Inner Demons
Title: Inner Demons
By: arashiforyou
Rating: R
Pairing/s: Ohmiya, not romantically
Genre: Horror, Psychological
Warnings: demons, blood, character death, graphic imagery
Summary: Nino had gone missing and was later found dead. While filming the final episode of his new drama, Ohno is determined to find out who killed his best friend.
Author Notes: For je_trick_or_fic 2016 event. So, I failed once again to write that fnaf arashi fic that someone requested. I am so sorry! I just couldn’t figure my plot for it. I thought I did it, but it’s hard writing a story that has only a character by himself majority of the time. This story is completely different than what I have commented in the Check ups. I’m also very sorry for submitting this very late. I had doubted myself, but I just love love Halloween. I could not give up in the end (I wrote this in one day...one day!). I drew some inspiration from the movie, The Conjuring, but it’s not entirely based on it. Enjoy!
“Demonic spirits don’t possess things. They possess people.” - Lorraine (The Conjuring 2013)
#
The news struck Ohno hard like a club to the face. Every TV channel was reporting the missing of Ninomiya Kazunari and the shocking result. He was dead.
Ohno sank to his knees, his eyes glued to his overly large TV monitor. A picture of Nino’s idol smile appeared with the words “Missing Celebrity Found Brutally Murdered in Own Apartment.” The tears came pouring out as Ohno wailed into his hands. His phone started ringing, but he didn’t bother answering. It might be his manager or another of his colleagues, but Ohno knew what the phone call was about.
We’re sorry for your lost. I can’t believe this is happening. What are we going to do? What can we do?
Ohno didn’t want to answer his phone. There was no point. His best friend was gone.
#
Nino had been missing for two days. The public didn’t know about it until after the company filed a missing report a day after he didn’t show up for work. It was unlike Nino to not answer his text or his manager’s calls. When the missing report went into effect, everyone in the company, including other Johnny idols, became worried. When the announcement was released, the media went haywire.
“Top Idol Goes Missing.” “Ninomiya Kazunari Kidnapped by Deranged Fans.” “Ninomiya Abandons Arashi for Good.”
The theories did not stop for almost twenty-four hours until the dreaded news finally arrived. The police had force their way into his apartment for clues but found him instead. Arashi’s managers, as well as the company executives, requested a temporarily halt in Arashi’s activities from the other broadcasting companies. Mainly to recover and give the members, as well as the staff and fans, time to grieve over their lost.
But Ohno didn’t have the luxury.
“The series cannot stop!” The drama director shouted across the meeting room. “We have reached the highest ratings since Hanzawa Naoki, and I won’t allow production to stop now.”
“You insensitive bastard!” Ohno’s manager shouted back. “One of our talents, practically a family member, has died! And all you care about is ratings?!”
“I’m not saying this isn’t a delicate time for us all,” the director said, slightly calmer. “I used to work with Ninomiya, and I already miss him. But look at Ohno.”
Ohno, himself, was absent from the meeting mentally. His eyes, dry now, gazed down at his hands. He mumbled almost inaudibly as if he was quietly casting a spell.
“His mindset is in the perfect condition for his character, now more than ever,” the director said. “His character in this drama goes through the exact same emotions at this point in the story. I don’t want to lose such raw expressions.”
“Playing a psychotic detective and going through a grievance are two different things,” Ohno’s manager stressed. “You can’t push him to work more when he’s going through a sensitive time in his life. Remember the contract!”
“Yes, I remember it,” the director sneered. “It also states that in the event should I see a potential breakthrough in either story writing or in development, I will be given the final saying and decision that will bring higher benefits and results to both Johnny Associates and the directing company.” The director pointed with his whole hand at Ohno, his eyes bulging out. “This is it!”
“Then I will come back with the executive’s consent to pull out Ohno from the drama!” The manager threatened. “Without your lead star, there will be no benefits,” sneering at the word, “for you or anyone.”
Ohno suddenly latched his hand onto his manager’s arm. He looked up from his hands and met his manager’s gaze.
“Don’t,” Ohno uttered. “I’ll do it.”
The manager’s brow pitched up, appalled. “Ohno, you can’t do this to yourself. Work should be your least priority now. All the other members have taken a short hiatus from their jobs. It’s completely understandable.”
“No, it’s not because of that,” Ohno continued in his low and somber tone. “Please. Let me finish this drama. I just…I can’t let this go undone. I don’t think Nino would want me to quit. He had supported me during the beginning of my filming. I want to see this through.”
His manager looked like he was about to object again, but the director butted in. “Excellent! I’m glad you still have a sense of duty left in you, Ohno. You have my respect.”
“I’m not doing this for you,” Ohno glared at the director. “And I don’t want your respect. You treat Nino’s death like it’s a minor setback. Once we finish this drama, I never want to work with you again.”
The director’s double chin appeared and he shrugged, as if the insult wasn’t a big deal to him. Ohno stood up and walked out of the meeting room without a final goodbye. He heard his manager’s footsteps following behind him.
“Well said, Ohno,” his manager nodded beside him. “I’ll turn in the request to Julie straight away not to associate with a man like him ever again. But if you don’t mind me asking, why do you still want to film this drama. This role is your most difficult one yet, and I can see it’s been draining you even before Nino went missing.”
Ohno sighed heavily, his eyes unable to meet with his manager. “Do you remember how I tend to indulge deeply into an acting role?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes when I get into the mind of this detective…,” Ohno sucked in his lips, hesitating to speak his next words. “I’m able to see things more clearly. Everything starts making logical sense.”
