1 Is it wrong to need you?

Just seven minutes ago, he had rejected a call, but the phone rang again, with the vibration becoming more insistent and violent with each passing moment. He could feel his annoyance boiling over, and he rejected it again.

『This again』

He thought to himself. But this time, the ring was strange, with a different pattern and much clearer. He checked his phone settings to see if something had happened, but another call came through, while Lain looked at him growing increasingly irritated.

『Give it a rest』

He quickly declined an unknown caller for the 69th time in an hour.

"All is well?", Lain, a girl he adored, questioned him with a lovely tilt of her head, seeing his expression as he denied the call from an unknown number with no caller ID.

"I keep getting these calls from an unknown number. I was hoping it was just a scammer looking for some fun, but whenever I answer, I either hear nothing or some weird beeps," Lefu explained, showing her his phone to satisfy her curiosity.

Lain, his girlfriend, furrowed her brows and looked at him."...did you try blocking their number?", she said something obvious, and Lefu had previously tried that, but still the issue continued. He shook his head and looked at his phone, then at Lain, who gazed at him with her normal calm eyes, oblivious to something...quite unsettling changing about them...due to the dimly lit street.

"I tried, but it didn't seem to stop them,"

He shook his head.

"I'm not sure why they're calling or what they want, but because blocking doesn't work no matter how hard I try, I've just..."

His phone's screen turned completely dark, which drew his attention immediately. As he tapped the side button again, the background shifted to the street in front of him.

"Given up?", she finished his sentence.

"Yep, and my phone is acting funny now", Lain became silent, and Lefu didn't notice any change in her body language. Usually, she showed interest when something caught her attention, so he assumed she took it lightly.

Strangely, on his phone, the time went crazy, with the digits surpassing thousands. "Weird," he muttered to himself while Lain stared at him with unwavering focus and her pitch-black eyes observed him. He tried to organise information from the changes in his phone and calmly looked at the surroundings area without showing his growing suspicion. He noticed a lit up street that way and gestured by pointing towards it.

"This way", he instructed her as they headed towards the light to figure out what to do next. But after the turn, the street was completely empty, with no lights in any of the buildings.

As they walked down the empty street, Lefu couldn't shake off the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. Only the sound of their synchronised footsteps soothed him and kept him sane enough to avoid panicking.

They continued walking when he heard a faint sound from behind, like someone whispering in his ear. He turned around, but no one was there. Just the soft rhythmic footsteps he heard from the frail girl walking next to him. She seemed to have grown a bit smaller since the last time they met and he noticed her legs got thinner. How did she lose this much in two weeks? He doubted she was the type to starve herself, frowned, and worried for her health. He did not have time to dwell on it as she stopped in her tracks.

"What is it?"

"You lost more weight, have you been eating?"

"Yes, I've ate more than I could handle in the past few weeks"

"Doesn't look like it"

She grew quiet and kept looking downwards the ground with her hair covering her face. A slight mannerism she's had for years now, but what troubled him was the lack of emotion on her face barely discernible. He grew heavily suspicious of her actions and the situation around him.

"What is it?"

She quickly turned and faced him, almost inhumanely. He took the decision not to look at it for fear of triggering it more.

"I just need to figure this out, don't worry".

He didn't waste any more time ruminating on what was unnecessary, and his normal nonchalant expression vanished as his dread grew, the uncertainty chilling him to the bone. He couldn't conceive of a rational way out of this situation as Lain turned around, she had a spasm of her arm that was clearly involuntary and looked painful. He was glancing down at his phone just in time and managed to avoid telling her he spotted her.

『That confirms it. It's a fucking skin-walker』