Hazy Days of December

On Monday it snowed.

Nene Yashiro dug out her pink boots she’d been waiting to wear since February and trekked to school with a spring in her step. The first snow of the season was always pretty, but that day felt truly magical. A winter wonderland, just waiting for her to conjure up a million whimsical scenarios of hearts aflame and true love’s desires.

And conjure she did. She was a romantic, she’d be the first to admit. Nene read trashy harlequin novels with a glimmer in her eye, created a playlist for every flutter of the heart she’d ever experienced, and projected herself onto the main character of every western romantic comedy she had the pleasure of watching, despite most definitely not being blonde, a business woman, or slender in the ankles. But that didn’t stop her, and she found herself lost in her teenage fantasies as she watched the snow blanket the world outside from her classroom window.

Being kissed in the snow, she was certain, would play out just like one of those movies- ankles deep in ice, the gentle tilt of her head with a gloved hand, their lips meeting for a kiss so chaste, so warm against the bitterness of the wind encapsulating them-

“Yashiro-san?”

“Y-Yes!” She practically screamed as she was ripped away from the arms of her faceless beloved and plopped back down into the wooden school desk (rather roughly, she thought with a wince, quite sure that her back would hurt later from that crack against the chair).

Nagisa-sensei eyed her over, followed by the ceremonial spotlights of each of her classmates’ gazes all flicking on in a row. She hoped they couldn’t see the sweat dribbling from her forehead.

“The next passage please.”

Ah. Right. Still in class. Nice going Nene, now you’ll never be kissing that prince under the oak tree at the school entrance.

But her teacher didn’t ridicule her, so she rose from her desk, textbook in hand, and read allowed in the steadiest, even-pitched voice she could muster. The self-inflicted embarrassment hugged her shoulders tighter than her winter coat.

If the classroom could be called cold, the bathrooms were freezing, sitting just where the sun failed to reach and leaving the place drenched in a frigid shadow. Nene struggled to steady her shaking hands and chattering teeth, while Hanako sat in the windowsill, seemingly unfazed. Hanako pissed her off a lot, sure, but not even her exasperation could stop her clanking knees, probably giving herself premature arthritis.

How was she supposed to clean like this?

“Hanako-kun!” she finally snapped, snatching her hands to her arms. It proved to be a poor course of action, as her hands were even colder than the air. “It’s freezing in here!”

Hanako was slow to pedal back from his daze, lost in whatever fascination he could find in the falling snow. Ignorant to her suffering, as per usual. “Hmm...is it?” he echoed in a far off voice.

“Yes, it is!” What did he mean ‘is it’? There was snow on the ground! But she watched as he lifted a hand up, testing the air blankly, no reaction managing to chip past his calm composure. She chewed the fat of her lip. “Aren’t…..aren’t you cold?”

“Well…” he shrugged, nonchalantly, “I’m a ghost. I don’t really get-”

His words dissipated as she took up his calloused hand between her own, the mottled flesh of impending frostbite starkly contrasting with her own soft, peach skin.

Hanako had always been chilly, but today he felt like a human popsicle (supernatural popsicle? Human-shaped, at least). She was quite certain that if she knocked him to the floor, he’d shatter into a million pieces of frozen ectoplasm.

Couldn’t he feel it? The apparition never complained about being hot or cold, but he was only wearing a thin school jacket- it seemed impossible that the weather didn’t affect him at all….right?

“You’re freezing…” Nene finally managed out, rubbing slow circles over the back of his hand. As if such a gentle gesture could warm something dead.

“U-um….”

She pulled her eyes away and was quickly smacked into his burning face. The blush spilled from his neck all the way to his ears, as if the top button of his shirt had cut off air to his lungs. As if ghosts needed to breathe to begin with.

And with a sharp gasp that came out more like a broken croak from a crushed toad, Nene ripped her hands away. “I-I mean-” she yelped, snow-angeling the air, “I-I know you’re a ghost and all b-b-but you still s-should keep yourself warm!”

Hanako stared at her for a long, agonizing moment, before pulling down the brim of his hat with a soft “Yeah…” And Nene felt the oxygen being sapped from the room as she turned back to the pathetic support of her mop.

Great going Nene.

You messed up again.

Hanako was a strange character that she never felt she could quite do enough reading for. He was loud, clingy, and wore that stupid jack-o-lantern smile most of the time, but she’d been able to narrow down to a few select instances when the facade slipped: when someone mentioned Tsukasa, Minamoto-senpai, or the chill of his hands.

She still didn’t quite get the Minamoto-senpai one. He was beautiful, he was dreamy, he was straight out of a Hallmark movie romance where she’d be swept away from a dead-end office job in the city only to rediscover the true meaning of Christmas in a small American midwestern- erm, he was a gentleman. But when brought up around the school spirit, Hanako would recoil as if he’d been thrown into a box of Number 6’s insects.

But that wasn’t the point.

Nene kept quiet about his frigid hands most of the time- he was a ghost, she knew he couldn’t help it. It came with the territory, like the fur of a cat. But once, mentioned just in passing, she’d stated how cold they felt compared to her own.

And at once, his disposition had sunk, and he’d even gone so far as to apologize , with a frail “sorry, I know dead people’s hands are weird.”

And Nene was hit with the crippling realization that she’d unearthed a subject not to be touched.

She kept quiet the rest of her cleaning, lost in the soapy bubbles dotting the floor that carried the same indigo tinge as Hanako’s fingers. Nene only broke the suffocating silence as she offered a goodbye, one he did not return as he only continued to watch the storm.

The next day it snowed again, and Nene spent most of class thinking about snowmen.

Living in an apartment most of her life had left her chances of building them scarce, but on occasion she’d trudge down to the neighborhood park, just to practice her sculpting and snow angel abilities. It always left her with a giddy feeling in her chest, as if she were slipping under some watchful eye for a secret rendezvous with Jack Frost himself.

She’d passed a few students testing their building abilities in the courtyard the previous day, and the black winter coat one boy wore tugged her mind back to her school-bound spirit friend. She couldn’t help but wonder if Hanako had ever made any snowmen when he was alive. Despite being over half a century old, his experience with the inner mechanisms of the world still seemed lacking most of the time.

She tried not to dwell on that thought. Something about it made her too sad.

As her mind drifted to her ghost friend, she found herself doodling a snowman across her very disjunct Japanese history notes that looked surprisingly like School Mystery Number 7- complete with the hat, seal sticker, and the pair of black mittens she had tucked into the front pocket of her messenger bag.

She’d managed to snag them from an old box of her father’s clothes, set aside to be donated. They completely engulfed her petite fingers, but Hanako had big hands, and she figured they’d fit him just fine.

Big, calloused hands white with pallor mortis. Fingers sharp as knives with skin pulled taut over every notch of bone.

Stop it Nene, that’s too morbid.

He’d told her before he didn’t feel temperature, at least, not like humans did. And maybe that was true. Maybe Hanako didn’t shiver biting into cherry ice pops, and maybe Hanako didn’t fan himself with his hat under the scorching August sun. Maybe the mittens would just be another accessory from his overly sentimental assistant, one that he’d thank her politely for and then tuck into some unused drawer when she’d left, like an ill decided birthday gift.

But Hanako was a good liar, and there was that slim chance that he’d just told her all those things to make her worry less.

And well, that just wasn’t a chance she was willing to take.

So when she arrived at the bathroom ready to present the gift, she expected a simple “thank you,” maybe even a joking “aw Yashiro, were you worried about me?” (she hated when he did that- wasn’t she allowed to worry about her friends?).

What she didn’t expect was the astonished look that crossed his face as she opened the door before he flung himself onto her in a tight embrace.

She barely squeaked out a “Hana-” before his hug tightened, squeezing the air from her lungs like a balloon.

“Yashiro...”

Her heart hammered against her ribs.

The way he spoke her name, so soft, so sweetly into the bend of her neck sent shivers up her spine, and not just from his cold skin. What was he doing? Sure, Hanako clung to her like a kitten to curtains most days of the week, but this didn’t feel like his clingy pokes and daikon-related teasing. This felt more like when he’d held her after she’d broken down at the confession tree.

This felt….it felt……

“H-Hanako-kun…” she finally managed after the poison of the moment had subsided from her tongue, “w-w-what is it? Is something wrong?”

He finally pulled away, smiling gently with those bright ochre eyes she felt she could tumble into in an instant, viscous as honey. “Ah...it’s nothing,” the boy finally answered. And then, he placed a hand on her cheek. “I just missed you.”

Nene felt as if something had burst inside her chest.

Missed her?

Missed her?

You didn’t tell someone you’d seen just the day before you’d missed them with a tight embrace, with a soft touch to the cheek, with those half-lidded eyes that meant...oh god... what the hell did it mean?!

She could feel her brain beginning to overheat at the possible scenarios that could play out (a good 57% of them most definitely not safe for a school setting), spreading to her face and threatening to melt his hand like wax.

When she finally made a noise, it came out more like a broken bicycle horn.

Hanako dropped his touch from her face, much to her relief(?), and tilted his head. “You’re here kinda early.”

And Nene took the moment to reassemble her shattered thoughts before she managed to pull out the reason she’d come there in the first place.

“A-ah, yeah! I have something...f-for you.”

“For me?”

The apparition watched eagerly as she unlatched her back, producing the pair of mittens and placing them in his expectant hands. His frigid skin brushed her own, and Nene was quick to avert her gaze to her rounded ankles.

Damn, she couldn’t even get pretty legs to look down at shyly. She was starting to wonder if the genre of her life was parody.

“F-for your hands, so you won’t be so cold.”

There stood a long moment of silence. Too long. Almost harrowing, like that time she’d attended an autograph signing for her favorite k-pop band, only for them to address it “to Nana Yoshiro.” It still hung on the wall above her desk, too beautiful to remove, but too painful to give more than a side-eyed glance.

But this was different.

Finally, she heard him slip the gloves on, and she raised her head.

Hanako stared at his hands blankly, some amalgamation of joy, of sorrow, of ambivalence streaked in the lines of his irises. He opened and closed his palms, as if testing a new tool, and Nene suddenly felt very uncertain.