From the corner of his eye, Ohno saw his manager slowly nodded as if absorbing Ohno’s confession. “The drama synopsis did describe your character as a mad genius. Are you saying you’ll continue playing this role as a coping method?”
“No,” Ohno said. “I’m going to find out who killed Nino.”
#
That night, Ohno was given the script to the final episode of the drama. He read through the script and got into the mind of his role, memorizing his lines and imagining the scenes before him. The final mystery of the drama made sense story-wise, but Ohno was still lost in the reasoning.
Why did the villain kill his victim? What purpose did he had? And what was the victim thinking in his final hours?
The script suddenly seemed bland to Ohno, and he put it aside. He walked into his living room where he had set up as his mini art studio. His large painting canvas took up most of his apartment wall, but the painting wasn’t finished. Ohno got into the habit of painting murals when he was filming a drama, to capture his thoughts and feelings as he goes along with his character’s journey through the story.
His current role was a complicated one: a deranged detective determined to find culprits through unorthodox means such as staging realistic reenactments. Ohno’s painting captured his character thus far in harsh shades of red, black, and rustic brown. It was probably his most abstract piece yet. Human limbs reached out from below as if trying to pull things under. Mutilated faces stretched across the canvas, their eyes sunken in like skulls.
But there remains a blank spot in the center of the canvas. The missing piece to Ohno’s artwork, as well as the final trait of his character that he still could not understand.
Ohno placed his hands on his hips, standing firmly in front of his work and feeling dissatisfied.
“Why do you do this to yourself?” Ohno asked his character. “Why do you hurt others just so you can catch the villain?”
His painting remained silent.
Ohno glanced down at his paint buckets and squatted down in front of them. He got new paints since the beginning of his projects-new drama equaled new supplies. He started out simple when the filming began. But as time went by, Ohno noticed his paints started to change. Their meaning became darker, as if something tainted them along with his character. It was both pleasing but also horrifying. Not only was his character changing with each passing episode, Ohno’s art style was also changing.
He dipped his wooden paint stirrer and swirled inside the blue paint bucket. In the beginning, the blue color was vibrant and unmistakably blue. Now, it was a darker tone, almost rich blue violet. Ohno scrunched his eyes shut, squeezing tight, and then opening them again.
Still blue violet.
“It’s not the color changing,” a voice spoke in Ohno’s head. “Your perception is changing.”
Ohno stood up and spun around in place, facing back at his painting. His character was positioned on the far edge of the canvas, a darkened self-portrait of himself looking down at his hands with parted lips. He painted a crown on his head and gave himself a feminine-like face. It remained unmoving.
Though it was Ohno’s internal voice, it was his character speaking.
“A darker tone means a darker soul,” his character chimed. “You are still grieving over your friend’s death. Your emotions will cloud your judgement.”
“It’s only natural,” Ohno uttered back at his painting. “Nino was part of my life for so long, and now…he’s no longer here.”
“Is he?” The voice challenged. “Why don’t you paint him? And see where it leads you?”
Ohno glanced down at his paints. They all seemed darker, as if bleeding into a single tone. He trembled as he picked up his favorite paintbrush and dipped into the yellowish-brown shade. Wiping off the excess on the bucket rim, Ohno raised his paintbrush and stared at the blank space on his canvas. His thoughts veered away from his drama, his work, his character. All he could think of was his friend.
The tears blurred his vision. He couldn’t truly see where his hand was moving. The paintbrush swished back and forth across the canvas. Ohno’s throat felt tight and his sobbing grew louder until he was wailing in his living room.
He dropped his paintbrush. It rolled, leaving dabs of paint on his hardwood floor.
In the center of his canvas, Nino curled in a fetal position. His body slashed in varies areas. His face was carved but still recognizable. But the amount of blood pooling at his feet seemed to feed the gnawing hands at the bottom of the mural. Ohno could almost hear Nino’s heartbeat on the canvas. A faint scream echoed in Ohno’s eardrums as Ohno imagined the terrifying scene Nino had to endure.
This was the truth of Nino’s death. A brutal and bloody death.
Then, a new feeling boiled inside Ohno. It was hot, and Ohno’s breathing grew louder with each intake. He clenched his teeth and his brow furrowed deeply.
“Whoever did this…,” Ohno growled low, “…I will make sure they’ll feel how Nino felt.”
“Even if it means your life?” The voice asked, in a cold calm mood compare to Ohno’s.
“I could care less about my career now,” Ohno said, glaring up at his dark self-portrait. “Nino did not deserved this kind of death. I will find the murderer… and I will make him bleed.”
#
Shooting the final scenes were a breeze. Ohno delivered his lines expertly and well in-tune with his character’s persona. Majority of the scenes were shot during the day. The climax will be held at night in an abandoned hospital.
The final episode involved a case of a runaway convict who was accusing of killing his wife. When the convict escaped, more murder cases popped up in the same manner of killing. The police in the drama automatically assumed it was their prison break murderer, but Ohno’s character did not believe so.
At the time when the convict committed his crime, it was in the abandoned hospital that was once in full function. The hospital, in the drama, was shut down for twenty years since the crime. Thus, the final confrontation stage for the copycat murderer and Ohno’s character became the drama’s climax.
