From the phone on the floor near Hideki’s head, a woman’s voice asked, “How may I direct your call?”

“Cara?!” Hideki asked, his eyes snapping toward the phone.  The sound of the voice reminded him of the blue-eyed operator he met.

“This is Amica,” the operator replied, “How may I direct your call?”

“Amica, get us out of here!” Hideki shouted, gripping the wooden bar as it began to crack under the demon’s gnashing teeth.

“I'm sorry,” Amica replied calmly, “I cannot route you from your current location.”

Hideki snarled, “Then connect me to someone who CAN! You're a phone operator and we're dealing with haunted telephones! If you don't help me, we're all going to die!”

Sitting at the switchboard, Amica swiveled in her chair, turning her green eyes to look toward the red-suited woman who oversaw their work.  Amica was quiet, lifting one headphone off of her ear, freeing the muffled sound of Hideki’s desperate shouting.

“He's asking for help,” Cara said, not looking up from her work.

The red-suited woman smirked, tilting her hat down over her eyes, and said, “I suppose, then, that he's ready to make a connection.”

Amica turned and reseated her earphones on her head.

“Please hold,” Amica said.

“HOLD?!” Hideki shouted, eyes wide at the audacity of her reply.

From the phone beside him, a steady, high pitched tone began to ring out.   Fumi winced at the sound, though Suu barely heard it over her own crying.   Hideki, however, screamed out as the piercing ring assaulted his ears.  His body stiffened, unnaturally jerking and throwing the demon off onto the floor next to him.  Hideki’s body arched off of the floor like a bow, his eyes rolling back as droplets of blood fell from his ears.

“Sorato?!” Fumi asked, eyes wide as she saw the drops of red.

Suddenly, black spikes jutted from Hideki’s ears. His hands cupped over them to try to grasp at the searing pain, but more and more spikes grew outward, until his ears were covered in a mass of black brambles, and vines crawled across the top of his head. He writhed and kicked and tossed on the ground, before throwing himself onto his side and curling up in a ball, then finally falling still.

Suu and Fumi stared in horror at the sight of the large, strong boy, wracked with pain, but the sight of him lying motionless was much worse.  Fumi slowly let go of Suu, and started to crawl toward Hideki.

“Sorato-san?” Fumi whispered.

Suddenly, the red demon scampered across the floor on all fours, skidding to put itself between Fumi and Hideki.  Fumi yelped and fell onto her backside as she scrambled away from it, but the long-tongued creature stalked after her.

Another sudden bang, and pieces of furniture broke and were flung back from the top of the stairs.  The ‘father’ revealed his true form, a blue-skinned ogre, still carrying the club he had used to break through the barricade.  The mother crawled up the steps past him, her unnaturally long arms extending from the tattered sleeves of her kimono, limbs covered in dozens, if not hundreds of tiny eyes.

‘We’re going to die,’ Fumi thought, too shocked to scream at the multitude of horror she was left to stare down.  From the corner of her eye, she saw movement, and winced as she long-tongued demon child leapt at her.

From mid air, suddenly, a shadow swatted the demon aside.  The red child slammed into a rafter with enough force to crack the wood, and dust showered down around them.

“Uhhnn…” Hideki groaned as he rolled over onto all fours, before slowly pushing himself to sit up on his knees.  A pair of black headphones rest over his ears, studded with black spikes, with black thorny vines wrapped over his head to keep them in place. The shadow he cast behind him began to grow, much more broad than his own bulky shoulders, and it began to curl over him.  Hideki looked up, staring at the translucent black, featureless face that seemed to be gazing back down at him.

“You're alive…” Fumi whispered.

Hideki held up his arm, and watched as his ‘shadow’ mimicked him, extending a long dark arm, and holding the silhouette of a katana in its grip.  Blurry images carried ahead of its own movement, almost like afterimages that instead preceded it.  Hideki opened his palm, and so did his shadow.  Though the shadow’s katana remained in its hand, a second black silhouette of a blade fell from the first, and landed in Hideki's grip.  Though the weapon appeared spectral to the eyes, it felt solid in his hand.   His fingers relaxed and then curled again, feeling the weight of the sword.

