Idol Gunner [Yuri Villainess LitRPG]

The first thing that struck Kana was the weight of the air. The only categorization her brain was able to partake in was to decide that it was wet. The oppressive, damp air of the bunker covered her every sense as the flashlight in her hand peered deeper into the dark halls of the historical structure. Chitose, beside her, carried the camera with confidence. The constant red indicator of its recording was the only highlight in the grays and blacks that now surrounded them.

“Minami-san!”

“Hush…”

The last thing she needed right now was a distraction. Or any sort of communication at all. Kana, now looking down a long corridor with worn walls, rusted metal, and aging wooden supports, suddenly felt like the world outside didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, and it was the only thing that mattered, simultaneously. With the door closed behind them, the weight of the hill above felt like it could collapse on them at any given moment.

She started walking, and Chitose followed.

The light in her hand, bobbing with every step, bounced off the rotting walls with confidence, only to be stopped in its tracks and consumed by the darkness with extreme prejudice. The corridor was visible up to three meters in front of them before being claimed by the darkness. And the back…Kana did not even want to think about it.

More for the trainee’s sake than her own.

The walls on both sides were relatively empty and void of personality, as one would expect. There was no text, and no patterns, on its clean white look. The only accent it had been bestowed with was the lines of fungus and green growth creeping down from the ceiling. And much like the featureless walls, Kana was unable to get over the repetitive sounds of her own walking.

Click. Clang. Click. Clang. Once in a while, Chitose whimpers, and loud breaths would break the monotony of their shoes’ rhythm, but that was about it. Kana switched her grip on the flashlight to try to shift her mindset.

This was an empty bunker, now populated by herself and other idols, and that was it. There was nobody else, and nothing else, to be found. All she needed to do was maintain a calm disposition until they came across someone else’s light, and then make a huge, loud deal about it. Not very obnoxious for her, and entertaining enough for the audience who wanted to see her squeal.

“Minami-san?” Chitose asked once more, but with a whisper this time. Shaking the camera slightly to communicate that it had to do with the shoot, she still waited to get permission to continue.

“Yeah?” Kana let her go on. It couldn’t be that bad a question.

“Do you hear that, too?”

Kana stopped and pushed the flashlight on her face, blinding the camera alongside the girl, before putting it back down. The trainee pushed her second hand up to cover her eyes, and then back down. No sound escaped her, however. As if, even if she had been bothered by the light, she had a reason not to raise her voice.

“What do you mean?”

“The…noise. In the distance.”

Chitose used the camera to point deeper into the corridor that was still in the darkness’ domain. Kana sighed and stepped closer to her, getting inches away from her body before leaning down and whispering straight in her ear.

“If this is a bit for the shoot, then stop it. It’s not funny.”

The girl gulped and vigorously shook her head, “It isn’t. I mean…can you not hear it? It’s coming from right there!”

She used her head to point at the shadow corridor once more, taking deep breaths as she started shaking. The camera in her hand rattled, and her uncomfortable heaving got more and more obvious. Kana turned, shining the light back towards the front. Yet, no results. She couldn’t see anything, and she couldn’t hear anything.

She couldn’t…

Kana sighed internally, closing her eyes to focus on her own ears. The muscles she pulled on from the inside were quite intact and without blockage, but it could not be a coincidence that she couldn’t hear something that Chitose Yono could. It wasn’t normally a big deal at all, but the discrepancy between their organs became more obvious in a space as quiet as this.

She looked at her right hand, where her weapons would usually appear. Blast, blast, blast, blast. To anyone who didn’t know, her lack of perfect hearing here would be questionable. To someone who had seen her fight even once…it probably wasn’t a surprise. Still, Kana hadn’t imagined in a million years that her own combat class would bite her in the ass like this one day.

“What kind of sound is it?” She inquired.

“Uh…” Chitose stepped forward, slowly bringing herself back under control as her empty palm grabbed Kana’s dress in fear, “It’s like a weird…tap, tap, tap. It has the pitch of dripping water, but the tempo….it’s like…like someone walking. Does that make sense?”

It did not, but she nodded either way. That would have to do for now, given that Kana could not hear it just. So, for now, letting Chitose stick close by and maintain contact, she started walking forward once more. This time with just a little bit more caution.

Every step that she did not hear the sounds the trainee was describing felt like a death sentence. A declaration that she had become incapable because of the power she had been using. Foot. She blinked and stopped. A single foot appeared at the edge of the flashlight’s radius on the floor. Kana gulped, moving the light up.

The limb remained until the light shone on it, but there was no body it was attached to. The only thing in front of her was the same, almost infinitely extending blank corridor.

“Minami-san?”

Kana led the light back down, only to find empty ground once more. No foot. No sign of human interference.

A laugh echoed in the distance, chastising her for falling for something so dumb. For imagining things that weren’t there. The light snapped to the distance once more, but to no avail. Nobody stood there, and yet the laughs continued. A chill ran down her spine, and the air felt like it was growing heavier and more oppressive by the second.

