Storm and a Ghost
Title: Storm and a Ghost
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Aiba/Ohno, general
Genre: humor, fluff
Disclaimer: I guess Johnny’s technically owns Arashi, huh? Not me.
Summary: In which Arashi attempts to discern what's real and what's not.
“I think being paired with either Aiba or Sho would be the worst,” Nino commented with folded arms, the group standing at their current filming location and waiting while the rest of the equipment was placed and the MCs finished their makeup.
“I don’t know, isn’t being by yourself pretty bad?” Jun argued, but Nino shook his head.
“No way. By yourself you know what to be scared of and what not to be. With those two idiots, they jump at everything and make you get jumpy too.”
“That’s true I guess…”
“Hey, it’s not my fault! I’m scared of ghosts,” Aiba threw in pathetically, looking at them with wide eyes, and then turned to Leader, who hadn’t really said much about their latest assignment yet.
A staff member had started coming closer with his camera hoisted onto his shoulder and running in order to capture their argument, but none of them did anything to change what they were doing, simply continuing on as they were.
“Leader would be the best case, right?” Nino asked, “Because he wasn’t scared at all when we did that haunted house thing a few years back, right?”
“Yeah, not at all. Not one scream,” Jun replied, and then all of them were looking at Ohno, as if sizing him up.
“I want to stay with Leader,” Aiba whined.
“How about we do janken for him?” Nino suggested, but Jun shook his head.
“The director already said we had to draw sticks, so we’ll just have to wait and see who gets the longest one.”
“What if it’s Ohno? Leader, who are you going to pick to stay with?”
Ohno looked around at the others waiting for an answer from him. He wanted to spend a night in a haunted house-well onsen or something, they didn’t know what the backstory to this place was yet because filming hadn’t started-as much as the rest of them did (which wasn’t very), but that was more because he missed his own bed when he wasn’t in it at night. They were all looking to him for comfort, but actually, the person he would choose to spend a night with, just the two of them, was that person for a reason other than it would keep him from getting frightened.
But he didn’t answer because he was pretty shy and didn’t want any of them to know about his crush which had effectively kept to himself for several years, so he just shrugged and they immediately lost interest in him.
“How about if he wins we play janken for him?” Nino suggested again, but the rest of them shook their heads, and then turned to the director as he signaled for them to get into their places.
So they lined up in front of the building, glancing around anxiously (except for Ohno, who was examining his shoes because one of them seemed to be getting a hole), and then faced the camera as the countdown started.
As usual, first the show was introduced, and then they directly went into the theme of today’s episode, which included Arashi spending a night alone in this haunted hotel. There were cameras planted in the rooms, and the hotel “staff” would be around to help them a little bit, but there were no camera men and no contact with the outside world until tomorrow morning.
Part of the catch was that there were only three rooms, so two people could share, but there would be one person alone throughout the whole night. Of course this was set up, they all knew it, and although the rules of being strictly split were lenient, they all understood that they would have to be good sports about it and give the director what he wanted eventually.
It was barely getting dark outside now, but they were gathered around a small standing stove and Nino rubbed his arms for effect, even though it wasn’t very cold (they were in the mountains, though, so it was going to be a brisk night at the very least).
“And so we have brought Mr. Takahashi, a professional historian and ghost expert, to inform us of the state of this hotel. Apparently he also is very knowledgeable of this specific area, and has researched the cause of this building’s abandonment.”
“It doesn’t look very ‘abandoned,’” Nino said under his breath, but they all knew this was likely a ruse to build up the atmosphere and make them scared. Ohno was interested, but simply because he liked stories like this. He liked to hear what exactly happened to make people ghosts, even if his mother always told him he shouldn’t believe in supernatural stuff like that.
“The truth is,” the guest started in a narrating voice, moving his hands so that his kimono sleeves made his long, narrow face even more eerie than it already was, “A very terrible event occurred here, exactly fifty years ago today, which I believe is the reason that this area was chosen.”
“Of course,” Jun mumbled, folding his arms just like Nino already had, but all of them were watching him intently, unable to do anything else as the tale began to unfold.
A newlywed couple, having moved here from the city to start a new life together, took over this inn when the previous owners decided to retire, unable to keep up with the massive amounts of customers that had come to view the beautiful scenery. At first it was easy, but within the first year, the wife became pregnant and, as the pregnancy developed, became sicker and sicker and was unable to continue helping her husband as she had done before.
When the baby was born--a girl--instead of rejoicing, they were both revolted at her disfigured features and horrifying voice, a cry so piercing that it would keep the entire inn up at night, and over only a few months’ time they had gone from a bustling business to no customers. The people from the neighboring village would warn anyone that came to stay away from the place with the cursed child, if they knew what was good for them.
So the husband did the only thing that would rid them of this burden. He took the child out into the forest, as far as he could manage, and left her there, to the mercy of nature.
Aiba took a breath of relief, as if he had expected something much worse, but the storyteller continued and all of them stiffened again.
Well, after that the wife had no more children. Although they were tentative to try, after a few years, when the baby’s existence had faded from their minds and their inn was back to its usual patronage, they attempted to conceive again. But nothing came of it.
Fifteen years later, they gave up, both of them content with simply being together and running the flourishing inn. In the spring, the same season that their forgotten baby had been born, a young woman so beautiful that one would believe she was an angel, appeared on their doorstep, begging for work.
They could not refuse, their want of a child reigniting, and so they agreed to trade lodging for chores such as cooking and cleaning.
The first year passed without incident, but in the second year, strange things started to happen, slowly at first but with startling frequency. A guest would report a disturbing figure at their window in the middle of the night, or that they had heard a piercing scream from the forest, or even that they had begun aching in unreasonable places after spending time there.
The number of guests began falling again, despite their lovely help, but that wasn’t all. The girl, thought to have been as pure as the angel she resembled, had begun her seduction of the husband, convincing him that his misfortunate had come from his wife-that it was her fault that their first baby had been hideous and repulsive.
“Kill her,” she said, “And the two of us will start anew. The strange happenings will stop and I will bear you the most beautiful child you have ever laid eyes upon.”
The husband, blinded by infatuation and longing for a return to normalcy, follow her words and, in the middle of the night, quietly slit his own wife’s throat.
Running from his own room to the girl’s, he happily conveyed his actions, and the girl smiled once, a wicked and horrifying smile, before thrusting a kitchen knife through his stomach.
“I’m glad. We can finally be together again… father.”
As silence settled over them, Ohno felt Aiba shiver next to him, and then realized that his arm had been grabbed somewhere during the story, but they had all been so zoned in on the final punch line that he hadn’t even noticed the taller man’s approach.
But he didn’t mind at all.
“After that, the girl killed herself as well, and still haunts the inn to this day, looking for something, although no one knows what.”
“Please… don’t make us stay here,” Sho whined, to create atmosphere (because Sho was good at that, even though he probably was scared shitless).
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Aiba added, grabbing onto Ohno harder, and Nino took a second to point out their connection before the MC took over again, pulling out a prepared can with disposable chopsticks sticking out the top.
“There are two with numbers at the end, one and two. The person who draws one can pick their roommate first, and then number two can. The person remaining will take the single room.”
There were more mumbled complaints from everyone, except Leader, but they all came forward and gathered around the can, marking their claim on one until they were all ready, then pulled them out at the same time.
“Yes!!” Aiba called out over the crowd, bouncing around a little and then grabbing onto Ohno’s arm again. “I call Leader!” he announced, holding up his chopstick, which had a small 1 on the bottom.
Ohno smiled at him, mostly because it was the same thing he would have picked too. If he had to sleep outside of his own bed, at least he could be with Aiba while he did so.
“Well, guess I’ll take Jun-kun, then,” Nino said in an even voice, obviously glad that his choice wasn’t between Aiba and Sho.
