"Have you guys ever heard of the game Slender?" Kawahara randomly asked the team as they were huddled around the table in Kagami's apartment after a thankfully delicious meal, a collaboration between Riko and Kagami no doubt. Due to the lack of funds to go anywhere for a team meal, they immediately decided to head straight to Kagami's apartment, not that the red head minded too much. Now, with their stomachs full and an after meal haze over them, they continued idle conversation.
"Slender? No, I haven't." Riko answered Kawahara's earlier question.
"Isn't that that popular free horror game in America?" Hyuuga asked back. Kawahara nodded.
"Yeah, I found people talking about it on the internet and I ended up downloading it. I haven't played it yet though."
"Then why don't we play it?" Kiyoshi chipped in.
"Oh, well, we don't have to.." Kawahara slowly muttered.
"Why not? It sounds like fun." With that, Kawahara pulled out his small laptop from his bag. Even though he pulled out his laptop reluctantly, it didn't mean he wasn't the least bit interested. Opening it up, he placed it on the table and everyone else crowded around. He clicked the dark little icon after his computer started up. When the program loaded and opened, the effect was instantaneous.
"Sooooo, haha, who wants to play?" Furihata asked, laughing nervously. Everyone looked around with nervous looks. The haunting music and the knowledge that it was a horror game wasn't comforting in the slightest.
"Well, Kiyoshi suggested it," Koganei said. "Wait where'd he go?" They all looked around and sure enough, the giant was nowhere to be seen.
"Idiot.." Hyuuga muttered. "Well then, first years," he turned to address them, "decide which of you is going to play!"
"Huh, why us?!" They all exclaimed.
"It's a senior order!"
"I vote for Kagami-kun." Kuroko said automatically.
"Huh? Why me?" Kagami asked back, flustered.
"Yeah, Kagami can do it." Furihata agreed.
"Go Kagami, we believe in you!" Fukuda added.
"Wait! I never said I'd-"
"Just make a decision already."
"Go go Kagami!" Koganei exclaimed. Kagami sighed, it was only a stupid game. It's not like it was that scary or anything.
"Fine.." Kagami answered with a sighing tone. Reluctantly, he shifted so he was in front of the computer and everyone else huddled around excitedly.
"Ok, so the controls are the WASD keys and SHIFT to run."
"It's nice to know that you know the controls but never had the guts to play it, Kawahara." Izuki implied. Kawahara rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly at that then focused back to the computer. Kagami had pressed start and the game began.
"What's that sound?"
"Is it the character walking?" Izuki asked. No one answered.
"Slender." Many of them read the title screen aloud. After that, Kagami was able to control the character.
"Collect 8 pages." Kagami read. "So, we have to find pages? Where could they be, on the trees?" he asked himself. He had no idea how he could even begin to find them if they were randomly scattered on the trees without any indication.
"Kagami-kun, even you aren't that stupid, it wouldn't be a game if you knew where they were." Kuroko said bluntly.
"I know that!"
"You should start playing Kagami." Fukuda suggested.
"The monster might be behind you." Furihata added in a shaky voice.
"How do you know there's a monster?" Riko inquired.
"There's always a monster in horror games."
"Good point." With that, Kagami started playing, all the others were watching closely. He walked around for a good minute before he found any pages.
"Hey, what's that?" Tsuchida pointed out.
"It looks like a tree."
"There's trees everywhere." Kagami muttered.
"This one's different. Kagami, go look at it." Kagami moved his character, cursing it's slow pace, to the tree and circled around it. The Seirin basketball team had found their first page.
"There's a page!"
"How do I get it?" Kagami asked.
"Left click." Kawahara said. Kagami clicked the page to collect it. Suddenly, as if predestined, thunder boomed outside as the music boomed from the game. The sudden unexpected noise caused them all to jump.
"What? It's storming?" Koganei asked as Riko stood up to look onto the balcony. The rain was pouring down and judging from how soaked the balcony was it was raining for a bit.
"I hope it clears up." Hyuuga said.
"Yeah, I didn't bring an umbrella." Tsuchida added.
"Storming rain brings us all shame."
"Shut up Izuki." The team replied. Nevertheless, Kagami continued to play, all the while members of the team gave Kagami hardly helpful suggestions.
"Go left Kagami."
"I can't, there's a fence!" He replied.
Nothing else happening besides the music softly booming in the background and rain pounding outside, Kagami eventually reached an open area where a bunch of cylindrical tanks and a building were situated.
"Do you think that one of the pages are on one of these?" Koganei asked, suggesting to the tanks. Kagami maneuvered around the tanks and sure enough, they found the second page.
"Cool, we got two!" Furihata exclaimed.
"That's pretty good, you know." Kawahara added.
