The trio walked down the hallways decorated with flowers and ribbons. Although the people around them were enjoying the event, the trio looked as if they were kidnapped and taken to the last room of the hallway.
The truth was when they had asked Ryota what was in his bag, he said that he would tell them but not in the open – they would need a silent room. And the room at the end of the corridor was the one.
Hito went inside first. Sengoku followed. Ryota closed the door behind him. Sengoku pulled a chair and placed it in front of the desk lying in the middle of the room. Hito pulled two chairs and kept them side by side with Sengoku's chairs.
The room once belonged to the Occult Research Club. But after two kids suddenly disappeared from the club, then from the school, and now from Tokyo, Japan, the school shut down the club and sealed the room.
The rumors say the tenth graders tried to perform a ritual and call a deceased spirit. That spirit turned out to be rather angry. The school had thought about giving the room to other clubs, but the students had refused the offer.
Ryota believed the students just packed their backs and left Tokyo to become the state news. But then realized that two tenth graders can not survive in a cruel world. They must have meddled with drug dealers and got themselves killed because their egos had ranked up to the level where they could just not show their faces back at the school again.
Ryota looked at the occult posters on the walls and the Ouija board lying in one corner of the room. The green board was scratched all over and pieces of chalk lay around the teacher's podium.
The teachers had not bothered taking the strange, twisted hangings off the ceiling, and neither had they bothered to take off the posters.
Ryota pulled the chair back and sat on it, pulling his school bag forward. Sengoku brought his hands over the table and dropped his head. Then he raised his brown eyes.
"I gave you the stuffed toy because I was sad since you would leave tonight. I had planned to book a ship to Okinawa for you. We would take a ship to—" Sengoku coughed. "We would leave for our hometown while you head to Okinawa."
"Then you opened your bag." Hito rubbed his hands together, staring at the pages scattered all over the floor.
'He had trembled. The stoic Hito had trembled. Because of something – no – because of the diary in my bag.'
Ryota unzipped his bag and Hito budged again. Without any hesitation, Ryota grabbed the thick diary by the spine and banged it on the table – that made a sound probably enough for others to hear. But they would just assume that the ghost has returned, and run away.
Sengoku pulled his hands off the table and Hito got off the chair but then stopped. Hito looked at the book from the corner of his eyes and noticed the black energy around it. He gulped, his hands trembled, and he stepped back again.
Sengoku pushed his chair back. Ryota frowned. 'Even you? What is up with this diary? Right, that island. I need to show them that place.'
Without waiting for them to acknowledge him, he pulled the diary to himself and opened the page with the date of that day.
As he had expected, the map was still there. He opened the map and spun the diary for Hito and Sengoku to take a look.
"Shizuma. I have not heard of this before." Ryota looked into Sengoku's eyes for the hint of those white strokes again, but his eyes stayed brown. Then he looked at Hito – he was not as good as Sengoku at hiding his emotions.
Hito's eyes were fixed on the diary with dark energy wavering around it, but his hand on the chair's back was trembling AGAIN.
Ryota noted their reactions and continued anyway, "This isolated island is not even on the map, except this. I found it in the diary – and you might not believe me – but the map only appears on the page with today's date. Yesterday, it was on the previous page, but now… I know how it sounds."
Sengoku raised his eyes at Hito, and Hito lifted his eyes from the diary. Then nodded.
"Where did you get this?" Sengoku asked. He dared to move his hand towards the diary.
"In the storage closet."
As Sengoku's hand reached for the diary, it wavered from side to side but finally landed on it. He grunted – as if in pain – when he grabbed the diary's spine and back cover. He opened his pinched eyes. With much struggle, he lifted the diary off the table.
"Oh and be careful when you open it. The first time I opened it, I had a vision."
No one in the room, except Ryota, knew what vision he was talking about. Sengoku examined the book cover to cover. He rested it in his left palm as he grabbed the front cover and flipped it open.
To Ryota's surprise, nothing happened. But to Hito's eyes: Sengoku was releasing his magic to fight off the dark magic protecting the diary. Sengoku was troubled by the preserved dark energy, it even scared Hito.
"Flip to the last page, Sen," Ryota said with a mischievous smile on his face.
Sengoku lifted his eyes off the diary for a moment, then opened the last page.
His body trembled and he almost dropped the book. With a gasp, Sengoku stepped back. The book bounced off his hands and onto the table.
