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★★★
WARNINGS: thoughts of relapse[nicotine]
"Kanada Taichi in Morioka, in June. Shimada Osamu in Yokohama, in August. Yamato Hiroshi in Nagoya, in September. These three died in similar circumstances. They were stabbed to death by a cursed spirit at the entrances to their apartments, and all of them had filed the same complaint with the property managers several weeks before dying. They claimed their auto-locking doors were left wide open. None of the other residents have any idea what could have happened," Akari, the assistant supervisor explained.
Luma sat in the front beside her as the other three were in the back. "Yeah you can just fill me in later. I don't mind." Luma couldn't see the tablet the other first-years were looking at to see the information. They slouched in the front seat and pouted.
"None of the dates or locations match, though. Could the same cursed spirit have killed them all?" Fushiguro wondered. "Hey, could the cursed spirit be responsible for the doors? Do sensors like those pick up cursed spirits? They don't show up on cameras and stuff, right?" Yuji asked.
"Apparently, the cursed spirit made the door operators go crazy, not the sensors." "Oh...operators?" "And as for whether or not the same cursed spirit was behind this...Well, we couldn't be certain from just the residuals. After all, a lot of time had already passed. So we tried to track down any connections between the three. We found that all three attended the same middle school for two years," Akari went on.
"Meaning all three received the same curse, and it activated after time had passed?" Yuji and Luma let out an "Ooh!" at Nobara's question. "Precisely. That's highly likely. So we're going to that middle school now to question someone the three victims all knew, and I want you three to see what you can find as sorcerers."
"Way to go, Kugisaki!" Yuji yelled next to Fushiguro's face. "As expected from the best." Luma high-fived her, who had a smug expression.
"A funeral?" "Is this the home of that acquaintance?" Nobara asked. "Yes, it is..." Akari trailed off. "I'm waiting in the car." Luma choked on a few words and left before letting anyone protest against it.
After a while, they all returned to the car, causing Luma to sniffle and wipe away their tears quickly. Akari started driving again.
"Well, this sucks. He died the same way the other three did. He lived with his family, so there was no auto-locking door, but he was killed in front of the entrance. Previously, upon returning home alone, he reported, "The door was unlocked, but it wouldn't open," to his other family members," Akari explained as she drove to the middle school.
Luma was terrified to step into a middle school again. It was when their whole life came crashing down. With their parents divorce and grandpa's death. Their peers would make fun and insult them, say every slur in the book. They only had Yuji. And then in 7th grade, Koutarou. Luma couldn't give two shits about Emi or Destiny but Koutarou was their friend for a long time. They kind of felt like they had a support system with them. But, the one time Luma was vulnerable around all three of them is when they took advantage of it and made them out to be a bad guy.
