Night of the Living Dead: Anita and Tani

And just like that, Akihiro Tani’s work is finished. There is nothing left for him to do but sit back and wait for his club members to finish their remaining tasks and allow the electronic locks on the doors to release themselves upon completion.

He’s surprised to find himself feeling relieved, and dare he say, optimistic.

Emilia has come out of her shell; if only a little bit by a normal human’s standard, it is a herculean accomplishment by her standard. Ume went from knowing nothing about Italian, to at least a few words and perhaps even a desire to learn more. Having found a great partner to help her going forward, her chances of success have skyrocketed.

Charl has conquered a major fear of his, and in the process will associate that success with the English language, he’ll always have a foundation to build on that will help him pass Shirai-sensei’s English class. Mariko is right in the middle of battling out her own fears, but by pronouncing a series of French words and sentences she has already managed to use her newfound knowledge as a bridge to self confidence.

If Tani were a puppet master, he'd be selling out the 8 o’clock marionette performances at the traveling circus. All of their carefully crafted successes pale in comparison to the greatest feat of the lot, which is how easily Anita Pederson has gone through the trials of her night.

Japanese was as foreign as a foreign language could get only two weeks prior, but tonight she has eased through difficult sentences and paragraph structures with the deftness of someone who has studied the language for years already. It helps that Tani has gained enough prowess in Norwegian to translate things easily, but no way should she have been able to pull this off without extraordinary talent and hard work.

Our arrogant club president can only explain her progress by connecting it to his own genius however; if his head were a balloon it’d be inflated to the point of popping. 

“Ha! How great am I? I think this whole VR experience might become a weekly thing for us. I'd  be able to cut down on paperwork by putting this tech to use more often.”

Pressing on the monitor to Anita’s screen, he can see that she’s still in the pitch dark faculty room, not having moved from her seat at a teacher’s desk.

“Ah Anita, since you're the first to finish, you can head back to headquarters now if you’d like. The door is unlocked.”

“It isn’t.” she replies.

“...?”

“I just checked. The door is still locked.”

“O-Oh.”

By this point, Tani isn’t even surprised by her ability to reply to him in Japanese, it might be because of her still heavy accent, or it might be that he’s come to expect it of her, so he speaks to her as he would anyone else.

“That’s odd, I wonder why the electric locks aren’t working? No problem, I’ll come and let you out myself.”

“Sounds good!”

Taking off his headset and placing it near the keyboard in front of him, Tani stands to his feet and exits the room, leaving behind the remainder of his club’s trials still playing out on the computer screens.

Now in the hallways and seeing things with his own eyes instead of through the eyes of others, he finds the dizzying effect of his view a little jarring. Rubbing his temple, he makes his way down the stairs and takes a left turn towards the faculty room. The wall of the hallways dance like the wake of water clambering onto shore, and the bits of light creeping through the windows play tricks on his sight.

He takes a steadying breath to realign his senses.

Reaching the faculty room, he’s surprised to find that the door opens right up from the outside, as soon as he enters he instinctively flicks up the light switch, but is quickly reminded that he had the lights in every room of the school deactivated.

“Hey Anita, where are you? I can’t see much of anything.”

“Over here.”

Following her voice, he’s still struggling to make out her form among the stacks of paper and filing cabinets. There are quite a few things here that he confuses her with, painting an assumed image of her in his mind only to get close enough to find out the shadow is something inanimate. Between his ears he curses the fact he didn’t have the wherewithal to bring his phone with him to use as a flashlight.

Another steady breath narrows his focus and orientates his vision to the best possible level from within the darkness.

“Over here.” she repeats herself, this time her voice coming from a different direction than he had originally thought.

Making a left turn, he accidentally bangs his hip on the corner of a table.

Any composure he had gained from his strategic breathing scatters away like dandelions blown by a heavy wind.

“Ow!”

“Are you okay?”

“Barely! Can’t you just go somewhere easier for me to find you? This is annoying!”

“I’m right here.”

Tani twists his body towards her voice, but still can’t see her.

But feeling a gentle tap on his back, his senses convulse.

“Whuaah!”

“Kyahh!”

Backing away from the sudden contact, he slams into a desk which tosses paperwork into the air. With how dark things are, the sensation of falling is extra jarring, reflexes will do no good if it isn’t possible to brace oneself.

But before he could drop onto an unforeseen hard object, the collar of his school cardigan is grabbed and he’s pulled back to safety. Holding onto him and standing mere inches away is Anita, she’s close enough for him to make out her delicate features and feel her body's warmth radiating against him. But her pretty face and gentle presence does nothing to quell his skyrocketing heart rate from wreaking havoc on his chest.

