Reformatted to fit the dates more accurately...
Enjoy!
---
Tuesday, September 9
"Th-th-thank you for having me over, Sakaki-san!" all but gushed a young
girl, whose friends called her Kaorin.
"Ah," nodded her tall, striking companion as she pored over her notes.
"I-I heard you got a very good grade in the l-last exam! I guess I'm really
lucky you're helping me study!"
"Mm."
"S-say!" Kaorin fidgeted with her pencil almost to the point of breaking it.
"Did you hear the story going around at school? About this really creepy
videotape that kills you when you watch it?"
Sakaki stopped her reading and looked up, "A tape?"
"Yes!" Kaorin exclaimed when Sakaki's attention suddenly turned to her.
"They say there's a videotape, and when you watch it, it's like somebody's
weirdest dream. Then this woman comes on, and she yells at you, through
the screen, only you don't hear anything."
She paused for effect, trying to deepen her voice to sound more dramatic,
and utterly failing when Sakaki looked at her straight in the eye. "Iiiyand
when it's over, your phone rings! A-and someone says, 'You will die in
seven days.'" She gave a false shriek and said, laughing nervously, "Scary!"
Sakaki, for her part, said nothing. She just looked down at her notes,
staring past them. A small TV set, on a table next to them, continued to
advertise the channel's Hello Kitty wares.
"Sa... Sakaki-san?"
"Who told you that?" Sakaki asked.
"Uh, Chihiro did." She gulped audibly. "Sakaki-san... did you watch the
tape?"
"Un," Sakaki nodded. "Last week."
Kaorin stared.
"Aaaah!" she sighed in unrestrained admiration, "Sakaki-san is so cool and
collected in the face of certain... certain..."
"Urban legend."
"Right! Urban legend! There's no way tapes can look back at you and then
make phone calls! Silly idea, right!?"
*riiiiiiing*
Kaorin froze. "Ah."
Sakaki looked at the clock on her desk. It read 10 pm. She frowned and
rose, then strode out of the room. The telephone continued its ominous ring
in the kitchen downstairs.
"Wait! Sakaki-san! Sakaki-saaan!" Kaorin called out, trying to keep up with
the taller girl's pace. But by the time she caught up with her, at the foot
of the stairs, Sakaki had already grasped the handpiece. Kaorin gasped,
"Ah!"
Hesitant for just a second, Sakaki picked up and said, "Hello?"
Kaorin felt the rush of blood through her heart in the moments before
Sakaki finally said, "Un," and hung up.
"It was Kagura," the taller girl said at last. "She's coming over with
the sodas."
"Ah!" Kaorin said, and slumped against the wall. "Just Kagura! Right, no
such thing as killer tapes, right? I-I'll go clear up a bit upstairs, OK?"
"I'll get the glasses," Sakaki said, watching Kaorin nearly stumble her way
back upstairs. She didn't understand why the shorter girl was so afraid of
this tape. In fact, she had found it rather... cute. Actually...
She stared blissfully at the ceiling for a few moments. Behind her, in the
living room down the hall, the TV switched itself on into blaring static,
but it went peacefully ignored.
Nearly a minute of static came and went. Sakaki was still in her voyage
through the Land of the Cute, her back turned to the darkened hallway.
A solid thump was heard, followed by a painful, "Aaaa." The loud static
had been replaced by sounds of a forest.
It was no surprise that, when the sound of shuffling feet came closer, and
closer still to Sakaki, she failed to notice it. But then, Kaorin called
from upstairs, "Sakaki-san! Did you get the glasses?" and she snapped back
to reality. Without batting an eye, she bent down into the cabinet, took out
some plastic cups, and quickly headed for the stairs.
"Aaaa... I missed," groused a voice behind her, unheard. Then came a
quick "pack!" sound, like a very tiny balloon popping, and all was silent in
the hall.
