Chapter Text
My name is Kojima Haruna and this might be hard to believe but I can see ghosts. You may think that ghosts are scary things that come get you at night like in movies or see-through beings that you can stick your hand right through but for me, they’re not like that. In fact, sometimes I have a hard time telling apart who is a ghost and who is not. This causes a lot of problems to say the least.
“Haruuuunyaa–!” A small form ran up from out of nowhere and wrapped short arms around Haruna’s waist in a hug. That was one of the ways you could tell if someone was a ghost or not, by the way. People who are alive don’t just appear out of nowhere but sometimes this isn’t a lot of help when you’re someone who doesn’t pay much attention to your surroundings most of the time—like the aforementioned girl.
“Oh Ryoka,” she greeted the girl softly but was wary not to hug her back. By now Haruna had learnt that people looked at you really strangely if you started hugging air in the middle of the street. She was on the way to her first day at a new school so there were quite a lot of people from the same high school passing and she didn’t want them to think she was a weirdo. Going to a new school was the opportunity for her to have a new start.
Ryoka was by appearance, a regular 6 year-old girl. She was adorable, really. Haruna had thought maybe she was a zashiki warashi– a childlike spirit from Japanese folklore that brought good fortune to the homes they stayed in, but it seemed that the girl was looking for her parents. Ryoka hadn’t explained very much but from what Haruna had been told, something was keeping her here instead of crossing over to the spirit world and the young ghost was driven to find her family. Haruna had stumbled upon the young ghost crying just last week when she had been heading back home from a trip to the convenience store and had mistaken her for a lost child. The policeman she’d stopped had been bewildered when she tried to get his assistance and in the end she was forced to make up a story about how the little girl she’d found must have run off or already found her mother in order to not sound crazy... even though the kid had been right there where she had left her.
Haruna had agreed to help but... Oshima Ryoka, huh? Neither ‘Oshima’ or ‘Ryoka’ were rare names but it couldn’t hurt to try so she had done the most obvious thing—fed the name into an internet search engine. There had been a lot of hits, of course but still, it turned out that the little girl hadn’t been so hard to identify after all. Her death had been quite publicised around 3 years back. She wasn’t really sure how to break it to the ghost yet.
BODY OF KIDNAPPED GIRL FOUND. NO SUSPECTS HAVE BEEN ARRESTED.
The kidnappers had gotten tired of waiting for the ransom money so they’d cut their losses and Ryoka had lost her life. There were a lot of rumours flying around afterwards about insurance policies and Mr. Oshima’s financial struggles. The press mercilessly pursued the story until the family had to move, just to get away.
“YUUNII!” Ryoka’s yell broke through Haruna’s thoughts and before she was able to react the little ghost had already dashed past the entrance gates of her new school.
My name is Oshima Yuu. Even though I am nineteen years old– turning 20 this year, I’m still a high school student. Furthermore, although I’ve been told I have a cute face, I’m short and not manly. A product of a broken family. There is nothing special about me at all and it can even be supposed that I am below the average worth of a normal human being. I was a hero once, however. Ryoka’s hero.
“Oshima! Are you paying attention? Answer this question!” The teacher, Togasaki, was exasperated by this student, one he knew from school records used to be exceptionally bright. Now this kid just sat in his class ignoring the world and barely making passing grades. Seeing the blank look on his student’s face made Togasaki realise that he’d be getting nowhere and just slowing down the rest of the class if he pressed the issue.
Turning to the new girl who had joined them just that day, he switched targets. “Kojima, can you answer the question?”
Haruna who had been staring on and off in Yuu’s direction, mostly because Ryoka had been hovering forlornly around the boy since she saw him and ineffectively tried to get his attention, was startled by the sudden inquiry.
“Um...” Come on, Haruna! This was supposed to be your new start, remember? “...aha...ha... what was the question?”
There was some tittering around her as some of the girls who had noticed where Haruna’s attention had been directed giggled. From behind her, Haruna heard someone whisper incredulously, “that shortie?”
Insulted on behalf of her brother at the perceived slur, Ryoka jumped up angrily from her place crouched by Yuu’s leg and yelled at the girl, “Yuunii’s not a shortie!”
In her eagerness to jump to her older brother’s defense, somehow, Ryoka’s ghostly flailing arm managed to knock Yuu’s open pencil bag to the ground, scattering the contents on the floor. Yuu’s eyes widened in disbelief. Did... did that just happen? How? Eyes scanning the room, he caught the deer in headlights stare of the new student. She was seated diagonally behind him, her mouth opened in a small ‘oh’ of surprise.
“Oshima! Can you clean up that mess? If you’re not going to pay attention in class, the least you could do is not disturb it.”
It hadn’t been him. He hadn’t touched the pencil bag at all since he’d removed the one pen he habitually twirled in class instead of listening. No one else seemed to have noticed anything strange... except that girl. Yuu hadn’t caught her name.