Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kunugigaoka House has taken many forms over the years – a library, a factory, a workshop, a school. 

Towering proud over its town, the mountain’s crown, its tragic reputation has been subject to many hushed rumours among the citizens for generations. Death appears to swallow it whole – will you be haunted by the terrifying visage belonging to the woman in the shadows, will the lights short circuit above you, will you feel, hear, smell what is not there? Children swap stories in rhymes and giggles to scare one another. 

But one thing is concrete – no one who walks the hallways of Kunugigaoka House does so alone.

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Terasaka Ryoma, twenty-four years of age and freshly graduated from university, is scrutinising the dubiously orange rim of a sink in a Tokyo apartment going for ¥42,000 a month when he receives the call. 

No Caller ID, the screen glares at him, and he answers it anyway with Karma’s snide admonishment already ringing in his head (“How the hell are you ever surprised when you get scammed?”). A smooth, deep voice seeps from the speaker and informs him, with not a single stutter or crackle, that a certain Terasaka Kiichi-san has passed away and left behind in his will a large estate to be given to his oldest living relative. Entirely for free. 

And Terasaka lags in processing how he’s never before in his life heard of a Kiichi because the promise of a free house in this economy has him agree to meet immediately, no thoughts attached. The house resides in Kunugigaoka (not overly far, he does wonder why he’s never heard of Kiichi now) and he clumsily jots its address in his notes app. 

Karma is less than impressed when he calls him up later, voice dripping with a combination of contempt and mirth rarely heard these days. Terasaka seems to possess a unique way of triggering it.  

"You get a call from some creep with no caller ID saying you've inherited a house from a relative you've never heard of and you just–" Karma cuts himself off with an incredulous groan, slipping into a harsh laugh. "No, you're exactly the kind of idiot to fall for that."

"It's free," emphasises Terasaka, and he can just picture Karma's molten eyes narrowing. “Look, I can deal with whether it’s real or not–”

“It absolutely is not.”

“–Later. But this sorta shit’s worth checkin’ out, right?”

“What’s this supposed relative’s name, again?”

Massaging his temples, Terasaka mutters out, “Kiichi, he said.”

“And it doesn’t ring a single alarm bell in that cavernous skull of yours?” 

“No, man, listen.” Terasaka sucks his teeth and leans back in his chair. “I barely knew any of my dad’s family, it’s not fuckin’ unbelievable. And it’s not like I can ask anyone now, so I’m willing to risk it. Who knows!”

“Who knows,” repeats Karma dryly. “When are you going?”

He frowns and checks the note. “Uh, next Tuesday. Noon… you comin’?”

A twinge of pitiful hope colours the proposition and Karma huffs a heavy sigh.

“I guess I’d better. I’d hate for my favourite minion to die in such a stupid way.”

To Terasaka’s credit, he does bother to dive into shallow research of the house. It’s plenty sizeable, sprawling across one of the mountaintops overlooking Kunugigaoka town, and photos herald it as well-kept, furnished. 

Kiichi must have had a gardener or a knack for DIY or some shit; a little digging had established him as a real person, an author of all things, boasting an assortment of history books concerning the town’s history to his name. Terasaka Kiichi, author of cult ‘Phantoms and their Tales’ has peacefully passed away at the age of ninety-one, blares one headline. 

Scrolling through a Reddit thread tells him there exist rumours of the house being haunted, about a string of deaths going back to the 1920s, and he scoffs. They’re the sort of ghost stories you tell at sleepovers as kids, smothered in blankets and spilling popcorn, he half-expects them to claim a kappa sighting.  

He enlists a dreadfully amused Nakamura’s help in deciphering the paperwork mailed inconspicuously to his little sister’s apartment (she’s understandably confused, and a little pissed that he’s the one who gets the house, but he ensures her she can stay whenever), and they both scratch their heads over contracts worded like wedding vows. Who the hell knows what “death til you part” means in this context? 

Regardless, Terasaka becomes glad he doesn’t have a ton of belongings as he packs. 

Karma appears – hair combed and dressed in an expensive scarlet button-up and chino shorts as if embarking on vacation – on the doorstep at the time they agreed come Tuesday and simply rolls his eyes at Terasaka’s overeager luggage. 

Their train ride out to Kunugigaoka is rather quiet – Karma doesn’t prod as much as Terasaka expected until they’re roughly two stops away. He lazily kicks one leg over the other and stretches back in that feline manner of his.

“How much of this have you thought through?”

“I did research!” says Terasaka defensively. He yanks out and unfolds his laptop, clicking onto a tab with a brief overview of the town, shoving it in Karma’s face.

He raises a slow eyebrow. “Uh-huh.”

“I did!”

Lush greenery greets them at Kunugigaoka station, tree branches slick with dew drooping in crescents, and that proves to be a theme as they meander through the town. It maintains a balance of rural and urban, factories hugged by mountains, roads grazed by woodland. 

Most buildings appear old, which tracks, the newest looking to be the eponymous Kunugigaoka Junior High School and partner Kunugigaoka High School, and Karma idly snaps photos of the restaurant chains they pass. When Terasaka shoots him a questioning glance he pokes his tongue out.

“For later, dumbass,” he says, flicking to one of his photos. “Y’know, that one pretty famous ramen chain – Matsuraiken – started here. The original restaurant’s still up and running.”  

When they reach the base of the mountain upon which the house sits there emerges an issue. 

There’s no cable-car. No stairs. Merely a faint trail with chipped, oak arrows pointing upwards. 

No specks of sympathy reflect in Karma’s eyes as he watches Terasaka haul his luggage up the mountain, practically dragging it, drenched in sweat compared to Karma’s casual trek. He doesn’t even grant him with a taunting jibe, the bastard. 

The house looms as they approach, casting long, shivering shadows and seeming to shudder in the wind. Certainly, parts of it are as well put together as Terasaka’s research suggested, but other parts, particularly the upper stories and back of the house, lean towards dilapidated. Karma notes with intrigue how the architecture morphs between traditional Japanese, notably its signature curved roof, and modern elements – the distribution of the architecture telling the story of renovation. 

Kiichi must have had a gardener, though, with the array of flowers gracing several beds. 

Terasaka dumps his luggage with heaving pants, an unimpressed Karma’s mouth twitching, and drags his fist up to bang at the thick, oak doors. 

A grating creak, they slide open, revealing a pallid, bony man with a crooked grin. His eyes flicker to Karma, before settling on Terasaka, and he extends a thin hand. 

“Terasaka-san, I presume?” he says, voice smooth as tar. “And this is…?”

Karma’s gaze doesn’t waver, not floundering as Terasaka does before shaking the offered hand. 

“Akabane, here to make sure this lug doesn’t get lost.”

The man’s aged features might have been handsome if not sharpened like a blade. He bows, grin opening way for a low chuckle. “A wise choice! Yanagisawa, at your service.”

Stepping aside, his eyes stalk them as Karma sidles in and Terasaka staggers after him.  

An instant damp chill rushes him and, eyes adjusting to the dim lighting, Terasaka finds Karma’s observation about the exterior architecture to be true inside too. A sparkling modern kitchen, rusted garage door, polished wood flooring juxtaposed with paper sheet dividers, a collection of tatami mats and an overflowing rotten box with floppy paperbacks. He thinks it’s pretty cool – from a glance alone, all the varying purposes the house has served shines. 

Yanagisawa leads them through to a proper dining room and scrapes back the chairs for them to sit. The sturdy table hosts a stack of papers and a suspicious fruit bowl. 

“Down to business,” Yanagisawa says. “I’m sure you have questions.”

Terasaka glances up from fiddling with a loose woodchip. “Uh - yeah, that’s right. First - this Kiichi guy, how was I related to him?”

“There’s not exactly a term for it, but…” Yanagisawa digs from the papers a printout of a rambling family tree and slides it across to him, jabbing at a name with his thumb. “That’s him, that’s you.”

Smirking, Karma frees a photo from the stack and airs it out. “Oh, yeah, I see the resemblance. See, Terasaka, why don’t you try growing a beard like this?”

“This house was originally built and lived in by one Terasaka Ryosuke-san, see, here” — Yanagisawa ghosts a fingertip over the respective spot on the tree — “in 1874. He transformed the ground floor into Kunugigaoka’s first library in 1913…. you’ll notice that it’s predominantly the ground floor that has been renovated so much over time, following the example of Ryosuke-san all those years ago. The upper stories, especially the bedrooms, haven’t changed much since they were first built.”

He unearths a specific set of photos, spreads them on the table, smoothing them out. 

Several scenes of the house spanning time stare up at them. 

First, grainy, depicts (assumedly) Ryosuke standing, chest puffed out, in front of the newly opened library with a thin, spectre of a young woman. 

Second, a nervous, wiry man clapping a pale boy with a round face and blank expression on the shoulder next to a sign faintly reading, “Horibe Electronics”. 

Third, by a colour photo of an older woman and boy with warm brown skin grinning at the camera while a sharp featured older man crouches and slings his arms around two motorcycles. 

Finally, a colour photo of an obvious polished classroom, a happy and healthy man with sunset orange hair beaming proudly at three students clutching test papers.

