RP Shinjuku Academy Paranormal Investigation Club

“Ooh, taking over someone else’s lair, even better!” Sayane let out a laugh as Eiji relayed information. She certainly wasn’t afraid of squirrels, but she’d had more than her fair share of run-ins with them. She’d found they were very territorial, and didn’t really understand the concept of “I’m just looking around to see if there’s anything cool here” very well.

Regardless, the lack of squirrels was a net positive, and Sayane was ready to stop letting Eiji have all the fun. She somewhat awkwardly stepped into Akina’s hand before roughly boosting off and grabbing Eiji’s. She probably could have gotten herself up there, nobody helped her up in her previous excursions after all, but she appreciated the help. And if Eiji thought she was stronger because of it, well that was just an added bonus.

Sayane copied Eiji’s previous movements, scanning the area with her flashlight and grabbing one of the notebooks to inspect as soon as the last member of their trio was with them. She let her arm hang by Eiji’s and called down.

“Jump for it, Akina! We’ll pull you up!”
 
Nothing came chittering out of a corner once the second girl invited herself into the nest, so perhaps there really weren’t any squirrels hiding up there. Or, maybe they were just waiting for the perfect moment to attack. If that was their plan then Akina was blissfully unaware of the potential fuzzy trap. Instead, she reached her hands up towards those of the other two girls to do what was possibly their third or possibly fourth best idea of the afternoon.

“Okay, I’m going to jump up on three!” Akina said, bouncing on her heels a couple of times, because that felt like it might warm her muscles up some, which would help her jump higher!

“Right! One, two… three!” She did not hesitate as she hopped up, reaching for the hands dangling down from above. If they caught her, there looked to be a nice pipe she could step on to help boost herself up into the ceiling.

~—~—~—~—~

“Right… but if we catch a glimpse of it then maybe we can figure out who the thief is.” Chiasa said, clearly once more getting more caught up in the moment than she was with good sense. It was just another little peek after all, and it wasn’t like they had damaged anything with the last one, right? “Let’s just take a quick little looksie and we can head back to your club room.”

Chiasa caught Kyo as the girl swooned into her, which did bring a little heat to her cheeks. “See? Kyo will just take a little look and we’ll be on our way.”
 
Kyo happily scrambled up Chiasa, letting the other girl boost her up into the vent. Once there, she poked her head inside, narrowing her eyes. She could've joked about something. It probably would've been funny. Something like - a vent ghost, in the shape of a rectangle, with a bloodied face. But -

There was something there. Something real. She barely caught sight of it as it disappeared further back into the shadows. Something long and snakelike, covered in mottled markings.

Without a word, Kyo kicked off of Chiasa's shoulders and face, pushing herself deeper into the vent. Deeper, and deeper, until only her shoes were hanging out, until the girl was gone altogether, crawling forward in hot pursuit of whatever little critter had gotten itself caught inside the school.

"Kyo's gonna get your ghost," she called back in a muffled echo, the sound of her thumping elbows disappearing into the ducts.
 
Akina made her jump, and Eiji caught one of her hands, letting Sayane grab the other so that the two of them could help pull her up into the lair of... squirrels? That didn't sound particularly terrifying. Eiji was trying desperately to think about it as the lair of squirrels and not the lair of whoever had left all those little trinkets and where were they now and what had happened to them and had it been horrible or were they still out there and they were going to show up in about ten seconds and ask what everyone was doing up there and that was going to be the worst, absolutely the worst-

Eiji made herself take a deep breath, which made her sneeze. She probably should have expected that, given that it didn't seem like this place had been cleaned any time recently. Actually, it would probably be pretty nice if it were tidied up. She wondered if it had been clean, when whoever-had-been-here had been here. And when that had been. And if they were about to show up again. Eiji glanced back the way they had come, but no cross-looking individuals seemed to have followed them in.

"Look, there's these little things up here," she said to the others after pulling Akina up - because sharing a problem meant you could pretend it was someone else's problem. "I don't think we're the first ones to find this place. I wonder who it was, before us?"
 
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Sayane grabbed Akina’s hand tightly, smiling at the girl as she pulled. Eiji had managed to grab her other hand, which was a relief. Sayane thought she was strong, but she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to pull the girl up all by herself! But here they all were, in the dusty squirrel lair that was noticeably lacking in squirrels.

“I dunno, maybe some older students?” Sayane thumbed through one of the notebooks, eyes watering a little at the dust that was kicked up. But she’d been in dirtier and dustier buildings, and some of those had even had mold! “Strange that they left all this stuff up here though.” She let out a gasp as her eyes lit up.

“Maybe something happened to them!” She turned to Akina, grabbing the other girl’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t that be exciting?”
 
“Wow, it’s neat up here.” Akina said once she wiggled her way into the attic space with the help of her friends. It certainly wasn’t the most spacious space she’d ever been in, but it was well furnished! So long as you counted piles of old notebooks as furnishing. Maybe if you piled them up you could make a chair? With that thought, Akina plucked one off the pile and flipped it open. Notes in the notebook, shocking.

“Oh!” Akina said, looking up as Sayane grabbed her shoulders. “I suppose that might have happened, but we better hope we don’t get cursed then. She added with an easygoing laugh. She turned her attention to the scattered trinkets that Eiji had motioned towards with an interested hum. Some were old and dusty, like the pair of earrings that looked like they had once been used by a spider for a home, while others looked like they hadn’t been left for that long, like a necklace which glittered in light coming into the little space from below.

“It seems like there had been a lot of different someones up here, doesn’t it?” Akina asked, leaning back to take a look over Sayane’s shoulder. “And it’s a lot of different odds and ends isn’t it? I think that’s a pile of erasers over there, and I think I see chopsticks over in that corner. Maybe there’s some tradition about leaving something up here when you graduate? Or…”

She looked back down to the earrings and frowned.

