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“Finally, the princess has arrived,” Gin meets him in the costume room, a soft push of her elbow against his, before she realises from the look on his face that something is not alright. “Hey, what happened?”
What happened is that Chuuya is having one of the worst days of his life in a long while. Earlier today, he woke up to an intense and invasive banging on his door by his neighbours downstairs, claiming angrily that he had flooded their apartment, which could not have been possible until Chuuya remembered that he might have accidentally left a tap open the night before, when the water was off for a couple of hours due to some utility works outside, and hoped to wake up to the sound of it to take a shower before work. Not the smartest decision of his, he must admit.
He did manage to take a shower, but only after two hours of scurrying in the bathroom, cleaning and drying the floors, and realising he now must change half the plumbing and, possibly, the tiles as well. Also, even though the insurance covers most of it, he still owes his neighbours a hefty sum of money for all the necessary repairs. As a result, he’s in an even bigger financial pit than he was before that happened, all due to his chronic exhaustion and shameful lack of logical thinking. He admits, not without difficulty, that all of it is entirely his fault.
He arrives at work already worn out and annoyed, and the thing he wants to do the least right now is run around scaring a group of junkies screaming and crying at every single floorboard creak as if their balls are getting cut off. On a Halloween week, too.
“We are packed for the next six days,” Gin announces as she drops back into her seat, taking a sip of canned Coke Zero through a straw, half of her makeup already done. “Better not lose your playful attitude, or you’re next on the list to get fired.”
Chuuya says nothing, putting his stuffed bag on the nearest couch and sitting down next to it, throwing his head back with an exhausted sigh. He’s always loved being a scare actor. There is a large part of it that deprives you of your humanity, but not in a bad way; being what they call an exuberant theatre kid, he’s never exactly enjoyed conventional performances, taking part in historical pieces of stage, playing knights, princes, or, sometimes, their mistresses, as his appearance allowed with a pinch of proper makeup. His roles on stage bared his soul to the world (and to himself) way too much for his liking; he took the advice of getting into the skin of your character seriously; in the end, almost every role he’d ever played, every play he’d ever done, drove him to such a terrifying extent of existential crisis that at some point he just couldn’t stand doing that anymore. He still wanted to be an actor, though; he just did not want others to dig deeper and dissect him into pieces, wondering which parts were acting and which ones were the real him. He’d never learned to properly estrange, and in the end, it backfired.
Being a scare actor is still acting, just a very different kind. Chuuya barely has any lines, and his job mostly consists of chasing people around in the dark, spiderweb-knit corridors, threatening them with a knife and listening to their screams. No one talks to him (or if they do, he never replies); no one tries to figure out who he is or what he looks like under the tons of makeup on his face. He can allow himself the frivolity of not existing as himself every day for a set period of time between clocking in and out.
“Everyone’s already here, I see,” Kouyou, one of their makeup artists, barges into the room with a stuffed makeup bag in one hand and a carton cup of coffee in the other. She flashes Chuuya a wondering, slightly concerned look. “You are so not happy about doing the Halloween week.”
“It’s not about it,” Chuuya groans, rubbing his eyes. “I’ve just had a shitty day, can we stop pointing at it and get things done instead?”
Kouyou takes a sip of her coffee and pushes back one of the chairs for him, gesturing at it. “My wish is your command, your highness,” with an unmasked mockery. “Now get your ass in here, we have less than an hour before the guests arrive.”
She manages to be done in forty minutes, during which Chuuya is scrolling through his phone whenever he can, stealing sips of Gin’s Coke, and dreaming of a proper lunch because his stomach keeps making sounds no one in the room particularly likes. “You can’t work on a hungry stomach, princess,” says Gin as she dives into her bag, rummaging for something. “You’ll need a lot of energy,” oh, thank god, Chuuya thinks as she hands him half of her cheese and ham sandwich, and immediately bites into it.
“If you smudge your lipstick, I will torture you to death, and you won’t like it,” Kouyou warns him while she’s packing all the little bottles and palettes back into her makeup purse.
The costume room is small and cramped, designed to accommodate no more than three (five, if they try hard enough) people at once, and the rack is bending under the weight of all their outfits, hats, and masks. Chuuya’s still in the clothes he arrived at work in, except his face and hair are fully done now, and he would think he looked comical if not for the number of times they’ve done it before. The too-realistic scratch marks and splashes of blood all over his face and neck are not scaring him anymore; if anything, at this point, he’s used to them more than to his actual, clean face. His eyes are richly accentuated with black and bloody-red eyeliner and mascara, and, along with light, almost glassy contact lenses, they do the work of making his face even more acute and creepy in the dark. Scare actors are used to seeing each other in full attire; it’s only the newbies who jump and squeak funnily sometimes, bumping into the others in the corridor during the first week or two on the job.
After he gets into the costume, shabby and torn on purpose button-up shirt and pants, looking like he just ran away from a torture chamber, the only thing in his look that still hints at it being him is his hair. Chuuya is the only one among his coworkers who never wears wigs, except on those days when one of the witch girls gets sick, and he has to cover up for her for the witchcraft scene. Luckily, these are less popular than the most frequent choice of their guests, which is an authentic remake of a classic haunted house with traces of a post-apocalyptic setting here and there, disturbing noises from the speakers and flashing lights all over the place, sometimes making it look like an abandoned cosmic station stranded in space, with all of its former residents long butchered by a race of hostile aliens.
Other than that, his own hair, fiery red and slightly past shoulder length, is a perfect canvas for Higuchi’s, their hairstylist’s, skilful hands. He usually wears his locks up in a bun for this role, with a bunch of strands curling on the sides, making it easier to see everything around him and navigate quickly in the dark, especially when the visitors start running away and creating all sorts of obstacles so he doesn’t catch up with them. After getting sprayed with a generous amount of fixing product, he’s fully ready, and a final touch is to grab his fake knife, looking a bit too much like a real one, from the prop shelf.
“You’re kinda hot like that, not going to lie,” Gin says as she helps them fix his tie, holding an unlit cigarette with her teeth. “If only you weren’t so short-”
“Go fuck yourself, weirdo,” Chuuya says without animosity, snatching the cigarette out of her mouth and putting it into his instead.