Ohno sat in his folded chair with a heavy windbreaker coat, waiting for his cue to get on stage. The night was cold, and the crew team were setting up last minute props for the scene. Ohno glanced down at his hands again, mumbled quietly his lines back to himself.
Next to him was his co-star, Kubota Masataka, the runaway culprit’s son who turned out to be the copycat murderer in the drama.
“This is it, huh,” Kubota uttered. A puff of white smoke escaped his lips. “This place really sets the mood. I can’t believe we have to film inside a real abandoned hospital.”
Ohno just hummed in response. The silence hung between them thickly.
“Ohno-san,” Kubota spoke, more softly. “Please let me express my condolences. Ninomiya was a great person. He was always kind to me, and I wish I had worked with him. I’m truly sorry for your lost.”
Without looking up, Ohno reached his hand out and patted Kubota’s head. He heard his co-star sniff, but Ohno remained unaffected.
He was no longer Ohno Satoshi, but the mad detective.
“Ohno! Kubota! Head to your starting point!” The director assistant called to him.
“Good luck,” Kubota cheered as they both stood up.
Ohno shed off his coat and headed inside the dilapidated hospital with his co-star. Part of the atmosphere of the filming was a sense of loneliness. To capture this effect, the director used a new method in filming the drama: positioned cameras with no crew present. This allow the actors to feel completely immersed in their roles and their surroundings. Without staff members or visible cameras, the actors performed better and provided more natural impromptu lines.
And the audience loved it.
Ohno and Kubota walked alone inside the hospital, climbing up the stairs to the third floor and followed the arrows to the first mark of their position.
“I’ll be going ahead then,” Kubota uttered as he walked alone to his position.
Ohno was left at the end of a hallway, staring down into the darkness where the culprit waited for him at the other end. He watched Kubota’s back. His eyes fluttered for he thought it was Nino. The truth was at the end of the hallway. The script explained that Ohno’s character will go through a series of flashbacks leading up to the final conclusion of the drama’s mystery. He was instructed to walk down the hallway with a cold and emotionless expression.
“Cameras ready,” an overhead speak sounded throughout the building.
Kubota completely disappeared into the darkness. The longer he stared down the dark hallway, the more Ohno’s mind switched to something different…a different time…
“And action!”
#
His painting wasn’t coming together at all. Even after three episodes of filming, none of the colors seemed right to Ohno. In his frustration, he hurled his paintbrushes at the canvas. A rather childish tantrum, but Ohno could not get rid of his childish personality. He was still Ohno Satoshi and not the character he was supposed to play as. His director had scolded at him for not portraying the character correctly.
“This isn’t working,” Ohno grunted as he picked up another unopened paint bucket. “Why can’t I get this stupid character right?”
His stubbornness refused to give up on his personal painting challenge. But his self-disappointment also hindered his ability to paint the way he wanted. It was a negative spiral of failure. Ohno grunted as he pry the paint bucket lid, but it wouldn’t budge.
Ohno clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Oh, come on! Not you too.”
He took up a firmer stance, as if his footing will help open the blasted bucket. He dug his nails under the paint lid and lifted, grunting louder as he did so.
The lid finally popped open, but so did his middle fingernail.
Ohno cried out in pain, dropping the bucket and spilling both paint and blood on the floor. Out of instinct, he brought his open fingertip in his mouth and set the paint bucket upright with his other hand. He dashed towards the bathroom and ran his finger under running water. Thankfully, he had sanitation and enough gauze to treat himself properly. It took nearly a whole roll until the bleeding stopped.
“Damn it,” Ohno hissed as he walked back to his living room to see the mess he made. “First my painting is ruined and now…”
Ohno stopped in his tracks as he stared down at the spilled paint. His fingernail laid on the blue paint mixed with his blood. His heartbeat sounded louder in his ears as he kneeled down to examine closer. He picked up his fingernail and swirled it with the paint and his blood.
The color changed. Something clicked inside Ohno. Everything was slowly starting to make sense. The natural blue color represented normality and reality, but Ohno’s blood color represented Ohno’s drama character: a person tainting reality around him to bring about a new image, a dark truth.
Ohno quickly jogged back to his bathroom and snatched up his bloody gauze in his trash bin. He hurried back to his living room and dabbed a few specks of paint on the gauze. Massaging the two colors together, Ohno got a magnificent blue violet color. Something he could find in the store, but its meaning could not be bought.
A wave of inspiration took hold of Ohno and he got back into painting.
The canvas became alive. The images seemed to pop out. When he ran out of gauze, Ohno pricked his finger, his palms, and then mixed in a small dish with paint.
He was finally able to complete his self-portrait of his character.
“We finally meet,” his character spoke. Ohno heard it as his own voice, but it sounded as though it came from the canvas. “I will teach how to create a masterpiece.”
That night, Ohno dreamed of a man’s body with a woman’s face wearing an elegant crown and riding a camel across the desert. The rider had followers behind, the number two hundred popped in Ohno’s head, and they carried trumpets and cymbals with them. The rider’s voice boomed in Ohno’s dream. He couldn’t make out what the rider was saying, but the words seemed to break into Ohno’s body. A cold chill seeped inside as well as a flood of knowledge that Ohno never knew. In his dream, his painting was finished and it looked beautiful, but his hands were dirty and caked with dry paint peeling away. A rustic brown color.
Since then, Ohno was deeply invested into his character. Everywhere he went, he was his character. The way he walked, talked, and behaved around others was different. Ohno kept mostly to himself with his eyes on his hands and his lips muttering quietly.
