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Azuringu Dai-O!


Azumanga Daioh! is owned by Azuma Kiyohiko, Media Works
Ringu is owned by Koji Suzuki.
Ringu/The Ring, Asmik Ace, Dreamworks SKG.


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Wednesday, September 10



"And now, Rainbow Entertainment News brings you a special report, live 
from the Ace Cafe & Bar! The Killing Tape: Urban Legend, or bored art 
student prank! With your host, Yomi-chan!" 
 
Koyomi removed her glasses, rubbed her forehead, and counted to twenty. 
"For the seventh time, Tomo, you are NOT supposed to do the introductory 
voiceovers." 
 
"But you get all the glory while I just lug this thing around and point 
it at stuff! It should be me hosting the show!" said Tomo. She turned the 
video camera in her hands so it aimed at her, and grinned at the lens. "I
got a much prettier image for TV, not to mention a slim figure and great
eyes, plus a better *singing voice*," she mock-sang out the last part for
emphasis. "And TV likes cute and energetic girls over moody four-eyes
anytime!"
 
*thwack* 
 
"...um, is your friend going to be OK?" A petite high-school girl grimaced, 
seeing Tomo whimper and nurse the bump on her head where Yomi had 
hand-chopped her. 
 
"No. No matter how many times I hit her," Yomi said. She ignored the gaze
of death Tomo gave her as she straightened back up. "Now remember, this
is just for a local university TV station, run by students. You don't
have to be nervous before the camera. All right?" 
 
"Okay," said the girl. "Umm, where do I start?" 
 
Yomi motioned for Tomo to start shooting. "Why don't we start with your 
name?" 
 
"Un. My name is Reiko Takano." 
 
"Takano-san, many of us have heard this story about a videotape that kills 
whoever whatches it. We don't know where the rumor came from, much 
less if it's real at all.

"However, it has been causing some anxiety among our students and 
teachers, and rental stores all over the city have had to double-check their 
entire inventories. So, now, what could you tell us about it?" 
 
"Well, I heard more about it from my sempai," Reiko explained. "She says, 
the first people who died were in Okinawa. They watched a tape with a 
strange woman on it, and they all died seven days later." 
 
"Uuoooh! A real cursed video with a time limit and everything!" Tomo 
exclaimed. Then went silent when Yomi elbowed her in the gut. 
 
"It started in Okinawa, then?" 
 
"My friend Kanae says it's really Izu, but my sempai heard from her 
boyfriend that his roommate read on a website that people really think it's 
from Okinawa." 
 
"Ah," Yomi blinked. "And what is on this tape? Have you watched it?" 
 
"Uh-uh," Reiko shook her head. She paused for a second, pursing her lips 
before continuing. "A friend of my sempai said she knew someone who did, 
though. She said that they had watched it a week ago, on some trip to an inn 
near Okinawa or something. They received a phone call right after, too." 
 
"A week?" thought Yomi, then made a mental note to check the local 
obituaries in today's paper. Just to disprove the rumor, of course. "Well, 
thank you for your time," she said. "But before we leave... Once you watch 
the tape, is there a way to get rid of the curse?" 
 
Reiko faced down for a moment, then said, "No, there isn't." 
 
			
-			O!			-
 
 
"Hey, Yomi..." Tomo called as the two of them headed down the street, the 
material from the interview stored safely in their backpacks. "You think 
they'll give us extra credit if we watch that tape?" 
 
"You'd actually want to watch that?" Yomi said. "Besides, it's just an urban 
legend. People see things out of context and immediately make rumors out 
of them. Like that story about the orange cat with the spaghetti-like arms 
we ran last week. I honestly don't know where Sakaki heard THAT one." 
 
"Aaah..." Tomo drifted off, clasping her hands behind her head and looking 
sideways at the rows of TVs on storefront displays. 
 
Yomi sighed in relief; that answer seemed to have satisfied Tomo. On the 
other hand, it really was all a big rumor, so... Well, it's not that she'd 
WANT to watch it... maybe just peek at it... a couple of minutes, really. 
She had probably seen worse from the grainy black & white movies the 
guys in Art kept coming up with. 
 
"Hey, Yomi..." Tomo called again. "You think we'd get extra credit if we 
ran the tape on the show?" 
 
"Idiot." 

 
-			O!			-


The hospital was strangely crowded today. Though she had only come once 
before, when Tomo had broken her leg trying to run up a wall, Yomi 
thought that there were quite a bit more people than normal. Most of them, 
understandably, hovering nervously around any doctor that could give them 
news about their loved ones.

"Yoo! Chiyo-chan!"

"Quiet, stupid!" Yomi hissed and whapped Tomo upside the head.  Further 
down the hall, Chiyo had taken notice of them and was walking up to meet 
them.

"Tomo-san, Yomi-san!" the small genius greeted them. Her hair had grown 
longer in the past few months, though it was still contained in twin
pigtails. "I just got back a couple of hours ago," she said. "Do you know
what happened?"

