Kazuya’s chest heaved for air, as he sluggishly trotted, trying to ignore the side stitch jabbing him in his abdomen. He stared straight ahead. The distance between the trees on each side grew, as the path widened, continuing down for what seemed like miles. He had no clue how long they had been on the run, but it had been a long time, he was sure.

Kazuya gave in. He hunched forward, resting the palm of his hands on his knees. His head throbbed in timing with his heartbeat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Akira and Rini halting in front of him, upon witnessing Kazuya’s worn-out condition.

“Rini, you idiot.” Kazuya wheezed. The sweat he had produced, caused his long-sleeved shirt to stick to his body like glue. “I can’t believe you would do something so idiotic. You idiot.”

“Me neither,” she murmured under her breath. “I-I just panicked! I’m sorry.”

Kazuya met her gaze, raising his eyebrows. He had assumed she would merely justify her actions and come up with a thousand excuses. Not straight up apologize.

She’s probably out of her mind, he concluded.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself.” A faint smile worked its way across Akira’s face, but his eyes didn’t display any delight, quite the contrary. “In any case, what’s important right now is that we find Aina.”

Kazuya snorted. “Find Aina? And how are we going to do that, exactly?”

Akira stared straight ahead. “By following this path, of course, like we’re already doing. She probably took the same way as us out of the glade.”

Rini and Kazuya shared a look.

“W-why do you think that?” Rini asked. “I mean, we never really found out where she went.”

“It’s just a hunch. Let’s go.”

Kazuya straightened his posture and followed his teammates, as they continued wandering. He sighed. Yeah right, Aina had gone down this path. She could’ve gone in a thousand different directions, for that matter. Kazuya didn’t trust Akira’s hunch. His ridiculous suggestions were what got them in this mess in the first place.

Kazuya’s eyes were fixed on his feet, as he dragged them. Now when he thought about it, they hadn’t even been able to find Aina’s footprints back in the glade. There hadn’t been a sign of her, as if she had completely disappeared from existence. But it wasn’t just Aina.

It was everyone.

Why hadn’t they run across any of their classmates, yet? Kazuya could only think of a few options. One, all of them had found the way out of this maze of a forest. Two, somehow the fact that they hadn't seen anybody was all just a coincidence, even if the chance was slim. Three… they had all been maimed or killed. Those were the only logical possibilities.

“Did you forget what I told you?” The man’s voice echoed in his head, as he thought back to what he told them. “The demon makes the rules in this forest, thus it is capable of altering its layout and the directions of the pathways.”

Kazuya grunted. Yeah, right. That was impossible. There was no way a nonexistent demon could alter a whole forest. And besides, the forest wasn’t so huge that every single one of them would get lost. At least someone had to have a sense of direction.

And yet, here we are, Kazuya thought. Still, it wasn’t that he didn’t believe the man at all. The arm Akira discovered was proof that something unusual was occurring here. The culprit could be a sick murderer or something along the lines. But not a demon. One thing Kazuya had learned throughout his life was that monsters didn’t exist, because the real monsters always turned out to be humans.

He exhaled deeply. Dead ahead, an enormous tree, several feet taller than a house, emerged from the depths of the distance. Right in the middle of the track. Its hundred branches curled and twisted up, like arms reaching towards the sky, and the twigs and leaves swayed in the keen wind.

“I-I kind of have a bad feeling about this.” Rini stepped sideways, leaning in close to Kazuya.

The place drowned in silence, as they approached, step by step. Kazuya narrowed his eyes, trying to see through the dark obscuring his view. A shadow in front of the tree stood still in the pit of darkness, almost like a corpse. It was as if its body slightly floated over the ground. Kazuya blinked. Had his eyesight gone bad?

Akira pointed the flashlight straight ahead. A flash of relief lightened up his face. “Wait, that’s… That’s Yasuhiro!” he shouted. “By the tree! It’s him guys, come on!”

Kazuya squeezed his eyes, barely making out Yasuhiro’s features. A crease between Kazuya’s eyebrows adorned his skin. The three of them rushed in his direction, as the beam from Akira’s flashlight guided them through the murk. However, the closer they went, the more Kazuya began to have a sinking feeling about this. This particular place was deadly quiet. There wasn’t even a breath of wind. He could only hear his heart pounding in his chest and the sound of their feet rapidly thumping against the moist ground. But that wasn’t all. A pungent, metallic smell crept into his nostrils. He recognized it from before.

It was the smell of blood.

It was only when they were close enough, that Kazuya’s worry manifested itself. Akira halted dead in his tracks, holding the flashlight still over Yasuhiro. Rini’s knees buckled and she crumpled to the ground with a thud. She didn’t scream. Instead, she coughed, as if her throat was filled with fragments of glass. Then, she vomited.

Kazuya didn’t blame her for once. This sight was enough to make anyone puke.

The sight of Yasuhiro’s corpse dangling from the tree.

Kazuya couldn’t stop staring. Yasuhiro’s wan face twisted in agony. One of his eyeballs bulged out, staring blankly into the dead of the night. The other was popped open and hung from its socket. Crimson liquid gushed out of the black, empty hole in his face.

Kazuya’s gaze ran down Yasuhiro’s corpse, and then, further down in front of his feet. In a sudden bout of panic, he jerked backward, retracing his last few steps. A gory mess of blood, separated body parts and bone fragments met his eyes. Purple, swollen fingers had been twisted off the hands. The legs were wrung out like a rag, dry of blood. So much in fact, that the flesh had split apart. The whiteness of the bones protruded from the wounds, and remains of blood streaks stained the socks with crimson.