“No way,” Sho whined, drooping his shoulders as he realized that he would be staying by himself. “You guys, please don’t make me…”
“Sorry, Sho-chan, you lose,” Nino responded, laying his own claim on Jun’s arm.
The MC laughed at their antics first, then said, “Shall we?” and motioned for the door, and the camera began panning out as they all went to collect their bags and start into the small inn together.
+++
“Hey, Leader? Do you really think that story is true?”
They had already changed into their sweats in which they would be sleeping, and the two of them were sitting together at a low table. A creepy old woman in a kimono had come into serve them dinner (which they both ate the entirety of), and explain about the inn again (as if they had forgotten), and then had said if they needed anything to let her know.
In the closet there had been a plastic skeleton hanging just above their heads, which had scared Aiba so bad that he had fallen onto the floor and had to catch his breath while Ohno looked at it curiously, touching it to see what it was made out of, and then without worrying about it anymore, pulled out both futons and began to lay them out while Aiba regrouped.
After that they became a little bored, although it was obvious that Aiba’s nerves were frayed, so they sat at the table together, Ohno staring at Aiba while Aiba looked around nervously.
“Because you know, that’s a pretty rotten thing to do to your own dad, you know.”
“Mm.”
“Oh-chan, can I hold your hand?” he asked quietly, and Ohno suddenly stiffened, his cheeks turning red even though he wasn’t sure whether it was obvious or not.
“Sure,” he said cooly, and then felt his heart speed up when Aiba did, even though he knew it was only because he was anxious and was using Ohno as his lifeline for making it through the night and not because he… you know, liked him or something. Even though that would have made Ohno very happy.
“And… can we put the futons together, too?” he added softly and Ohno wondered if it was so the cameras wouldn’t hear his request or because he had been affected that much.
But Ohno nodded in return because he couldn’t form any words (although he figured this would happen, and that was why he wanted to be with Aiba-chan no matter what), and the other man took a breath of relief, resting his head on Ohno’s shoulder.
“I can’t believe you’re not scared at all, Oh-chan. You’re so brave.”
Instead of responding to the comment (because Ohno wasn’t really sure that he was brave, he just didn’t startle easily, and that’s what most of this seemed based on), he asked, “Do you think Sho-kun is going to be okay?”
“I don’t know…” Aiba laughed and looked towards the door, and just then two yells were heard from the next room over, the one shared by Jun and Nino.
When they had sounded, Aiba jumped, and Ohno’s eyes widened, and then they looked at each other.
“Should we see what happened?” Aiba whispered, and Ohno nodded, because they didn’t have much else to do here anyway.
Still holding hands, the two of them headed to the other room, peaking in slowly, and Jun and Nino were cowering in the corner (Nino more than Jun), staring at the window.
“What is it?” Ohno asked plainly, looking at where they were staring, but nothing was visible outside.
“The girl!” Nino whimpered. “She was right there…”
They both came completely inside the room, but when Ohno started walking towards the window, Aiba stiffened and instead opted to join the other two in the corner.
Although he slowed down a little as he reached it, without hesitating (very much), he undid the clasp in the middle and slowly slid one pane aside as the group behind him whimpered together.
“Is anything there?” Jun boldly asked (Aiba had made his way to hide behind him with Nino), and Ohno turned once to look at him before sticking his head out into the cold night air.
Aiba let out a surprised sound at the action, and then Ohno glanced around, looking above and below him as well, because they were on the second story so it was obvious that something could be at ground level. Like a crew member waving a doll on a stick.
“There’s nothing here,” he reassured them, before closing the window again and heading back over to his friends.
“Seriously,” Aiba whined, standing up along with Jun, and even though Nino was delayed, he did the same, and the room’s pair returned to their own small table with sour faces.
“What’re you guys doing?” Jun asked as he sat back down, and Nino was keeping his eye on the window just in case.
“We were just talking… Did you guys find a skeleton in your closet?” Aiba asked, with an edge of something that was almost enthusiasm.
“We… didn’t look yet,” Nino replied, but his eyes lit up like he was excited to see.
So the two of them went to the closet together, although their scream when the skeleton fell was more like children getting fed candy rather than cries of horror, and Ohno sat next to Jun for lack of anything else to do.
“Do you think Sho-kun’ll be okay?” Ohno asked him, because they hadn’t heard anything from his room yet.
“Maybe we should warn him about the skeleton,” Jun suggested, because it was getting late and they would probably all head off to bed soon anyway.
So they went as a group, finding Sho already laying out on his futon with a book in hand, looking both comfortable and not worried about potentially being in a haunted inn.
“Oh. So you knew about the skeleton?” Ohno asked, because the rest of them had expressions that were too incredulous to form words to ask themselves.
“Skeleton?” Sho sat up, looking suddenly much more nervous than he had been.
“You got your futon out of the closet, right?” Jun’s voice was unbelieving, and Nino was hiding behind him again (Aiba had returned to Ohno, resting his hands on his back lightly like a pet monkey).
“Well, yeah, but…”
Nino rushed over to the closet and shoved it open, and just like all the other rooms, a plastic skeleton rattled down until it was less than a foot above his head, and this time Sho jumped while the other four were expecting it.
“I didn’t notice it before!” he shrieked, and the rest of them were just as nervous for him as he was for himself. He was the easiest one to scare, plus he was oblivious enough that he would always be caught off guard.
“Oh man, you are toast. In the middle of the night, at the climax, that girl is going to be on top of you with a knife in your stomach before you even realize she’s here,” Nino mumbled sadly, shaking his head.
Sho looked terrified at that prediction.
“Please! Can I stay with you guys?!” he begged, getting on his knees and pressing his hands together.
They looked back and forth at each other, but they all knew that someone being terrified out of their wits (in this case, Sho) was part of the draw of filming something like this.
“Sorry, Sho,” Aiba said sadly, and Ohno was frowning too.
“Do your best,” Nino added nonchalantly before pulling Jun back into the hallway so they could return to their bedroom.
“It’s just until morning,” Ohno offered as a final word before he left with Aiba, also going back to their room to, assumably, try to get some sleep.
And they did. Instead of talking about anything else, they laid down on their joined futons, staring up at the ceiling with the lights still on, and held hands under the covers.
“Leader, I think I just saw something through the window.”
Ohno looked over, but there was nothing there.
“I’m scared,” Aiba mumbled, climbing under the blankets and basically pushing himself into bed with Ohno, wrapping his arms around his middle as tightly as he could and shoving his face into his shoulder.
Ohno managed to get his arm around Aiba too, immediately warming up at the close connection, and patted his head gently.
“Just until morning,” he repeated, pulling the blanket up above his own head so that they were huddled together.
“Sorry, Oh-chan.”
“If it makes you feel better, Aiba-chan…” Ohno replied, although he himself was enjoying the attitude of his frightened friend more than he should have been. “Let’s try to get some sleep, okay?”
+++
The first time they were woken up was about an hour later, when the door was slammed open.
Aiba jumped in horror and ended up on top of Ohno, straddling his waist and trying to keep the blanket over the top of them while, at the same time, attempting to make out the source of the noise, and Ohno would have been very excited had the circumstances been different.
He pulled back the edge of the futon slowly and was met with the inn keeper, holding a tray in her wrinkled hands and looking either mildly annoyed or completely disinterested in their position (he couldn’t really decipher which it was).
“I brought you the evening tea-“
“Seriously?” Aiba whined, pulling himself off of Ohno and standing up, then screaming immediately when his head connected with the skeleton from the closet, which had been moved to hang right above them.
Instead of collecting himself, Aiba just dove for his futon and covered himself with a blanket again as Ohno pushed himself up to relieve the old woman of her burden.
“Thank you,” he said politely, sitting it on their small table (there were cookies!) and then ducked his head in return when she bowed deeply.
“I’d keep an eye on the window if I were you,” came a serious warning, then she was out the door again, hobbling a little strangely (but Ohno just assumed that was because she was old).
