Red Summer

 

 

It was summer again. Scorching and sticky were the only ways Yuu could describe it. The cicadas were blazing just outside the window and a bird was perched on the windowsill. Yuu was laying on the bare wooden floor, in an attempt to find a cool spot to nap, and a small fan was plugged in the outlet facing his direction. Yuu wore a white cotton shirt and jeans. His black hair needed a trim and his glasses were pushed up to his forehead.

His phone, which had been lying next to him, went off. Yuu lazily opened his eyes and wanted to ignore the call, like he had been doing for the first week of the summer, but one call after another came and went until he lost patience for waiting it out.

He adjusted his glasses back onto his nose and looked at the caller ID which said Jenifer across the screen. He accepted the call.

"Jen, what are you calling me so early in the morning for?" Yuu said in an annoyed tone.

"I'm sorry! Did I wake you from a nap? And it's already well into the afternoon. Get you're lazy butt up! And don't shorten my name again!" Jenifer said. She was fine with being called Jenny, but Yuu thought two syllables was still to long, so he shortened it further to Jen.

"Oh... I must have lost track of time..." Which was a lie since he's been sleeping under the clock for almost all day. Yuu propped himself up. "So what do you want?"

"Oh, Yuu, some of our classmates from last year invited us to a Test of Courage this afternoon! You have to come!" Jenifer's voice had clear excitement.

"A Test of Courage in broad daylight?" Yuu said, not very motivated about it.

"It's supposed to be at the Wailing Shrine, so I don't think daylight has anything to do with it."

Yuu perked up slightly. "... I guess... I can come... for today."

"Great! I'll see you in half an hour at the bus station!" Jenifer hung up.

Yuu fell back onto his back and heaved a heavy sigh. The Wailing Shrine... it's been almost five years since he's been there. In fact, it was on a day very much like this when he had last been there.
"Is he still there...?"

...

Five years ago, Yuu was quite a bit smaller at the age of eleven. He held a small hand made map in his hands. His mother was terribly ill and a good friend of her's with medical experience lived in a smaller secluded part of the city inside a small forest to the north. Yuu was willing to go by himself up to her friend to pick up the medicine. But from the map he had drawn, he couldn't tell up from down. As he was walking with his nose in his map, he nearly bumped into a large man going the opposite direction on the road.

"I-I'm sorry sir! I wasn't looking-" Yuu cut off there. When he looked up his heart nearly stopped from fright.

The man was normal to begin with. But dead in the middle of his forehead was a small hole less than an inch in diameter went straight through to the back of his head. Oozing from it was a flowing red liquid. The sight was all to real for Yuu, yet all to familiar.

Ever since he could remember, he could always see things differently from the other kids. Over the years, he learned to hid it from everyone else, but once in a while, it would just slip out. He always wondered why it was just him. Why was he the only one who had to go through this? Why can't they all just go away?
Yuu gulped and stiffly walked around the man and they walked their separate ways. When he peeked over his shoulder, he could see the man watching him go, his head cocked to one side, his mouth opening and closing with an intent to speak but with no ability to do so. Yuu quickened his pace to a sprint and fled down the dirt path.

It was then that he stumbled upon the Wailing Shrine. Of course he had heard of it before, it was a popular urban legend in his city. A courtyard the size of an average front yard had undergrowth bursting out from the cracks in the stone tiles. A small wooded gate with a faded red paint was broken and hung lifelessly on it's hinges. On the other end of the courtyard was a small wooden shrine with a stone base. He could tell that it used to be lavishly cared for, but now it looked nothing more than a gloomy old shack. He took a step past the gates and a voice made him jump back nearly eight feet.

"You can see them too?"

Behind Yuu was a boy about the same age as him with short light brown hair and had bright brown eyes. He wore a simple tee shirt and shorts fit for the hot summer. On his nose he had a bandage like he had fallen on his face not too long ago. A wide grin split his face in two.

"I haven't meet anyone alive who could see them too!"

"... did you follow me?" Yuu asked him.

The boy smiled innocently. "Sort of. I saw what happened and I got a bit interested. So you can see ghosts?" He asked again.

Yuu didn't answer him.

"Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't introduce myself! My name's Shun."

"That's not the problem..." Who would answer someone who's been tailing him? But Yuu was getting interested. "Could you really see him? The man with the hole in his head?"

"As clear as any living person." Shun said matter-of-factly. "But it was kind of rude of you to just ignore him like that. Couldn't you at least try to find out what he's trying to say?"

This comment puzzled Yuu. He never thought of interacting with the ghosts he saw. Far from it. Shun seemed to figure this out from his expression.

"Let me tell you something... eh... what should I call you?"

"... Yuu..."

"Well, let me tell you something Yuu, not all ghosts are evil as you think. There's a lot of ghosts that wouldn't hurt a fly."

"But-"

"No 'but's! Come on, you can't be prejudice against a dead person, they can't help it!"

Yuu was about to say 'but' again, but Shun was on a roll.

"I know! As a friend, I won't give up until you change you're views about ghosts!"

"Um... we just meet less than two minutes ago..."

"How does that stop me from being a friend?"

"Uh... well, never mind..."

"If you can't even call me a friend, how are you going to start calling other ghosts friends?"

Yuu's brain was well past maximum capacity. Just what kind of troublesome person did he bump into?

...

Yuu glanced over his shoulder from where he sat on the bench at the bus stop. "Jen, you finally made it. If you're going to drag me along, at least get here before I do."

Jenifer was in casual clothing not unlike his. She wore a bright red blouse with white shorts along with her threatening beat-up brown leather combat boots. Her long dark brown hair was pulled back in a hurried bun as usual. 

"Sorry! It took a while to convince my dad to let me go from babysitting my little brother."

"You should have called after you convinced your father..." Yuu sighed. "Well, I would have left without you if you didn't show up soon anyways."

Jenifer had a rather mischievous look on her face. "Why so keen on coming? I thought you would refuse and sleep or something along those lines."

Yuu thought for a moment. "Visiting an old friend."

"What friend of yours would be living in such a gloomy part of town..." Jenifer muttered. "It's surprising though, who would have thought you had another friend who wasn't me."

"I doubt he changed much over the years though..."

They sat together and waited, in Yuu's case, rather impatiently, for the bus to arrive. After a while, Yuu stood up and excused himself to get himself a drink from a vending machine across the street.

"You want anything?" He asked Jenifer.

Jenifer put a bit too much thought into it before she answered, "Water."

He pushed the button and he listened to the chosen drink tumble down from within. When he bent down to fish out his can, he felt something bump into his leg. When he looked down, it was a small green ball. When he glanced up, there was a kid not to far away staring longingly at his ball. His long black hair covered his eyes enough for him not to be able to see them from this distance. He wore a red sweater with his sleeves rolled up and brown shorts. Yuu picked up the green ball and held it up.

"This is yours...?" The boy held up his small palms eagerly a small smile appeared on his pale face. Yuu rolled it back to the boy and he ran away, turning back momentarily before he disappeared down the street.

"... Weird kids these days..."

Yuu bought Jenifer's drink and headed back across the street to the bench. As Yuu handed her her drink, she asked, "What took you so long? And were you talking to someone?"

"Oh, I meet this weird little kid just now. You were sitting across from me, how could you not see?"

Jenifer had a puzzled look on her face. "kid? I didn't see any kid."

A moment later Yuu sighed. "So he was another one... that explains a lot..."

Jenifer leaned uncomfortably close to Yuu's face staring intently. "It was a ghost! I know it! Ah what I would give to see them too! What did he look like? How old do you think he was? I wonder how he died. What was his name-"

Yuu held up a hand to her face rather rudely, cutting her off. "Stop talking you occult freak. Too many questions, half of them I don't even know how to answer."

 

As implied earlier, Jenifer was one of Yuu's few friends. The reason why he didn't have any more friends was that no one wanted to socialize with a scapegoat of school, and Yuu didn't want to socialize with them either. Jenifer just happened to be a major supernatural fan and caught wind of the old rumors from his old schools of his 'ghost sightings'. Ever since then, she's been sticking to him, and Yuu had no energy to reject her, though in the long run, it might have been worth the effort to have shaken her off.

"Ah, but Yuu! I'm curious! Do ghosts look like people? Or are they like balls of energy? How do you exorcise a ghost? There's just too many questions for someone who can't even see them!" Jenifer said, both frustrated and fascinated. 

In the distance, I could see the bus start to roll its way towards us.. Jenifer twisted open her water and took a sip. "Two bucks." Jenifer nearlly choked on her water as Yuu climbed onto the bus.

It was rare to see a packed bus around these parts, especially if it were headed to the rual areas, but every seat had an occupant. Was it some kind of festival today Yuu wondered. "Jen, I can't find any empty seats, how 'bout we go back home now..." His usuall lazyness has kicked in again.

"Yuu, get your lazy butt moving for once. And what kind of lame excuse is that? This bus is empty." Jen took a seat in the front of the bus, which happened to have an old woman in it, and as she sat, as soon as her skin made contact, the old lady evaporated into a haze and materialized again in the aisle, grumbling unhappily. 

"You going to sit next to me or are you afraid of cooties?" Jenifer sighed. Yuu glanced at the old woman's compainion who was sitting next to Jenifer. "I think I'll sit in the back of the bus..." Jenifer raised her brow at him. 

"Okay..."

Yuu stumbled along the 'packed' asle towards a lone empty seat in the very back of the bus. Since when has there been so many ghosts in one place? They were appearing like rabbits. The same appeared to be true on the trip to the forest. Out in the rual patty fields, he could see pail, transparent figures wadding through the mud, some wearing warm winter clothing, unfazed by the glaring heat of the sun.

The bus dropped them off at an old dirt trail leading into the forest. There was a group of high schoolers their own age waiting there as well. One of them looked up.

"Hey Jenifer! Finally you showed up! Who do you have with you?" He asked. "Don't think I invited him."

Jenifer put her hands to her hips. "He's a friend of mine. And if he's not comming, I'm not comming either."

The boy thought for a moment. "Alright, he can come. What's your name?"

"His name is-"

Jenifer was cut off by Yuu. "Whoa there. They don't need to know." He whispered to her.

"Why not?" She pouted.

Yuu sighed. "It's for your own sake, Jen. If they find out your hanging out with someone like me, you can say goodbye to your rep."

Jenifer and Yuu both knew that practically everyone though Yuu was a freak. Even Jenifer, who was a bit weird herself, never showed that side of her to the public.

"Look, I know that you're trying to be nice and everything, but how are you going to make friends like this?"

"I'm not." Yuu said bluntly.

The boy and his group were starting to get inpatient. "Hey, you going to answer the question or not?"

Before Jenifer could open her mouth, Yuu answered for himself. "Ken. I'm Ken. I don't go to your school."

The boy extended his hand and Yuu shook it. "I'm Paris. Sorry Ken, but we might be waiting a while longer for everyone to get here."

"They just chickened out! Come on, Paris, let's just leave 'em." One person from the group said to him.

"Oh shut up will you? If you'd only watch the news once in a while, you would know why everyone didn't show up. If Paris didn't ask me to come, I would still be at home too." Another answered.

Jenifer walked up to her friends, leaving behind Yuu in the shade of the trees, over hearing the conversation. "The news? Did something happen?"

"Yeah, just this morning. Five guys from our school were at a reunion party like ours at school. But they just went missing overnight. No witnesses."

"The police are trying to keep things under wraps, but the whole school is buzzing."

"Can't keep a teen's mouth shut for more than ten seconds." The group snickered.

Five missing students... now that Yuu thought about it, he might have heard something about it this morning, but had not paid any attention to it. Yuu stared off in the distance at the patty fields now that the group had started to move into a less interesting topic of movies coming out this month. Sickly white men were wadding through the mud. Yuu pulled out his phone and took a picture. There were no people in the photo.

"They're everywhere, aren't they...?” Yuu muttered.

 

...

 

Shun was dragging little Yuu through a maze of trees. The undergrowth cut his bare legs in several places and his feet were sore from walking. "Hey... uh, Shun. Shouldn't we stay on the road?"

"This is a faster way to town." he answered. "There! You see? We're already here."

Following Shun’s gaze, Yuu looked ahead to a small town down a steep grassy slope. It was like what you would see in a samurai movie or something. Most of the houses were wooden and there were narrow paths between the fields of crop. The farmers there wore straw hats to shield themselves from the sun. Farther in the town, you could see that there were a few modern houses. Yuu guessed that he should get the medicine from one of those houses.

“Hey, Shun, I was wondering if you know where this lady lives…” Yuu stops as he turns around, but Shun had already disappeared. “Where could that idiot have gone…”

Yuu looked down at the town and slid down the slope, tumbling midway and tripped, rolling over his head the rest of the way. He sat there for a moment to shake the spots out of his eyes.

"You're so slow, Yuu, keep up!" Yuu glanced up to see Shun all the way into the middle of the field. The boy sure could run. Yuu didn't even notice him.

 

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Texte: Animefan123
Bildmaterialien: Animefan123
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 08.03.2013

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