“... and into guys.”
Ten minutes before today’s guests’ arrival, they still have some time for a quick smoke break outside, in the building’s backyard, where no one can see their outfits and makeup and shit their pants on accident. The weather is foggy and gloomy today, a typical day in late October, and the wind is so cold that getting back inside is the only thing Chuuya can think about throughout the whole break.
“You think we’ll get normal ones today?” Gin asks, little hope in her voice. She’s dressed as a makeshift Samara Morgan from The Ring, always struggling not to burn her long black wig (there was no need in one, if you ask Chuuya, but Gin was adamant to keep her own locks pristine, with the amount of hair spray they use on it daily I’d be bald by the age of thirty five!) whenever she’s flicking her lighter next to her face. “I’m tired of dealing with childish weirdos.”
Haunted houses get all kinds of visitors on a daily basis. Usually, they arrive in groups of four to eight, but sometimes, couples participate, too, and they are the easiest ones to scare. Even though all of them are equally made to read the rules before the quest begins, some guests barely even skim through the list, overly self-confident and sure that they’ll be able to improvise on the spot, how scary and difficult can it possibly be? Chuuya hates this kind the most, especially given that the scare actors must stay in the role and keep playing their part even if the guests do not get scared whatsoever or – which is way worse – start mocking and scaring them back instead of running away. How witty, he thinks, rolling his eyes in the dark and twisting the fake knife in his hand, sometimes wishing that it was real.
“No matter who we get,” he says at last, rolling down the sleeves of his shirt. “Let’s be brilliant as we usually are.”
Ranpo might be the main enthusiast of quest rooms among their friend group, but writing him in equals having a universal cheat code to every single puzzle, which always kills all the fun. Ranpo just knows the answer after barely ten seconds of looking at the clue. Dazai needs a little bit more, but he is a confident and unwavering runner-up.
He’s in the backseat of Kunikida’s car, squeezed between Tanizaki and Atsushi, with Kunikida at the wheel and Naomi – right next to him, trying to reapply her lip gloss in the mirror. “Bump,” Kunikida warns her as he watches the road carefully, and she freezes for a second so she doesn’t get her face stained. “Pit,” again. “Turning right,” again. “Turning left.”
“How scary is this haunted house, anyway?” Atsushi asks, the most anxious one of them. “Have any of you been there before?”
“Ranpo has,” Tanizaki hums, absorbed by the game on his Nintendo Switch. “He’ll be waiting for us at the entrance to explain everything he knows before we go in.”
“He hasn’t done this particular quest, has he?” Naomi asks from the passenger’s seat, staring at them through the mirror, confused.
“I suppose not,” Tanizaki answers, without looking back at her. “Though, when it comes to him, it doesn’t really matter. Dude can hack the Pentagon on his worst day.”
Among all of them, Dazai must be the least excited to be going to a haunted house quest on his only weekend in the past three months, save for Atsushi, who won’t stop trembling like a leaf in the wind next to him the entire ride. That’s why he keeps silent most of the road, arms folded on his chest, and he already imagines how he’ll get back home after all of this shitshow is over and just rot in his bed for an eternity, scrolling the pics of beautiful girls and guys on Tinder and maybe chatting some of them up until he falls asleep. The weather is not exactly pleasant for having a date, the rain keeps drumming against the car’s windows the entire time, and the road is barely visible due to all of the thick, almost sinister fog. Yokohama is drowning in rain and bone-piercing wind, and Dazai just happened to be an extremely nice guy for accepting his friend’s invitation to a haunted house run (because hey, it’s the Halloween week, we can’t miss that!), while otherwise, he would have stayed at home and slept through the entire day.
They arrive at the meeting spot just in time before the new round of torrential rainfall washes over the city, and quickly rush inside the building while Kunikida is looking for a spot to park the car. Dazai doesn’t have enough time to study his surroundings while outside, but he notices that it is indeed a proper castle, with five stories and an impressive Medieval facade, probably bought up from the private property owners by some multibillionaire entrepreneur and turned into a set of haunted quest rooms out of all things. Happens a lot. Located almost on the outskirts of Yokohama, the road that goes past it mostly leads to the industrial neighbourhoods, power plants, and factories, and the streets are eerily quiet, especially on a gloomy day like that. The windows on the first floor are lit, seeping through the blurry fog with their bright orange stains, and it almost gives Dazai some of the much-needed solace; maybe, they will be offered some cranberry tea or even a cup of pumpkin spice coffee, generously sprinkled with cinnamon.
Instead, they are given a set of printed handouts with today’s game’s rules, and Dazai skims over the lines without much enthusiasm, already being able to predict what’s written there: do not spoil the equipment, do not break the furtnirute (kind of the same thing, if you ask him), do not touch or talk to the actors… blah, blah, blah. He’s not some sort of caveman to be doing all that. Although if he manages to run into some cute witch girl on his way through the dark corridors, he might even be brave enough to leave a note with his number for her later at the receptionist’s desk.
Ranpo, so excited he’s almost vibrating with impatience, waits for them patiently while they’re all taking off their coats and hanging them on the special rack next to the entrance. Then, the receptionist, a cute blonde girl wearing glasses and a name tag saying Louisa on her badge, hands Ranpo a walkie-talkie with a bunch of buttons on it. “Alright, you get three hints and no more,” she explains in perfect Japanese as he accepts it from her manicured hand. “If you try to take an extra hint, it’ll be ignored. Also, we have cameras with sound recording all over the place, so if you decide to cheat or record something on your phones, we will know, and you will be banned from the quest, so please, refrain from doing so.” She frowns for a second, scratching her chin and trying to remember if she forgot anything else of importance. “The ghosts, if they catch you, will have to mark you in a certain way to show that you’re out of the game. Usually, they do it with fake blood.”
“Wow, hold on, hold on,” Kunikida chimes in. “No one warned us about this.”