“How about some cookies, Aiba-chan?” he asked straight away, settling in front of the table and checking the teapot before pouring two cups.
There was silence for a moment, but eventually he peeked his head out from under the blanket and then looked around cautiously, before scooting over to Ohno (taking the blanket with him).
“What flavor?”
“Chocolate chip. Oh, I wonder what’s in here,” Ohno mumbled, pulling a small lacquered box towards him and then taking the lid off the top.
A fake coiled snake popped out and hit him in the nose, and Aiba gasped, grabbing his chest, although Ohno didn’t really do anything but rub his face where it had hit him and look down at it in disappointment. He had thought there were some more sweets or something in there. Like a nice Danish.
“I’m really sick of this… Can’t even have a late tea in peace…” Aiba complained as he took a sip from the steaming cup and bit into a cookie, trying to act normal so that his heartbeat would settle again.
They finished the snack in silence, and then slid back into their futons together, in the same position that they had been in before, Aiba holding onto his arm tightly and Ohno trying to calm him breathing, which only seemed to speed up when Aiba was close to him.
+++
The second time they were woken up, the lights had been turned off, and the only reason that Ohno managed to regain consciousness was because Aiba was tugging on his arms and whispering in his ear (that certainly got him moving again).
“Oh-chan there are footsteps!!”
And indeed, when Aiba didn’t add anything and silence overtook the room, there was the barest hint of feet scraping the tatami mats.
“Aiba, let’s see what it is,” Ohno whispered back, but Aiba clung to him harder and shook his head.
“No! Let’s pretend to be asleep and maybe it’ll go away!”
Ohno gave in, although he really didn’t think that plan would work, and then Aiba cringed when a spooky voice filtered through the room, soft at first, but slowly becoming understandable.
“Uuun…. Jun…”
And then the blankets covering them like a tent were torn off, and Aiba screamed, shielding his head, and Ohno blinked up at the woman dressed in white standing over them… who was a little chubby and had quite short hair.
“Oh. Wrong room. Sorry,” she said in a deadpan voice, then replaced the blanket on top of them politely before heading towards the door, and Aiba still didn’t move, half lying on top of Ohno again, and Ohno didn’t mind.
“It’s okay, Aiba-chan. Oshima’s gone now.”
“I just want to go home,” he whined back, but Ohno hugged him tightly and that seemed to help.
“She’s bugging Jun and Nino now, so how about we go back to sleep?”
Aiba shifted so that they were nose to nose and Ohno almost stopped breathing, crossing his eyes so that he could continue watching him as well as he could in the darkness.
“Aiba-chan?” he asked slowly, and felt his hair being pushed back lightly with a barely shaking hand.
“I’m really lucky to have gotten that chopstick,” he replied, then touched their foreheads together and closed his eyes.
It took several minutes for Ohno to collect himself, and it was still difficult with Aiba being wrapped around him like this and their faces still being so close together (he could steal a kiss and blame it on a sneeze), but Ohno was Ohno and eventually he was able to slip off along with his friend.
+++
The third time they were woken up was by the door again, only it was softer than before, and instead of their blanket being completely pulled off, a pathetic voice called out first.
“Satoshi-kun? Aiba-chan?”
“Sho-kun?” Ohno managed to respond before Aiba did, since he was clinging to him at the first sign of something amiss. He pulled back the blanket to make sure it was indeed their friend and not a trick.
“I really can’t stand it anymore. Please let me sleep with you!” Sho begged, dropping to the floor in a bow, and Ohno rubbed his eyes while Aiba tentatively looked over his shoulder at the newcomer.
“Sho-chan? What happened?”
He moved closer to them, sitting on top of Aiba’s abandoned futon, and with a wavering voice, continued to plead his case.
“Well, it took forever for me to go to sleep anyway, and then that lady came back in as loud as she could and then told me another scary story about the fact the mother’s body had been found in my room and that she was known to haunt there on a full moon-it’s a full moon, did you guys know that?”
“Re-really?” Aiba looked over at the window, and then ducked under the covers again, burrowing his head into Ohno’s chest.
“Anyway, so I decided to skip the tea because I didn’t feel well-“ Ohno thought this was a good decision because of the snake trap, “but then, after I was back in my futon, a silhouette of a girl appeared on the wall. And then Oshima came in-was she in here too?”
“Yeah… I wonder if she really made a mistake twice or if the director wanted her to bug all of us?” Ohno mused aloud, propping himself up a little and patting Aiba unconsciously on the head.
“She chased me into a corner and tried to kiss me,” Sho added with a disgusted and depressed expression, then continued on avidly, “And right now there was a girl at my window again. I really saw her this time! She had long black hair and was wearing the same kimono that the inn keeper is! So please let me stay in here with you! I can’t stand being alone anymore.”
“Well, I guess it’s okay,” Ohno conceded, since Sho was honestly freaked out right now, and it was the middle of the night anyway, so probably nothing was expected out of them at the moment anyhow. Sho had been by himself for a pretty long time too, and had probably panicked enough to make more than an hour special out of it. “Where do you want to sleep?”
“Well… in the middle would be preferable.”
“No way! I’m staying by Oh-chan!” Aiba argued right away, latching onto him harder and making Ohno become a little flustered as their legs tangled together even more.
“Fine, I’ll take the other side, then,” Sho agreed, and stood easily to walk around the bed.
Ohno wasn’t sure he liked being shared with Sho while Aiba had won him fair and square, but if Sho was scared enough to interrupt them, well, he couldn’t really say no, then, could he?
+++
Number four was a zombie pulling him out of bed.
Ohno didn’t even realize anything had been happening until he was already freed from the two bodies surrounding him, except for Aiba had such a firm hold on him that he came halfway out of the futon as well, and jumped to life immediately.
But instead of screaming and running away like he thought he would, he panicked and grabbed onto Ohno tighter, trying to pull him away from the monster.
“Oh-chan! No!”
And then Sho was up, although he was rolling somewhere on the floor and trying to grasp onto the situation while he pushed himself off the ground, but Aiba acted first, still holding onto Ohno as tight as he could even as the zombie started for the door.
“Let go of him!” he almost screeched, pulling hard on Ohno’s legs, and Ohno was limp with sleep and wondering what the hell was going on.
“Graurg,” said the zombie, jerking his body and trying to free him from Aiba’s grip, but Aiba kicked him instead and sent the group of them to the floor.
After that he quickly retrieved Ohno, backing up and holding him close to his chest while they both sat on the floor, Sho staring at them in shock from a few feet away.
The zombie slowly got up and said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “Either Mr. Sakurai goes back to his room, or I will be taking Mr. Ohno with me.”
“Sho, go back to your room,” Aiba said immediately, and Sho, probably because he couldn’t comprehend being given such a straightforward and ruthless command like that from Aiba, stood and allowed the zombie to gently take his hand and lead him away.
When they were left alone, Aiba retreated to the bed again, this time with Ohno in tow, and together they settled into their original position once more, completely covered with Aiba clinging to him and Ohno rubbing his back in reassurance.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you were gone,” Aiba admitted softly, and rested his nose against Ohno’s collar.
“It would have been fine. They just would have taken me to the van, or put me in Sho’s room.”
“I know. But I would have been worried.”
Ohno waited, his fingers running through Aiba’s hair lightly, then admitted, probably because his mind was heavy with sleep despite almost being kidnapped by a zombie, “I’m glad.”
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad that Aiba-chan cares so much about me.”
“Of-of course I care, Leader!” he replied instantly, as if he was offended by the simple idea that he didn’t, and retreated so that he could (try to) look at Ohno’s face.
Ohno didn’t reply, only smiled, so Aiba, tentatively, asked, “I can care, right?”
“Of course you can care,” he returned as two long fingers brushed his cheek, and he realized that his hand had settled on Aiba’s hip, and that his t-shirt was pretty thin.
“Because I care about Leader a lot, you know,” he added in a voice that was gradually getting softer, more intimate.
