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Yuuji gasps as he runs up another flight of stairs. The night is cool, the wind breezy and surprisingly, it becomes hard for him to breath; he pants, although there seems not to be air coming to his lungs. It is exploding, everything is exploding.
There is supposed to be moonlight. But then again, was there really anything that stayed supposed? The hallways of the province school were engulfed in darkness, laced with pitch black, yet trembling shadows. Where light should have hit stayed abnormally gloomy, it is strange, in a way; how the building stayed so dark compared to the outside.
Yuuji runs as quietly as he can, but his fatigued steps fell heavy on the ceramic tiles, sending a ringed echo bouncing off the walls. In the dead silence, the sheer sound of his movements seems loud enough to hurt his ears. How long has this been going on? He cannot remember, had it been an hour? A night? Yuuji had not stopped running for so long, those shadows, those petrifying shadows; they chase him, their tentacles try to grab him and they whip as though they were not inanimate shadows .
Yuuji Itadori is 14 years old. A while ago, when the sun was just going down, Yuuji had run back to school for his notebook that he had, clumsily forgotten. He was about to go home when footsteps visited the door of the classroom, it could have been the janitor, or the campus guard. But it was a man. A man with raven hair that seemed only a couple years older, yet towered over him.
The man stared, he stood at the door and did nothing but stare at Yuuji. And through marble green eyes, Yuuji felt an unsettling coldness, the gaze cutting too deep, and pupils too dilated to be normal. He awkwardly half jogged half walked to the exit,
“Sorry, I’m just uh, getting my notebook,” Yuuji hugged his schoolbag close to his chest, “I’ll, uh, leave right now.”
The man did not respond, but Yuuji felt his gaze growing harsher. Yuuji carefully tried to walk past the man at the door frame, and there was a quiet explosion of light when he brushed against the man’s shoulder, an explosion that he could not hear nor see. But the man seemed to have plenty of that small spark as he twisted his head and grinned at Yuuji. The smile was malevolent with an unfamiliar sense of utter adoration.
Then there comes the soft, yet solid, almost fuzzy things. They creep with incomprehensible speed up his ankles and were about to tighten when Yuuji tugs violently at his feet, just now noticing the unusually black tentacles slithering on the ground, out from the man’s shadows ; the man had not moved. He dropped his bag and dashed as fast as he can towards the closest stairway, what the fuck .
Yuuji had seen some strange things before, (like that one guy with stitches on his forehead who elucidated on how he was Yuuji’s mother, or that weird buns neighbor who kept insisting on Yuuji calling him oni-san) , but this was a bit too much. Normal people don’t have whipping tentacles coming out of their shadows, normal people don’t appear at random schools and scare teenage high-schoolers.
And so Yuuji runs.
And the next thing that Yuuji realized was the locked main door of the school building.
He pounded on the door, he shook the handle and even resorted to kicking the steel surfaces, but nothing made the locked exits budge. Sweat beaded at his forehead and his heart raced against his ribcage. It did not take long for Yuuji to hear slow, airy footsteps pad down the stairs behind him.
“Please,” Yuuji whispered before giving one last shove.
Without another way out, he began running down the halls, away from where he had just come down from. Keep in mind, the hallways were unfaithfully dark, with lowly lit fluorescent lights buzzing a quiet hum that irritated ears. Yuuji had watched countless thriller films before, horror even; but none of them registered as much as now, where he was trapped in the same building with some menacing other-worldly man who probably had the intent to harm.
Running away is not any easy job when those squiggly tentacles pop randomly out of dark corners or broken bulbs, again, that ever-so annoying hum of fluorescent lights. Yuuji’s stamina is slowly wearing out, and it does not help how he feels sharp, predatory eyes watching him in almost amusement . The man also mumbles his name occasionally, his voice is low and deep, but there is a soft, melodic whistle to the tone; and though it does not seem like the man is calling to Yuuji, it still startles him nonetheless.
“Itadori,” there it goes again, the sound comes from behind the turn of hallways, and there is longing in the maniacal voice. “ Itadori, don’t make this harder than it should be.”
Yuuji has no idea what the man is bluffing about, nor how he knows his name. He sprints away fast, and slips into a classroom he has never been in before. It might be a drama room, and it is filled with show props and fuzzy pom poms. He finds a decent cabinet that is conveniently covered behind rows of open boxes and hanger stands full of puffy dresses or furry scarves, he shuts off the light then slowly makes his way to the closet.
It does not take long before he snugs himself nicely into the fitting wardrobe, the hideout is just big enough for him to stand in with the cabinet doors fully closed. And it only takes a few pants of air for the ominous footsteps to reach the room.
“Itadori?” There is a pause in movement, Yuuji cannot see anything within the pitch black, and the man seems not to need light to see. “Are you in here?”
“Why do you hide?”
Yuuji clasps his hand over his mouth, his heart racing in his chest.
The footsteps shuffle through the boxes, closer, and closer to Yuuji’s cabinet.
There is silence for a long while, or so Yuuji thinks. He does not move, nor does he breathe. And for those few moments which seemed like eternity, Yuuji almost thinks that time has stopped. But then it is all good, because the footsteps retract and move away. There is a small chuckle, so quiet to the point he thinks that he misheard a mouse in the wall.
It is too late when Yuuji feels cold tentacles wrap around his torso, tightening around his ankles and restricting his wrists. His vision grew dark, even darker than the pitch black of the closed wardrobe, his eyes have been covered. He can feel the closet opening, and as fast as he had run earlier, fear seeps into his veins. Slender hands caress his face, something wet touches his lips and Yuuji realizes that it was a kiss. A soft peck, yet filled with horrifying control and suffocation. The man hugs him, and Yuuji tries to bash but there is nothing he can move. There is hot breath near his ears, the man bites at his ears.
“Itadori… You’re here,” the voice is sickly sweet, Yuuji tenses in the hard embrace, “Ah…You’re here.”
“Why did you leave me back then?”
Yuuji cannot speak.