Terasaka whistles as he examines each photo in turn. “So… Kiichi bought it back into the family, then?”

“That’s right.” Yanagisawa’s lips are thin when he smiles. “You see this, Horibe Electronics? That’s who bought it out of your family in the ‘40s and, coincidentally, I became involved with the house through them.”

If he stares too long at the woman standing by Ryosuke in the library photo, his eyes throb and unfocus, appearing to distort her. He shakes his head, glances sidelong to Karma who studies said Horibe Electronics with a passing recognition. 

“Any other questions?”

“Yeah,” says Karma, leaning back. “What’s your role here?”

“To the Horibe family, I was a guardian,” he assures. “Since, I kept in contact with each passing owner of the house, and I have all the credentials to do this. Worry not.”

Humming, Karma appears to accept the answer for now, and returns to the photos. 

Yanagisawa pushes himself to his feet and bows deeply. “If that’s all, I’ll be taking my leave. The house is now entirely in your care, Terasaka-san. I trust you read the documents?”

He bids them farewell and skulks out the house, leaving behind the photos and family tree but taking the remaining papers. 

A thick silence coats them and the house, seeming to breathe in tandem with the two. Karma clicks on his phone, sterile blue light piercing the room. Leaning over his shoulder, Terasaka catches the time. 13:09. 

An itch to explore the house and its grounds nags at him, tugs him out his chair and he stretches, eyeing Karma’s bouncing foot. 

“What’s up?” he prompts. 

“Nothing…” Karma shoves his phone in his pocket but, contrary to popular belief, Terasaka knows better. 

“You were lookin’ at these photos for a long time.”

He shrugs. “It’s interesting, I’m interested.” Clearing his throat, he stands and sweeps the photos up in one swift motion. “I’ve decided I’m staying with you for a while.”

“Oh really?”

Karma’s grin is familiar, devilish and sharp, and Terasaka grins back with easy equal vigour.

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Initially, Terasaka wants Kiichi’s room. Until a snickering Karma shatters his illusion, insetting reminders of the dead body that likely lay there not even a week ago. So he settles for a bedroom in the east wing, overlooking the town.

A survey of the house by the two of them revealed an unreliable boiler that Terasaka notes to check out and illuminated which areas of the house had remained untouched by life for who knows how many decades. Though the wiring is fine (he examined it a million times because Karma wouldn’t believe it), electricity flickers on and off periodically, generally when it’s most inconvenient. 

Karma had gotten pissed off at him, thinking he’d moved the photo collection from the room he claimed, until finding it haphazardly tossed across the room. 

It’s an old house, bound to be dodgy in places.

…Terasaka makes a note to check for gas leaks or some shit, as he shivers in bed, blankets up to his chin like a child, staring deep into the bloody eyes of a pale face twisting itself into a grin.  

(He scours the house the next day, finds none.)

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“Oi, Terasaka!”

Karma’s voice pours through the open window and, fumbling with the faucet, Terasaka stumbles out the shower and chucks on a shirt as he jogs over.

“What?” he shouts back, patting down damp hair. 

Karma openly laughs, teetering off when Terasaka grumbles and shrinks back. “No, no, stay – you’ve got a good view from up there.”

He backs up and points high up, just above the window. Straining, Terasaka leans out and squints, desperately trying to zero in on it. 

“It’s the brickwork, it looks crap, but can you see what the exact issue is?”

Terasaka braces a knee on the windowsill to heave himself up a little. “Huh… oh! Yeah, no, I see it – it’s fuckin’ ivy. Like at the back of the house. Figures.”

“Ivy…?”

“Yeah–”

Any attempt to clamber back halts as a freezing pressure clamps on Terasaka’s back. He yelps, swiping his arm behind him.

“Idiot, what are you–”

Karma’s words die with a choke. The freezing pressure mounts, lodging ice in Terasaka’s spine, and with an airless shove he loses what little balance he clung to and plummets from the window. 

All air lurches from his lungs, a panicked scream ripping free with it, as he collides with the ground below.

Hazily, he registers Karma’s voice, clipped and hurried, and in his rocking vision – four fuzzy figures staring down from the window.

And then – darkness. 

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Muramatsu splays his hands, tripping over his words. “We wanted him gone, didn’t we? Killin’ him isn’t ideal, sure, but what works, works!”

“It was my first proposal,” drawls Hazama with a shrug. 

“Direct action,” Itona agrees, flexing a hand. “We all know we can’t afford another guy like old Kiichi.”

Taisei drills holes into the retreating helicopter with his eyes, jaw twitching, and stays silent. 

For a series of weeks, it’s business as usual for them again, their routines resuming. Potential new owner disposed of, the ghosts can part ways again, temporary alliance dissolved. 

Hazama returns to the library and watches, every week, that young man with sunset orange hair sporting a child ghost bound to him plant fresh flowers on the grounds. Itona drifts between the boiler room and garage, radio forever crackling, and he allows himself a small smile at a news report announcing the sudden death of researcher Yanagisawa Kotaro. Taisei watches Muramatsu pace around their bedroom for the umpteenth time muttering, his apparent new daily regime. Himself, Taisei hadn’t been as chill with killing the guy or even particularly haunting him as the others, and he’s made it no secret he feels that way to Muramatsu, so he supposes he’s partly responsible for his current state. 

It’ll pass. As things always do here. In a quiet hum of lifelessness.

…A quiet hum of lifelessness…

…Until he comes back.

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The deafening click of keys echoes through the blissfully empty house followed by that grating creak of door sliding open. In bumbles Terasaka, supported on one side by a disgruntled Karma, sporting a bandaged head and neck-brace. Called by Karma, Takebayashi shuffles through after. He takes one sweeping glance of the place and wrinkles his nose, nudging up his glasses.

“Get him into a bed,” he commands. “Rest is the most important step to his recovery right now.” 

“Don’t gotta fuss over me,” Terasaka grumbles. “I’m fine.”

Karma steers him upstairs, fires a cool glare. “Shut up.”

Soberly, he concedes. A prickly trepidation trickled through him at the mere sight of the house – looming, windows glaring – but he’d choked it down, like the visions bombarding him at the hospital (no one else had seen the doctor carrying his own head?) he shoves it all away with solid, stubborn palms. 

He’s apparently not fine, probably clinging still to remnants of his head injury, but it’s fine. 

Stairs mounted, he signals for Karma to take a break and bends over, hands braced on thighs, to catch his breath. When he straightens again is when he sees it. 

A man unrecognisable for the life of him loiters in the hallway – comfortable in a dark cyan engineer’s uniform, patched in oil stains, and matching cap, long cared for locs flowing out, skin radiating an otherworldly glow. He turns and the crusted blood smeared on his chin, trailing down his front, spurs sweat to pool at Terasaka’s nape. Their eyes meet, and he has little time to question the mirrored fear that crawls across the man’s face, for Karma smacks his shoulder. 

He spins, mouth agape, to Karma’s arched eyebrow. 

“It’s nothin’, nothin’, just had to get my breath back,” he says, too rushed, too clipped. 

When Terasaka dares glance at the hallway again, its emptiness stares back. He draws a sluggish breath.  

Karma drags him to his room and at least bothers to smooth the bedding down before he dumps him. Scrutiny bubbles in those eyes as Terasaka wriggles under the covers to the bed’s creaking, scratching his neck-brace with a grunt. It transports them back to the hospital, where the set-up was much the same. 

…If Terasaka is honest, he’s unsure what Karma’s getting out of this. He sinks into his mattress. 

“Oh, please,” a low, breathy voice behind him flutters a chill down his neck, his hand twitches. “He’s still here? Juliet couldn’t do one thing right?”

“Am I dying?” he mumbles, pathetic. “Am I dead?”

Karma scoffs, hovers in the doorway. “No, by some fucking miracle you survived, and are surviving.”

“He better not be dying,” the voice warns. “Ryosuke was enough. Three idiots in the house already is enough, they don’t even amuse me, at least he did.”

“Get rest like Takebayashi told you,” Karma says, closing the door with a rough scrape. “Even you can’t screw that up.”

Karma’s presence, warm like volcanic rock, is displaced with that fluttering chill. 

Swallowing hard, Terasaka inches around. 

All blood freezes.

A charred face peers out from midnight hair, suspended body donning a black hakama half-swallowed by the wall. That same unsettlingly canny visage which haunts him, twisted in a vampiric grin, every night. 

Oh he could shit himself. 

He doesn’t, he retains some dignity as he screws his eyes shut and thick tears crawl free. The figure stares right back at him when he cracks them open again. Scrubbing his eyes, taking deep breaths, massaging his temples… nothing works. The figure continues staring, astonishment building into cruel amusement. 

“What’s this?” she says, a chuckle rising. “Well this is new.”

“I’m dying,” Terasaka whimpers. “I’m dying and I’m going to hell. Oh god.”

“If you can see me, I understand why you’d think that,” she says. “How interesting. You were supposed to die, obviously you didn’t, but your brushing with death’s fingers has had… some impact…”

Terasaka furiously shakes his head, groaning. “This isn’t real, I hit my head hard, that’s right, yeah…”

She grins sharp and shadowy. “That’s right, Terasaka Ryoma, this is all in your head.”

