Another: The Class of 1999

Chapter 21: It Begins

The next day, after lessons had finished, my class were stood outside the school gates. It was chilly, so we were all dressed in our big coats. Our suitcases stood at one side of the gate, and we were all either sitting or standing as we waited for the bus to be ready. I was sat with Riku, who was pretty on edge.

"Tsuki-cchi," Riku looked like he was deep in thought. "I need to tell you something..."

"Sure, what's up?" I asked him.

"I had a weird dream last night," Riku explained. "And recently I've been filled with strange thoughts, and I keep getting a sense of déjà vu..."

"Déjà vu?" I repeated. "Like what?"

"Like..." Riku began, but then he shook his head. "Nothing. Never mind."

"Ri-kun, tell me."

"No, you'll think it's weird."

I glared at him. "My school class is cursed and my best friend is a dead student. I'm pretty sure I can handle it."

Riki nodded once. "Well... Recently I've been thinking...maybe I've been to Yomiyama before..."

"What?" I asked. "Like, before this academic year?"

Riku nodded. "It's weird... But recently I've been thinking about it. It seems like a long gone memory, but..."

"So you're saying that you've been to Yomiyama before, but can't remember when?" I asked. "Do you remember anything that happened?"

Riku shook his head.

"Is it the curse? But why would the curse do that? Wouldn't it just be easier to make you forget your came here before?" I gasped. "Perhaps the curse is foaming, somehow? Maybe we're reaching the end! Maybe that's why you can remember!"

"Or maybe I'm just getting paranoid," Riku decided.

My sudden confidence boost was demolished. I couldn't help feeling uneasy. I remembered how Riku was so certain that both he and I didn't have any links to Yomiyama and therefore couldn't be the dead, extra student. Then we discover that my aunt had been a member of that class twenty years ago, and he may have been here before himself...

But there was no need for us all to panic - we just had to figure out how to break it to the rest of the class that Clarissa was dead, and the only way we'd be able to stop more deaths from happening was to kill them.

Yep... No need to panic at all...

We all climbed into the minibus, that took us up a huge winding road through the mountains. The higher the bus climbed, the more scary the scenery looked. The once bright green leaves on the trees were brown and clinging loosely to dead branches. The once green grass was brown and withering, and the rocks looked sharp and lethal.

We were supposed to be staying at a small hotel near the Yomiyama shrine. However, due to the events of the class last year (which were unknown to us) the hotel was now non-existent. So we were staying in a hotel which was slightly further away. And very old fashioned - it reminded me of an England Victorian manor house. The exterior walls were a murky white colour, and the windows looked like they needed a wash. The bushes and flowerbeds outside looked like they needed some tender loving too.

Chibiki-Sensei had us all standing together at the entrance of the building. He asked the hotel owners to take our photograph. We all did our best to smile.

Inside was slightly better. All the carpets were red, but they looked old and thinning. The wooden planks on the walls were stood vertically in place, and down all the wide corridors there were small wooden tables holding various glass and pottery vases.