“There’s no way,” Akira uttered with his mouth agape, still out of it. “It has to be a nightmare.” Then, his eyes widened. “Class Rep!” he said. “She was on the same team as Yasuhiro. Something must’ve happened to her!”

He took a step, first hesitantly. Then, his features hardened, as he made his way to the sea of severed body parts. The combination of blood and soil squelched underneath his feet. He crouched and shoved the piled-up flesh, separating them from each other.

Kazuya clenched his teeth in disgust, as he observed Akira, staining his hand with blood. He had officially gone insane, Kazuya thought. He stomped, as he approached him, his shoes immersing in the liquidlike ground.

“Have you lost your mind?” Kazuya said through his teeth. “You’re the one who screamed like a baby when you saw an arm – just one! And now you’re acting like an idiot. What’s wrong with you?”

Akira stood up. Kazuya strode forward and clutched Akira’s collar, wrinkling his hoodie. “We don’t have time to search for Rai,” he said. “We’ve got to get away, now.”

“Oh yeah?” Akira flicked his arm sideways, forcing Kazuya’s hands off of him. “And you’re the one who didn’t hesitate to investigate the arm we found. So, what's gotten into you? Don’t tell me you’re scared, mister indifferent!”

“What are you, dumb? I don’t need to investigate this mess to know that Yasuhiro and a bunch of others are dead. And I don’t need to investigate to know that we’re next. So, if you want to act like a brave hero, you can do it on your own. Rini and I are leaving.”

Rini sat still on her knees, staring vacantly. “That dummy that hung from the tree… maybe it was a sign that this would happen to Yasuhiro. And maybe the arm Akira found was one of our classmates’, too.”

“I already know all of that!” Akira said. “But Class Rep wanted to help me. The least I could do is return the favor!”

A gust of wind carried a piercing silence through the forest. Akira’s gaze was locked on the ground. He curled his crimson hand into a fist, clenching it. The blood dripped from between his fingers.

“Help you?” Rini asked. “With what?”

Suddenly, Akira flinched. “Uh, nothing. Never mind.”

“The answer is obvious,” Kazuya answered for him. “She wanted to help mister prankster here to set up pranks in a futile attempt scare me.”

“Wait, you knew?!”

“I’m not deaf, you know. I heard everything you two were talking about near the cottage.”

“That’s impossible!” Akira said. “We weren’t talking that loud. You wouldn’t have been able to hear us.”

“My hearing is pretty good.”

“Hah, very funny.”

They stared each other down for a few seconds.

“Whatever,” Kazuya said. “You’re not going to find Class Rep in that mess of body parts, but if you really want to, you can go ahead and try.”

Akira’s gaze drilled into Kazuya, drifting from his face to the human flesh in front of his feet and then back to his face. He exhaled deeply, his features softening. “No. You’re right. I don't want to put ourselves in danger by staying here any longer. We should leave. Afterward, we'll continue our search for Aina.”

“No!” Rini said. She stood up on her feet, barely managing to keep her balance. “I’ve really had enough of everything this time. The weird man already told us how the demon controls the forest. There’s no way we’re going to find her! We have to leave!”

“We just have to look harder,” Akira argued. “Aina went down this path, I’m sure of it. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find her, despite what the man said.”

“N-no! We should look for the exit!”

“We don’t even have a lead, so it doesn't make sense.”

“You don’t make sense!”

“Both of you, belt up!” Kazuya yelled. A deafening silence washed over the place. Rini and Akira stood with their mouth agape, the words stuck in their throats. “You two are so annoying sometimes. First of all, we can’t rely on your idiotic hunches, Akira. And second of all, we have no idea where the exit is. Just stop arguing like children.”

Akira turned his head and gazed directly into Rini’s sea-green eyes. “Listen, Rini. If you’re this terrified when you’re together with us, imagine how Aina must be feeling all alone. She’s probably scared out of her wits, waiting for us to find her. I don’t want to let her down.” His eyes were glowing softly, but his voice sounded as stern as stone.

Rini raised her eyebrows and lowered her head as if she was deep in thought.

“If we don’t find her, we’ll leave the forest as the first step,” Akira continued. “I promise you that.”

Rini didn’t respond for a while. She gripped the sides of her muddied dress with her hands, and ungripped again. She kept doing that over and over as if she was contemplating the options.

Then, she met his gaze.

“Fine, I get it. I trust you, so you'll have to keep your word.”

Akira’s face gleamed with satisfaction, and his eyes finally displayed the happiness his lips did when he smiled. “I will.”

“Then, let’s get the heck out of here,” Kazuya said.

Past the tree in the middle of the track, the path began narrowing again, following a sinuous trail through the forest. None of them uttered a word. They just kept dragging their feet, like they were wandering through a desert with nothing in front of them and nothing behind them.

Kazuya breathed heavily and his legs felt almost numb. They had spent an awful amount of time in the forest, to begin with, it wouldn’t surprise him if dawn came upon them in just a few minutes. Still, as they walked, he started to think that even if the sun would rise high up in the sky tomorrow, this forest would eternally remain darker than death itself.

As the three of them turned around the sharp corner, he realized why.

Three tombstones appeared before their eyes.