> January 6, 2010 <
It was a bitter morning. The sky, once bright and clear the day Mitsu had last walked beneath it, now sagged under a heavy gray, mirroring the shock and sorrow blanketing Xevera Subdivision.
News of the boy's brutal death had spread like wildfire. Each new detail hit harder than the last.
A quiet, unspoken dread gripped the town. People gathered around their televisions, watching grim reports play out like something from a nightmare.
At Mitsu's funeral, the church overflowed with mourners—neighbors, classmates, teachers, all dressed in somber black. His mother sat in the front pew, unmoving, her handkerchief clutched so tightly her knuckles had gone bone white.
Friends and family approached her one by one, their words of comfort soft, scripted, and utterly empty. Mitsu's father stood beside her, gaunt and expressionless, staring at the closed, simple wooden casket in front of them.
The boy they once knew—lively, rebellious, so painfully alive—was now just a memory, stolen by violence no one wanted to speak about directly. It shouldn't have ended like this. Not like this.
Each mourner stole glances at Mitsu's friends, who stood to the side like ghosts of guilt, pale and silent. Joshua, their so-called ringleader, couldn't meet anyone's eyes, his face flickering between disbelief and something worse.
Whispers slipped through the air like static. How could this have happened?
Mitsu had been young. He had time—until he didn't.
In the days that followed, the local news turned the story into a spectacle. Reporters gathered outside the manor, hands gesturing dramatically toward its crumbling fa?ade.
Clips of Mitsu's family played again and again—tear-streaked, stunned, locked in sorrow. His school photo, grainy and washed-out, showed him with a faint smirk that now felt too real, too close.
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"Local teenager Mitsu Fojitaru was found dead inside the abandoned manor just days after venturing in with friends," one anchor said, voice flat and rehearsed. "His death, police confirm, was caused by severe assault and gunshot wounds inflicted during an altercation with known criminals occupying the property."
The words didn't seem real. Even people who barely knew him felt like the world had tilted just a bit.
As news vans clogged the streets, neighbors started swapping stories, remembering Mitsu however they could. Some called him quiet and moody, others painted him as your average teenager—a little reckless, but harmless.
It didn't matter which version they believed. All of Xevera mourned in ripples, grief spreading slow and uneven across the subdivision.
In a cramped interview room at the station, Mitsu's friends sat under fluorescent lights, faces pale and fidgeting. They answered the detectives in low voices, dragging out each piece of the night with visible reluctance.
They spoke of the dare, the manor, the shadows that moved and the voices that shouldn't have been there. But when asked why they left him, the air tightened.
Joshua's eyes were rimmed red, his voice breaking as he stammered through half-finished excuses. Even he didn't seem to believe the words coming out of his mouth.
The officers scribbled everything down, cold and methodical. One detail after another stacked into a ledger of failure.
Two suspects were already in custody by then—caught at the scene days later, blood still staining their clothes. Their faces, blank and hardened, flashed across TV screens as they were led away in cuffs.
The arrests brought no comfort. If anything, the guilt weighed heavier on Mitsu's friends, suffocating and ever-present.
Outside the station, cameras swarmed. Reporters fired questions like bullets, looking for a headline, a quote, a soundbite to sell the tragedy.
Mitsu's mother, Jess, gave them one through cracked lips and tear-glossed eyes. She spoke of his last laugh, his last words—the last time she saw her son alive before they let him die in that dark place.
The entire town reeled. The case had cracked something open—a fear, a truth, a failure they could no longer ignore.
People whispered about the haunted manor and the neglected neighborhood, blaming shadows and broken fences. Some demanded the building be destroyed, others wanted security, curfews, answers.
Mitsu's death stopped being just a tragedy. It became a symbol of what happens when warnings go unheeded, when danger grows in silence, and when one wrong step takes everything away.
