'Heihachi!' I called at the latter when my eyes fell upon him at the train station.

He trotted his way towards me, his hands plunged in his pocket. 'Hey!' he greeted, in a monotonous voice.

'Good morning! Is it Hatsu who told you that I'm leaving on mission?'

He averted his eyes as he answered, 'No. He was still sleeping when I left.'

'Is everything alright?' I inquired, anxiously, noticing the dark-haired boy's low spirit.

'Yeah. Everything's perfect!' he replied, curtly and transformed himself into a bat to cut short to the conversation.

I was taken aback.

Did something happen?

He climbed onto my back and crouching down, I picked his clothes up, folding them to put them into my bag. I supposed that he was accompanying Cho Kururugi and I on mission.

Of course, the ginger-haired girl was totally against being partnered up with me, but strangely, ever since we had come out of Master Kagami's office earlier, she didn't lash out at me unlike I expected.

She kept everything in, simply looking furious.

Our mission took us to a village named Haruta. We had set out sometimes before noon and when we arrived there, the sun was about to set.

The mission we had been assigned revolved around a cursed well, the case of which we had to investigate and take adequate measures.

Haruta was a small and isolated village with not more than a hundred habitants. There were no hotels in the village but only a ryokan. We took lodging there and because of the exorbitant price of a room, we took a single one to share at three.

Fortunately, the room was big and there were movable partitions to separate our futons.

As I was undoing my bag, I glanced at Heihachi who had taken back human form and was sitting under the veranda outside, one of his knees brought up to his chest, his chin resting onto it, his expression dejected.

The boy was starting to worry me. I was practically sure that something happened and that he wasn't telling me.

Abruptly, my cellphone rang, and I saw that it was Hatsu who was calling me. Tsunan had already saved Master Kagami and Hatsu's phone number, as well as his own, in the phone before giving it to me.

I picked up the call. 'Hello, Hatsu!'

'Hey, Shun! It's Tsunan who gave me your number,' he said, his voice sounding odd.

I wondered if it was because we were talking through the phone or due to something else.

'I wanted to ask you... Is Heihachi with you?'

'Yes. He's here.'

'Do you think that I could talk to him?'

'Sure!'

I turned around to call Heihachi, but the latter was nowhere to be seen anymore. Perplexed, I came out of the sliding door, looking athwart of the veranda, but the dark-haired boy was really gone.

'Shun?'

'I'm sorry, Hatsu. He was here a minute ago. I don't know where he's gone.'

He fell silent.

'But, I could tell him to call you when he's back,' I proposed.

'Alright. Thanks.'

He hanged up.

I came back inside, now dead worried about Heihachi.

'Say, didn't you see where Heihachi left?' I asked Cho Kururugi.

She glanced towards the veranda before she raised her eyebrows at me, scoffing 'Are you talking to me?' She jerked to her feet abruptly, lashing out at me, 'Alright! Listen to me carefully! I would never have left on mission with you if it had been up to me. I'm here only because Master Kagami has forced me to! But don't count on me to accomplish this mission with you! We're not partners, understood?!'

With this said, she barged out of the door, furiously, and I stared after her long after she was gone, stunned by her sudden outburst.

***

'Dammit! That girl is a poison!' grumbled Cho Kururugi as she flounced out of the ryokan. 'First, it was Tsunan and Master Kagami, then Hatsu and Ayame, and now, even Shirane seems to have begun to accept her! That girl is truly diabolical!'

She paused down to take a deep calming breath, but it just seemed impossible for her to be able to calm down.

For a few hours, she walked aimlessly around the village and when it started to become late, she thought about heading back to the ryokan but she couldn't imagine herself sleeping in the same room as the red-haired girl without attempting to murder her in her sleep.

She decided to investigate on the cursed well instead. The quicker she would accomplish the mission, the quicker she would be rid of Shun Shutsuki.

Most of the shops were closed at this hour but the local bar was open. She entered it, moving up to the short half-bald old man standing behind the bar counter, who was drying a large beer glass with a cloth.

She was sure that she could get information from an ancient of the village.

'Hello, sir!' she called at the man. 'Have you always lived around here?'

The latter glanced up at her and gave her a small nod while he continued to do what he was doing.

'Great! I'm looking for some information.'

She took his silence as a sign to continue. Lowering her voice, she asked him, 'Did you hear the villagers talk about a well that would be cursed?'

The man's hands froze and he looked up at her, his expression suddenly disturbed.

'You're certainly talking about the well of the orphanage!'

'The orphanage?'

She took a seat.

'It's found just outside of the village on the hill.'

'What's the story of that well?' she inquired, putting her elbows up on the counter and resting her chin over her intertwined fingers.

'Oh, it's a horrible one!' he sighed, putting the beer glass and the cloth down. 'It happened some twenty years ago.' He began telling her, 'The orphanage was a very frightening place for the children who lived there. They were subjected to inhuman treatments by the vile personnel.'

He shook his head in disgust.

The ginger-haired girl lowered her hands onto the table, a small lump forming in her throat.