“It’s in your rule cards, line number nine,” Louisa replies with a smile, pointing at the printout in his hands. “They will aim for the skin, but if your clothes get stained, don’t worry. The fake blood easily comes off with a simplest bar of soap and some water,” Dazai is barely listening to her at this point, already looking around and studying their location in all detail. “Your task is to solve all the clues and find a key that will lead you out within two hours. The actors are already in their spots, so you can proceed inside now. It’s upstairs, you start from floor one, and the stairs leading down here will be blocked for the duration of the quest, unless there is an emergency,” Louisa points at the elevator behind their backs, properly decorated to fit the vintage ambience of the place, with all of its candles instead of electric lights and the lack of proper technology in sight, but still too modern-looking for the setting.
Dazai doesn’t expect much from the evening; besides, Ranpo keeps yapping the entire time they ride upstairs, thinking he’s being the mood-setter. Atsushi is still shaking visibly, hiding in the farthest corner, and the moment the doors slide open, revealing the total darkness and eerie silence of the place, Dazai can swear he can hear Atsushi gulp in fear, his heart probably dropping to his stomach with the heaviness of the sentiment.
Ranpo leads the way, a bit too confidently, with his chin proudly up. Dazai is right behind, and they find themselves in a narrow corridor first, with a small table with various objects piled up on it, lit by one small candle, trembling from the wind coming from god knows where, and a bloody, handwritten sign in horror-movie font, saying “One per Player”.
Ranpo immediately goes for a blank pocket-sized notebook and a pen, claiming that he needs to write down his thoughts as he goes; Naomi settles with a small flashlight, even though this place is much more well-lit than Dazai had expected, albeit with candles out of all things (isn’t it sort of a fire hazard? He should ask the receptionist how exactly they handle these emergencies later). Kunikida thinks for some time and ends up with a spray bottle filled with mysterious liquid, as the label on it says Can Be Used to Stagger Ghosts. Tanizaki grabs a printed-out map of the place to mark the traps as he discovers them, and Atsushi thinks the longest just to end up with an emergency whistle. Dazai rolls his eyes and goes for the lockpick, figuring out he’ll need this the most to get out as fast as possible; he has no care in the world about the monsters and ghosts, it’s not like they will kill him or something.
“Alright,” Ranpo turns around to give them all a look. “Is everyone ready?”
“Let’s do this,” Tanizaki nods, folding his map and stuffing it into the front pocket of his jeans.
There’s only one place to go from there, which is an eerie-looking door at the end of the corridor. They approach it, and Ranpo puts his hand on the knob, pressing it down; the door gives in without resistance, opening to an even longer corridor, with multiple doors and turns, looking like a complete maze with traps and hints.
Just as they step inside, they hear a quiet, muffled hiss behind their backs, and when they turn around, the candle that was burning on the table is snuffed, with only a faint and thin trickle of smoke rising from the wick into the air. Then, the door they’ve just opened slams closed by itself, and when Dazai tries the knob again, he finds that it is locked. He hears Atsushi gulp audibly next to him.
Alright, perhaps this can be fun.
Before the guests ever get to Chuuya on floor two, they must unlock four different doors, find the first clue for the key, and survive a vicious and screamful chase from Gin down the corridor with multiple turns. This often takes some time, especially if not a single one of the dumbasses thought of grabbing a lockpick from the prop table, so he has around twenty to thirty minutes to just fuck around in the room, leafing through the books on the bookcase or resting in an armchair, his legs crossed, his knife in his lap. As soon as he hears screams and rushed steps on the creaking floorboards coming from downstairs, he’ll start bracing himself for his remarkable entrance.
Fifteen minutes into his book, he starts hearing faint voices coming from the distance, and a candle on the coffee table flickers from a gust of wind coming from the open window. This is moving faster than I’d expected, he thinks and puts the book aside, getting up from the armchair. Holding his knife in his hand, he approaches the door slowly, putting his ear to it and trying to listen for anything going on outside. Is it time yet?
“Fuck,” he swears to himself in a whisper, tightening his grip on the knife’s handle.
According to the plot, he shouldn’t chase anyone like Gin did. Instead, he must come out just three minutes before the team exits room two and appear in the middle of the corridor like a ghost, blocking them from proceeding further. Then, as they shit their pants and start frantically running around, looking for roundabout ways or places to hide, he will begin walking forward, speeding up with each step, twisting his knife in his hand. He is not supposed to be actually touching anyone with the knife, as well as with any part of his body, but sometimes, one of the guests might push him by accident while running away, and they end up colliding into each other, which is beyond annoying.
“You think this one will also have some sort of a fucked up ghost running after us?” He hears a terrified girl’s voice from a distance and smirks to himself, catching the click of the lock, leading their visitors to the very first room on the floor.
“Oh, don’t even start, Naomi,” a male voice replies to her. “I’ve nearly died, and not because I was scared, but because I can’t really run around so much with these lungs I have.”
“You should be smoking less.”
Chuuya sighs and leans with his back against the door, studying the blade of his knife closely, with a blood-written three on it. This is the most interesting part of their chase. Chuuya is the only actor capable of moving between the floors, taking the stairs wherever he needs to as the quest progresses, and all of that because the most important clue, which is the last number of the vault code with the exit key, is written on his knife. The most challenging part of the quest, then, is to take the knife away from him without touching him directly. It is possible, though this is also where most of the teams fail. One especially clever girl, around a month ago, made Chuuya trip over her foot and, as he was falling (still one of the most embarrassing things that has ever happened to him at work), managed to snatch the knife out of his hand and read the number, screaming it back to her friends, who were already tinkering with the vault in the final room, which is usually changed after nearly every quest for fairness. For some reason, he doesn’t have extremely high hopes about today’s guys, even though he must admit, they beat the first floor way faster than their average clearance time among all of the visitors.
His earpiece makes a short, hissing noise, and Chuuya grimaces. He will never get used to it. “Princess, do you copy?” He hears Gin’s whisper on the other end.
“I told you not to call me that during the games,” he sighs. “Yes?”
“Sorry, princess. They just cleared my floor and are now headed to yours, so get in the position.”
He smirks. Should have told him that five minutes ago. “Anything else I must be aware of?”
She thinks for a moment, still slightly out of breath after her chase. “Not really, except that I managed to get tricked by the fireplace blood thing again. We should really make the boss rework this shitty quest somehow. Also, the tall brunette guy is a real piece of work.”
