Project “30” [Beta 2.0] (Mature / Closed)

The note was handwritten, reading the following—

”29/12/2001,
It’s dark. I keep hearing the voices. There are sounds I dare not find the origin of. A girl, she’s in pain. That’s all I know. She’s screaming, wanting out. But that bosses wouldn’t let her go that easily. They enjoy her. They like her body. She’s a toy to them…”

”13/02/2002,
She’s dead. I killed her myself. She wanted to die, saying it was better that she gave away her life than suffer a fate worse than death itself. Even then, she died with a smile and was still used by the bosses one last time. Her body should be filled to the brim with their disgusting fluids at this point. The thought scares me, knowing I’ll be next.”

”14/02/2002,
Today’s the first day they started using me. I’m exhausted. I can’t keep up with how much they were giving me. My body hurts everywhere. I want to die, everything they did to me today was worse than what I’ve imagined. Valentine’s has never been worse than this my whole life…”

”15/02/2002,
The bosses brought me out to a bar, it hurt to know that I can’t drink alcohol. They said that this place had the best drinks and the best-looking bartender around. I agree to the second statement. He was nice, although the visitors were a little weird. They didn’t seem… normal to me. After that night out was the usual, the bosses gave me what I ‘deserved’. I feel sick.”

”17/02/2002,
I found a knife. I know what I must do with it. Had the reaper come take my soul before this, I might’ve had a much better afterlife. But whatever works. This will be my last page. Goodnight.”

As Iris was reading, she made a note of the dates. This was someone linked to Cassidy.
“This person killed her… Were they female as well? It would be safe to assume given—“
“Are you talking to yourself again?” A voice came from behind her closed door. The voice belonged to a tired woman who sounded like she had just woken up from a nightmare.
“Yeah, problem?” Iris called back, rolling her eyes even though the other woman couldn’t see.
“No, just don’t stay up all night talking to yourself again. You need to sleep more than twice a week.” The owner of the voice started walking away, leaving Iris to ponder over the note.

As Iris was thinking over the notes, her phone would notify her about a new email.

”I see you’re using valuable time to take notes about everything. That’s great. Now, I know you want to keep on using your time wisely and try to find connections and all that, but don’t worry. You have twenty nine days left, remember? No need to play smart move and try to get every answer because in the end, you won’t get anything today. Why don’t you take a rest? That’ll do you some good, I’m sure,” with that, the email ended. Another file was attached to the email, this time a voice file titled ‘MoonlightSonata.mp3’

As expected, the file was the sonata being played. Judging from the clapping sound at the beginning of the file, it might be alright to assume that this was being played at a concert hall. Everything seemed to play out smoothly until the song reached the end of the last movement. That was when another sound covered the beautiful piano playing. A gunshot rang from somewhere in the hall and the sound that followed after was the sound of something falling and shattering, then the sound of people screaming.

The file ended.

After reading the email, Iris let out a heavy sigh. Of course she wasn’t going to get any answers tonight, that would have been too much to ask for. “Why have it split across 30 days when I can do it in 15…” she grumbled, running her hand through her hair, “I barely sleep anyway.”

She slid off her bed and started changing into slightly more comfortable clothing. She had no intention of sleeping, but something was oddly satisfying about wearing joggers and an oversized hoodie when indoors at night. The audio file played in the background, and while she appreciated the pianists talent for performing such a piece, it wasn’t her thing.
The only part that interested her was the last five seconds, knowing for a fact that someone probably died. “Oh this just gets better and better…”

Sometime in the night, Iris remembered the fruit in her bag. She decided to take it down to the kitchen, knowing that if she had left it there it would have been weeks before she even thought about it again. Last time that had happened she needed a new rucksack.
She took her phone to the kitchen, scrolling through social media— not that there was anything interesting being posted at that time of night. “I wonder if Aki is asleep.”

As she spoke of the doctor, an email came.

”No I’m not,” was all that the email had said.

Well, that email, that was.

Another email came as quickly as the first with a title this time— ‘Breaking the Rules’

”I know you don’t sleep. I don’t either. How about this. Thirty days, filled with sixty days worth of information and cryptic puzzle pieces for you to put together. That means you’ll be working day and night and so on. Do we have a deal here?”

