Satoru-kun

“I’m at Suzu Café.”

Kanon’s body froze as a chill ripped through her body. She knew the caller was probably just her lame friend trying to scare her, but it didn’t take away the chilling feeling that these phone calls would be giving her. She couldn’t explain it, there was just something eerie about the voice on the other end. It did make sense though. Her friend was a bit of a horror freak, she was probably an experiment at how to scare people like this. This is what Kanon gets for being best friends with someone so obsessed with the horror genre.

“Sayuri, this isn’t funny,” Kanon said harshly into the receiver. The brunette teenager was never given a response. Instead, she was just met with the click of a receiver. Rolling her eyes, Kanon ended the call, snapping her cellphone shut and stuffing it back into her jean pockets.

This was getting annoying now. Over the last day, Kanon had been getting so many of these calls. Right now, she could count having gotten eight calls. The only thing the calls would ever tell her was the location of whoever was on the phone. After they said their spot, they’d hang up and leave Kanon dumbstruck. Well, she had been dumbstruck for only a little while before something occurred to her… It had to be her friend.

Yesterday, she and her best friend went out to try some stupid ritual. Her friend had always been interested in this stuff and for as long as she could remember, Sayuri would constantly ask Kanon to do these stupid rituals with her. Kanon always rejected, knowing how much of a waste of time they would be. She didn’t even understand why Sayuri was interested in them. They were childish stories to scare children; a teenager of her age shouldn’t believe them.

But, after all the years of rejecting Sayuri, Kanon finally caved. She agreed to do a small ritual with Sayuri. Sayuri seemed really happy at first but when she explained the ritual, Kanon found out that Sayuri wanted her to do it alone, saying it would only work if it was done alone.

So Kanon did. She did all of this to shut up Sayuri. She thought that if she did one ritual for Sayuri then the girl would stop asking her to do all of this stupid stuff with her. Kanon did everything she was told to. She popped the 10 yen coin into the payphone, calling her own cellphone. It rang and rang and rang. Just when Kanon was about to give up, she could hear the receiver pick up. Weird, but it was probably just a glitch in the phone, her phone was ancient after all. When she heard it connect, she said the words she was told to.

Satoru-kun, Satoru-kun. If you’re there, would you please come here?

She had said her words with confidence and strength. When she hung up the phone, nothing happened. She shrugged her shoulders and went back to her friend, explaining everything. The two girls carried on like nothing had happened, accepting the idea that the ritual didn’t work or Kanon had just done something wrong.

It was after midnight that Kanon had gotten her first call. She’d just gotten to sleep when her phone rang loudly, jolting the girl out of her peaceful slumber. She answered it, only to be told nothing more than a location before the culprit hung up. She had rolled her eyes and rolled over to go back to sleep. Over the course of the day, she would receive more and more calls, each giving her a different location.

Now the location was Suzu Café, just a few blocks away from her house. It was a bit strange, Kanon could admit that, but she knew this was Sayuri. Sayuri was one of her closest friends; she’d been over to Kanon’s house plenty of times so it wouldn’t surprise her if Sayuri knew the surrounding area very well.

Kanon leaned herself back against the couch, her feet kicking themselves up onto the coffee table beside her. She was formulating a plan on how to get back at Sayuri. She had no doubt that Sayuri would call her again to try and scare her, but how did she get back at her? Sayuri never stayed on the line long enough. Maybe Kanon just needed to wait until she saw Sayuri at school tomorrow, then she could really get her back for this.

Kanon smiled to herself, laying her arms behind her head and giving herself a content sigh. She never was one to just roll over and accept defeat, she would always try to come out on top over anyone who tried to mess with her, and that included Sayuri. Kanon’s relaxation didn’t last long before she heard her phone go off again.

“Goddamn it,” Kanon cursed lowly. She flung her legs off the coffee table pushing herself up into a sitting position again. She leaned forward, grabbing her phone off of the table. As usual, the caller I.D said nothing more than it was a private number. She flipped her phone open, placing it to her ear.

Kanon pushed herself off the couch, listening intently for any answer on the other end. As she wandered out to the kitchen, she continued to hear nothing. The young teenager growled lowly, enough was enough.

“Cut it out, Sayuri. You’re not scary and you’re not funny,” Kanon said with her tone low and menacing. Kanon leaned her body forward onto the kitchen counter, her eyes peering out of the window. There was a few seconds of a crackling static sound until she heard the words that made her blood run cold.

“I’m behind you.”

Kanon’s body tensed, the hand gripping her phone tightening its grip as her breathing begun to come out in short, labored gasps. Kanon couldn’t explain it. As soon as those words were said, a chill had run through the room Kanon was in, freezing her to the bone. The drop in temperature had brought with it an eerie feeling the bore down on Kanon, almost feeling like she was being crushed beneath its weight.

Kanon couldn’t shake the ominous feeling that had swept over her at hearing those words.

“K-knock it off, Sayuri,” Kanon stuttered out. The young teenager had never felt anything like this. How was Sayuri accomplishing this? She knew Sayuri knew how to scare, but surely she couldn’t be this good, could she?

Kanon didn’t get a response as she had hoped. She had hoped to hear Sayuri laughing about how badly she had gotten Kanon but she heard nothing of the sort. All she heard was that same crackling static sound.

Kanon slowly pushed herself up into a standing position, her freehand gripping the edge of the counter she had formerly been leaning on tightly. She could feel a force urging her to turn around even though her mind screamed at her to stay facing the direction she already was.

She ignored that little voice in her head though. The force pulling her was much stronger. With slow movements, she slowly turned her body. Her feet turned one by one, her body moving with it. She closed her eyes tightly as she turned around. Taking a deep breath and exhaling shakily, Kanon slowly opened her eyes.

She wished she hadn’t.

Standing in front of her now was a little boy who couldn’t be more than eight years of age. But he wasn’t any normal little boy. In his hand, he clutched a cellphone tightly, the blood dripping off the phone and splashing onto the floor. On his face, a creepy smile was spread from cheek to cheek, his small white teeth barely seeable through the smile. His head was bowed, his short black bob of hair covering his eyes.

Kanon watched as the little boy raised his head, a scream ripping through her as the phone fell to the floor, the screen shattering in the process. Kanon could see that where his eyes should have been, there was nothing instead. The sockets stared back at the frozen girl, the little boy’s smile growing.

Kanon could feel herself beginning to lose consciousness as she saw the boy open his mouth to speak.