Epi.13-3: Ghost Café — Now Open

On the morning the ghost café opened, Furuta had called Hiromu out under the pretense of “filming a realistic first-impressions video of a new collaboration café.”

“What the hell… is this?”
The words slipped out the moment he stepped inside the shop and saw the hall.

It was the same familiar café he was used to seeing.
There had been no requests for changes to either the interior or the menu, leaving him thoroughly underwhelmed.

However, there was a sense of unease that couldn’t be put into words.
Even the smile was gone from the face of Yuina, the part-time girl who had long supported the shop—someone who could rightly be called its poster girl.
She was biting her lower lip, wearing an expression as if she were enduring something.

“It might just be my imagination, so I didn’t say anything, but…”
Yuina opened her mouth hesitantly.
“Since about two days ago, something’s felt off.
But it wasn’t as bad as it is now…”

While they were having that exchange, Hiromu showed up.
Ideally, they would have wanted to film properly starting from the entrance scene, but they hadn’t even had time to prepare for that.

“For now, let’s start filming.”
Hoping to make up for it with Hiromu’s reaction, Furuta gave the order to begin filming.

They filmed a greeting and a brief explanation of how things had come to this in front of the register near the entrance, and Hiromu took his seat at their usual filming table.

The table suddenly shook so violently it seemed about to tip over, and Hiromu rolled across the floor as if fleeing from something.

“I heard something, and someone breathed right into my ear… what the hell did you guys do?”
He wasn’t exaggerating for effect—he was genuinely frightened.

The cameraman let out a loud scream as well and fell backward onto the floor.

When Furuta looked around, there were things that could not be believed to belong to this world: vague human silhouettes with indistinct outlines, white shadows crawling along the floor, and something that vanished only to reappear somewhere else.

At the moment everyone held their breath, a deep, rough scream came from the kitchen.
That was the signal for everyone to bolt out of the café.