But there were those who were not pleased with his method acting.
“You need to eat, Ohno,” Nino persisted. He invited, dragged, Ohno to his house for the first time and cooked dinner. A large pot of meat and potatoes with bowls of dark leafy greens laid out on Nino’s dining table. When Nino goes out, he goes all out. “You are getting paler and paler every day. So please, just eat and forget for one hour about your drama.”
Ohno glanced down at the food, all rich in iron. When he looked down at his hands, he saw the prick marks old and new scattered across his fingers and palms. He had managed to fill one paint bucket with enough of his blood to get the right color richness. But the cost was immense, and he still had more paint buckets to fill.
“You eat it,” Ohno uttered. “I’m going home.”
Nino darted forward and grabbed Ohno’s wrist. “What have you been doing with yourself?! Why are your hands like that?”
“Let go of me!” Ohno said louder, flinging his arm away. “I have to finish my painting. I have to-“
“Eat the damn food! I only want to help you!” Nino’s face turned slightly red, his brow deeply furrowed and his fists clenched.
The color on his face allured Ohno. He couldn’t stop staring. The way the red blend with the pink skin…it was the perfect tone…
The voice inside Ohno’s head spoke for him. His voice sound unfamiliar even to his own ears, even the words. Nino’s eyes grew round, and his skin shade turned pale as well.
Ohno couldn’t remember what happened. Only that he returned home and got more than half of his canvas completed. There were empty tupperwares scattered across the living room, drips of red liquid lingered inside the plastic containers. His hands were soaked in “new” paint.
#
Ohno stopped in his tracks, trembling head to toe and breathing irregularly. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking as he started down at them. The prick marks and cuts covered nearly every inch of his hands. The scars appeared more red and fresh as if they reopened. They were bleeding. He began hyperventilating, letting out short fearful cries, and the dark hallway began to spin.
“Whoever did this…,” Ohno recalled his own voice, “I will make sure they’ll feel how Nino felt.”
Ohno took off running down the hall.
“Even if it means your life?”
I will find the murderer… and I will make him bleed.
The final act was the reveal of the truth, the confrontation of the true murderer of the drama. And Ohno found it.
At the end of the hallway, he spotted Kubota giving him a confused look. Running wasn’t part of the script. Kubota held his hand out as if to stop him, but Ohno wasn’t aiming for him. He jumped through the window and plummeted down three stories with glass shards following behind him.
#
They claimed it was attempted suicide, and Sho and Jun believed it. Ohno was the second closest member to Nino out of all of them. But Aiba did not believe it was suicide. Since Nino went missing, Ohno had taken it worse than Aiba, the one who had been friends with Nino the longest. The more he watched Ohno’s behavior, the more Aiba wished it wasn’t true.
But he remembered the feeling.
Years ago when Aiba and Ohno went on a filming task to find ghosts, Aiba felt that cold presences lingering inside that room, and the radio spoke clearly to him. Aiba saw and heard things that he could not speak openly. Not because he thought no one would believe him, but he simply…couldn’t.
The thing held him back, holding him in place, before he passed out. Since then, Aiba knew the signs. Ohno was brimming with it, and Aiba was helpless. It was worse than Aiba had gone through. At the time when he was possessed, Aiba still held on a bit of himself.
Ohno, on the other, was lost from the beginning.
“You didn’t wanted to kill yourself,” Aiba muttered to Ohno who laid still in the hospital bed. “You wanted to kill that…thing.” He reached out and held Ohno’s hand. It was warm. “Did you? Did you make it?”
Only the heartbeat monitor responded.
Suddenly, the door opened and Sho and Jun scrolled in, looking slightly haggard but scared.
“We went to his apartment,” Sho started. “That painting he was making for his drama…it’s not right.”
“What do you mean?” Aiba frowned at them.
Jun came around the bed while swiping across his smartphone. “This is what he was painting.”
Aiba glanced down at the phone and gasped. A chill ran down his spine, but he couldn’t take his eyes away from Jun’s phone.
Ohno’s living room was covered in blood. His paint buckets dripped in dark red as well as his paintbrushes. His canvas was a mix of red and brown, most likely dried up blood. But the painting itself was a splattered mess in a horrifying manner. The only image Aiba could make out was a man with a woman’s face, wearing a crown and riding a camel…
“What made him create such a thing?” Sho whispered.
Aiba held Jun’s phone in his own hand, zooming in and out at certain locations of the photo. At last he spotted a scratch marking on Ohno’s hardwood floor. A fingernail laid next to the writing.
“Sho, do you know what this means?” Aiba said, zooming in on the writing. “It might be a clue on what drove Ohno insane.”
Sho glanced over Aiba’s shoulder, his eyes squinting, trying to make out the writing through all the paint and blood.
The End
#
Ending Author Notes: Paimon, one of the Kings of Hell with two hundred legions under his rule. For more about Paimon, check out Wikipedia.
Anyways, my deepest apologizes for having such an ending! I literally wrote this in one day due to my stubbornness in wanting to participate in the event, and because I love Halloween! If I had more time, I would have flush this story out more, but my aim was to keep it simple on demon possession. And yes, I made a reference of Arashi’s USO Japan episode! (who hasn’t!?) I left out the gory parts of Nino’s death as I figured the psychological horror would be good enough. I tend to keep my horror stories open like this because the horror is never over; it’s kinda my style :3
But overall, thank you for reading.