Chuuya rolls his eyes, letting half of her rant pass by. He’s used to guys like that, especially those who come here with their girlfriends, trying to make a proper impression on them and ending up running away with hysterical screams, so he doubts there’s barely anything for him to prepare for. A typical Thursday. “Right,” he clears his throat. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Good luck, princess,” he hears a faint smile in her voice. “Over and out.”
The worst idea they could have ever gotten they get at the very beginning, which is to split up and search every single room in pairs. Dazai goes with Atsushi, since they are the perfect combination of a shivering kitten and a totally unaffected guy, and even when a ghost girl jumps at them from around the corner, Dazai barely twitches, just lurking into the nearest open room and tugging Atsushi with him by the collar of his shirt. He slams the door shut and locks it from the inside, waiting until the ghost redirects her attention to someone else. Good luck dealing with this one, guys, he smirks to himself.
“Come on, she wasn’t that scary,” he rolls his eyes at Atsushi, hugging himself with both arms, his lips trembling from shock. “She just appeared out of nowhere.”
“This is emotional manipulation, and you will go to hell,” Atsushi manages to push the words out.
“Sure, sure,” Dazai nods in agreement; hell should be scared of me. “Let’s not waste time and take a look around instead.”
This looks like a typical bedroom with a weird-looking hospital cot instead of a bed, covered in huge stains of dried, brownish blood over it. There’s a big, exuberant chandelier, a patterned carpet on the creaking floor, a shut window with nothing but darkness behind it, some eerie oil paintings of dead animals on the walls, and a non-functioning fireplace, which is the first thing Dazai decides to check for the clue. He reaches with his hand inside it blindly, rummaging around through dust and spiderwebs, while Atsushi is watching him with doe eyes. At last, he manages to find a piece of paper stuck to the lintel, and the second he unsticks it, something grabs him by the hand, catching his wrist in a vice. He jumps a little but doesn’t make a sound, putting effort into freeing himself. When he finally does, his entire hand is covered in scarlet red liquid. Upon seeing it, Atsushi nearly faints from horror. “What is that? Did they injure you?!”
Dazai puts his hand to his face, sniffing the liquid with a suspicious look and catching a faint smell of nothing but cheap face paint. He shakes his head. “A trick as old as time,” he sighs, wiping the remains that haven’t dried yet on his white shirt, leaving an imperfect imprint of his palm on the fabric. “They should refund us for the spoiled clothes after the quest is done,” he doesn’t care if this is washable.
In the meantime, the chase in the corridor is in full swing. Since Dazai has found the paper with the next digit of the code, the stairs to the next floor must be unblocked now, but they still have to find a way to let the others know and somehow distract the ghost girl. Slowly, he opens the door, taking a peek outside and finding no one around them. Then, they hear Naomi’s scream coming from the door right next to the staircase, and in a second, all the rest run outside, with Kunikida desperately trying to slam the door shut behind them, but the ghost girl turns out to be stronger than she looks, forcing it back open.
“Oh, shit!” Says Ranpo, but his voice is more playful than terrified.
“Ranpo!” Dazai shouts at him, and his friend turns around quickly, locating him.
He runs closer while the ghost is too busy chasing Kunikida and the rest from room to room, and instantly fixates on the piece of paper in Dazai’s hand. “Is it..?” His eyes light up with excitement. “This is so, so much fun, dude!”
“Listen, there’s no time,” Dazai hisses at him. “You’re the smartest one among all of us, and the game master probably knows about it, so you should be the prime target for the ghosts.”
“You think they were briefed on it?” Ranpo raises an eyebrow, glancing behind himself from time to time to make sure that no one is after him.
“I’m sure about it,” Dazai nods. “Listen, here’s what we’ll do…”
At some point, Naomi gets tired of running around and screaming, out of breath, and Kunikida has to drag her to a safe corner, while Tanizaki is busy keeping the ghost’s attention on himself. If this is the easiest level yet, then Dazai is genuinely curious as to what awaits them next. They hear the furniture being toppled and glass breaking in one of the open rooms, and Dazai is already sure that they’ll have to pay a hefty fine once they’re out of this place. However, this is something to be worried about later. For now…
“Hey, you!” As planned, Ranpo appears in the middle of the corridor the second the ghost girl walks out, probably having successfully marked Tanizaki as the caught one. If all of them get caught by the ghosts before their time is up, the game is officially over, and they will lose. Losing is not Dazai’s style, and Ranpo entirely shares this sentiment. “Hey, your next target is right here!”
Looks like their bait has worked, since the ghost is now headed in Ranpo’s direction, not too fast but confidently enough, speeding up with each step. Dazai, hidden just around the corner with Atsushi by his side, keeps counting seconds to himself. One, two, three, four…
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Ranpo smirks and raises his arms playfully. “Here’s your easy catch!”
Dazai tightens his grip on a makeshift bow he’s found in the room, which was left on the floor (it wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t supposed to be used!), and aligns his shot. The arrows are not real, of course, just the plastic-made toy ones, but if he tries hard enough, he is sure he’ll be able to make it stuck somehow. While Ranpo is dancing around the ghost, slowly backing away to the wall, Dazai straightens his back and closes one eye as he draws back the bowstring, aiming not at the girl’s head, but slightly past it.
“Have you even held a bow before?” Atsushi wonders behind him.
“It can’t be that difficult,” Dazai whispers back to him, trying not to overthink it too much. If he succeeds, they are saved from this floor; if he doesn’t, though… well, at least, they’ll have a good story to tell.
Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine…
“Ranpo, now!”
Thirty. Ranpo sways to the side, running into the nearest room and slamming the door shut, and at the same moment, Dazai fires the shot, the arrow swishing right past the girl’s head and flying straight at a wooden shelf on the wall with a small, dusty glass jar on it, nothing but a barely noticeable decoration. As it falls on the floor and shatters into pieces, the jar makes the ghost freeze in place and turn around in utter confusion. Using the little time they have while she is stalled, Dazai catches Atsushi by his wrist blindly, and together, they run right past her, headed to the stairs. In the meantime, Ranpo uses a secret tunnel that they had managed to find in the bedroom earlier, to sneak to the very first room and reappear next to the staircase. While the ghost girl is running back at them, Dazai rushes all of the rest forward, including the marked Tanizaki, and turns around to face the girl. She stops right in front of him, confused.
