Kenji still felt the warmth of Amaya's smile when he was walking home from the shopping district later that night. He kept his hands in his pockets, not wanting to send Shota a text at the moment. He didn't even want to think about Amaya...instead, he wanted to try and clear his head.
Maybe it really was his fault. But, to be fair, he hadn't expected himself to fall for the girl he was hiring to spend the day with.
I'll forget about her soon enough, he told himself.
With a heavy sigh, Kenji came to a halt at the corner of the street, where the blinking lights of a small convenience store stood out in the darkness. This brought a smile to his face— he could use a snack.
Kenji took a turn for the convenience store, but just when he reached for the door, a sudden wave of movement from across the street caught his eye. He turned his head in time to catch a blur disappear around the corner of the building...and that blur was human-shaped.
Now interested in this phenomenon, Kenji turned away from the convenience store and took off at a jog across the empty street. He quickened his pace once he crossed the road and rounded the corner in pursuit of whatever he had seen seconds ago. However, once he'd made it around, he found that there was nothing out of the ordinary. The boy stopped to catch his breath.
"What the hell?"
Kenji shook his head. Was he really imagining things at this point? How path—
A swift motion redirected his attention to the rooftops of the buildings adjacent to where he stood, and when he squinted, he could make out someone running underneath the moonlight. Whoever it was moved fast, but the person halted for a split second for Kenji to get a better look at their appearance.
Kenji's jaw almost dropped to the concrete when he realized that the individual was a girl with short, dark hair and sporting a pleated skirt and blouse.
"Amaya?" he called out, a little louder than he'd wanted to, which caught the girl's attention. She turned her head towards him, froze, and then swiftly disappeared from behind the building.
Kenji stiffened. Did she just jump?
"Amaya!" Kenji called out again, now breaking into a run down the sidewalk and toward the first open alley he could get to. While he sprinted, a dozen thoughts raced through his head at the same speed as the heart pounding in his chest. Was that really Amaya? What was she doing? How did she get on the roof? Or was he losing his mind?
He was soon able to find out when he came to the end of the alley, where he found the girl pulling herself to her feet. Kenji slammed to a stop and panted, unable to comprehend what he was seeing in front of him.
Even from several feet away, Kenji could hear Amaya's labored breathing as she rose to her full height. She looked down at herself, as if checking for injuries, before turning around to face Kenji. In the pale moonlight, he could see her left eye gleaming silver, which brought him to question if she really was Amaya or not. Her hair was out of place, her makeup was smudged, and she only had one brown eye while the other was almost iridescent. On the other hand, she had the same clothing on— it was just torn and disheveled in some places.
Suddenly, she staggered forward, stopped herself, and spoke.
"K-Kenji...?"
Kenji's face blanched and sweat beads started to form along his forehead. He gulped and brought himself to respond.
"Amaya? Er, Oshiro-san?"
Amaya straightened her posture and threaded her eyebrows in frustration, catching Kenji off guard. There was no way that this was the same girl he'd been with hours earlier.
"Get out of here," she snapped, her fingers curling to form tight fists. "It's not safe. You have to leave. Now."
Kenj did a double take.
"What? Then what are YOU doing here?" he fired back in a much less hostile tone. "Where you running on the roof? How'd you get down? What's going on?"
Amaya set her jaw and strode forward to close the gap between Kenji and herself before grabbing hold of the boy's shirt collar and bringing his face forward.
"Did you not hear me? You're going to get us both killed." She let go of his collar, but with a forceful shove back. "Leave."
Kenji hesitated, then shook his head firmly. There was no way he was leaving Amaya...no matter what she was so worried about.
"No, I'm not—"
A moving figure kept Kenji from finishing his sentence and led him to shift his gaze to the rooftops. Having noticed that something had caught Kenji's eye, Amaya turned her head.
"It's an Onibaba."
Before Kenji had the chance to ask what she meant by that, the creature perched on the top of the roof launched itself forward and landed where Amaya had previously been standing in the blink of an eye. The creature landed on all fours, but Kenji could tell by its form that it could walk like a human. After all...
"That's an old hag."
In a flash, the Onibaba came crawling rapidly on all fours, its distorted face twisted into a grin as loose breasts swayed from its bony structure. Yellowed talons reached out in place of fingernails, ready to tear Kenji and Amaya to shreds.
Although Kenji was frozen in fear, Amaya whirled around and prepared herself to fight back. Upon seeing this, Kenji snapped to his senses and grabbed ahold of the back of Amaya's blouse so he could yank her back. When he did so, he wrapped both of his arms around her small torso and closed his eyes, doing his best to replicate the time he'd seemingly teleported when he was younger. Unfortunately, all he could do was hope for the best while he fell backward with Amaya in his arms.
There was a shriek of fury from the Onibaba followed by sudden silence and a soft thud when Kenji fell on his back.
Hesitantly, the boy opened his eyes, finding himself in a dark bedroom with an odd sense of familiarity to it. He blinked a few times to adjust to the light before realizing that there was a girl clinging to him.
Amaya.
Just when he opened his mouth to speak, Amaya raised her head abruptly and proceeded to scramble to her feet. Kenji was just as quick to get up and even quicker to cover her mouth with his hand so she couldn't make any noise. As he'd expected, Amaya struggled against him, but she went still when Kenji nodded to the boy fast asleep in his bed a couple feet away.
"Shh. Don't wake him," Kenji whispered as quietly as possible in a desperate attempt to calm Amaya down. "Don't worry, that's my friend. I can explain."
Somehow, Amaya managed to wriggle herself free and took several steps back from Kenji, fear apparent in her silver eyes. He reached out for her, hoping she would at least stop trying to get away from him, but instead, she made a mad dash for the open window beside Shota's bed. Kenji jumped to grab her a little too late...and she slipped out the window and disappeared.
Kenji thrust his head out of the opening and leaned on the windowsill to see Amaya running across a nearby roof and sliding down a fire escape. Why she wanted to go after the hag, he had no idea. All he knew was that he had to stop her for whatever reason that was in his chest.
However, he stopped himself from going out the window and instead turned to face Shota's sleeping form. The other boy didn't stir, which didn't surprise Kenji in the least. Of course, he would be a heavy sleeper.
The bigger question was...why Shota, of all people? Why did the portal open up to a classmate?
He shook his head, too tired to think about the teleportation ability he had. He wasn't sure if he could teleport to Amaya...let alone try teleporting again so soon. Both times he'd teleported could have been a sort of fluke.
Ultimately, he decided to do his best to catch up to Amaya and squeezed through the window into the night.