NekoMentals!

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Aito, Kurogane, and Damion bolted towards Yurika and Sachiko's screams. Their feet pounded on the floor and all three of them unsheathed their katanas.

"What happened, Yurika?" Damion ran up to Yurika and shook her, bringing her back to her body. He wiped the tears that were streaming down her face using his thumbs. "Are you hurt? Did you find Hisa?"

Yurika nodded and pointed inside, not able to say anything. She put her katana back in her belt and buried her face in her hands while she sobbed. Kurogane walked out of the room from where he was assessing the damage and put his arms around her shoulders, giving her an embrace and consoling her.

Kurogane scavenged everything that he thought was useful from Hisa's backpack and left the rest with her body in the alternate dimension. Among the things he grabbed, the map with the riddle was ultimately the most important.

Sachiko sighed and spoke. "We need to find who did this. I can take a guess who did it, but that doesn't change anything. I don't know how he did it, but we can't sit around and wait anymore. We have to take action."

"Who do you think it was?" Yurika asked quietly, arms around her middle.

Using her arms to prove her point, Sachiko gestured to random spots around the room and the hallway. "Kurogane. As if that wasn't obvious enough."

Yurika glanced at the boy behind her, turned back to her friend and whispered, "It wasn't him. He was with us the whole time. Another thing: a death caused by shadow wouldn't cause the entire room to be painted in Hisa's blood."

"Yurika, listen. Tama can't be the one who did it; she wouldn't kill her own sister, and she would have tried to find the crystal on her own. Maybe Kurogane's shadows used a spare katana that was lying around." Sachiko sighed to herself again and disappeared into the bloody room, mourning the dead woman.

She slumped down onto the floor and into a ball, and Aito sat next to her. "I don't think Kurogane did it. It easily could have been the purple monster."

"How," Yurika blurted out hopelessly in a monotone voice.

Aito hummed. "Well, for starters, it could have been out to kill us instead of Hisa. Or maybe it just wanted the crystal and thought she had it."

"So," Yurika raised her head a little. "You're saying that I was supposed to die and I'm responsible for Hisa's death."

He slapped himself on the forehead and exhaled. "No, Yurika. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't anyone's fault."

~

The group gathered their belongings in the map room and set off, leaving the alternate dimension behind for good. Diana leaped up into Yurika's bag and groomed herself with her paws. Bubbles slept in Sachiko's short pocket.

Without Hisa, they didn't know what to do, where to go; they only knew that they had to stop Tama and the purple monster. Yurika felt a significant pull to the completed crystal and the images inside of it, but she couldn't figure out why.

"Let's camp here for the night. We're far enough away from both civilization and Tama's house; the purple thing shouldn't find us," Damion suggested to the others. "It's just about sunset anyway."

Everyone helped pitch the tent and then unpacked the sleeping bags once the tent was finished. Sachiko made a small fire from the loose twigs laying around on the ground so that the group could warm up and roast some hotdogs for dinner.

Soon after dinner, Sachiko went inside the tent and fell asleep first– feelings were not things that she wanted to deal with. Aito called the first watch and insisted that the others go to sleep. Damion instructed Sachiko's brother to wake him up in six hours.