After hours of searching for any traces that might lead to Larry's contact information, Benjamin finally completed searching thirty-three phones belonging to his daughter.
He knew that he and his wife didn't have Larry's phone number either.
He finally resigned to his fate by waking up Matilda.
"Honey, can you wake up, please?"
Matilda couldn't sleep either while her husband was busy searching for Leni's phones.
Matilda didn't waste even a single second and entered Larry's room. There, she looked everywhere: from the bed, cabinets, his wardrobe, and his bags, yet she couldn't find anything.
There, she found Larry's diary on top of the bookshelf where he stored countless textbooks, manga, action figures, as well as other merchandise, but she didn't mind any of it.
Her primary objective was to rescue her son.
She flipped through every page of her son's diary and read every entry, not sparing a single word. She made sure to find any clue that might lead her to her son's whereabouts.
But all her hope bore fruitless as she read everything from the first page down to the last page of her son's diary.
Tears started to swell in the cornea of her eyes. She couldn't imagine how devastating it must have been to live a pitiful life like this.
At first, she was in denial about it; the more she thought about what was going on inside the house from Larry's perspective, the more she couldn't help but think about how horrible a mother she was.
Then she felt angry, of course not because of her son, but at herself and the other people inside the house.
She eventually consoled herself that everything would be okay; she wanted to try to act as a mother should. To stay strong, yet after a while, her self-bargaining turned into depression.
Until she finally accepted the truth.
In just a few minutes, she experienced her five stages of grief.
**********
"Matilda, can I ask you something?"
"What do you want to ask, Benjamin?"
"Uuuum, I've been contemplating whether I should ask this or not, but did you give Larry his own personal phone?"
"What? You didn't buy him a single one?"
"Why would I do that? I'm busy with my work, you know that."
"....."
"Don't give me that face."
Benjamin started to get nervous after looking at his wife's speechless reaction.
"Matilda, how much is Larry's daily school allowance?"
"How would I know that? You're his father; you should have given him a daily allowance enough to buy a phone for himself."
"F***"
Benjamin finally put all the pieces together as to why they hadn't received a call from Larry.
It turns out their son didn't even have a phone.
"No, no, no, no, no....."
Matilda began freaking out and burst into outrage the moment she thought about how her son might be right now.
'Is he scared, or in the dark crying? My poor baby boy Larry.'
"Did you give him our phone number?"
"No, I didn't expect this might happen. If only I knew, I could have bought him limited edition phones every month like Leni and saved our phone numbers to ensure our worries."
"Then how did he manage to get this many comic books and toys?"
Matilda then offered Benjamin the diary she had been reading earlier.
It turns out that Larry used their family's old computer to buy and sell his second-hand clothes and then turned a profit.
He began to apply to become a part-time librarian in a nearby store until he managed to buy those action figures.
**********
At the same time, Larry's lifeless body, covered in blood, was rushed into an ambulance.
The witnesses called for the ambulance and hurried Larry to the hospital, but unfortunately, there was heavy traffic down the road.
They couldn't escape the current traffic because there was a loud commotion happening at the very end, where people started running faster, leaving their vehicles stranded.
"Run....ruuuuun! All of you, go back right now!"
Thankfully, before the ambulance got stuck in the traffic, they managed to get out and find another route.
The more time they wasted, the more Larry's chances of survival became critical.
Excluding Larry, the ambulance had four other people: two in the front seat while the other two were nurses making sure to give Larry his first aid medication before they arrived at the hospital.
(Beeeeep)
The monitor sounded like a sign that they failed to save the fifteen-year-old kid from dying.
"Time of death: 12:45 at midnight."
The nurse clarified the time when the patient took his last breath in the world.
**********
Leni also couldn't sleep in her room. Knowing the world might end any minute from now made it impossible to relieve some worries.
What bothered her the most was how her parents could treat her like this.
Why did they choose to side with Larry even though he wasn't even present at the confrontation?
She didn't even bully her brother because she believed that even a single word spoken wasn't even worthy of her interest or attention.
She never once scolded, humiliated, or physically insulted him, yet why was she getting punished instead when all this time she believed she was the most filial child out of the two of them?
"Why would Mom and Dad treat me like this?"
(Boom)
A loud, sudden earthquake shook the house, making her snap out of her nonsensical worries.
The power outlet in their house began to run out of energy as the whole vicinity was clouded with smoke.
Reality started to sink in when she was venting her anger and frustration and forgot to close her bathroom window until her anger subsided and was replaced with fear.
(Crack crack crack)
She heard some footsteps near her bedroom as she hid under the bed.
Her bathroom door slowly opened; Leni closed her eyes and held her breath, afraid of being discovered by the being that had trespassed into her room.
After a few minutes, the sounds of the unknown creepy footsteps suddenly halted in front of where her bed was standing.
That's when she opened her eyes and witnessed an ugly, hideous-looking, red-blooded ghoul full of scars staring deeply into her soul.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh."