Story The Paranormal Investigation Club's Daily Activities

[takki]

Hello, you who has happened to pass by my story thread! This is a story from my old quest RP that after a year of putting the story in hiatus*, I've finally decided to rewrite it!

Spoiler: hiatus reason

I have good reasons for this, with the most impactful factor being the loss of motivation, writer's block, and failing where to go from that current point (maybe all of those three can be summed up to just writer's block?)

My current idea for this was to revise the posts I initially made in the old quest rp, and try my best to honor the original choices while revising things and tying it up together to make the story more coherent and sensible, and in spite of the revisions I'll make, the essence of the original characters will still be present here. Maybe except for Aiko being Hiroshi's girlfriend, so I might have to remove that altogether while still keeping their interactions and chemistry almost unchanged.

Synopsis
This is a story of of Hiroshi and his four other friends, who are the only humans (so far) that remain in this demon-ridden world. They are only high school students in the illusion, yet they are but humans trying to survive together in this harsh world hidden under the facade of a normality; where in the day, it's a normal world, and on the other side of the planet, the true and ruined world appears, where demons and 'asleep humans' inhabit the Earth clueless of what was actually happening around them.

With the group granted supernatural powers after seeing through the illusion, they aspire to survive and find more humans who are awake and can see the real world, and any signs or evidence of what might have caused this phenomenon in the first place. But they have to be careful, because they won't easily get what they want.


But to those who have followed the original quest rp, thank you for following until the end! I'll write at my own pace so there's no guarantee for post length and duration. And I almost forgot to say, this story is mostly inspired from anime settings so if that's a pet peeve of yours, this may not be for you. Rest assured that it won't be the main focus of the story, but rather just a basis for the character chemistry and world lore.

 

[takki]

I didn't know why I transferred to a different school after finishing my second year in high school. I may have begged my parents to transfer me but I couldn't quite remember, my memories were blurry. As far as I remember, my old friends were all still going to that school. Back then, my reputation as the craziest, most extreme otaku was something that I cherished, because I get to talk to other students my age about the hobbies we enjoy, and without getting harshly judged by others. It didn't go as far as vandalizing inscribing an ancient Aztec message in school wall to contact aliens, or wearing a mecha pilot cosplay to school, however. But who needs those when I was already having the best time of my life? But enough of all those, why did I even transfer in the first place? I was already having fun. I was satisfied, yet something else was compelling me to do otherwise.

Maybe I wanted to have a normal, high school life. Having a girlfriend, joining a sports club, walking home or eating together with friends, having a study session at someone's house... I didn't get to experience that on my first two years as a high school student. Maybe that was the reason why I transferred. Akanotohana School is a newly established school near our house, so I only needed to walk to go to school, which really saves me money and time by spending less on commuting.

But in order to communicate with other people that doesn't have the same tastes as mine, I needed to abandon everything. I needed to change my full identity. It felt heartbreaking as I stocked away all my posters, light novels, and other anime peripherals inside my room, but I gradually started to adjust to the shift. I barely watch anime nowadays, compared to my old habit of no-lifeing and staying up the whole night just to finish a series. I started to actually enjoy reading fictional books. The school year hasn't started yet, but is this what it truly feels like to have a normal, non-otaku life?

But lately, I've been having these weird dreams. Nightmares, actually.

Kagawa Prefecture was ruined. Everything looked so gray and lifeless. The street was littered by rubble as the air reeked of powdered cement. Yet the houses and buildings, for some miraculous reason, were still very much intact. Then I saw the monsters. They looked like eldritch horrors that came from the spawns of Hell itself, each step of their terrifying being sounded like stepping on broken glass and wet slime, as they walked on the sidewalk as if they were a morally conscious creature. It was so surreal and impossibly scary, it felt absolutely terrifying. Maybe the dreams were an aftereffect of myself transitioning to a new personality, because I awoke to a strong headache that felt like my brain was being contracting.

But at the end, you, the reader, will understand why. You will understand the truth of this world, the reason for my dreams, and most importantly, why the world died a hundred years ago.

For now, let's keep it light, shall we? Classes start tomorrow in the morning and I'm going to make a good first impression by being early in the first years' morning assembly. Tomorrow was a day like any other day, yet unbeknownst to me, that was my last day as a normal high school student. Well, sort of.