“Careful.” she says with a smile, straightening out his wrinkled cardigan and tapping his shoulders upon completion.

Tani makes an attempt at another deep breath, but can’t even get halfway before choking and allowing himself to slide into the troubling series of mental and physical anguish he’s suffering through. Luckily it’s dark, and he can hide the flushed cheeks he’s certain that he’d be showing otherwise.

“I-I’ll clean this up later. Let’s make our way back to headquarters and wait for the others.”

Using his hand to guide him through the openings of desks and filing cabinets and expecting Anita to be able to follow, his beating heart skips and feels as though it is engulfed in flames when Anita grabs at the sleeve of his free hand. Although not much, their skin is making contact.

“What are you doing?” Tani asks, trying not to sound rattled.

“So you don’t lose me.”

Anita said that in Norwegian, but Tani could understand as much.

“...”

He replies with silence, and guides her out into the hallways of Kokusai where at least there is enough light coming in from outside to see where they’re walking. Upon releasing her grip on his sleeve, Tani feels a cool wind nip at the back of his hand where their skin once touched. He does his best to trick himself into believing he’s relieved.

“I’m sure it was easy for you to see in the dark with the VR goggles on, but it was extremely dark in there. Next time we do something like this I’ll make sure it isn’t so dangerous for you.” Tani says in a mix of Norwegian and Japanese.

“Hehe, it was no problem.”

Because the two of them are both learning each other’s languages together, their style of communicating is unique unto themselves.

A few years ago when Tani began his language journey, he started with English, of course his main method of learning came from meticulous note taking and diving into books and online lessons, but another trick was to go onto a social media app called *Beddit and join a community passionate about swapping language knowledge.

He had tested what he knew by talking to native English speakers who also wished to learn Japanese, and in just a couple months he had left his peers behind and became fluent.

Tani has found that his ability to pick up Anita’s language is an even easier task, and by speaking to her in both Japanese and Norwegian interspersedly he is hoping that she can keep up with his development.

“It didn’t seem like anything was a problem for you in there. You’ve gotten so good at Japanese, I’ll have to up the difficulty level going forward.”

“Whatever works best.”

The two take a left turn, at the end of the twenty meter long hallway they are in comes a right turn, and shortly after that are the stairs leading back to the clubroom. Walking along in silence, the tapping of their feet echoing down the hall takes the internal shape of a ticking clock winding down. The urgency of which brings a nagging question to Tani’s mind.

Tani clears his throat and says, “There’s something I’d like to ask you.”

“Hmm?”

“Why are you so agreeable?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve put you through a lot of things since we met, especially in regards to our club. Unlike everyone else you haven’t complained about any of it even once, locking you in that dark room had me wondering why you never let your disapproval known?”

Tani is walking in front of her, even though he’s curious to see what kind of face she’s making he wouldn’t dare turn around.

“I’m sure I’ve complained.”

“Have you?”

“Whenever you’re too hard on yourself, I’ve made it known have I not?”

Tani thinks back on how she lent him her school sweater to sleep on, and how she made him tea to help relieve his stress. As kind as those gestures were, they most certainly can’t be considered complaints.

“That doesn’t count. I’m talking about all the tasks I’ve been giving you. I’ll shamefully admit that you found a way to convince me to change my curriculum to better suit your needs, but you haven’t outright had a moan about anything so far.”

“And you want to know why that is?” Anita’s Japanese reply is as smooth as silk.

“...Well, yeah. In my line of work, those who are eager to agree are most likely after something in return. I’m having a hard time figuring out what it is you want from me, seeing as what I want from you I have intentionally made obvious.”

“I’ve already gotten what I’ve wanted out of you.”

Tani slows to a stop, and he can sense her getting closer to him.

“Are you kidding?”

“It’s all been fun, you’ve given that to me right away, actually.”

That answer makes his insides feel fuzzy. He’s still confused.

“It can’t possibly be fun, none of what I’ve been teaching you is supposed to be fun.”

Anita takes a few feathery steps and skips in front of him, her golden hair glistens underneath the light sneaking in from the windows and waves alongside the gravity of her head’s graceful movement.

“It’s still fun to me.”

She is giving him an answer as clear as water, yet the amount of conflict such a concise response is inflicting upon him is borderline torture. He can’t accept it because he can’t understand it, and as someone who has done nothing but seek knowledge for the last few years, what he doesn’t understand is one of the very few things that frightens him.

