Dangerous Souls

Nightmare

"Miss Maki, you are the victim of a vile act here, is that correct?" The girl nodded stiffly. "Can you tell us what happened?"

Vile act? Mai wondered to herself.

"It...it happened last week," Rina began, taking a deep shaky breath. Mai felt the shift in the air, she was starting to regret coming along. "I was running late for class, because I had forgotten my textbook, so I went back and got it. It was a late evening class, there was no one in the hallways of that building. At least, I thought there was no one. I was walking up the stairs and almost made it to the door, when I was grabbed from behind."

The girl paused and took another shaky breath. Mai noticed that Naru was being much more...gentle with this witness. Something she wasn't quite used to seeing. "What happened next?" But she didn't want to continue, and that made Mai regret not listening to Ayako's warning about this case. "Miss aki, did the person who grabbed you proceed to rape you in the stairwell?"

Rina sucked in a breath and did her damned best to hold back the tears. "I shouldn't have come, I'm sorry for wasting your time. I'll be on my-"

"Miss Maki." She had been about to stand but Naru's voice stopped her. "We are not the police. We are not going to get them involved unless you decide to do so. All we're here for, is to figure out what is going on and there is more to the story isn't there?"

Slowly, Rina nodded and adjusted her sitting position. She took another slow shaky breath, truly not wanting to continue this interview, but as much as Mai wanted to reach over and guide her out of the room, she knew that they needed to know the whole story. From her side.

"I'll ask you again. Were you raped in the stairwell that night?"

"Yes." Her voice was quiet. Her eyes were focused on the table. Mai could feel the emotions radiating off of the poor girl. Fear. Anger. Sadness. Guilt. One giant mixture. "No one was going to go through the stairs for another half hour, so he had his way with me."

"Do you know who raped you?"

"It wasn't him." The mix of emotions shifted at the determined answer.

"Who?" Lin's constant typing helped to keep Mai grounded from imagining the awful deed done to this girl.

"Rikuto. But it wasn't him! It couldn't have been! He is too quiet of a guy to do that!" Mai's head tilted at the answer. If he was the one who did it, why is she defending him?

"But he was the one who grabbed you and forced you in the stairwell?" Naru asked again for confirmation.

"Yes, but he wasn't there." The comment caused Lin to skip a beat in his typing. Even he seemed a little unnerved even though he knew just as much as Naru. "I couldn't see him in his eyes. They weren't his eyes."

"They weren't his eyes?" Mai's question couldn't be contained. The girl looked at her and seemed to study the makeup job that had been done earlier.

"The Rikuto I know from class has deep brown eyes. Whoever did this to me had bright yellow ones." And thus, Mai understood why SPR had been called into the case. "It wasn't him. Someone else was in there."

"You believe he was possessed?"

"He wouldn't have done it otherwise." Rina sighed, looking back down at the table. "He doesn't even know that he did it."

***

"You really thought bringing her here was a good idea?" Masako commented with her eyes closed as they walked through another dorm building. Ayako was almost certain that the medium was rolling her eyes.