Note: I have nothing to do with Here is Greenwood and its characters except to be a fan who enjoys the OVAs a lot. This story is my extrapolation of the storylines as seen in the OVAs. I apologize if this story doesn't quite fit in with the manga.
Kazuya started out of the light doze he'd slipped into. He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision. Then he lay there in his bed, staring up at the bottom of his bunk. His bunk, since he was still sleeping in Shun's lower bunk. Shinobu-sempai had said that anybody who happened to peek in would be confused to see him back in the top bunk, so he stayed on the bottom. On the other hand, being in the bottom bunk made it easier for him to get up and pace. And, what with Shun getting hurt, he had a lot to pace about.
Haru had disappeared the moment the door shut behind Shinobu-sempai, and he himself had quickly slipped under the covers. It had been early then, but neither of them wanted to risk their secrets being discovered in case someone happened to poke their heads in. As someone had.
* * *
There was a knock on the door. Kazuya pushed himself up into a sitting position. "Who is it?"
The door opened. Kunihisa Aoki, fellow dorm resident and the manager of Greenwood's arcade, stuck his head inside.
"Aoki, did you go next door?" Kazuya asked. "How's Shun?"
Aoki shook his head. "Mitsuru-sempai told me to tell you that he and Shinobu-sempai are going with Shun to the hospital."
Kazuya blinked. "The hospital? What happened?"
"Shun fell backwards and cracked his head on the desk," Aoki said. "He was unconscious when they took him out to the ambulance."
"How bad was it?"
"Pretty bloody," Aoki said. "Shinobu-sempai thinks Shun's going to need a lot of stitches." He was silent for a moment, then shook himself. "How's your leg?" he asked.
"Better," Kazuya said. "It'll feel better when I know that Shun's all right."
"Do you want me to stay here until Shinobu-sempai comes back?"
Kazuya shook his head. "No, I'll be fine. Thanks, though."
"Take care, Suka," Aoki said, his voice suddenly serious. "The dorm seems to be having a run on bad luck lately."
Kazuya stared at him. "What do you mean?"
"Well, first you broke your leg, then over vacation Furusawa-sempai nearly got into an accident when his front tire popped on a nail. And Sakaguchi's not back yet because he caught that strange bug that's been going around."
Kazuya suddenly felt cold.
"Other guys have been having their own problems, and now Shun gets hurt." Aoki shook his head. "Mitsuru-sempai said that Misako accidentally scared Shun."
Kazuya nodded. "She was going to hug Mitsuru-sempai."
Aoki stared at him. "She's a ghost! She can't touch him now any more than she could before!"
Kazuya shrugged. "I guess she forgot. She wound up passing right through him and flying through the wall." He sighed. "Where she startled Shun, and that's when everything happened."
Aoki shook his head. "Well, accidents will happen. Take care, okay?"
Kazuya nodded. "Oyasumi, Aoki-kun."
"Oyasumi."
* * *
Kazuya started out of his doze again. This time, he heard the doorknob rattling. He was starting to sit up when the door opened and Shinobu-sempai entered.
"Aniki," he said, swinging his legs out of the bed. "How's Shun?"
His friend sat down at the desk. "He regained consciousness in the ambulance," Shinobu-sempai said. "They took some X-rays at the hospital, and he didn't crack his skull."
Kazuya breathed a huge sigh of relief. "That's good."
Shinobu-sempai nodded. "Still, he gave his head a pretty solid crack, and the gash in the back of his skull required about twelve stitches to close."
Kazuya winced. "Did they have to cut off a lot of his hair?" His friend nodded. Kazuya winced again. "That's going to hurt."
"It could have been worse," Shinobu-sempai said. "Shun seemed to be fine, but he almost collapsed when he tried to stand up. The doctors think he might have a minor concussion, so they're keeping him overnight." He stood up and took off his coat. "I left Mitsuru at the hospital. He's going to help Shun get settled, then either stay there overnight himself or go home and sleep there. Tomorrow morning he's going to stay with Shun until his parents come."
"His parents?"
"I called Shun's parents, and they're driving in tomorrow morning. Then they're going to take Shun home with them. He'll be coming back in about a week or so." He dropped his coat on the chair. "I have to tell the dorm lady that Shun and Mitsuru won't be back tonight." He left the room.
Kazuya stared after his friend, then slowly got back under his covers.
"That could be a problem," a voice said.
Kazuya sat up again. "Haru?"