“It knows my name,” he whispers, gulps. “‘Course it fuckin’ does, it’s in my head…”

The figure scrambles through the solid wall in a swift motion and wades across his bed to face him. Seared flesh glares from holes in her hakama, skin beneath furious red near translucent in its pallor, radiating the same glow as the hallway man. 

All Terasaka can do is gape, flinching forwards with a punch and fist passing straight through her body, that same chill wracking him. A tangible chill.  

“That accomplished a lot,” the figure chuckles. “Ryosuke… Ryoma… the same idiot.”

A swinging lanyard from her neck catches his attention, and Terasaka manages to decipher Hazama as the name scrawled upon it. He squeezes his eyes shut again, aware now of why the figure is familiar – the photo. She was so unnerving, the woman next to Ryosuke, of course his conscience internalised her…

He needs air.

Desperately diverting his gaze from the figure (Hazama?), Terasaka pushes himself up and stumbles to the hallway.

Another figure, glowing the same glow, whips his head up and Terasaka backs against the wall. Piercing plasma eyes narrow at him, narrow further when he stares right into them with a terrified mesmerisation. He trails his gaze to the side, shuddering, vomit curdling at the back of his throat, at a bony arm dangling on its socket by a fleshy thread. 

The weak lights above flicker, shortfuse, and a full yell rips from him as Terasaka tramples downstairs, rushing through the figure who doubles over at contact. 

He skids into the dining room – Karma and Takebayashi flick their eyes to him, matching concerned annoyance stretched across their expressions. Takebayashi nears him, cautious, hand outstretched. 

“What are you doing?” he says. “You need to rest, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Terasaka swallows a pitiful sob. “Think ‘m goin’ crazy.”

Takebayashi’s frown softens a smidge and he takes him by the sleeve, leading him to the table. 

“Okay.” He pushes Terasaka into a chair with gentle force. “Okay, you’re not going crazy, that’s not a term we use. You seem… spooked. It’s very possible your injury did more psychological damage than we thought, but that’s not my field…”

Karma shoves takeout towards him. “Maybe it’s this dump of a house.”

“No,” Terasaka mumbles, burying his head in the crook of his arm. “Was happenin’ at the hospital too, I just… thought it’d go away.”

“Idiot.” Sudden acidity slathers Karma’s voice. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I thought it’d go away!” It’s half-true. 

Whatever Takebayashi’s comment is, he misses it, because a chill darts through the room with an unfamiliar, nasal voice. 

“The hell’s this!” it shouts, trembling. Terasaka drags his eyes up and wilts – a guy with cropped butterscotch hair and blood patterns matching Hallway Man glares at their takeout. “Matsuraiken? They were supposed to shut that down, don’t tell me, that bastard…” 

As if summoned, the three other figures drift through the wall. 

Hazama grins at him eerily, eerily enough it feels as if it seeps right down to his bones. Forehead crinkled, Hallway Man braces a hand on blond’s shoulder, another on his hip. Arm watches them for a second, before scrutinising Terasaka, dissecting him as if he were a circuit. 

“Terasaka!” Takebayashi waves his hand in front of his face and, gulping, Terasaka shakily nods. “Oh, Karma, I think his condition is…”

Karma snaps his fingers, Terasaka follows the motion, breathes deeply.

“Terasaka,” he enunciates, poising a palm beneath his chin. “What do you see?”

“There’s…” he clears his throat, “there’s one, uh, she’s a librarian? From that photo with Ryosuke, but she’s…”

“Horrifically malformed, blood and bone showing under crisped skin, the most terrifying spectre the world has seen…”

“Burnt,” he settles on, ignoring her curling, breathy drawl. “Dead. There’s two guys covered in blood and… and one guy, uh, he barely has an… an arm…”

“He can really see us?” Arm says, quiet, monotone. “That hasn’t happened before.” 

Karma blinks, exchanging a glance with Takebayashi. Terasaka expects a degree of mocking exasperation from him but, opposingly, he leans forwards with a stern curiosity, eyes like flickering embers. 

He laughs lightly and says, “Have you actually seen a ghost?”

Eyeing each of them in turn, skin crawling, Terasaka raggedly exhales. 

“Can I… wait, I’ve gotta check somethin’...”

Takebayashi halts him from standing with a firm grip on his shoulder. “What do you need?”

“Laptop.”

“I’ll get it.”

Takebayashi’s followed out by six pairs of eyes. 

Five then burn into Terasaka, who avoids best he can staring at the one man’s arm wound, all simmering in curiosity, amusement, fear. Karma hums before hopping up, flicking up a hand in a one moment gesture and sliding out the room – Terasaka now alone (but not quite). 

“Can you hear us too?” Hallway Man tries.

A nod, he scrunches his eyebrows further. 

“Weird.”

“Is he a ghost now?” Blond hisses, fastening a hand over hallway man’s. “Oh, shit, this isn’t ‘cause of the window, right?”

Realisation slams into Terasaka like a rock lobbed at him, he buffers, chokes. That unique chill he’s perpetually hunted by since, the same cold that lodged within as he plummeted–

“That was you?!” he splutters, jabbing an accusatory finger. “You fuckin’- a ghost fucking pushed me?! I nearly died!”

“And you didn’t, so it didn’t work,” Arm says in a tone that suggests he might as well be talking to a toddler. “This is why we keep to ourselves, try working with them once and it doesn’t even work.”

“Died is a strong word…” Blond trails off with a look from Hallway Man and examines the takeout again. 

When Karma and Takebayashi return, he plonks down in his chair, sweat coating his forehead and neck, and furiously punches the laptop’s keys until he uncovers the information on his mind – Takebayashi flinches back when he spins the screen around to show them. Concern is not strong enough a word for what reflects in the two’s eyes, but they scoot forwards to read. 

The newspaper headline he’d uncovered – going from that janky Reddit post he read weeks ago down a rabbit hole – dated 1924, Library And Librarian Beloved By Whole Town Goes Up In Flames! Local Primary School Pays Respects. The grainy, faded photo unmistakably depicts Hazama, cropped from the photo of her and Ryosuke. 

Karma lines up said photo, lips curling, eyes sliding between the article and Terasaka. 

“It’d make sense if you internalised the librarian from the photo…” muses Takebayashi, voice petering out.

“How’d I know she burned to death, though?” Shaking his head, Terasaka taps the screen with his thumb. “I’m tellin’ you, this is weird shit. It matches up with all the fuckass haunting rumours I read before comin’ here.”

“There are rumours about me? How delightful, Hanako-san will have to retire.” Hazama wades through the table, peers at the laptop screen. “What’s this? Strange device, why’s it so blinding, urgh…”

“It’s a weirdly thin computer,” supplies Hallway Man. “Dunno where the rest of it is.”

Terasaka whirls the laptop back around – scanning the various testimonials scattered throughout for Hazama. I’ll miss my witch librarian! Meiko, 7. A true tragedy, rest well, Hazama-san - Mayor Yamamoto. Two people boast genuine interviews, one of which being Ryosuke (Hazama-kun was the most astute librarian you could ask for, wonderfully clever…) and a woman named as Yukiko (I miss her dreadfully, she was so misunderstood but I hope she knows how much this community loved her, how much I love her. I could speak to her so freely…). 

He saves the article and roots around the internet some more. That Reddit thread had only focused, really, on Hazama – her presence. But there was that tidbit on flickering electrics…

“Karma,” he says, voice dry. “D’you have the photo of the um, electronics company?”

Karma slips it across. “Horibe Electronics. You know, I recognised the name, I looked it up myself and…”

“...A tragic accident killing the factory’s young owner and permanently shutting it down on March 31st 1958,” he reads, stomach coiling at the description of the accident, utterly unexpected, one of the machines, tearing his arm almost clean off, died from blood loss as no one found him in time. 

“I was gonna say their early bankruptcy, but that too.”

The young owner’s profile stares impassively up from the article. Horibe Itona. Equally impassive remains his ghost when Terasaka meets his eyes. His expression twitches for a second before his gaze darts to the wall. 

Terasaka scrolls through the Horibe Electronics wikipedia page, the name Yanagisawa leaping out. Hadn’t he been the gaunt man who’d contacted him about the house, who met with him? He’d mentioned involvement with Horibe Electronics, hadn’t he… Terasaka highlights a quote from him dated April 1st, 1958, a day after the accident, claiming it truly tragic and unforeseen… that the Horibe family was surely plagued by a kind of unfortunate devastation…  

“So, you see the owner of Horibe Electronics as he died, too?” At his nod, Takebayashi rubs his arm. “Even though, in the photo, he’s a young child…”

“And there are two more?” Karma prompts, hand brushing over the leftover photos. “Either of these?”

Terasaka screws up his forehead, scrutinising them. The schoolhouse, he thinks, is a resolute no. 

Hallway Man hovers over his shoulder, spurring a chill. Glancing up, the hollow thorniness in his eyes forms a lump in Terasaka’s throat. 

