“Gaaargh!”
Forget what I said. The place was terrifying.
The first floor had images of Tenchido characters in funny Halloweenesque costumes flying around, still very much within the confines of child-friendly. But on the second floor, everything changed.
We were charged by life-sized zombie-ghost things, growling ghoulishly as they came for us, and making me scream louder than I’m pretty sure I’ve ever screamed since the very moment I was born. I used to think that haunted houses weren’t scary so long as you remembered that it was all fake and understood the mechanisms. Those turned out to be the arrogant words of a man whose only experience with haunted houses was the more lame varieties.
I needed to remember my goal in life—that was, becoming a professional in the world of fiction. I should know high-quality stories could sometimes have a way bigger effect on our users than anything in the natural world. That’s what made them so enjoyable, and what made them worth creating. This was a haunted house built to a world-class level of realism by some of the world’s most talented creators. Of course it was going to be scary.
Having said that, these ghosts were being played by human beings. Human beings I might just be able to reason with.
“Um, I was wondering if you could go a little easier on me so I don’t have a heart attack?”
“Ugaaargh!”
“You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry for asking!”
No sooner had negotiations with the ghost in front of me begun than they’d broken down.
I had to give props to the actor on this one. Even when I tried to tell myself it was just some guy in a costume, I couldn’t see it as anything other than a monster—one who couldn’t understand a word I was saying.
Wait, what if he genuinely believed he was a ghost?
“What are you doing, Aki? Are you stupid or something?”
“Please, don’t look at me like that! Have some compassion!”
How the heck was Mashiro not as terrified as me right now? She had to be messed up. Not only wasn’t she screaming, but she looked totally calm.
I followed a few steps after Mashiro, looking this way and that at our surroundings as we went. I was determined not to miss a single trick.
We were in a hallway. Japan had a lot of outdoor hallways, the kind apartment buildings have, where there’s a railing out in the open air. This one was fully indoors, like in those fancy high-rise apartment buildings or hotels.
In other words, we were in a closed-off space, giving the controllers of this place free rein to make things as scary as they pleased. The lights flickered constantly, the walls were full of holes, and sometimes the doors to either side of us would burst open and a ghost would jump out.
This truly was the most hellish place on Earth.
“Hm.”
“Gah! Wh-What’s wrong?! Why are you stopping?!”
“Shush! Look over there.”
“What, in front of the stairs to the next floor? ...Urk!”
At the end of the corridor was a fire door to the right-hand side. It was left open a crack, just enough for a single person to pass through. I could just about make out the stairs leading up through that gap.
So we’d made it through the second floor, and were now able to head up to the third. Great. There was just one gigantic problem.
“Like this place wasn’t creepy enough already!”
Right next to that small fire door was a person. They were sitting in a chair with their head drooping, but you didn’t need to be an evil genius with an IQ of 300 to tell that it was another ghost, what with the soot in its ashen hair, and its arms and legs that looked like dying tree bark.
“The only way out, and it’s guarded by a corpse. You can tell they’re really upping the fear factor here. Ten out of ten!”
“Stop getting so excited. Damn, what do you think’ll wake it up? If we can work that out, we’ll be able to get past.”
“What are you muttering about?”
“Ngh! Wait up, Mashiro! I was trying to come up with a plan!”
She hadn’t even hesitated; she was right past the ghost and already at the bottom of the stairs. She turned to me with a grimace. “Shut up. You’re being too loud.”
“Of course I am! You just walked past this ghost that’s ready to jump out at us like it was nothing!”
“Yeah, because I was excited to see it come to life. But it didn’t move even when I got close, which toyed with my expectations... Now there’s something new and exciting!” Mashiro shot me a thumbs-up. I was kind of in awe at how my girlfriend could make this haunted house look like child’s play.
Oh right, she’s not my girlfriend anymore.
“I guess we now know it doesn’t move, so that’s good.”
“Yeah. It works the first time, but it’ll spoil it if they try to pull this off again.”
“As far as I’m concerned, they can do it as many times as they want.”
Anyway, it seemed I had the all clear to go ahead.
I’m aware it’s not a very chivalrous thing to let a girl be the canary in a coal mine, but I was honestly relieved that Mashiro had stepped on the potential land mine first to see whether it would trigger or not.
Thinking of canaries, a totally irrelevant thought struck me about Canary. If you think of an editor as someone who reads and touches up a manuscript to make sure it’s not gonna bomb when it gets published, then wasn’t an editor sort of like a canary in a coal mine? Kiraboshi Kanaria’s pen name might have been deeper than I originally thought.
That was what ran through my head as I followed Mashiro and passed by the ghost.
Crash!
“Wha...?”
I turned around to see that the ghost had collapsed to the floor, its dark hair spread out in messy knots. Its withered limbs were scuttling like spider legs as it crawled its way towards me.
“Gimme...”
“U-Um... Good afternoon.”
“So lonely... Gimme your girlfriend...”
“Wait, this ghost wakes up because of jealousy?!”