The kitchens, hoping to snag an apron.

(chapter originally by doragom333 on writing.com)

Kanshi smiled a sickening smirk as he watched Yukiko along the multiple video feeds from the hidden cameras his crew set up. The girl was stubbornly keeping her front shielded as she ran, but there were a few choice side shots and rear shots providing plenty of quality material. And, with the special chemical currently coursing through her body, soon enough that shield would soon become an open gateway for them to see her indulging in one of life's most forbidden pleasures. And once she was **** and occupied, then would come the master stroke. He shook his head, tucking his fantasies in to the back of his brain. It would all come to fruition soon enough. He just needed a little more patience...

Looking back at the monitors, Kanshi scanned for Yukiko's current location, but couldn't find her. She had vanished from all the camera feeds!

"Where did she go!?" he shouted.

"Already on it, sir," one of the technicians responded, poring through the previous footage. "It looks like... the kitchen!"

"What? Why there? Did she suddenly get snack cravings after all this?" Kanshi asked. "Figures she'd go to the one room that was too busy to sneak a camera inside... Hey, that's not a side effect of the gas isn't it?"

"No sir," said the worker he addressed. "If it made you hungry as well as horny then there'd be no market for it."

"All right, all right, skip the lecture next time, we're on a time table here," Kanshi admonished. "Now, who've we got closest to the kitchen?"

"That'd be the one in #108, just a couple doors away," another worker answered.

"#108? Perfect! Get 'em there with their camera and have the feed patched through to the big screen," he ordered. "We're going in."

Meanwhile, Yukiko had already made it to the kitchen and was in the middle of searching the cabinets for an apron, having turned on the lights to help after making sure she was alone in the room. With dinner having long since finished, the kitchenware had already been cleaned and put away for the night, though the smell of the night's meal still lingered in the air. It was to that smell that Yukiko attributed the strange headache and warmth in her chest, unaware of Kanshi's crooked scheme.

"I was sure it was this one... yes!" Yukiko said to herself, having made her way along the cabinets before finally finding an apron in the leftmost one. "It would've been nice if it wasn't the last one, but that's always how it goes isn't it?" she joked to herself.

But despite being able to make that joke, Yukiko wasn't feeling fine at all. Her thoughts kept coming back to what was happening to her right now, and Mayumi Yamano. That slip from before, the one that instantly vanished from her body, was one thing. It can't have been the original article, she disposed of it herself, so maybe it could have been a copy, and someone was playing a joke on her? But if this was just some horrible prank, how could they have gotten this level of detail in acquiring an exact replica of a piece of clothing that she wasn't even wearing at the time of her ****? No one should have known of that underwear's existence. But then again... Ms. Yamano's affair was exposed so there may have been some earlier pictures featuring her in that clothing.

But just as Yukiko began to feel a little better, she remembered what she saw in the mirror, and that voice, followed by the slip vanishing into the ether. That felt all too real to be fake, and she had had that headache ever since then, not because of the food smell. But if that was real, then could that really be Ms. Yamano's ghost, or-

"Hhh!" Yukiko's breath froze in her throat as she realized a new, terrible possibility. What if that wasn't Ms. Yamano's ghost, but her Shadow!? The image also spoke about Namatame, the man she was having an affair with, and one's Shadow did seem to exhibit one's suppressed desires. Also, Ms. Yamano herself was killed by Shadows, her own Shadow likely being one of them. So then, what would happen to a Shadow after the human they came from is killed? Would they just disappear, or would they continue to exist, filled with unending rage at the human who denied them?

Yukiko's breathing grew rapid as she gripped the apron tightly with her hands, her mind racing as she considered the possibility that Mayumi Yamano's Shadow was haunting the inn. Why now after all these months? Was it foggy tonight? She couldn't remember. The steam was always nice and thick during a hot spring bath so it could have been steam or fog clouding the area. She could go outside herself to check, but not like this. She needed real clothes, not just an apron!

"Oh, right!" she said, her mind snapped back to reality as she began to don the apron. While she shouldn't go outside even with the apron on, she should be decent enough with it to be able to make it back to her own room, where she could check on things from there and even use her phone to call her friends and tell them all about what was happening. If shadows were involved, she would have to be a bit more daring; there was no time to lose!

As she was putting the apron on, the "guest" from Room #108 arrived, camera in hand catching Yukiko's naked backside.

"Phew, so that's what she was doing! Well played, Amagi, well played..." Kanshi, back in the recording van, sighed. "Looks like we made it in time, though. Now, as soon as she finishes dressing, kill the lights," he said over his headset to #108.

Yukiko had thought that putting on the apron would ease her nerves as well as protect her modesty, as she would be wearing some that most definitely wasn't ghost or Shadow clothing. But the headache and warmth in her body was only getting worse. Even stranger, after securing the apron to her body by tying the strings, she realized that the fabric felt weird along her private areas, which Yukiko tried to rationalize by reasoning that you're not supposed to wear aprons naked, the fact that one's butt is still completely exposed notwithstanding. Still, she needed to contact her friends and get to the bottom fo this, now! "Okay, Yukiko, you've got this," she said to herself. "Time to g-AH!" she yelped as her surroundings fell into complete darkness.

*SLAM* the kitchen door shut loudly.

Yukiko whirled around, only to see nothing. If there was anything, it was too dark to tell what it was. Either way, Yukiko wasn't going to stick around and find out, and began creeping toward the other door, the one leading to the dining room.

"Okay, nice touch slamming the door. Got a priceless look of fear there," Kanshi spoke to #108. "Let's keep this up. You said you were pretty skilled with your hands and great at stealth, so next we're going to have you-"