ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤO'ER HIM, IT LOOMS,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤDROOL DRIPPING FROM MAW.
STANGE, little thing, he was. NO FEAR, coursed through him ; it could change that. Closer, it approaches, chittering as an insect, naught but LAUGHTER. Four eyes snap to focus upon him, as it leans down.
❝ ICHIGO-O-O-O ... ❞ Voice, sing-song. Almost close, to his mothers'. YET, ISAAK, CONTINUES TO SMILE. Pointed claw jams up, under the others' chin, forcing Shinigami - Hybrid to make eye contact. O! Try as he might to draw, that mighty blade Zangetsu ...ONE COULD NOT KILL THAT WHICH DID NOT EXIST. Schrodinger's beast. The unliving, that dances between planes, THAT WHICH WAS OF A CHILDS' MIND, UNABLE TO FULLY EMBRACE THE LIFE IT NOW LIVED !
ㅤㅤㅤㅤ❝ MI-MI-MISSES ... YOU-OU- OU ... ❞
⎡ @analogfriend ⫿ unscripted ⫿ accepting ⎦
It’s been a while since he’s been here.
It stands like a headstone among the overgrowth of its grounds, the windows blacked with grime, ivy curling in through shattered panes. Inside, the air smells like mold and iodine. Water stained ceilings sag. Wallpaper bubbles and peels in long, hanging strips like shedding skin.
He gets why people are talking about this place.
He doesn’t need to reach for his badge to know something’s wrong. He feels it. A low, constant pressure building like the echo of a scream under glass.
As he descends, the feeling gets stranger, stronger. Not like a Hollow. Just an otherness he follows lower and lower.
A different kind of ghost.
But as Ichigo moves deeper—following that pressure like a spider thread drawn through the dark—he’s less sure it’s even that.
The stairs come without warning.
A square hole, punched into the ground, too precise, too clean. A set of escalators flank steps like teeth.
Not part of the hospital. Not even close.
They angle wrong, lead down too far. The subbasement should be the lowest level here. But it isn’t.
He pauses on the threshold. The walls leading lower seem to go on a long way. Tile becomes linoleum, linoleum becomes marble.
Overhead, fluorescents hum, scattering out greenish light. His footsteps echo—once, then again, then a third time out of sync. Like something trying to mimic him, poorly, and sometimes a breath too late.
He looks back. The escalator jerks on for half a second. But when he looks, it’s stopped again.
The corridor temperature lowers the deeper he goes. Cold. Like the throat of a cave burrowing deep into the earth.
Then he steps down again and the ceiling opens up, and there’s nothing but space.
He’d expected darkness, but there’s light everywhere. Stores. Walkways. Booths. Sparkling glass. Overhead chandeliers made of faceted crystal and metal shining in perfect repair. The hospital was a wreck, but everything here gleams as if freshly polished. Like someone’s cleaned it recently.
Is it a passage? An old concourse connecting the hospital to somewhere else? If so, where are the people? Why would a path lead to an abandoned hospital?
His instincts flare, senses ringing, hair rising, but there’s no clear threat. No danger to be seen.
He takes the final step down.
Only one thing breaks up the stretch of flat marble.
Nearby is half a peeled crayon.
His chest tightens. “Shit.”
He kneels beside it then glances around.
This was supposed to be a ghost hunt.
He moves through the corridors of the mall. He keeps expecting people. Thinks someone will step out of a bookstore or a clothing shop or he’ll see a worker behind a counter. But instead, everything here looks like it’s waiting.
Feels as stale as a held breath.
It’s wrong in a quiet way. The way a dream is wrong moments before waking up.
He passes an ad only to stop. An old man smiles back at him, teeth white and gleaming. An he stares a long moment, certain that man passed away when he was little. He remembers because he saw the ghost. It lingered around the neighborhood, followed the wife, face half marred with blood.
Ichigo glances around. No one.
The air smells faintly of cookies and rusted metal.
He breathes in. Keeps walking.
Still no reiatsu. No screaming hollow. No child. Just… him, and the silence and a hundred empty windows looking out at him as he walks.
Mannequins stand in happy poses wearing clothes in styles Ichigo vaguely remembers. When he looks again, the clothes are gone, they’re slumped like bodies against the glass, the eyes stitched shut.
He frowns, feeling led, but he moves on.
Something knows he’s here. No sense being quiet now.
There’s a new sound now. Like crinkling paper. Like nighttime insects.
“Hey,” he calls out, voice low, hand near Zangetsu. “Kid? You down here?”
Something brushes his shoulder.
He turns fast, and his hand slips through something. Not wind. Not air.
Then sharpness under his jaw. Pressure.
His head is snapped up, too far. Too high.
The step back for distance is automatic, and it doesn't happen. His foot scraping slick against marble, refusing purchase. His hand closes on the hilt.
His heart stutters. But… he hadn’t called her that then. Tatsuki made fun of him for it. You’re such a mama’s boy. He was still calling her Mama, all the way until—
The words. They’re in his ears, but also inside. A sound that seems to resonate up through his soft palate and into his skull. A deep, unsettling presence. His mother's voice residing in something inhuman.
The creature is colorless. Except for the eyes ringed with red like bloody tears, like something that’s cried too long.
Saliva slips down from it's teeth to pool somewhere below.
The monk spoke like this once. When he was dead but still there in the ground and buildings and in Ichigo. And he thinks this voice was taken from him. His mind. His memories.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤ❝ MI-MI-MISSES ... YOU-OU- OU ... ❞
His teeth grit. He wants to be angry, instead those words just hurt. Like an old bruise pressed too many times.
Flashes flicker across his thoughts. His mother calling from another room, their house during childhood, Yuzu and Karin’s hands tugging at his sleeves, begging him to play. Not memories exactly. Just fragments. Bits of Ichigo held up like puzzle pieces.
“Get outta my head,” he says, quiet. Automatic.
He feels it now. Like ghostly fingers stroking through the dark places in his brain. Something that could turn to pain, but hasn’t.
That makes him pause again.
The silence around him tightens.
Even the escalators stop pretending to move.
Not a whisper. Not a hum.
Just the soft ring of blood in his ears and something foreign and quiet watching him think.
It showed him those things.
The voice, not hers, but close enough to wound— lingers in his mouth, like he tasted it.
That’s what unsettles him.
This thing… it isn’t trying to frighten him. It’s… trying… what? To be known?
He feels the moment his anger wanes in him like a muscle going slack.
Without turning his back, he casts his senses through the mall again. Nothing moves, but everything waits. The mannequins. The corridors. Even the lights above seem to hold their breath.
This whole place feels like a thought that doesn’t want to be finished.
His eyes go back to the creature’s. Something stirs in him. “…Are you alone down here?”
His eyes shift to the shoe. The crayon. The quiet.
It’s all he can manage with his chin still tipped up. And he’s going to have to do something about that soon.
But a thought rises. Pricks at him. Out of place.
“Is it you? Are you the kid?”