Chitose’s camera was now pointed straight at her face, but she could not care less. Maybe this was a ruse, after all. Maybe the trainee had only imagined the sound. Had she? She probably had. But it did not matter all of a sudden. The low-pitched, gruff laughter did not stop. It only rang out louder, more defined. Chitose did not acknowledge, but Kana’s heart did.

Some long-forgotten commander who never got his due, maybe. Or some nameless soldier who had never quite cared enough, but still lost his life. Anybody could be laughing at her. Kana was nothing but a singer dressed up in a cutesy skirt, trying to get a few laughs out of this place. For her to get scared of an empty corridor was…pathetic. Wasn’t it?

She started walking again, and her pace increased. Chitose ran to keep up, surprised at the sudden change in movement. Kana could not care less. She pushed her ears open, hoping to catch the sound before she could be humiliated more. The laughter had stopped, but its echoes persisted. In her head, they became louder than ever.

Someone walked past her, grazing her shoulder as he ran to deliver a radio communication that had come in. An announcement speaker in the distance called someone to the general’s office. The footsteps of the soldiers around her became clearer as she started to see their uniformed selves inhabiting the rotten carcass of their final home.

How many had made it out? How many had died here out of some disease that had no cure? She could be next. She could lie down here and stop trying. She was hallucinating, and her ears weren’t cooperating. She tried, and tried, and heard nothing. Kana started running, but the sound did not reach her.

“Minami-san!”

Ignore the kid. Ignore the kid. She kept running, shining the flashlight in every corner of the corridor as she tried to reach the source of the disturbance. The pitch of water and the tempo of footsteps. What did that mean? What did that sound like? She felt her breathing catch up to her running. It became more and more difficult to think and understand.

“Minami-san!”

“No time!”

“It’s over here.” The trainee finally shouted a bit, and Kana stopped. She looked back, only to see the red light of the camera floating far back in the corridor, where Chitose had stopped. The trainee waved the camera around to grab her attention, “Found the noise. It’s here.”

Kana took a step forward, and it was like her ears popped open. The drip, swish, tap, drip, swish, tap rhythm of the object became obvious. She had run past it and missed it. The laughter left her head, and the visions of the soldiers vanished. She bit her tongue, pulling herself back into reality. Slowly, light leading her, she reached the plate where Chitose was waiting, and crouched down.

On the floor was a tin can. Caught between a rusted pipe and the wall, it had been rolling from one object to the other. As it hit the pipe, the sound of the ‘water’ rang out due to the dampness in the air. As it rolled back to the wall, it scaped the rough, grimy floor of the bunker to make the swish that sustained the sound and made it sound like a footstep.

Chitose, camera pointed at the object, laughed, “Dumb, dumb. I thought it was someone walking, but never mind. Why did it suddenly start doing that, do you think?”

“Huh?”

The camera was pointed at her once more. This time, though, she pushed the light straight into the camera and whimpered for the audio. Making a slightly mad, slightly cute sound of disapproval, she finally spoke up.

“Shush. Pr…probably just the wind, right? Hehe. It couldn’t be, uh, anything more than that. Come on, Yono-san! We still need to get out of the bunker. Come on, come on! We gotta be, like, number one <3!”

“Holy…” Chitose whispered as she pulled the camera away from Kana, “How’d you do that?”

“Eh? Whaddaya mean, Yono-san!?”

“N…nothing.”

“Haha. You mean not being scared by the thing, right? Well…it’s just a skill you pick up once you keep doing these tests of courage. Believe it or not, this Minami-san of yours was quite a problem child, so I’ve gotten quite good at, uh…”

“Hiding your true feelings?”

This one was said out loud. A perfect gag and joke.

“Oi! Don’t put it like that. I’m actually fearless, got it!?”

“Sure, sure, Minami-san. Whatever you say…”

Kana shook her head in disapproval and turned. The moment she pulled her flashlight back up, however, a very human face came into view. Right in front of the light, eyes shining bright as her red lips pursed at the sudden illumination of her face, the guest in their little party stood there without expression.

For right about two seconds.

“WAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!” Kana cried out at once, the light dropping out of her hands and clattering to the floor. Along with her, two more voices started screaming in panic. One of them was Chitose. The other…she didn’t know.

“WHAT THE FU-”

Before the trainee could utter that particular word out of her mouth, Kana quickly covered it with her hand as her media brain came back online. With the camera roll saved, she finally took a deep breath to calm down and turned to look at the two girls standing in front of them.

Picking the light up and aiming it at their faces, she realized who it was. Nobuko Kimura and her trainee. Risa Ueno, if Kana remembered correctly. The quiet girl who had absolutely nothing to say. Even now, she didn’t. Standing there with the same dearth of expression that she had been carrying when the light was shoved in her eyes, she blinked twice and kept looking.

