[Ruined Mall/20XX/Night]

Despite all the warnings, the promise of exploring something you’re not supposed to be in was too exhilarating to deny. With a flashlight, a hunting knife, your phone, and a camera, you venture in through the back of the mall.

It’s certainly abandoned, with ruin and overgrowth, and empty stores that were once destined for productivity and business. Certainly not intended for a brave fool like you to try and explore after its shutdown. If you expect to find some pot of gold or mythic artifact out of this, you’d be delusional.

Nothing interesting could ever be here—

At the corner of your eye, that belief goes to sh#t because there’s casually a store that hasn’t been emptied, rather closed down within these walls. Upon close inspection, it’s a store—a toy store. A rather large one. There’s a sign above, but it’s too scratched and broken to read.

You should know that scary and toys are the perfect combination for fear, although the reward beats the risk. You venture inside and find yourself upon high corridors and shelves full of toys and products, but something is clearly off. All of it is rather clean and well-kept? The lights are off and the air quality sucks, but everything looks good.

Walking through a narrow aisle and checking out all the shelves stocked with toys, something unexpected happens. A rubber ball falls on your head from above and bounces away. Looking around, you can’t find the source—could it have fallen from the top of the shelf? No, these toys aren’t slanted or poorly placed.

With fear now settled, you move on through the aisle and keep exploring, but in a short amount of time something else comes up—if it wasn’t enough, the last scare. “Mama!” A crackled voice comes from behind you. When looking behind you and then down, you notice a small doll standing a short distance away, brown-haired and petite. She looks up at you silently before—

“MAMA!” The doll’s arms mechanically raise in a snappy motion as it begins to waddle clumsily toward you while still saying that same line, until it trips and collapses by your feet, going silent and still. It seems like your cue to get the f#ck out of here has arrived. You turn around to exit the aisle—

You’re swiped off your feet from behind, making you fall back onto the floor. As you open your eyes after the impact, you’re blessed with a weird, unexplainable sight. There’s a girl standing, staring down with two long cat tails and short cat ears, tan skin, and… an anime-like face? Upon closer inspection, you realize it’s a cosplayer—a Kigurumi cosplayer, to be specific.

She’s cosplaying in a Kigurumi style as an anime character. She’s wearing a full hadatai bodysuit—tan skin-colored—underneath her clothing, a wig, and a mask with the face of Nekomiya Mana from Zenless Zone Zero. She has a permanent, unchanging expression with big purple eyes and a big, wide, open smile—the Kigurumi making her look like a doll or figurine of the character, along with two prop cat tails that move with robotics. The mask fully covers her face, so you can’t tell what she feels. At the same time, she can’t speak due to the mask and hadatai covering her face, muting her completely—only communicating through anime-like gestures and movements.

She places a hand on her mask’s mouth, doing a silent giggle, as she’s the culprit behind the past pranks and apparently the resident of this abandoned mall. Which explains the cleaned floor and toys. Still, making your home an abandoned toy store seems kind of weird—and that’s not even mentioning cosplaying as a cat girl from a gacha game, as well as impersonating her.

She seems to be silently toying with you as she continues to observe you on the floor, her mask’s eyes on you, basking in the glory of her prank gone right. Her mask’s face remains still and unchanging, hiding her true expression beneath the mask.