“Dazai, what are you doing?” He hears Naomi scream behind his back. “Get your ass up here, we’ve cleared the floor!”
He ignores her, grabbing the hem of his shirt instead and demonstrating the blood-stained white fabric to the ghost. “See?” He asks, a smirk playing on his lips. “I’ve already been marked by another ghost, so you don’t have to chase me anymore. I’m out of the game.”
He doubts it will work; she knows the rules and locations of everything in this place better than he does, but, to his surprise, the ghost remains immovable and doesn’t make a sound, watching him the entire time he runs up the stairs, way too excited to stop now. The ghosts are not allowed to chase them after they’ve crossed the entrance to the staircase, which lets Dazai glance back at her, hanging his body over the railing and making sure she’s still there.
“By the way, I lied!” He shouts, smiling. “Have a nice day, lady ghost!”
Chuuya is starting to get annoyed.
It’s been another ten minutes now, and they are still rummaging around in the second room, even though the next clue is located in the fifth, which is the one they won’t be able to reach until they pass by him anyway. He thinks it’s going to take a while more, almost compelled to sit back in the armchair and continue his reading session, but then, he hears the team lurk back into the corridor, deep into a heated exchange.
“You’ve already suggested splitting up before, and we nearly died! There’s no way in the world I’m doing this again. Let’s stick together.”
“I agree.”
“Listen, guys, I would gladly stick together, but we don’t have time,” the voice Chuuya hasn’t heard before speaks. “We’ve spent almost an hour trying to pass by that ghost lady, and now we have to speed up with the rest of the digits. If we spend an hour on each of the four, we will never get out of here on time.”
A short silence follows.
“Alright,” another voice agrees with a tired sigh. “Let’s do what Dazai says. But since he wants to be smug about it, let him go alone. He thinks he knows the game better than we do, anyway.”
“He’s just a cockroach that finds a way to survive in any circumstances.”
“Sure, sure,” the guy named Dazai speaks again, not even slightly irritated or upset at his friends’ remarks. If anything, he sounds… excited. “I’ll go forward alone, since ghosts mostly appear at the end of the way, and all of you can stay here and inspect the rooms in the meantime.”
“Deal.”
Chuuya swallows heavily, ear still pressed to the door. What does he do now? He has plans for all kinds of emergencies or going-off-scripts, of course, but never has a single group decided to split up in such a foolish way, letting one of them go forward alone and, possibly, sacrifice himself for the rest of them to win some time. Chuuya’s role is to scare away a group of at least three people and mark as many of them as possible while they’re running around in panic and hysteria. He already holds a vial of fake blood prepared in his right sleeve.
He has two options here. Either he somehow waits it out until all of the team is back together – but then, he will have to go heavily off the script and possibly sacrifice a lot of unnecessary time, – or just improvise and catch this Dazai first, since he seems to be the bravest one among the group anyway, even though Louisa had warned all the actors about Ranpo instead.
Either way, Chuuya gets tired of waiting and braces himself, especially after the silence in the corridor grows way too suspicious. He whips out his knife and holds it firmly in his hand as he puts the other on the doorknob, twisting it without making a sound. He takes a careful step into the barely-lit corridor, instantly turning around and assessing his surroundings. There’s no one next to him, not even that Dazai guy, and Chuuya assumes that he must have somehow passed by his room and gone forward while he was thinking over the ways to go about it.
“Fuck,” Chuuya spits under his breath, holding his knife ready as he proceeds into the depths of the corridor, step by step, constantly glancing around for any suspicious movement. If he manages to let the entire group go without so much as stalling them for a couple of minutes, he will definitely get scolded by the boss and Louisa watching them through the cameras later.
Abruptly, he stops, noticing that the door to room six on his right is slightly ajar, which is not supposed to be the case at this point in the game. He freezes in place and decides to wait it out until Dazai finishes fucking around and comes back to the corridor, so he just stands right there next to the wall, timing his breaths and listening for whatever is going on inside. Suddenly, the door creaks, opening further, and a small, round object rolls out of the room. Chuuya stops it with his foot and, hesitating for a second, bends over to pick it up and inspect it. It it just a tennis ball.
“Gotcha!” Someone shouts the moment he straightens his back, and the next thing Chuuya knows, a cushion from the bed flies right at him, aimed at his head.
He dodges it at the very last moment, running into the room and slamming the door shut behind his back instead. For a moment, they freeze in front of each other, with Dazai still standing next to the bed, holding another cushion in his hand. While you can’t touch the actors, the rulebook says nothing about throwing objects at them as long as they can’t be injured, and Chuuya will definitely fight with the boss over that rule later.
In Chuuya’s picture of things, it is allowed to break some rules when the visitors get too overconfident and full of themselves. Seeing that challenging smirk on Dazai’s face, half-drowned in the darkness of the room, Chuuya feels his entire body fire up. Oh, he’s had a long-long day, and he kind of deserves some encouragement for what he went through.
“You’re not a girl,” Dazai hums, still squeezing the cushion in his hand.
Chuuya is not allowed to talk to the guests, so he keeps silent.
“Or are you?” Squinting his eyes.
Oh, really?
“Either way, you’re a bit too pretty to be a scare actor. Even with all this… paint,” Dazai hums. “See, I’m not afraid of you at all. It must be very hurtful to your professional ego.”
And now… verbally abusing the actors? Oh, Chuuya will so have to insist on rewriting that rulebook from scratch. He braces himself, thinking of how he can get to Dazai without physically touching him, but the equipment here in the room is not really suitable for seizing anyone. Besides, Gin has warned him about a tall brunette guy, which means that he’s dangerous and unpredictable. He must have run into his own trap with no means of escape.
He keeps quiet, not in any way reacting to Dazai’s words. In the meantime, he proceeds with running his mouth. “What is your role anyway? You look like an office worker butchered in a zombie attack.”
