Night of the Living Dead: Anita and Tani (Part 3) - *The Closet*

Something perhaps not often thought about, is the fact that ninjas don’t wear shoes. Sneaking up on a target would be awfully difficult if their footsteps could be heard from a meter away. With that in mind, both Tani and Anita have left their shoes behind in class 3-D, and are cautiously making their way through the halls in their socks.

Moving as slowly as they are, the noises of their movements are almost non-existent, the school is so quiet that the faint echoes of their clubmate’s voices even reach them from within the auditorium and gym all the way from the lower floors.

The creeping silence makes the thought of a sudden noise all the more terrifying.

Tani peeks his head around the corner towards the stairway leading up to the 5th floor where the computer science room is; seeing that the coast is clear, a militaristic hand gesture is used to prompt Anita to follow him. The two make their way towards the stairs, knowing full well that their ordeal would be over upon reaching the top. HQ is tantalizingly close.

Their delicate walk progresses into hurried shuffles across the smooth floor. Although not daring to look behind them, the overwhelming sense of something nipping at their heels compels them forward with the force of flames propelled by a strong breeze.

Only a few feet away from the first flight of stairs now, and the two share a passing glance of relief.

Unfortunately, that relief is violated by the abrasive sound of thuds coming from up above them.

The two stop dead in their tracks.

BONG

This first noise is loud and not immediately decipherable.

BONG-BONG

The noise gets closer.

But where is it coming from?

Although surrounded by darkened hallways on either side of them, nothing is approaching from either direction.

BONG-BONG-BONG!

The noise coming from the stairs races towards them, rattling off in quick chaotic intervals.

Something flies over the railing, bangs off the wall and catapults itself off the last flight stairs closest to them.

“Eeep!”

“Wuah!”

The two jump away from each other and dodge the object, only to find that the item rolling on the ground is a red tetherball. The ball itself isn't what's painting their faces blue with fright, it is how it got there, or rather, who threw it down the stairs.

The spinning steadily slows, revealing thick black letters crudely drawn onto the red ball that just so happen to stop at the perfect position to be read.

DEATH

Tani looks towards Anita, and is surprised to find she’s already halfway down the hall hailing him over to her. Tani has unwittingly become the stereotypical frozen in fear person always killed first in horror films. A potentially fatal blunder.

“!?”

Although initially surprised by Anita’s survival instincts, he snaps out of his daze when the sound of feet scurrying down the stairs reaches his ears. There is someone or something rushing towards him, and it’ll only be a couple short seconds until it is right on top of him.

He flees without sparing a glance back towards the footsteps, and the two scamper off down the dimly lit hallway.

“O-Okay, we won’t be going up that flight of stairs.” Tani says in jest, his tone not doing enough to mask how rattled he is.

“Is there another way??”

“Well, every floor has a rectangular design, one corner on each side of the rectangle has an emergency staircase.”

“But what if we get cut off trying to go around?”

“We’d just have to hope that whatever it is that we’re up against isn’t posted anywhere near one of the four staircases we choose.”

“I feel like the ghost will be blocking our way up no matter what.”

“If it’s an actual person, they can’t be in multiple spots at the same time. We’ll take our chances with my final back up plan.”

Pulling on her sleeve, he opens up a door leading to a janitorial utility room and hurries her inside. The small dark room is cramped with cleaning equipment and other supplies. Tani brushes a mop to the side and slides open a curtain of work uniforms to reveal a ladder leading upwards into a crawlspace.

“What’s this?” Anita asks, unable to make out the destination past a few rungs into the darkness.

“Each floor has a utility room for the cleaning staff that connect with each other in case of emergency. I doubt the intruder knows this, so we just need to climb to the 5th floor’s room and sneak by.”

“Okay. I’ll go first!”

“Wait wait.” Tani implores.

“?”

“It’s best that I go first, I know the way after all.”

Anita lets a soft chuckle escape her lips before saying, “Then tell me where to go, I can take you there, Tani.”

With her communication mixed in both Norwegian and Japanese, a lot of her words come across as stern and almost direct to the point of harshness. Not too dissimilar to how Emilia’s vernacular and tone leaves conversation partners feeling uneasy, Anita’s accent and delivery makes Tani feel particularly uneasy depending on what she says.

“...But.”

