V͇̿I͇̿P͇̿Bཽuཽcཽkཽaཽr

1

"You must have done something to cause problems."
Frothy shakes his head and sighs sadly, "You don't understand."
Kouta frowns in confusion and asks, "How?"
"I'm sure you can guess what happened when you were little. Your dad, well, he's not your biological dad, right?"
“Oh yeah…He’s actually my uncle. My biological mom left me to live with him when I was born. He raised me since my real dad couldn't care less.”
“That sounds bad, don't you think?”
"Sometimes, but that’s alright. The only thing that matters to me now is protecting myself."
"You know that your mother abandoned you. It’s not right for someone to leave their child like that."
"Hey! Stop calling her that!" Kouta snaps, clenching his fists tightly at his sides. “She didn't abandon me. She tried to save herself! She had to!” His voice cracks slightly with each sentence. He feels tears starting to form in the corner of his eyes. “And besides, everyone knows that my dad never cared about me. My mom wanted to give birth to me, but she found someone else to carry me instead and she ended up giving me away.”
"Didn' your real mom love you? Wasn' she trying to save you too?"
"Of course she loved me!" Kouta shouts furiously. He can feel anger burning within his chest. "But she's gone now. I'm sorry. I wish there was something I could do...some way to fix it." Tears are already streaming freely down Kouta's face.
"Your father cares about you very much. Everyone does. You can talk to him about this." Frothy says gently, walking closer to Kouta, trying to calm the boy down.
"I can't! Because then maybe he will really believe me when I tell him that mom isn't coming home ever again!" Kouta cries out angrily.
"Maybe, but what about tomorrow night? If you want to talk to him about this today, you must do so. Do you promise?"
For several seconds, silence fills the air as both boys stand frozen in place. After a few minutes, Kouta finally whispers, "Yea..I promise."
"Good. Follow me then. I'll show you where the bathrooms are. The rest of you come too."
Without another word, Frothy leads the two boys down a corridor. On the wall of the hallway, there is an illuminated sign above it stating, 'Bathrooms'.
They pass by a number of doors on the floor until they reach one at the end of the hall. The door has a small window set high into the center of the door frame, through which a stream of bright light emanates onto the floor. It takes a moment for their eyes to adjust to the light, after being used to the dimly lit halls. Once they do, the four boys notice that it is quite cramped inside of the room, with four beds placed against the walls. Each bed has multiple blankets laid atop it, as if someone had been sleeping inside them recently, though there are no people lying in it. The boys immediately recognize each bed as having a figure laying in it. The closest one belongs to a man with black hair. His shirt and pants covered with dust and dirt.
“Is this place haunted or what?!” Kouta screams out as he backs away from one of the beds. “This looks way worse than I thought it did..there’s no one in any of those beds, is there..?”
The other boys all share confused glances at one another, “No, of course not!” Frothy laughs.
The other one says slowly, “Well there certainly doesn’t seem to be any ghosts in any of these rooms. So..why don’t we start searching the bedrooms..see if we find anything.”
“What?! But, I’m tired!!”
“We won’t go far. You’ll have plenty of time to sleep later, okay? We need to get rid of whatever spirits or whatever that is lurking in this house.”
“Ugh..fine”
Kouta groans in frustration, following behind Frothy and his group of friends as they make their way down the long narrow corridor. They eventually stop in front of a door in the middle of the hallway with a large hole in the middle of it. Frothy reaches toward the doorknob but pulls back immediately.
“There’s blood.