“This is… this is crazy…” Hideki whispered as he stared at the sword.  He slowly shuffled to his feet, and stumbled back a step, before he felt the hands of the shadow catch him by the shoulders.  Hideki looked around to realize that the shadow was still holding its own katana, but had sprouted two more arms from its amorphous form to bolster him.

“Sorato-kun… Wh-What is that?” Suu stammered, staring in amazement.

“I don’t know,” said Hideki, “but it’s going to help us.”

The red demon shook its head as it regained its wits, slapping its tongue from side to side before it began to scamper across the floor, its claws scraping the wood as it erratically zigged and zagged toward Hideki.   As it lunged at him again, Hideki swung his sword, and so did his shadow.  A half-dozen blurry images of blades flew in formation with the swing, and the red demon child screamed as it was struck from the air, bleeding from no less than seven slices across its face and body.   Its long tongue fell several feet away, squirming and writhing on the floor, independent of the rest of its body.

The ‘mother’ screeched and began to crawl across the floor toward Hideki, her long arms carrying her as efficiently as legs.  As a long arm reached up toward him, Hideki raised the katana over his head with both hands.  His feet slid across the floor in a sharp step forward, and with a powerful downward strike, he bisected the demon woman’s arm, splitting it from the center of her palm to her elbow.  He didn’t stop, his eyes and his mind changing focus to the giant blue ogre, who ascended the stairs even if it meant having to hunker down under the low ceiling.  He drug his club along the floor before swinging it at Hideki.

“Look out!” Fumi shouted.

“HAAAH!” Hideki cried with a powerful exhale, slashing upward with his sword, followed by a dozen afterimages of blades.  The strikes were powerful enough to deflect the club upward, and embed it deeply in the ceiling, hard enough to knock planks of the roof loose.  The ogre growled and slowly began to tug on its club, trying to free it.

“Hurry!” Fumi said, grabbing Suu’s wrist and pulling her to her feet as they ran toward the now unguarded stairs.  However, when they reached the top of the stairs, Fumi stopped, peering down the steps into the darkness.  At the foot of the steps, the fog from outside was pouring in through the front door, and several dark blue demons were crawling all over the decrepit living room and investigating the rotten steps.  They looked up at Fumi and hissed.  She looked back at Hideki and said, “The demons are here!”

“We’re trapped…” Hideki said with a snarl, slashing at the ogre’s stomach.  The ogre groaned as several cuts sent him staggering back, and he yanked the club from the ceiling before he fell to the floor.  Though the ogre wasn’t dead, he was certainly downed for the moment, and left a gaping hole in the ceiling.

“Give me a lift!” Fumi said as she ran toward Hideki.

“Eh?” Hideki asked, surprised, before he realized there was a hole over their heads.  He crouched down, and before he could even offer his hands, Fumi used his knee to step on and climb up through the opening.  Hideki’s face reddened, and he averted his eyes to not be looking up her skirt as she climbed, regardless of the fact she was wearing leggings.

Once Fumi climbed onto the roof, she turned around and offered her hands, calling back down, “Onishi-kun, you next!”

Suu looked up at Fumi, hesitantly, before reaching up to take her hands.   Suddenly, Suu felt Hideki’s arms wrap around her legs, and she yelped in surprise as he hefted her up off of the ground.   With Fumi’s pulling, they made Suu crawl through the hole with or without her own efforts.

“Is it clear up there?” Hideki asked, before he jumped to grab the edge and began to pull himself up.

“I don’t see any threats,” said Fumi, “but that doesn’t necessarily infer safety.”

“You’ve got the weirdest way of talking,” Hideki grumbled, standing up on the roof.

Fumi glared at him and asked, “What’s so weird about it?”

Hideki looked around, and laid his hand over one of his spiked earphones.  He looked at Fumi and said, “I guess this is all of the help I’m going to get from those operators.  Do you have any other ideas about how we should get back to the real world?”

“There are options but few of them good,” said Fumi, “and almost none of them have a sound logical reasoning besides ‘we haven’t tried them yet’.  I would suggest finding a payphone on this side of things, but I haven’t seen one yet.  Short of that, we could try walking back to Midorioka across the bridge, though I doubt we’ll go unimpeded.”

“Midorioka it is, then,” Hideki said.

Suu spoke up, albeit quietly, and said, “I don’t think I can go…”