“I care about Aiba-chan too,” Ohno whispered back, and their noses were aligned again. He could feel Aiba’s soft breaths on his cheek.
And then a piercing scream came from somewhere (it wasn’t really distinguishable), and Aiba jumped again, sitting up and throwing the blankets back and looking at the wall separating their room from Jun’s and Nino's.
“Maybe it’s Oshima,” Ohno threw out, even though that had been a few hours ago, but then a shadow fell on their window and Aiba stiffened again, grasping onto his arm as hard as he could.
And then a head slowly started rising from the bottom of the frame, a woman with straight black hair that was half covering her pale face, and she was looking at the two of them with her head tilted forward, creating a horrific aesthetic.
“AH! It’s her!” Aiba shrieked, hiding behind Ohno but unable to take his eyes off of the window where the girl was waiting. “From the story!”
When her entire head and half of her upper body was visible, which was indeed covered in a faded kimono of the same print as the inn keepers, she stopped moving and only stared at them with an eerie glow covering her body.
And then Ohno pushed himself off the ground, much to Aiba’s horror, and told him, “I’m just going to see if she’ll leave if I get closer.”
“No, Leader! Let’s go! Let’s go into Sho’s room!” Aiba begged him, holding onto his leg, but Ohno gave him a calm look and gently touched his head.
“It’s okay, Aiba. You’ll feel safer if you wait here in the futon.”
“No! I won’t let you go alone, Oh-chan,” Aiba conceded, then forced himself to stand.
They both turned to the girl (who hadn’t moved at all, still watching them with furrowed brows), holding hands tightly between them and Ohno walked forward slowly while Aiba struggled to even follow behind him, closing his eyes tightly as they moved to the window.
It was really interesting. Once they were this close, she looked so real, and Ohno was curious as to how they made her float like that without any strings. And then, when they could see more, she didn’t have any feet either! It must have been a projection of some sort, although Ohno didn’t know much about that.
“She’s not leaving, Oh-chan!” Aiba whispered after finally sneaking a peek, completely terrified and cowering behind his back even though their hands were still connected. He was hunched over, resting his mouth on the back of his shoulder and darting his eyes so that he was looking at anything but the girl.
So he unlocked the latch, even though Aiba physically winced, and then slid it open so that the cold night air hit him hard enough to make him shiver.
The girl was still there.
They continued to stare at her, completely silent, until Aiba asked, “What should we do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she wants something to eat,” Ohno suggested.
“Wh-what?”
“We still have some cookies, right? Maybe she wants one. She’s probably been working really hard tonight, scaring us like this.”
“Sh-she doesn’t have any feet, Ohno. She’s a ghost for god’s sake.”
“Ghosts have feelings too, Aiba-chan. Let’s at least try.”
He didn’t turn around, because he wanted to make sure she didn’t suddenly disappear while they were getting a cookie, but Aiba did as he was asked, and the pair shuffled back to the table to get the two remaining cookies that they had never finished, then returned to the window while the girl hadn’t moved at all (her hair wasn’t even swaying, despite a cold breeze blowing into the room quite gently).
Then Ohno leaned out the window (with Aiba grabbing onto his hand and wrapping his other arm around his stomach tightly as if he was afraid the ghost was going to try to take him away too) and held out the cookie.
Finally the girl tilted her head just a fraction and looked at it, then disappeared completely.
“Oh,” Leader let out, a bit disappointed that she hadn’t taken it (but then again if she was a projection, she couldn’t eat it anyway), and then Aiba immediately pulled him back inside and slammed the window shut, locking it tightly.
“We’re going back to bed!” he demanded in a high pitched voice, and almost dragged Ohno there, and the two of them hid under the covers again, Aiba vowing to not leave again until morning.
+++
The last time they got up it was because morning had rolled around and the old woman had appeared again with a tray of breakfast food.
“Thank you,” Ohno said sleepily as she sat it down on the table, and then moved to help her clear away the tea tray, which was in the same spot they had left it in.
“I should be thanking you,” she replied cryptically, then immediately excused herself and left the room.
“Hey, Aiba-chan?” Ohno asked curiously, as he turned back to his friend, who was working himself out of bed with hair that was all over the place.
“Hmm?”
“Did you eat those cookies? I thought we decided to save them just in case she came back.”
Aiba blinked at him with beady eyes, rubbing his face and shaking his head. “No, I left them on the plate.”
“That’s weird,” Ohno mumbled, but turned to their breakfast, taking off the lids of all the dishes on Aiba’s plate, just in case there was another hidden toy to scare them. Because they had both finally gotten some rest and the last thing he needed was for Aiba to get nervous again this early in the morning.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. This looks really good,” Ohno tactfully changed the subject, and began arranging his own serving to start eating while Aiba crawled over next to him, sitting so close that their knees were touching.
“Smells good too!”
And the rest of the morning went without any more tricks. They got changed and met out front at the scheduled time, and although Sho looked haggard and Jun a bit annoyed, they were all fairly cheerful for having just spent a night in a potentially haunted building.
They did the closing take quickly, assured that it had all been fake and that the story about this place was a questionable legend at best (Nino complained about that part), and that, during the summer, this place was actually full of people who went hiking and rock climbing in the surrounding mountains.
In the van on the way home, Aiba took the seat next to Ohno before Nino could beat him to it, and held his hand the whole time while they listened to the other recount the scariest things that had happened last night, asking the director, who was in the passenger’s seat, how everything had worked and if they had missed anything.
“How about that girl that wouldn’t leave this morning?” Aiba asked with enthusiasm, pretending that, since he and Ohno had approached her, that she wasn’t really anything to be scared about.
“Huh?” Jun asked first, turning to him, “You mean that shadow that kept appearing in the window? They already said it was just a light trick.”
“No, we saw her, right Leader? She had long black hair and was wearing that kimono, just like you said Sho-chan!”
“Oh yeah, that’s right! She appeared in my window before I went into Ohno’s room!”
“You went into Ohno’s room?” Nino demanded with a frown, as if they would have done the same if they hadn’t thought it was cheating.
“I’m not sure what you guys are talking about…” the director replied, and Jun cut in with a surprised voice, “Hey, didn’t we see her too, Nino? When we first got there last night?”
“What-Oh my God, we did!” he answered, becoming obviously rigid as he realized that Aiba and Sho weren’t simply making stories up because they had been too scared to think straight.
“She didn’t have any feet,” Aiba added, as if that was a defining feature (which it was, but none of the rest of them had gotten close enough to notice).
“Seriously. We didn’t do anything with the girl. That was supposed to be Oshima’s role.”
“Stop kidding us!” Sho pleaded, covering his eyes and taking a deep breath, and the conversation was dropped, each of them thinking what they would about it.
Ohno was pretty curious, although it was all over now so there was no use in wasting time on whether they had actually seen a real ghost or simply been tricked again, and besides, something much more important had come out of this whole thing than an hour long TV special.
With Aiba’s head on his shoulder, his eyes closed tightly in an attempt to forget even bringing the topic up, Ohno squeezed the hand in his and got one in return, wondering when they would be able to continue the almost-confession that had been started before the appearance of the girl.
Maybe he should ask Mr. Director if there was any room for a sequel.
+++
A/N: 1. This story is sort of based on Down Town's batsu games, which I watched with yarukizero a while ago. 2. This was supposed to be a drabble, but you can see how long it got, so I decided to post it as a short story instead. I'm sorry if there's not much content. 3. I wrote the ghost story in the middle myself although I think it's pretty plain. 4. I planned to post this yesterday... and forgot. So I'm sorry. 5. If you don't know who Oshima is, she's the chubby comedian with short hair who showed up at the haunted house before dressed as a ghost(?). She loves Jun. 6. Always open to criticism, or anything you have to say. :) I noticed that I haven't been including genres in my posting information recently, I guess I should do that. Hopefully my next post will be on Saturday/Sunday!