“Chiasa said a lot of girls had lost jewelry in the locker room, right?”

—————

“Huh? Hey! Wait!” Chiasa yelped up at Kyo’s retreating legs as she landed solidly on her backside. They were just going to take a look not dive head first into the thing! And — and even if it wasn’t a ghost then there might be mice! Chiasa jumped up to her feet, reaching up to try to catch Kyo’s ankle before the girl got away but it was too late. In a panic the swimmer turned to the only reasonable person in the group, Miiko, and pointed up at the vent.

“I— what do we do? She’s going to get stuck, isn’t she?”

——————

Perhaps because Kyo was so brave, the snake-like thing that probably wasn’t a snake darted back in rapid retreat. There was a metallic banging sound, that wasn’t quite as loud as Kyo’s, but it sent a reverberation through the ductwork.
 
Sayane seemed excited about all this, even if it wasn't much. Eiji smiled, maybe just a little bit, because it was kind of exciting, even if it probably wasn't... well, whatever Sayane thought it was. She started a little bit as Akina casually grabbed one of the notebooks and started looking at it - it seemed wrong somehow. What if it was someone's diary? She would feel awful if anyone ever read her diary.

Mostly because Eiji was a terrible journalist, though, and any time she started a diary it lasted for about three days, then there would be a gap of a month or so, then another day or something, and then she would forget it entirely. At least in looking over Akina's shoulder - not reading! - the pages seemed more filled in.

Eiji crouched down by the jewelry instead, cautiously looking through it, thinking. Now, it wasn't exactly a fantastical explanation, but.. "You know, there are some kinds of birds that like to collect shiny things. It's possible that if things got left out..." She shrugged. She was pretty sure Chiasa had said something about things disappearing from lockers, but she didn't remember exactly. "Maybe rats too, to be honest." Rats could get into pretty small places. Eiji didn't mind them, but some people did. "I wonder if the gym thief is just a little animal of some sort. Do you think we should take the jewelry back?"
 
“Huh, yeah it does.” Sayane responded, taking in the wide array of items covered in various levels of dust. “I don’t think it would’ve been this dusty if people had come here when they graduated.” She picked up a small thimble that had been clattering around, rolling the dusty metal between her fingers, perking up when she heard Eiji’s suggestion.

“Absolutely not!” Sayane exclaimed, perhaps a little too loudly for the small space. She smiled apologetically before continuing, this time at a more reasonable volume. “If it’s a spirit that’s taken these, then taking them away would just make things worse.” Then again, they were rummaging around in here with seemingly no ill effect. What if it was just an animal, and she was just making a big fuss out of nothing?

But no, she had a feeling. Maybe the other girls had found something? If this was just some bored chipmunk it would be so lame!

“Do you think the others found anything in the locker room?”
 
“Mm, I guess it’s not impossible that a little animal did all this.” Akina said, picking up a handful of earrings and turning them over in her hand. Little animals did like shiny things, or birds did at least but it was pretty well organized up here wasn’t it? Well, not well organized in the orderly sense but the similar things were clumped together in ambling little piles of junk. “Oh, I guess this is why there are so many reminders about not leaving things unattended on the bulletin board in the front hall.” She said. Her attention turned to Sayane as the girl made a strong objection to them taking the stuff with them.

“I suppose that’s true, don’t want to make it angry when we don’t even know what it is.” She agreed with a cheerful nod as she returned her handful of earrings to the pile. Akina returned to her feet, patting her hands off on her sides. “I’d say we should go meet back up with the others and share what we’ve found.” She said, stepping carefully back over to the hole they had entered through. She sat down, dangling her feet through the hole, it took her a moment or two to find what felt like solid footing on the water pump before she slid down to the ground with a short laugh.

“Hopefully they got up to less trouble than we did.” She said with a wink, looking back up at the other two girls.
 
"We don't have to tell them, do we?" Eiji asked, debating whether or not she ought to be panicking right now. A little adventure was, was, well... she'd had one. And it wasn't her first, and, okay, it had been kind of interesting and she definitely wanted to come back here later and maybe see about getting a little ladder or stool or something so it was easier to get up, but - somehow saying out loud what they had been up to seemed rather daunting. It meant admitting that, well, she had been getting in trouble.

Eiji was not supposed to get in trouble, after all. She was supposed to be a good influence, and she was supposed to make sure that her friends stayed out of trouble and spent their time - she didn't know, planting flowers for senior citizens or volunteering at the library or something. That was what was supposed to happen. She wasn't supposed to end up... here.

But it was really a very cool hideout and maybe they could bring up a little blanket or something and -

Oh, no.

She was the bad influence.

"...I'm going to get in so much trouble."
 
“I still don’t think it’s an animal.” Sayane was fairly positive on this. Just because the spirit wasn’t upset at them for rifling through its stuff didn’t mean it wasn’t there. After all, animals didn’t steal things and sort them by item type. Except maybe some birds? She’d read somewhere that some birds were really smart, maybe it was just a bird after all. Or maybe a spirit bird! There had to be some of those, right?

She was more than a little disappointed when Akina suggested they head back. They were just beginning to explore! There was so much more they could’ve found in the crawlspace, she had snacks in case the spirits came back angry, it was a perfect situation.

“Of course we have to tell them, Eiji.” Sayane threw her arm around the other girl. “After all, what’s the point of adventure if you don’t get to rub it in other people’s face how awesome it was?” She pulled back and gave Eiji a proper look. Poor thing, probably hadn’t hit her rebellious phase yet.

“Hey, it’s okay.” She added, softer, more serious. “You’re not gonna get in trouble. If you do, just blame me.” Sayane smiled at her. “We squirrel survivors gotta stick together.”
 
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