Human Adjacent - Megumi Fushiguro x READER

Chapter 2

(okay this is probably going to be a bad chapter as well cause it's gonna be transitional. So strap in ladies, gentlemen, and those of you who are both or neither, this is gonna be a rough one)

(Also I'm giving this story a lot of clichés literally just for the sake of simplicity so I don't have to work insanely hard on this I'm lazy lmao so be prepared to cringe.)

Time skip to a few weeks later

It had gotten colder, signifying that winter was creeping in on the city. I could feel the cold concrete through the soles of my boots, and the air was making its way in through the arm and neck holes of my puffy coat. I step into school and sigh lightly. I really love indoor temperature control. However, as I'm on my way up the stairs to my first class, I notice something. The halls are empty, and not just been emptied empty, like they should be ten minutes after the first morning bell rings, they were empty empty. I hadn't noticed at first, it was too cold for me to ride my bike and I had underestimated the time it would take me to walk to school, so I was about ten minutes late. Naturally this led to the assumption that everybody was just in class. But this was wrong, there were no stragglers that always landed in class at least a few minutes late, no laughter echoing from the bathrooms, no chatter or teacher's voices inside the classrooms. I turn around and shiver despite the comfortable heat of the school. What the hell is going on.

I click my phone on gently, the home screen says it, clear as day. Wednesday, 8:12 AM. It's a school day, so where the hell is everybody?

I turn nervously on my heel and begin my way back down the stairs, slowly. I'm almost to the bottom, about ten feet away from the big glass double doors to the outside when I hear them. Pounding footsteps, an amused voice shouting. "Take the right Fushiguro! Cut it off!" I was a single step into the hallway to get ready to walk towards the door when I saw it. About twenty meters down the hallway, a fat, tall, blue creature, with two eyes that were so big they looked like they were on the verge of falling out of it's head, and two that looked too small for any living creature to use. It had wispy strands of gray and brown hair falling out of its ugly wrinkled skin, waddling back and fourth on two legs at a petrifying pace. From it, I hear a mangled voice making out words I can't understand. And God the hallway smells awful, how had I not noticed the moment I stepped foot in the school? My palm finds my mouth as I feel the sudden need to vomit in fear and disgust wash over me. That isn't a person.

I step back into the stair hall, panicking. Squeezing my eyes shut and trying to force the nausea back down my throat, but every time it recedes it comes back twice as strong. There has to be some logical explanation for this, right? The school is empty, because they rented out campus to shoot a movie. No idiot, then it would've been in your school email when you checked it last night, or someone would've told you. Stuff like that would be big news, plus, why on a weekday at eight AM? I force myself to take deep breaths and pry my eyes open, still, I was facing the wall on the other side of the stairwell, I was grateful for the concrete walls around me, but still, if danger came close, the only place I would be able to run is up, and that's a cage waiting to happen.

"Sensei?" Shit, why does that voice sound so familiar? "Why is it going that way?" He sounded nervous, and I hear the garbled voice coming close. It's going this way for me. It knows I'm here, which means I've got to be dead.

"Guess you'll just need to find out!" The first voice says, like he's having fun, like this is all a game. My knees threaten to give out and I set my bag next to me as quietly as possible, trying to make sure the zippers don't jangle when it hits the stair. I squeeze my eyes shut and think, my hand forcing hot air back into my nose with every silent heave I breathe. There's a classroom about two feet to my right, but if everyone was evacuated before they could enter the building, it would most likely be locked. But teachers get to school early, don't they?

Risk and reward. The ideas had the same reward, safety, except one risk is known, one unknown. Generally, you would take the known risk, run upstairs, and corner yourself, crossing your fingers for safety and that whatever the hell is out there doesn't follow you. But if it did, I'm cornered. However, the class next door was used for chemistry, which means the windows open, so would it be safer to lunge into the open hallway and expose myself in the hope that the door would be unlocked. I open my eyes. It's close.

Before I get the chance to make a decision I see a dark blur out of the corner of my eye, I stumble and my heel connects with the stair as I try to back away, instinct telling me to fight, brain saying run. My eyes widen. That's why I recognized his voice. There he is, his spiky black hair swaying as he whips his head around to check something down the hall. His grip felt bruising around my wrist as he yanked me up the stairs, I stumbled for a moment before adapting to the pace. He didn't let me fall when I tripped, but he didn't really check if I was okay either, he'd tilt his head to check that my arm was still attached to my body, then force me back into a balanced state and start sprinting again.

I didn't have to look back to know why.

I'm not an idiot, I can hear the garbled words behind me, probably less than three steps back, saying something about a bento box that I couldn't quite catch. I feel my shoulder pop as I'm pulled around a corner, down a hall as we reach the top of the stairs. We rip around a corner and I feel my back slammed against the cool brick wall, leaving me gasping for air as all of my breath is violently forced from my lungs. The boy forces me upright without hesitation, my spine straight, caged between him and the wall. He was close enough that I could hardly see other than bits of light in a halo around his dark uniform and spiky hair.

I hear the groaning of the creature stop for a split second and it feels like time has slowed, I can hear every breath I take, blood rushing in my ears, and I can't tell if the racing heartbeat pounding all around me is the boy's or my own. Then time starts again and I can hear something that sounds like a shirt being ripped, and quiet growling, mixed with a couple of soft barks here and there like the sound of stray dogs fighting over a scrap of food from a dumpster. The mumbles of the monster grow into agonized howl's and shrieks.

I crane my neck to the side, attempting to look over his shoulder to see what is happening to the left of me. I feel his hand come up and he places it on my cheek, lightly pushing my head back to face him, leaving his large palm slightly cupped there to obstruct my vision.

"Don't look," he whispers gently. "You don't want to see that."

I slump a little bit, feeling the need to pass out, vomit, and cry all at once. I don't mind, this time, when his palm wraps a little looser than before around my bicep to hold me upright, my head lolling against his chest. I don't know what was happening over there, but he was right.

I don't think I want to.

1444 Words.

Yeah like I said lots of clichés and such. I'm gonna make an effort to make it as slow burn as possible but I am extremely impatient and this is gonna be more casually written than the other fanfics I'm writing atm so I hope its still fine lmao. Anyways, have a good day everyone :)

-Chaos