He meets him in the middle. “Look up Yoshida Motors. Then Matsuraiken, your takeout. It’ll tell you what y’want to know.”

“One of them says this,” Terasaka ghosts a hand over the sunny family with motorcycles, “is Yoshida Motors. Is that, uh, right?”

Karma’s eyebrows shoot up, voice lowers to a near whisper. “It is.”

A quick search pulls up first their (brief) wikipedia page, followed by articles proclaiming a death on the grounds from 1983, no – two deaths. All echo similar stories: Police Rule Yoshida Motors Deaths A Suicide. 

As a headache bursts, he continues to read, the sleepy town of Kunugigaoka held their breaths as police investigated the mysterious deaths of 24 year olds Yoshida Taisei and Muramatsu Takuya, known as the town mechanic running Yoshida Motors and the heir to familiar ramen chain Matsuraiken respectively, discovered three months ago in June (...) after much speculation, the police department have closed the case as a double suicide… 

“Holy shit,” he mumbles, angles the screen to Karma and Takebayashi, whose mouths drop in comical unison. 

Scrolling down further exposes a string of true crime forums going back to the early 2000s discussing the case, challenging the police handling of it decades on, was it  really a suicide or an elaborate cover-up – many subscribe to that theory, he reads, citing various lines of reasoning...   

Terasaka’s head spins, he kneeds his eyes with his knuckles until kaleidoscopic splotches worsen the blooming headache. He groans, groans louder, and almost yells again. He really can’t fucking deny it – there are actual dead people consuming all his senses. It actually makes more sense than any of the psychological shit Takebayashi was trying to spew. 

“Fuck,” breathes Karma. A grin, sharp and catlike, flashes. “I hope you know this is the most interesting thing to ever happen to you, Terasaka. I suddenly enjoy your company.”

Takebayashi scrubs a hand across his face. “My scientific worldview has been shattered but, I suppose, ghosts have always been… impossible to falsify.”

.

.

.

In the time he’s confined to the house recovering, the ghosts appear intent to prove every haunting story right. 

He doesn’t know what the hell they meant by not working together because Hazama posing herself at the end of his bed every night, contorting her face and body into pure nightmare fuel, Horibe fusing out the electricity at the most inconvenient, often painful, times, and Muramatsu smashing items to the floor, all seem pretty fucking in tune to him. 

Now Terasaka knows it was them who tried to kill him not a seed of doubt sews in his mind that this is no less than another attempt to drive him out. Well, too bad! Eat shit! 

It’s not working in the slightest, he reasons, crouched in the corner beside the toilet as Hazama lurks outside his door ready to scare him shitless (literally). 

Takebayashi clings to a theory of stress, especially whenever he regards Terasaka’s current state, but he seems to waver. He’d rather believe in ghosts than something like clairvoyance, which is the only other explanation he could come up with for Terasaka’s knowledge on these people.

Karma sparks with utter intrigue and entertainment in Terasaka’s new ailment. Like a firecracker, he whips up questions and theories for him – turning those photos over in his lithe hands. 

.

.

.

At least a week passes and Terasaka burns with new incentive at the sight of a man wandering around the house’s garden – what strikes him is not his finely pressed, sleek suit, nor his sunset hair (though the hue rings familiar) but what trails after him. 

A boy no older than fifteen, exerting that ghostly glow, trails after this man like a lost puppy. By now Terasaka is itchingly familiar with each of the ghosts haunting these grounds bar Yoshida, whom he rarely sees except to drag away Muramatsu and shoot Terasaka a glance just shy of apologetic, and this ghost is not one of them. 

Scuffing on sturdy shoes, before he can lumber off to the garden Yoshida catches him.

He seems to fight internally whether to speak or not, eventually he concedes. 

“Looks like you’ve noticed our weekly visitor,” he says. “Both of ‘em.”

Terasaka gnaws on his inner-cheek, glancing between Yoshida and the door. A question sears his throat, internally debating to spill. 

Yoshida answers before he even asks, “Pretty simply, there’re some ghosts who bind to people instead of places when they die. That kid’s one of ‘em.”

And, christ, he is a kid. 

When Terasaka trundles up to him and the man, the kid’s soft, round face and dusting of acne lurches his stomach, twists. Shadows droop beneath the kid’s dim eyes, his school uniform and ruffled bronze hair damp. Damp, and the absent shoes curdles realisation. He swallows it down.

Absorbing the bouquet bundled in the man’s arms, the matching shadows, he wonders if they were perhaps brothers. Up close, he’s shockingly youthful, and Terasaka muses he must be around his age. A sharp chill cuts him and he glances up to Hazama surveying from a high window. 

“Hey,” he addresses the man, who stills, rigid. “Uh, what’re you doin’?”

Initially he spares him not even a breath of acknowledgement, hands folded over the bouquet twitching. 

“Tending to the garden,” he says stiffly. “Are you the new owner?”

“Yeah.”

“Am I permitted to plant flowers?”

“Uh, sure. I couldn’t care less.”

“Good, that’s all then.”

Terasaka opens and clamps shut his mouth as the man proceeds to the flowerbed and kneels, neatly picking tools from a briefcase. Sinking his shoe in the cold mud, Terasaka turns to the ghost child, watching the man with a deep melancholy printed upon his young, young face. 

“Who’re you?” he says, hushed. 

The boy startles, whipping to him and, as if checking it was really him being spoken to, points at his chest. 

“Yeah, you. Don’t… don’t ask, I’m just workin’ shit out myself.” 

“You shouldn’t be able to see me,” the boy’s voice cracks, scratchy. Terasaka winces. 

“No shit. But I can, and sunshine over there’s not lookin’ cooperative so, who are you?”

No response.

Petals soar with a breeze to the river; the boy follows, eyes dull, as they bob underwater and dash downstream. A yearning swirls in those mulled wine eyes that Terasaka can imagine once burned bright like a halo – a rooted longing as he chases leaves and petals down the river. 

A busted cell phone clutches eternally in his hand, a number Terasaka can’t make out flashing on the cracked screen, and the boy clenches his fist over it. 

“This used to be a cram school,” the boy whispers. 

It’s all he gets to say before the man whisks away, back down the mountain, with a curt departing nod to Terasaka and the ghost floats helplessly after.

Terasaka’s chest tightens when he knocks on Karma’s door and asks for the classroom photo. In it (healthy and youthful in a royal purple basketball jersey) beams the boy, clasped on the shoulder by a man – similar but not the same as earlier, he should have been much older. 

Alert, Karma shrugs when he asks him if he could do more research on it, or get Takebayashi to. 

Combing the house, Terasaka huffs a relieved breath when he finds Yoshida staring vacantly out the window. 

“Oi, thanks for the tip earlier,” he says as a greeting. 

Yoshida hums. “It’s fine, thought you’d want to know.”

Silence constricts them, Terasaka shifts weight from leg to leg.

“Uh, sorry that you died. Must be rough.”

“It was painful, pretty quick though, so not as bad as Itona or Hazama. I had someone with me too.”

“Oh, yeah, you and, and that Muramatsu guy–” he bites his tongue, rolls words over in his head. “You two’ve gotta be close, yeah?”

Yoshida rocks back on his heels, captures Terasaka with a look drenched in exhausted boredom. “Why’re you still here?”

It slices through the air, bounces off rickety walls patched with their scraping paint. 

“I’m not goin’ anywhere, you can pass that along to your ghost pals.” It starts confident, teeters into pathetic the more Yoshida stares at him. 

He sighs, blinks away. “Feel like I should apologise for the others tryin’ to kill you so, sorry. Living people just tend to be a pain.”

The explanation rings like it should make sense, which it probably does to the ghosts, but Terasaka bats it away. Moreover, none of them appear apologetic as they wreak havoc on his psyche. Telling Yoshida such draws another sigh. 

“I can get Taku to stop, you’re stuck with the other two, though,” he says. “Really, I don’t mind you, I even think you could be pretty useful, connection between the dead and living ‘n’ all.”

It takes embarrassingly long for him to link Taku to Muramatsu. 

“What d’you mean you can’t get the other two t’stop?” huffs Terasaka. “They’re the most annoying, Muramatsu’s just a dick!”

Yoshida smothers an amused smile, tugging it into a grimace instead. “None of us spoke to each other like, at all, ‘til you showed up. Except me ‘n’ Taku, duh… but I didn’t know shit about Hazama or Itona.”

Horibe had alluded to that. Weird that being stuck in the same place for eternity together would drive people apart, but also, not overly. 

“Fine, whatever…” Terasaka breathes out, massaging his temple. “Thanks… Yoshida. Cool to know one of you hasn’t got beef with me.”

His mouth twists. “Taisei is fine.”

.

.

.

Taisei proves decent company, emerging more after their awkward chat.

He becomes an interesting movie partner considering he hasn’t seen any movie past the early ‘80s so Terasaka introduces him to the world of modern cinema — that actress Mase Haruna popping up abundantly. He takes interest in the modern technology kicking around the house, too, asking Terasaka if he or Karma or Takebayashi have any vehicles. 

