Stairs [MP100]

Stairs

Reigen somewhat hated jobs like these, the kind that threw them in the middle of the wood in the middle of nowhere. They also often happened to not be in Seasoning City either, of course, they couldn't be.

It always felt like some sort of horror movie set-up, especially seeing they were here for spirit extermination too.

This time it was a man who came to them, saying he had inherited his father's cabin in the woods. Said cabin had been somewhat abandoned in the last decades due to old age and health reasons, but even more in the last one.

He had gone to it to try and see if maybe with some maintenance he could use it for vacations away from the city. Yet, upon coming to the cabin, strange things started to happen, all of which he couldn't find reasonable explanations for these events.

"At least we didn't come out here only because some squirrel had come inside," Reigen had commented to Mob once he had taken care of what was haunting the place. It would have been the cherry on top if it had been something like that.

One of the annoying parts though was the fact that they had to walk a bit over one kilometre in the woods. The path to the cabin was still there, but nature had started to claim it back and it made it impossible for cars to keep driving past a certain point.

But a 20 minutes hike in the wood shouldn't be too much of a problem aside from being annoying. Especially with a path that was still pretty easy to follow despite the lack of care it had received in the past years.

This is why he could only now stand alone on the path, feeling very confused.

He had been talking and commenting about the finished job to Mob when he realised he wasn't receiving any more little replies. This made him stop when he also realised there were no other footsteps aside from his, making him turn around.

Mob wasn't there.

"Mob?" he called out, looking around him with a little frown.

He then looked down, making sure he too was still following the trail, but it was indeed the correct path. Plus, if he had started to walk outside of the trail he assumed Mob would either have still been following him or told him, not keep going on his own. This didn't make any sense.

So he started walking back up the trail again, looking at each side of the wood surrounding the path.

"Mob!" he called out again loudly, worry starting to seep into his voice. "It's not time to play hide and seek, it's getting too dark for that" he added, a short laugh escaping him as he tried to calm his nerve with a little joke.

Yet he received no answer, only the sound of nature and the wind rustling the leaves above him.

And he also couldn't bring himself to believe Mob was trying to prank him right now. Never before the teenager had done anything like this, nor did he think he would suddenly try to do so. It just didn't feel like something Mob would do to anyone.

Some panic started to bloom inside of him at the thought that he had lost his 13 year old employee and student in the woods when it was about to get dark. He had heard about how easy it could be to lose a child in the wood if one wasn't paying enough attention, but he had not expected to lose Mob!!

He ended up deciding to step off the path to check the surrounding woods. Surely Mob could not have gone that far, could he? Although he couldn't tell for just how long he had stopped following him.

He continued calling his name aloud as he walked, looking around him and scanning as best as he could his surrounding. It was a bit hard to do with all the trees and the sun getting lower in the sky too.