The Voodoo Club (self-insert #3)

Chapter 6

By evening, I was feeling considerably better.

After having a mug of tea (courtesy of John) I sat in a corner of the conference room with my laptop and began to look at my notes. The connection between the first desk victim, Murayama-san, and the track team was that neither believed in Kasai's power. That itself was enough to lay evidence in the direction of the 'Gellerini', but it wasn't convincing enough: the hitogatas for both phenomenon were vague. Couldn't Kasai at least make a hitogata for Murayama-san? After all, the girl had confronted her directly.

Naru had been the one to support Kasai and had been the kindest after Ubusuna-sensei and Mai. Why would she want to hurt him? Mentally shrugging, I moved onto the puzzle that was the aforementioned bio teacher and pulled up the articles I'd downloaded.

Three articles later, I knew who the Jusha was. It was all so childishly easy.

"Nira." Lin was standing in front of me, but I barely noticed him. I was busy scribbling down all of the evidence in one of Naru's notebook.

"Hmmm?" I asked absently, drawing an arrow to connect two ideas.

"Naru and Taniyama-san are missing."

"Together? Good for them." Someone scoffed at that. Ayako, maybe, but probably Masako.

He crouched in front of me and grabbed hold of the pen, forcing me to stop. "I need you to focus. Where could they be?" He demanded.

I blanched, trying to round up my scrambled brain cells. "Uh. Give me a mo'. Um..." I drummed my fingers against the notebook, trying to think. "They're gone, missing, we don't know where they are, no one remembers where they were last seen, you're looking for them...Mai was looking for hitogatas." I brightened. "She was looking for hitogata!"

Everyone looked quite unimpressed.

"Sorry. We all were. Though I don't know what Naru was up to." I laughed wryly. "He'll be with Mai, wherever she is. Looking for hitogata? Looking for Mai?"

Mai?! What are you doing?!

"There was a little girl." I whispered.

"Taniyama-san?" Lin pressed.

"No. Oh, God. We need rope and a flashlight. They'd fallen into the manhole in the unfinished section of the campus." I staggered to my feet, leaning heavily on Ayako as the world spun and my vision darkened. "Quickly. You'll also find the rest of the hitogatas down there."

"Easy, easy." Ayako dragged me to a chair and forced me to down a glass of water. Once I could see, the room was empty aside from us and Masako. "It's alright. Lin and the boys just went."

"I have to..."

"Sit."

I sat.

The rescue party returned about an hour later, along with a sack. Lin dumped them unceremoniously onto the table, pouring out a stream of wooden dolls. Bou-san edged away from them as if they might start swarming us. "Wow. Whoever it is, I'm impressed that they actually made this many hitogata." He remarked. The hitogatas clattered as Naru dug through them. "I didn't even think to look in the manhole..."

"Mai. Nira." Naru said suddenly, holding out two hitogata. Mai took hers, and after a pause I did the same. "My hitogata...and Yoshino-sensei's were also found in there."

"So? This should stop the power of the Zuso, right?" Bou-san inquired.

"Correct." Naru took a seat, letting out a heavy sigh. I squinted at him—maybe it was my eyes, but he looked a little pale. "All we need to do now is throw the hitogata in a river or burn them. But...I wonder if this will stop the Jusha..." His eyelids drooped, then fell.