“How the fuck would we get a car up here?” Terasaka says around a mouthful of pot noodle. “It’s a mountain, man.”

Taisei crosses his arms, frowns at him. “There’s a road behind the house…? We had it built when we moved in, ‘course no one’s gonna access vehicle mechanics without one.”

And so there fucking is. 

Terasaka feels real stupid when he informs Karma and Takebayashi who positively gape at him. Within a day Takebayashi’s fetched his car, Karma his motorcycle. Taisei grins like a kid on his birthday, staring at Karma’s bike for hours at a time from all angles, eyes almost sparkling, hands bouncing. Several drops of achievement trickle through him at that. 

Having stopped chucking Terasaka’s shit to the floor like a goddamn cat, Muramatsu occasionally joins them, flittering by Taisei’s side, but is always quick to leave.

“What’s his deal?” prompts Terasaka one night while exposing Taisei to the Star Wars prequels. 

Taisei doesn’t respond, it’s easy to believe he’s too enraptured by the spaceships, but his mouth twitches a fraction. 

Unpredictably, Horibe comes around when Terasaka burrows in the boiler room, fruitlessly attempting to fix it. 

He prowls silently in, flutters around the room unnoticed. When he speaks, flat yet captivating, Terasaka jumps from his stool and bangs his head against a low bar of wood. Whipping around to glare at him, Horibe barely emotes. 

“That’s not how you fix a boiler,” he says. “But hitting it repeatedly with a wrench is the idiot’s way of doing it, so I’m not surprised.”

“What do you want,” Terasaka whines, eyes flying to the dim lights above. “Don’t try shit.”

“Do you want the boiler fixed?”

“Wh- obviously.”

Horibe makes a turning motion with his hand. “Red lever. The wrench is hardly necessary.”

Terasaka tentatively follows his advice, gasps when the boiler seems to fix instantaneously. He looks at Horibe for approval, who just raises an eyebrow at him. 

They delve into what almost constitutes as conversation as Horibe guides him on fixing the boiler, then the various appliances around the house. He learns that many of them were installed by Horibe Electronics back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, still holding up today. A trickle of pride colours Horibe’s tone as he discusses them, especially the radio, and when he introduces himself as Itona, Terasaka allows himself a smile. 

Progress, slow and sure, creeps up on them. 

.

.

.

(“Stop fuckin’ doing that!” Terasaka cries, rocketing his slipper through Hazama hanging upside down at the end of his bed.

She cackles, cruel and crawling. “You make it too fun.”)

Chapter Text

Karma returns with information regarding when the house was a classroom as Terasaka prepares to venture into town for the first time since his accident. 

(Takebayashi still isn’t happy about that, but Terasaka thinks he can suck it.)

Itona watches, plasma eyes rippling in vacant interest, as Karma swivels his laptop around to face Terasaka who munches through onigiri and ignores Muramatsu muttering about his shoddy cooking. Squinting against the screen’s glare, he skims Karma’s notes and grunts.

“That guy you saw is the son of the man who used to teach here,” Karma taps the screen. “Asano. Senior Gakuhou and junior Gakuhuu. The father died a few years back and the son never inherited the role of educator, more of a businessman.”

Terasaka rolls a grain of rice around a gap in his teeth. It makes sense. 

“What about the students?” he says, tearing at some nori. “The three kids Asano Sr taught.”

“Yeah, that’s where things get messed up,” Karma huffs. “One of those kids, Ikeda Rikuto, killed himself a few years into junior high. He was a star of the junior basketball team, so it was reported all over local news.”

Terasaka inhales sharply and swallows. That kid wearing a soaked through uniform and missing shoes, face full with baby fat and freckles. God. He nudges his breakfast away. 

Humming, Itona reads the laptop screen. “These devices are next level. You can get information about any topic from anywhere in the world in an instant? Look up the stock market.”

Terasaka ignores him. 

“Your old electronics dump obviously isn’t around anymore, man,” Muramatsu scoffs. 

“That kid committed suicide just like you, maybe you should talk to him.”

Muramatsu’s bloodied mouth twists to a scowl and Terasaka drags a hand across his face, squeezing his eyes shut. He kneads his eyelids with the heels of his palms until they ache and splotches of colour bleed through as Itona and Muramatsu’s bickering dissolves into thumping background noise. 

That kid can’t have been more than fifteen. His scratchy voice, the acne adorning his chin, all crashes into Terasaka in waves of nausea. 

The man, Gakushuu, must come here to pay respects to his father. That sole conclusion rings in Terasaka’s mind. The flowers and kneeling. It must serve as a sort of shrine. 

This place used to be a cram school. Used to be a garage, a factory, a library. 

Bile threatens his throat and he exhales a trembling breath. 

In preparation for his journey to the current library poised as the town’s centrepiece, Terasaka grabs a couple of books authored by old Kiichi and stuffs them in his backpack. Hazama drifts past, he feels her presence pierce his skin before he sees her. 

“Oh? Fleeing so soon?” Sardonic amusement curdles in her voice. 

“The library,” he says, wondering why he even bothers to tell her that. As if the dead librarian who burned alive in a library wants to hear that. 

She falters, barely perceptible, before donning her haunting demeanour. 

“The one that used to be a hospital?” she says. Chuckling, her next words whistle like wind through trees in a graveyard. “Beware, Terasaka Ryoma, not only of arsonists but of the crazed spirits of patients driven mad by confinement!”

A shudder rattles through him, try as he might to suppress it. He grimaces. 

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

He waves off a persistent Takebayashi’s offer of carpool and treks down the mountain path. The crisp morning air caresses his lungs and breaths come considerably easier. He fumbles around in his pocket for earbuds and plugs them in, scrolling through his phone until his thumb hovers above the link to a podcast episode Karma sent him.

Karma: Something about that double suicide case? 

There seems to be lots of speculation about it

I still can’t believe this is happening lol

Suicide case. Terasaka’s mind flickers back to breakfast. Taisei, the kid (Ikeda?), Muramatsu. His stomach coils as he follows the link and hits play. 

HOST #1: Hello my true crime fanatics and welcome back to Crime Novel - the true crime podcast for the modern era focused on giving victims the voices stolen from them back. I’m Yuzuki-

HOST #2: And I’m Ritsu-

HOST #1 (YUZUKI): Your trustworthy hosts! 

HOST #2 (RITSU): Today’s episode concerns a case that has resonated with people around the country since it was reportedly ‘closed’ in the 1980s. Our queer listeners in particular are bound to be familiar. 

YUZUKI: If that wasn’t enough of a giveaway, yes, today we’re covering the Yoshida Motors Lover’s Suicide. 

RITSU: We’re lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to interview the family of one of the victims, Yoshida Taisei, who still desperately seek justice for their son and his partner, Muramatsu Takuya. While we reached out to Muramatsu-san’s family, we received no response. 

YUZUKI: Mhm, so stay tuned for that at the end of the show. First of all, let’s get some context, right, Ritsu?

RITSU: You got it! To begin, we’ll cover the victims. First is the former owner of the now closed Yoshida Motors, a family-owned motorcycle repair business, Yoshida Taisei. 

YUZUKI: Yoshida-san was twenty-four years old at the time of his tragic death. He had inherited ownership of the business two years prior and was working alongside his mother and father. He was educated in a technical university and met his partner when they were in the same class at junior high. 

RITSU: Which brings us to Muramatsu-san, also twenty-four at time of death and owner of the also family-owned ramen chain, Matsuraiken. Matsuraiken had been struggling before he took over from his father, and it seemed like he was on track to fixing its reputation. After his death, his younger brother took over ownership. More on that later…

YUZUKI: While it wasn’t made public at the time due to societal perception and how the case overall was handled, family and friends have confirmed the two’s romantic partnership and the aspirations they had to start a joint business together. Said confirmation is what led the case to be given the ‘Lover’s Suicide’ title. 

RITSU: But, if this was suicide, why place it under true crime at all? It’s simple. It WASN’T a suicide. This line of speculation has been the dominant narrative for decades now, with the victims’ family and friends pushing it as they push for justice.

YUZUKI: The appalling way the police handled the case is the first piece of evidence supporting this speculation that we’ll cover-

Following moss-lined cracks in the pavement, Terasaka passes that ramen joint. Matsuraiken. Cool sweat pools in the small of his back as he hovers at the window, peering in. 

A man busies himself in wiping down tables, choppy hair concealed in a towel. He chucks a cloth over his shoulder and raises his gaze – two vacuole eyes swallow Terasaka’s presence and he stumbles back. Terasaka nods stiffly and rushes down the sidewalk, hands stuffed in his pockets. 

The sweat trickles, stinging his skin until Matsuraiken’s windows vanish behind a corner. 

Terasaka tugs at his lapel and grits his teeth. Shaking his head, he continues, podcast fading to a buzzing in his ears until he yanks his earbuds out, unable to concentrate.

Slight embarrassment ebbs at him as he remembers how he’d asked Taisei if he and Muramatsu are close. No shit. Slight trepidation gnaws at his gut at the prospect of murder that podcast implied before he stopped it. It’s not new, he’d read about the theories while doing light research on the two as he did with Itona and Hazama, but hearing it spoken, actually discussed… 

His breathing dips into something shallow as it dawns on him that, able to talk to these guys, he could very well fucking ask them.