“That sounds fine by me.”
“Seriously stop talking to yourself!” Danny whisper shouted from the doorway. “I thought you’d stopped doing that.”
Iris shook her head. “I’ve never stopped talking to myself. You already know I’m a few screws loose, or whatever the saying is.”
Danny shook his head and passed her, heading to the back door where he sat down and lit up a self-rolled cigarette. “Next time you want money, just ask me yeah? You don’t have to take it, I will just give it to you.”
The woman paused for a moment before nodding, a little taken aback by Danny’s statement. “Well see you later then.” With that, she made her way upstairs with a slight frown. “He’s never nice to me, what did I do…?”

After returning to her room, she opened up the suitcase again and took out the knife. Those characters on the handle, what did they mean? She opened her laptop again and searched for the symbols.

Searching the words on the internet would result in the meaning coming out as ‘warrior of the east’. Other than that, the knife itself did not hold a lot of interesting details. Judging from its rust, it was like this knife has been kept for hundred of years.

Soon enough, another email came from Aki’s cryptic email address. It wasn’t a very long email, for it was only two sentences long.

”Come outside for a minute. I’ve prepared something for you.”

Upon seeing the email, she nodded and made her way downstairs. Danny had moved from the back door now so she was able to slip out. “I read that as ‘come outside for a minute, I’m waiting for you’, of course my twisted head would think that.” She chuckled and looked around for whatever it was that Aki had left for her.

Near the front door was a cardboard box sealed with clear tape and tied to it was a golden balloon. There was also a note on the box—
“From : Dr. Aki, open after midnight,”

The streets were empty, quiet, and it was clear that no one else was on the street. Whoever it was that had dropped the package wasn’t there anymore.

She stared down at the box with a soft frown before kneeling down to pick it up. After glancing around, she slowly took it inside and closed the door, holding onto the balloon to stop it from potentially hitting the walls or ceiling as she made her way back up to her room.

Iris sat down on her bed, staring at the box in curiosity. It hadn’t been too heavy, but then it wasn’t as light as a feather either. Just what had he sent her, and did it even relate to the project?

Sixty minutes…
Ten minutes…
One minute…

As midnight hit, Iris immediately untied the balloon from the box and fastened it to her desk chair before removing the tape on the box. The suspense wasn’t necessarily killing her, but it was eating away at her patience.

The box was opened. Inside the cardboard box was a collection of items all covered with quite an amount of styrofoam pieces. As all the items came out, they showed themselves to be— a notebook, a black baseball cap, a violin bow, a newspaper, a wooden sculpture of a horse, and a deck of playing cards. Clearly, all had some sort of significance to them, but whatever those significances may be, only time and closer inspection will tell.

The woman emptied the box, carefully laying everything out on her bed one my one. “What a strange collection of items…”
After setting everything out, she picked up the notebook and started flipping through the pages, hoping to find something useful. It was a long shot, but not a thoughtless decision.

Flipping through the pages would result in Iris finding some pages written, some pages blank, and some torn off completely. The pages which were written looked like school notes, talking about things ranging from blood cells to biodiversity at its finest. There were then pages with drawings. Some of which were done finely and were drawn with much detail while some were clearly done by an amateur.
One of the pages was bookmarked.
That page being a written page which was a detail different from the others.
“She told me she wanted to meet me after school today. She wanted to meet me and myself alone. I’m excited! Although she seems quite aggressive, I think she’s nice.”
And that was the last page of the notebook.

“I pray for this person’s sake that she was nice,” she mumbled to herself, reading the last page before going through the notes and diagrams on the other pages. “Although given that I now hold this, it’s safe to assume she wasn’t. Whoever ‘she’ is.”

She set the notebook down, leaving it open on the final page before picking up the next item— the newspaper. No doubt there would be some juicy clues hidden among the pages.