The other boy materialized before him, then sat down on the edge of the bunk. "Your roommate going home. That could be a problem."
Kazuya frowned. "Isn't it better that he get some rest there?"
"It is," Haru said, "but remember that there's a mummy after him."
Kazuya blinked. "I forgot! But what difference will it make whether Shun's here or there?"
Haru sighed. "Kazuya, I felt a presence tonight. It wasn't Misako, and it wasn't the rusalka, which I can feel even from here. It was coming toward us, then it stopped and went off in another direction."
Kazuya felt his blood go cold. "After the ambulance?" In the darkness he saw Haru nod.
"It was almost here," the other boy said, "but it followed your friend instead of coming here. If Shun goes home, it's going to pursue him there, and there's no way I can protect him if it does. Not unless your friend calls to me the way you did, and I don't have a connection to him, not like the one I have with you."
"This is bad," Kazuya muttered. He looked up. "Any ideas?" He heard Haru sigh.
"Just one," the other boy said softly. "And I don't think you're going to like it very much."
"What choice do we have?" Kazuya pointed out. "Tell me."
* * *
Shinobu moved silently through the darkened dormitory. It wasn't especially late--just after 10:00, really--but he had no doubt that the chill in the night air had chased everyone to the warmth of their beds early on.
And since he was all alone, he allowed himself the luxury of a huge yawn and a bone-popping stretch. Such a display would have been crude and unseemly, but since there was no one to see him, he could relax his control and indulge in something his personal set of values and ideals would never permit him to do in the view of others.
The whim indulged, Shinobu reasserted control over himself and continued up the stairs. Rather than continuing on to Kazuya's room, however, he stopped before the door of 211. Then, he went inside.
Although he'd been spending so much time with Kazuya in Kazuya's room, there was no doubt in his mind that this was his room. The feel of it...the organized clutter...it was a marked contrast from Kazuya's relatively empty room. This room had "Mitsuru and Shinobu" written all over it, from the differences in the set-up of their desks to their differing tastes in reading materials at the heads of their bunks.
Shinobu sat down on the edge of his bed--Shun's bed for now--and leaned back on it, allowing himself another relaxed moment.
In a way, he was glad that Mitsuru and Shun weren't there. Of course, he wished that other circumstances had taken them away--a movie, maybe--but there was no helping it. In the end, all that mattered was that he now had a place, for however short a time, where he could sit down and think without all sorts of interruptions to distract him. And the night's events definitely encouraged thinking.
The dorm lady hadn't been pleased when he'd told her that Mitsuru and Shun wouldn't be coming back that night. She'd been concerned about Shun, naturally, but having two of her wards away when they were supposed to be in the dormitory no doubt irritated her. There was nothing to be done about it, however, and she had grudgingly conceded that it made more sense for Mitsuru to go home to Uguisudani than return to Greenwood that night. That Shun would be going back to his parents' inn when he'd already moved back into the dormitory was another sore spot, but she'd admitted that he'd be better off resting at home than in the noisy dorm.
Mitsuru would be back the next day, and Shun back in a week. There were certain advantages to having Shun gone for a while, but there were definitely disadvantages as well. On the one hand, Shun's absence would mean the mummy that was always coming closer would not threaten the residents of Greenwood. Also, they wouldn't have to worry about keeping Shun in the dark about everything that had been going on at Greenwood. On the other hand, the mummy would then pursue Shun and endanger the people there. Tonight that meant the hospital. Tomorrow that would mean Shun's family and anybody else who lay between the hospital and the Kisaragis' inn.
Shinobu frowned. That exchange wasn't a good one. It was absolutely unacceptable. But the question now was how to keep the mummy near Greenwood without endangering anybody else. And they'd have to act quickly: he'd sensed something ominous while he was in the ambulance with Shun and Mitsuru. And if it was what he thought it was, they had very little time to spare.
The mummy was after Shun; that was a known fact. It was also known that the mummy was--or had been--drawing steadily closer to Greenwood. Now the mummy was moving away from Greenwood, headed in all probability straight towards the hospital. Shinobu didn't think it could move very fast, especially now that it was in the city, so it probably wouldn't be able to reach Shun before he left for his family's inn. Then the mummy would change direction again.
Shinobu shook his head. They knew--more or less--where the mummy was now. They somehow had to keep it nearby. And there was only one way he could think of to do that.
Somebody was going to have to summon it again.