He scoffs. As if they’d tell him, who the hell does he think he is?

Able to see ghosts or not, he can still mind his damn business.   

Two buildings linked via an open-air bridge crest the horizon, beaming sign christening the site as Kunugigaoka Central Library. A sigh of relief drips from Terasaka’s lips as the doors whir open and warmth blasts him. 

The librarian, a woman with kind-eyes and a distinct lack of burnt flesh, greets him and he nods back. 

“Are you after anything in particular?” she says. “We recently had parts of the library refurbished if you need help finding anything.”

He grins a tad awkwardly. “Nah, I’m new in town, just here to…” The words taste foreign on his tongue. “...Read.”

He weaves around bookshelves and pads up the stairs until he finds a free desk to slide into and dump his stuff on. Shuffling out his stack of books and laptop, he grants himself a cursory glance around the room. 

Mostly students studying, the occasional pensioner browsing the large-print section. A nurse, likely on break, stands at the window and gazes at the street below. 

He squints at her for a moment before flipping open his laptop. The sun has been bright lately, it casts a soft glow across the room. 

Languidly, he flicks open one of Kiichi’s books. Dwellings on Paranormal Activity. He snickers to himself as he reads the introduction and pulls up a collection of book reviews on his screen. 

Kiichi had a cult following, fellow believers in the supernatural who lapped up his every word and insisted they had experienced exactly what he had.

Before, Terasaka would have waved them off as nutjobs. Now, he can’t afford that luxury. 

He leafs through the book until a chapter title hooks onto him. 

VII FACES IN THE DARK

There exist spirits known to project their presence to the mortal realm, breaching the rift between our world and their own. 

 

Whether it’s that or because he’s in a library or what, and her words latch like tree sap to his brain, Terasaka finds himself scouring his bookmarks for information on Hazama’s case again. 

Kunugigaoka Library fire 

Article | Talk

The Kunugigaoka Library fire occurred in 1924 at Kunugigaoka Library in Kunugigaoka, Tokyo, Japan, causing 7 injuries and 1 fatality. It began under the staircase before spreading to the library’s ground floor in a flashover. 

The sole fatality was librarian Hazama Kirara, and one of the injuries is known to have been the library’s founder and builder Terasaka Ryosuke. Newspaper records from the time provide no indication of the cause of the fire, though from analysing other contemporary evidence historians suspect it may have been due to a fallen candle. 

The library subsequently shut down and a factory was opened in its place (See: Horibe Electronics). A new library was opened in the town in 1954. 

As he scans the article, the hairs at the back of his neck prickle his skin and he rubs at them. A familiar chill seeps down to his bones and he freezes. 

Of course. Of fucking course. 

Eyes slipping shut, he folds his laptop with a click. His breathing, patched and uneven, quickens as he drops his hand to his side and swallows. 

He turns in his chair, pries his eyes back open, and gazes up. 

The nurse’s amber eyes burn into his. She blinks as they retain eye contact, mouth drawn into a small O. 

“Hello?” she says, voice soft. 

“Dammit,” Terasaka grumbles, angling his face to the ceiling. “Dammit, fucking of course I can see ‘em outside the grounds of that house. Fucking of course.”

She blinks again, drifting back. Her eyes dart around the room, as if to confirm he’s talking to her. 

“Hello?” she repeats. 

Terasaka breathes heavily through his nose and makes eye contact once more. “Hey. Bet you weren’t expectin’ this to happen today.”

The nurse’s uniform is spotless, porcelain skin uncracked. The light glow ensnaring her is all that gives her away. 

“Oh!” Tentatively, she moves closer. “You can see me?”

“And hear you, sorta feel you, whatever…” Terasaka rattles off. “Why the hell were you looming over my shoulder all creepy-like?”

She dodges the question. “Why can you see me?”

“Long story.”

“I have eternity.”

“Okay? I sure as hell don’t.”

She tilts her head at him, hands threading together and resting in front of her chest. 

“Why are you reading that article?” she says. 

“That…?” Terasaka glances back to his closed laptop. “Personal research, why d’you want to know?”

“The library’s building is still intact up in one of the mountains,” she says. “If you can see me, I recommend you go there.”

He snorts, scratching at his ear. “Yeah, man, been there, done that. You ain’t the first weirdo I’ve run into.”

At his response, her eyes appear to brighten, scintillating in the sun. She dips her face closer to his, Terasaka inches back instinctively, eyebrows scrunching to a frown. 

“What are you–”

“Did you find a ghost belonging to the librarian who died in that fire there?”

“Ha–” He gapes. “Hazama…?”

The nurse brings trembling hands to her mouth, and Terasaka stares as limpid tears collect in her eyes and never fall. 

His gaze drags down to the embroidered name on her uniform now unconcealed. Kanzaki Yukiko. 

Pangs of recognition churn his stomach.

Chapter Text

Face to face with a spectre, coruscate eyes like honey in the sun piercing his skin, Terasaka fights the urge to bolt. Kanzaki Yukiko. Yukiko. It’s not the most uncommon name, why does it provoke such trepidation?

He wrenches himself away from her, unfastening himself from her gaze, and the intermittent clacking of his keyboard reverberates between them as he fights his trembling hands. Cursing every typo as his fingers twitch, Terasaka pries open one of his bookmarks on Hazama. 

The newspaper article. 

I miss her dreadfully, she was so misunderstood but I hope she knows how much this community loved her, how much I love her. I could speak to her so freely… - Yukiko, 24

For fuck’s sake. They refuse to leave him alone. Even out of the house, far from its grounds, he can’t escape. Terasaka clenches his hands, nails stabbing his palms, and grits his teeth. They’ve damned him. In pushing him from that window, they might have well pushed him down into hell. 

His eyes flicker back to the ghost. She reads the article, the quote he highlights with his cursor, and bows her head. Resembling so much the stereotypical yurei, her hair dark as Hazama’s shadows her face and trickles down her white uniform. 

Terasaka scoffs. These bastards do fit the bill for yurei, if he considers it.

“So,” he says, hushed though there’s little need as the studying teens stuff their ears with earbuds and his only other living company are pensioners, “I’m gonna guess that’s you.”

Blood thrums in his head as she ensnares him in a stare. “You know Kirara.”

“Dumbass name for her.” He snorts, straightening and willing himself not to look away. “She’s as sparkly as I’m sane. She know you?”

Drifting closer, the glow enshrouding her pulses like the light overseeing an operating table. Terasaka cringes, grinding his teeth. 

“...Yes,” Yukiko breathes. “She knew me. I knew her.” Unspilled tears glisten, icicles lodged in place. “This has never happened to me before. No one has even sensed me before. But you are in contact with us both. This must be fate. You must send her a message from me.”

“I…” Air catches in his windpipe. Terasaka clears his throat. “Listen, lady, I’m just tryin’ to mind my own business here.”

“But don’t you see?” Her voice only quietens, becomes wispier. “This is a gift. You must help me, please.”

He blanches. “Gift? Those maniacs pushed me out a fucking window!”

A resounding shhh jolts him to reality and he whips his gaze up to a glaring man, shaking his head. Terasaka grins apologetically and fumbles for his phone, clumsily gesturing to it and shrugging. The man clicks his tongue and returns to his book.

Terasaka heaves a sigh and rounds on the ghost again.

Her face crumples, aura diminishes, and desperation claws at her voice. “I haven’t seen her in so long, this doesn’t just happen. You must help me.”  

“If I help you,” Terasaka grumbles, shoulders tense as he glares at the screen, at the article. “Will you leave me the hell alone?”

Her face blooms into a smile and she bows, hands clasped at her chest. “Yes, thank you so much. Just let me leave her a message. Please, at least let me say goodbye.”

His gut twists.

“I ain’t doing it for you…” Flipping his notebook to the last few pages, he grabs a pen and bites the lid off. “Fine. Spill.”

Notebook brimming with the transcribed yearnings of a dead nurse, Terasaka escapes from her intense aura embracing the library and sunshine kisses his skin. His relieved sigh fills his lungs with petrichor-imbued fresh air. 

Thanks to her, his abundant books remain sealed shut, as unopened as when he found them. And now he has to actively seek out Hazama… 

A full-body shudder wracks him, rattles his bones. 

Does he? Is he really obligated to? His stomach squirms and an itch gnaws his temple. Grumbling, he scrubs at it. 

Who knows what else these ghosts can do to him. Best to do as they say. Muramatsu throws heavier shit by the second. 

He adjusts the bag-strap biting his shoulder and mooches down the street. His phone buzzes and he squints against the sun, hand pressed against his forehead as a visor, to read the screen: a text from Karma demanding food. Typical. His own stomach grumbles, conspiring against him.

The steady beat of his footsteps slows as a gaudy ramen joint blares at the edge of his vision. Terasaka scratches his undercut, weight shifting from leg to leg, and shrugs. 

Warmth and steamy spices blast him as the bell chimes above, Terasaka winds around stools and slides into a table at the front, slotted next to a man possessing jovially rosy cheeks. 

