Blue Butterfly | Amajiki Tamaki

| 17 |

3rd POV

"This really is a castle."

"Hadou, don't go too far ahead."

"Stop worrying already, Togata-kun."

Placing her hand on the wall, Nejire gave the texture a light rub, feeling the rock-solid sturdiness against her palm. She was striding along one of the many extending halls that lead to several vacant chambers, nothing but bits of crumpled rock sticking out from grey, clay walls.
Towards the end of the hallway was a tight spiraling staircase that descended to a large flat, elevated stage, another swirling staircase linking it further down.

Draping from the high ceiling was a materialised, grey chandelier coated in a tinge of silver that remained still throughout; deformed, but it kept a solid shape to furnish the queer surroundings with an 'antic' sort of feeling.
Naked tables and chairs were angled against the walls along the branching hallway, a sense of wonder washing down on them.

[Name] followed Nejire from behind, Mirio and Tamaki hot on her trail, all the while maintaining their guards up.

The pit-pat of their padding ricocheted off the clay floor and pealed in the warm, musty air, the only sound rendering the wary silence at bay. It was as silent as a catacomb, their pounding hearts ready to leap in anxiousness.

"It seems a bit too quiet in here," Mirio discerned, rubbing his nose with his collar. "We have to be careful, situations like these can only lead to surprise attacks."

Nejire hummed, skipping merrily ahead in a fast pace, blatantly paying no heed to Mirio's words. [Name] noticed this, hastening her footsteps to catch up with the bubbly blue-haired teen.

"... Nejire, slow down. We have to stick together," she warned.

"Give that chest a rest, [Name]-chan," Nejire snorted. "We're perfectly fine!"

"Each team has been allocated to different areas in the castle! Your equipment will be in one of the many chambers in crates so start searching! You have a total of twenty minutes for this event-start!"

"And we just started, it's not like we're gonna get attacked right awa—"

Her happy-going words were cut off short when an ear-splitting screech reverberated throughout the area, clapping her hands over her ears to mute the deafening sound. [Name] and the rest sank to the floor and covered their ears, a wave of vibrations striking their eardrums. The whistle-like sound was only being amplified by the passing second; Tamaki and Mirio shuffled and scampered around, searching for the source of the sound.

"—w-what the heck?! I'm gonna go deaf!"

"Nice going, Hadou! You just had to jinx it!" Mirio tried to shout over the blaring noise. "We need to get out of here, quick!"

"... But which way do we go?!" Tamaki asked, scrunching his face at the detestable sound ringing in his ears. "We don't have our equipment yet!"

"Then we'll have to find it on our way, let's go!"

Without a sliver of hesitation, all four of them bolted down the flight of spiraling stairs in flurry onto the flat stage, eyes flickering to the other stack of steps awaiting them below. The ear-splitting ringing rang louder—the screaming pitch capable of shattering several window glasses—as they ran.

There was a row of doors aligned close to each other at the end of the last staircase, and Nejire, being the first person to escape, flung the nearest door wide open with a grunt, outstretching her hand towards the staircase in sheer frustration. "Shut up already!"