Further warnings: focused entirely on Fuji and Tezuka

Author is no native English speaker (always glad to accept corrections)

Angst

Please enjoy!

6. Sarabande

The ghost’s malevolent smirk left Tezuka fearing the worst. His heart continued pounding loudly, even as the door magically shut again and he was left alone in the rain, clutching Fuji’s limp body to his chest.

‘Let this be a nightmare.’ he prayed, ‘Let this be anything but reality.’

But the rain kept falling, pasting his hair to his head, running in cold trails over his face, soaking into his clothes that had long since lost any warmth they ever possessed. Shivering, he leaned forward, blindly reaching for the book bag.

A cell phone. Call home first, and then a warm shelter, a cup of tea, his bed – to close his eyes, to forget, to escape from this horror. Somebody to take the responsibility off his shoulders, somebody to look after Fuji, somebody to hand him a warm blanket…

With badly trembling hands he flipped the cell phone open, water droplet on his glasses distorting his sight atrociously – when he heard a noise.

The first noise this evening that sounded perfectly normal, sounded like ordinary civilization where ghosts didn’t exist and haunted houses belonged into children’s books or bad movies. A car was approaching – he saw the headlights cutting through the yet incomplete darkness.

He was far too exhausted to marvel at the car’s beauty or that it came to stop in front of them. Relief flooded his body, weakening his knees – for a moment his vision whitened completely.

Then he heard steps approaching, blinked repeated to clear his swimming sight and found a rather distracted and worried Fuji Yumiko hurrying into their direction.

“Tezuka-kun…” she gasped, white-faced, “Are you alright? What happened? Where is my br …Syusuke!”

She hurried past Tezuka, crouching down in front of her brother’s motionless form with trembling lips. When she reached out a hand Tezuka heard himself speaking in a voice that was far too calm to belong to himself.

“He should be alright. He is only running a slight fever, so he should be okay.”

Yumiko, having registered the unusual warmth emitting from her younger brother’s body, nodded and turned to Tezuka, somewhat relieved, yet the worry hadn’t been banished.

“What happened, Tezuka-kun? What made…” she abruptly bit her lip, “Never mind.”

With a frown she looked at the mansion, disgust warring with other, undefined emotions on her face, before she gave only a slight shake of her head.

“Never mind.” she repeated, maybe more for her own sake than Tezuka’s, who was too tired to take note of her peculiar behaviour. Otherwise he might have noted something like regret flashing in her eyes, the unhappy downturn of her lips or the way she had to force herself to turn away from the building.

“Let’s get you both warmed up properly. We can talk then.”

In a matter of minutes they had collected their school bags and climbed into the car. Fuji bundled up into blankets, stretched out in the backseat, his condition unchanged, while Tezuka had claimed one remaining, blue-checked blanket and the passenger seat for himself. In silence, he watched Yumiko steer out of the lonely area.

Night had fallen completely when they left the forgotten, old settlement behind.

Tezuka raised an eyebrow, but nodded in acquiescence.

She sighed. “Did you encounter the ghost in a smaller room upstairs? One that hasn’t been in use for a long time?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.” Tezuka replied carefully, taken aback by that question’s preciseness, “But yes, we were in a room upstairs.”

“Why did you go upstairs?”

Tezuka shrugged. There’d been no specific reason he recalled. “Fuji-kun asked what was upstairs.”

He wondered if he should comment on his team mate’s alien behaviour. How he’d been so harried to get upstairs, how he had practically run away…

“Was my brother acting strange?”

It was frightening how much that woman, that was barely older than Tezuka himself, knew without having been there. Just maybe she only knew her brother too well – but Tezuka didn’t dare to inquire, fearing the true answer.

In response to her question he simply nodded, feeling it wasn’t his place to give the details. Yumiko, however, appeared satisfied with his abridged version.

“Were there…” she started, casually switching lanes to take the exit to downtown Tokyo, “Were there markings on the ground?”

“There were some characters on the paper…” Tezuka said, and Yumiko cut him off abruptly, “On the paper? You mean the paper we left there yesterday evening?”

“Yes those.” Tezuka affirmed, wondering why he felt as if he was giving the wrong answer. Yumiko silently bit her lip, casting a worried look at her brother’s pale face in the review mirror.

“There were no markings on the ground otherwise?” she questioned.

“No.” to the best of Tezuka’s recollection the ground had been free of any strange or visible emblems, “I didn’t see any.”

She nodded, looking even more concerned then previously.

“The voice Syusuke was talking in was a female’s, wasn’t it?”

That kind of knowledge would have frightened Tezuka deeply had he been more awake at that moment. Dimly, he acknowledged that something strange was going on, that supernatural forces were at work again – but he couldn’t bring himself to care after everything that had happened today.

After his tiny nod of confirmation Yumiko continued. “What happened then? How did you get out?”

“We…” Tezuka had to gather his wits here, “When Fuji had… well, he collapsed and the ghost turned to me. I …”

“Did all you could to survive.” Yumiko filled in for him, eyeing the scratches that had only stopped bleeding fifteen minutes ago, “And it was a narrow affair.” she stated firmly.

Tezuka would have protested, but he knew when to keep his silence. “Like that, yes.” ,he said instead, “I left the house … and a bit later I saw a strange fog drifting out and well, went in, fetched Fuji and left again.”

Saying it like this made it all sound horribly unspectacular. All the emotional aspects – dread, horror, desperation – were lost completely. Still, it seemed as if Yumiko understood, even without the right words from his part.

“Which was an incredibly foolish and risky thing to do, but I’m grateful to you nonetheless. Anyways…” she abruptly brought the car to stop at a traffic light. “As you might have realized, that fog was the ghost in another form. That spirit isn’t bound tightly to the house, after all.”

Tezuka broke the ensuing silence just when the light switched to green.

“That black box we retrieved… what was in it?”

“Ah, that one?” Yumiko asked, pulling into a residential area, “It works like a camera. We usually use it to get a look at our ghost, but considering how powerful this one was I wouldn’t be surprised if we won’t see anything.”

Before she could fall into contemplative silence again, Tezuka cleared his throat and changed the topic to something far more dear to his heart. “Ano… is Fuji going to be okay?” he asked, hating himself for sounding that uncertain.

A slightly tired, but warm smile greeted him. “He should be. Syusuke’s never been fond of being possessed and with his cold that must have been enough to knock him out.”

It was enough to sooth the worst of his concerns, but Tezuka wondered why Yumiko didn’t appear as relieved as her words reflected. Before long, however, the car turned into a familiar street, where every second window shone in a warm, golden hue. Curtains drawn, televisions running, people moving about – the last remnants of that cold, lonely feeling disappeared from his veins as they neared his house.

“Thank you for being such a good friend to my brother.” Yumiko said suddenly, looking straight ahead while bringing the car to a stop in front of his home.

A little confused, Tezuka inclined his head nonetheless. But his home was just outside, his bed a mere couple of footsteps away, so he wasn’t up for conversation any longer. Tomorrow was another day, tomorrow, maybe he’d be able to make something out of this situation, but right now he only wanted to collapse into his bed.

He was on autopilot when he exchanged the formal goodbyes with Yumiko, even though they appeared superfluous in light of their situation. And only when he disappeared inside the house she drove off, after letting her wistful gaze linger a bit longer at the welcoming family home.

‘Only a little longer.’ she mumbled to herself, ‘Be his friend only a little longer, Tezuka-kun.’

On to Chapter 7~