"You think the next page is in the building, heh Mitobe?" Koganei said for Mitobe. With that, Kagami went towards the building at the slow walking pace (Kawahara warned him not to use the run unless he needed to). As if testing to see whether or not anything would pop out, Kagami turned his sight to look around. This action triggered a piano slam and their first sighting of the Slender man. This caused everyone to jump and startled breaths to escape them.
"Run Kagami-kun!" Completely ignoring the building, Kagami ran back into the forest. The sudden scare sped up their heartbeats and being caught off guard didn't help any of their cases. Some of them, without realizing, had grabbed each other's shoulders from the jump scare. As Kagami continued to play, none of them let their guard down.
"What was that thing anyway?" Fukuda asked.
"Slender man." Kawahara answered.
"Why doesn't he have a face?" Furihata inquired.
"I have no idea but let's just try not to see him again, where's the next page?"
"I bet it's in the building back there." Hyuuga announced. "Kagami, turn back!"
"I'm not going back there!" Kagami replied. The other first years erratically agreed with him.
"Why not? Aren't you a tiger?"
"What does that have to do with anything!" Kagami yelled, his voice cracking a bit. Kagami hastily kept moving throughout the game, not even daring to look behind him again. He soon came up to, what looked to be, three large rocks. The music in the background created a sort of anxious tension as he circled them to look for a page.
"There's another page!" The first years announced. Seeing the white upon the rocks, Kagami collected it. The music boomed louder and the longer they looked around, the more their tension grew. Nothing significant happened for awhile as Kagami maneuvered around which only added to their nervous anticipation. It was only then when they found their next landmark that anyone spoke.
"There's a page!" Furihata spoke out. The light of the flashlight shone off the white of their next page. The page was attached to a tall rusted cylindrical object. No one had any idea what it was. Kagami clicked the page and collected it, the music still booming in the background.
"Ah, four out of eight pages, you guys are doing awesome." A voice suddenly called out which resulted in turning sharply to look behind them.
"Idiot, where the hell were you?!" Hyuuga yelled.
"Bathroom." He replied with a smile. Hyuuga ground his teeth in response.
"Hey what's happening?" Everyone sharply directed their gaze to the computer screen. The picture was steadily becoming fuzzy and a static sound was coming from the speakers.
"That means he's close!" Kawahara announced.
"Shit!" Kagami started to panic and began to run. The static became louder so he adjusted his course and soon the static died down. The whole team let out an audible sigh of relief. But before they could get too comfortable a sudden flash of white went across the screen accompanied by a loud high pitched sound.
"Eeep!" Everyone was startled and visibly jumped. The static started to build up once more and Kagami ran away. Unfortunately, the character's stamina ran low and began to walk at a painfully slow pace.
"Run Kagami!" The team yelled.
"I can't!" He yelled in response. The static was still present and Kagami didn't dare look behind him. Even with his best efforts, Kagami couldn't avoid having to adjust his course and ended up turning to be greeted by the Slender man a short distance away. They jumped at the piano slam then suddenly the lights in Kagami's apartment went out, wrapping them in darkness with the only light coming from the computer. The unexpected change in their physical surrounding ripped startled screams out of their throats.
"Stop screaming you idiots! The power just went out." Hyuuga barked.
"You screamed too Hyuuga." Kiyoshi replied. Hyuuga adjusted his glasses nervously. However, Hyuuga's words did nothing to decrease the intensity of the moment. Everyone was huddled around closer than ever, making sure they would see what would happen. Kagami had ran away from Slender man and, not surprisingly, ended up getting lost in the forest. The static never really left the screen but he couldn't see the Slender man anywhere.
"Where the hell is he?!" Kagami asked.
"Why do you want to know?" Kawahara asked in response.
"I wanna know so I can stay away from him." Kagami kept moving around quickly but cautiously and never stayed in one spot for any period of time. Eventually, he ran into the next landmark. Being careful not to turn directly around too quickly, Kagami made his way around the truck. There was no page so he moved over to the containers in the same location, finding a page on that one.
"That's 5 pages!" Koganei yelled excitedly.
"Be careful Kagami." Riko warned. Without saying anything, Kagami walked away slowly. After a bit of walking, Kagami began to sprint again to try and find the next page but suddenly a flash of white went across the screen and stopped the character dead in its tracks. Without Kagami controlling the character, the line of vision was focused and there stood the Slender man. The sudden occurrence caught them by surprise and they began to scream through the loud sounds of white noise. They were stuck and the game over was inevitable. They watched as the face of the Slender man, accompanied by the loud noise, popped up and fell silent with shock. The game screen turned black, leaving them in a brief darkness, before returning to the home screen.
The Seirin team remained silent for a few minutes before Hyuuga broke the silence.
"We will never speak of this." The team agreed as Kawahara gently shoved his laptop back into his bag. Not much else was said between them as they packed up to leave Kagami's house.
Even though the whole Slender ordeal had brought the team closer together, they all silently acknowledged the fact that they would never speak of the indie horror game Slender, ever again.