The chef’s expression flickers in recognition as he approaches. Terasaka squints as it does, he supposes he’s somewhat familiar: a man sporting choppy hair and a slight overbite. It’s hurriedly shooed away as he orders a hefty serving of soba and beer (half to-go, half to scarf here), barely skimming the menu. 

As dipping sauce coats his tongue, noodles coil around his chopsticks, amber liquid dribbles down the can, Terasaka becomes hyper-aware that the chef is watching him curiously all the while he works, takes orders, and cooks.   

Rosy-cheeks elbows him, waving his chopsticks towards Terasaka’s takeout bag. “Hey, man, you new in town? Haven’t seen your face ‘round here before and, trust me, I’d remember!”

He slips into a guffaw and Terasaka chugs his drink. 

His sleeve muffles his voice as he wipes his chin. “Yeah, moved in ‘bout a month or so ago.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” He grunts and mulls over whether to tell. He slurps up some noodles. “The house up the hill. ‘M in there.”

A clatter pierces the room and Terasaka flicks his gaze up to the chef clutching his thumb, knife strewn beside him. They lock eyes and recognition pools in Terasaka’s gut. 

Ah. 

He’s in that Matsuraiken. 

A grimace twists his mouth. 

For whatever stupid reason, like it being a chain restaurant, it hadn’t occurred he might run into the owner. 

“Seriously?” Rosy-cheeks ploughs on, spilling his broth. “Man, take care of yourself, tragic shit happens up there.”

Throat parched, Terasaka drags himself away from the chef and stares into his soba. The chef’s eyes lie on his skin like nettles. 

You’re telling me, he wants to respond. 

(He doesn’t.)

Terasaka shoves the takeout into Karma’s awaiting arms and inclines his head towards Takebayashi.

“Sure you’re good, man?” he says. “The soba’s pretty good.”

Takebayashi zips his jacket up and adjusts the arm of his glasses. “No, I’ve overstayed my welcome enough already…” His lips purse and he gives Terasaka and the house a final survey. “Call me if any flare-ups occur, or… Karma call me. Because I know you won’t.”

Tongue poked out as he inspects his takeout, Karma flashes a lazy thumbs-up. 

“Whatever…” Sunlight streams into the hallway, Takebayashi’s silhouette at the door. “Don’t die on your way back, I have enough ghosts harassin’ me as is.”

“Yes, you take care too, Terasaka,” he retorts. A smile twitches. “I’ll have to tell Okuda about all of this, she won’t believe a word. I might just give you more visitors.”

“Har-har.”

“Say hi to her for me,” Karma pipes up. 

Takebayashi melts into the sun and disappears around a corner to his car, a final short wave flicked up behind him. The door shuts with a creak, thud and a click and Terasaka cracks his neck. 

He eyes the takeout packaging, the obnoxious pinecone mascot, and unease worms within him. 

“Make sure to throw that out,” he says. “Don’t wanna be dodging furniture that ghost’s gonna chuck at me if ya don’t.”

Karma arches an eyebrow but shrugs, fishing his phone from his back pocket. “It makes him that mad?”

“Insane. Can’t even mention the damn thing.”

One of his canines peeks out as Karma chews his bottom lip and types away one-handed. 

Terasaka regards him a moment more before departing in search of that freaky chick Hazama. The quicker he gets it over with, the better.

Thankfully, he finds her before she finds him. Skulking in a room in the east wing, arachnidian eyes cleaving the thick darkness. Terasaka forces the lump lodged in his throat down and flicks on the light. 

The air thins. 

“You returned in one piece,” she says, tone lathered in disappointment. 

Terasaka’s jaw twitches and the torn out page from his notebook rustles in his trembling hands. 

He exhales. “Does the name Kanzaki Yukiko mean shit to you?”

All oxygen lurches from his lungs. 

Terasaka’s hand flails, grappling at his throat, as his windpipe constricts and a shadow looms over him. Yanked down, his knees crash against the floorboards. 

Ink splatters his vision, he blinks through hot tears and stares up into the eyes of a wolf spider that’s ensnared its prey. Accusatory, Hazama’s charred lips twist in a snarl. 

He chokes, chest sizzling. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Like wind weaving between gravestones, her voice instils in him a sickening sense of mortality. “Saying that name, what do you think you’re doing?” 

Terasaka thumps his knuckles against the floorboards, clawing at consciousness. 

“Is it not enough for Romeo and Juliet over there to mock me? Now you, with your incessant probing, your ceaseless living, have come to as well?” The room encloses him, walls drawing nearer. “How do you know that name?”

Air dives into his lungs sharply as snatched out and Terasaka heaves, collapsing to his hands and knees. Blood pounds his head and every attempt to straighten fails and sends him to the floor, the sensation like missing a step. 

The shadow drapes over him, no breathing room to process. 

“Explain yourself.”

“Fuck,” he rasps. “What the fuck?”

Terasaka fumbles around for the paper sent to the floor in the confrontation and smooths it out, painfully inhaling as fog smothers his brain. 

“You dickheads aren’t the only ghosts I can see.” He staggers against the wall, wood chips digging into his spine, and combs a sweat-slick hand through his hair. “There’s that kid, right. The kid who killed himself. And at the library…”

Her glare hooks beneath his skin, tugs. Terasaka squeezes his eyes shut and swallows. Arduously. 

“There was this nurse. Obviously my dumbass was staring, so obviously she gathered I could see her. She questioned me, learnt I lived in this shithole, and mentioned you.”

No response. The room breathes, laboured, with him. 

“I don’t want any… anythin’ to do with you–” Terasaka cuts himself off with a groan. “Shit, why did I agree? Why the hell did I agree to help her…”

He stumbles to his feet, brushing himself down, and gazes hazily at the note. 

“She knew you, you knew her,” he says. “She usin’ me as her messenger so listen and I can get the hell away from you.”

Willing himself to look at her, the charred skin beneath the veil, an intense melancholy reverberates through him. Mouth pried open, eyes glassy, Hazama stares at him. 

As he relays the message, memories from a time he never experienced rush through Terasaka’s conscience. 

The funeral is cut-and-dry, the mother (creator, scorner) does not cry. Rattling off a eulogy hollow as bones to an audience of few, she does not cry. 

Through the curtain of mist, fully descended and frostbitten, hover Ryosuke and Yukiko. Two apparitions – a set of eyes, bubbling magma, pierce and cauterise in one; another, viscous honey, thickens over it. 

Yukiko asks, in that dappled sunlight voice, how the mother feels.

Both know, standing over Hazama’s tomb, that whatever she says, she doesn’t mean. 

 

Hoarse, Terasaka licks his lips, tongue catching on broken skin. Hazama remains silent when he finishes the note, expression vacant. 

Observing her a second more, Terasaka clenches his fists, note crumpling, and turns to leave. 

“Wait.”

He does. He has no earthly idea why, but he does. 

“I’ll give her a response,” she says. “Write her a response from me.”

Anger gnaws at him, Terasaka rubs the base of his throat. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“You will never understand what this is like, and I don’t care.” Hazama drifts across the room, presence lodging a chill in his bones. “Watching those two everyday able to see each other, talk to each other, touch each other. You will never understand that I have not seen Yukiko in almost a century, you cannot even conceive that amount of time…” Sweat prickles Terasaka’s nape. “And I don’t want you dead, so you never will. But I can affect you in other ways.”

Swallowing, Terasaka slides his gaze to her. Hazama raises her chin, ghostly aura flickering. 

“We’ll have a truce,” she says. “If you do this for me, serve as a messenger between myself and Yukiko, I shall leave you alone.”

His forehead creases, wary. “What’s the catch?”

“Let me talk to her.”

Terasaka chews the inside of his cheek until a welt forms. He heaves a long-suffering sigh. 

“Fine,” he says. “But only when I’m already planning on goin’ out. If it gets you to stop fucking haunting me, then, fine. I’ll play dead matchmaker or whatever.”

Warm tea nurses Terasaka’s throat, and he moodily fills out job application forms. Karma’s inheritance can only carry them so far. 

…Itona hovers over his shoulder, frowning at the screen. His facial muscles, particularly his brows and nose, twitch like a cat. With how much he, Hazama and Muramatsu have been intent on bothering him, Terasaka doesn’t think the comparison is inadequate. 

Terasaka eyes Taisei and Muramatsu, chin propped upon his palm.

“...Ghosts can’t usually touch each other, right?” he says. “Like, you shouldn’t be able to touch anything, right?”

Muramatsu flinches and scowls. Taisei slips an arm around Muramatsu’s waist as if to prove a point and tilts his head. 

“Sure, usually.”

“But you two obviously can…” Terasaka’s voice peeters out towards the end and he shifts awkwardly, ears burning. “Hazama seemed pissed about it is all. Why’s it different for you two?”

Scoffing, Itona drags his gaze from the laptop. “They died together. You’re not very smart, are you?”

Terasaka splutters, heat spiking to his neck, and Muramatsu snickers – actually snickers. A stupid little kishishishi. God, his and Itona’s relationship confuses the hell out of him. 

