[Rachel] A finger

"Hold on a minute. Something is wrong. Very wrong!" Kurokawa put down the not-yet-prepared vegetables in her hands and said with a weighty tone.

As I glanced over at the bookworm, her expressions were not what I expected them to be. For someone with such a history with her mother, damned by the storyline and the system, I half expected to see grief, sorrow, or even fury and hatred pouring straight out from her. The sole reason her life was miserable had come home, after all. However, contrary to my thoughts, she did not appear to be consumed by negative emotions. In fact, Kuro looked worried more than anything. It was not fear but a genuine concern.

Well, it was Wawa. Figuring out what was going on in her mind was never easy. She did kill herself in my iteration, but not after devising destructive plans so that everyone except me would wage war against everybody else. A fearsome woman, honestly. Even in death.

"I-Is it her? Is your mother home?" Fumbling with words, Han asked the bookworm, who replied nothing and kept a frown on her face. "What's wrong?"

Kurokawa did not answer Han. Her verdant eyes were intently staring out of the kitchen.

Knock-knock

When silence tried to envelop the three of us again, about to cancel the sound as a dumb mistake born from needless winds from outside, everyone looked outward. Another sound was coming into the kitchen, similar to what we had heard recently. There was a difference between the two times, though. The knocking was louder this time as if trying to sneak into our hearts. 

Knock. Knock. Knock

Three consecutive knockings came right after. On second thought, rather than calling them knockings, they were becoming more like desperate bangings on the door. Evidently, whoever was behind the front door knew someone was home and wanted us to know that. Although I did wonder if they learned there were more than Kurokawa inside or not.

A few seconds later, Kurokawa turned toward my alleged childhood friend: "Han, please go back upstairs. No matter what happens here, I need you to stop C from coming down. Laura can go, but C must absolutely not."

"What? Are you s..." Before Han could even continue to ask more questions, Kurokawa's serious look had already shut him off. "I get it. As long as C stays in the room, right?"

"Thank you." Wawa nodded her head lightly. "Whatever you do, do not let him escape that room. Please."

"Okay."

"Wait. One more thing." Kuro stopped Han with her words. And with a grave look, she added, "Do not let him know what is going on down here. We don't want him to get worried needlessly. If he asks, only tell him we are making dinner and stop at that. Further inquiries from C will always be answered with 'I don't know' or anything of equivalence. I really hope you cooperate well."

Gulp

Sensing the painful stares, someone struggled to swallow his saliva. In a second, cold sweats had formed on the temporal sides of his forehead. Looking at the two, I unknowingly smirked. This was no more a request but an order issued by the almighty Kurokawa, the very person who killed her mother. What a predicament to be in! How could Han not feel anxious?! His pale face proved her tactics to be sufficient!

"I-I understand."

With that said, that circumstantial childhood friend of mine escaped the kitchen. On the way out, he looked once at the bookworm and then at the entrance, seemingly trying to find out what made Kuro's sudden change of tone. Regardless, I highly doubted if he could do so. Han was never exceptionally bright, and without prior knowledge of the storyline, he would always live in the dark.

Bang

"Yeah, someone is getting restless." Whoever was behind the door smashed it hard. Listening to the sudden sound, I could feel my lips curve upward. At this point, I had a rough idea of Kuro's weird behavior. "Do you need my help?"

"Yes, I do. Please grab anything you deem fit for your hands." 

My hand immediately headed to the knife rack. "Just the kitchen knife is fine. I don't really have experience with anything else." 

"I know," Kurokawa claimed.

Smiling, I held a single knife and walked towards the entrance. As the distance shortened, however— bang bang bang bang — consecutive sounds of intense banging continued to ring through the house. Its intensity kept on rising as we stayed inside the place.

"Mother does not knock." As she walked behind me, Kurokawa explained. I noticed a frown on her stunning face. Even in such bizarre and unprecedented circumstances, her emerald green eyes could still shine dazzlingly. Long gone the forlorn air she once wrapped herself in, Kuro's current state was vastly more attractive. Unparalleled.