“You’re the one who…?” Kana pulled the flashlight to the Ruby Passion Jr. leader’s face and kept it there for some time.

“Y-yeah. Well, you screamed like a little girl, too. Keep it down!”

She pulled it down, mainly for the camera, “What happened to your light. I don’t see any of you carrying one. And…the camera, too. Where did you lose it?”

Risa Ueno bowed down all of a sudden, whispering an answer, “I accidentally slipped, fell down, and broke the camera under my weight. And then when Kimura-san tried to help me up, I ended up pulling her down and breaking the flashlight in her hand. So, we have been roaming around without any light for a while now.”

“Oh…” Chitose stepped forward, keeping the camera aimed at them.

“Yeah, I feel like there’s a metaphor in that story somewhere.” Kana sighed and pushed past them to continue walking, “Come on, then.”

Nobuko pulled Risa along as they started following the two, “Is there? If there is, then I think it might be speaking against you, Minami!”

“What could you possibly mean, Nobuko-chan!?” Kana turned with her tongue sticking out. It felt nostalgic, but fitting, “Got something to say about dear old Kana-chan, do you? Don’t go around blaming me for things I didn’t do. Again, I mean. I did not eat that pudding!”

“Kana Minami-san ate your pudding?” Ueno looked up at her mentor, squeezing the girl’s hand as she spoke in a dead monotone.

“Uh..buhhh…” Nobuko tripped on her words as Chitose shoved the camera closer to her face, “Uh…y-yeah? Yeah, she did. She totally ate my pudding. When, uh, we were…talking a bit earlier. Yeah. Thief…”

Kana shook her head in disapproval, still deviously smiling, “So many lies about Kana-chan going around. What will I ever do!? I didn’t even do any of it. It was…I swear…it was the…evil Kana Minami!”

“There is an evil Kana Minami?”

“Uh…no…Ueno-chan…” The beret-wearing wannabe rival stared at Kana with piercing eyes while she managed her oblivious trainee, “There’s no evil Kana-chan. I think it’s really just…the same person.”

“Wha!?” Kana opened her mouth in response as the camera flew back to her, and then put her arms together to form an X before wildly shaking her head from side to side, “No, no, no, no! Evil Kana-chan is very real, and she only appears when pudding is kept in front of her. She’s…uh…very evil!”

“Wow.” Risa Ueno nodded and continued in her emotionless tone, “I will try keeping some pudding on her plate tonight. Can I do that, Kimura-san?”

“Uh…yeah. Sure…?”

“Yay!”

Even that last line, she delivered with an extreme, calculated lack of excitement. After that, however, there started an unspoken pact of silence. Nobuko kept to herself, keeping quiet and refusing to interact with them. Risa Ueno, quiet as ever, followed her like a child. Chitose tried her best to keep moving the camera around to capture every possible expression, but eventually gave up once she realized none of that was happening.

The group soon reached a door as the flashlight started to expand to cover the exit with their closing. Taking the lead, Kana pulled the handle down and let the light in. The creaking iron door gave way to the final rays of the setting sun, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Not because they were done, but because the little stint with Nobuko would be over.

“One team per exit.” Kana said as she gave way, “Go on. You don’t have your flashlight, so it’s better if you leave.”

“Uh…” Nobuko took a second as her eyes surveyed every inch of the surroundings to find out why Kana Minami was being so kind. But once she decided that it was all for the camera, she wondered if it would be a better idea to just refuse the help and go her own way.

“Thank you, Kana Minami-san.”

Instead of following her thought process, though, the trainee did not think twice. Giving her a grateful bow, Risa Ueno let go of Nobuko’s hand and immediately walked out the door. On the other side, the representative of the media agencies and the Coalition wrote her name down, and the door was locked for their team instantly.

“Ouch.” Kana mouthed in the same monotonous tone as Ueno and gestured at the gate once more.

Hurt, confused, and slightly annoyed at the situation, Nobuko Kimura took her leave. As the door closed behind her, Chitose kept zooming the camera deeper and deeper into Kana’s face. She looked back at her trainee, groaning in annoyance before turning and continuing to walk.

“Minami-san.” The girl entered an interviewer voice as the flashlight came back on and the dark corridors were illuminated once more, “What do you have to say about that amazing show of graciousness?”

“Hmm?” Kana had no wish to answer something that dumb. But given that the camera had now captured the question, she had no other option left. Turning back with a smile, she pushed the flashlight on her own face, and spoke up, “You see, Nobuko-chan is a great, great, great friend of mine. And to be completely honest…evil Kana-chan does not actu-”

“Ah…”

“What?”

“The camera died.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Kana turned and started walking, “Keep up, then. This stupid fucking bunker is starting to suffocate me.”

About forty-three wordless minutes after Chitose Yono started following Kana Minami to find the next exit, they were finally able to find their way out of the bunker. The last team of their group to do so, thus making them the overall losers of the game.