1-B,” she said calmly, as she stared down the faded rotary dial, “It is my responsibility to do what is best for the members of my class, and care for those who cannot attend.  It would be irresponsible of me to not go with you.”

Hideki chuckled and said, “That’s a really convoluted excuse.”

Fumi glanced up at him, annoyed, and said, “It’s 11:59.”

Hideki grinned down at her, before nodding, and looking at his payphone, mumbling under his breath, “Yeah, yeah...”

The two of them watched as the second hand moved smoothly along its track. At last, the long and short arms ticked, and for the briefest moment, all three arms pointed straight up.

“This is it,” Hideki said as he lifted the receiver off of the top of the phone, and held it to his ear.  Fumi did the same, and both of them held their index fingers to the zeroes of their rotary dials.  Hideki took a deep breath, before whispering, “Three, two… one…”

Both of them turned the dials to zero, before they spun back into place.  A dull hum began to come through the earpiece, before elevating to a high pitched ring.  The deafening sound froze Hideki in place, and he recognized this feeling.  From the corner of his eye, he saw Fumi, rigidly standing in place, her eyes wide and mouth agape, but no sound slipping out.   Her body began to tremble as Hideki felt the sharp ringing begin to reverberate throughout his entire body. His vision blurred, before everything fell away.

A brief sensation of falling, before Hideki was jarred to his senses.  He stumbled briefly, but remained on his feet, dizzily looking around as his vision cleared.  He realized Fumi was standing next to him, but they were no longer standing in front of the bank of sun-bleached pale pink payphones.

They were standing on an unfamiliar city street.   The streets and houses were dim, as if lit only by the dull rays of twilight, but the sky itself was a pale blue-gray, striking against the silhouettes of the dark buildings. Though it was difficult to see detail through the fog, the buildings around them looked old, as though they were built in the 40s or 50s.  As a gentle breeze pushed back the fog, however, they could see that the buildings were dilapidated, with windows broken, and doors hung askew.  Sediment had washed up into the grout of the bricks or between the wooden planks, and piled in the corners of stairs.  Puddles remained on the damp road, with wavy tracks of sand here and there.

“What is this place?” Hideki asked, as he looked around, “This is nothing like the place I saw before…”

Fumi slowly sunk to her knees in the middle of the road where they stood.

“Rep?” Hideki asked, grabbing her arm, “Hey, are you okay?”

“It’s Kibitani,” Fumi whispered as she stared ahead, “This is what old Kibitani looked like, after the flood… I’ve seen photos of it before.”

“Old Kibitani?” Hideki asked, his eyes widening, “You don’t mean… I mean, the stupid rumor about talking to ghosts from fifty years ago… It’s not…”

Fumi looked up at him, silent, but all of the color had drained from her face.   She shakily stood up next to him, accepting his grip on her arm for help, before she looked to the street ahead of them again and said, “I can’t think of any other explanation.”

Hideki looked ahead as well, before he began to walk.

“Wh… Where are you going?” Fumi asked, watching his back.

Hideki paused, and looked back, saying simply, “To find Suu.”

Fumi watched him walking away, before she looked around. Finding nothing but desolate silence, she jogged to catch up and fell into step alongside him.

They walked for what felt like an hour.  They passed by ruined houses, walking over waterlogged children’s toys that had washed into the street, and navigating between stalled cars that had drifted into one another at intersections.   They hadn’t seen any signs of life, only markings where life once existed.  When the road they followed came to an end, they found themselves at a T, meeting a road that ran alongside a wide river.

“This is the Asa River,” Fumi said, “If the fog weren’t so thick, you could see Midorioka up the hill from here.”

“Do you think Suu might be trying to make it back home?” Hideki asked, “Where would we find a bridge?”

“I imagine it’s still a long walk from here,” Fumi said, “But… It should be this way.”

From beyond the fog, they heard a quiet, but high pitched sound, the chime of a bell.

“Did you hear that?” Fumi asked.

“A bell,” Hideki muttered as he looked around.

There was another chime, before they saw a figure materializing through the fog.  Hideki instinctively took on a defensive posture, curling his fists as he faced the form, while Fumi stepped behind his broad figure for safety.

Hideki raised his fists, and said, “Who’s th--”

When the figure burst from the fog, it didn’t slow down, zooming past them down the street without paying them any mind.  Hideki and Fumi stood there in shock, eyes wide as they watched Suu pass them by on a bicycle. She rang the chime on her handlebars again as she pedaled up the next hill, before coasting down the other side.

Still standing in the middle of the road, stunned, Fumi looked at Hideki and asked, “You saw that, didn’t you?”

“It was Suu,” he muttered,”She didn’t even look at us, but I know that was Suu.”

“She didn’t look like she was in distress,” Fumi said, watching the direction that Suu went, and starting to jog that way, “She looked… thinner.”

Hideki began to jog as well, before he picked up the pace into a run, saying, “We have to track her down and figure out what’s going on.”

Though Suu was far out of sight, the distant ringing of a bike bell was enough to point Hideki and Fumi in the right direction.  Every time they were lost, or confused on which way to turn, they would hear the far-off chime and take off running again.

When Hideki ran out of a narrow alley, he looked up the road, and saw Suu stopping in front of an old house.  She knocked the kickstand down before climbing off of her bike, and she turned around to open up a large box on the back of the bike.