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Aiba/Ohno, general
Genre: humor, fluff
Disclaimer: I guess Johnny’s technically owns Arashi, huh? Not me.
Summary: In which Arashi attempts to discern what's real and what's not.
“I think being paired with either Aiba or Sho would be the worst,” Nino commented with folded arms, the group standing at their current filming location and waiting while the rest of the equipment was placed and the MCs finished their makeup.
“I don’t know, isn’t being by yourself pretty bad?” Jun argued, but Nino shook his head.
“No way. By yourself you know what to be scared of and what not to be. With those two idiots, they jump at everything and make you get jumpy too.”
“That’s true I guess…”
“Hey, it’s not my fault! I’m scared of ghosts,” Aiba threw in pathetically, looking at them with wide eyes, and then turned to Leader, who hadn’t really said much about their latest assignment yet.
A staff member had started coming closer with his camera hoisted onto his shoulder and running in order to capture their argument, but none of them did anything to change what they were doing, simply continuing on as they were.
“Leader would be the best case, right?” Nino asked, “Because he wasn’t scared at all when we did that haunted house thing a few years back, right?”
“Yeah, not at all. Not one scream,” Jun replied, and then all of them were looking at Ohno, as if sizing him up.
“I want to stay with Leader,” Aiba whined.
“How about we do janken for him?” Nino suggested, but Jun shook his head.
“The director already said we had to draw sticks, so we’ll just have to wait and see who gets the longest one.”
“What if it’s Ohno? Leader, who are you going to pick to stay with?”
Ohno looked around at the others waiting for an answer from him. He wanted to spend a night in a haunted house-well onsen or something, they didn’t know what the backstory to this place was yet because filming hadn’t started-as much as the rest of them did (which wasn’t very), but that was more because he missed his own bed when he wasn’t in it at night. They were all looking to him for comfort, but actually, the person he would choose to spend a night with, just the two of them, was that person for a reason other than it would keep him from getting frightened.
But he didn’t answer because he was pretty shy and didn’t want any of them to know about his crush which had effectively kept to himself for several years, so he just shrugged and they immediately lost interest in him.
“How about if he wins we play janken for him?” Nino suggested again, but the rest of them shook their heads, and then turned to the director as he signaled for them to get into their places.
So they lined up in front of the building, glancing around anxiously (except for Ohno, who was examining his shoes because one of them seemed to be getting a hole), and then faced the camera as the countdown started.
As usual, first the show was introduced, and then they directly went into the theme of today’s episode, which included Arashi spending a night alone in this haunted hotel. There were cameras planted in the rooms, and the hotel “staff” would be around to help them a little bit, but there were no camera men and no contact with the outside world until tomorrow morning.
Part of the catch was that there were only three rooms, so two people could share, but there would be one person alone throughout the whole night. Of course this was set up, they all knew it, and although the rules of being strictly split were lenient, they all understood that they would have to be good sports about it and give the director what he wanted eventually.
It was barely getting dark outside now, but they were gathered around a small standing stove and Nino rubbed his arms for effect, even though it wasn’t very cold (they were in the mountains, though, so it was going to be a brisk night at the very least).
“And so we have brought Mr. Takahashi, a professional historian and ghost expert, to inform us of the state of this hotel. Apparently he also is very knowledgeable of this specific area, and has researched the cause of this building’s abandonment.”
“It doesn’t look very ‘abandoned,’” Nino said under his breath, but they all knew this was likely a ruse to build up the atmosphere and make them scared. Ohno was interested, but simply because he liked stories like this. He liked to hear what exactly happened to make people ghosts, even if his mother always told him he shouldn’t believe in supernatural stuff like that.
“The truth is,” the guest started in a narrating voice, moving his hands so that his kimono sleeves made his long, narrow face even more eerie than it already was, “A very terrible event occurred here, exactly fifty years ago today, which I believe is the reason that this area was chosen.”
“Of course,” Jun mumbled, folding his arms just like Nino already had, but all of them were watching him intently, unable to do anything else as the tale began to unfold.
A newlywed couple, having moved here from the city to start a new life together, took over this inn when the previous owners decided to retire, unable to keep up with the massive amounts of customers that had come to view the beautiful scenery. At first it was easy, but within the first year, the wife became pregnant and, as the pregnancy developed, became sicker and sicker and was unable to continue helping her husband as she had done before.
When the baby was born--a girl--instead of rejoicing, they were both revolted at her disfigured features and horrifying voice, a cry so piercing that it would keep the entire inn up at night, and over only a few months’ time they had gone from a bustling business to no customers. The people from the neighboring village would warn anyone that came to stay away from the place with the cursed child, if they knew what was good for them.
So the husband did the only thing that would rid them of this burden. He took the child out into the forest, as far as he could manage, and left her there, to the mercy of nature.
Aiba took a breath of relief, as if he had expected something much worse, but the storyteller continued and all of them stiffened again.
Well, after that the wife had no more children. Although they were tentative to try, after a few years, when the baby’s existence had faded from their minds and their inn was back to its usual patronage, they attempted to conceive again. But nothing came of it.
Fifteen years later, they gave up, both of them content with simply being together and running the flourishing inn. In the spring, the same season that their forgotten baby had been born, a young woman so beautiful that one would believe she was an angel, appeared on their doorstep, begging for work.
They could not refuse, their want of a child reigniting, and so they agreed to trade lodging for chores such as cooking and cleaning.
The first year passed without incident, but in the second year, strange things started to happen, slowly at first but with startling frequency. A guest would report a disturbing figure at their window in the middle of the night, or that they had heard a piercing scream from the forest, or even that they had begun aching in unreasonable places after spending time there.
The number of guests began falling again, despite their lovely help, but that wasn’t all. The girl, thought to have been as pure as the angel she resembled, had begun her seduction of the husband, convincing him that his misfortunate had come from his wife-that it was her fault that their first baby had been hideous and repulsive.
“Kill her,” she said, “And the two of us will start anew. The strange happenings will stop and I will bear you the most beautiful child you have ever laid eyes upon.”
The husband, blinded by infatuation and longing for a return to normalcy, follow her words and, in the middle of the night, quietly slit his own wife’s throat.
Running from his own room to the girl’s, he happily conveyed his actions, and the girl smiled once, a wicked and horrifying smile, before thrusting a kitchen knife through his stomach.
“I’m glad. We can finally be together again… father.”
As silence settled over them, Ohno felt Aiba shiver next to him, and then realized that his arm had been grabbed somewhere during the story, but they had all been so zoned in on the final punch line that he hadn’t even noticed the taller man’s approach.
But he didn’t mind at all.
“After that, the girl killed herself as well, and still haunts the inn to this day, looking for something, although no one knows what.”
“Please… don’t make us stay here,” Sho whined, to create atmosphere (because Sho was good at that, even though he probably was scared shitless).
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Aiba added, grabbing onto Ohno harder, and Nino took a second to point out their connection before the MC took over again, pulling out a prepared can with disposable chopsticks sticking out the top.
“There are two with numbers at the end, one and two. The person who draws one can pick their roommate first, and then number two can. The person remaining will take the single room.”
There were more mumbled complaints from everyone, except Leader, but they all came forward and gathered around the can, marking their claim on one until they were all ready, then pulled them out at the same time.
“Yes!!” Aiba called out over the crowd, bouncing around a little and then grabbing onto Ohno’s arm again. “I call Leader!” he announced, holding up his chopstick, which had a small 1 on the bottom.
Ohno smiled at him, mostly because it was the same thing he would have picked too. If he had to sleep outside of his own bed, at least he could be with Aiba while he did so.
“Well, guess I’ll take Jun-kun, then,” Nino said in an even voice, obviously glad that his choice wasn’t between Aiba and Sho.
“No way,” Sho whined, drooping his shoulders as he realized that he would be staying by himself. “You guys, please don’t make me…”
“Sorry, Sho-chan, you lose,” Nino responded, laying his own claim on Jun’s arm.
