[1] HOUSE OF CROWS | Haikyuu!! (Murder of Crows) ✓

HOUSE OF CROWS | 07

"You saw someone?"

"Not... quite. But it definitely looked as though someone had been standing there." The floorboards above your head shuddered and more dust rained down. This time it was closer to the stairs, and you realised you could hear footsteps too now; faint, light taps against the wood. You stepped back, away from the stairs, unable to take your eyes off the darkness pooling at the top. Akaashi gasped quietly when he heard them too. There was definitely someone up there.

"Hello?" You called, your voice coming out in a half-strangled whisper that you immediately felt embarrassed about. The footsteps stopped, but there was no response, and you felt gooseflesh break across your neck when you realised it might not be one of the boys.

"Outside?" Akaashi whispered in your ear. You barely nodded before you were both scrambling towards the door, flinging it open and lurching out into the sultry forest air.

A figure appeared almost immediately in your line of sight, running at you from the left. Your heart was in your throat and you were already pulling yourself and Akaashi away before you registered who it was. You came to an uneasy stop, breathing hard.

"T-Tsukishima?"

The blond was panting and his face was covered in a glossy sheen of sweat when he reached you, doubling over with his hands on his knees. "Have you... seen Hinata?"

"Hinata? No. What's going on? Where did you all go? And why is there a dead crow-"

"Hinata's missing," he interrupted, breathlessly. "Again." He straightened up and pushed down his glasses to rub the sweat out of his eyes.

Before he had the chance to explain, another figure came around the house, jogging towards you. Kuroo's face was as pinched as Tsukishima's.

"Will someone please explain what's going on?" You said, crossing your arms. Akaashi stood on your left, sweeping his light along the house. There was nobody stood at the windows, but you experienced the sudden, undulating fear that someone, somewhere, was watching. "Where's Hinata?"

Kuroo stepped towards you, sucked in a breath, and then expelled it with the words: "We were waiting for you and Akaashi when a crow flew in and attacked us."

You stared at Kuroo blankly, chewing around his words. "A crow just randomly attacked you?" Even as you said it, you remembered the small black eyes staring at you from the trees, their knife-like talons barely missing your head.

Kuroo nodded, and your glance slid across to Tsukishima. "He's telling the truth," the blond said quietly as Kuroo pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and showed you the two long scratches along his arm.

"Shit," you muttered, reaching forward to inspect it. The bleeding had stopped, but the cut had raised an angry red welt along his skin. "We should bandage this, in case it gets infected."

Kuroo pulled his arm gently out of your grasp, dragging his sleeve back down. "I appreciate it, but the first aid can wait. First we need to find Hinata."

"Did he run off again?" Akaashi asked.

Kuroo hesitated. "More like he just disappeared."

"Disappeared?" The word felt cold in your mouth, and you shivered.

"One second he was there, then the crow came in and when everything settled down, he was gone. Neither of us saw or heard him leave."

You glanced across at Akaashi. "We heard someone upstairs, just a moment ago. Hinata was probably just afraid of the crow and ran off."

Kuroo and Tsukishima exchanged a look, and you saw the tall blond's frown deepen. "We checked upstairs. All of the rooms were empty."

You shrugged, trying to dispel your previous concerns. Now that you knew Hinata was missing, you figured it must have been him up there after all. "Well there's someone up there now. Come on."

"Wait," Kuroo said, grabbing your arm to stop you from leaving. "What about the person you saw?" He kept his voice low, but the others heard him anyway.

"What person?" Tsukishima asked.

You rolled your eyes, wriggling your arm free. "I didn't see a person. It just looked like someone had been standing at one of the windows. There was condensation on the glass, like a breath. It was probably nothing," you added.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

You narrowed your eyes at him. "I didn't want to scare Hinata, okay? But you said yourselves that you checked upstairs. There was nobody else there."

"We didn't look properly," Kuroo pointed out. "We were just looking for red hair, so we didn't go fully into the rooms."

"Then he's probably up there after all. Let's go find him before he falls through a ceiling or something."