After walking around the premises for a while longer, they decided to end their visit to the shrine. If they took the steps leading down to the white torii gate, they would find the cab stand half a block away. At the top of the stairs there were a few vending machines, so they took the opportunity to buy some soft drinks and rest for a few minutes before heading down.

“I think I'm going crazy,” the brunette confessed. Her revelation was so sudden that it caught others off guard, leaving them bewildered.

“If anything, you were never very sane,” said the boy, believing that his friend was joking. However, the girl's face did not twitch. It was then that everyone understood that she was being serious.

“What do you mean?” The redhead looked her in the eyes solemnly. “Why do you think that?”

“The thing is…”

Honestly, that was the only conclusion she could come to. For as long as she could remember, she'd had strange, vivid dreams. Her sleep patterns had always been irregular as well, so she didn't understand when exactly it all got out of control. 

When did her dreams start to become so real? When did her insomnia start to get worse? Was it when she started dreaming about that story, or was it when she started writing it down?

“When we went through that hoop before... How do I explain it... I saw something strange. Although I don't know if 'saw' is the correct way to define it.” She rubbed her face in frustration as she couldn't find the words and then sighed heavily. “They were like memories, or a lucid dream. Bah, I don't know what it was. What scares me the most are the voices. Since we walked in here, I can hear as if someone is talking to me, but at the same time I don't understand what the hell they're saying. I know they're calling my name.” The brunette then realized something and began to mutter to herself. “Come to think of it, was that my name? It didn't sound like mine, but…”

“Let me tell you, if that's the reason you think you're crazy, then that makes two of us.”

“Thank God!” The boy celebrated with great relief after getting rid of a big load off his shoulders, “I'm not the only nutcase, haha!”

“Well, look on the bright side,” said the redhead, making a grimace with her lips, “at least we'll all end up in the asylum. We might even get a discount.”

The brunette examined her friends one by one, surprise and confusion evident on her face. Were they serious or were they just playing along to keep her from falling apart? But when everyone started talking, she finally realized that they weren't kidding.

“I felt like I was in free fall and then I got really cold,” the black-haired woman explained, adjusting the coat she was wearing, “but I thought it was my anemia, so I didn't think much of it.”

“Me too!” The boy exclaimed excitedly. “But in my case I felt very hot and hungry. I assumed it was some symptom of, you know, purification,” he emphasized at the end, raising and bending his index and middle fingers several times. “That or I was just hungry,” he concluded, shrugging his shoulders and taking another sip of his drink.

“Besides the feeling of falling, I felt like my skin was burning, to the point where I started sweating and I had to take off my coat," the redhead revealed. “And I heard voices, but I thought they were the people around me. Then I realized that it wasn't actually my name I was hearing, but for some reason, I thought they were calling me.”

“I don't know if I'm scared, amazed, or possessed,” the brunette scoffed at her situation, feeling overwhelmed by her emotions and chaotic thoughts. She even thought that perhaps her paranoia was also due to her mental fatigue from having to deal with one thing followed by the other.

“Whether it's the shrine, or us, we'll find out when we leave.” The boy stood up and put the bottle in his backpack.

“He's right, we still have places to visit. And at night we can talk about it calmly at the hotel.” The black-haired woman patted her friend's shoulder and held out her hand out of habit.

The brunette smiled with relief and took her hand, intertwining their fingers firmly. The anguish she felt in her chest faded largely thanks to the understanding and constant support of her friends who listened to her without judging. Thanks to them, the insecurities and fears that she thought she was unable to face became easy to overcome.

To the point that, if she were the monster in a fairy tale, she was absurdly certain that, no matter how much the whole world rejected her, she would be proud to be the wicked witch or the dangerous dragon.

The four of them descended the first flight of stairs and contemplated the long descent they had to the immense white torii gate and the busy avenue.

“How many steps are there...?”

“About a hundred?”

“Let's take a photo from here. It's a nice view.”

“Let the torii gate be seen in the background!”