“Are they no good?” she asked in a small voice, and he finally snapped from his trance.

“What? Oh no, it’s just….it’s been a while...since I’ve worn mittens.”

Nene felt the prickle of the air return to her face. Hanako was an old spirit, she knew that, but it was easy to forget with his childish appearance, with his inappropriate humor, with his domain being in a school bathroom. It was easy to forget that he’d spent the better part of the last century alone, with no one to dote over him. And even then, she couldn’t be sure that he had anyone like that before he…

Hanako drew her out of her thoughts with a bright smile. “Thank you, Yashiro. For thinking of me.”

Damnit. Why’d he have to give her that smile?

She choked back another clown nose honk. “Y-yeah of course! I mean we’re friends and all and friends have to help each other out becausethat’swhatfriendsdobecausewe’refriendsright?”

She paused to catch her breath.

Hanako looked as if he’d been struck with a bag of flour from one of her donut making sessions.

“Um. Right,” he smiled, trying to break the tension.

Somehow it felt as if he’d pulled the rope around her throat even tighter.

Nene cleaned the bathrooms quickly, snatching glances at the ghost boy in the window as he examined his newly gloved hands as if they were toys on Christmas.

Her lip was swollen by the time she left from biting it, trying to hold back that wobbly smile over the glimmer in his eyes.

“Aoi, what does it mean when a boy says he missed you?”

Her friend looked up from her chore of tending to the class flowers. “He told you he missed you?”

Nene nodded hesitantly. The events of the previous day ate away at her mind, and she couldn’t shake the tension of his tight embrace from her shoulders. The puff of his breath against her neck. The gentle stroke of his hand.

The implications haunted her like a lingering spirit.

Aoi sat the watering can down with a sweep of her perfect hair and a flutter of her perfect eyelashes. No wonder she drove boys crazy. She even got good ankles too. “Nene-chan, this boy….wouldn’t happen to be your crush, would it?”

“My WHAT?!?!”

The shriek drew the attention of the rest of the class, and Nene suddenly felt as if she’d been thrown into a bullfighting ring. Her brain jammed up of any rational thought, and the only thing stampeding towards her was that cursed c-word.

Aoi stepped in before it could hit, however, with a laugh. “Oh Nene-chan, I think that just means he likes you!”

Nope, that was worse. All chill was gone from the air now as she began to sweat.

Hanako liked her?

That seemed impossible.

Hanako-kun was a powerful spirit tasked with keeping the balance of the school- he didn’t have time for some trivial human thing like romance. And besides, he’d just kissed her that one time for protection (even if she had misconstrued it and made a complete fool of herself- but hey, that wasn’t completely her fault). It wasn’t like he’d turned tomato red when she’d tried to cheer him up. It wasn’t like he got all huffy at the mention of other boys she fawned over.

It wasn’t like….he’d asked her...on a date……….

Um.

Nene let out a long sigh in frustration, flopping over her desk. “That’s the thing. I thought he was going to confess to me before, but….”

But then the confession tree happened, and she’d been left with a headache and a face full of smeared mascara.

She shouldn’t get her hopes up about something like this. It’d bit her in the ass one too many times.

“Maybe he got cold feet,” Aoi comforted, slipping into the desk chair in front of her. “Why don’t you do something nice for him, see how he reacts?”

“Something nice?”

“Right. Something you normally wouldn’t do for someone who’s just a friend, like….” Her friend tapped her chin before her eyes lit up in excitement. “You could make him a lunchbox!”

“Ao-chan,” Akane butted in, suddenly standing right behind her. Nene hadn’t noticed when he’d arrived, but then again, there wasn’t really a time that Akane wasn’t present. He swelled his chest before giving a deep, reverent bow. “I’d love it if you made me lunchboxes!”

“That’s nice Akane,” her friend retorted, waving him away with a flip of her delicate hand. “One point.”

Nene watched as the boy visibly deflated, and made a mental note not to pester Aoi when she was playing matchmaker.

But a lunchbox….it didn’t seem like that bad of an idea. She was no cook, but she’d seen enough television dramas and read her fair share of shoujo manga to know how these kinds of things went. It’d even been in Hanako’s “Love Strategies: One Hundred Ways!” book (though honestly, that probably wasn’t a positive).

It just might work.

Nene spent the rest of class brainstorming recipes.

When she arrived at the girl’s bathroom, she found it surprisingly empty. It wasn’t like Hanako to up and disappear without leaving one of his signature chicken scratch notes decorated with rocket ships and giant monsters. But it seemed his reluctance to bring her along on his duties had increased exponentially after she’d learned of her dwindling time. She’d brought it up before, but he’d quickly brushed it off with a “Yashiro, you’re being paranoid!” or a “Yashiro, now you have more time to clean!” It was frustrating, but it wasn’t like she could stop him when he slunk out like a stray cat to go pick back alley fights with apparitions.

And it wasn’t like she could demand he open up more.

Hanako had promised he’d tell her everything, but that was months ago now. Way before she’d seen him in the past stuck between worlds, before she’d dreamt of a little boy at the Star Festival, before he’d put on the performance of being Amane Yugi in Shijima’s watercolor world. She knew he’d promised but….maybe he’d forgotten. Maybe his confidence had waned since then.

She sometimes wanted to grab his stupid face and give him a hard shake, just to make him understand she wasn’t going anywhere. That she knew he’d done terrible things and she still wanted to be his friend. That she was Nene Yashiro, first year student and assistant to School Mystery Number 7, thank you very much!

It was with this thought that she finally looked up from her mopping, nearly jumping from her skin as she found the bathroom’s resident ghost standing in the doorway.

“H-Hanako-kun!” she yelped, sloshing a healthy dose of mop water across the floor and up her tights. Perfect. Just how she wanted to walk home in the snow. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“Yashiro.”

She winced at the seriousness in his tone, halting her from berating him further. And then, she took a good look at the boy.

Ghosts didn’t need to sleep. Hanako had told her that before. But Hanako looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. His normally bright amber eyes stared glossed and sunken, and his pallid complexion seemed to be made from the very snow outside.

Nene felt her mouth grow dry, and she murmured. “H-Hanako-kun, are you alright?”

He only answered with a soft hum, briskly heading for the window with his hands behind his back. And all Nene could do was stare dumbly as the soapy water seeped into her stockings.

He was hiding something.

He had to be.

But the dulled expression on his face discouraged her from prying. Better to leave things to settle out before she asked. Despite his normal cheeky demeanor, Hanako could be as stubborn as a bull, and asking often only served to add more locks to his secrets.

Nene went back to her mopping silently as Hanako watched the winter swirl into a haze in the courtyard below.

“It’s really starting to come down,” he mumbled, finally breaking the silence. The crackle in his tone made her heart twinge. “You should probably head home.”

Now she knew something was definitely wrong. Hanako never told her to leave early, and certainly not before she’d finished cleaning. He’d kept her past seven a few days, trapping her between his unending whining and his (very unmotivating) cheering. Was he planning on doing something reckless when she left? Should she insist on staying?

But the look he gave her after her long bout of silence made her sink further into her uniform. A smile so tight, as if he was attempting to squeeze out any real emotion that could press through, with some sad blend between pleading and pity. She swallowed roughly against her dry throat.

“O-okay, I’ll see you tomorrow Hanako-kun….”

She left silently with only her messenger bag and the growing discomfort in her gut.

Nene was awake nearly an hour before her alarm, standing in her kitchen and staring down a mess of ingredients she had to throw together into a bento before heading to school. Operation: Make Hanako a Lunchbox was a go, and she was determined that this one would be a success! And it would be great success, if she could just get those vegetable stars to look more celestial and less like misshapen hexagons.

She hoped that such a gesture would cheer him up. Nene definitely did not spend the better part of the previous night wrapped up in her emotions and a pink fuzzy blanket, playing the “uh oh” section of her music library while she worried about a ghost. She definitely did not write three sappy poems in purple gel pen in her skull stickered diary. And she most certainly did not have a very passionate dream involving some choppy haired boy who was not her type.

Okay, maybe she did. But Hanako’s complete 180 from the previous day’s demeanor had shaken her to the core and left her frostbitten at his words. And maybe he couldn’t hunger, and maybe it’d be for the best if he couldn’t taste her cooking, but well, it’s the thought that matters with these things, not the taste, right?

Perhaps there was an issue with some wayward supernatural. The ghostly boy typically only involved her with matters relating to messy rumors or yorishiro that needed striking, but she knew his job consisted of more than that. “It’s atonement, Yashiro” he’d chime in some cheeky manner. Nene wondered if it was sacrilegious to use the term so flippantly.

Perhaps she should ask about it. She was his assistant after all, and Nene was all too eager to help out in any way possible- to the point that she, occasionally, got in the way. Hanako seemed spooked by it at times, something she found rather entertaining, being the spook himself.

But it was lost in thought that the kitchen knife slipped from her grip. In a fumbling effort to catch, she smacked it against the counter, and-

The blade cuts through her fingers like carrots. A slice through the air, and her index and middle finger thump to the counter amongst her freshly chopped vegetables. Nene can see blood.

There’s blood.

There’s so much blood.

She grips her wounded hand in her dress, the fabric quickly dyeing crimson. There’s too much blood. It’s dripping to the floor now. She can feel it begin to lap at her ankles. Nene reaches for some sort of support, the counter, the sink, anything- only to find the room bending around her as the tile floor swallows her up in one hard, darkening thump-

She blinked, staring at her hand where the blade had nicked her finger in her distraction.

What a scary place for her mind to wander.

The cut had begun to bubble red, but a quick rinse under the sink and a bandage washed away the sting. She quickly finished packing together the lunchbox and headed out for school.

Nene was surprised to find the school spirit sitting in his usual windowsill seat, and even more surprised when he agreed to her offer to head up to the roof without cleaning the bathroom. She could count on one hand the times she’d missed bathroom duty, and he still held those instances over her head like a bad grade.

