Just read it and see for yourself

They fast traveled back to the entrance and looked for a way to get to the basement from there. The stairs to it were easy to find, but they were filled with a mysterious black goop that was impossible, and unwise, to traverse.

“How are we supposed to get to the basement if it is… I want to say flooded?” Henry did what he excelled at: complaining.

“Wait, I think the letter mentioned the basement.” Riku took out a softly glowing piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “We’re in luck. It says right here that if the way to the basement is obstructed, we can just make a hole in a part of the pavement that has weakened over time.”

“I know I proposed it before but I don’t actually want the building to collapse! Especially while we’re inside it!”

“We’re just making a small hole in the floor, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“You’ve got to stop setting up flags!”

Riku ignored Henry’s meta comment and took out a sledgehammer from his other pocket.

“...Do you always have a sledgehammer with you?”

“It’s more useful than you’d think.”

“I didn’t think, ever.”

“Help me find a weakened portion of the floor. One with a lot of mold is probably the best.”

“Wait, wait, there’s another thing that bothers me.”

“What?”

“...The letter has instructions on how to get to the basement, but we still went to the roof first?”

“It doesn’t say the skull is in the basement. Here, I’ll read it to you.”

He turned the paper in a way that they could both read and began reading it out loud.

“We’ve kept the symbol of your destiny in the hands of a trusted handler named Saisentan. You will need to reach the roof of the, once sacred, building, and speak to him.
If the way to the basement is obstructed, make a hole in a part of the pavement that has weakened over time.

We pray that with age you will learn to forgive us.”

It took Henry some time to process the information, and eventually come up with many errors.

“See? It doesn’t say that the skull is in the basement.”

“I’m so close to bluescreening again… Whatever, I won’t pry in your private life, I don’t think I would survive it. Just give me that hammer and let’s get this skull.”

Riku smiled, before passing him the heavy tool. As Henry grabbed it, his hands fell to the floor, followed by the rest of his body.

“On second thought, maybe you could use the hammer?”

I’m going to skip over the logistics of making a hole through the floor with a sledgehammer to jump inside it. I will only say that Henry and Riku reached the basement safely.

The basement didn’t look very different from the other floors. It might have looked as if the frequency of upside-down pentagrams was slightly higher, or maybe the air was more humid, maybe the floor was stickier, maybe mobs had a higher chance of dropping rare materials, but it was impossible to know. The only difference they could truly notice, and the problem they had to face now, was the fact that there was next to no light. The only thing that could help them in knowing what their feet stood on was the letter, which, as I mentioned before, softly glowed.

“This is slightly scarier than the previous creepy basement I’ve been in, which funnily enough was only a couple of days ago!” Henry laughed, trying not to cry.

“I’m jealous, I don’t have the same level of experience as you. Maybe I should start trying out more dungeon crawler games, they might help with future activities.”

They joked around, trying to lighten the mood. Well, Henry did, for sure. No one could tell when Riku was being serious or not. Regardless, talking helped them with walking forwards in the spooky scary corridors and ignoring the ominous_ambient_noises.mp3 coming from the walls. It was very lucky for them that there was only one corridor, with no doors and only one way to go. A couple hundred steps later, remnants of a red carpet appeared on the floor, leading towards a wide archway. Where the carpet ended, the room began. A room whose walls were as dark as a moonless night. Right in the center, the skull waited for them, sitting on top of a stand that was as black as the walls. Or at least that’s what Henry assumed. Otherwise it would seem as if the skull was floating in the void, but that would be impossible. Still, Henry didn’t trust stepping towards it.

“I-Is that the skull?”

“It must be…” Riku was almost enchanted by it.

Its appearance was that of a bull’s skull, which I’m sure anyone reading knows the shape of, with horns of jade easily longer than the skull itself. Between the eyes but closer to the top there was a third eye socket, at the center of two long cracks that suggested an unpleasant passing of the animal. In other words, edgy.

As if moved by destiny itself, Riku walked closer to it.

“Wait!” Henry couldn’t muster the courage to follow it, “This looks like it’s a big deal. Are you sure you can just take it?”

But Riku didn’t hear him. He was bewitched by the skull, as if falling into the hole where its third eye once stood. He extended his hand to grab it.

“Stop!” Henry finally walked inside the room. He clung to his sides and stopped him from touching the skull.

“Let me go Henry.” Riku’s voice was eerily serene, “This skull is my birthright.”

“I don’t like how you’re looking at it! There is something very wrong about this whole situation. It feels as if you’re going to lose yourself once you get the skull!”

“No… This is the opposite. The skull will help me in finding myself.”

“Listen to me! I was in the same situation not long ago. There was this golden statue that I had to bring back but because of it I put myself in a stupidly dangerous situation. But I still wanted the statue! I couldn’t manage to resist its golden sheen even when I was about to die because of it!”

“...And what did you do?”

“I… I managed to both save myself and get the statue okay maybe that’s not the best example but still I don't think you should—”

Riku took the skull in his hands.

“Nooooo!” Henry screamed.

Riku brought the skull closer to his face and looked deeply into its three eyes.

He stared into them, longingly, for what felt like an eternity.

"Riku...?"

Henry's words were muffled by the overwhelming silence that saturated the room.