“It’s a basic elimination of possibilities.” Itona stares him down as if he’s the dumbest lifeform on the planet. “Me and Hazama can’t touch each other, me and Muramatsu can’t touch each other, me and Yoshida can’t touch each other. But Yoshida and Muramatsu can feel each other up all they want.”

“Well you don’t hafta put it like that,” Muramatsu grumbles, making to leave before Taisei tugs him closer and rests his chin on his shoulder. 

Terasaka flips his hands up defensively. “I’m not dead! How the hell would I figure that out?”

“You could observe. Look around you. Take in your surroundings.”

“You jackasses are the ones who tried to kill me!” Huffing, Terasaka tries to relax his muscles. “I think I’m entitled to some explanations.”

“You do, do you?”

“You’re all annoying as shit.”

Taisei seems to take pity on him. “Well, what else do you wanna know?”

Terasaka rests his eyes on Taisei and Muramatsu’s position. An obvious, yet totally embarrassing for everyone involved question tugs at his mind. It rolls over for several moments, before landing on the conclusion that they’re not on “can ghosts bone?” basis yet. Taisei probably won’t kill him, but Muramatsu has been throwing larger things by the day, so Terasaka can’t rule him out. 

He’s also not sure he wants the answer.

If Karma or Takebayashi could talk to ghosts they’d have a lot more pressing questions. Unfortunately, or fortunately in many cases, Terasaka is not either of them. 

“Um,” he says eloquently. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

(Hazama lets him sleep peacefully that night. True to her word. 

Terasaka sinks in sleep, dreams probed by unfamiliar memories.)

The library’s automatic doors whoosh open. Terasaka shares a nod with the librarian and weaves gracelessly around bustling kids, pooling around another librarian perched on a chair to read to them, to trudge upstairs. Vibrant colours with puzzle-piece patterns swap for a beige tranquility. 

He scans the tables and sucks his teeth. No sign. No nurse uniform. No gazing wistfully out the window. No reading over hunched shoulders. No ghost. 

Folding into the mass of bookshelves, he attempts mundanity by reading the spines and touching his thumb and index against the bristles on his chin, but he glances around at regular intervals. Only two others neighbour him, neither a nurse. From their attire, he’d pin them as teachers (plaid pants, neckties). 

Hazama’s transcribed note sears his thigh through his pocket’s lining. As though the words yearn to tear from the page and brand themselves to Yukiko without his interference.

Terasaka’s bottom lip twists. 

These ghosts are like a tar pit. He can’t claw his way out, submerged in its acrid seepage. It opened up from under him and swallowed him whole. Now, he can only let it take him. 

What? So he’s condemned to do these assholes’ bidding ‘til he dies? Or leave, he supposes, but that’s exactly what they want, no way in hell he’s giving them the satisfaction of running him out. It’s his damn house! 

What did he do in another life to deserve this? 

Because clearly there’s more to the idea of life that they know about. If ghosts exist, who’s to say parallel universes don’t? Terasaka hopes there’s a universe where he’s the ghost haunting these fuckers. Or they’re all alive at the same time, pissing each other off on equal footing. 

A sigh slips out. Now, that he’d want to see. The power dynamic right now binds and chokes. His hand ghosts the base of his neck. 

In seconds, Hazama cut off his breathing. As if smothered by a flammagenitus cloud, ash clotting his windpipe. The air around him contorted into a dense mass, crushing him remorselessly. He felt suspended in time as his lungs shrivelled, experiencing, perhaps, a fraction of her death. The suffocation associated with burning alive. 

She hadn’t entertained much caution for his life, despite claiming a lack of desire to kill. Maybe a century spent without life deprives you of its fragility. 

If she can do that, what can the others do? 

Terasaka’s muscles tense. Taisei and Muramatsu were poisoned, right? And Itona’s arm… If he ticked them off, pushed too far…

His pulse throbs uncomfortably at the base of his throat.

He’s certain he looks like an idiot, but he ducks into the DVD section and pretends to read the back of some Mase Haruna flick, settling his nerves. Maybe he’ll die of stress in that house. 

He scowls and shakes his head. No, idiot, you’re not letting them win. 

Breathing slowly, his eyes roam around the room for a telltale ghostly glow. They reach the pair of, assumedly, teachers and Terasaka startles. 

One of them – taller, dark hair, not Japanese – glows. The signature faint blue, flickering like TV static. And he’s… talking. 

He’s talking to the smaller one. And the smaller man responds. 

Terasaka gapes. 

He cranes his neck to observe more closely. A bloody wound pierces the taller man’s chest – coin slot shaped, a knife wound, maybe. He’s a ghost, no doubt about it. And the smaller man… Terasaka rakes his gaze over his lithe form. Nothing. Human, alive. But he’s conversing with the ghost. 

If Terasaka had any concerns left about his sanity, they’d extinguish then and there. 

While he’s gormlessly staring, the smaller man catches him and narrows his eyes. Sharp as a blade and distinctly not teacher-like. Terasaka flinches and looks to the ghost. Their eyes meet, of course. Of course. 

He’s offered no time to process anything. The smaller man darts forwards, grabs Terasaka by the lapel, and twists him into one of the library’s many nooks. One hand snakes up to cover his mouth, the other fisted in his shirt as he backs Terasaka against one of the bookcases. 

“Voila, nicely done, Nagisa-kun!”

Terasaka’s heart hammers against his ribs, breaths spitting free in short bursts. The other man is half his size in height and weight yet, effortlessly, has Terasaka controlled under eyes like the pull of an ocean’s current. Any shout, any words, wither in Terasaka’s throat. 

He flicks his pinned open eyes to the ghost, who dons a perpetual smile. How did he… how did they compute the situation so quickly?

“You can see him.” The man’s voice is deceptively soft. “Can’t you?”

Terasaka nods. The man’s breath is warm against his clavicle and sweat prickles his brow and nape. 

“Interesting,” the ghost says. He cocks his head. “We’ve only met one other able to see ghosts like Nagisa-kun. I take it you’re not bound to one, though?”

The smaller man (Nagisa?) withdraws slightly, removing his hand from Terasaka’s mouth. His eyes demand an answer.

“N…” Terasaka’s stomach spasms. “No. ‘M not. You are…?”

“Dead? Indeed!” The ghost chuckles. “Will you get a drink with us? Maybe we can have a chat.”

“I don’t…” Christ, Nagisa’s eyes are like a monsoon. “I’ve got business here, first…”

“Fine by us!” The ghost’s smile doesn’t waver. “We’ll be right behind you.”

Terasaka glances frantically between them. Sincerity is all that reflects back. 

How the hell does he get into these situations?

Nagisa poised behind him, unnoticed as the dappled shadows on the walls, Terasaka resumes his search for Yukiko and scowls deeply when he finally finds her. Tucked into an alcove where a bespeckled student reads classical literature. 

She lifts her face with a smile as he approaches, brow creasing at his company. Creasing further as she registers the presence of another ghost. 

Terasaka opens his mouth then remembers the student. He frowns and motions for Yukiko to follow him back to the isolated nook. 

Yukiko exchanges pleasantries with the ever-grinning ghost and jumps when Nagisa greets her too. Far more cordially than backing Terasaka into a corner, reeking of bloodlust. 

Why do so many chumps have beef with him? He’s just a guy!

Huffing, he digs out Hazama’s letter, smooths it out, and shoves it in Yukiko’s face to read. She flinches, before regaining composure. Her eyes flutter across the page with the ease of an academic and Terasaka winces as they mist over. 

“Kirara…” She whispers. “You…” Swallowing, she graces Terasaka with a weak smile. Her cheeks dye a rosy pink despite, he assumes, the lack of blood. “Thank you. Truly, thank you.”

“Hazama’s forcin’ me to play messenger between you two,” he says, waving off her gratitude. “So if you have anythin’ else to say, lemme know and I’ll transcribe it or whatever.”

His skin burns as Nagisa studies him. 

“I’ll come back tomorrow.” He scratches his undercut, fingertips running along the short bristles. “I’ve uh…” He glances at Nagisa and the ghost. Yukiko takes the hint. “Got somethin’ on.”

“Of course,” she says softly. “I’ll need time to think of how to adequately reply, after all.” Her eyes crinkle, near crescents. “Thank you, again.”

Terasaka grunts and bids her farewell. Nagisa trails after him, the ghost after him, down the stairs and into the sunlight. 

“Where are we going?” Nagisa says, like they’re friends out for a stroll. “I want to buy you a drink.”

“Somehow,” Terasaka grumbles, “I ain’t in any rush to trust a dude like you around alcohol.”

If Nagisa is offended, he masks it well. Instead, he smiles a polite (disarming) smile and shrugs at the ghost. 

“We’re goin’ back to mine,” Terasaka says. “I… Well, I ain’t been able to see these dead fuckers very long. I thought it’d be rarer than this to find someone else.”

Nagisa hums, tilts his head. “Usually, it is. Near death experiences don’t happen to everyone.”

The ghost clasps his hands together. “You should start a support group!”

Terasaka massages his temples and leads the two, dead and alive, along the path back home.