"So either your mom lost her keys to the house..." 

"Or someone else is outside." Wawa finished my sentence for me. 

"Hehe. Interesting. Very interesting." A few unnoticeable words escaped, yet I did not think the other girl noticed as they were virtually inaudible.

Nonetheless, taking the lead was beneficial since I could hide the twitching of the corners of my lips. Things were getting more and more fun as time moved, and I had the first seat to everything. 

I could not help but wonder what my Darling would do if he were here. Without a doubt, he would freak out and curse everything for the god-knows-how-many-time. Keeping those thoughts in my head, a hand reached the handle, and the other clutched Kuro's kitchen knife tightly, getting ready for any sudden attack.

Ga-Chak

Upon opening the door, there was no one, which instantly killed my excitement. In my mind, I half expected to see a familiar ginger girl with twin tails looking at me with disdain and fury. The other half was a good brawl coming from her tiny figure. But in reality, the street was as empty as it could be. With the exception of some mindless wandering shadow people, one could even say the place was deserted.

"Well... That was... anticlimatic..." I hid my disappointment with a heavy sigh. As the chilly, soft nightly winds continued to breeze through the empty spaces, they picked up the words and grazed my cheeks. "I was looking forward to seeing our new friends."

Ga-chak

"No one's outside?"Closing the door behind me, Kurokawa questioned. Interestingly, our bookworm kept a safe distance between us as if anticipating some attack. Wawa did this when we confronted the trash back at school, too. I was not mad, though. She knew what she was capable of. Nothing was wrong with understanding your limits and acting upon them. That was called being intelligent and reasonable.

"Nope." I shook my head. Looking left and right, it seemed no one was coming. Still, the banging on the door was definitely not an auditory hallucination. Someone must have done it. 

Without missing a beat, Kurokawa suggested: "Try looking up or down. People always skip those two directions."

Oh?

"There's nothing upward but the sky and clouds. What about downward..."

Immediately, the pupils inside me constricted. "You were right, Wawa. It's my fault for not scanning every direction."

There it was, on the ground, inside a small pool of dark red liquid, laying still a finger. 

A human finger. With a small black piece of cloth tying it.

Lowered my body, the pinky came closer into view. Although it was nighttime, and the only light we could have was coming from inside the house and from the streetlights above, it was not difficult to examine what was apparent. 

Thanks to my experience in dealing with carcasses, the looks of this finger showed that it had just been severed recently. Hours, at best. Blood stains around the finger were still crimson-red, and its viscosity was similar to the early stages of blood-drying. Not to mention that the skin was fresh, with no bruises and other wounds, and the fingernail on top was clean without breaks, meaning that the victim hardly had time to fight back in this situation. 

Of course, that person could have also given up and decided to do nothing to her capture.

"What's going on?" Kurokawa's voice came from behind me. "You're taking quite a bit of time."

"See for yourself," I replied while backstepping to leave room for Wawa to move forward. "I don't know what you'll feel about this, honestly. I'll say one thing, though. You did a great job telling Han to keep C in the room, or else we could face a reset soon enough. It was the best decision. Period."

"Is that?" Leaning forward to look at the thing on the ground, Kurokawa held back her voice. Whether her trembling sounds were because of excitement or sadness was beyond me. At this point, I still had no idea how she would treat her mother. Would she condemn that person for mistreating her? Or Would she try to mend their relationship as people simultaneously tied by the storyline? I did not know the answer to those questions. 

We have had the chance to become more familiar by staying near C, so it was hard to say what route Wawa would take. We were supposed to be at each other's throats previously and look at us now. 

"I don't think it's fake. I also don't think anyone can fake something like this in our world." 

"That..." She pointed at the finger on the ground, or more precisely, pointed at the black string around the finger. "...Must have come from Mother's silk dress."