Chuuya doesn’t really have time for this bullshit, even though it’s part of his work to stall the players for as long as possible. He keeps racking his brains about possible ways of distracting Dazai until he finally gets a moment of enlightenment. If you can’t fool someone, make them believe they have fooled you.
Slowly, he raises both of his hands, pretending that he’s accepted defeat and is now giving up, but his right hand is still holding the knife. This goes exactly as planned, since the number written on the blade catches Dazai’s eye, and he fixates on it as if mesmerised, dropping the cushion back on the bed and squinting in a fruitless attempt to decipher the digit, but there’s no way of doing that unless he steps closer, which is exactly what Chuuya’s plan entails.
“Okay, pretty face,” Dazai nods at him, taking a step forward very slowly. “Easy,” he raises his hands too, demonstrating that he’s not holding any kind of weapons. “Show me that nice little knife of yours, would you?”
Chuuya tilts his head to the side, allowing himself a smirk. As Dazai takes another step forward, approaching him slowly but confidently, he raises the stakes and puts his right hand behind his back, entirely covering the knife from view. Dazai freezes, wide-eyed. “Oh, really? This is how we’re going to play now?” Chuuya doesn’t say anything, backing away until his shoulders meet the closed door behind him. “C’mon,” Dazai shakes his head. “Give it to me, would you? Aren’t you a good ghost?”
Why is he talking to him like he’s a fucking dog?!
It takes Chuuya all his resolve not to speak up and break the character. He is still a professional, first and foremost. “Alright, then,” Dazai stops within two steps from him and hums. “Let’s do it this way: shuffle it in your hands a little, and if I guess which one you’re holding it with, you’ll give me the knife. How does it sound?”
Chuuya hums in response, making a quiet sound. Dazai smiles. “So, you are not mute. That’s nice,” Chuuya wants to butcher him. Up close, it’s easier to make out his face, etched by the candlelight, and Chuuya’s breath catches in his chest for a second. As smug and devilish as he is, he’s so handsome it’s almost a sin.
He forgets what they were doing for a second, but then recovers and nods, shuffling the knife in his hands for some time and ending up holding it in his left hand instead of the right. This is simple psychology. In games like this, players often think that the object they’re looking for will get shuffled only to end up in the same spot it was initially in. But this is not how Chuuya is going to play. Dazai will go for the right hand, and then Chuuya will reveal the vial and splash the blood all over him, marking him as the next odd one out. The perfect plan. Nothing can possibly go wrong.
“Alright, pretty face,” for the love of god, can he stop calling him pretty face? “Let me think,” he puts his hand to his chin, rubbing it with his fingers and looking all over Chuuya with a special kind of suspicious scrutiny. At last, he speaks, “I think the knife is in your right hand,” bingo.
Chuuya can’t hold back an inaudible laugh as he slowly reveals his right hand, opening up his palm, and sees Dazai’s eyes widen in disbelief. “Wow…” He says quietly. “So, what do we do now?”
Chuuya still needs to distract him for a second to open the vile, but it’s impossible with him standing this close. He thinks of the best way to go about it, but then, all of a sudden, Dazai reaches forward with his hand, and Chuuya doesn’t know whether he’s going for the doorknob or for him, but his first self-defence reflex is to catch him by the wrist of his shirt and turn them around, pinning Dazai against the wall instead. Surprised, Dazai lets out a shuddering breath, staring right at him up close. He swallows. “Aren’t you… Not supposed to be doing that?”
Chuuya squints his eyes. “I can if one of the players is threatening my safety.”
“I wasn’t-”
“Anyway,” he flicks out the knife, putting it into his right hand, and, making sure that the side with the number on it is turned down, puts it to Dazai’s bare, unprotected neck. He decides to play a little bit more. “Tell me one reason I shouldn’t mark you right now and kick you out of the game. You won’t be able to help your friends anymore, as the game master will hear it and ban all of you at once, and the quest will be over. You think they can make it without these witty brains of yours?”
Dazai gulps, still staring right at him up close. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear a word,” he admits. “Are you single?”
Chuuya freezes, his eyes snapping wide. This is definitely going off the script. There’s nothing (except common sense) preventing Dazai from snatching the knife from Chuuya’s hand right now, especially as it goes lax for a moment due to his sheer stupefaction. He keeps wondering how many rules they can keep breaking and, distracted for a second, glances around the room. He doesn’t see anything unusual until his gaze stops on the camera in the farthest corner, noticing that it has been covered with a piece of the bedsheets, which is most likely Dazai’s doing. He bites his lip. On the other hand, he should be thankful because now, Louisa will probably think that something just malfunctioned (their tech breaks down all the time anyway) and turn her attention to the other group instead, not seeing all of the forbidden things that Chuuya stubbornly keeps doing just to get his way. On the other hand, though…
Wait.
Wait, wait, wait…
This is definitely nothing but a carefully planned tactic. Dazai is trying to make him let his guard down, and Chuuya almost fell for it just now. He even got rid of the only camera in the room for that. Chuuya squints his eyes and steps even closer, pressing the fake knife firmer into Dazai’s throat, watching him swallow nervously at this, his Adam’s apple rolling up and down under the blade. “Stop fucking with me.”
“Oh, help me, dear god,” Dazai flinches slightly under the pressure, even though they are not touching each other with a single part of their bodies. “Listen,” he says in a trembling voice. “I would’ve never thought I’d find myself in a situation like that, but the time is running out, and my friends might be looking for me, and I can’t come back without that digit, or else we are doomed, and I hate losing, it really makes me think badly of myself, which I can’t allow to happen, but also, you are so fucking hot, and I don’t even know your name, but I might willingly offer my soul to the devil for a single chance to kiss you right now, and I really don’t want to do that, so please, just this one time, let me go and forget you, or else I won’t be able to sleep at night ever again.”
Chuuya is listening to the entire rant with a blank face, but in his head, there’s a battlefield. He feels his entire body go hot, shivers crawling up his spine, and they can’t really allow it to keep going, but he wonders if his dignity is more important than his principles, and the answer is a definite, sharp no. Dazai hates losing, he says? Well, so does Chuuya.