Hanako had silently followed her as she prattled on about her day, wearing a smile that fit him much better than the mittens on his hands. He even managed to squeeze in a radish joke when she’d mentioned harvesting winter vegetables. She’d struck him for that, but at least he was back to his old self.

Snow was just beginning to flutter from the sky as they settled onto the rooftop bench, and Nene could barely contain her excitement as she pulled out her picnic supplies.

“I have something for you!” she chimed, pressing the plastic box into the boy’s hands.

Hanako stared at his gift for a long moment. “Wow Yashiro, you’ve been giving me a lot of stuff lately.” And then he smirked, that stupid smile of his sending her heart thumping in her ears as he purred, “Are you trying to get me to fall for you?”

All gears in her head ground to a halt.

She flailed for some sort of reply. She wanted to scream at him, to smack that idiotic hat from his head and berate him for such immature, such silly, such….such dangerously close to the mark comments.

…...What would he do if she said yes?

“T-That’s…”

Luckily, a chuckle cut off her runaway thoughts, and Hanako nudged her. “I’m just kidding.”

Just kidding.

Right.

He was always just kidding.

Nene laughed along softly at a joke she didn’t understand, hating the disappointment that dug at her chest.

But those emotions were quickly set aside as he opened the box, his eyes growing wide at the space-themed arrangement twinkling back at him.

“You made this for me…?” he asked softly, the tone just indecipherable enough to cause her panic to spark and rage into a forest fire in her chest.

She’d overdone it. She’d overdone it again and she’d made a complete fool of herself and he thought she was some weirdo who’d just-

“I-I know it’s not donuts-”

“Are you kidding? This is great!” he practically shouted, excitedly shoving a rocket-shaped vegetable in his mouth. And through her relief, joy, and excessive giggling, she couldn’t even bring herself to scold him for his abysmal manners.

Nene didn’t know if ghosts got hungry, but Hanako ate like he hadn’t tasted food in 50 years, and she almost felt bad for not cooking for him earlier. The lingering baby fat of his cheeks always masked how thin he really was, but she could see it in his oversized uniform, in the crook of his wrists, in the stretch of his neck. Just symptoms of being, well, dead, she always told herself. It was too morbid to consider any alternatives.

But it felt nice to have someone eat her cooking so enthusiastically. She wasn’t sure if he was even tasting it at the speed he scarfed it down, but at least it helped her forget her last failed attempt that ended up being carted off to the lost and found by the intended recipient.

“Though, you knooooow,” the boy began through a muffled mouthful, “it would be nice to have some donuts too.”

“Can’t you just be grateful for what you have?”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t grateful! I was just putting out some dessert options!”

She gave him a playful shove, struggling to wipe the smile off her face as she looked out over the courtyard below. A few students were struggling to shove together a snowman, and Nene found herself imagining her and Hanako building one. It’d probably turn out an ugly mess, complete with his cap on top, but they’d laugh about it in the end. Almost like a da-

She swallowed a mouthful of cold air before she could finish the thought.

“Hanako-kun…” she began, diverting the thought altogether, “you know, winter break is starting in a few days.”

The ghost slowed his munching. She watched as he gave his rice a tentative poke. “Is that so...”

Nene couldn’t be sure, but he sounded almost...disappointed. Well, he probably was. Hanako didn’t seem to have much to do outside of pestering her and Kou, so she was sure it got lonely on the emptier days at school.

“Yeah...b-but I’ll be here a few days to check on the gardens, so-” she reached for his mittened hand, curling it around her own, “I can visit you then….l-like with study camp……”

Hanako watched his food as if it was the most interesting thing in the world before shoving in another mouthful, chewing slowly and deliberately. Yeah...okay……”

It didn’t sound very convincing, but the squeeze of his hand gave at least some reassurance.

And as Nene watched him, she noticed half of the rice he’d shoveled into his mouth had stuck to the corners of his lips. If he hadn’t eaten in 50 years, he certainly hadn’t thought about etiquette in that long (and, knowing Hanako, it’d probably been even longer).

“Hanako-kun.”

“Hm?”

He finally pulled his gaze away and was met with a napkin to his mouth.

“Hold still.”

Hanako could only sit in a mute compliance as she wiped away the bits of rice and the growing sense of nostalgia from his pallid skin.

“Okay, all clean.”

Hanako watched her for a long moment, lost in a look between confusion and embarrassment, before he pulled his hat down and looked away.

“Um….thanks……”

Few words were exchanged for the rest of the meal, and Nene spent the time stealing glances at the boy’s red ears that poked out from his messy locks, trying to hold back a smile.

When Hanako finally finished his lunchbox, the five o’clock bell was just beginning to chime, signaling her leave. Nene rose to her feet, dusted herself off, and headed inside with her apparition friend hot on her heels.

Normally they would part ways at the staircase. Hanako would bring up some empty threat about her being on time the next day (“your fish food is waiting!” he’d chirp), she’d give him a playful slug as a promise she’d be there, and that was it. It was fine that way. Despite being bound at the hip (or, more accurately, the stomach- wherever the mermaid scale had settled in the end) they still had their separate life and afterlife to go about.

But today, he followed her all the way to the front gates.

The wind was beginning to pick up now, biting at her face and wisping her hair into a snow-crusted twist. And as she stepped from the school grounds and slid the gate closed, she took one last look at the boy, the snow drifting through his translucent, gaunt figure. From the shadow of his cap, she couldn’t read his expression.

“Goodbye, Hanako-kun.”

“Yashiro.”

His hand slipped through the fencing, flickering just for a moment as he strained the limits of the school, before curling around her wrist and tugging her back. She stumbled, her face pressing up against the cold metal bars.

No, it wasn’t the metal.

The chill of his lips on her cheek made her jump in surprise. And yet, they felt warm compared to the storm whirling from the sky, and much softer than she’d imagined. As if being nuzzled by a cat’s cold nose.

A puff of his surprisingly hot breath burned away the shock of the moment and spread across her cheeks in a bright pink blush. He finally pulled away, leaning his head against her shoulder.

“Thank you….for the lunchbox,” he murmured, running a gloved hand through a strand of her hair- a simple, intimate gesture that sent her eyes spinning in her skull. “Be careful on your way home, ‘kay?”

Nene tried to make a noise, but it came out more like a hamster squeak as it attempted to squeeze past her thumping heart that had lodged in her throat. So instead, she stood there silently, wedged halfway between the fence of the school and her own spiraling emotions, until she felt him pull away.

She cursed him silently for doing so.

Nene finally looked up, catching just the smallest sliver of a smile beneath the brim of his hat as he stepped back. And with a cold gust, he faded away from sight, and Nene was left standing in the snow in a daze.

And then it hit her.

Oh, she’d just been kissed.

Huh.

Nene stood for a long moment staring into the empty school grounds as the snow began to pile up around her ankles. Maybe she should scream. Maybe she should cry. Maybe she should just drop dead right there from whatever toxic mix of her own feelings was brewing in her chest. Maybe she should march back in there and demand an answer from that stupid slimy ghost who just insisted on making her stomach do somersaults.

Instead, she turned and ran. And if anyone saw her, she hoped they’d assign her red face to the nip of the cold.

Hanako had kissed her.

Hanako had kissed her.

That moment rang in her head throughout the entirety of breakfast.

It wasn’t her first kiss, sure. Hanako had kissed her before (what he called a “protection charm” or some bullshit) which had resulted in her being a bumbling, crying mess in the practice gardens. That time had just been a misunderstanding, one that she still got stuck playing on loop through her head right before she went to sleep. It definitely sat in the high ranks of “Nene Yashiro’s Top 5 Embarrassing Moments,” rivaled only by the time she’d worn pajamas to school on a day that was most definitely not pajama day.

But this time….hadn’t quite felt the same.

Something about Hanako had changed since that incident. He started clinging to her like lint to a dryer trap. His teasing had significantly dropped. He still called her a daikon and pulled out one of his characteristically middle school boy jokes from time to time, but he didn’t act like a pervy flirt anymore.

And he hadn’t worn the same shit-eating grin he had the first time he’d kissed her.

He’d actually looked kinda...kinda cute-

Nene paused.

Oh god.

Do I like Hanako?

She quickly slammed her hands over her mouth, as if even thinking such a thing could let it slip out into reality. As if some nosy psychic was prepping their broadcast equipment, ready to project her shameful thoughts to all of humanity at a moment’s notice.

Hell, she’d seen her fair share of supernaturals. It wasn’t like it was too crazy a notion.

This was all stupid Hanako’s fault. Just a stupid boy with his stupid hat and his stupid smile and his stupid kisses that made her feel like she had a million stupid butterflies hatching in her stomach. Even after she’d spilled her heart to him! Even after she’d told him she liked him, he still had the nerve to do this ?

Nene wasn’t much one to swear, but just thinking about him brewed a whole storm of curses in her head.

He thought he could just kiss her and get away with it, did he?

Well Nene Yashiro does not lose in the battle of love!

So she prepped her emotions, headed to school, and made it all the way to lunch with Kou without blowing a gasket. And if anyone asked how many times the ghost boy’s dumb grinning face popped into her head during class, well, that was none of their business!

It was as she sat there with her underclassman, still fuming but determined, that she innocently asked.

“Kou-kun, what do you know about kissing?”

The blonde boy made a noise that sounded a bit like a pig being choked, and she noticed the juice he’d been drinking a second ago now dripping from his nose. She quickly offered him a napkin as he struggled (and failed) to regain his composure.

“S-senpai, what’s this about?”

The quiver in his voice, the blush, the fact that half of his drink was now splattered across his face told her all she needed to know. She’d guessed that Kou hadn’t ever been involved in any kind of relationship before, but she didn’t expect the question to, quite literally, blow up in his face.

And besides, teenage boys were probably the last people she’d want to ask for advice.

“Ah, never mind, it’s nothing,” she waved it off with a flip of her hair.

Kou seemed oddly invested in his meal for the rest of lunch, his face flushed with a scarlet she hoped wasn’t from an oncoming illness.

