The next day, Anton was seated in the co-pilot seat outside the school, where all the students who had died used to study together. His suspicions told him that the reporter named Reiko seemed to know something, but following basic methods to gain her trust, he decided not to interrogate her.
"Tell me about yourself. Why are you in this line of work? You must be aware that this is more than just a job, a self-imposed obligation from which, once inside, you cannot escape." Anton turned his head towards Yoshio, wanting to know more about him.
"My father was killed by a demon. They told me he was a prince of hell, but I'm not sure if that's correct. Sometimes, I wonder if I can be as great as you, as my dad, or the people who are my mentors." Yoshio smiled slightly, trying to hide his doubts. He didn't know why he always smiled, regardless of the situation, but truth be told, he didn't want to smile right now.
"How strong can a human be to confront the demon itself? Evil spirits are different from demons because their resentment is with the living. As for demons, they act according to their amusement, likes, and dislikes."
"Eh?" Anton extended his hand and said, "You don't need to be a good exorcist to do things right. Just doing the right thing at the right time is more than enough for you to understand the value of your work."
Yoshio looked at the silver cross in Anton's hand, took it when offered, and said, "Thank you for your words, sir."
Anton lit a cigarette and said, "It seems there won't be any activity in this school. We need to go in and find out where those kids went and found that cursed object."
It seemed he had imagined finding that reporter in this place trying to investigate the death of her niece, but it seems she didn't know about the connection between the dead and her relative. In that case, Anton didn't need to pay more attention to that woman for now.
Moreover, the relatives didn't know anything about how their children had gone to a cabin to meet and have fun. On the other hand, besides the students who had died, there was the death of a motorcyclist and two people in a vehicle who died at the same time.
In this kind of dark entity, the deaths of the entire area where the entity can exert its influence must be analyzed. In a range close to the other deaths, only three more were related in space and time, seemingly victims of the same entity they were pursuing.
On the school grounds where most victims studied, Anton let Yoshio take care of the initial interactions because, due to his foreign features, inconveniences were greater. Not having Asian features and having an appearance that many might consider the stereotype of an attractive foreign man, Anton didn't have much of a detective profile initially, so he decided to let Yoshio do the heavy lifting.
"There are no traces of evil in this place; everything seems clear." Anton burned incense, and as a natural reaction when there is a type of evil that no one can find, this smoke, instead of being white, turns completely black. With no reaction from Anton, he sighed with exhaustion, left the incense stuck in the garden outside the school, and walked inside, where Yoshio seemed to have found something.
"Sir, a girl seems to have a close relationship with the deceased, but the school tells us we need to be discreet because they don't want bad rumors to spread." Yoshio, who had spoken with the principal, reached an agreement.
"That's understandable. Humans are idiots by nature, and that's why we need to suppress all information about that urban legend before more victims of that dark entity die." Anton had heard rumors about the Blue Whale Challenge. This name refers to a potentially harmful and self-harming online game attributed to cases of suicide among teenagers, due to the rules of the game. Its spread began on the Russian social network Vkontakte in May 2016.
Anton had come across this information when researching the urban legend. Some of the most recent comments linked it to the challenge, so if it was a real problem in 2016, now an urban legend with suspicions of dying if you watch that video would be chaos, maybe worldwide.
When they entered an office, there was a girl sitting, waiting. Anton, once seated, asked directly, "Do you know about your classmates who died on the same day, right?"
"Yes, they initially invited me, but I refused because I wanted to study." The simple-looking girl responded clearly.
Anton nodded, then asked, "If you're curious about why they died, we suspect it's due to a rather strange drug, so we want to find out where they gathered."
"They went to accommodation on the outskirts of this city, more precisely in a forest quite far south. I can point out the name."
There weren't many problems getting the name of the location, so Anton and Yoshio set off shortly after getting the information they wanted.
The journey was very long, and due to the location of the cabin, they couldn't go directly there by helicopter, so they had no choice but to drive to that place.
A few hours later, they found the path to the cabin and, upon arrival, observed a fairly new vehicle that belonged to a local person. "Investigate the plates of that vehicle; it seems not to be here by mere chance."
But at that moment, Anton saw reporter Reiko Asakawa coming out of that cabin with a pale expression.
"We have to stop her, her bag; she carries a cursed object." Anton could see with his own eyes a dark trail around Reiko Asakawa's body, so he knew immediately that she was now cursed.