Sakaki reached the top of the stairs to suddenly find the door to her room
dripping wet. Worse, a rather large puddle had already formed there --and
the sounds of birds and insects, which had gone ignored earlier, were loud
and clear now, and they were coming from her room.
Puzzled, she gripped the doorknob. It was also wet, dripping heavily into
the puddle below. She paused for a moment, as if expecting something only
she would understand, then twisted the knob and pushed the door open.
The grainy, blurred image of a stone well was fixed on the screen of her
small TV. She would have screamed, but she had the chance to utter only
one word.
"C-cute..."
*********************
Azuringu Dai-O!
Azumanga Daioh! is owned by Azuma Kiyohiko, Media Works
Ringu is owned by Koji Suzuki.
Ringu/The Ring, Asmik Ace, Dreamworks SKG.
*********************
---
Wednesday, September 10
"And now, Rainbow Entertainment News brings you a special report, live
from the Ace Cafe & Bar! The Killing Tape: Urban Legend, or bored art
student prank! With your host, Yomi-chan!"
Koyomi removed her glasses, rubbed her forehead, and counted to twenty.
"For the seventh time, Tomo, you are NOT supposed to do the introductory
voiceovers."
"But you get all the glory while I just lug this thing around and point
it at stuff! It should be me hosting the show!" said Tomo. She turned the
video camera in her hands so it aimed at her, and grinned at the lens. "I
got a much prettier image for TV, not to mention a slim figure and great
eyes, plus a better *singing voice*," she mock-sang out the last part for
emphasis. "And TV likes cute and energetic girls over moody four-eyes
anytime!"
*thwack*
"...um, is your friend going to be OK?" A petite high-school girl grimaced,
seeing Tomo whimper and nurse the bump on her head where Yomi had
hand-chopped her.
"No. No matter how many times I hit her," Yomi said. She ignored the gaze
of death Tomo gave her as she straightened back up. "Now remember, this
is just for a local university TV station, run by students. You don't
have to be nervous before the camera. All right?"
"Okay," said the girl. "Umm, where do I start?"
Yomi motioned for Tomo to start shooting. "Why don't we start with your
name?"
"Un. My name is Reiko Takano."
"Takano-san, many of us have heard this story about a videotape that kills
whoever whatches it. We don't know where the rumor came from, much
less if it's real at all.
"However, it has been causing some anxiety among our students and
teachers, and rental stores all over the city have had to double-check their
entire inventories. So, now, what could you tell us about it?"
"Well, I heard more about it from my sempai," Reiko explained. "She says,
the first people who died were in Okinawa. They watched a tape with a
strange woman on it, and they all died seven days later."
"Uuoooh! A real cursed video with a time limit and everything!" Tomo
exclaimed. Then went silent when Yomi elbowed her in the gut.
"It started in Okinawa, then?"
"My friend Kanae says it's really Izu, but my sempai heard from her
boyfriend that his roommate read on a website that people really think it's
from Okinawa."
"Ah," Yomi blinked. "And what is on this tape? Have you watched it?"
"Uh-uh," Reiko shook her head. She paused for a second, pursing her lips
before continuing. "A friend of my sempai said she knew someone who did,
though. She said that they had watched it a week ago, on some trip to an inn
near Okinawa or something. They received a phone call right after, too."
"A week?" thought Yomi, then made a mental note to check the local
obituaries in today's paper. Just to disprove the rumor, of course. "Well,
thank you for your time," she said. "But before we leave... Once you watch
the tape, is there a way to get rid of the curse?"
Reiko faced down for a moment, then said, "No, there isn't."
- O! -
"Hey, Yomi..." Tomo called as the two of them headed down the street, the
material from the interview stored safely in their backpacks. "You think
they'll give us extra credit if we watch that tape?"
"You'd actually want to watch that?" Yomi said. "Besides, it's just an urban
legend. People see things out of context and immediately make rumors out
of them. Like that story about the orange cat with the spaghetti-like arms
we ran last week. I honestly don't know where Sakaki heard THAT one."