“You want to kiss me, huh?” He smiles, leaning just a tiny bit closer to him. “What kind of perverted mind is that? I’m a ghost who’s trying to kill you, and you are horny,” he stops for a second. “My name’s Chuuya, by the way,” just because he’s tired of being called pretty face all the time.
“Listen, pretty face,” Dazai shakes his head. “I’ve never said I was a decent human being.”
The thing is… he is handsome. And Chuuya might want to kiss him, too, which is something he will never forgive himself for. This is a haunted house, and he is an actor, not a goddamn prostitute at a cheap brothel. He decides to play around it, once again. “Okay,” he sighs. “I’ll let you kiss me,” he says, seeing Dazai’s eyes widen even further at the words. “But before that, you should make a choice.”
Dazai gulps. “What… what kind of choice?”
The corners of Chuuya’s painted mouth are crawling up, up, up. “It’s either the kiss,” he glances down. “Or the knife. Choose.”
“You’re offering me to betray my entire team and make us lose the game on purpose just for a chance of kissing you?” Dazai clarifies, not looking entirely opposed to the idea.
“They have probably already gone forward without you,” Chuuya hums. “I am not there to stand in their way, and they think that you’re already waiting for the last digit next to the vault.”
Dazai is quiet for the longest time, but the clock is ticking, and they both know it.
“You know, pretty face,” he says, at last, drawing in a shivering breath. “It’s just a four-digit combination anyway. I can probably guess the last number with my eyes closed.”
Chuuya smirks. “What about the order?”
He swallows. “Fuck the order.”
Fuck the rules.
Chuuya drops the knife on the floor the moment Dazai reaches forward, finding his lips in half-darkness, and something breaks into small pieces in his stomach at the sensation of it. He hasn’t kissed anyone in the longest time, but doing it with Dazai feels so… right, so unlike anything he’s felt before, even though they barely know each other, and it’s immoral, stupid, and simply wrong, but they can’t stop. Kouyou will definitely kill him later for smudging the lipstick, Chuuya thinks to himself as Dazai deepens the kiss, and he lets his lips part under the pressure, almost ready to moan from how good it feels, but then, he remembers that the fucking camera in the corner is still recording the sound, so they have to be as quiet and sneaky as possible. Oh, this is the hardest task in this entire game.
Dazai puts both of his hands on his neck, holding him firmly in place, and catches his lower lip between his teeth, biting and tugging at it, and Chuuya feels his entire world spin from how good, bone-shattering good it feels. He can’t even respond properly as Dazai takes the lead, overly enthusiastic and way out of it, but there is one thing Chuuya can think about that could stagger him right now. Determined, he drives his knee into Dazai’s crotch, feeling how hard he is in his pants, and smirks smugly into the kiss. Dazai flinches, hands tightening into a vice on Chuuya’s neck, and he has to bite his lip for a second, because there is no way this fucker knows about his choking kink.
He is hard, too, and at some point into the kiss, they start rubbing against each other through the clothes impatiently, and Chuuya is sure that by now, he has full control of anything Dazai says or does. The ghosts have won, once again. The main menace of the players’ team is now wrapped around Chuuya’s finger like a little spineless doll.
“Hey, pretty face,” Dazai breaks the kiss for a second and whispers into his lips, out of breath. “Since I’ve already lost anyway,” he grabs Chuuya by the shoulders and flips them around, pressing him against the door instead. Chuuya flinches from surprise, the first instinct being to push Dazai away, but then, he kisses him again, his tongue back in Chuuya’s mouth, and his entire body gives in to it with no means of resistance. Dazai smiles through the kiss. “Can’t believe you’re a bottom,” he whispers and then delivers the final shot by grabbing Chuuya by the thighs and lifting him up, holding his entire weight in his arms.
Chuuya encircles his neck with both of his arms for support, leaning in for another kiss as Dazai keeps pressing firmer into his crotch, and he might be self-indulging a little bit too much. With how sex-deprived he’s been for the past months, living off a quick and barely enthusiastic jacking off whenever he wasn’t too worn out after work, this feels like the biggest blessing; at the same time, he’s not sure he will last for too long. Dazai is hot, and, if he’s being real, Chuuya has always had a thing for overly self-confident and intelligent guys, and the fact that what they’re doing is strictly forbidden and heavily punishable only adds fuel to the fire. “Dazai,” Chuuya whispers into his lips, on the verge of breaking apart. “I… I…”
“Yes, pretty face?” He whispers back, his fingers kneading the soft skin on Chuuya’s inner thighs through the fabric of his clothes, making him flinch and shiver. “Do you want us to take this to the bed?”
He won’t make it long enough for that.
He swallows, so beside himself from all the friction, kissing, and touching, that he barely manages to push the words out. “You…” he whispers again and gets interrupted with another kiss, very brief but deep, making him feel like Dazai is trying to gnaw at his soul. “You…” He tries again when they break apart. “... Have lost.”
Dazai says nothing, but a brief smile flickers on his face. He leans forward once again, but this time, aiming for Chuuya’s neck, putting his lips to the overly sensitive skin there, biting and sucking on it, and Chuuya can swear that it’s him who’s willingly selling his soul to the devil. Coming into his underwear without even properly touching himself? At work? While passionately making out with a guest? Oh, his therapist will hear about this later.
“What are you waiting for, pretty face?” Dazai lifts his head for a second and whispers into his ear. “Don’t you want to lose it, too?”
Oh, he does.
Dazai kisses him right behind his ear, driving his hips into Chuuya’s one last time, and Chuuya feels the blinding sensation finally swallow him whole as he closes his eyes and claws at Dazai’s shoulders so hard he might actually leave scratch marks on his skin. He bites down a moan with all his might, riding out what might be the strongest orgasm of his entire existence, going limp in Dazai’s arms and losing any connection with reality for what feels like at least three minutes.
When he finally opens his eyes, still steadying his breath, he’s sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, and Dazai is standing right next to him, reading the digit off Chuuya’s knife. Chuuya’s eyes snap open in disbelief, but Dazai only smiles at him and drops the knife back on the floor. “Thanks, pretty face. Once again… I’m not the one to lose.”