The MC laughed at their antics first, then said, “Shall we?” and motioned for the door, and the camera began panning out as they all went to collect their bags and start into the small inn together.
+++
“Hey, Leader? Do you really think that story is true?”
They had already changed into their sweats in which they would be sleeping, and the two of them were sitting together at a low table. A creepy old woman in a kimono had come into serve them dinner (which they both ate the entirety of), and explain about the inn again (as if they had forgotten), and then had said if they needed anything to let her know.
In the closet there had been a plastic skeleton hanging just above their heads, which had scared Aiba so bad that he had fallen onto the floor and had to catch his breath while Ohno looked at it curiously, touching it to see what it was made out of, and then without worrying about it anymore, pulled out both futons and began to lay them out while Aiba regrouped.
After that they became a little bored, although it was obvious that Aiba’s nerves were frayed, so they sat at the table together, Ohno staring at Aiba while Aiba looked around nervously.
“Because you know, that’s a pretty rotten thing to do to your own dad, you know.”
“Mm.”
“Oh-chan, can I hold your hand?” he asked quietly, and Ohno suddenly stiffened, his cheeks turning red even though he wasn’t sure whether it was obvious or not.
“Sure,” he said cooly, and then felt his heart speed up when Aiba did, even though he knew it was only because he was anxious and was using Ohno as his lifeline for making it through the night and not because he… you know, liked him or something. Even though that would have made Ohno very happy.
“And… can we put the futons together, too?” he added softly and Ohno wondered if it was so the cameras wouldn’t hear his request or because he had been affected that much.
But Ohno nodded in return because he couldn’t form any words (although he figured this would happen, and that was why he wanted to be with Aiba-chan no matter what), and the other man took a breath of relief, resting his head on Ohno’s shoulder.
“I can’t believe you’re not scared at all, Oh-chan. You’re so brave.”
Instead of responding to the comment (because Ohno wasn’t really sure that he was brave, he just didn’t startle easily, and that’s what most of this seemed based on), he asked, “Do you think Sho-kun is going to be okay?”
“I don’t know…” Aiba laughed and looked towards the door, and just then two yells were heard from the next room over, the one shared by Jun and Nino.
When they had sounded, Aiba jumped, and Ohno’s eyes widened, and then they looked at each other.
“Should we see what happened?” Aiba whispered, and Ohno nodded, because they didn’t have much else to do here anyway.
Still holding hands, the two of them headed to the other room, peaking in slowly, and Jun and Nino were cowering in the corner (Nino more than Jun), staring at the window.
“What is it?” Ohno asked plainly, looking at where they were staring, but nothing was visible outside.
“The girl!” Nino whimpered. “She was right there…”
They both came completely inside the room, but when Ohno started walking towards the window, Aiba stiffened and instead opted to join the other two in the corner.
Although he slowed down a little as he reached it, without hesitating (very much), he undid the clasp in the middle and slowly slid one pane aside as the group behind him whimpered together.
“Is anything there?” Jun boldly asked (Aiba had made his way to hide behind him with Nino), and Ohno turned once to look at him before sticking his head out into the cold night air.
Aiba let out a surprised sound at the action, and then Ohno glanced around, looking above and below him as well, because they were on the second story so it was obvious that something could be at ground level. Like a crew member waving a doll on a stick.
“There’s nothing here,” he reassured them, before closing the window again and heading back over to his friends.
“Seriously,” Aiba whined, standing up along with Jun, and even though Nino was delayed, he did the same, and the room’s pair returned to their own small table with sour faces.
“What’re you guys doing?” Jun asked as he sat back down, and Nino was keeping his eye on the window just in case.
“We were just talking… Did you guys find a skeleton in your closet?” Aiba asked, with an edge of something that was almost enthusiasm.
“We… didn’t look yet,” Nino replied, but his eyes lit up like he was excited to see.
So the two of them went to the closet together, although their scream when the skeleton fell was more like children getting fed candy rather than cries of horror, and Ohno sat next to Jun for lack of anything else to do.
“Do you think Sho-kun’ll be okay?” Ohno asked him, because they hadn’t heard anything from his room yet.
“Maybe we should warn him about the skeleton,” Jun suggested, because it was getting late and they would probably all head off to bed soon anyway.
So they went as a group, finding Sho already laying out on his futon with a book in hand, looking both comfortable and not worried about potentially being in a haunted inn.
“Oh. So you knew about the skeleton?” Ohno asked, because the rest of them had expressions that were too incredulous to form words to ask themselves.
“Skeleton?” Sho sat up, looking suddenly much more nervous than he had been.
“You got your futon out of the closet, right?” Jun’s voice was unbelieving, and Nino was hiding behind him again (Aiba had returned to Ohno, resting his hands on his back lightly like a pet monkey).
“Well, yeah, but…”
Nino rushed over to the closet and shoved it open, and just like all the other rooms, a plastic skeleton rattled down until it was less than a foot above his head, and this time Sho jumped while the other four were expecting it.
“I didn’t notice it before!” he shrieked, and the rest of them were just as nervous for him as he was for himself. He was the easiest one to scare, plus he was oblivious enough that he would always be caught off guard.
“Oh man, you are toast. In the middle of the night, at the climax, that girl is going to be on top of you with a knife in your stomach before you even realize she’s here,” Nino mumbled sadly, shaking his head.
Sho looked terrified at that prediction.
“Please! Can I stay with you guys?!” he begged, getting on his knees and pressing his hands together.
They looked back and forth at each other, but they all knew that someone being terrified out of their wits (in this case, Sho) was part of the draw of filming something like this.
“Sorry, Sho,” Aiba said sadly, and Ohno was frowning too.
“Do your best,” Nino added nonchalantly before pulling Jun back into the hallway so they could return to their bedroom.
“It’s just until morning,” Ohno offered as a final word before he left with Aiba, also going back to their room to, assumably, try to get some sleep.
And they did. Instead of talking about anything else, they laid down on their joined futons, staring up at the ceiling with the lights still on, and held hands under the covers.
“Leader, I think I just saw something through the window.”
Ohno looked over, but there was nothing there.
“I’m scared,” Aiba mumbled, climbing under the blankets and basically pushing himself into bed with Ohno, wrapping his arms around his middle as tightly as he could and shoving his face into his shoulder.
Ohno managed to get his arm around Aiba too, immediately warming up at the close connection, and patted his head gently.
“Just until morning,” he repeated, pulling the blanket up above his own head so that they were huddled together.
“Sorry, Oh-chan.”
“If it makes you feel better, Aiba-chan…” Ohno replied, although he himself was enjoying the attitude of his frightened friend more than he should have been. “Let’s try to get some sleep, okay?”
+++
The first time they were woken up was about an hour later, when the door was slammed open.
Aiba jumped in horror and ended up on top of Ohno, straddling his waist and trying to keep the blanket over the top of them while, at the same time, attempting to make out the source of the noise, and Ohno would have been very excited had the circumstances been different.
He pulled back the edge of the futon slowly and was met with the inn keeper, holding a tray in her wrinkled hands and looking either mildly annoyed or completely disinterested in their position (he couldn’t really decipher which it was).
“I brought you the evening tea-“
“Seriously?” Aiba whined, pulling himself off of Ohno and standing up, then screaming immediately when his head connected with the skeleton from the closet, which had been moved to hang right above them.
Instead of collecting himself, Aiba just dove for his futon and covered himself with a blanket again as Ohno pushed himself up to relieve the old woman of her burden.
“Thank you,” he said politely, sitting it on their small table (there were cookies!) and then ducked his head in return when she bowed deeply.
“I’d keep an eye on the window if I were you,” came a serious warning, then she was out the door again, hobbling a little strangely (but Ohno just assumed that was because she was old).