In the newspaper were your regular news of economy, finances, trends, etc. There was, though, a news of a murder. The headline reading—
“Male highschool student found dead after visiting friend after school,”
Reading through the lines, it would seem as though the poor boy was stabbed through the heart with a pocket knife. The culprit was a girl of roughly the same age. The boy’s belongings, everything he had, were still in his locker and so the police hadn’t recovered the items yet. It would seem as if Aki had got to it first, especially the notebook in particular.

“Called it!” Iris grinned grimly upon reading the headline, immediately reading what was written. “A pocket knife huh? A yandere, perhaps? Nah…Those types of people don’t even get suspected.”
So these were the boy’s belongings huh? Such a strange collection. She started picking up the other objects, trying to find if a name had been written or etched into any of them. “It would be nice to put a name to the boy… I will say, Aki, the fact that you were able to recover these amazes me. A man of many wonders.”

As she spoke that, after a short moment, an email came.

”Thank you for the compliment. The fact that you aren’t taken aback by any of these items and facts I’ve given you amazes me as well. I advise you have a look at the baseball cap next. Trust me, there is more to it than meets the eye,” the email read.

With the email came a voice clip. Opening it—
“Good late evening Iris. This is Aki. Yes, the Aki who’s putting you in this weird situation out of the blue. There’s not much I can say right now as this is just our first day together, but you’re doing a great job at not freaking out every time you see something weird or unusual. That’s great. Keep up the good work. There is something here for you to find, I insure you,” with that, the voice clip ended. The man was a young one who sounded like he was still in his late teens or really early twenties. He sounded polite, his voice was melodic, and his tone was, at its core, mesmerizing.

She listened to the voice clip before doing anything else, though the reaction that occurred was one Iris definitely wasn’t expecting. Her heart started racing and only continued to thump harder as Aki continued talking. “Your voice… I—“ Iris quickly shook her head and frowned. “Never mind.”

Now was not the time or place to be having human reactions.

With a gentle sigh, she picked up the baseball cap and turned it over with the hope of finding something on the inside.

As Iris would look at the baseball cap, it would show that the cap had a paper note inside of it. It reads ‘This cap belong to Sirius Galinsky’ which was slightly covered in a dark shade of red, closely resembling blood.

Her phone, then, would give ding. The email that came wasn’t so long but it did have quite the meaning.
”You were talking about my voice? Would you prefer me to use it instead of these emails then?”

“Sirius Galinsky… Sirius? Is that a girl’s name?” Iris spoke softly as she read the note, setting the cap down with a slight frown before reading the next message.
“I don’t mind,” she sighed, tucking her hands into her hoodie pocket. “I can’t pass you off as talking to myself if others happen to hear you.”

With a long pause in between, the next email came.
”That would indeed be a problem. Do you have headphones or earphones?” was what the email had said.
The cap which laid beside Iris had nothing else of significance besides the name. However, on the newspaper, on the page next to the news of the highschool boy, was an article about a catastrophe which happened overseas in a baseball stadium where the scoreboard fell and had taken several casualties with it. In the article, it said that the names of the casualties, and who they were, were still being investigated thoroughly.

Iris thought for a moment before going over to her desk and rummaging around the top drawer, eventually taking out a pair of earphones. She never really used them since she didn’t listen to music, but they were handy to have around.
She plugged them in and sighed. “Okay… What not?”
It wasn’t clear whether she was talking about the items or Aki, so it was safe to assume she meant both.

When her earphones were plugged in, the emails stopped coming for a bit before one eventually came. No text was written into the email, but it did came with a voice file. Opening it—
“Right so… I’ve never had an actual conversation with anyone in the last four years or so, so please bear with me. Uhm… I’m not sure what to say yet. There are things I can help you with while doing this Project with you but then again, I can only do so much. You seem lonely. I can be a friend if you want, but then again, who would want to be friends with an obsessed collector like myself. Sounds straight from a soap opera if anything. You should eat more, that’s something I’ve noticed. I know you say you don’t feel the need to do so but… it’s for yourself…”
There was a pause there before the scientist started talking again.
“Take your time to look at the things I’ve sent you. Tomorrow before the sun rises, head down to the nearest coffee shop. The one that’s usually filled since 8 AM. There’ll be something waiting for you there. Ask the employees. I’ll probably drop it off some time tonight. And uh… in case you decide to sleep… good night. Sweet dreams, yeah? T-That’s what people say, right…? Anyways, I’ll talk to you again if I have time,”

Iris fell silent as she listened to the voice message, her expression becoming unnaturally sad. “Sweet dreams huh… I don’t remember if a time like that even existed for me.”
When was the last time someone had wished her a good night? It must have been a long time ago since her housemates all knew she chose not to sleep; sleeping only caused the nightmares to worsen. The only time Iris was vulnerable was during sleep, at least she liked to tell herself that. “A sleeping person is a dead person.”

