The return of Junko Hayata

"Hello there! My name is Subushira Satoshi. But you can call me Satoshi-san." The gale wind sweeps across the air of the infamous Seishun school grounds. Enters the man clothed in a tight black suit, tucked all up to his chin, bracing for the cold entrance; of both the uncontrollable weather, and the known history of the school. Only armed with a camera.

*Click*

"It's been a whole month since the disappearance of that one school girl. The school in itself seems to be just fine." The shivering man looks to all sides. The tall administration block of the school ahead of him. Students of all grades casually moving alongside it.

"I myself appreciate grieving, but when I first got intel on this case, I didn't think everything would seem soo gloomy at first. It already feels like they confirmed there was a body." A cold feeling washes up his spine, hitting like a lightning spark throughout his upper body. "I don't like this place." He then starts moving forward. 

"I got myself into this. So I just have to get myself out as well."

Even though he came here for the specific purpose of uncovering more details of the school and its relationship with its students, he doesn't feel as much into it as he was before. Now it just feels like some kind of night shift duty he didn't sign up for.

Satoshi moves across the lit up pathway, not wanting to walk in the darker sides of it. As he walks, his mind is all over the place. He can't fully connect as to why such a big school wouldn't outwardly put better lighting. It feels like they're purposefully aware of their reputation and find joy in the harrowing. Or it is simply in his mind.

A tense feeling moves across his body, a glimpse of a shadowy movement makes his eyes shift accordingly to it. And in that slight movement he finds himself face to face with the girls' school locker room. As he moves to open up the slightly narrow-closed door, he gets a view of his hand. The rested hair on his left hand have all risen up. He gulps before his eyes catch another slow movement, and he opens the door in a rushed sense.

In his range of sight, nothing out of the ordinary could be seen. But then again, the large room wasn't all that ordinary in itself. Every piece of lighting was on. The room was soo bright that the shadows of everything inside were diminished in size. He turned slightly to stare back at his own, but it was merely the same as before. Or maybe it's just the lighting curve indifference to the room itself.

To everything else that was going on, this wasn't something he felt like focusing too much on. His head turned back to the front of the mirror where his reflection was. He stared a bit into the mirror, trying to see if anything would change, or maybe the movies he has watched were confusing his mind a bit too much.

While staring at the mirror in front of him, on the left side of the sink top, he saw a silver crane-crested hairpin. He moved to observe it. On the edges, he could see bits of hair on it. Although it wasn't that much visible, in close inspection, skin tissues or what he belived to be concentrated dandruffs were as well there.

As he was about to move out, his head turning, a tiny glow of crimson on the tip of the hairpin caught his eyes. It was barely visible and almost dried up, that became hard to notice it at first glance.

As he reached to grab it, his hand fell stiff to a cold sensation. His hand hadn't touched the hairpin, but a dirtied hand that was holding on to it. As his hand regained its sense of touch, he felt something moving from the hand. His eyes were completely wide open. The compound arteries fully visible to anyone. The black pupils in them shrank to the size of a pinhole. His flowing-with-the-wind black hair, stiff as a cat drenched with cold water. Ahead of him, all over the mysterious hand, was a pile of maggots.

He pulled his right hand off as fast as it had landed. He couldn't care more about the hairpin as all of his thoughts were screaming for him to run. But his legs didn't budge an inch. Completely frozen in fear. He stared at the liquid flowing down his pants, and his heart was about to give in at how fast it was beating, but looking ahead, the hand was gone. Nothing in sight, but his miserable state.

While in constant shock, he felt his heartbeat lowering and his legs starting to shake. He could at least move again.

His hands held together the sink as he adjusted a bit to face the door. His mind failed to process what had just happened, and he didn't feel all too comfortable to remind himself of it. So moving towards the door, he stopped right in front of it. He could hear something, but it was rather faint.

On the far side of the room,  a showerhead started emitting a clogging sound. This pulled all the attention Satoshi had, towards it. The clogging sound grew more and more loud until a short pause. Then as in unison to the returning of the sound, a flowing water sound started pouring out as well. In complete silence, it felt like somebody had opened up the shower, thought that there was no water and didn't bother to close it. But now the water was running smoothly.

He felt like closing it, but from what he had just experienced, he felt a bit skeptical about it. But stopped thinking about the matter altogether when he heard a singing voice coming straight from the shower.

Although mild and soft at first, the voice felt a bit heavy. Like the chords were scratching onto something. It produced a low pitched scratching noise, that flooded the entire girls' locker room.

Satoshi stared at his hand one more time, to make sure nothing was on it. Still in deep-rooted stare, three droplets fell on his hand. He stared back at the mirror and saw his face covered in sweat. He moved up his left sleeve and wiped the sweat clean off his face. He could see the twitching of his body from the large mirror.

Both his hands fell on the sink as he started drinking the cold water so as to cool himself down a bit. The cold sensation of it moving across his throat felt delightful. He even poured a bit on his hair and clothes for a faster cool down. In truth he was already calming down. He now only needed to fix the mess on the outside. Staring at the camera, he thought of hanging it as well, and pressed the record button. He didn't know how much of its battery it retained at most, or if any at all.

He tucked back his hair, fixed his tie and removed his blazer; hanging it on a hanger for a bit to air-dry. He moved in closer to fill his mouth with the cold water, but a dense smell brushed past his nose, and he started vomiting uncontrollably. He hadn't eaten that much for breakfast so most of what he vomited was the water.

After a bit of time to compose himself, he turned to check the source of the protruding stench. Where his eyes met another pair.

The figure in front of him was feminine in nature, but he couldn't fully tell well from the mud and dirt that was covering it. The face was inverted in a way that it seemed as if it was wearing many hands over it. The hands were slowly moving shifting the shape of the face until that of a woman formed. The rest of the body was now forming as well, with what seemed to be water falling off of her. Satoshi's breathe let out a shriek, that was slowly rising same as his heartbeat.

All this time, Satoshi's eyes were stuck on hers. He hadn't blinked for some time now. Fearing anything might happen. As sweat drops flowed from his forehead and passed through his face, some flowed across his eyelids, and he couldn't maintain the same stare as the girl had, and he blinked.

Opening his sweat-depraved eyes, the girl was nowhere to be seen. The only thing left behind was the hairpin, and the pile of mud on the bathroom floor. He stretched his hand for the hairpin. It was completely clean, as if it was anew. As he picked it up, he noticed that his shadow was gone.

***

While moving across the dark and gloomy school hallways, Toshi Mizuki, noticed that class 3-b's lights were on, in the day's morning. As the class's prefect, it was somewhat her responsibility to cater for the well-being of her class's shortcomings. In thought, she had to do all the work, now that no one seemed to care about anything anymore.

She walks towards the well lit class 3-b, slides the large door to the left side and wanders in the empty classroom. Toshi was about to turn off the lights when her eyes fell on what seemed to be an inconceivable sight.

There in the flesh, seated on her middle desk, was the missing student; Junko Hayata. The lit up room made her look like a moon goddess. The only thing Mizuki felt like was out of the ordinary, was not that she wasn't clothed, but her shadow seemed to house an extra head.