“How about some cookies, Aiba-chan?” he asked straight away, settling in front of the table and checking the teapot before pouring two cups.
There was silence for a moment, but eventually he peeked his head out from under the blanket and then looked around cautiously, before scooting over to Ohno (taking the blanket with him).
“What flavor?”
“Chocolate chip. Oh, I wonder what’s in here,” Ohno mumbled, pulling a small lacquered box towards him and then taking the lid off the top.
A fake coiled snake popped out and hit him in the nose, and Aiba gasped, grabbing his chest, although Ohno didn’t really do anything but rub his face where it had hit him and look down at it in disappointment. He had thought there were some more sweets or something in there. Like a nice Danish.
“I’m really sick of this… Can’t even have a late tea in peace…” Aiba complained as he took a sip from the steaming cup and bit into a cookie, trying to act normal so that his heartbeat would settle again.
They finished the snack in silence, and then slid back into their futons together, in the same position that they had been in before, Aiba holding onto his arm tightly and Ohno trying to calm him breathing, which only seemed to speed up when Aiba was close to him.
+++
The second time they were woken up, the lights had been turned off, and the only reason that Ohno managed to regain consciousness was because Aiba was tugging on his arms and whispering in his ear (that certainly got him moving again).
“Oh-chan there are footsteps!!”
And indeed, when Aiba didn’t add anything and silence overtook the room, there was the barest hint of feet scraping the tatami mats.
“Aiba, let’s see what it is,” Ohno whispered back, but Aiba clung to him harder and shook his head.
“No! Let’s pretend to be asleep and maybe it’ll go away!”
Ohno gave in, although he really didn’t think that plan would work, and then Aiba cringed when a spooky voice filtered through the room, soft at first, but slowly becoming understandable.
“Uuun…. Jun…”
And then the blankets covering them like a tent were torn off, and Aiba screamed, shielding his head, and Ohno blinked up at the woman dressed in white standing over them… who was a little chubby and had quite short hair.
“Oh. Wrong room. Sorry,” she said in a deadpan voice, then replaced the blanket on top of them politely before heading towards the door, and Aiba still didn’t move, half lying on top of Ohno again, and Ohno didn’t mind.
“It’s okay, Aiba-chan. Oshima’s gone now.”
“I just want to go home,” he whined back, but Ohno hugged him tightly and that seemed to help.
“She’s bugging Jun and Nino now, so how about we go back to sleep?”
Aiba shifted so that they were nose to nose and Ohno almost stopped breathing, crossing his eyes so that he could continue watching him as well as he could in the darkness.
“Aiba-chan?” he asked slowly, and felt his hair being pushed back lightly with a barely shaking hand.
“I’m really lucky to have gotten that chopstick,” he replied, then touched their foreheads together and closed his eyes.
It took several minutes for Ohno to collect himself, and it was still difficult with Aiba being wrapped around him like this and their faces still being so close together (he could steal a kiss and blame it on a sneeze), but Ohno was Ohno and eventually he was able to slip off along with his friend.
+++
The third time they were woken up was by the door again, only it was softer than before, and instead of their blanket being completely pulled off, a pathetic voice called out first.
“Satoshi-kun? Aiba-chan?”
“Sho-kun?” Ohno managed to respond before Aiba did, since he was clinging to him at the first sign of something amiss. He pulled back the blanket to make sure it was indeed their friend and not a trick.
“I really can’t stand it anymore. Please let me sleep with you!” Sho begged, dropping to the floor in a bow, and Ohno rubbed his eyes while Aiba tentatively looked over his shoulder at the newcomer.
“Sho-chan? What happened?”
He moved closer to them, sitting on top of Aiba’s abandoned futon, and with a wavering voice, continued to plead his case.
“Well, it took forever for me to go to sleep anyway, and then that lady came back in as loud as she could and then told me another scary story about the fact the mother’s body had been found in my room and that she was known to haunt there on a full moon-it’s a full moon, did you guys know that?”
“Re-really?” Aiba looked over at the window, and then ducked under the covers again, burrowing his head into Ohno’s chest.
“Anyway, so I decided to skip the tea because I didn’t feel well-“ Ohno thought this was a good decision because of the snake trap, “but then, after I was back in my futon, a silhouette of a girl appeared on the wall. And then Oshima came in-was she in here too?”
“Yeah… I wonder if she really made a mistake twice or if the director wanted her to bug all of us?” Ohno mused aloud, propping himself up a little and patting Aiba unconsciously on the head.
“She chased me into a corner and tried to kiss me,” Sho added with a disgusted and depressed expression, then continued on avidly, “And right now there was a girl at my window again. I really saw her this time! She had long black hair and was wearing the same kimono that the inn keeper is! So please let me stay in here with you! I can’t stand being alone anymore.”
“Well, I guess it’s okay,” Ohno conceded, since Sho was honestly freaked out right now, and it was the middle of the night anyway, so probably nothing was expected out of them at the moment anyhow. Sho had been by himself for a pretty long time too, and had probably panicked enough to make more than an hour special out of it. “Where do you want to sleep?”
“Well… in the middle would be preferable.”
“No way! I’m staying by Oh-chan!” Aiba argued right away, latching onto him harder and making Ohno become a little flustered as their legs tangled together even more.
“Fine, I’ll take the other side, then,” Sho agreed, and stood easily to walk around the bed.
Ohno wasn’t sure he liked being shared with Sho while Aiba had won him fair and square, but if Sho was scared enough to interrupt them, well, he couldn’t really say no, then, could he?
+++
Number four was a zombie pulling him out of bed.
Ohno didn’t even realize anything had been happening until he was already freed from the two bodies surrounding him, except for Aiba had such a firm hold on him that he came halfway out of the futon as well, and jumped to life immediately.
But instead of screaming and running away like he thought he would, he panicked and grabbed onto Ohno tighter, trying to pull him away from the monster.
“Oh-chan! No!”
And then Sho was up, although he was rolling somewhere on the floor and trying to grasp onto the situation while he pushed himself off the ground, but Aiba acted first, still holding onto Ohno as tight as he could even as the zombie started for the door.
“Let go of him!” he almost screeched, pulling hard on Ohno’s legs, and Ohno was limp with sleep and wondering what the hell was going on.
“Graurg,” said the zombie, jerking his body and trying to free him from Aiba’s grip, but Aiba kicked him instead and sent the group of them to the floor.
After that he quickly retrieved Ohno, backing up and holding him close to his chest while they both sat on the floor, Sho staring at them in shock from a few feet away.
The zombie slowly got up and said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “Either Mr. Sakurai goes back to his room, or I will be taking Mr. Ohno with me.”
“Sho, go back to your room,” Aiba said immediately, and Sho, probably because he couldn’t comprehend being given such a straightforward and ruthless command like that from Aiba, stood and allowed the zombie to gently take his hand and lead him away.
When they were left alone, Aiba retreated to the bed again, this time with Ohno in tow, and together they settled into their original position once more, completely covered with Aiba clinging to him and Ohno rubbing his back in reassurance.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you were gone,” Aiba admitted softly, and rested his nose against Ohno’s collar.
“It would have been fine. They just would have taken me to the van, or put me in Sho’s room.”
“I know. But I would have been worried.”
Ohno waited, his fingers running through Aiba’s hair lightly, then admitted, probably because his mind was heavy with sleep despite almost being kidnapped by a zombie, “I’m glad.”
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad that Aiba-chan cares so much about me.”
“Of-of course I care, Leader!” he replied instantly, as if he was offended by the simple idea that he didn’t, and retreated so that he could (try to) look at Ohno’s face.
Ohno didn’t reply, only smiled, so Aiba, tentatively, asked, “I can care, right?”
“Of course you can care,” he returned as two long fingers brushed his cheek, and he realized that his hand had settled on Aiba’s hip, and that his t-shirt was pretty thin.
“Because I care about Leader a lot, you know,” he added in a voice that was gradually getting softer, more intimate.