"Aaah..." Tomo drifted off, clasping her hands behind her head and looking
sideways at the rows of TVs on storefront displays.
Yomi sighed in relief; that answer seemed to have satisfied Tomo. On the
other hand, it really was all a big rumor, so... Well, it's not that she'd
WANT to watch it... maybe just peek at it... a couple of minutes, really.
She had probably seen worse from the grainy black & white movies the
guys in Art kept coming up with.
"Hey, Yomi..." Tomo called again. "You think we'd get extra credit if we
ran the tape on the show?"
"Idiot."
- O! -
The hospital was strangely crowded today. Though she had only come once
before, when Tomo had broken her leg trying to run up a wall, Yomi
thought that there were quite a bit more people than normal. Most of them,
understandably, hovering nervously around any doctor that could give them
news about their loved ones.
"Yoo! Chiyo-chan!"
"Quiet, stupid!" Yomi hissed and whapped Tomo upside the head. Further
down the hall, Chiyo had taken notice of them and was walking up to meet
them.
"Tomo-san, Yomi-san!" the small genius greeted them. Her hair had grown
longer in the past few months, though it was still contained in twin
pigtails. "I just got back a couple of hours ago," she said. "Do you know
what happened?"
"Not much," Yomi said. "Kagura was the one who called us. All we know is
that Sakaki is in some sort of coma."
"Is Osaka coming?" Tomo asked, trying to find her among the worried
crowds.
"Um, I couldn't find her when I called her house," Chiyo said. "Her family
said she was on a trip."
"We'll get in touch with her later," Yomi said. "Kagura?"
"She came here ahead of us," Chiyo said. "She's with Sakaki-san right
now."
Indeed, upon entering one of the IC rooms, the trio found Kagura sitting by
Sakaki's bedside, looming worriedly over her friend.
"Hey! Guys!" she rose from her chair, stumbling over a bit. It was obvious
on her face that, whatever had happened last night, she was still frazzled
about it. "Chiyo-chan, glad you could come too!"
Chiyo smiled up at her, but the smile quickly turned to a worried demeanor.
"What happened to Sakaki-san?"
Kagura shook her head, "To be honest, you got me. I was coming over with
her and Kaorin, but when I got there she... she was like this, and Kaorin
was a wreck." She grimaced at the memory.
Yomi glanced over at Sakaki. She looked as though she were just in deep
sleep --if one slept with her eyes open, blushing up to the ears, and with a
faint, almost imperceptible grin on her lips. Yomi shuddered.
"Yomi, Yomi, look!" Tomo said, grabbing at a control attached to Sakaki's
bed. "Button up!" The bed folded to a sitting position. Chiyo cried at the
look of Sakaki nearly dropping on top of her. "Button down!" It stretched
the bed back to a horizontal state. "Ah! This folds the bed in half!"
"Gimme that!" Yomi slapped the controls out of Tomo's hands. "Just go
back to the lobby and get today's paper before you shoot Sakaki out the
window!"
"Aaah, Yomi's so mean," Tomo groused, but complied anyway.
"Chiyo, wanna go keep an eye on Tomo for us?" Kagura said. Chiyo
hesitated for a moment, looking back and forth between Kagura and Sakaki,
then nodded and raced to catch up with Tomo. Kagura sighed in relief.
"What's that about?" Yomi said. "Even Tomo can't mess up a hospital. Um...
Much."
"Listen, Yomi," Kagura said, trying to avoid looking straight at Sakaki's
face as she spoke. "You work for your school's news department, right?"
"Journalism, right," Yomi said. "I'm doing some story on urban legends."
"Right, about that..." Kagura turned away, facing the window then leaning
back on it. "When I... when I got there, Kaorin was completely out of her
mind. She kept going on and on about TVs and videos." At the darkening
of Yomi's expression, she stuttered, "D-don't think I'm crazy or somethin'.