'One day, arrived a young woman named ...' He cupped his chin, narrowing his eyes as he tried hard to remember her name. 'Yukiryo! Yes, Yukiryo was her name! She came from a far away village and got enrolled in the staff. When she saw the cruelty that the other staff members showed upon the orphans, she began to oppose herself against her colleagues, and she was the only one to do it.'

He looked down, his eyes tightening.

'It hadn't been a week since she had joined the personnel that, she became witness of a male colleague assaulting one of the children- a little boy. She tried to warn the authorities but before she could, the staff members captured her and they dragged her to the well at the back of the orphanage and they threw her down it, leaving her to drown.'

The man stared up into her eyes again.

'The little boy was next, in order for the personnel to ensure themselves of his silence, and that of the other kids, if these wanted to avoid themselves the same fate.'

She swallowed hard.

'After the incident, one by one, the staff members began to die. They all drowned in the same well and that, in less than a year. It is said that Yukiryo had become a Kyōkotsu. The orphanage closed down and the children were shifted to different institutions. The well dried up and the building was left abandoned.'

Kyōkotsu were born from bones which hadn't been given proper burial and shown disrespect to by being discarded down a well. These bones either came from a murdered or suicided person or someone who has accidentally fell into the well. Kyōkotsu were riven by vengeance and they were known to pass on their grudge to others.

In appearance, wrapped in a ragged shroud with only its bleached skull and tangled hair appearing out of its tattered clothes, the yōkai was a ghostly skeletal figure.

He informed her, 'It was only after many years later that we learnt what really happened at the orphanage from the children who had been there at the time and who had become adult since then.'

He carried on to say, 'There has been several other deaths after that. Many people have tried to purchase the property and from time to time, homeless people intrude themselves into the orphanage to sleep there for the night. Every time, it's the same story. They are found at the bottom of the well, dead. If the victims didn't die in the fall, they died of starvation.'

Cho cupped her chin thoughtfully.

She knew what she had to do. She had to retrieve the bones of the Kyōkotsu- or rather Yukiryo- to give the latter a grave, and also, find a priest to perform a few prayers for her soul to rest in peace.

She decided to deal with it immediately, having no wish of spending more time than necessary with Shun Shutsuki. And of course, it was out of the question that she gets back to the ryokan to get the latter's assistance.

'Thank you for the information you have given me!' she said to the old man, getting to her feet.

'It's okay. Are you passionated by scary stories, young girl? You're writing a book?'

Her expression turned awkward and she replied, 'Ye- Yes, sir.'

Coming out of the bar, she headed for the orphanage.

It was near midnight when she reached the old decrepit building standing there on top of the hill eastward of Haruta Village.

For a whole minute, the ginger-haired girl stood outside of the rusty and seemingly likely to collapse iron gate of the orphanage, staring at the dark gloomy building facing her, having the jitters in all of sudden.

'I should have asked Shutsuki to accompany me!' she mumbled, before she shook her head and slapped her hands against her cheeks to catch her bearings. 'What am I saying? Come on, Cho Kururugi! You can do it! What are you scared of, anyway? You're armed in case the situation goes awry!'

Taking a deep breath, she pushed the cranky gate open, confidently. The gate opened with a screech that made her skin crept.

'Don't be such a funk!' she scolded herself, and building up her confidence again, she stepped onto the propriety, getting on her guards.

The orphanage was composed of a single building that stood three storied high. The main door was chained but most of the window-panes of the ground floor were broken. Vines had crawled their way up the outside walls of the building, giving it a lugubrious look.

Coming around of the building into the back yard, she paused down a few feet away from the well which was found there, to scrutinize her surroundings carefully, expecting the Kyōkotsu to appear out of the blue and attack her.

When nothing happened after several minutes, she closed the distance between the well and her.

Her heart palpitating in her chest, she brought her torch over the well to have a look down it.

At this point, she had expected the Kyōkotsu to emerge out of the well- like the devil jumps out of a box- to drag her down it.

A sense of relief swept over her when nothing of the sort happened. The passage was clear.

'Time to get to work!'

She had thought about everything.

Tying one end of the rope she had bought at the village to a tree, she threw the other end of it down the well. She then tied the piece of cloth she was going to use to collect the bones, around her neck like a scarf.

Lastly, she wrapped the long ends of her kimono's sleeves around her palms to prevent her hands from burning with friction. Then, holding her small torch in-between her teeth, she began to descend down the well carefully with the help of the rope.

She had almost reached the bottom of the pit when, abruptly, the worst that could have happened, happened; the rope snapped. She landed on her two feet down the well, but her right ankle didn't withstand the shock.

Falling on her behind, she held her injured ankle, screaming out in pain.

It was an open wound; she could feel her hands becoming wet with blood.

It took her a few minutes before she could think beyond the pain and she begun to search for her torch- which had slipped her mouth and became switched off- on the ground, in the dark.

She managed to get her hands on it, making a small prayer in her heart that it wasn't broken.

She almost sighed in relief as it lit up again when she switched on the button.

Instantly, she took a quick glance around of the pit, expecting the Kyōkotsu to be there watching her.

She didn't see anyone, but what she found though, was the piece of rope which had snapped, and an incapacitating feeling of horror for she was trapped at the bottom of the well!

Thank you for reading!