Hanako was missing from the bathroom when she arrived.

The tile floor seemed to still retain some of its shine from her previous cleaning. Hanako had confessed once that not many people visited that bathroom (she couldn’t imagine why), so dropping her bag by the windowsill, she headed out in search of him.

The thing was, Nene wasn’t too sure what she would do once she found him.

How do you confront someone who’d kissed you so suddenly the day before?

The phantom touch of his lips lingered as heavily on her heart as it did on her cheek. She couldn’t seem to rid her skin of the chill, no matter how much she rubbed at it (it wasn’t like she necessarily wanted it gone to begin with, however). It was as if he’d stuck his own seal on her cheek, and her hyperawareness of the feeling proved difficult to think of little else.

She continued rubbing her cheek as she wandered through the dull blue-painted halls.

Nene didn’t particularly want to find Hanako and confront all those emotions she’d been bottling up in the slots between her ribs for the past few months, all those dreams where she’d so conveniently edited his bright amber eyes onto some whimsical lover, all those playlists she’d made of hundreds of sappy songs that she just so happened to name after flowers. It felt like she was waiting for the doctor’s bad news: “guess what, you’re in love and it’s terminal!” And Nene felt truly terrified.

But as she wandered the halls the snow outside began to morph into a freezing rain, and she wasn’t particularly fond of arriving at her apartment in gills either.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place.

She checked all of the usual places the ghostly boy liked to loiter- the roof, the science prep room, Tsuchigomori’s classroom- but each one she found just as empty as the girl’s bathroom.

Maybe he was avoiding her.

Maybe he regretted kissing her the previous day. Maybe it had been meant to be a hug and he’d accidentally smacked his lips against her cheek and now felt embarrassed about it. Maybe he hadn’t actually kissed her the other day and she had just hallucinated the whole thing in some pathetic excuse to rectify her feelings for a ghost that she’d inserted into her imaginary shoujo manga romance scenario-

Ugh, why did boys have to be so confusing?!

Nene paused to catch up with her thoughts, wringing her umbrella in her hands.

The library. That was one place she hadn’t checked. Tsuchigomori had been absent of his usual spots as well, so it seemed logical that him and Hanako could be together.

Nene turned the corner and headed down the stairs.

Her foot slipped.

Nene feels herself go airborne, her legs swinging up over her head.

She hits the stairs once.

Twice.

The glint of the umbrella tip, and it pierces through her stomach, popping open on the other side in a glistening shower of carmine fluid. Nene can see red. She can see blood. She can see bits of her own flesh sloughing off the open umbrella like the storm against the windows.

And she can see her life flicker before her eyes in a poorly spliced supercut, only lasting for but a blink.

Her heart thumps wildly impaled on the umbrella shaft, until it’s drowned out by the tapping of rain.

A firm hand grabbed her wrist, and she felt herself being pulled back onto the top step. She swayed for a second, regaining the feeling in her knees, her twisting stomach, and she looked up.

And over her stood tall, blonde, and ever so handsome Teru Minamoto.

“Watch your step there, Yashiro-san.”

He released her as she struggled to blink the daze of her life flashing in an instant before her eyes. Nene felt her mouth fall open, gawking like a fish as her head began to wrap around the scenario that had unfolded. “Minamoto-senpai?”

He smiled at her with such a charm that it practically wrote her diary pages for her. And Nene couldn’t stop her stupid heart from clogging up her throat with its incessant pounding.

“You seem a bit out of it, are you alright?”

Alright.

Alright……

She snapped herself from her daydream with a shake of her head. “O-oh, yes.” Damnit Nene, focus! “I was just looking for Hanako-kun…..”

If the upperclassman’s smile faltered, she didn’t take notice, and Minamoto’s face tightened into a bright smile as if made of plastic. “You’re looking for Number 7?” he purred, laced with a hidden venom, “I haven’t seen him today.”

Nene’s flustered emotions settled into disappointment at the news, and she let her shoulders droop. “Oh….” she murmured, lowering her umbrella, “Okay.”

And with that hint of discouragement in her voice, Minamoto’s face softened almost to a point of pity. The kind she’d imagine he’d have given her if she actually did work up the courage to confess. It almost fit his face too well, and she suddenly felt like a terminally ill patient, speaking of some unachievable dream.

Well, that might not have been too far off the mark.

“The school is only so big,” Minamoto offered in consolation, “I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.”

“Oh, yeah...” she mused, before perking back up as she remembered her goal. “Oh, right! I was heading for the library!”

All of the tension dropped from the air at once, along with her manners, as she turned to the stairs ready to rush off. But Minamoto’s voice halted her in her tracks.

“Yashiro-san?”

“Y-Yes?”

She looked back up at the exorcist. In the frame of the pale stormy light, there was something ominous about the way he stood there, hand loosely draped over the blade strapped to his waist. The accessory didn’t fit with his perfect face, still bearing a gentle smile.

“Be careful on your walk home tonight.”

And she paused, a hint of nostalgia poking at her ribs.

Nene nodded slowly, before muttering a “Goodbye, Minamoto-senpai,” and headed off in search of her spirit friend.

The library proved to be empty, and unable to get into the bookstacks any longer, Nene headed home alone.

The next day was spent in a haze. She remembered standing up to read at some point in class before the lull of the clock ticking put her to sleep. And suddenly Nene was back at her quest to find the oh-so-elusive Hanako.

She’d spent the past morning gathering her courage, ready to address that whole mess of feelings knotted in her stomach. It wasn’t like confessing was a foreign concept to her, but the previous instances hadn’t come with the same mounting terror that she now felt. The previous instances hadn’t left her unable to eat breakfast, unable to take class notes, unable to sleep at night, aching with worry. At best, he’d politely decline her, and they’d spend the rest of her time at the school pretending the incident never happened. And at worst…

Well, she didn’t want to think about the worst.

But either way, she didn’t really expect him to accept.

She also didn’t expect to find Hanako face to face with Akane Aoi, just outside the bathroom in what appeared to be a heated discussion.

Nene nearly went running up to greet him, to scold him for disappearing yesterday and wrap him up in her gentle embrace, when she heard a firm, booming “no” from the ghost, slamming her to a stop. In that moment, she found herself ducking around a corner, hiding to watch a conversation play out that she was certain she was not meant to see.

“Number 7, the other mysteries-”

“I don’t give a damn what the other mysteries have to say,” Hanako hissed, and even from her distance, she could see the shift in his eyes as his pupils narrowed to pinpricks, threatening to suck in anyone who dared to get too close.

Akane didn’t seem to notice, however, and stepped closer to use his height to his advantage.

“You can’t keep doing this. I know those cowards won’t dare go against you, Honorable Number 7 ,” he spat, the title boiling off of his tongue, “but I won’t stand for it.”

It happened so quick she nearly missed it. In an instant, Hanako reached into his jacket, no, his stomach , and tore out his knife with a jerk as if prying it from the flesh itself. Akane barely had a chance to react before the blade was pointed at his adam’s apple, pressed against his skin ever so taut.

Number 7 leaned closer, his other hand gripped tightly around the clock keeper’s tie. Any humanity, any sense that he was just a child under that cap, had melted from his frame like wax. The subtle crack of his wrist echoed through the halls, and the apparition drew in a long, unnecessary breath.

“Listen, Number 1 ,” he snarled in a voice that Nene was certain couldn’t belong to a 14-year-old boy, “ Do. Not. Interfere. I will sort out this issue myself.”

Akane always wore his confidence like a new suit, but staring down the barrel of the blade, he looked truly, genuinely afraid. And Nene felt as if he’d torn the knife out of her stomach, feeling a sickening twist as she watched the scene play out.

The cheeky boy who prided himself in mediating the school’s relations, at keeping the peace between student and supernatural, pointing his blade at a human.

Akane swallowed, his throat bobbing dangerously close to the tip of the knife. And then, with what little grit he could muster, he replied.

“Fine.”

The weapon dropped. Hanako took a step back, pulling on that cheerful, boyish grin he always wore as if he’d never taken it off in the first place, and offered a curt nod in condolences. “Good,” he purred, folding the kitchenware back into the cavity of his chest, “Now then, goodbye Number 1.”

Akane didn’t stay around a heartbeat more. She watched as her classmate quickly gathered his bag from the floor that he’d dropped amidst the confrontation and hurried off.

Nene nearly followed him, when the soft, cherubic voice of a middle school boy blocked her path.

“Yashiro?”

She turned slowly, only to find him smiling back at her, innocent and unassuming. As if he hadn’t just crammed his blade back into his gut with the ease of returning a utensil to the drawer. And she forced an equally unassuming expression on her face, battling that growing sickening feeling and uncertain implications.

He must have noticed the surprise smudged across her face, because his grin only grew.

“You didn’t think you were going to skip out on bathroom duty, did you?”

Nene didn’t know how to respond to that, and only gaped her mouth as she fished for words.

“N-no….”

“Good, come on then,” he chimed, ushering her inside the bathroom. And she could only mutely comply as she was tugged inside by that nasty sense of responsibility.

She was a total mess cleaning.

That hallway scene looped in her brain, overshadowing the previous supercut involving the ghostly boy.

Nene felt as if she knew Hanako pretty well. Sure she didn’t know much about his past, and sure, she didn’t really know what he did for the role of Honorable Number 7, but he was still her friend. She knew the quips he liked to pull out his back pocket whenever she complained about cleaning, she knew his favorite food and subject in school, she knew his tics and mannerisms like the veins on the back of her hand.

But what she’d seen in the hallway wasn’t Hanako.

What she’d seen in the hallway hadn’t been human, she was quite certain.

But then again, ghosts weren’t human in the first place, were they?

Hanako must have noticed her distraction after spilling the mop bucket for a fifth time, and he floated closer. “Yashiro, something on your mind?”

His voice was soft, sweet, as if glazed in honey. It sent shivers up her spine.

“O-oh...it’s just…….”

Don’t bring it up. It’s better not to ask.

“I thought….I saw Akane leaving here before I came….did he stop by?”