Since there weren't many people around, they decided to quickly pose for the photo. Just as they got the perfect shot, a shrill screech of tires skidding across the pavement penetrated their eardrums, followed by a loud impact and the horrified screams of people. Everyone turned around, focusing their attention on what was happening on the avenue.

“How awful…”

“It looks like a car hit a bicycle.”

“I hope they're all right, that it's nothing serious.”

“Let's go down.”

The four resumed their walk, this time with more haste. As they approached the base of the stairs, the brutal scene became more visible. The police reacted quickly and moved the onlookers away. One of them was reporting what had happened, probably asking for an ambulance and reinforcements, while the other was assisting the cyclist. The car's driver, who had apparently suffered minor injuries, even got out to help and check if the girl was all right.

When they were halfway down the stairs, the brunette looked at the unfortunate young woman who was lying motionless on the ground. The impact had been of such magnitude that the bike was destroyed, and its owner had been thrown several meters away, to the center of the avenue. Some of her limbs were twisted in an unusual way, so it was obvious that they were fractured. But this was not what caught the brunette's attention.

Her eyes were fixed on the bike, or what was left of it. The colors, the decorations, even the contents of the small basket that had been scattered across the street. She then observed the clothing of the girl who was bleeding out, the shocked onlookers murmuring in anguish, everything.

‘It's like a deja vu’. Something told her that this situation had already happened before or, rather, all the elements together formed a familiar scene.

Suddenly, the view before her eyes became blurry and grainy, like static from an old television. A sickening, creepy feeling crawled up her body like a snake coiling around her. Her body was petrified in place, and no matter how much she forced it to move, it did not obey her.

“What's going on?” The redhead noticed that something was wrong, so she immediately approached the brunette, but received no response.

“What happened?” The boy asked when he realized that both of them had stayed behind.

“No, it's just... I…” she stammered anxiously, not knowing how to explain the horrible feeling that compressed her chest. “I don't feel well. Let's get out of here.”

"Then let's go," the black-haired woman urged nervously, her face pale with fright.

“I can't,” the brunette's voice trembled, her fear growing immeasurably. “I can't move.”

“I'll carry her,” the boy immediately picked her up and carried her on his back, rushing down with the other two girls at his side.

However, they didn't go down even ten steps before the boy screamed in pain, falling forward. The brunette felt her world spin out of control, not understanding what had happened. The next moment, everything went white.

When she opened her eyes, the first thing she felt was an excruciating pain throughout her body. As she remembered that she had not been the only one who had fallen, her adrenaline shot up, to the point of completely overshadowing her pain. She tried to sit up without noticing the state she was in, frantically looking for her friends.

“Ah... what... no…” she stammered with trembling lips as she saw what was in front of her.

Blood had stained the stairs a reddish hue and the bodies of her friends were scattered on them like puppets whose strings had been cut. The scene was so unreal that the brunette believed it was a dream. Her fool of a friend had surely lost his balance and now they were both unconscious. This was nothing more than a nightmare, or so she tried to convince herself.

Her senses slowly returned, until she finally heard the terrified shrieks of people running and the bellowing of police officers in the distance. Amidst all the commotion, that voice from before was desperately shouting her name so loudly that it seemed like their vocal cords would break at any moment.

The brunette tried to crawl towards her friends, shouting their names over and over again, hoping that one of them would show signs of life. Her dull brain didn't notice details such as why they had fallen? Or, why were they all bleeding to death? Much less did she notice the presence of the man with the facemask who was standing in the middle of the stairs, a blood-smeared knife in his hand.

“At last. You don't know how long I've been waiting for this,” the photographer mumbled, a fervent madness reflected in his eyes. “This will be the last time, the last time... There will be no more pain. I promise.”

The man knelt in front of the girl who couldn't stop crying and climbed on top of her, thus preventing her from moving. The brown eyes beneath him wandered from the lifeless bodies on the stairs, finally resting on him. He could not help but feel great pleasure in knowing that his presence had at last been acknowledged.

“I'll be the one who fulfills your wish. No one else but me.”

It was the last thing the brunette heard before the knife pierced her heart.