I..." She turned to look at Sakaki, a chill running down her spine. "You
can ask around, right? You find out about stuff."
Yomi sighed, "Kagura, I don't think I can."
"Please, Yomi," Kagura said, then hesitated. "I... I saw her face."
And Kagura thought back to her finding Sakaki, shrunk back against a
corner grasping at all her plush animals. Her eyes were wide, her face red,
and her jaw hanging open in the most intense, terrible look of pure and
concentrated bliss she had ever seen in her life.
It was horrible. She shuddered again at the memory of it.
"But the story with the tape is supposed to kill you, not... whatever
happened to her," Yomi insisted.
"Well, maybe she's just too strong for that," Kagura said. "All I know is,
last week she went to some field trip to Okinawa with her class, and when
she
came back she was acting like... uh..." She winced at the thought of it,
but... "She was acting all like Osaka. Talking about seeing weird things and
stuff."
Yomi frowned. Okinawa.
"All right, I'll see what I can do," she said.
"And take care of Chiyo, too."
"Huh?" Yomi stared, "What?"
"Er, I can't have her at my house right now, and her parents didn't come
with her," Kagura said. "It's OK, you can stay at her house, I guess. She
got the keys."
"But that's not... Oh, all right." Yomi rubbed her forehead. For some
reason, she felt she had just bitten off much more than she could chew. Not
that she believed in the curse, of course.
"By the way, you said Kaorin was there when it happened," she said, still
massaging her temples. "Where is she? Is she here?"
Kagura looked at her in the eye. "Yeah, she's here. She's in the hospital's
psych ward."
Yomi looked up, her eyes wide, "What did you say?"
"Yomi, look!" came Tomo's muffled voice from somewhere down the hall,
"A de-terminator! Cool!"
"Aah! Tomo-san! That's a defibrillator! Put it down! AAH!"
The lights went out all over the floor.
Yomi sighed. "And I could have picked the urban legend about giant kung-fu
turtles instead..."
---
Thursday, September 11
It hadn't really taken much effort to connect the dots at first. Like Kagura
said, school records showed that Sakaki and a few other classmates had
taken a trip to Okinawa recently (though, more accurately, it was Sakaki
who tagged along just so she could visit Maya's home again.) Also, a
quick check into yesterday's obituaries had revealed that, indeed, four of
such classmates had died under mysterious circumstances; and they all
died around 10 pm, Tuesday night.
Trying to visit Kaorin was a no-go for now, though. With her being in the
Psychiatric unit of the hospital, Yomi would need to schedule an
appointment, as well as permission from a relative. Maybe she could get
to see her by Saturday.
"U-uoooh! Here it comes! Here it comes! Waaah!"
Thus she found herself sitting on an airplane seat, trying to let the
soothing, relaxing roar of the airplane's take-off sequence drown out
Tomo's enthusiasm.
Despite Kagura's insistence, Chiyo had stayed behind for this trip. That
way, she could also stay around Sakaki in case there were any changes, or
if Osaka finally contacted them. Come to think of it, that was weird in
itself. They hadn't heard from Osaka for a little over a month, almost
since she came back from a family holiday. Maybe they should check up
on her after dealing with this Cursed Video story.
"Say, Yomi," Tomo said, struggling valiantly with her bag of peanuts.
"Where are we going, anyway?"
"I thought I showed you already," Yomi said, plucking a set of
photographs out of her pocket. "Look at this. I got this from Sakaki's
house."
"Oooh..." said Tomo, leaning over the photos. As Yomi flipped through
them, they showed various stages from the trip --a cat-shaped vending
machine at the airport, a little girl from the plane wearing cat-ears, a
bizarre yet cute display of teddy bears at the airport in Okinawa, and so
on.
"Notice anything unusual about these pictures?" asked Yomi.