He sighed and stood up. There was no helping it. The only way to get the mummy's fixation off of Shun was to summon it himself.
Now all he had to do was figure out how to do it.
"Reading the same spell that Shun did should work," he murmured to himself as he paced. "It was undoubtedly directed specifically at an Egyptian mummy, which is why the mummy had to come all the way from Osaka. Summoning an Egyptian mummy should target the same mummy."
The only problem with that assumption, he realized, was that there was no way for him to prove or disprove that theory. There were no other Egyptian mummy's in Japan that could be affected by the spell, and he doubted that news of the nearest mummy other than the one stalking Shun would reach Japan any time soon.
There had to be a way to work around that restriction, though, a way to test his theory.
He stopped pacing and headed out the door. What he really needed was an expert's opinion. Since he couldn't get that, he'd settle for asking Kazuya and Haru.
It took a little less than a second to lock 211 behind him and enter 210.
"He'll never agree to it," Kazuya was saying as he entered.
"It's not like we have a whole lot of options," Haru countered.
Shinobu stared at the two of them. "What's going on here?"
The two of them turned to face him.
"The mummy's turned around," Haru said.
"It's going after Shun," Kazuya added.
"There's a way to draw it back to Greenwood."
"It's too dangerous, aniki."
Shinobu couldn't quite suppress his grin. They'd been thinking about the same things he had. And from the sound of things, they'd come to the same conclusion that he had.
"We have to use that book again," Haru said, "use it to summon the mummy back here."
"It's too risky," Kazuya protested. "What if we call up another mummy instead? Then we'll have two mummy's roaming around Japan instead of just the one we started out with."
"I told you," Haru said impatiently. "We'll test the spells by summoning a vampire again. If it works the way I think it works, it will summon me again instead of another vampire."
And that was the answer. Shinobu shook his head at the utter simplicity of the solution.
"And what if you're wrong?" Kazuya snapped. "We might end up with a vampire who's more blood-thirsty than you are."
"I'm sorry, Kazuya," Shinobu interrupted. "I'm afraid Haru's correct. This is the only way we can stop the mummy from getting away." He sighed. "Unfortunately, it will have to wait until tomorrow night. I'll need to go get the book tomorrow."
Haru shook his head. "If we could read the spell tonight, we'd be sparing a lot of people a trip to the hospital." He sighed. "I guess we'll just have to wait."
Shinobu nodded.
He just hoped the plan worked.
* * *
Kazuya stared thoughtfully up at the bottom of the upper bunk. A few feet above him his sempai slept quietly in the bunk that he should have been in. But despite his best efforts at convincing his friend that he was able to climb up to his own bed, Shinobu-sempai had been firm: he was going to sleep in the bottom bunk until the doctor said he could stop using the bandage for support.
It was all a pose, of course. Kazuya's leg was fine and he knew it. So did Shinobu-sempai. So did the doctor. Shinobu-sempai, however, had insisted and backed his position with irrefutable logic.
"I wake up earlier than you do," he'd said. "If I go out and someone comes in, they'll expect to see you in the bottom bunk, not the top. If you're up there, they're going to wonder how you managed it. That puts Haru at risk, and I know you don't want that."
Kazuya hadn't been able to argue with him. It was true that Shinobu-sempai did awaken earlier than most people in the dormitory. Furthermore, it was true that the other dorm residents sometimes dropped by once they knew that at least one boy in each room was awake. And it was true that, while everyone knocked before entering other boys' rooms, they often didn't bother waiting for a response. That would definitely make changing beds before they came in a problem. So he was stuck in the bottom bunk.
Kazuya sighed. As much as he wanted to believe that it was the bunk that was keeping him awake, he knew perfectly well that it was another problem that was bothering him.
Tomorrow--or maybe today, since he had no idea what time it was--they'd be reading spells from the evil book that had caused all their problems to begin with. The plan was for them to summon the mummy that was chasing after Shun and draw it back to Greenwood. First, though, they'd try summoning another vampire, and they believed that the spell would focus on Haru since he was the closest vampire.
They believed. He didn't.
What if something went wrong? What if, instead of fixing on Haru, the spell located another vampire and drew him--or her--to Greenwood? They'd been immensely lucky that the original spell had snared Haru. There was no guarantee that the next one would be as kindly disposed towards humans as Haru was. And if it wasn't, and it was a male vampire, would Haru be able to defeat it, weakened as he was by limiting his intake of blood? Sure, he'd been supplementing the blood he was taking from himself and Shinobu-sempai with instant ramen--Shinobu-sempai had been devastatingly accurate when he'd described Haru to Mitsuru--but would it be enough to sustain him in a battle with a vampire who had no qualms about killing humans and had probably been imbibing nothing but blood?
