Master Series: Episode 3 "Noodles"

Reminder:"I" in this story is not Saya!
For information about this series read episode 1


This is not a ghost story, but I must set it down.

My master in the Way of Occult had suddenly stopped coming to the club. Master's classmate told me that he hadn't been seen in the classes either.

That got me worried and I went to his apartment. As usual the front door had been left unlocked, so after a few knocks on the door I went in, and found inside the haggard master lying alone on the mattress.
I asked him what was the matter, and he said,
"No appetite. Had only noodles for the whole week."
So that explains it, I thought, looking at his pale face.
"Haven't you got anything else to eat? You could die, " I said and searched the room, but found nothing.

"Are you suffering from the summer heat?" I asked him, but there was no answer.
Well, I don't want to know anyway, I thought, and coldly left him.
I was in awe of Master, but he could sometimes be surprisingly childish, and for that reason there was a part of me that belittled him. At the time we were already speaking on equal terms.

When I paid a visit to him again two days later, he was still lying on the mattress in the exactly same manner as before.
It seemed he had never put one foot outside his room and stayed under the duvet all day.
"Noodles won't keep you alive for long," just as I said that to him, Master suddenly retched and, clutching at his chest, rushed to the toilet.
As I rubbed his back for him, he started to vomit. I watched him and thought something weird like, "you could eat noodles all day but your vomit still turns out brown."
Just then a sudden realization came over me.

Wait a minute...

I searched the room again but there was nothing there. Not even noodles.
"What on earth are you eating?" I asked him more urgently. But he said nothing.
He is possessed, a suspicion flashed across my mind. But I couldn't do anything for him then.
I later forced him to go the hospital with me where he was immediately admitted for malnutrition.

He was put on a drip and after four days he got well and was duly discharged. But he never told me what exactly he was eating during the time he shut himself away in his room.

Something, however, had changed in him. Whereas he was rather arrogant and laddish before, he had now become more meek and babyish in comparison. That same summer we would visit many haunted places, but the change had made him unreliable, and we would often face unnecessary dangers.