"Yeah. Sakaki-chan likes the Chicago Cubs. Weird," Tomo pointed at a
picture of Sakaki posing next to the Cubs' mascot, whose team was
apparently visiting. "Oh! I got it, I got it!" she exclaimed, ripping her
peanut bag open and lifting it in victory.
Yomi sighed in frustration, "No, I meant that there's nothing strange at
all about these pictures. See these four people here?" she pointed at a
particular group that was about to enter a resort villa. "These are Sakaki's
classmates that died the day before yesterday."
"Oooh..."
"But something happened there. Sometime during the trip, they were
changed. Look at these pictures." And Yomi quickly flipped to the end of
the set, where the same group was now exiting the resort. "Now do you
notice anything weird?"
"It... it can't be!" Tomo gasped in shock. "Th-they all... they all have
Chiyo-chan's pigtails!"
Yomi nodded. "Exactly."
"Uwaaaah!" Tomo yelped, standing up, then banging her head hard
against the overhead compartment. "Oooowww..." She sat back down, but
it didn't stop her tirade, "They... They stole my idea! They're all doing
the Chiyo-chan Show and they're probably famous by now! They're getting
all the royalties and dates with movie stars and I get--"
"Idiot!" Yomi silenced her with a quick jab to the shoulder. "Quiet down!
And no, it's not the 'Chiyo-chan show' or whatever. Look here, even
Sakaki has them."
She showed another picture. Indeed, while she was relatively normal in
all prior photos, all pictures of Sakaki after the resort included Chiyo's
very own pigtails, auburn and bread-shaped, somehow attached to
Sakaki's head amid her own hair. At a second glance, though, Yomi
noticed that Sakaki's face in those pictures was also locked in that
horrible, unsettling look of joy that Kagura had described. The other girls
in the photos had the same look, but considerably toned down --rather,
almost nonexistent, which was why Yomi must have missed it in the first
place.
"So, whatever did this to them," Yomi continued, "It happened here." She
took a picture where the name of the resort was prominently displayed --
in a cat-shaped sign, even.
"Yamamura Inn."
- O! -
Tomo and Yomi stepped out of the airport terminal, the latter red-faced
as if a few gallons of ketchup had exploded in front of her. "That's the
last time I ride next to you on a plane," she said.
"Aw, come on, Yomi..." Tomo said, tugging a few transparent plastic
tubes from around her neck. "They let little kids into the cockpit all the
time! Why shouldn't they let me, a college student, try out this stewardess
act?"
"BUt you didn't even ask!" snapped Yomi. "You almost choked yourself
AND that poor old lady with the air masks!"
"She wasn't wearing it properly! And that bitchy stewardess kept ripping
it off!"
"She was trying to save the lady's life! I'm actually surprised she
didn't call you a 'terrorist threat' in the first place..."
Tomo pouted, "That's mean, Yomi..." She picked up her bags and headed
for the taxi concession. "And I didn't even get the Junior Pilot modeling
set I asked for."
"Probably because you would have set it on fire and crashed it against my
head," thought Yomi, then headed for the taxi cabs herself.
It turned out, Yamamura Inn wasn't in Okinawa proper. It was one of the
few inns and resorts in the island of Iriomote, where Sakaki and Maya
had found each other so long ago. After a quick ferry trip and bus route,
the pair found themselves standing before the infamous cat-shaped sign.
Despite the luxury that the rest of the resort seemed to exude, the sign
itself was quite weather-beaten and decayed. The name itself, Yamamura,
was split into two rows --the kanji for "Yama" on the upper, and kana for
"mura" in the lower. The wood had darkened in many places, almost as if
by fire, but aside from the name the words "Family Inn" were clearly
visible at the bottom.
"Yamamura Family Inn, huh?" Tomo said. "Must be a chain or
something."
"What are you talking about?" Yomi asked.
"Well, I went to Izu on vacation with my family, when I was in junior-
high. They had a Yamamura Inn there too. Really creepy place."
"Hmm. I don't think it has anything to do with this one," Yomi said.