Hanako didn’t miss a beat, and Nene nearly missed the change of his face. “Yeah, he did.”

“I um…..” she fidgeted, grasping for some feeble support in her mop, “I thought I heard arguing.”

“Ah.”

Nene looked up, finding the apparition smiling at her- a bit too tight, however, threatening to split his alabaster skin down the middle and reveal….whatever it was she had seen in the hall underneath.

Whatever “Number 7” she had not yet been acquainted with.

“It was nothing really. I was just a bit annoyed about all these meetings,” he quipped, his hand waving her from her thoughts, “I think this weather is starting to get to me.”

Liar.

She could read it as plainly as his idle fiddling with his uniform buttons. The latex mask had slipped, and Nene as the skin of his bare hands twitched, rippled, just itching to reach up and readjust it.

But before she could bring this fact to the surface, his smile morphed into a smirk, and he leaned in close, just a hair between their noses.

“Were you worried about me, Yashiro?”

Damnit.

She could feel the cogs in her brain shutting off in a steady chain reaction as those silky ochre eyes slipped in between her rational thought. The brim of his hat tapping against her forehead was all too much contact and exactly not enough at the same time, and the puff of his breath against her lips threatened to turn her legs to flippers. It smelled oddly sweet like….like……….

Some tiny bit of reason left finally chipped her out of her stupor, and she took a wobbly step back.

Of course she was worried about him, but when he said it like that….

“I-I need to head home!”

The slightest bit of disappointment crossed his face as he watched her pack up her things in a rush in a desperate attempt to avoid his gaze. Hanako let out a long sigh, trudging back into the windowsill.

“Yashiro?”

She faltered, just for the briefest of moments, and turned back to him. Back to that stupid smile she couldn’t get out of her mind.

“Be careful heading home, okay?”

A gulp, and she squeaked out something that rivaled her hamster in pitch before hurrying out.

“He kissed you?”

“NOT SO LOUD!” Nene practically screamed, definitely being the loudest in the class. In the previous day’s haze, she’d forgotten to even mention “the incident” to her best friend, but now, she was definitely regretting doing so in the first place.

She could feel a thousand icicle stares from her classmates raining down upon her, but Aoi only laughed.

“Oh Nene-chan, he definitely likes you!” her friend teased with a playful nudge, but the revelation only added to the stones in her stomach.

“But he’s kissed me before, a-and it wasn’t really meant like that! So why would he do it again…” She let out a groan, burying her face into the comfort of her hard wooden desk.

Stupid boys!

He kisses her, he doesn’t like her like that, he swoops in to save her at every other heartbeat, he tells her not to do that when she kisses him back, he asks her on a date, he kisses her cheek-

Nene felt like she was playing “he loves me, he loves me not” with an infinitely petaled pansy.

Akane had taken up eavesdropping on their conversation, or rather, listening to the lull of Aoi’s voice. Thankfully Nene didn’t have to worry about him retaining much of her woes, and if he did, it wasn’t like he would skip off to Hanako so they could giggle like schoolgirls about it.

The event of yesterday played in her mind.

Akane wasn’t easy to frighten. He’d pulled off a million stunts in the name of Aoi’s honor, and Nene was certain that he’d checked any fears he had at the door after he’d begun pursuing her. He didn’t make much headway, but that was beside the point. Akane was a school mystery. Akane had the power of time just a brush from his fingertips. Akane had looked truly, genuinely frightened in that split second that Hanako’s knife had grazed his throat.

Nene knew that Hanako wasn’t telling her the whole truth about the incident (or rather, none of the truth at all), but the fear that flickered in the clock keepers eyes told her she wouldn’t get much information out of him either.

Besides, she didn’t really want to go behind her friend’s back just to get insight into an interaction that might have been completely mundane. Hanako would tell her if it was something important….right?

“Nene-chan, I think I’ve got an idea,” Aoi announced. Her friend leaned in close, with that lethal popular girl smile curling across her lips, and whispered in her ear.

And as the words tickled her ear, Nene felt herself let out a shriek.

“Yashiro, are you alright?”

Nene nearly dropped the rag she held as she wiped the mirrors. The afternoon had been relatively quiet, thankfully, as Hanako had been wrapped up in an intense battle of wits with the mokke. His distraction allowed her to live out the career of “bumbling idiot” to the fullest, at least until he had lost, and now his full attention was back to her sloppy attempts to scrub the glass. She focused on her own trembling hand so as to not catch his concerned gaze through the mirror.

“I-I’m fine,” she finally muttered, rubbing the smear harder.

“Are you sure? You’re really red.” And suddenly he was at her side, nudging his chin into the crook of her neck and blinking with those large, puppy dog eyes. “Did you get a sunburn?”

She jumped back at the icy touch, much to her (and his) surprise, her jaw painfully cracking against his sharp cheekbone. Hanako stumbled away and watched as she flailed to catch the words floating out of her head.

“Y-yeah, it’s just a sunburn, no problem at all, nuh uh, no siree.”

Perfect Nene. Totally not suspicious at all.

Hanako gave her a curious look, just about to open his mouth to release some dreaded rebuttal when her gaze drifted down.

“Hanako-kun….what happened to your hand?”

All eyes dropped to his left palm, which he quickly curled into a shielding fist behind his back.

“Ah it’s nothing, don’t-”

His dismissal hit her like a gentle puff as she snatched up his arm.

The apparition’s normally pristine skin had been scorched a bright red, straight across the palm. A burn, she noted, very similar to his injury from raitejou, all those months ago. He winced as she jabbed the spot with a finger.

“W-what is this? A burn?” she fretted, waving a hand as if hoping to wipe it away.

“Yashiro, really it’s nothing-”

“It is not nothing! You got hurt and you didn’t even tell me!” Her voice had begun to trill now, and she stamped her foot (rather childishly, she thought in retrospect). But she didn’t care- she was pissed .

“Yashiro-”

“You just go around doing whatever the hell you please, and I’m tired of it! I’m tired of you just acting like my feelings are some stupid toy!”

“Yashiro.”

“Why can’t you get it through your thick head that maybe someone cares about you? That maybe I care if something happens to you, you stupid ghost! Stupid Hanako-”

“ Yashiro .”

She could feel her name on her skin, him only being a few inches away now. Those amber eyes much too big for his face watched her curiously, just the slightest hint of amusement dancing between them.

And all at once, her rage slipped from her mind as she stared at him blankly.

If someone had walked into the bathroom that instant, they’d have just seen two normal students at first glance (if they could see Hanako, and if they ignored the fact that there was a boy in the girl’s restroom).

But in the soft snowy light, his face held a haunting glow, skin stretched taut over his boyish features and chapped lips carrying just the slightest tinge of blue, as if he’d been out in the cold too long. As if he belonged in some crime show splayed across a medical examiner’s table, pumped rigid with the formaldehyde she was certain she could smell on his breath.

He was still very much moving however, speaking words she couldn’t hear in her daydream. It wasn’t until a cold finger tapped her nose that she snapped back to reality.

“Yashiro, is something wrong?”

Yes. Something was very much wrong. Something was definitely wrong about the way she felt for a boy who was little more than a freshly dug up corpse.

She swallowed, just to make sure she was still in her own body.

“Hanako-kun….”

She must have been insane. That was the only rational explanation for her action. She must have been.

But then again, she’d already swallowed a mermaid scale, so what was one more mistake?

Before he could ask again, her hands were on his collar, yanking him down until their lips met, a bit harder than she anticipated. Actually, it kinda hurt as their foreheads clanked together. Hanako squeaked like a startled cat, but she refused to let the pain, the embarrassment, the fact that she had no clue what the hell she was doing ruin her moment, and she puckered her lips more, holding him there until she couldn't breathe.

They finally broke apart, both gasping for air (Hanako, needlessly so).

And the realization of what she’d just done began to sink in.

Her brain scolded her for focusing on his buttons, unable to meet his eye to attempt to read one of the boy’s signature unreadable expressions. The aftershock of the moment left the hairs of her neck standing on end, and she was certain her lips would be bruised in the morning from her pathetic attempt at a kiss.

Her face burned.

“Yashiro….”

Here it came. She’d heard those words too many times before and could only silently pray for a gentle let down.

It won’t work out.

I don’t like you that way.

Your legs are too fat.

Nene braced herself for the worst.

But the words never came, because Hanako had gripped her shoulders, pulling her back into him. This time much gentler than her first effort.

His lips were as soft as his touch.

Up close, Hanako smelled a bit like the stale air of an old book and a bit like metal. But over both of those, she could smell sugar like the glaze of a pastry, so much she could nearly taste it. And it caused her knees to buckle as she leaned further into him.

She broke just a moment to catch her breath, before pressing deeper this time, sinking into his chilled lips. A cold hand ran up through her hair, and she felt herself shudder under such a simple, intimate gesture. His other hand had dropped to her waist, and she prayed that he couldn’t feel the butterflies in her stomach. It wasn’t very fair that her body broadcasted her excitement while his remained completely still.

He parted just for a moment, before kissing her again, his head tilting at just the right angle for her heart to catch in her throat.

Nene moved her hand up to his sealed cheek, cupping the frigid sticker beneath her palm. She wanted to kiss him there, she thought. On his cheek, and his forehead, and his neck too. Would he let her if she asked? She envisioned him teasing her about being a “naughty daikon,” but she didn’t care.

Because she really liked Hanako.

And he’d spent one too many years by himself for her to not let him know that.

Nene felt a drop strike her cheek, and her eyes fluttered.

Am I crying?

She let out the tiniest of gasps before pulling him closer, hoping he wouldn’t see.

How lame, crying while kissing the boy she’d (reluctantly) been pining over for the majority of the school year. Nice going Nene. She’d have to kick herself later, but right now, she was too busy caught up in the moment.

The moment of his frigid touch, his sweet sugar-chapped lips, his chest pressed so close to hers she could nearly feel some phantasmal heartbeat beneath those brass buttons.

That was until the moment was slammed shut as Hanako abruptly tore himself away.

Nene awoke harshly from her dream, stumbling back onto her wobbly legs as she looked up to the boy.

