Paranormal Club

A chill went down my spine as I focused the digital camera I was holding on the tall iron gates outside my high school, Sakura High. These gates, with their intricate flower designs, were ones I passed every morning to enter the school.

Normally, they were just a daily sight, nothing to be afraid of. But during the icy, damp night we'd chosen to undertake our (strictly speaking, illegal) club activity on, they took on a different aura. It was as if they had a personality of their own, shining from the moisture of the short drizzle that fell a few hours back. Beyond them, I could see the faint yellow glow of lanterns and other halloween decorations inside.

I stood there for a moment, taking in the silence of the night. Maybe this isn't for me, I thought. This... Paranormal stuff... Maybe I'd have been better off in the Anime club or somethin-

"Well, let's get started then, shall we?"

Her voice was so loud I almost dropped the camera.

"Stop being so loud, Mai! Don't you know we're basically trespassing right now?"

This time it was Emi's voice, firing at Mai in an aggressive whisper. Good grief, I thought sadly. My final year of high school and look where I ended up...

"We're probably gonna get expelled for trespassing," I said in a bleak voice, knowing the reply Mai was gonna give me.

"No we won't, as long as we don't do anything to the property. Even the science club was let off with only a warning when they entered the school after closing hours to observe an experiment or something, I don't know. But enough of that, let's start already."

"Mai's right. Used enough storage, Haruto?" said the only voice I could tolerate. "You've been recording a gate for the past 10 minutes."

"Yeah, Haruto. Let's get started," agreed Emi.

Clutching the camera tightly, I turned around, to get on camera the pathetic current state of the Sakura High Paranormal Club.

"What're you recording us for?" said Mai Watanabe angrily. Fair-skinned and with medium length curly black hair, the club president Mai was nowhere near the model student she was supposed to be. Instead she was a short-tempered, easily flustered tsundere type. It showed in her attitude, and also in the short miniskirt she was wearing at the moment. But there was something about her, a caring instinct deep down, that drew people's attention like a magnet. She was impossible to ignore, a quality that'd kept the club running this long.

Next was Emi Sato, the brains of the club, who stood posing for the camera in a bright red raincoat. Dark-skinned and with long blonde hair tied in a ponytail, she was the vice president, and Mai's best friend. She was the top of her class in both academics and sports, the ideal model student Mai should've been. But she had a sly, cunning side, especially to people she wasn't that close to. The only people that recognized her dual sided personality were us at the Paranormal club.

"Yo," came a voice to my left. Grinning, I turned the camera over to him. My best friend, Genius Suzuki, who was dressed in a black trench coat and smoking a cigarette. He had a clean-shaven head, a light scruffy beard-stache, and was a man of few words. I called him 'Genius', but it could've been 'Crazy,' because I genuinely couldn't distinguish which of the two he was sometimes. He did whatever the fuck he wanted, without giving a shit about anyone who told him otherwise, which was something I genuinely respected him for.

And then there's me, Haruto Kimura, I thought. Average looks, with longish black hair tied in a messy man-bun, and wearing an ordinary t-shirt and shorts. Nothing about me stood out.

"I'm starting anyway, whether you record or not," came Mai's voice, as she stormed towards the front gate, fixing a collar microphone near her mouth.

I turned the camera, tracking her as she walked, and finally settling on her in front of the gate. She frowned at me for a second but quickly regained composure, ready to recite her lines.

"Action," I whispered.

"Happy Halloween, everyone. I'm Mai Watanabe, president of the Paranormal Club, here tonight outside the front gate of our prestigious Sakura High. You're probably wondering what we're doing here, in the middle of the night..." 

"Cut," I said, frustrated. "That's the best you could come up with? 'Oooh, what we're doing here, in the middle of the night...-' isn't that obvious?"

"You host then!" shot back Mai in an angry voice. "Seriously..."

"Alright, alright, just get to the point... Action!"

"Ugh... Ehem," she said, clearing her throat. "As you know, Sakura High is one steeped in history, and tonight, we're going to unravel it's secrets, and find the answer to the age-old question: is our school haunted, or not?"

"That was good!" whispered Emi, as she walked over to Mai and handed over a big containing the paranormal equipment we had with us. "Keep going!"

"To answer this question, we have some equipment to help us... Firstly," she said, taking out a cheap EMF detector we'd ordered a week ago. "An Electromagnetic Field, or EMF detector. It measures fluctuations in electromagnetic fields, which can indicate the presence of paranormal activity. This is measured through the lights you can see on it. The more lights that turn on, the stronger the presence."

"Mhm," said Genius, smoking behind the camera. Coming from a very rich family, he was naturally the one who offered to pay for all the equipment.

"Secondly," she said, taking out a handheld communication device. "A Spirit Box, which you've probably heard of if you've watched any Paranormal investigation YouTube video or TV program. Basically, it rapidly scans through radio frequencies, creating a stream of white noise or snippets of radio broadcasts. Spirits can manipulate this noise to communicate with us by forming words through the radio snippets."

"That one cost a lot," came Genius's voice again.

"Next," she said, putting the spirit box back in with the EMF detector and taking out a camera. "A thermal camera, to help us detect temperature fluctuations or cold spots, indicating the presence of a spirit. Our Genius will be operating it."

"Don't forget the infrared!" said Emi from behind.

"Oh, and all of us are equipped with a mini infrared, or night vision camera to record in the dark. That, along with the high quality sound recorder Emi has, we'll be able to catch every little sound and movement in the pitch black halls and classrooms... Stay tuned for a night of investigation, and a bonus session at the end where we're bound to catch something... Now, onto the inside..."

"Cut," I said, mildly surprised. "You didn't stutter once, I'm impressed."

"Keeping the Ouija Board session we've planned at the end secret... You nailed it, Mai!" said Emi.

Smiling at her, Mai curtsied in response, giving me a momentary peek under her miniskirt. Yellow. Bold.

"With this, I'm sure we can out-do every other club's activity, even though we're probably gonna get in some trouble for trespassing on campus..."

"That's tomorrow's problem," said Genius, throwing his cigarette to the ground and stepping on it. "We gotta figure out how to get past the night guard's station tonight first."

Breaking into school grounds at midnight, I thought. It can't get any crazier than this.