"Come on."
They walked up the twisting path from the road to the resort area. In stark
contrast to the sign, the cabins and tennis courts seemed brand-new and
spotless. There was even an outdoor, black-tie restaurant in a plaza
among the villas. Yomi winced in sympathy as her wallet considered
suicide.
Tomo tugged at her arm. "Yomi, look!" She pointed at one of the
buildings.
"Cabin 12," Yomi whispered. She quickly rifled through Sakaki's
photographs --it was the very same cabin that Sakaki and her group had
stayed in.
"I'll go check if it's available," Yomi said, shaking her head out of the
cloud that seemed to envelop her for a moment. "Look around, but
DON'T touch or break anything."
"Yes, mommy," Tomo mocked. She simply dropped her bags on the
ground and raced around the cabin, going "Oooh!" and "Uwaaa..." at
regular intervals.
Yomi rolled her eyes and sought out the registration office. Unlike the
resort itself, the building that housed the main office was a simple
concrete box, sparsely decorated and hidden away among the trees.
Inside, Yomi found a no-nonsense wooden counter with a guestbook on
it, though at the moment no one was there to receive customers; to the
side, an impressive rack of VHS tapes --anything from ancient Doraemon
tapes to horror movies. A sign above the racks read, "VCR-equipped
rooms! Free videos for loan during your stay!"
There were easily a hundred or more tapes on those racks. Yomi had
almost grown tired of reading the various titles when, at the corner of her
eye, a simple black slab stood out to attention. She leaned closer to it
--it was an unlabeled, anonymous black VHS, lacking a box or even a
handwritten note about its contents. Among the multicolored cases and
cardboard slips, the solid black compelled her sight towards it.
Swallowing, Yomi began to reach for it with her hand... She could almost
FEEL sparks in the air between the tape and her fingers...
"May I help you?"
"Gah!" Yomi jumped, startled. She quickly turned to the counter, from
which a thin, middle-aged man stared at her amicably. He was tall, taller
than Sakaki, probably, and wore wire-rim glasses that reminded her of
Professor Kimura. His unkempt hair reinforced that opinion.
"I, uh, wanted to stay at Cabin 12 for a couple of nights," she said. "I'm
afraid I don't have a reservation...?"
"Oh, that's fine," the innkeeper said. "You just have to sign on the
guestbook and leave a 5,000 yen deposit." He glanced over at the tapes,
"You can take any one you like, if you want. We get most of our
collection through tapes left behind by previous visitors."
"I see," Yomi said, absentmindedly signing the book. As she fished out
the yen notes from her pocket, her eyes wandered over to the unmarked
tape once again, and she found herself asking, "What's that one about?
Did the case get lost?"
The innkeeper frowned, his glasses fogging up for a moment. "I don't
know anything about that tape," he stated firmly. "I had never seen it
before in my life."
Yomi considered the change in the keeper's demeanor. But any
consideration of his knowledge about the tape faded when she heard
Tomo's loud call, "Hey Yomi! Come look at this!"
Snapping out of her thoughts, Yomi hesitated for a second before taking
the tape. "Thank you," she said, nodding to the keeper, who simply stared
at where she had been standing, even long after she had left.
"Not..." he finally whispered to himself, his jaw slowly, but surely, going
slack to create a horrifying yet familiar look on his face.
"Not high-schoolers anymore! WAAAAAAH!"
- O! -
Yomi joined Tomo on a slope by Cabin 12. The latter, doing her
middling-to-adequate detective impression, was poking around the small
garden that had been planted there, nosing around the very the wooden
lattice that prevented curious people from nosing around beneath the
cabin itself.
"What is it?" Yomi said.
"Look," Tomo said. It was already growing dark, so she had to point a
flashlight at a spot on the ground. "What's that?"
Yomi recognized the object on the ground immediately. It was a so-
called, "Daddy-Hat," shaped vaguely like the head of a cat. She thought
back to her own souvenir hat, stored safely after the second Culture
Festival back in high-school. Could this particular hat be Sakaki's?