“I care about Aiba-chan too,” Ohno whispered back, and their noses were aligned again. He could feel Aiba’s soft breaths on his cheek.
And then a piercing scream came from somewhere (it wasn’t really distinguishable), and Aiba jumped again, sitting up and throwing the blankets back and looking at the wall separating their room from Jun’s and Nino's.
“Maybe it’s Oshima,” Ohno threw out, even though that had been a few hours ago, but then a shadow fell on their window and Aiba stiffened again, grasping onto his arm as hard as he could.
And then a head slowly started rising from the bottom of the frame, a woman with straight black hair that was half covering her pale face, and she was looking at the two of them with her head tilted forward, creating a horrific aesthetic.
“AH! It’s her!” Aiba shrieked, hiding behind Ohno but unable to take his eyes off of the window where the girl was waiting. “From the story!”
When her entire head and half of her upper body was visible, which was indeed covered in a faded kimono of the same print as the inn keepers, she stopped moving and only stared at them with an eerie glow covering her body.
And then Ohno pushed himself off the ground, much to Aiba’s horror, and told him, “I’m just going to see if she’ll leave if I get closer.”
“No, Leader! Let’s go! Let’s go into Sho’s room!” Aiba begged him, holding onto his leg, but Ohno gave him a calm look and gently touched his head.
“It’s okay, Aiba. You’ll feel safer if you wait here in the futon.”
“No! I won’t let you go alone, Oh-chan,” Aiba conceded, then forced himself to stand.
They both turned to the girl (who hadn’t moved at all, still watching them with furrowed brows), holding hands tightly between them and Ohno walked forward slowly while Aiba struggled to even follow behind him, closing his eyes tightly as they moved to the window.
It was really interesting. Once they were this close, she looked so real, and Ohno was curious as to how they made her float like that without any strings. And then, when they could see more, she didn’t have any feet either! It must have been a projection of some sort, although Ohno didn’t know much about that.
“She’s not leaving, Oh-chan!” Aiba whispered after finally sneaking a peek, completely terrified and cowering behind his back even though their hands were still connected. He was hunched over, resting his mouth on the back of his shoulder and darting his eyes so that he was looking at anything but the girl.
So he unlocked the latch, even though Aiba physically winced, and then slid it open so that the cold night air hit him hard enough to make him shiver.
The girl was still there.
They continued to stare at her, completely silent, until Aiba asked, “What should we do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she wants something to eat,” Ohno suggested.
“Wh-what?”
“We still have some cookies, right? Maybe she wants one. She’s probably been working really hard tonight, scaring us like this.”
“Sh-she doesn’t have any feet, Ohno. She’s a ghost for god’s sake.”
“Ghosts have feelings too, Aiba-chan. Let’s at least try.”
He didn’t turn around, because he wanted to make sure she didn’t suddenly disappear while they were getting a cookie, but Aiba did as he was asked, and the pair shuffled back to the table to get the two remaining cookies that they had never finished, then returned to the window while the girl hadn’t moved at all (her hair wasn’t even swaying, despite a cold breeze blowing into the room quite gently).
Then Ohno leaned out the window (with Aiba grabbing onto his hand and wrapping his other arm around his stomach tightly as if he was afraid the ghost was going to try to take him away too) and held out the cookie.
Finally the girl tilted her head just a fraction and looked at it, then disappeared completely.
“Oh,” Leader let out, a bit disappointed that she hadn’t taken it (but then again if she was a projection, she couldn’t eat it anyway), and then Aiba immediately pulled him back inside and slammed the window shut, locking it tightly.
“We’re going back to bed!” he demanded in a high pitched voice, and almost dragged Ohno there, and the two of them hid under the covers again, Aiba vowing to not leave again until morning.
+++
The last time they got up it was because morning had rolled around and the old woman had appeared again with a tray of breakfast food.
“Thank you,” Ohno said sleepily as she sat it down on the table, and then moved to help her clear away the tea tray, which was in the same spot they had left it in.
“I should be thanking you,” she replied cryptically, then immediately excused herself and left the room.
“Hey, Aiba-chan?” Ohno asked curiously, as he turned back to his friend, who was working himself out of bed with hair that was all over the place.
“Hmm?”
“Did you eat those cookies? I thought we decided to save them just in case she came back.”
Aiba blinked at him with beady eyes, rubbing his face and shaking his head. “No, I left them on the plate.”
“That’s weird,” Ohno mumbled, but turned to their breakfast, taking off the lids of all the dishes on Aiba’s plate, just in case there was another hidden toy to scare them. Because they had both finally gotten some rest and the last thing he needed was for Aiba to get nervous again this early in the morning.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. This looks really good,” Ohno tactfully changed the subject, and began arranging his own serving to start eating while Aiba crawled over next to him, sitting so close that their knees were touching.
“Smells good too!”
And the rest of the morning went without any more tricks. They got changed and met out front at the scheduled time, and although Sho looked haggard and Jun a bit annoyed, they were all fairly cheerful for having just spent a night in a potentially haunted building.
They did the closing take quickly, assured that it had all been fake and that the story about this place was a questionable legend at best (Nino complained about that part), and that, during the summer, this place was actually full of people who went hiking and rock climbing in the surrounding mountains.
In the van on the way home, Aiba took the seat next to Ohno before Nino could beat him to it, and held his hand the whole time while they listened to the other recount the scariest things that had happened last night, asking the director, who was in the passenger’s seat, how everything had worked and if they had missed anything.
“How about that girl that wouldn’t leave this morning?” Aiba asked with enthusiasm, pretending that, since he and Ohno had approached her, that she wasn’t really anything to be scared about.
“Huh?” Jun asked first, turning to him, “You mean that shadow that kept appearing in the window? They already said it was just a light trick.”
“No, we saw her, right Leader? She had long black hair and was wearing that kimono, just like you said Sho-chan!”
“Oh yeah, that’s right! She appeared in my window before I went into Ohno’s room!”
“You went into Ohno’s room?” Nino demanded with a frown, as if they would have done the same if they hadn’t thought it was cheating.
“I’m not sure what you guys are talking about…” the director replied, and Jun cut in with a surprised voice, “Hey, didn’t we see her too, Nino? When we first got there last night?”
“What-Oh my God, we did!” he answered, becoming obviously rigid as he realized that Aiba and Sho weren’t simply making stories up because they had been too scared to think straight.
“She didn’t have any feet,” Aiba added, as if that was a defining feature (which it was, but none of the rest of them had gotten close enough to notice).
“Seriously. We didn’t do anything with the girl. That was supposed to be Oshima’s role.”
“Stop kidding us!” Sho pleaded, covering his eyes and taking a deep breath, and the conversation was dropped, each of them thinking what they would about it.
Ohno was pretty curious, although it was all over now so there was no use in wasting time on whether they had actually seen a real ghost or simply been tricked again, and besides, something much more important had come out of this whole thing than an hour long TV special.
With Aiba’s head on his shoulder, his eyes closed tightly in an attempt to forget even bringing the topic up, Ohno squeezed the hand in his and got one in return, wondering when they would be able to continue the almost-confession that had been started before the appearance of the girl.
Maybe he should ask Mr. Director if there was any room for a sequel.
+++
A/N: 1. This story is sort of based on Down Town's batsu games, which I watched with yarukizero a while ago. 2. This was supposed to be a drabble, but you can see how long it got, so I decided to post it as a short story instead. I'm sorry if there's not much content. 3. I wrote the ghost story in the middle myself although I think it's pretty plain. 4. I planned to post this yesterday... and forgot. So I'm sorry. 5. If you don't know who Oshima is, she's the chubby comedian with short hair who showed up at the haunted house before dressed as a ghost(?). She loves Jun. 6. Always open to criticism, or anything you have to say. :) I noticed that I haven't been including genres in my posting information recently, I guess I should do that. Hopefully my next post will be on Saturday/Sunday!