Help from the Shadows (Open Novella Contest)

8 (Case, Beginning, Mitsue)

"You sure this is the house, Uncle Chenhua?" Akino questioned skeptically as we stood in front of a mansion.

"Pretty sure," Chenhua nodded as he went to ring the doorbell, but was stopped by Choiseung.

"Be careful, Dad," he told his dad, making Chenhua chuckle as he patted his head, "Don't worry, Choiseung. I can take care of myself." before he rang the doorbell.

TING TONG!

After waiting for a while, the door finally opened to reveal a girl around Natsume's age with light peach hair, brown eyes, and wore the normal junior high school uniform. She blinked upon seeing Ayame.

"Ayame-chan? What's wrong?" she asked her.

"Saki-chan, did you post something on Usuranura, that website that Natsume-chan, Touma-kun and I look at daily?" Ayame interrogated. She frowned, but still nodded, "Yeah, it's quite the interesting blog, all right, but, erm, I saw something unbelievable, that's why."

"Machida-san, we're investigating the Disappearing Vortexes Case," Akino decided to step up. "I'm Kin Akino, and this is Maui Rau, Kam Choiseung and Ren Chenhua. As Natsume, Touma, Akinori and Keisuke are all out of town, we were appointed as new members to be their stand-ins while they're gone. We would like to ask you  questions regarding your post on Usuranura, if that's fine with you."

"Ah, yeah, it is," she smiled at us. "Come on in then." 

Once we entered and settled in the fancy living room, she gave us tea to drink and asked if she could begin her story.

"Sure," we nodded. 

Saki-chan sighed before she began, " Well, I had been accompanying some elementary school kids who wanted to do their project in the mountains, when suddenly we were surrounded by fog. I had shouted out for the kids, but no one responded... until I heard screams of help from them. Then the mist cleared, revealing that I was now all alone."

"That must have been quite frightening," Ayame immediately sympathized.

"Yeah, it was," Saki nodded. "I'm so scared and worried of the kids' well being. I hope that they'll be alright."

"Don't worry, Saki-chan," Choiseung grabbed her hands and smiled at her. "We'll save those kids and bring down whoever took them, so don't worry, okay?"

Saki smiled back, "Thank you, Kam-san."

"No worries, Saki-chan," he nodded.

After that we took our leave.

"It's definitely a Youkai's doing," I declared to the others the moment we were out of Saki's earshot. Choiseung immediately seconded me.

"Well, I guess that our next stop is the mountains then," Rau sighed.

"U-Huh," Ayame nodded in agreement. 

After we went back to get ready for the case, we immediately set off for the train station. At the train station, we ordered tickets to the mountains nearby. Since we still had some time before we boarded, we bought some おべんと (obento = Japanese rice boxes) for the train ride and decided to plan our next move while waiting. 

"Okay, since the mountains are quite unpredictable during the late afternoon, we'll go in batches," Ayame began. "There's me, Mitsue-baa, Akino-san, Rau-san, Choiseung-san, Chenhua-san, and Jorogumo-" 

"Sorry for interrupting, but I'm still wondering why Jorogumo's here with us," Akino noted offhandedly. That made us blink as we all turned to look at the spider Youkai, who was sheepishly smiling, "I wanted to help you guys out."