Narrator

※This story in first-person POV is a story that the main character of 'Unforeseen' is writing.

It started about two months ago, when I suddenly found myself standing in the middle of an abandoned hospital near Fukuoka.

That day I went to bed as usual, but when I tried to close my eyes, a sharp throb suddenly hit my head, and I just gritted my teeth, letting the pain pass. And after a few minutes, my head stopped throbbing as if nothing had happened, but after that, I felt like no longer sleeping.

I slowly opened my eyes. At first, I couldn't see anything; there was only darkness, but blinking a couple of times, my vision came back, and strangely, I saw someone standing by my window, and they were looking at me without saying a word to me.

They slowly approached me, at first I thought I was seeing things—it was all a dream—but as they got closer and closer, I could feel my heart trying to pound out of my chest.

"Who are you?" I asked, yet they didn't respond.

I backed up until my shoulders hit the corner of the bedframe as they reached out both their hands, reaching for my neck. Then, a moment later, they started choking me. I struggled, trying to kick them away from me, but no matter what I did, I was just too weak to protect myself.

"H, help me!" I cried out softly.

"Help me!" I cried again, but this time, the moment the words left my mouth, my body felt lighter than ever. The next thing I knew, I was standing in a strange place.

My breathing became heavy, then slowly began to settle.

After a few minutes of looking around, I figured that I was in a hospital that had been abandoned ages ago.

I didn't panic, though. But the air in there was heavy, riddled with stale chemical odors and drugs. The electricity was off, and most of the ward doors were closed. The floors were dusty and mostly wet; if I had to guess, the water came from the busted pipes in the ceiling.

After walking for some time, trying to figure out a way out of there, I ran into the reception area, where a gas lamp was lit. Yet there was nobody inside, only the unsettling silence.

I stayed there, taking a break from all the walking it took to get there, but not long after, I began to hear clicking noises and slow footsteps approaching in my direction.

At first, I thought it was just the building settling, or maybe rats. Still, the footsteps had weight to them, as if the sound was being carried straight into my head.

"Hello?" I called out, my voice sounding wrong in the empty hall.

The footsteps stopped.

I waited. One second. Two. Then the clicking started again, closer this time. I noticed then that the gas lamp flickered whenever the sound resumed, its flame shrinking as though it was being starved.

That was when I realized something else: there were no windows. I had passed multiple corridors, wards, staircases—but no windows. The hospital wasn't just abandoned. It was sealed.

The footsteps resumed, now accompanied by a dragging sound, like something being pulled behind whoever or whatever was walking. I stepped back from the counter and felt my heel sink into something soft. When I looked down, I saw a patient bracelet, yellowed with age, wrapped loosely around my ankle.

My name was written on it.

My throat tightened. I tried to pull it off, but the plastic crumbled in my fingers like damp paper. The clicking sound was right behind me now. I didn't turn around. I couldn't.

Instead, I ran.

The corridors twisted in ways that made no sense. The doors I passed earlier were gone, replaced by blank walls or doors labeled with dates instead of room numbers. Some of the dates hadn't happened yet. Others were from years before I was born.

My breathing grew ragged as I stumbled into a ward filled with beds.

Every bed was occupied, each with a sheet drawn up to the patient's neck. I moved slowly between them, afraid to make noise.

Then, one of the sheets shifted.

I froze.

A hand emerged from beneath the fabric before it curled into a fist.

"Open your eyes," a voice whispered.

It wasn't coming from the bed, but from inside my head.

The clicking sound returned, louder than before. The gas lamps overhead burst to life one by one, revealing the figure standing at the entrance of the ward. It was tall, unnaturally thin, its joints bent the wrong way. Its face was smooth, featureless, except for a shallow indentation where a mouth should have been.

It tilted its head.

"You aren't supposed to be in here," it said, though its mouth didn't move. "You, you, you don't belong in here."

