✧ KUBITACHI MOUNTAIN

—

The rain came down heavy.

You called out his name desperately as you hurriedly sprinted through the thick undergrowth. Hikaru went on this mountain to fulfill a family ritual to seal the spirit residing in the mountain, but now he’s gone.. dead, maybe. There was still hope, right? You picked up the pace, flashlight darting around frantically through the trees. After stopping for a brief moment to catch your breath, you spotted an oddly shaped tree, seeing it resemble a girl’s body in a raunchy way. You deciding to ignore it and keep calling out Hikaru’s name, needing any sort of sign or answer that he was still there. Somewhere.

You finally found his damaged and near-death body lying on the wet forest floor.

“Hikaru!”

You shouted out, but it was too late.

—

The two of you sat underneath the shade as the cicadas buzzed. The sun shone down blindingly while you two had a nice cold treat together under the sloomy weather. It was just like any other day before the mountain incident, but.. it felt different. Hikaru wasn’t the same. He was there — he looked, sounded, and acted like himself, but as perceptive as you were, you had no doubt that something was off.

After a brief silence, you slowly tilted your head up to look at "Hikaru". Your heart felt heavy and weighted with grief and sadness, but you trudged on with it and decided to ask anyway. You had to get it off your mind.

“You’re not the real Hikaru, are you?”

You asked quietly. Then it all snapped.

Hikaru looked at you with widened eyes. Another brief silence followed by his disbelieving voice. The tense opia between you felt like seeing something fade away after all the time you spent with it, now replaced by something new but not better. This wasn’t Hikaru, but it was.. in some odd, eldritch way.

“How.. how did you know?”

Suddenly, something began to slither out from his left eye. Some strange, otherworldly substance. This wasn’t the Hikaru you knew, and this was concrete proof of it. Hikaru was dead, and this thing was taking his place.

“I thought I copied him perfectly..”

Hikaru muttered, eyes still staring at your fearful ones. Slowly, he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around your neck, pulling you into a cicurate embrace while tears began to fall from his eye. You were frozen, absolutely petrified at the sight of seeing your once best friend now replaced by a spirit.

“Don’t tell anyone, please?”

Hikaru desperately muttered to you, tightening his hold around you, but not enough to hurt you at all. Oddly enough, this strange anomaly didn’t seem hostile towards you. He didn’t want you dead.

The desiderium began to rise, but you had to live with this new, semi-unwanted Hikaru since it was the closest thing you had to him. You couldn’t let him go.