Man, it's been like a whole week since that mess with Eli…
And since my grandparents' house got straight-up wrecked.
My parents pulled up after everything went down.
My mom? Bro, she went off.
Yelling, lecturing, dragging out every "bad habit" I ever had like she been saving them for a rainy day.
And my dad just stood behind her like,
"Calm down, babe… calm down,"
but he wasn't stopping nothing.
After all that drama, my folks decided I should go stay with Nami.
Yeah Nami's house.
Crazy thing?
Nami actually agreed.
Even I was shocked.
But I didn't have a choice.
Couldn't stay alone anymore, not with the house gone.
They gave me the downstairs spot near the garage.
Wasn't fancy, but hey, I got a door and four walls.
Nami's folks weren't coming back till the end of the year,
so it was just me, Nami, and her older sister Yura holding down the place.
Kikigi High was wild that week
ceremony, prep events, the whole school buzzing.
Each class had to come up with some big plan for the festival.
But our club?
Yeah… nah.
The school shut down our club room.
Said they were low on funds,
and after the recent damage to school property
(the one we definitely had nothing to do with… probably)
they just tore the whole building down.
So with our club gone, we had nowhere to meet.
We ended up going back to what was left of my grandparents' place
the burned, busted skeleton of it
and grabbed whatever wood we could find.
Then we spent the whole damn week building a treehouse.
A treehouse.
And somehow… we actually pulled it off.
Kiki
that chaotic little cat
became our "security guard."
Bro sat in front of the treehouse like he was guarding the Pentagon.
Most of the time we met in Nami's parents' garage anyway.
Sometimes in Cairo's room.
But his mom?
Man… the way she looked at us every time she walked in…
Forget ghosts
she was the real horror villain of the week.
Since the fight with Eli and the way she vanished,
we hadn't seen any ghosts or spooky nonsense.
Everything stayed weirdly calm…
too calm.
But peace never lasts.
Soon the whole school started buzzing with rumors about some mysterious girl.
A girl in our school uniform, long hair covering her face,
talking about ghosts and creepy stuff.
Every rumor pointed to one image
uniform soaked like rain,
hair long and black,
face hidden.
Real nightmare-fuel look.
Whenever we walked past people whispering about it,
we just acted clueless,
headed straight to the school roof like always.
As long as the rumor wasn't dragging us into another supernatural disaster,
we were good.
The school festival planning kicked into high gear.
My class decided on an ocean-themed café.
Cairo's class?
They flexing with a live band out on the school field,
right where the football team practices.
And Nami's class?
They went all-in on a haunted room
a full spooky adventure inside their classroom.
We were busy all week,
running around trying to get everything ready before festival day hit.