And if it was a female vampire, would Haru be able to subdue all the residents of Greenwood without hurting them? Because, if Kazuya knew the boys of Greenwood, it wouldn't take much for the vampire to win them over.
Of course, if the spell didn't work the way they planned, then what would they do? There would still be a mummy searching for Shun, they wouldn't be able to find it as it headed towards the Kisaragi family's inn, and they might not be around any longer to help Shun anyway. If they did manage to survive, then what would they do? They could try the spell again and hope that it worked this time, but if it didn't, they'd just be drawing another mummy to Greenwood.
Then there was the possibility that the spell would work the way they planned, only they wouldn't know it because Haru had already responded to the summons, and he'd be right there anyway. And, assuming that the spell did work, how would the mummy respond? Would it turn around and come to them, or would the original spell have a greater degree of power and control over it? What if they summoned it, only the mummy was able to resist it because of that first spell, and wouldn't respond to their summons until it dealt with Shun, who had originally summoned it?
Kazuya shook his head and sighed. As much as he wanted to deny Shinobu-sempai and Haru's claim that there was no other possible course of action, he knew that they were right. All the information they'd gathered and research they'd done had turned up nothing, and now they'd run out of time. The mummy had come too close for them to let it get away now, and if this was the only way they could keep it nearby, then they had to do it, regardless of what his feelings on the matter were.
One thing was certain, though. They'd have to go out to the church as soon as possible, and get the book back to Greenwood before Mitsuru returned, because they could count on him objecting to the whole plan. And if anyone could stop this plan from going forward, it would be Mitsuru. He knew that he wouldn't need a lot of persuading to stop, but Shinobu-sempai would be harder to convince. And while Shinobu-sempai often trampled over Mitsuru's opinions on relatively unimportant matters--relative meaning non-life-threatening--on something this major he'd be forced to stop. Mitsuru was physically stronger, after all, and Shinobu-sempai was unwilling to use his own special skills against someone he loved as a brother.
Kazuya sighed again. Well, since they had no choice, why was he worrying about it so much? He wasn't Mitsuru, and he wasn't able to stop Shinobu-sempai and Haru, so he might as well relax, accept the inevitable, and get on with his life, or whatever remained of it.
Kazuya closed his eyes, rolled on his side, and went to sleep.
* * *
Mitsuru stared up at the ceiling of his room.
It was odd to have come back to the temple so soon after having left it for Greenwood. It had been odd for his family when he'd shown up that evening, announcing his intentions to stay there that night.
They'd welcomed him back, of course, the way they always did. They'd been sympathetic and understanding and concerned when he'd explained why he was there. His father had even offered to drop him off at the hospital before he went in to work the next morning.
But it was still odd.
He shoved all of that out of his mind. There was something else bothering him. He forced himself to think back to the events of the evening.
Shun's accident--as they'd told the dorm lady--had thrown most of Greenwood into an uproar. There was, first of all, the fact that Shun had screamed, and Greenwood's thin walls meant practically the entire dormitory heard it. Because Shun's voice was rather distinctive, everyone had known who was screaming and had come running because Shun, after all, was everybody's friend.
It had been in the ambulance with Shun and Shinobu that he noticed it. Shinobu had suddenly tensed, and his face had become alert in the way it always did whenever he sensed a spirit. To others it might have meant nothing. To him, who knew Shinobu as well as anyone could and who had seen him that way before, it meant trouble.
The only thing he could think of was that they'd somehow passed the mummy. It should have been close to Greenwood by then, and it was the only reason why Shinobu would have sensed something. His friend was able to sense when spirits were particularly focused on them, and the mummy would certainly have had a reason to focus on Shun.
That meant, though, that the mummy was close to Greenwood, only it would now be heading for the hospital. Where Shun was. Only he wouldn't be there tomorrow morning, since his parents were coming for him. Which meant that the mummy would then head towards Shun's family's inn.
Mitsuru closed his eyes. He had a sickening feeling that Shinobu would do something very risky to get the mummy back to Greenwood, and he had a worse feeling that he knew what it would be.
He only hoped he was wrong.
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