“...Alright I’m done now, we can go home.” He turned back to Henry.

“Oh. Are you ok? How do you feel?”

“I don’t feel a lot different than I did before. I can sense that there is a connection between me and the skull, based on what my parents wrote in the letter, but I have to do more research before I can really understand anything.”

“...And you are normal? Sorry, you are the same as before?”

“Of course. C’mon, we don’t have a reason to stay in this damp place.”

They went back to the hole, exited the basement in the same fashion they entered it, and left the abandoned and apparently once sacred building.

“Wait, that’s it!?” Henry screamed.

“I have the skull. What else did you want?”

“What about all the ominous signs, the couple of flags you put up, and the scary implications of it all?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I mean, I thought there would be something more… More! Wait, I just realized I didn’t even do anything to help you! Why did you tell me to come here with you?”

“I wanted to bring you along. Like friends hanging out, I assume. Wasn’t this a classic outing between friends?”

“Wha— ...Well, I haven’t hung out with people much, but based on the few times I’ve done it here in Japan… Yeah, it checks out.”

“Nice. Want to go catch crayfish in a river?”

“Sure, why not?”

And so they spent the rest of the evening doing more normal friends things.

Since the following day was Sunday, they decided to spend it together as well.

It got to Monday morning and Henry was excited to go to school, despite having studied not in the weekend. The reason for his excitement was that for the first time in his life, he had someone to walk to school with. This would have been impossible back in the US, since he took a bus to go to school. He wanted to believe this was the main reason.

“Hey Riku! Sorry, did I make you wait?”

The two friends met not far from the school entrance.

"No, surprisingly. I was expecting you to be late again and do the bread thing."

"Nah, I've milked that joke enough."

As they walked towards the class, they began talking about the fun times they had during the past two days.

"You really surprised me yesterday. I can’t believe you have no toes on your left foot." Henry remembered the time spent cray fishing.

“I still don’t think it’s that surprising. It was weirder when you tried to evoke a kappa in the river.”

“I did do that, right! Wow, it already feels like it has been ages.” He started reminiscing about the previous two days, like an old man going through a midlife crisis that misses his naive youth when he was more carefree.

“We caught crayfish, we went to the park, we went to a ParentageMart, a publicity guy approached us with free samples of their “special food”, we later discovered that he was not a publicity guy and not affiliated with any company, we sung at a karaoke, had fun touring bars, we went to the beach, we made friends, we experienced our first love, we graduated from high school, you went to college while I went job hunting, because of our different situations we grew apart and stopped talking, I ended up working for an exploitative company and hated my life, then one day I found you while on the train, you had become a famous stylist, I was very jealous of your success, and I got angry at you, but you forgave me, I realized that in reality I was angry at myself, for not trying to find something I liked, for not having the same positivity and strength as you, I started crying, but you understood me and we hugged, then the train derailed and we died, we woke up in a different world, with magic and dragons and stuff, you turned into a golem for some reason, while I had skills that made me the most powerful wizard in the world, it was really unfair on everyone else, we discovered that the world was threatened by a demon lord, we went around saving cities and killing monsters, but you could only every support me with your healing powers while I was seen as the real hero, you became very jealous of me, at one point you decided to betray me and side with the demon lord, you turned into an ambiguously erotic golem demon, we had an epic fight under the rain, moments before killing each other we both realized that this situation was exactly the same as our previous life, but with the roles reversed, now I was the successful one and you the one that hated his life, we cried and hugged again, but this time we knew what we had to do, we teamed up and used my overpowered magic and your newfound demonic golem skills to kill the demon lord and save the world, then the demon lord’s death opened a portal, and we knew it would bring us back home, so we jumped inside it, and then we found ourselves back in our teenager bodies, in front of the PrentageMart, as if everything was just a fever dream.”

"Isn't that ParentageMart close to where you live?" Riku changed the topic.

"Not anymore, we moved the other day."

"Isn't this the second time you've moved since coming here?"

"Third actually. But don't worry, it's still the same area more or less."

"Third? But it’s your second week of school."

"Yes, but I didn't start school immediately. I spent the first week getting all the essentials, like the uniform, other school stuff, figures, anime posters, video games, hentai,"

"It's alright, I don't need a full list. But that makes me think, I never asked you why you moved to Japan."

"My dad is running from the mob after losing their blood money at a casino."

"Uh. I guess that explains why you move house every week."

"They're B&B's."

"Of course, of course."

“Hey, why don’t we go see the shousshounennen movie next saturday night? It’s a recap movie of the first season, perfect for a beginner to the series like you.” Henry proposed a not sponsored idea.

"Oh, I can't go that night."

"How come?"

"It's a full moon."

"... And?"

"I just can't. It'd be too hard to explain."

"You know, I feel like we really get along, you and I."

POSTFACE

- CHEAT SHEET

Full moon: After a month of eating, the moon will get full. This is highlighted by the glowing aura around its body. At this point, you can press L2+X+Y to perform the moon’s ultimate attack. Use it wisely! You’ll have to make the moon full again before you can perform the attack a second time.

Dungeon Crawler: It’s easier to understand using examples. Famous dungeon crawlers are [REDACTED BECAUSE OF DMCA].