Confronted by the prospect of having a secondary role in their escape plan, Tani stands flustered and confused as to why she has suddenly decided to lead the way. It is in this moment he remembers their conversation earlier when he asked her why she has always been so agreeable, going along with his whims without so much as a hint of complaint. She had told him it was because it has all been fun for her.

Picking now of all times to assert herself would at best mean she is not having fun, which considering the situation they’ve found themselves in wouldn’t be much of a surprise. At the very worst, it means she doesn’t trust him to keep her safe, and it is that thought that acts as a needle piercing his heart.

Could she have done this because he hesitated when the ball fell down the stairs? In his head he admits that being caught off guard so easily must have looked weak, showing her he’s capable of freezing like that is especially embarrassing.

If he can’t even protect a student of his at school, how will he be able to protect billions of people from all across the world in the future? 

Even though how forcefully he's perceived her words has perhaps been lost in translation, Anita’s first time revealing her free will has brought forth an existential crisis of confidence within a split second. 

However, our resident survival expert refuses to go down without a fight.

Clearing his throat, he crosses his hands in front of his face to show his emphatic rejection of her proposal. “You can’t go first, cause I’ll be able to see up your skirt.”

A desperate gambit.

Anita shrinks back with a blush. But a blink of her eyes does enough to gather herself, she looks up at the dark crawl space and then back down to Tani.

“No you won’t.”

With that, she begins climbing and is quickly enveloped within the dark. Tani’s last gasp of an attempt at control has been defeated, stamped out by the keen eye Anita, who could plainly see that even if he tried his best to see up her skirt it’d be too dark to make out any details.

A sigh releases his built up tension and he starts climbing up the ladder behind her. They make their way up in silence, careful not to misplace their shoeless feet and go for a tumble. Anita is only a few rungs ahead of Tani but hardly any of her can be made out from within the darkness.

That is, all of her except a light color in the peculiar shape of a peach.

Like they both thought, he can’t make out the details but he knows exactly what he’s looking at, and despite the reason why they are in this position in the first place, the thought of what is only a few feet in front of him brings upon a nuclear reaction to his face.

Not wanting to look up any longer out of guilt, he averts his gaze and immediately finds himself sliding down the ladder.

“!!”

Unable to properly catch his bearings in the crawlspace, he flails his arms in an attempt to latch onto something and avoid having his body slam into the ground of the janitor closet ten feet below. In doing so he pins himself against the wall and the ladder with one of his arms and both legs stuck vicariously underneath him and unable to move.

“Are you okay??” Anita asks in a hushed worry.

“Y-Yeah… I got myself in a little pinch.”

“One second, I’ll come and help.”

Anita begins to make her way back down to him, but in such a tight space she has no way of reaching out to him with her hands.

“I don’t need your help! I’ll wriggle out of this in no time.”

With his gaze still turned away, Tani pushes against the wall and it is immediately clear that he isn’t going to budge from this position. Cursing the pressing evidence of his many blunders thus far in the night, he’s flailing like a mouse caught in a trap while he attempts to free himself.

Anita ignores his feigned confidence and makes her way to him. 

“Here.”

Tani halts his frantic movements when Anita presents her shoeless foot in front of his face, his hesitation at her foot’s sudden presence prompts her to gently bump his forehead with her toes.

Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined contact from a girls foot on his forehead. Tani takes in a sharp inhale and sheepishly twists his face away.

“Grab my leg, I’ll pull you up.”

With only one free arm and no way of extricating himself otherwise, he is forced to grab onto her slender ankle and grip tight as she pulls the both of them up the ladder. Surprisingly she is able to create a lot of leverage and he’s quickly becoming unstuck, but his fingers are overcome with electricity while clasping onto her. 

His hand almost fits entirely around her ankle and although a relatively hard part of her body, the numbness of his hand's contact with her reads as extraordinarily soft.

He’s never touched anyone in this part of their body before, and he’s surprised by the havoc the sensation of which is wreaking on him.

A few nudges is all it takes and he’s free from his predicament, the short moment felt like ages. Clasping back onto the ladder with his now free hands, he ignores his fluttering heart and says,

“Y-You didn’t have to do that.”

“Look, we’ve made it to the door!” she says, her accent accurately broadcasting her excitement.

Seeing her open the latch at the top of the ladder and climbing into the janitorial utility room on the 5th floor, some light from the green exit sign by the door peaks into the crawlspace. His eyes greet the clearest possible view of what lies beneath her skirt.

“!!”

He almost falls again.

To be continued!!