By: arashiforyou
Rating: R
Pairing/s: Ohmiya, not romantically
Genre: Horror, Psychological
Warnings: demons, blood, character death, graphic imagery
Summary: Nino had gone missing and was later found dead. While filming the final episode of his new drama, Ohno is determined to find out who killed his best friend.
Author Notes: For je_trick_or_fic 2016 event. So, I failed once again to write that fnaf arashi fic that someone requested. I am so sorry! I just couldn’t figure my plot for it. I thought I did it, but it’s hard writing a story that has only a character by himself majority of the time. This story is completely different than what I have commented in the Check ups. I’m also very sorry for submitting this very late. I had doubted myself, but I just love love Halloween. I could not give up in the end (I wrote this in one day...one day!). I drew some inspiration from the movie, The Conjuring, but it’s not entirely based on it. Enjoy!
“Demonic spirits don’t possess things. They possess people.” - Lorraine (The Conjuring 2013)
#
The news struck Ohno hard like a club to the face. Every TV channel was reporting the missing of Ninomiya Kazunari and the shocking result. He was dead.
Ohno sank to his knees, his eyes glued to his overly large TV monitor. A picture of Nino’s idol smile appeared with the words “Missing Celebrity Found Brutally Murdered in Own Apartment.” The tears came pouring out as Ohno wailed into his hands. His phone started ringing, but he didn’t bother answering. It might be his manager or another of his colleagues, but Ohno knew what the phone call was about.
We’re sorry for your lost. I can’t believe this is happening. What are we going to do? What can we do?
Ohno didn’t want to answer his phone. There was no point. His best friend was gone.
#
Nino had been missing for two days. The public didn’t know about it until after the company filed a missing report a day after he didn’t show up for work. It was unlike Nino to not answer his text or his manager’s calls. When the missing report went into effect, everyone in the company, including other Johnny idols, became worried. When the announcement was released, the media went haywire.
“Top Idol Goes Missing.” “Ninomiya Kazunari Kidnapped by Deranged Fans.” “Ninomiya Abandons Arashi for Good.”
The theories did not stop for almost twenty-four hours until the dreaded news finally arrived. The police had force their way into his apartment for clues but found him instead. Arashi’s managers, as well as the company executives, requested a temporarily halt in Arashi’s activities from the other broadcasting companies. Mainly to recover and give the members, as well as the staff and fans, time to grieve over their lost.
But Ohno didn’t have the luxury.
“The series cannot stop!” The drama director shouted across the meeting room. “We have reached the highest ratings since Hanzawa Naoki, and I won’t allow production to stop now.”
“You insensitive bastard!” Ohno’s manager shouted back. “One of our talents, practically a family member, has died! And all you care about is ratings?!”
“I’m not saying this isn’t a delicate time for us all,” the director said, slightly calmer. “I used to work with Ninomiya, and I already miss him. But look at Ohno.”
Ohno, himself, was absent from the meeting mentally. His eyes, dry now, gazed down at his hands. He mumbled almost inaudibly as if he was quietly casting a spell.
“His mindset is in the perfect condition for his character, now more than ever,” the director said. “His character in this drama goes through the exact same emotions at this point in the story. I don’t want to lose such raw expressions.”
“Playing a psychotic detective and going through a grievance are two different things,” Ohno’s manager stressed. “You can’t push him to work more when he’s going through a sensitive time in his life. Remember the contract!”
“Yes, I remember it,” the director sneered. “It also states that in the event should I see a potential breakthrough in either story writing or in development, I will be given the final saying and decision that will bring higher benefits and results to both Johnny Associates and the directing company.” The director pointed with his whole hand at Ohno, his eyes bulging out. “This is it!”
“Then I will come back with the executive’s consent to pull out Ohno from the drama!” The manager threatened. “Without your lead star, there will be no benefits,” sneering at the word, “for you or anyone.”
Ohno suddenly latched his hand onto his manager’s arm. He looked up from his hands and met his manager’s gaze.
“Don’t,” Ohno uttered. “I’ll do it.”
The manager’s brow pitched up, appalled. “Ohno, you can’t do this to yourself. Work should be your least priority now. All the other members have taken a short hiatus from their jobs. It’s completely understandable.”
“No, it’s not because of that,” Ohno continued in his low and somber tone. “Please. Let me finish this drama. I just…I can’t let this go undone. I don’t think Nino would want me to quit. He had supported me during the beginning of my filming. I want to see this through.”
His manager looked like he was about to object again, but the director butted in. “Excellent! I’m glad you still have a sense of duty left in you, Ohno. You have my respect.”
“I’m not doing this for you,” Ohno glared at the director. “And I don’t want your respect. You treat Nino’s death like it’s a minor setback. Once we finish this drama, I never want to work with you again.”
The director’s double chin appeared and he shrugged, as if the insult wasn’t a big deal to him. Ohno stood up and walked out of the meeting room without a final goodbye. He heard his manager’s footsteps following behind him.
“Well said, Ohno,” his manager nodded beside him. “I’ll turn in the request to Julie straight away not to associate with a man like him ever again. But if you don’t mind me asking, why do you still want to film this drama. This role is your most difficult one yet, and I can see it’s been draining you even before Nino went missing.”
Ohno sighed heavily, his eyes unable to meet with his manager. “Do you remember how I tend to indulge deeply into an acting role?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes when I get into the mind of this detective…,” Ohno sucked in his lips, hesitating to speak his next words. “I’m able to see things more clearly. Everything starts making logical sense.”
