The boy who walks over - “Homura Kodaka, second-year! I’m with the school newspaper,” he introduces himself - seems…off. He smiles politely, but he has the kind of face that makes you think he knows something you don't, and you can't even pinpoint why. Black hair flicks out in all directions, and striking, ice-blue eyes (wait, are those contacts…? They look way too perfect to be real) follow the every move of his two upperclassmen; he looks between them, glances down for a moment, and then focuses his gaze on Rocky.

  Shiori presses her hands together in front of her face.

  “Cut to the chase,” Rocky sighs out loud as he lifts himself off of the lockers he's made into his home for the past half hour, if only to put space between him and her. Homura grins like he's just been given a million yen, playing with a silver ring on his left thumb.

  “Don't suppose I could take up, say, half an hour of your time?” He closes his eyes with a hopeful hum - the very picture of a demand trying to pretend it isn't one. Rokuro suppresses a groan.

  “What's in it for me?”

  For a moment, Shiori could swear he met her eyes, but Homura doesn't miss a beat. “Mm, I was hoping you’d say that.” Somehow, she’s getting a bad feeling… “Weeeell, I hear on the grapevine you’ve been looking into the bus crash. Something about seeing a…ghost in the gardens?”

  Rocky’s back stiffens, shoulders tensing - Shiori feels that sense of dread she was getting start to crystallise in her gut. Apparently, that was all the response he wanted. “I knew it,” he smiles, clapping his hands together, “just one little interview, that's all I ask! I’m looking into occult sightings at the school, you see-”

  “Forget it,” the delinquent cuts him off. He’s taller than Homura - tall enough to loom over him, especially as he straightens his body and broadens his stance like a cat puffing out its fur - but it doesn't seem to intimidate him any. “I don't believe in that shit. Get outta my face.”

  Sighing out loud, Homura animatedly shakes his head, throwing his hands up in an exaggerated shrug. “Well, you’re perfectly within your rights to refuse,” he starts slowly, “but, I do have a journalistic responsibility to report on things that happen in the school, and…well, if the new transfer student starts poking around about a dead girl, and the next day he's seen skulking around the bathrooms after another girl got strangled half to death in them, it sounds a bit…”

  “Fine,” Rokuro huffs, “I get the picture. I’ll give you your fucking interview.” The scariest glare he could possibly muster, and Homura doesn't even flinch. Glancing quickly to Shiori, Rocky shoots her an apologetic look, but she seems to be just as shaken as he is. As she nods her head, he can only assume she's up for the detour - which Homura looks fucking delighted to lead them on.

  “-and this,” their punchable tour guide announces, dragging them through a pair of fancy, Western-style double doors, “is our archive room!”

  Instantly, Rocky feels claustrophobic; it’s not even that small of a space, but it's definitely getting used for more than it should be. Old editions of the school newspaper are packed like sardines into huge bookshelves, lining every wall in wood, paper and the unmistakable smell of ink. A huge camera set-up takes up the majority of the far end of the room, the star of the show itself standing atop a tripod pointed at a set of comfy-looking leather seats around a circle-shaped table; the rest is mostly just desks, stacked high with even more papers and covered in so many ancient coffee rings that it's hard to tell where the espresso ends and the wood grain begins. Homura ushers them to the back, and - despite Rocky’s increasingly withering glares - ignites the red, blinking “RECORDING” light on the camera with a touch of a few buttons. He doesn't even give his victims time to protest, slinging himself into a chair opposite and lounging back like a daytime TV presenter.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “So,” he hums out loud, leaning over the edge of his chair to pull a file off a shelf, “tell me, what do you think about these?” Homura slides the paper folder across the table, expectantly; Rocky narrows his eyes.

  “I thought this was an interview.”

  “It is! It is. Just have a look, you’ll see.”

  Suspicious, Rokuro unfolds the oversized envelope and sifts through the contents. “SANA HARUKAWA: STILL MISSING” headlines the first one - a paper from twenty years ago? - and the next is much the same: Yasuko Tachibana, Hanami Kibe, Karin Munezawa, Shimo Sato… It just keeps going. All students, all found dead or injured in the first-floor bathrooms, all either strangled or covered in their own blood, and all from the time between 1965 to 1972.

  “That's fucked up,” Rocky raises a brow, looking over the top of the papers, “but this ain't got nothin’ to do with me. I ain't a cold case detective.”

  “Mm, I bet you aren't,” why the fuck does he sound so smug? “I think you’re in a position to have some very enlightening insights, though, Mr. Tanaka.”

  Homura’s gaze, once again, seems to look right past Rocky, and stare down Shiori; when he follows it, the delinquent’s fingers curl into a tight grip on his oversized pants. She’s staring at the headlines, hands over her mouth like she's trying not to throw up - witnessing her so pale and shaking, Rokuro tries to be subtle when he puts his hand on her arm, but Homura’s watchful eye feels like it catches everything.

  Looking back across the table, Rokuro stares - a silent interrogation. Homura is like a master Poker-player, but everyone has their tells. Rocky feels his teeth grit together.

  “You’re accusing me of tryin’ to kill her,” he bluntly cuts to the chase, “what, ‘cause I was standin’ in a hallway? You're pointin’ the finger at me on fuck all.” Getting to his feet, Rocky doesn't even try to hide it when he throws out his hand and puts a barrier between this smarmy prick and the horrified ghost-girl behind him. “This “interview” is over. Tell your newspaper buddies that, if this gets published, I’ll fuck ‘em up.”

  “Er, Mr. Tanaka, we’re still on camera-”

  “Even better.”

  Pushing through the ocean of desks like Moses parting the Red fucking Sea, Rocky takes Shiori by the wrist and gets the hell out of there. There's absolutely nothing Homura can do to stop them, and - judging by how he doesn't even try - he knows it.

  “I don't know, I just-...I think he might have been onto something, maybe…?”

  “Don't tell me you think I strangled that chick, too,” Rocky groans, talking to Shiori between bites of shitty, school-store, probably-frozen curry bread. Apparently, however Homura got news of his godawful reputation, the rest of the school did, too - the halls seem to vacate the second he gets to them, but that's not entirely a bad thing. Nobody to stop them, nobody to slow them down, and nobody to overhear – no matter how much he says, out loud, to a girl who's already long dead.

  “Not about that,” she quickly clarifies, “I just think-… The cases he showed us- what if they're actually related?”

  Raising an eyebrow, Rocky thinks for a moment. “The latest one was still twenty years old,” he finally points out, “you sure about that?”

  Though hesitant, Shiori nods her head. “One of the names- I recognised it. “Karin Munezawa” - it's the same spelling as Erimi's family name.”

  Rocky opens his mouth to reply, but he doesn't actually get to before a sudden scream pulls them to a stop. Ahead of them, the infamous first-floor bathroom door looms under glaring ceiling-lights. It might just be context filling in the blanks of his imagination, but the whole place suddenly reeks of death and resentment - the girl who comes dashing out at the speed of light seems to agree.

  Shouting for help at the top of her lungs and drenched in what he really hopes isn't what he thinks it is, she dashes blindly like she's running for her life, and stumbles directly into the third-year boy standing right in the middle of the hall. A godawful smell fills his nose as she balls her fists into his oversized shirt; her body is shaking, there are tears in her eyes, but all he can think of is the fact that her uniform shirt is stained yellow.