And found that he was the one crying.

“H-Hanako-kun….?” she began, her voice crumbling away. She’d only seen him cry a few times, and she definitely didn’t expect him to when he seemed to be enjoying himself.

Hanako stared at her blankly as tears dribbled down his blanched cheeks, seemingly confused by his own reaction. His hand finally raised to his face, tentatively touching the beads spilling from his eyes.

“Ah….I’m sorry. I’m sorry I-”

He took a step back, the clack of his shoe ear piercing against the silence of the bathroom.

“......I have to go.”

He pivoted, and, in the blink of an eye, was out the door. She suddenly found herself standing alone in the bathroom, dazed with shock and confusion.

And in that moment, Nene began to cry herself.

The next day passed in a blur. Nene spent most of class with her head buried in her notebook. As the previous day’s memory looped, she felt her heart flutter, her cheeks grow red, and the stone in her stomach grow heavier with each iteration of that fateful ending. It almost made her laugh, in some sad sort of way, that her first real kiss had ended so pathetically. “Poor Nene-chan, always having bad luck,” Aoi always cooed as she rubbed her back after yet another failed love attempt.

The worst of luck indeed.

Seeing Hanako was the last thing she wanted to do after school. So instead, she wandered the halls in search of some explanation for her jumbled emotions.

Even despite everything else that had happened, she still couldn’t get the image of his burned hand from her mind. Hanako didn’t get hurt easily- hakujoudai typically took the brunt of any attacks- and it took a special type of weapon to even graze him. She knew this well. She’d once gone after him with a pencil after one too many daikon jokes, only to find it went straight through him.

It was with this in mind that she made her way to the science prep room.

Tsuchigomori was never much one for comfort, and his advice only ever came in the form of cryptic rhetorical questions. But he knew Hanako better than anyone. He knew Hanako back when he’d still been a student, back when he still had color in his cheeks and warmth to his touch. And Nene hoped that this knowledge would give her some insight to her spirit friend’s strange behavior, even though she expected to have to battle him for it.

But the last thing she expected to find was Kou also seated in the tiny office, fidgeting under the gaze of his homeroom teacher.

Tsuchigomori drew his eyes from the exorcist as she poked her head through the doorframe. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Senpai!” Kou exclaimed, practically wagging a nonexistent tail. The overpowering boom of joy and shock in his voice, as if she’d just returned from the grave, nearly toppled her from her feet, but Nene pushed on a smile and stepped inside.

“Kou-kun...what are you doing here?”

One would have thought she asked for a kidney the way the air sucked out of the room. He opened and closed his mouth as he searched for words.

“O-oh,” Kou began, tapping his fingers together, “w-well senpai...you see….um……..”

“Homework help,” Tsuchigomori butted in, taking a long puff of his pipe. Nene was quite certain smoking wasn’t allowed in the school, but that was a battle she didn’t feel like picking. She watched as he leaned back in his chair. “If Minamoto-kun doesn’t start doing better on his homework, he’s not going to pass his exams.”

Kou stiffened defensively, snatching up his umbrella. “Hey, I passed last semester’s exams!”

“That’s no excuse!” Tsuchigomori snapped. With a long sigh, he pushed up his glasses to rub his eyes. “I’m guessing you’re here looking for Honorable Number 7?”

Nene gave a jolt as the conversation shifted her direction.

“Oh um…..not really………”

Nene could feel her ankles growing cold. She suddenly didn’t feel like sharing the fact that Hanako had cried after she kissed him, that he’d run off afterward and left her alone, that she most definitely had not spent the better part of the previous night crying into her pillow to the point that she was still nursing a residual headache. Not that she really wanted to spill that moment to her teacher in the first place, but especially not in front of Kou. The poor kid seemed traumatized enough by her simple implication of kissing, so it was probably best not to share she’d been indulging in such illicit activities.

She tapped her foot behind her, concocting some sort of excuse. “It’s just...do you think Hanako-kun’s been acting weird, sensei?”

Tsuchigomori waved a cloud of smoke from his face. “Acting weird?”

“Weird” didn’t even begin to cover it.

“He just…..he seems like he’s not telling me everything…” Nene found herself focused on the hem of her dress, bunching it into her fists. Trying to ground herself. “I’m...his assistant, and yet…..”

Tsuchigomori let out a hum, twirling his pipe. She watched as he pulled off his glasses (which she had a sneaking suspicion he didn’t really need) to rub the grime from the lenses.

“Perhaps he thinks he’s keeping you safe.”

“Y-yeah senpai!” Kou suddenly butted in, reminding her of his presence. “Hanako might be a slimeball, but he’s always got a good reason for doing stuff!”

She finally turned to get a good look at her underclassman, and was struck with a twist to her gut.

“Kou-kun, what happened to your head?”

Kou winced at the observation, his eyebrows shooting up and crinkling the bandage wrapped around his forehead. His blond bangs obscured the faint discoloration of what she could only guess was dried blood for the most part, but she could still see the injury, plain as day. He quickly lowered his face as if to hide it.

“Ah...i-it’s nothing senpai. Just an accident.”

Just an accident.

So Hanako wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.

Her mouth gaped like a fish for a second, before she clamped it shut. She didn’t feel like arguing with him today, despite knowing there was more to the story.

“Oh….sorry to hear that.”

Just an accident.

Just another secret she wasn’t a part of. Just another mystery to stress over as she lay awake at night worrying if her friends were sleeping easy. If a certain ghost could even sleep to begin with.

And suddenly, she felt as if the temperature of the room was rising to an insufferable degree.

Nene turned back to the school mystery, whose curious gaze bore into her like fangs. The air scalded her throat as she swallowed.

“W-well, I’m going to head home now….”

“Yashiro-san.”

The school mystery’s voice sent a rumble down her spine. She turned to him, watching as Tsuchigomori tapped his pipe into the ashtray on his desk with a subtle tick. Fingers just a bit too long. Eyes that cut a bit too sharp.

“Be careful on your way home.”

Her ears were ringing.

And suddenly, static. She could hear static, and the warped voices of someone still speaking, but as if it were played in reverse, as if rapidly flipping through radio stations. She could see arms, one, two, four too many, and violet eyes that cut through the dark afternoon sun, reaching up the walls, towards the windows, towards her, and then-

She felt herself promptly drop back into her own chubby ankles.

Nene blinked, finding both Tsuchigomori and Kou staring at her, uncertain how long she’d been standing there.

She gave a curt nod, finding her words fleeing, and hurried from the science prep room.

It snowed throughout the morning.

Nene spent the day bunching up her courage in the pockets of her skirt, ready to finally face her spirit friend. Tsuchigomori had entertained the idea of him slinking around for her own safety, but she wasn’t sure.

Hanako was up to something.

Something she was determined to find out.

She’d promised him all those months ago she’d trust him until he told her everything. Pinky promised even.

And she was still willing to keep that promise, but well….she didn’t have all the time in the world.

She found him sitting on the top of the roof, letting the snow pile up on his hat.

“Hanako-kun!”

Her cheerful greeting sent a jolt through him, but he didn’t look up from his apparently very interesting lap. She took the opportunity to slide into the seat next to him.

“Yashiro,” he greeted quietly, his voice feeling a bit too hollow, a bit too impersonal. Just like the way Tsuchigomori always referred to him as “Number 7.” She watched as he picked at his pallid hands, pulled off into some thought too deep for her to reach. She took a deep breath.

“What are you doing up here?”

“Hmm….just doing some thinking.”

Her eyes flicked between his downcast face and his fidgety hands. He’d bitten his nails down to a level she could describe as painful, and it seemed the unraveling trim of his jacket was the next victim of his restlessness. Nene chewed her lip.

She knew this would be difficult. She knew how Hanako locked himself up at the first prod of her questions, and she’d prepared for it. Dig a little deeper.

“Hanako-kun, has something been bothering you?”

His throat bobbed in a hard swallow. “‘S nothing really. Just...the usual duties.”

“Duties?”

Hanako waved a hand nonchalantly, attempting to shoo away her worries. “You know. School Mystery stuff.” And he left it at that.

Nene most certainly did not know what “School Mystery stuff” meant, as Hanako hadn’t shared hardly any insight as to what his atonement entailed, but she kept quiet. Baby steps. She knew not to press too much.

“Um. About the other day…...”

Oh. That.

He’d begun to tug at the loose strings of his jacket, as if trying to find the right words in the stitching. Nene could feel her heart beginning to pick up. She prayed he couldn’t hear it, dropping her gaze to his see-through shoes.

“I’m um.” He took a long, unnecessary breath. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry.

She couldn’t be sure if he was apologizing for kissing her or for running off. Or for both. Maybe he wasn’t quite sure himself.

If she still had the courage, she’d have stood up right there and given him a proper confession. Grabbed him by the collar and told him that she liked his stupid ghost self, and maybe even kissed him again, if he’d let her. But her confidence had waned with every word, and all she got out was a weak “okay.”

They sat in an uncomfortable silence.

“Hanako-kun.” She struggled to steady her nerves as she selected her words. Choose carefully. “I-if there’s ever something bugging you…..you can...you can talk to me, you know.”

Please talk to me.

“Mm,” the spirit hummed. He dropped the hem of his jacket, staring out across the courtyard below. “It’s not really something you could help with.”

Nene halted.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Hanako seemed to quickly realize his misstep, taking in a sharp breath.

“Yashiro...I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Like what ?” she snapped.

“You know….it’s just, it’s spirit stuff, not….” He gave a halfhearted wave of his hand, only causing the tension in her jaw to rise.

“Not what?”

“Yashiro-”

“Don’t you ‘Yashiro’ me!” she finally snapped, her voice spiking in decibels. The shout finally drew his full attention as he turned to her, recoiling.

She felt her breath hitch.

“Hanako-kun….what happened to your face?”

Nene felt as if she herself had been struck, staring at the purple bruise across his right cheekbone. The injury glowed against his pale complexion and had begun to swell, leaving his eye scrunched into a squint. It had to be fresh. She could smell copper on the air.