She spent the next hour or so reading the newspaper again and researching the stated events, keeping the light on her laptop as low as possible to avoid hallucinating— it wasn’t a pretty sight and she knew Danny in particular was tired of her screaming and having panic attacks because the hallucinations become too much. “What’s it like to be normal, Aki?”

Some time after Iris had asked the question, a voice message came through her email.

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that. All my life, that word is one I would not use to describe myself. There is much more you don’t know about me, Iris. There are things you shouldn’t know about me and that you shouldn’t try to find out. ‘Normality’ and ‘humanity’ are two things I’ve thrown away already, is all I’m going to say. As for sleeping… if it’s hard, will you stay up all night with me then? It’s not like I can sleep after all that I’ve done anyways,” a pause can be heard and the sound of footsteps filled the silence. It was like he was running.
“My haunting guilty conscience takes over as I close my eyes. I think you understand that,”

“I understand, more so than what people realise.” She murmured, closing her laptop and laying down on her bed. Her eyes focused on the dark ceiling, not that she could see anything now that there was no light— or at least there wasn’t enough light. A soft glow from the outside street lamps ran in a square ring around her closed curtains. Iris closed her eyes for a moment before taking a deep breath and opened them again. “Where are you going?”

About five minutes passed before the voicemail came—

“To the coffee shop I told you to come to before the sun rises. The barista probably hates me for coming at this time and ordering a single iced americano. Oh and, don’t come out. It’s best that we don’t meet until the time is right.” That was all the voice file talked about.

“I didn’t realise you had the intention of ever meeting me.” Iris sighed, shuddering at the thought of someone wanting to meet her. “I don’t think you’d want to know me in person.”

After a moment of silence, she sat up on the bed and sighed before standing up. “It’s not even two o’clock and I’m already bored. Oh… That’s nothing unusual.”
With a soft groan, she trudged out of her room and made her way downstairs. Her phone was in her pocket, the earphones still in her ears. “Guess you’re coming with me as I wander around the back garden. God I really am lonely…” At this, she laughed a little sadly. She was aware of her own loneliness, but it wasn’t until night time that it became an issue. Night time was when no one else was around to stop her from doing stupid things, to stop her mind from acting on its own. A perfect example of this was as she passed the knife block on the counter and simply stared at it, and the thoughts that came to her were ones that even she didn’t want to ‘talk to herself’ about.

She made her way outside and sat under the small canopy at the end of the garden, pulling her feet up to her chest as she leaned against one of the thin pillars. It would be time to go to the coffee shop soon, right?

As she was sitting alone there, an email came. Again, with a voice file and nothing else.

“You seem rather sad. I left some coffee for you at the front door. I don’t know what you drink so… I bought one of every kind they had. I know, excessive but whatever. It’s lonely at this time of night, I know. In any case scenario, I assure you that the next twenty nine days, I’ll try to make them as interesting for you as I can. The extent of that depends though. I’m looking up at the moon right now. If you look up, you’ll be looking at the same one as I am. Cliche, but I find it magical how no matter the distance, there’s always a time when someone so near yet so faraway is looking at the same thing as you are. It gets… a little bit less lonely,”

As Iris listened to his voice, she did as he said and the strangest of things happened. Iris started to cry. Upon realising that her eyes were leaking, the tears stopped almost as quickly as they had begun. She never cried for long, if and when it happened, and she never liked admitting that it ever happened. Maybe that’s why it only happened when she was alone? Who knew…
“Thanks for the c-coffee… You didn’t need to go to the trouble…” God this man was sweet, so sweet.