test 4

It started as a joke, like most stupid things do. Leo found this sketchy website called pixiv.net late one night, all about rituals and “contacting entities.” He swore it was just for creepypasta vibes, something to freak ourselves out during a sleepover. But last Friday, in his basement with the lights off and some candles he stole from his mom’s yoga room, he decided to actually try one. He read the weird Latin words off his Pixiv phone screen, laughing nervously. I was just sitting on the old couch, rolling my eyes, until the air got thick and cold all at once, and this smell, like rotten flowers and incense, just flooded the room. We both stopped laughing.

After that, Leo changed. He was always tired, bags under his eyes like bruises. He started skipping school, saying he was having these incredibly vivid dreams about a “visitor.” He’d smile this weird, distant smile when he said it. I saw him a week after the ritual, and he looked… thin. Not just skinny, but drained, like all the color of pixiv and life had been leeched out of him. His hands shook, and he kept whispering about how beautiful she was, how she came to him every night. He called her his “midnight friend.” I tried to shake him out of it, told him it was all in his head, but he just looked at me with these hollow eyes and said, “You wouldn’t understand. She needs me.”

They found him in his bed yesterday morning. I didn’t see him, but my older brother heard the paramedics talking. They said there was no medical reason for it; he was just gone. Completely pale, skin cold, with this terrifying, peaceful smile frozen on his face. The official word is “sudden unexplained failure of the nervous system” or whatever. But I know. I was there. She wasn’t a dream. She took everything he had, sip by sip, until there was nothing left but an empty shell. And the worst part? Sometimes, now when I’m trying to fall asleep, I catch a faint scent of rotten flowers in my room. I think… I think maybe she knows I was there, too.