The apparition didn’t give her much time to examine further, as his hand slapped across the wound.

“I-it’s nothing. Just an accident.”

An accident.

Just an accident.

Just like…..

“Hanako-kun, have you been fighting with Kou-kun?”

The burn on the hand. The scrape across the head. The knuckle shaped bruise across the cheek.

It was too coincidental. Like a poorly constructed mystery novel.

Hanako feigned some sort of confusion. “Yashiro, it’s not-”

“Is that where you’ve been sneaking off to? Picking fights with our friend ?” Her voice had begun to climb in octaves. She could feel her fists trembling, and she clenched them tighter.

“Yashiro-”

“You’re always running off without me, you never take me along on any business anymore, you don’t tell me anything about things that happen and just expect me to sit around and take it.” She was on her feet at this point, towering over him in some mock intimidation, struggling to contain her shivers.

“ Yashiro ,” he repeated, this time much softer. Pleading.

She didn’t hear him. Her head filled with a fizzling numbness, and the butterflies had piled in a lifeless heap in her stomach. She felt sick.

“You asked me to trust you.” She felt her voice cracking. Push through. “Couldn’t you extend some back even a little bit? Hanako-kun, you….”

Idiot.

Jerk.

Control freak.

No. she picked the one that hurt the most.

“You liar !”

The word cracked, suspended in the air between them as she turned and ran, letting the adrenaline carry her inside.

She hoped the wind covered the broken sob she tried so desperately to quell.

Hanako lets his legs dangle freely over the miniature landscape below. He’s never tried falling from this height before, but he knew he wouldn’t die. It’d hurt, probably a lot worse than dying, but in the end, he’d still get up unscathed. Yet another obnoxious side effect of being supernatural.

At least humans had the good sense to die.

He almost tests this theory, when that familiar singsong voice strikes his ears.

“Amane~”

He doesn’t have to look. He knows who stands behind him- his own reflection, glowing with a childish eagerness he never could quite match, almost to the point of it being exhausting.

Hanako keeps his mouth tacked shut.

Tsukasa finds a way to weave a conversation regardless.

His twin crouches at his side, peering down to the throngs of students making their ways home. Something he and his brother couldn’t do, even if they had a home to begin with.

“Woooow they all look like ants from up here!” Tsukasa laughs, jabbing a finger at the air, “Small enough to squash!”

“Ants,” Hanako echoes. He doesn’t find the entertainment in such a visual. He’s too busy nursing the throbbing in his cheek and in his chest. Where everything should be still, but he still feels some vile wriggling between the spaces of his ribs.

He stares at the burn branding his palm.

Liar.

That’s what she called him. He won’t deny it. He is a liar. He’s also a lot of things much worse: a fake, a School Mystery, a murderer. It’s okay, he tries to tell himself. It’s probably better this way. It’d probably have been better if they’d done this from the start, but Hanako had a horrible way of getting overly emotional about these kinds of things.

He’s dead, he has to remind himself. The dead don’t get to have these sorts of feelings.

It takes him by surprise when Tsukasa grabs his hand- his injured one at that- and stretches it out wide for the clouds above to see.

“Look, we match now!” His brother grins, holding out his own hand.

Hanako doesn’t need to look. He already knows what’s there. A scorched, crusted patch of skin at the butt of his twin’s palm where he touched the stove when they were little. A third-degree burn and a hospital trip later, Tsukasa would tell him that he couldn’t even feel that part anymore, a fact he liked to test by sticking needles into the dead patch. Hanako was always quick to stop him before he could draw blood.

He wondered if that fact carried over into the afterlife.

He pulls away from his brother’s grip, curling his fingers into a defensive fist. The pit in his stomach grows heavier as he feels a sharp hand press against his gut.

“We match here too, Amane,” Tsukasa coos, his voice sounding too far away, too serene. Hanako wants to ask him what the hell he means by that, but he already knows.

He knows too well.

Hanako won’t give his brother the reaction he wants, and Tsukasa pouts.

“Amaneeeee,” he whines, draping his slender arms around his shoulders. It feels too gentle for a relationship they don’t have. “I’m bored, let’s play a game!”

A game.

Hanako doesn’t have time for Tsukasa’s games, and he knows damn well how they all end. He’s not seven anymore, he’s fourteen. He’s been fourteen for the past fifty years, and he’s been done with these “games” for even longer.

“Not now Tsu.”

“No fair! You never want to play,” Tsukasa sulks, twisting his wide smile into a dramatic frown. An expression that might garner sympathy if it came from anyone other than his little brother. “You only want to play with that assistant of yours…..um….Nene something………..”

Hanako winces before he gets a chance to repress it, and that’s all his brother needs to unfurl a grin from ear to ear.

“So you are playing a game.” And with a white, boney finger, his twin pokes at the red and white seal on his cheek. A harsh reminder of yet another lie. It burns a little, but Hanako keeps that to himself. “Hey, Amane, I want to play too.”

“No.”

It spills out so quick that Hanako nearly forgets who he’s talking to. He had never been good about telling Tsukasa no, and his little brother had never been good at obliging. But Tsukasa doesn’t seem to take offense. Instead, he unwinds his arms and pushes himself to his feet.

“Fine. I’ll just go find her myself then.”

And in an instant, Hanako’s hand is around his twin’s wrist, thin and boney and coated in a layer of poorly healed scar tissue. He can’t feel temperature anymore, but under the illusion of surprise, he’s certain Tsukasa feels even colder than the air outside. Like a corpse, dug up from a frozen grave.

Maybe that wasn’t too far off the mark.

“Tsukasa…..”

His brother smiles wider, and Hanako gets the sense he is about to make a fatal mistake by that phantom ache in his gut where he knows a knife should be.

Well, not that it matters anyway.

He’s already dead.

Nene smeared on her makeup extra thick the next day in an attempt to hide her puffy eyes.

If anyone noticed she’d been crying most of the night, they thankfully didn’t comment on it. She’d spent the past twelve hours fluctuating between sobbing into her pillow, furiously scribbling her vendetta against the male species in her diary, and watching hamster videos on loop in an attempt to cheer herself up. She was certain she’d added at least a thousand views to one in particular.

Her rage had slowly smoldered though, doused by a heavy bucket of guilt. She hated fighting with Hanako. It wasn’t the first time, but typically arguments spurred from one too many daikon jokes that a few clingy hugs and whines could make up for. Usually it was his fault, and she was all too quick to forgive.

Now she struggled to forgive herself.

Hanako carried his secrets like stones in his pockets. He was the type to sink rather than spill, which often left her flailing to help a drowning person who didn’t want to be saved.

It was exasperating, disheartening, but it was Hanako. An earthbound spirit with a sentence for murder. A sentence he too willfully accepted.

Nene found herself idly picking at the bandaid on her hand where she’d sliced her finger in her bento making quest. Gently, she pulled away the slimy covering, finding the skin raw yet completely void of the injury underneath.

Aoi had mentioned earlier how there were only five days left until winter break. It didn’t seem right, but checking the calendar it was certainly true.

She had another bandaid to rip off. She needed to apologize.

Hanako seemed to be absent more than he was around as of late. After another empty bathroom, Nene found herself Tsuchigomori’s classroom on a mission.

And she knew he’d been there from the origami dinosaurs made from what she guessed were once students’ essays.

Hanako may have been silent on his feet, but he practically left a trail of ectoplasm wherever he went.

The desks in this part of the building were old, older than most of the others. Run a finger across the surface too fast and it’d come up filled with splinters and a toxic coating of graphite. One of her teachers had once complained that they hadn’t been replaced since the fifties, but she couldn’t carbon date them to know for sure.

She wondered if Amane Yugi’s desk was amongst them, somewhere.

A student’s desk was typically removed from the classroom when they passed. Nene vividly remembered her first year of middle school when a third year had drowned over summer break. Walking past class 3-C, she’d seen the gaping hole in the desks where they’d snipped her seat out, as if it’d been some sort of cyst. Sure, it might not have hurt to touch anymore, but the scar was still there in plain sight.

She wasn’t sure what they did with the desks after that.

Maybe one of these had been Amane Yugi’s old middle school seat. Maybe she’d find one still tattooed with a ballpoint pen kaiju or a handful of poorly drawn stars. Maybe she’d sit down at it, breathe in the view her friend had of the chalkboard all those years ago. When he was still a human.

Nene scooped up one of the paper sculptures, poking it with a finger.

The jagged edges and sloppy folding seemed practically written in the spirit’s handwriting. She’d once brought up how terrible it truly was to Tsuchigomori, only for him to mumble about how it was the worst in his class, once upon a time. She didn’t dwell too long on that wistful look in her teacher’s eyes.

A gust snatched the figure from her hand. Nene watched as it drifted up into the air and towards the open window before realization set in and she was able to spark a reaction. She dove for the dinosaur, popping it from her fingers as it drifted further out the window and into the falling snow. Just a little further, a little more, and-

Her hand slips. And she’s falling.

She’s falling.

She can barely utter a gasp, let alone a scream, before her stomach leaps from her gut to wedge itself between her clenched teeth. She tastes bile, blood. The wind claws at her clothes, her hair, her skin. Nene can’t tell if it’s tears or blood spilling from her eyes through the ice.

She’s falling too fast.

She’s going to hit.

She sees it before it happens. The crack of her spine against the concrete snow as she bounces like a tennis ball. Her brain spilling out sunny side up through a shattered skull and broken teeth.

And then, black. Just as dark as Hanako’s uniform .

Her face hit the ground with a soft thud.

“Nene-chan!”

She could taste snow. She could feel her friend’s hands wrapping around her arm, dragging her to her knees.

Nene blinked the frost from her eyes to find herself in the practice garden, trowel still clutched tightly in her fist with a watering can spilled a few feet ahead. Aoi dusted away the snow from her hair, dressed in her own club gear.

“Nene-chan, are you okay?” her friend fretted, “You have to be careful on the ice!”

“A-Aoi….”

Nene didn’t hear, her ears still muted from the roar of the wind. Cold. Howling. Caustic.