“Maybe my Norwegian isn’t articulating this properly…” Holding his chin, he tilts his head back. “Why is it fun for you?”

“It just is!”

“I need a more detailed explanation!”

She winks at him and playfully turns her back on him. She very obviously has no intention of giving him any more information, he’ll have to figure it out on his own.

Perturbed to say the least, Tani stomps his way towards her.

“Hey!”

She doesn’t respond, and he puts his hand on her shoulder to get her attention. The sensation greeting his hand is one of concrete, he’s actually surprised such a dainty part of a human body could be so stiff.

At first he wonders if this is her rejecting his touch, and horrible thoughts flood his head within a split second. Has he gotten too comfortable and expressed himself in an offensive way? He didn’t mean to shout aggressively, did it come off threatening? She is a girl after all, he can’t be touching her without her consent. But aren’t friends allowed to bicker with each other? Aren't friends allowed to touch each other?

His entire body freezes upon these series of anxious thoughts sending electrical signals into his brain and shocking his limbs.

He peaks over her shoulder to see what kind of face she’s making, and notices her golden eyes locked onto something, paying him no mind at all.

“A-Anita?”

“Do you see that?” she asks with a quiver in her voice.

Tani has never heard her sound like that before, and he’s relieved to find that it wipes away his social anxiety like a mop to a dirty floor. His relief however is short lived, because now he’s confronted with a new form of anxiety upon following her gaze to the end of the hallway.

The right turn in which they were heading for is farther away from the windows, so it is slightly darker than where they are now in the hallway. The faint light entering from their left only does enough to illuminate a portion of the shadows that grow darker leading toward the stairs.

As dark blue as it is, it is not dark enough to conceal a figure peaking at them from behind the wall.

That’s right, there is a shadowy figure looking right at them. It isn’t moving at all, but there’s no doubt that it is the head of someone or something carrying itself at an angle.

Tani’s next heartbeat is as thunderous as an exploding grenade.

His mind immediately tries to rationalize what he’s seeing.

“Ah, that’s just a shadow coming in from outside the windows. Nothing to be alarmed about.”

As smooth as he’s trying to portray himself with those words, he finds himself unable to take another step forward. This prompts Anita to freeze in place as well.

“That’s not a shadow.”

“Of course it is, we’ve just completed tasks involving ghosts and zombies on VR goggles, it's no surprise that our minds would trick us into seeing things that aren’t really there, or making shapes out of shadows. There’s actually something called the 'Shadow Person Phenomena' which really explains that well.”

The two continue to look towards the darkened head peaking out at them from behind the wall, Tani has made no effort to prove his theory correct, which makes Anita more weary of the figure’s presence. There’s no doubt that what he’s saying is true, it’s a lot like watching a ghost hunter style tv show where there are a few people in a rumored haunted hospital or jailhouse, they have all their equipment to pick up EVP’s and special cameras, but the only evidence at the end of the episode is their frightened reaction to things they perceive as real from within the darkness.

Tani actually modeled this language challenge to produce similar emotions out of his students, that way the knowledge would be easiest absorbed through imaginary trauma.

But the human brain knows when it sees something that is truly there. No amount of rational thought can dispel what it understands to be real.

The question is, if it is real, what kind of real is it?

“Tani…” Anita says, slowly backing away. “This isn’t a VR simulation.”

“Come on this is ridiculous.” Tani refuses to believe it, and he convinces the legs of his that feel more like cinder blocks to take reluctant steps towards the figure. “It’s just the light playing tricks on us.”

He takes only a few steps forward, and the world around them shifts in a direction they’d never had seen coming.

The peaking head of the figure in the shadows slides out of view behind the wall in a swift and unnatural movement.

Whatever it is has confirmed itself to be real.

“!!!??”

“Holy shit!!!”

Tani turns away in a panic and flees. He’s surprised to find Anita’s reaction to be slower than his, and he grabs her hand and pulls her alongside him.

He refuses to believe that this thing is a ghost, which would mean if that was actually a person in front of him, the threat is much more dire. There should be no one here; just like ghost hunter shows, he locked everyone inside with the electric locks at the beginning of the night, no one should have been able to get in. 

Unless the person was already here in the first place...

Although considering all those possibilities, there is only one thing compelling his body to move on instinct, and that is protecting Anita from harm. Holding her hand doesn’t carry the same charcoal like effect this time, he pays no mind to how soft it is, he ignores how her delicate hand is squeezing his in a vice grip, he doesn’t even realize he’s pulling her with all his might as he flees down the halls of Kokusai.

All he knows is that he needs to...

“Run!!!!”

To be continued!