Ryota's smile faded – he had not thought it would be so much of a shock. Sengoku grabbed his forehead and took a seat two feet away from the table.
Hito released his grip on the chair and picked up the book. He knew he had to release his dark energy to fight the dark energy coming from the diary. But he doubted he would be able to defend against that.
He was curious, too, about what Sengoku had read to give him a shock. He lifted the book and flipped open the back cover. His hands tightened around the book's edges, the pressure was greater than Hito had expected it to be.
And when he read the words: Belongs to Hayashi Ryota, he shuddered. For one foolish moment, he thought Ryota had presented them with the book on purpose.
Then he got to the bottom of the page and read the words that knocked the shit out of him. Signed Ojisan, your grandfather.
He closed the diary and dropped it on the table. "Fuck!" He grabbed his forehead and stumbled against the stage for teachers. He pushed the podium on the wall but stood on his feet. "W-why do you have his diary? W-why…?"
Ryota got off the chair and grabbed the diary. "What is wrong with you, guys? It is just a diary. Or… is something wrong?"
They were weird. For the first time in three years, Sengoku had lost his cool, and Hito had shifted his emotion from pissed-off annoyance to fear. That word was fear.
Ryota clenched the diary in his hands. 'I don't want my prediction to come true. Please, no.'
Ryota gulped because he was nervous to ask Sengoku something that would change the way Ryota looks at him. "You are from Shizuma, aren't you?"
Sengoku's mouth dropped open. The exact reaction Ryota had imagined from Sengoku. But that was far from enough.
He looked at Hito and repeated the question, "Your hometown is this isolated island, isn't it?"
Hito looked away. He had always done that when was asked a difficult question by the maths teachers. He would avoid the gaze and think that he had avoided the question too.
Sengoku coughed his fake cough again. "H-Hito, come here. We need to talk."
Hito nodded. He held his head low as he walked across the table and joined Sengoku. He rubbed his forehead and said, "Tell him now. You should."
Sengoku nodded. He was standing a few feet away from Ryota, just enough for him to keep his conversation private.
When Hito received no valid reply, he walked back to Ryota and stretched out his palm. "Give me a cigarette."
Ryota took a roll from the blazer's inner pocket, then took out a lighter from his pants pocket. Hito was still not ready to make eye contact with Ryota, cause he held his head low even when he put the cigarette in between his lips.
He lighted the cigarette, then dropped the lighter on Ryota's lap. He took a drag as he turned and released when he reached Sengoku.
"He knows about it, Sen. Or he just came to know."
Whatever the case was, Sengoku looked too worried to even give Hito a proper answer. While looking out of the window, at the stupid kids laughing below him, Sengoku stretched his hand to Hito.
Hito gleaned at Sengoku, then at his hand. "What do you want?" Hito whispered. He continued to stare at his hand. Sengoku lifted the first two fingers.
That day must have been full of surprises for Hito. The pure Sengoku had asked for a cigarette. And that, too, to smoke on the school premises!
With a scoff, Hito placed the cigarette on his finger. Hito looked out of the window too. Since the class has not been cleaned in months, the glass and floor were dirty.
"He is curious. Ryota will get himself killed like the curious cat."
"I have an idea," Sengoku said as he took a drag, then blew it at the ceiling, "We have no choice but to take him now that he knows about Shizuma. And we do not need to tell him, he will find it, or learn about it from someone." After another drag, Sengoku asked, "Are you scared?"
"Nah. Let us count him on tonight's ship. Are you sure you want to take him?"
Sengoku passed the cigarette to Hito and shook his head. "He knows about the island, we can not risk it."
Hito took a long drag, almost finishing it to the butt. He pulled the cigarette off his lips. "He may be stronger than both of us."
"I have thought about that. Even if he is, he is like a soldier with a gun with no basic knowledge of even unlocking the safety. And he lacks the courage to be evil."
"Exactly, Sen. And such a soldier don't exist. He has dark magic in his blood, he is a Hayashi after all."
"So what? What if he is a Hayashi?"
He lowered the cigarette on the window sill and crushed it, then twisted it till the ask fell off the sill. "Because if he is hiding his real power," Hito flicked the cigarette out of the window and looked at Sengoku, "we are in real danger. And if we bring him to Shizuma, we will be bringing the danger with us."