Summer horror story: why my friend stopped coming to school

I wasn't going to post this but.

My friend Kenichi hasn't shown up to school in three weeks. We've been close since kindergarten. His family runs the biggest supermarket in the area. This dude LOVED school. Like, got perfect attendance awards in elementary school level of loved it.

And now he just. won't come.

His parents say he locked himself in his room and refuses to go. Says he hates school now. Which makes zero sense. I couldn't wrap my head around it.

Every time I went to his house, his parents were too busy running the store to really talk, and Kenichi himself was nowhere. Wouldn't come out. Wouldn't answer.

Okay. I made a decision.

That night I snuck in.

The bathroom window was open so I twisted myself through it. Started looking for his room. We've been friends forever but I'd somehow never actually been inside his house, so I had no idea where anything was. I'm tiptoeing through the dark, trying not to make a sound.

Then I end up in the kitchen.

*clink.*

My foot hit the table. A bottle fell off. Tabasco sauce, looks like. The same kind they stock in huge piles at his family's store.

Moonlight hits the label. I'm just standing there reading the ingredients out of pure nervous habit.

Salt. Pepper. Oil. Kenichi's blood.

"Honey, fresh ingredients just arrived."

"Perfect timing, we were running low on blood."

Smiling voices. The wet sound of lips.

Behind me.