"Let's take it," she said. "Come on, we have the cabin. Let's get inside and
think about what we're going to do next."
They climbed up the slope again, circling cabin 12 towards its entrance.
But had they stayed a little bit longer, they would have heard a faint,
almost whispered, "Aaaa... Where's my hat...?" coming from the darkness
under the cabin.
- O! -
Yomi turned the tape in her hands over and over. She hadn't told Tomo
about it yet --she had a feeling that Tomo would go, "Yeah! Cursed Video
time!" and sit down afterwards with a bag of popcorn and candy. Not that
she REALLY believed the stories, but... Well, she just didn't want Tomo
messing up her investigation.
She waited until Miss Boundless Energy went to take a shower (the cabin
itself was almost a small house, and possibly more luxurious than one)
before settling down at the living room, from where the darkened TV set
dominated the world. A VCR waited on a shelf beneath the TV, its
flashing clock almost teasing her to get it over with.
Stalling, she switched on the TV. Half the image was static on most of the
channels, which explained the presence of VCRs in all cabins. Normal
television reception must be incredibly bad out here. Eventually, she
settled on a channel with no signal, muting the hiss of static as she did.
"Come on," she said to herself, "It's just a stupid video. It's not like
it's going to flip open and strangle me with the tape, right?" She fiddled
with the tape's hatch for a moment until she caught herself, then cursed
and slammed the tape down on the coffee table in front of her. "Stupid,
stupid, stupid," she chanted, standing up and pacing around the table.
"You're getting scared because of a silly urban legend about a 'cursed
video.' There is NOTHING on that tape. Here, I'll prove it!"
Annoyed, she plucked the tape from the table and jabbed it into the VCR.
It whirred slightly, then caught the tape in its belts and began to pull it
in. Yomi, panicking for a second when she saw the tape had no overwrite
protection, tried to yank the tape back out, but her fingers could find no
purchase on the smooth, black edges.
The static on the TV was replaced by solid darkness almost instantly.
Yomi peered closer, kneeling in front of the TV.
However, the darkness continued for a good minute or two. Yomi was
about to eject the damn tape when, all of a sudden, the entire screen was
filled by the image of a white, almost blinding ring of light. It
came with an eerie, high-pitched sound not unlike a girl's voice going,
"Eeeee..."
Yomi's pupils dilated.
After five seconds, the image of the Ring glitched away, replaced by yet
more static. But it didn't last long; a picture of a bun of melon bread,
suspended on a fishing hook, came up instead. There was no trace of
color in the picture, as if the video had been shot in a degraded reel that
was days away from turning green.
Then, just as a nondescript feline mouth rose from the bottom of the
screen to bite the bread, the image switched to that of a small girl
sitting on a chair. Or, more accurately, her pitch-black silhouette, as
seen from the side.
That image was also replaced, this time by a shot of a woman, facing
away from the camera and framed entirely within an oval mirror,
brushing her long brown hair.
She brushed her hair twice, three times, then in a split second the mirror
that contained her switched to the other side of the screen, showing a
young girl clad all in white and with her hair completely obscuring her
face. Just as quickly, the mirror came back to the woman, then quickly
zoomed into her mouth as it curled up into an evil grin.
This time, an image of a playground came up --its swings and cages
brightly colored though the rest of the image remained in washed-out
black and white. A swing on the right creaked and moved, then a bizarre,
cat-like creature with spaghetti arms floated by, waving at the audience.
As soon as the floating cat reached the other side of the screen, the image
fizzled into a landscape filled with uncountable mountain cats, all
identical to Maya, and all facing the screen with the same bored
expression. Briefly, almost imperceptibly, there was the image of a man
among them. He wore black trousers and a spotless dress shirt, and had a
Dad-Hat covering the entirety of his upper face. His hand was pointing to
the side, at something beyond the screen, but he flashed by too quickly
to notice what it was.
