“I’m okay.” He gave her a small pat on the shoulder.
Asako grimaced and pushed away from him. “You reek.”
“I know. The whole castle stank of decay.”
“Did you have fun?” Eikichi, Asako’s younger brother, strolled in. He didn’t look remotely concerned and a little grin played at the corners of his lips. Eikichi had been the one to dare Nagisa into visiting the Castle of Bones.
“Shut it.” Nagisa gritted his teeth. “This is all your fault.”
Eikichi pointed a finger at himself, mock surprise on his face. “Me? I’m an angel.”
“Man, I can’t believe you fucking went there!” Hideto shoved Eikichi aside and grabbed Nagisa’s shoulders, an enormous grin on his face and eyes glinting with curiosity. “Tell me everything. Did you sleep in the forest? Did you pee your pants? Or better, crapped your pants?” He sniffed Nagisa. “Man, you did crap your pants!” Hideto, fresh out of high school and the youngest of the group, was always a tad too enthusiastic.
“How the hell is shitting my pants better? And I didn’t.” Nagisa pulled himself free and sat down on the bed, the tips of his fingers massaging his temples. His friends’ chattering turned his headache from mild to painful.
“Come on,” Hideto begged. “Tell us how it was.”
“Fine.” Nagisa blew an exasperated breath. “I found the damn castle, walked around, and came across a jikininki who nearly killed me. A man who lives there with the ghost saved me and let me stay in his room for the night.”
His friends stared, expressions ranging from confused to amused. Nagisa pulled his phone out, only now seeing their missed calls and messages asking if he was still alive, and checked the pictures.
Useless. White smoke appeared in all of them as if he had taken the pictures inside a volcano and not inside the castle. He shrugged and threw the phone on the bed, not caring anymore whether they believed him or not.
“What’s a jikininki?” Hideto finally asked.
“Corpse-eating ghost,” Asako explained. She turned to Nagisa, her gaze skeptical. “You really saw it?”
Nagisa nodded. “At first I thought it was you all, trying to scare me. I wanted to catch you red-handed, but… it was eating a dead person, and… well…” He trailed off as his stomach churned at the thought.
Asako and Hideto gasped at the same time, her with a terrified grimace, him with excitement.
Eikichi snorted. “So, some random dude saved you from the jikininki.”
“Yeah.”
“And you slept in his room?”
Nagisa frowned, wondering if there was some other meaning behind the question. “I did.”
Eikichi burst into his usual, obnoxious laughter. “Oi, Nagisa, were you sleeping on the forest’s ground, fantasizing about a guy the entire time? ‘Cause that’s outta this world, man.”
“I wasn’t fantasizing!” Nagisa yelled and stood up. “It was real!” Though he said that, he wasn’t sure he believed his own words.
Asako intervened, hands raised. “Okay, that’s enough. Eikichi, shut up. You,” she looked at Nagisa, “calm down. You know how he is.”
“Well, maybe I’m tired of your brother,” Nagisa snapped. “After all, he’s the one who came up with this stupid dare. I could’ve died.”
“I didn’t force you to go there, smartass,” Eikichi said. “You could’ve said no. Besides, there’s nothing there.” He grinned. “But your story is cute.”
“You—”
“Dude, chill,” Hideto said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, what you said sounds cool, but there really isn’t anything there. There was probably a castle or a building of some sort in the past, but it’s long gone.”
Nagisa blew air through his nose, exasperated. “I’ve seen the damn thing. You can smell it on my clothes.” He tugged at his jacket. “People died there. Those guys from the club in Aomori were right.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Eikichi rolled his eyes. “They were drunk. And all the things they spoke about are just legends. It’s all for the tourists. They love these types of stories.”
Nagisa bit his lower lip. Had he imagined everything, after all? “Theitakodon’t seem to think that,” he added. “They warned me not to go up there at night.”