From the corner of his eye, Ohno saw his manager slowly nodded as if absorbing Ohno’s confession. “The drama synopsis did describe your character as a mad genius. Are you saying you’ll continue playing this role as a coping method?”
“No,” Ohno said. “I’m going to find out who killed Nino.”
#
That night, Ohno was given the script to the final episode of the drama. He read through the script and got into the mind of his role, memorizing his lines and imagining the scenes before him. The final mystery of the drama made sense story-wise, but Ohno was still lost in the reasoning.
Why did the villain kill his victim? What purpose did he had? And what was the victim thinking in his final hours?
The script suddenly seemed bland to Ohno, and he put it aside. He walked into his living room where he had set up as his mini art studio. His large painting canvas took up most of his apartment wall, but the painting wasn’t finished. Ohno got into the habit of painting murals when he was filming a drama, to capture his thoughts and feelings as he goes along with his character’s journey through the story.
His current role was a complicated one: a deranged detective determined to find culprits through unorthodox means such as staging realistic reenactments. Ohno’s painting captured his character thus far in harsh shades of red, black, and rustic brown. It was probably his most abstract piece yet. Human limbs reached out from below as if trying to pull things under. Mutilated faces stretched across the canvas, their eyes sunken in like skulls.
But there remains a blank spot in the center of the canvas. The missing piece to Ohno’s artwork, as well as the final trait of his character that he still could not understand.
Ohno placed his hands on his hips, standing firmly in front of his work and feeling dissatisfied.
“Why do you do this to yourself?” Ohno asked his character. “Why do you hurt others just so you can catch the villain?”
His painting remained silent.
Ohno glanced down at his paint buckets and squatted down in front of them. He got new paints since the beginning of his projects-new drama equaled new supplies. He started out simple when the filming began. But as time went by, Ohno noticed his paints started to change. Their meaning became darker, as if something tainted them along with his character. It was both pleasing but also horrifying. Not only was his character changing with each passing episode, Ohno’s art style was also changing.
He dipped his wooden paint stirrer and swirled inside the blue paint bucket. In the beginning, the blue color was vibrant and unmistakably blue. Now, it was a darker tone, almost rich blue violet. Ohno scrunched his eyes shut, squeezing tight, and then opening them again.
Still blue violet.
“It’s not the color changing,” a voice spoke in Ohno’s head. “Your perception is changing.”
Ohno stood up and spun around in place, facing back at his painting. His character was positioned on the far edge of the canvas, a darkened self-portrait of himself looking down at his hands with parted lips. He painted a crown on his head and gave himself a feminine-like face. It remained unmoving.
Though it was Ohno’s internal voice, it was his character speaking.
“A darker tone means a darker soul,” his character chimed. “You are still grieving over your friend’s death. Your emotions will cloud your judgement.”
“It’s only natural,” Ohno uttered back at his painting. “Nino was part of my life for so long, and now…he’s no longer here.”
“Is he?” The voice challenged. “Why don’t you paint him? And see where it leads you?”
Ohno glanced down at his paints. They all seemed darker, as if bleeding into a single tone. He trembled as he picked up his favorite paintbrush and dipped into the yellowish-brown shade. Wiping off the excess on the bucket rim, Ohno raised his paintbrush and stared at the blank space on his canvas. His thoughts veered away from his drama, his work, his character. All he could think of was his friend.
The tears blurred his vision. He couldn’t truly see where his hand was moving. The paintbrush swished back and forth across the canvas. Ohno’s throat felt tight and his sobbing grew louder until he was wailing in his living room.
He dropped his paintbrush. It rolled, leaving dabs of paint on his hardwood floor.
In the center of his canvas, Nino curled in a fetal position. His body slashed in varies areas. His face was carved but still recognizable. But the amount of blood pooling at his feet seemed to feed the gnawing hands at the bottom of the mural. Ohno could almost hear Nino’s heartbeat on the canvas. A faint scream echoed in Ohno’s eardrums as Ohno imagined the terrifying scene Nino had to endure.
This was the truth of Nino’s death. A brutal and bloody death.
Then, a new feeling boiled inside Ohno. It was hot, and Ohno’s breathing grew louder with each intake. He clenched his teeth and his brow furrowed deeply.
“Whoever did this…,” Ohno growled low, “…I will make sure they’ll feel how Nino felt.”
“Even if it means your life?” The voice asked, in a cold calm mood compare to Ohno’s.
“I could care less about my career now,” Ohno said, glaring up at his dark self-portrait. “Nino did not deserved this kind of death. I will find the murderer… and I will make him bleed.”
#
Shooting the final scenes were a breeze. Ohno delivered his lines expertly and well in-tune with his character’s persona. Majority of the scenes were shot during the day. The climax will be held at night in an abandoned hospital.
The final episode involved a case of a runaway convict who was accusing of killing his wife. When the convict escaped, more murder cases popped up in the same manner of killing. The police in the drama automatically assumed it was their prison break murderer, but Ohno’s character did not believe so.
At the time when the convict committed his crime, it was in the abandoned hospital that was once in full function. The hospital, in the drama, was shut down for twenty years since the crime. Thus, the final confrontation stage for the copycat murderer and Ohno’s character became the drama’s climax.