A gigantic eye then filled the screen. It was too close to tell if it was a
man or a woman, but there was a kanji glowing brightly in its pupil. It
started out as the kanji for "Sada," "Chastity," but then morphed
erratically into the katakana for "mara." Then the whole thing exploded
into a shower of dozens, if not hundreds, of flying Chiyos.
But Yomi was too entranced to realize this. One of the Chiyos flapped her
pigtails to face the camera from up close, then flashed a grin that sent
unknowing diabetics into insulin shock over the entire world. Yomi
blushed despite herself, her jaw going slack and muttering by itself, "C-
cute..."
Before she could adjust to the intense cuteness, however, said cuteness
was replaced by an extreme close-up of a woman, ranting so hysterically
at the camera that her face couldn't really be identified. Fortunately, the
only sound that came from the speakers was a painfully sweet children's
song that went on about flying on cotton-candy pigtails.
The woman gave one last shout, and then was suddenly standing on the
edge of a playground's pool of balls, her back to the camera again. She
lifted her arms dramatically, then simply dropped forward into the ocean
of multicolored balls, not to surface again.
Then followed a series of lightning-fast clips: the silhouette of a
long-haired girl with hiccups; a glass of water, on fire, sitting on a
table; the same playground with swings and cages as before, but without
the cat-like creature anywhere in sight. Then a final, widening shot of
millions and millions of Chiyos all mouthing the words, "It's done!"
The barrage finally stopped, and there was one last image on the TV set: a
small stone well, in the middle of a classroom, faced by rings upon rings
of schooldesks. The sound of forest insects and birds was almost deafening.
Then, all of a sudden, static. The tape whirred inside the VCR as it started
rewinding.
Yomi stared at the static on the TV for a few more seconds. Her jaw was
slack, her face blushing intensely, and her glasses fogged to hide her eyes
from the world. Eventually, she let out a breath, then gasped for air while
still kneeling by the TV. An errant hand rose to turn off the appliance; but
when she looked up, the blank screen reflected a girl clad all in white, her
hair obscuring her face, standing just behind Yomi.
Sucking air, Yomi whirled around --and found Tomo, wrapped in a
humongous white towel, drying her hair. She almost felt like decking her.
"Hey, Yomi, what'cha doing?" Tomo said. "Anything good on TV?"
Yomi tried to speak, but her mouth had suddenly gone all too dry. She
ejected the tape then rushed to grab her luggage. Just as she grasped one
of her suitcase's handles, however, the phone burst to life with a
deafening ring.
Yomi stared at it.
Tomo stared at it.
Yomi gulped, then quickly picked up and answered, "Hello?"
There was utter silence in the line, aside from Yomi's troubled breathing.
Then, startling her to no end, came a girl's voice, "A! Sorry! Umm...
seven days?"
The words were followed by a cacophony of singing children, all of them
repeating the cotton-candy pigtail song. Yomi shuddered visibly and hung
up.
"Who was that?" asked Tomo, adjusting a towel around her hair.
"Get your things, we have to go NOW," she commanded.
Tomo blinked at her, puzzled, "Did you forget your diet book again?"
"I said MOVE!" Yomi bellowed and grabbed Tomo by the arm, pulling
her along and out of the cabin. Unfortunately, the door slammed onto the
very edge of Tomo's towel.
"Eeeeeek!"
"AH! High-school girl!"
"Wear some clothes, idiot!"
"YOU were the one who pulled me out! Biiidaaah!"
Meanwhile, inside the cabin, the TV flickered on for a moment. If one
had been paying attention, the silhouette of a long-haired girl, facing
sideways, could be seen going, "Aa, still needs work..."
*********************
Azuringu Dai-O!
End of Day 0
Seven days left
*********************
Jorge A. Pratt
00709382@academ01.ccm.itesm.mx
terbril@rocketmail.com
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