"Urrghh...hyaa...hyuu...hyaa...hyuu...bleurgh...mgyuh...ehum..."
In a dark alley, a figure was crouching while panting, tears streaming out of his eyes, struggling to hold back the intense urge to vomit.
"Bwack!"
In the end the figure surrendered and threw up, but nothing really came out since he didn't have any lunch at all.
Feeling the sharp, bitter taste of gastric juice in his mouth, Mino opened his eyes which were filled his tears. Breathing through his nose, he caught the nauseatic stench again. The stench of rotting flesh.
What happened a few minutes ago...
Mino advanced towards the ice cone and finally went behind it to observe the dark patch near it. As soon as his eyes laid themselves on the dark patch and followed the dark red trail, they came across a horrific sight.
Two corpses lying there. He let out a fear laden scream and freaked out even more when he heard the reverberating sounds ringing in his ears.
[Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!!! I just came here for seeing this mysterious block of ice. What in the world is happening! I need to inform this to the police quickly.]
Suppressing his feeling of nausea caused due to the rotting flesh (surprisingly which he couldn't smell before) he turned back to run away, but stopped himself when he heard a familiar sound.
It was a ringtone, not any ordinary one, but one too unique to be forgotten. He tried remembering where he had heard the ringtone. It suddenly struck him.
[That's fucking Sir doc's ringtone!].
There was no mistaking it. Whenever those bullies beat him up, he took refuge in Mr. Reinard's infirmary. He used to talk to him regarding these matters of bullying and whatnot. Occasionally, his phone rang out. The silly ringtone at first made Mino laugh, and slowly it engraved itself into his mind. It was one thing he would never forget.
As he was confused as hell,ba memory from the morning popped up.
("She took my first phone. It had my favourite ringtone!")
An ominous realisation slowly started to form.
[Could it really be.. no it fucking can't! Two people of course can have same super unique ringtones! There's no way that's Ma'am Mira with Sir Doc's phone. Yeah, I'm sure of that!]
Heart beating his chest like a hammer beats metal, Mino started continuing towards the ringing phone near the corpse, the tingling in his body increasing with every passing moment. The vicious stench attacked his sense of smell for the second time. As he went closer, he finally picked the phone up, which still had blood clinging to it.
[I can't believe what I am doing. Why am I even doing this!]
What he was doing was really questionable. Picking up the phone of a corpse. He, who became nervous quickly, actually moved near the corpse and picked the phone up without any ounce of fear or hesitation in his eyes. His desire to uncover the mystery had overcome his desire to not get involved.
Rubbing the blood over a piece of tissue which we got from his packet, he finally tried to unlock. The phone was vibrating, indicating an incoming call. Quickly rejecting the call, he unlocked to screen too...
see the picture of Reinard. The thing he feared... appeared to have come true. All that was the left was to check the corpse which wasn't mutilated completed.
[I... have to do this...!]
He walked up to the corpse and felt the horrible smell intensify.
Encouraging himself, he flipped the corpse over...
That brings us back to the current situation. Mino was kneeling, or rather crouching in front of the remains of his English teacher, Mira Marsell. Her corpse had no arms or legs attached to them, they were cut off from the elbow and knee respectively.
However, there was only a single severed arm near her body, and it was in such a terrible condition that Mino had averted his eyes the moment he noticed it. It was charred black, the whitish bone could be seen in some places.
What was even more horrifying was the possibility that the arm was charred before being severed from the body. No fingers attached to the hand except one. Mino finally understood what the small black stick-like things really were which he saw while approaching the Mira's corpse.
It was viable to assume that her other limbs had also met the same treatment. Her body was also charred black in many places, but there was an intriguing observation. Purplish-Red lines zigzzagged and branched out radially from the chest.
"Electricity..."
He whispered quietly. Eyes fixed on the corpse, Mino stood up. The realization hitting him hard once again, he fell on his butt and once again his body lurched forward. Not bothering to stand up, he started crawling away from that place on all fours. Mino's mental state was in complete chaos.
[I just touched a corpse! Why was Ma'am lying that miserable state! Is it done by the same person who killed that poor civilian yesterday?! Or... is it done by...]
The faces he had seen in the afternoon during recess flashed in his mind. He heaved himself up and started running, trying to navigate through the claustrophobic alleys which now seemed more scary to him than the bullies.
But he came to a halt once again. There was a sharp stinging pain in his neck, as if something was penetrating into it. Eyes widened, he brought his eyes downward, not daring to move his neck even by a single millimetre. The feeling of a slimy liquid flowing down... that dreadful feeling reappeared. From his upper neck.
His lowered eyes caught a sharp glint of the broad side of a dagger blade, it's tip nowhere to be seen, blood flowing from his neck over the blade. He felt a jerk, and a disastrously painful sensation filled his mind as his body gave up and he collapsed. There was a small but deep wound in his neck.
[J-just w-who d-did t-t-that...]
Mino's mind was dulled by the pain, but it could still think nonetheless. As he lay down on the paved ground once again, he heard a voice.
"Do you want to live?"