"Not much," Yomi said. "Kagura was the one who called us. All we know is 
that Sakaki is in some sort of coma."

"Is Osaka coming?" Tomo asked, trying to find her among the worried 
crowds.

"Um, I couldn't find her when I called her house," Chiyo said. "Her family 
said she was on a trip."

"We'll get in touch with her later," Yomi said. "Kagura?"

"She came here ahead of us," Chiyo said. "She's with Sakaki-san right 
now."

Indeed, upon entering one of the IC rooms, the trio found Kagura sitting by 
Sakaki's bedside, looming worriedly over her friend.

"Hey! Guys!" she rose from her chair, stumbling over a bit. It was obvious 
on her face that, whatever had happened last night, she was still frazzled 
about it. "Chiyo-chan, glad you could come too!"

Chiyo smiled up at her, but the smile quickly turned to a worried demeanor. 
"What happened to Sakaki-san?"

Kagura shook her head, "To be honest, you got me. I was coming over with 
her and Kaorin, but when I got there she... she was like this, and Kaorin 
was a wreck." She grimaced at the memory.

Yomi glanced over at Sakaki. She looked as though she were just in deep 
sleep --if one slept with her eyes open, blushing up to the ears, and with a 
faint, almost imperceptible grin on her lips. Yomi shuddered. 

"Yomi, Yomi, look!" Tomo said, grabbing at a control attached to Sakaki's 
bed. "Button up!" The bed folded to a sitting position. Chiyo cried at the 
look of Sakaki nearly dropping on top of her.  "Button down!" It stretched 
the bed back to a horizontal state. "Ah! This folds the bed in half!"

"Gimme that!" Yomi slapped the controls out of Tomo's hands. "Just go 
back to the lobby and get today's paper before you shoot Sakaki out the 
window!"

"Aaah, Yomi's so mean," Tomo groused, but complied anyway.

"Chiyo, wanna go keep an eye on Tomo for us?" Kagura said. Chiyo 
hesitated for a moment, looking back and forth between Kagura and Sakaki, 
then nodded and raced to catch up with Tomo. Kagura sighed in relief.

"What's that about?" Yomi said. "Even Tomo can't mess up a hospital. Um... 
Much."

"Listen, Yomi," Kagura said, trying to avoid looking straight at Sakaki's 
face as she spoke. "You work for your school's news department, right?"

"Journalism, right," Yomi said. "I'm doing some story on urban legends."

"Right, about that..." Kagura turned away, facing the window then leaning 
back on it. "When I... when I got there, Kaorin was completely out of her 
mind. She kept going on and on about TVs and videos." At the darkening 
of Yomi's expression, she stuttered, "D-don't think I'm crazy or somethin'. 
I..." She turned to look at Sakaki, a chill running down her spine. "You
can ask around, right? You find out about stuff."

Yomi sighed, "Kagura, I don't think I can."

"Please, Yomi," Kagura said, then hesitated. "I... I saw her face."

And Kagura thought back to her finding Sakaki, shrunk back against a 
corner grasping at all her plush animals. Her eyes were wide, her face red, 
and her jaw hanging open in the most intense, terrible look of pure and 
concentrated bliss she had ever seen in her life.

It was horrible. She shuddered again at the memory of it.

"But the story with the tape is supposed to kill you, not... whatever 
happened to her," Yomi insisted.

"Well, maybe she's just too strong for that," Kagura said. "All I know is,
last week she went to some field trip to Okinawa with her class, and when she 
came back she was acting like... uh..." She winced at the thought of it, 
but... "She was acting all like Osaka. Talking about seeing weird things and 
stuff."

Yomi frowned. Okinawa.

"All right, I'll see what I can do," she said.

"And take care of Chiyo, too."

"Huh?" Yomi stared, "What?"

"Er, I can't have her at my house right now, and her parents didn't come 
with her," Kagura said. "It's OK, you can stay at her house, I guess. She
got the keys."

"But that's not... Oh, all right." Yomi rubbed her forehead. For some 
reason, she felt she had just bitten off much more than she could chew. Not 
that she believed in the curse, of course.

"By the way, you said Kaorin was there when it happened," she said, still 
massaging her temples. "Where is she? Is she here?"

Kagura looked at her in the eye. "Yeah, she's here. She's in the hospital's 
psych ward."

Yomi looked up, her eyes wide, "What did you say?"

"Yomi, look!" came Tomo's muffled voice from somewhere down the hall, 
"A de-terminator! Cool!"

"Aah! Tomo-san! That's a defibrillator! Put it down! AAH!"

The lights went out all over the floor.

Yomi sighed. "And I could have picked the urban legend about giant kung-fu
turtles instead..."







Jorge A. Pratt
jorgepratt@prodigy.net.mx
terbril@rocketmail.com