After a prolonged, awkward silence, one of the fashionable women accompanying the 'life winner'—the one carrying a Chanel bag—voiced her skepticism.
"A kid? I've never seen a kid nearly as tall as the bus."
"Or one who looks quite so... weathered," the rapping man chimed in.
The driver just kept smiling amiably. "Maybe he just looks old for his age. I saw him sitting by the road earlier, hugging his knees... looked so pitiful, especially with the rain coming down."
Why the sudden, maudlin backstory? Saiki wondered internally. His group remained silent, but their eyes instinctively turned towards him.
Saiki glanced at the man still standing near the entrance. "He looks okay for now," he stated flatly.
For now being the operative phrase. While the man's expression was downcast and his clothes suggested homelessness, Saiki's sharp eyes noticed something incongruous: the man possessed a pair of piercingly sharp eyes, the kind rarely seen on a typical vagrant.
"Whatever. As long as he doesn't bother us, it's fine," Pietro shrugged. He didn't particularly care who the guy was; having clawed his way out of poverty and served time with HYDRA, he'd seen all sorts. As long as the man kept to himself, Pietro wasn't bothered.
However, the other group clearly wasn't willing to let it go.
"We can't let someone of unknown origin on this bus! Open the door and throw him out!" Ryan, the thuggish man, demanded, reaching out to physically eject the downcast man.
The downcast man clearly had no intention of getting off. He stood stock-still, unmoving as Ryan shoved him, neither retaliating nor responding to the barrage of insults.
This standoff couldn't continue indefinitely. Seeing that it was almost noon, Pietro and Wanda both stood up, looking ready to intervene. To Peter, however, their posture—cracking knuckles, shifting weight—looked less like peacemaking and more like they were about to jump into the fray themselves. Peter had no doubt the twins were planning to throw both men off the bus.
Ever the responsible one, Peter quickly stood up to intercept them. "You guys sit down, I'll handle this."
But before he could move, the other man—the handsome 'life winner' surrounded by women—spoke up, stopping Ryan.
"That's enough, Ryan." The man gently pushed aside the women leaning against him, stood up, and stepped between the two antagonists. "We're supposed to be on vacation. Don't ruin the mood."
The life winner clearly held higher status than Ryan; his words instantly deflated Ryan's aggressive posture.
"But..." Ryan glanced uncertainly at the downcast man.
The life winner clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder. "He's probably just an ordinary person with eccentric taste in clothes. Besides, even if he did want to cause trouble, look at us—a whole bus full of people. What could he possibly do?"
After speaking, the life winner shot the downcast man a look loaded with warning. Whether the man genuinely wanted to respect this show of trust or simply avoid further conflict, he wordlessly walked to the very back of the bus, sat down, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes, adopting an unmistakable 'I won't disturb anyone' attitude.
Seeing this, Ryan couldn't press the issue further. The brief commotion ended, and the bus continued on its journey.
After another hour or so, they finally arrived at the "resort."
Pietro and Wanda, filled with visions of luxury, practically leaped off the bus first. However, as they took in the sight before them, their excited expressions instantly soured.
"Are you sure this is the right place?" Pietro demanded, pointing incredulously at the building as Peter climbed down. "Is this really the resort?"
The structure looming before them was old, dilapidated, and looked practically ready to collapse. It bore zero resemblance to the "luxury five-star hotel" Olsen had described, looking far more like a haunted house.
The other group of passengers seemed equally displeased with the surroundings and immediately went off to find the person in charge and demand an explanation. From their furious thoughts, Saiki gathered they felt they'd been scammed by false advertising, tricked into paying a hefty sum for this disastrous trip.
Tsk, Saiki thought. And here I thought Olsen was actually a rich kid. Turns out he's just some kind of con artist.
He watched the supposed manager trying to placate Ryan's group, the man's guilty expression plain to see (and his thoughts even plainer to Saiki). "Call Olsen," Saiki instructed Peter. "Tell him where we are. If he's not here, or if he can't give us a reasonable explanation, we're leaving."
Peter nodded and pulled out his phone. Even if they had been invited as guests, this dismal environment hardly screamed 'welcome.'
But there was no signal. Peter frowned, shaking his phone uselessly as the "No Service" message remained stubbornly on the screen.
"Damn it, no signal!"
Hearing this, everyone else instinctively checked their own phones, confirming the lack of service.
The driver, having parked the van, happened to overhear their conversation and walked over. "This whole area was recently designated for development," he explained cheerfully. "It's still under construction, so the signal's pretty spotty. There is a phone booth over there that works, though."
The driver then led Peter towards said phone booth. Its location was bizarre – situated directly in the middle of a murky pond, accessible only by a narrow stone pathway. There were no visible power lines connected to it. Peter, while not an expert on telecommunications, wasn't an idiot. Could a phone like this actually work?
Maybe it uses Wi-Fi or something, he rationalized internally, not wanting to seem rude after the driver's apparent helpfulness.
Peter recited Olsen's number to the driver, who inserted a card and dialed. Just as Peter reached to take the receiver, the driver inexplicably started chatting casually with "Olsen."
Peter: "..."
Something feels really weird about this.
After exchanging a few pleasantries with the person on the other end, the driver finally handed the phone to Peter.
Peter took it. "Hello? Olsen? What is going on? Where did you bring us?"
Silence answered him.
Assuming it was just a bad connection, Peter tried again patiently. "Hello?"
Still nothing but dead air.
Just as Peter began to suspect Olsen was deliberately messing with them, he idly tugged on the phone cord. To his shock, he realized the cord was severed, frayed and decayed at the end, clearly having been broken for quite some time.
Peter froze. Realization dawned – it wasn't Olsen pranking him. It was the driver. But why?
While Peter was still reeling from this confusion, the surface of the pond beside the stone path began to bubble violently. Then, a head broke the surface. The driver was nowhere in sight.
A figure started climbing out of the murky water. It looked like a woman with long, stringy, dark hair plastered to her face (or perhaps a man with long hair, it was hard to tell). Its skin was deathly pale, wrinkled and bloated from submersion. Dark, empty eyes fixed directly on Peter, and then its mouth stretched impossibly wide into a horrifying, blood-red grin.
It emerged fully from the water and began crawling onto the stone path, extending long, slender, bone-white fingers as it slowly advanced towards Peter.
Peter: "..."
What the—? Sadako?!
The realization that this might be something... unclean hit him. A bloodcurdling scream tore from his throat.
"AAAAHHHHHH! GHOST! THERE'S A GHOST!" he shrieked, simultaneously firing frantic bursts of webbing at the grotesque figure crawling towards him.
The creature let out a muffled grunt as the sticky strands instantly adhered to it, halting its progress. (If Peter had been calm enough to look closely, he might have noticed a distinctly normal, human face hidden beneath the curtain of wet hair.)
But Peter was far too terrified to notice details. His mind was consumed by a single, paralyzing thought: GHOST! Acting purely on instinct, he thoroughly webbed the "ghost" to the path, ensuring it was securely immobilized. Then, letting out panicked whimpers, he scrambled past the bound figure and sprinted back towards the dilapidated building, desperate for the safety of his friends.
"Peter?! What happened?!"
Hearing his screams, Saiki, Pietro, and Wanda rushed towards the pond area. Peter saw them approaching like beacons of salvation and practically threw himself at them. Before they could even ask, he gasped out, words tumbling over each other in panic.
"Oh my god! You guys! You won't believe this! I saw a ghost!"
The three of them just stared at him, utterly blank-faced.
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