The beds began to shake. Sheets fell away. And every face beneath them looked like mine, their eyes open and unblinking.

Pain exploded behind my eyes. I screamed, clutching my head, and the ward folded inward.

I woke up in my bed, gasping and drenched in sweat. The morning light spilled through the window, and my room was exactly as it should have been.

But when I tried to sit up, my body felt heavy, as if it didn't quite belong to me anymore.

I noticed something then. Faint marks around my neck, already fading...

After I explained everything to the doctor and my therapist, they all said it was just hypnagogic hallucinations, a phenomenon caused by lack of sleep. After that, they added that I should just rest regularly to prevent it from happening again.

"That's it," Ren finished softly. "The end of the story."

He was seated at the very back of the classroom with his chair tilted so his shoulders rested against the wall. A thin booklet lying over his face, at a glance, it could've passed for a comic.

"That was deep," Shun muttered with a worn voice.

He sat beside Ren in the same slouched posture, a similar booklet covering his own face.

Ren exhaled. "Yeah. But I don't know if it—"

He stopped mid-sentence, lowering the booklet and straightening in his seat.

"If it what?" Shun asked.

Ren leaned over and nudged Shun's leg with his foot. "Hey," he whispered.

Startled, Shun lifted a hand, tilting his booklet just enough to reveal his tired eyes. Ren didn't look at him. His gaze drifted past the desks in front of them. "I think everyone's staring."

Shun followed his line of sight.

Everyone in class had turned around, looking at them quietly. Even their literature teacher, Miss Sayaka, was among them.

Shun cleared his throat, standing from his seat. Ren followed, and a second later, they made their way out of the classroom without glancing back even once. Everyone remained in their poses until both Ren and Shun closed the door behind them.

Then, the two carried themselves through the hallways, heading downstairs without saying a word to each other.

***

Later, they sat near the edge of the school grounds, side by side on the worn concrete bordering the field. Beyond them, the track team ran in tight, disciplined loops, their shoes striking the ground in a steady rhythm as they trained for a match scheduled a month away. The repetition was almost hypnotic.

"So," Ren said after a while, rolling a half-empty water bottle between his palms, "when do we actually start drawing the book?"

Shun didn't answer right away. He leaned back until his shoulders met the grass, staring at the sky without really looking at it.

"I don't know," he said at last. "I still don't have enough hospital references. And you still need to fix the flow of that story."

Ren nodded, more to himself than to Shun. "Yeah. You're probably right."

He took a sip, then lay back as well, resting flat against the warm ground. Above them, birds cut across the blue sky, their shadows passing briefly over Ren's face before disappearing.

"I think I know where we can get the references," Shun muttered, covering his eyes with one hand.

"Seriously, you two?" a voice said from nearby. Yet, the two didn't react at first, assuming it was aimed at the track team or someone else nearby.

"Hmm?" Ren replied calmly. "Where?"

"The abandoned hospital near the love hotel in town," Shun said. "But with the current situation the hospital is in. Sneaking in during the day is risky. And if we tried asking nicely, I highly doubt they'll just be willing to let a couple of high schoolers in."

"So, we'll just have to sneak in during the night."

"Seriously," the voice repeated.

A shadow fell over Ren and Shun; both of them looked up.

Miss Sayaka stood over them with an unreadable expression.

"Oh, it's your sister." Lowering his hand from his face, Shun said flatly.

Ren blinked once. "Oh. Hey sis."

"It's Miss Sayaka to you," she corrected, her voice almost flustered. "Anyway, what are you doing out here?"

"Killing time," Ren said.

"We're just waiting for the time to knock off before heading to correct some references."

"You are joking, right?" Sayaka asked.

"No, this might be our only chance... But enough of that. What are you doing here? Don't you have a class to teach?"

Sayaka didn't answer right away. She looked past them, toward the track field, where the runners kept circling, and after a moment let out a low sigh. Ren and Shun sat up.