Can I Submit Late Amasai Week Things I Still Have, Like, 2 More Prompts To Do (1 If I Skip Free Day)

Can I submit late amasai week things I still have, like, 2 more prompts to do (1 if I skip free day)

Beta @amasaiweek day 4: journey/trail

~*~*more angst but dw it's not as extreme as day 3*~*~

Tw: blood, gunshots

Is this beta au spoilers? Idk but I'm tagging for it because it's the 4th chapter motive

@kagazuly au credit

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Footsteps echoed down the dim hallway. Shuichi's footsteps, to be exact. Careful, fearful steps, like each step could be his last, because it quite literally could be.

He thought about what he knew to try and put the pieces together. Rantaro, Ryoma, and Kokichi all went into the third floor of the school- er, the Sanzu Garden together to find their afternoon locks, and the weapons maker and Kokichi made it back to the dorms. According to them, Rantaro had fallen into a pit trap, and they hadn't been able to find him since. Now, after everyone else had their afternoon challenge completed, Shuichi and Kaito had been chosen to try to find Rantaro.

So far, they'd found nothing but more traps- and one of Rantaro's locks, completed. At least he'd be safe for the night, wherever he was.

Walking along the hallway, Shuichi heard a click from inside the walls, and- a dart flew by him, narrowly missing his cheek.

If I had been just a bit off, he thought, that would've gone right through my eye. And Monokuma said the traps wouldn't kill us. That statement seemed less true by the day.

Luckily, that had been one of the smaller traps, as they ranged from small projectiles being thrown to walls crashing against each other with a person in between. He looked around at the walls of the hallway, searching for signs of human interaction, when something caught his eye.

A red spot on the floor.

Many red spots, actually, making a clear trail down the hall and around a corner.

There were no traps around here that he knew of that could make a hole big enough to cause that much blood loss. They'd all either give you small cuts or kill you in a second. And Rantaro kept first aid supplies on him, so the violinist doubted he'd go that long without stopping the blood.

Still, Kokichi had told him Rantaro's was the only lock on the third floor, and the way he was coming from was closest to the stairway, so…

Whoever came this way did it on purpose. And it wasn't to get their afternoon locks.

Shuichi ran through the hall and followed the red trail around the corner, to where it abruptly stopped over a tile of the floor. There were no traps besides the dart in that hall. Where had this person gotten their injury, then?

He slowed his pace, thinking more logically now. I should go back and get Kaito, that way we'll keep each other in sight in case this trail leads somewhere bad.

But he could be anywhere on this floor by now, and I don't know if that trap'll activate again because it's right at my eye level, and was that liquid in the dart, now that I'm thinking more in detail about it? Could it be a tranquilizer dart, or a poisonous one? And- okay, pull yourself together, Shuichi.

Out of sheer stubbornness, he decided to keep following the trail by himself, and walked slowly along the blood trail until he reached the tile it stopped at.

Hmm.

Maybe whoever was injured had stopped here to treat their wounds a bit if the pain had gotten to be too much. Or they could've turned around and gone back. Kokichi did say he knew Rantaro's lock was the only one on the floor. Maybe he had done some exploring and gotten hurt on accident, or maybe-

His thoughts were cut off by a sudden lack of ground beneath his feet.

Or maybe the injured person had fallen into a pitfall trap right at this very spot.

He screamed in surprise at the fall and heard a voice from above him, far away, and loud footsteps. "SHUICHI?!"

Yeah, he should've told Kaito.

The panels to the trap shut, leaving him to fall in total darkness and silence.

It was both peaceful and stressful, the feeling of not knowing where you'd land or when, nothing but darkness and your own thoughts and the stomach-churning sensation Shuichi found out was easy to get used to, and-

BANG.

A-

A gunshot?

From somewhere below him, there was a gunshot. And now, light began to clear up the darkness, revealing cold metal walls around him. There were more gunshots, louder, more frequent. What kind of place does this lead to?

With a thump, he landed on a thick mattress, oddly out of place in the room he landed in, which was made of blank white concrete walls covered in chipping, moldy wallpaper. He saw no guns nor sparks or bullets flying, but the sound of gunshots was everywhere, exploding in his eardrums so that he had to block his ears if he wanted to concentrate. Cardboard boxes sat in varying stacks and piles in the corners of the room. There were no holes in them, Shuichi saw, so could there just not be- he walked out into the middle of the room. Sure enough, the sound was just coming from a hidden speaker, and there were no real guns.

Now, how to get out of this room?

The cardboard boxes were most likely there for a reason. They could be traps, but they could also serve as a way to escape. He decided to investigate them first.

Picking a random box off a stack in the nearest corner, he noticed something. Something green. And curled into a tight ball, letting out whimpers that could barely be heard over the noise from the speakers.

It was- He was Rantaro. Much, much different than how he acted around the others, but Rantaro nonetheless. What was going on?

"Some rooms will lock you in and whisper your worst fears to you."

This was one of those rooms, wasn't it? Designed for Rantaro, for sure. And it couldn't just be the gunshot noise that triggered him so badly, since he'd talked so much about his feats in war before. The room probably had something to do with his fear. No wonder he was hiding in a fort of small brown boxes.

"Rantaro!"

Nothing. His voice was still quieter than the background noise. 

"RANTARO!!"

The medic seemed paralyzed for a second, then slowly turned his head towards Shuichi.

"You have to snap out of this, Ra-"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! GET DOWN, OR YOU COULD GET SHOT!"

Tears were streaming down his usually confident face as he said this.

"No! You have to listen, Rantaro!" The violinist crouched down next to the stack of boxes.

"None of what you're thinking about is real. There are speakers in the walls, they're making the sound of gunshots. I don't know what this place is, but as far as I know it can't hurt you. You're safe, alright? You're safe."

Rantaro was still hyperventilating.

"Hey, hey. Calm down. Everyone's waiting back at the dorms. We've been really worried for you. That's how I ended up here, by falling through the same trap you did."

The shots in the background became softer and softer as Shuichi explained their situation casually, until they eventually faded away into nothingness. Apparently the mastermind was done with this twisted torture.

A door opened at the opposite side of the room.

The curled-up figure had slowed his breathing some, but was still panicking.

"...It. It stopped."

"Huh. It did."

And it took quite a lot of convincing, but, not very long after the noises stopped, the two walked to the door, Rantaro holding the other's hand tightly for security.

"Oh, right! Have you tended to your wound yet? If not, we ought to fix that now before getting back to the others."

"...Wound? What wound?" Rantaro asked, checking his body for any wound he could've forgotten about.

"Well, there was a trail of blood leading to the door here, so I thought it might be your-"

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

If Rantaro really had been taken by surprise and fallen here, he wouldn't have had time to fix himself up until he finished falling, which would mean-

But there wasn't any blood on the mattress or the floor at all.

"I followed the trail too. Thought I could find someone suspicious, since no other locks were on that floor and the trail led away from my lock."

"Uh, wait… then if it wasn't you or Kokichi… whose blood trail was that?"