Nighttime. A schoolhouse. The exact sort of place where countless ghost stories had been set since time immemorial. Rumors about music rooms and nurse’s offices were particularly prone to center around spooky supernatural happenings...and for people like me—which is to say, chicken-hearted cowards who ended up unable to sleep after just watching the trailer for a horror film—they were, without exaggeration, tremendously difficult places to be at night, even under the best of circumstances.
The cultural festival’s after-party was still in full swing, so access to the schoolhouse wasn’t currently restricted. I probably wasn’t the only one inside—a few people would be loitering here and there in the hallways and classrooms, most likely gazing out the windows at the bonfire. Some of them would be taking advantage of the dark of night to, er...spend a few intimate moments with each other, let’s say. I, however, was desperately, frantically praying that just for now, just while I was passing by, nobody would make any sounds or reveal any hints that they were around whatsoever!
“Please, no ghosts... No ghosts...” I muttered under my breath as I timidly braved the school’s hallways with only my cell phone’s light to guide me.
Crash!
“Hyeeek?!”
What was that?! I definitely just heard something! Was that one of those ghost sounds?! I know for a fact that when you hear a weird sound in a place like this when nobody else is around, it’s basically guaranteed to be a ghost thing! They’re, like, those weird sounds that you hear when you’re home alone!
Okay, so maybe they’re not supernatural happenings after all, and the truth is just that when you’re not alone the people around you make enough noise to drown out all sorts of little pops and creaks that happen all the time but you can totally hear then when you’re the only one around, and they’re really caused by changes in atmospheric pressure and humidity and gradually deteriorating furniture and stuff and have nothing to do with ghosts or anything supernatural at all, so it’s all totally natural and has nothing to do with departed humans doing their best to contact the living and absolutely not curse or haunt them, nope, not any sort of threat whatsoever, and anyway schools like this get used for decades on end so of course little bits and pieces would be worn out all over the place and of course they’d just naturally make sounds from time to time which of course have nothing to do with ghosts since ghosts don’t exist in the first place, so everything’s totally fine and no matter how many times you look you won’t see anything ghosty and you’ll be just fine because everything’s fine and—
Clunk!
“Gyaaah?!”
Nope! Whatever that noise was, “the gradual degradation of the building” and “spontaneous noises brought about by ambient conditions” absolutely cannot explain it!!!
“It’s all right, Yotsuba!”
My inner angel!
“Didn’t your little monologue already cover this crap? You know there’s people watching the bonfire from in here—you said it yourself!”
And my inner devil! I actually got so scared that my inner angel and devil were dispatched to reassure me! I can always count on them!
Crack!
“Bwaugh?!” my inner angel and my inner devil yelped in unison as they flinched away from yet another inexplicable sound! And since both of them were imaginary beings born from my own mind, it goes without saying that I did the same. I was, after all, extremely timid and easily startled by ghos—I mean, by perfectly ordinary noises brought about by a building’s gradual degradation and other natural factors!
“Yotsuba? The school rules are very specific about not running in the hallways, but it’s nighttime, and that means that the rules do not currently apply. Run away as fast as possible, right this instant.”
Is that really how this works, inner angel?!
“If anything gets in your way, bowl it over and keep running!”
What do you mean “anything,” inner devil?! There’s nothing here to get in my way at all! I can’t see anything, anyway! B-But then again, just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about, does it...?!
“...uch.”
“!!!”
A-A voice?!
“Y-Yotsuba!”
“Haul ass!”
Spurred by the terrified voices of my inner angel and devil, I took off down the corridor at an all-out sprint.