Ohno sat in his folded chair with a heavy windbreaker coat, waiting for his cue to get on stage. The night was cold, and the crew team were setting up last minute props for the scene. Ohno glanced down at his hands again, mumbled quietly his lines back to himself.
Next to him was his co-star, Kubota Masataka, the runaway culprit’s son who turned out to be the copycat murderer in the drama.
“This is it, huh,” Kubota uttered. A puff of white smoke escaped his lips. “This place really sets the mood. I can’t believe we have to film inside a real abandoned hospital.”
Ohno just hummed in response. The silence hung between them thickly.
“Ohno-san,” Kubota spoke, more softly. “Please let me express my condolences. Ninomiya was a great person. He was always kind to me, and I wish I had worked with him. I’m truly sorry for your lost.”
Without looking up, Ohno reached his hand out and patted Kubota’s head. He heard his co-star sniff, but Ohno remained unaffected.
He was no longer Ohno Satoshi, but the mad detective.
“Ohno! Kubota! Head to your starting point!” The director assistant called to him.
“Good luck,” Kubota cheered as they both stood up.
Ohno shed off his coat and headed inside the dilapidated hospital with his co-star. Part of the atmosphere of the filming was a sense of loneliness. To capture this effect, the director used a new method in filming the drama: positioned cameras with no crew present. This allow the actors to feel completely immersed in their roles and their surroundings. Without staff members or visible cameras, the actors performed better and provided more natural impromptu lines.
And the audience loved it.
Ohno and Kubota walked alone inside the hospital, climbing up the stairs to the third floor and followed the arrows to the first mark of their position.
“I’ll be going ahead then,” Kubota uttered as he walked alone to his position.
Ohno was left at the end of a hallway, staring down into the darkness where the culprit waited for him at the other end. He watched Kubota’s back. His eyes fluttered for he thought it was Nino. The truth was at the end of the hallway. The script explained that Ohno’s character will go through a series of flashbacks leading up to the final conclusion of the drama’s mystery. He was instructed to walk down the hallway with a cold and emotionless expression.
“Cameras ready,” an overhead speak sounded throughout the building.
Kubota completely disappeared into the darkness. The longer he stared down the dark hallway, the more Ohno’s mind switched to something different…a different time…
“And action!”
#
His painting wasn’t coming together at all. Even after three episodes of filming, none of the colors seemed right to Ohno. In his frustration, he hurled his paintbrushes at the canvas. A rather childish tantrum, but Ohno could not get rid of his childish personality. He was still Ohno Satoshi and not the character he was supposed to play as. His director had scolded at him for not portraying the character correctly.
“This isn’t working,” Ohno grunted as he picked up another unopened paint bucket. “Why can’t I get this stupid character right?”
His stubbornness refused to give up on his personal painting challenge. But his self-disappointment also hindered his ability to paint the way he wanted. It was a negative spiral of failure. Ohno grunted as he pry the paint bucket lid, but it wouldn’t budge.
Ohno clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Oh, come on! Not you too.”
He took up a firmer stance, as if his footing will help open the blasted bucket. He dug his nails under the paint lid and lifted, grunting louder as he did so.
The lid finally popped open, but so did his middle fingernail.
Ohno cried out in pain, dropping the bucket and spilling both paint and blood on the floor. Out of instinct, he brought his open fingertip in his mouth and set the paint bucket upright with his other hand. He dashed towards the bathroom and ran his finger under running water. Thankfully, he had sanitation and enough gauze to treat himself properly. It took nearly a whole roll until the bleeding stopped.
“Damn it,” Ohno hissed as he walked back to his living room to see the mess he made. “First my painting is ruined and now…”
Ohno stopped in his tracks as he stared down at the spilled paint. His fingernail laid on the blue paint mixed with his blood. His heartbeat sounded louder in his ears as he kneeled down to examine closer. He picked up his fingernail and swirled it with the paint and his blood.
The color changed. Something clicked inside Ohno. Everything was slowly starting to make sense. The natural blue color represented normality and reality, but Ohno’s blood color represented Ohno’s drama character: a person tainting reality around him to bring about a new image, a dark truth.
Ohno quickly jogged back to his bathroom and snatched up his bloody gauze in his trash bin. He hurried back to his living room and dabbed a few specks of paint on the gauze. Massaging the two colors together, Ohno got a magnificent blue violet color. Something he could find in the store, but its meaning could not be bought.
A wave of inspiration took hold of Ohno and he got back into painting.
The canvas became alive. The images seemed to pop out. When he ran out of gauze, Ohno pricked his finger, his palms, and then mixed in a small dish with paint.
He was finally able to complete his self-portrait of his character.
“We finally meet,” his character spoke. Ohno heard it as his own voice, but it sounded as though it came from the canvas. “I will teach how to create a masterpiece.”
That night, Ohno dreamed of a man’s body with a woman’s face wearing an elegant crown and riding a camel across the desert. The rider had followers behind, the number two hundred popped in Ohno’s head, and they carried trumpets and cymbals with them. The rider’s voice boomed in Ohno’s dream. He couldn’t make out what the rider was saying, but the words seemed to break into Ohno’s body. A cold chill seeped inside as well as a flood of knowledge that Ohno never knew. In his dream, his painting was finished and it looked beautiful, but his hands were dirty and caked with dry paint peeling away. A rustic brown color.
Since then, Ohno was deeply invested into his character. Everywhere he went, he was his character. The way he walked, talked, and behaved around others was different. Ohno kept mostly to himself with his eyes on his hands and his lips muttering quietly.