Out of breath, Fumi nearly stumbled into Hideki when he stopped in front of her.  Before she could scold him for stopping so suddenly, she too noticed Suu, and asked, “Is… Is that a food delivery bike?”

Indeed, Suu pulled a bag out of the box, and went to knock on the door of the house.

“Suu-chan!” Hideki shouted as he jogged toward her.

Suu didn’t respond, or even acknowledge his presence.   The door of the old-fashioned house slid open, and Suu was greeted with the visage of a wrinkly, short old woman with bulging eyes and stringy hair.   Even her brown kimono was tattered, the hem discolored from water stains and the sleeves dotted with mold.  She was a few warts and a hooked nose away from looking like a textbook example of a hag.   The old woman held a cane in one withered hand, and with the other hand, she reached out to snatch the bag out of Suu’s grasp.

“I’m s-sorry I’m late,” Suu said quietly as she bowed deeply.

The old woman lifted her cane and sharply crowned Suu with it, snapping bitterly, “You stupid child! I almost starved to death waiting on you!”

“I’m sorry!” Suu whimpered, biting back tears but not lifting her head.

Hideki felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.  He balled his fists as he stormed toward them, ignoring the fact that Fumi was clinging to his arm to try to hold him back.

“How many more people are going to die waiting on you to help them?” the crone muttered, “Worthless, worthless girl…”

“I’m sorry, I’ll hurry,” Suu whispered between soft sobs, as she turned to head for her bike, and the old woman slammed the door shut behind her.

“Suu, stop!” Hideki said, shaking Fumi off his arm and running to grab ahold of her bicycle.

With no option but to acknowledge him, Suu, froze, her teary eyes opened wide as she stared at the bulky boy holding onto her bike.  Her lips moved briefly without sound, before she managed to stutter out a quiet, “So… Sora… to… kun…?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said with a fragile smile, “We’ve come to take you home.”

“Home?” she asked, looking around to identify the ‘we’, before she spotted Fumi.  With a confused look, she asked, “What are you doing here, class rep…?”

“You’ve been missing for twenty-four hours,” said Fumi as she approached, “We were worried you might’ve called that foolish rumor, so we came for you.”

“Come on, let’s find a way go back,” Hideki said, lifting a hand off of the handlebars to offer it to her, “We’ll go together.”

Suu stared at his hand for a moment, before suddenly snatching the handlebars away and swinging her leg over the bike.  She began to pedal away, saying, “I can’t!”

“SUU!” Hideki shouted, starting to jog alongside her, “What the hell are you talking about?  You ‘can’t’? You can’t stay here, this place is… it’s not right!”

“You’re pedaling around in a living nightmare and you want to stay?!” Fumi shouted as she ran after the bike.

“They need me,” Suu said, huffing as she pedaled harder to try to pick up speed, going up an incline; “If I don’t help them, they’ll…”

“These people aren’t real, they aren’t alive!” Hideki shouted.

Suu gripped the handlebars right as she shouted, “THEY NEED ME!”

Her tire lost traction in a band of wet sand on the road, and Suu fell off of her bike onto the damp asphalt. Her bike slid onto its side and the box of food cracked open, spilling covered bowls of ramen onto the ground.

“SUU!” Hideki shouted as he knelt beside her, trying to pull the bike off from her tangled legs.

Suu sat on the ground, sobbing. Her scraped knee showed through the tear in her capri jeans, and the stray threads of denim began to turn red with blood.  She sat there, wiping at her eyes with her sleeves, as her sobs grew into wails.   It was easy enough to tell that Suu wasn’t crying over a skinned knee, but she was completely breaking down.

“If I don’t, they’ll…” she cried.

“It’s not your responsibility,” Fumi said as she knelt next to Suu.  Though her voice was usually cold and stoic, Fumi was putting a clear effort into trying to soften her tone and take on a more warm approach.  She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and offered it to Suu, saying quietly, “You can’t try to help everyone, and you shouldn’t either, if they’re going to be abusive to you.”

“B-But they’ll…” Suu stammered between sobs as she wiped her eyes with the handkerchief.

“Suu-chan, you have to put you first,” said Hideki, as he tossed the bike aside.

Suu yelped as she watched the bike skid on the concrete, and reached out toward it, but Fumi held her back.

“I have to!” Suu said, “If I don’t…”

“No!” Fumi snapped, holding an arm across Suu to keep her from trying to go after it.

‘I ought to just smash that freaking bicycle or throw it in the river,’ Hideki thought, as he cast a glance toward the bike.  However, he realized that the fog was beginning to move closer, not just thickening, but actively crawling across the ground to try to reclaim the bike.  He stared at the unnaturally moving haze, before saying, “We have to go.”

“What?” Fumi asked.

Hideki reached down to grab Suu, hauling her up to his feet, and said, “We have to go!”

“What are you panicking over?” Fumi asked, before she looked to the edge of the fog that flowed over bike.  Her eyes narrowed as she saw shadows stirring in the vapor, before they began to take form.  Three small creatures, crawled out of the haze, appearing almost like emaciated children.  Their skin was dark blue, and their heads looked almost too large to be held up by their scrawny bodies.  They crawled over the bike, before lifting their heads, yellow eyes locked on Fumi before they began to hiss.

“RUN!” Hideki shouted, as he pulled Suu onto his back, with her arms around his shoulders, and his hands hiking her knees up at his sides.  Though he had most often taken the lead, Fumi bolted past him, and he began to run behind her, carrying Suu on his back, as they fled from the tiny demons.