“But… you don’t have time,” he barely manages to let the words out through his broken, laboured breathing, his entire body still shaking after what they just did.
Dazai hums, glancing over his shoulder at the clock on the wall. “I have exactly seven minutes left,” he smiles. “Seven minutes in heaven, or whatever they say,” he grabs the doorknob, ready to leave. “And I can do a lot with those.”
Already stepping outside, he turns around one last time to salute Chuuya, defeated, on the floor. “Take a look into that pocket of yours when you’re back to your senses, will you?”
Dazai is the last one to get into the car already waiting for him outside. Still breathing hard after his little run, he fastens his seatbelt in the backseat, while everyone else is exchanging confused, bewildered glances.
“Um,” Ranpo speaks first. “Where have you been..? You gave us the last digit and then disappeared once we got out.”
“Sorry,” he flashes all of them an apologetic smile. “Needed to go to the bathroom.”
They do not raise the subject anymore, and Dazai is grateful for that, as the last thing he wants right now is to explain to his friends where he’d disappeared to for at least thirty minutes of their precious play time while they were looking for the clues. While Ranpo and Tanizaki are arguing over where they should go to eat, and Naomi is scrolling through her endless playlist to find a fitting song to play in the car, Dazai keeps staring into the window for the rest of the ride, thinking of nothing but Chuuya’s pretty face, wondering if he’s even prettier with all that heavy makeup off, and the heavenly noises he was making the entire time that they were kissing, soft, shivering breaths into Dazai’s mouth, driving him to insanity.
Did Dazai come?
You bet. With someone like Chuuya, it was hard not to. He would have done much more to him had the circumstances allowed, but for now, it’s enough to soak in the exact memory of everything that had happened between them in that room, something that Dazai would gladly keep doing over and over again.
Chuuya leaves work closer to midnight, changing his clothes and washing the makeup off his face in the staff bathroom as fast as he can and practically running away before Gin and the others can come back from their smoke break and flood him with stupid questions. It’s only Louisa who keeps looking at him suspiciously the entire time he’s clocking out at the reception desk, and Chuuya is so not ready for the conversation she might want to have with him.
“The camera in room six on the second floor malfunctioned earlier today,” she says in a quiet, slightly suspicious voice, tapping something on the keyboard of her computer, carefully hidden from view by the tall desk. “That entire floor is your responsibility. Do you know anything about it?”
Chuuya forces out an innocent smile and shakes his head. “No idea. Sorry.”
It’s clear as day that she doesn’t believe him, but, surprisingly, she lets him go for the night. He gets out of the building as quickly as possible, diving into the backseat of the cab he already called for himself while he was still inside.
The entire ride home is excruciating; he keeps replaying what happened earlier in his head, over and over again, until his stomach ties itself into a knot. Dazai’s hands on his body, his fingers pressing into the skin of his thighs, their mind-boggling kisses, each one like a knife piercing through Chuuya’s heart. He’s drumming his foot against the floor, unable to relax, and is barely responsive whenever the driver tries to initiate small talk or start a conversation about his day.
When he finally gets back home, he slams the door shut and leans against it, diving into his coat’s pocket and whipping out a small, folded piece of paper Dazai left with him earlier today. For the longest minute in his life, he’s hypnotising the digits of his phone number, pondering whether he should call or not, and only then, he notices that one of them, the very last one (or it can be any one, really, since the order doesn’t really matter), is missing.
Chuuya’s eyes snap wide open as he unsticks himself from the wall, suddenly very sober.
“You… piece of shit,” he whispers to himself in utter disbelief.
Is this how people feel when their one-night stand leaves in the morning without even saying goodbye?
The phone number thing keeps pissing Chuuya off for the rest of the Halloween week, making him disjointed and lazy in his movements, even as he’s fully in the role, running around and chasing people in the corridors. How could he have done this? How could he have done this? Sure, Chuuya can try and guess the last digit, since it’s not that hard anyway, or he can even spend some time looking the phone up in the phonebook, but his pride just won’t allow him to chase Dazai after what that smug fucker put him through.
On the last day of the week, November 2nd, Chuuya leaves work entirely worn out and dreaming only of a proper shower and a full night of sleep. He gets some scolding from Louisa for not putting all of it into his acting lately and just nods the entire time, promising her that he’ll get back into shape after some rest over the weekend.
Confused, disappointed, and fierce, he walks down the narrow pathway leading to the road, flicking out his phone to call himself a cab, when he notices an unknown car parked right next to the sidewalk and stops, freezing in his spot. Something pushes him forward, then, and he pockets the phone as he walks right to the car, determined, his steps thudding against the pavement. Once he stops next to the window at the passenger’s side, he hears the click of the doors unlocking and hesitates for barely a second before getting in.
“Long time no see, pretty face,” Dazai says the moment he slams the door closed behind his back. “Even prettier like that, too.”
Chuuya starts fuming. His first instinct is to curse the life out of him and then run away, forgetting about his existence once and for all, but something forces him to stay in the car, watching Dazai’s calm and collected face, their gazes, hungry, locked on each other.
Oh, fuck it.
Chuuya leaps forward first, covering Dazai’s lips with his, and he responds immediately, hugging him by the waist and helping him get onto his lap without breaking the kiss the entire time. It’s just slightly cramped, so Dazai makes more room for them by pushing his seat further back from the wheel, and Chuuya strips out of his coat, undressing little by little. They are definitely not going to have sex in the car.
But they can get started here.
“You’re a fucking piece of shit,” Chuuya breaks the kiss for a second, hissing into Dazai’s mouth as he’s tinkering with the buttons of his shirt. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you the entire week.”
A smug smirk crawls up Dazai’s face. “What, did I scare you, pretty face? You thought I’d never come back to finish what we started?”
Yes.
“Shut your mouth,” Chuuya whispers and leans in for another kiss, even deeper and more unrestrained than before. He’s been so starved for it he’s ready to wail.
It might be Dazai who sold his soul to the devil for just one kiss, but Chuuya would do exactly the same for a fucking missing digit in a phone number.
Hell, indeed, should be scared of them.