But there were those who were not pleased with his method acting.
“You need to eat, Ohno,” Nino persisted. He invited, dragged, Ohno to his house for the first time and cooked dinner. A large pot of meat and potatoes with bowls of dark leafy greens laid out on Nino’s dining table. When Nino goes out, he goes all out. “You are getting paler and paler every day. So please, just eat and forget for one hour about your drama.”
Ohno glanced down at the food, all rich in iron. When he looked down at his hands, he saw the prick marks old and new scattered across his fingers and palms. He had managed to fill one paint bucket with enough of his blood to get the right color richness. But the cost was immense, and he still had more paint buckets to fill.
“You eat it,” Ohno uttered. “I’m going home.”
Nino darted forward and grabbed Ohno’s wrist. “What have you been doing with yourself?! Why are your hands like that?”
“Let go of me!” Ohno said louder, flinging his arm away. “I have to finish my painting. I have to-“
“Eat the damn food! I only want to help you!” Nino’s face turned slightly red, his brow deeply furrowed and his fists clenched.
The color on his face allured Ohno. He couldn’t stop staring. The way the red blend with the pink skin…it was the perfect tone…
The voice inside Ohno’s head spoke for him. His voice sound unfamiliar even to his own ears, even the words. Nino’s eyes grew round, and his skin shade turned pale as well.
Ohno couldn’t remember what happened. Only that he returned home and got more than half of his canvas completed. There were empty tupperwares scattered across the living room, drips of red liquid lingered inside the plastic containers. His hands were soaked in “new” paint.
#
Ohno stopped in his tracks, trembling head to toe and breathing irregularly. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking as he started down at them. The prick marks and cuts covered nearly every inch of his hands. The scars appeared more red and fresh as if they reopened. They were bleeding. He began hyperventilating, letting out short fearful cries, and the dark hallway began to spin.
“Whoever did this…,” Ohno recalled his own voice, “I will make sure they’ll feel how Nino felt.”
Ohno took off running down the hall.
“Even if it means your life?”
I will find the murderer… and I will make him bleed.
The final act was the reveal of the truth, the confrontation of the true murderer of the drama. And Ohno found it.
At the end of the hallway, he spotted Kubota giving him a confused look. Running wasn’t part of the script. Kubota held his hand out as if to stop him, but Ohno wasn’t aiming for him. He jumped through the window and plummeted down three stories with glass shards following behind him.
#
They claimed it was attempted suicide, and Sho and Jun believed it. Ohno was the second closest member to Nino out of all of them. But Aiba did not believe it was suicide. Since Nino went missing, Ohno had taken it worse than Aiba, the one who had been friends with Nino the longest. The more he watched Ohno’s behavior, the more Aiba wished it wasn’t true.
But he remembered the feeling.
Years ago when Aiba and Ohno went on a filming task to find ghosts, Aiba felt that cold presences lingering inside that room, and the radio spoke clearly to him. Aiba saw and heard things that he could not speak openly. Not because he thought no one would believe him, but he simply…couldn’t.
The thing held him back, holding him in place, before he passed out. Since then, Aiba knew the signs. Ohno was brimming with it, and Aiba was helpless. It was worse than Aiba had gone through. At the time when he was possessed, Aiba still held on a bit of himself.
Ohno, on the other, was lost from the beginning.
“You didn’t wanted to kill yourself,” Aiba muttered to Ohno who laid still in the hospital bed. “You wanted to kill that…thing.” He reached out and held Ohno’s hand. It was warm. “Did you? Did you make it?”
Only the heartbeat monitor responded.
Suddenly, the door opened and Sho and Jun scrolled in, looking slightly haggard but scared.
“We went to his apartment,” Sho started. “That painting he was making for his drama…it’s not right.”
“What do you mean?” Aiba frowned at them.
Jun came around the bed while swiping across his smartphone. “This is what he was painting.”
Aiba glanced down at the phone and gasped. A chill ran down his spine, but he couldn’t take his eyes away from Jun’s phone.
Ohno’s living room was covered in blood. His paint buckets dripped in dark red as well as his paintbrushes. His canvas was a mix of red and brown, most likely dried up blood. But the painting itself was a splattered mess in a horrifying manner. The only image Aiba could make out was a man with a woman’s face, wearing a crown and riding a camel…
“What made him create such a thing?” Sho whispered.
Aiba held Jun’s phone in his own hand, zooming in and out at certain locations of the photo. At last he spotted a scratch marking on Ohno’s hardwood floor. A fingernail laid next to the writing.
“Sho, do you know what this means?” Aiba said, zooming in on the writing. “It might be a clue on what drove Ohno insane.”
Sho glanced over Aiba’s shoulder, his eyes squinting, trying to make out the writing through all the paint and blood.
The End
#
Ending Author Notes: Paimon, one of the Kings of Hell with two hundred legions under his rule. For more about Paimon, check out Wikipedia.
Anyways, my deepest apologizes for having such an ending! I literally wrote this in one day due to my stubbornness in wanting to participate in the event, and because I love Halloween! If I had more time, I would have flush this story out more, but my aim was to keep it simple on demon possession. And yes, I made a reference of Arashi’s USO Japan episode! (who hasn’t!?) I left out the gory parts of Nino’s death as I figured the psychological horror would be good enough. I tend to keep my horror stories open like this because the horror is never over; it’s kinda my style :3
But overall, thank you for reading.