She craned her head up.

From the ground, she could clearly see the third-floor classroom window, still open and crusted with ice. A casket waiting awaiting its guest.

Tsuchigomori stared back. Nene felt her stomach churn.

Whatever expression he made, whatever knowledge hid behind those round glass walls was quickly locked away with the click of the window and yank of the curtains.

And Nene was left in a dizzy haze as she was guided back to the garden to harvest the winter vegetables.

He feels the tip of the blade between his shoulder blades first. Not deep enough to draw blood, but just enough to make him scared, if he was still alive.

“Coming at me blade in hand? That’s not very fair, dontcha think?”

The click of the exorcist’s teeth in disgust is enough to tell him who it is. It wasn’t like there were many people going around pointing swords at him. Hanako-san of the Toilet had his fair share of enemies, but most didn’t brandish their weapons in such a brazen, childish manner. Despite his physical maturity, that was something the older brother still had in common with the kid.

“I’ve come to put an end to this,” the student president snarls, and it takes all of Hanako’s self-control to not burst out into hysterical laughter. He sounds so serious like this. Probably rehearsed the line in his head the whole day.

As if he could ever do anything about the situation.

“Really?” the apparition purrs, feeling the point drive further into his vertebrae. It doesn’t feel that bad actually. Like scratching an itch he can’t reach. “You exorcists are quite hypocritical, you know that? Here I am, trying to help humans, and you come at me with a weapon! I thought you’re supposed to be protecting people from us oh-so-dangerous supernaturals, Mr. Self Righteous Exorcist.”

“This has gone way past helping humans, school mystery,” the Minamoto spits. Hanako kinda likes when he calls him that, all full of hatred. Reminds him of the clock keeper kid.

“So bold! Have you considered that I might not give a damn?”

“I can exorcise you this instant.” The exorcist is smiling now, he can feel it in the twist of his blade. “Put a stop to this right now.”

How irritating.

All it takes is a quick pivot on his heels and a flicker of his tsueshiro, and Hanako is facing him, blade clasped tightly in his right hand. The joke is gone now. He does enough singing and dancing with his brother to know how this kind of thing goes.

“And what will that accomplish, hm? What does expelling little ol’ me do for the grand scheme of things?” The sword twitches, pressing the sharpened edge against his palm and drawing blood. Hanako watches as it drips down his wrist to his white school shirt sleeve. Not that big of a deal. What was one more stain anyways?

He pushes a smile across his sallow complexion, taking in a long breath to taste the iron smell of his own injury. “It won’t be much longer now. Yashiro already hates me, so that’s one less obstacle to worry about.”

He wouldn’t admit saying those words didn’t hurt, definitely much more than the weapon he gripped. It was better this way, he told himself, fix it without her getting involved. No need to get emotional about it.

He promised to protect her. This was the easiest way.

The Minamoto kid scowls at him, something Hanako is certain he does often, judging by the creases between his brows. That was something different from his brother.

“What, can’t do it now?” Hanako chirps, his eyes growing hollow. His patience is wearing thin. He glances up to the ticking clock on the wall, finding the hands stuck at 4:45. Almost time for the students to return home. He liked to watch them leave from the bathroom window.

Yashiro hadn’t come to clean today. Maybe he could see her from there.

The exorcist gives a deliberate twist of his sword this time, plunging it deeper into his palm. He hears a tiny crunch, guessing it was bone. Did ghosts even have bones? He really hadn’t taken the time to check in fifty years.

“I’ll be keeping an eye on you, school mystery.”

It was funny the first time, but not so much now.

Hanako’s face plunges into something darker, something of near bloodlust burning through those dull, ochre eyes. He lowers his grip on the blade in one slow, deliberate drawl as he meets the boy’s frigid gaze. It’s full of hate, but he catches the little sketch of uncertainty in the dart of his pupils.

“See that’s the difference between me and you Minamotos.” There’s something mechanical in his words, the cadence low and steady. A voice programmed for an evil spirit.

“I can actually finish a job.”

And with a flick of hakujoudai between them, he breezes past the exorcist, keeping his chin held level.

Hanako ignores the ache in his shoulder.

Nene found him in the bathroom windowsill.

It felt off, finding him where he was actually supposed to be. She’d considered just skipping her bathroom check all together today in favor of wandering the school grounds, but something told her to come. She’d had enough time to tend to her wounded trust.

Nene knew something was wrong by the way he clutched his exposed forearm.

Hakujoudai flitted nervously at her arrival, but Hanako barely reacted, his hat pulled low and his gaze focused on some fascinating swirl in the wood’s grain. He offered a side glance, a soft “hey, Yashiro,” before she was at his side, wrenching his arm free for a better look.

The sight sent a rattle through her bones.

Nene could feel her heart forced into her throat, leaving her shaking and breathless as she stared at the blood crusted scrapes speckling his skin. Hanako watched blankly as she waved her hand, as if trying to wipe away the injury. Something she felt she’d done many times before.

Pointlessly.

“W-what happened? Where did all of these come from?! First aid, we need-”

He snatched his arm away, gingerly, but with just enough force to send her back a step.

Her face scrunched in confusion. “H-Hanako-kun…”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” he muttered, shoving his sleeve back down over the cuts, “Just leave it alone, okay?”

Hanako finally turned to her, eyes glazed with a thick film of exhaustion. The cavities beneath them had sunken into a dark shadow, leaving him looking even more skeletal than he normally did, and she could see another scrape hidden beneath his messy bangs. He looked ill, drained, and Nene had no idea how to fix it.

Just like that Amane Yugi she’d found cowering behind the curtains.

Amane Yugi was someone she couldn’t help. She couldn’t nurse his wounds and save him from that polished kitchen knife.

Amane Yugi had changed his fate for the worse.

She wouldn’t let Hanako repeat that mistake.

Feeling a new surge of confidence, she brought herself to full height. Nene snatched up his hand, still bandaged where the burn marred his palm, and took a deep breath.

“Hanako-kun, I-I’m going to fix this! I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ll fix it!”

And with a sharp inhale, she hurried from the bathroom, off to the misty solution stirring in her head.

The door shut with a click, and Hanako let his face drop into the shadows as he gritted his teeth.

She would fix this.

She repeated the words as she pushed through the halls of the school. She repeated the words as she dashed through the courtyard past the freshly built snowmen. She repeated the words as she shoved herself through the school’s front gates, stumbling into the street. She repeated the words as she-

The headlights hit her first.

And then the impact.

Nene tastes metal, then her own broken teeth, then concrete.

The ground sticks to her, or rather she to it, as most of her face and shoulder is left on the road as she slides across from the hit. She can smell wet asphalt. She can feel her spine curl at an angle it’s not supposed to. She can hear a drone and slurred voices that don’t sound like they’re speaking Japanese. Like an old radio looping on repeat.

There’s someone standing over her, smiling with teeth too sharp and eyes too wide and a face too emaciated to fit a living person. He rocks back on his heels. He’s dressed as if for her funeral. The static swells with his carnivorous grin.

“Enjoying yourself yet?”

She can’t answer him. Her throat has collapsed in on itself, her voice sucked into some black hole. All she hears is static. All she hears is ticking.

It’s shrieking at her. It’s-

A car horn.

Nene blinked into the blaze of headlights, behind which a bus and a very annoyed driver glared. Her feet still planted firmly, she trailed her eyes from her pink boots to the iron gates behind her.

She was standing in the road in front of the school.

Another blare of the horn served to fully snap her from her daze, and she waved an apology as she hurried across to the safety of the sidewalk.

Nene walked home in the crosswalks the rest of the way.

Nene found it difficult to keep her eyes open.

In the past few days, she’d paid a visit to nearly every apparition she could reach. Mitsuba had called let her off with a tirade after she banged on the bathroom mirrors for nearly an hour. Shijima had given her a tight smile and promptly erased her from her boundary after tipping over a bucket of paint. Yako had left her hand covered in teeth marks and scratches. Akane had waved her off of anything unrelated to Aoi. Tsuchigomori had been, well, Tsuchigomori.

And she’d run out of candy before she could get anything useful out of the mokke.

She’d even taken to following around Kou for a day, finding his only interesting secret to be that he practiced battle quips behind the stairwell.

And each day, Hanako avoided her.

Nene’s stress over her spirit friend had swelled like a balloon in her stomach, leaving her queasy. She hated feeling helpless, and she hated even more seeing him hurt, no matter how much he argued it was nothing, no matter how much he silently bore the ache.

She searched for answers in the lines of her notebook, absentmindedly doodling stars.

“Yashiro-san?”

“Yes!”

She shot up at her name, a bit too abruptly as her chair cracked into the desk behind her. Her teacher watched her curiously.

“The next page, please.”

Right. She was still in class.

Nene rose to her feet, book in hand, and cleared her throat before looking down at the words on the page.

And she paused.

“Ah, sensei, haven’t we already read this passage?”

“Yashiro-san,” her teacher gave her an inquisitive look, “were you sleeping in class again?”

“N-no sir!” she yelped, and tucked away her uncertainties.

Nene read the passage aloud, a sense of nostalgia tingling her tongue. She returned to her seat, silently, and found herself staring out the window, watching as the tap of the snow blurred into the ticking of the classroom clock.

She must have fallen asleep.

Because when she opened her eyes, the sun was just scratching the horizon, and Nene sat alone in an empty classroom.

She didn’t remember drifting off. She remembered reading, and a smear of words, and a slur of her teacher’s voice and…..

That had been during third block, and it was now nearing six as she wandered the bright blue halls.

She’d never been in the school when it was this empty. She’d stayed late before, yes, but that had always been with Hanako, who always took care to walk (or rather, float) her to the door, typically with a trail of mokke behind them demanding their candy prize from a card match win. The school spirit might have been invisible to all around them, but his presence was comforting, and with him, she never felt truly alone.

The same could not be said now.

Nene paused at one of the windows, staring out over the courtyard below. The snow poured down in hazy sheets, but she could still see the footprint trail carved out to the gate, a poorly constructed snowman beneath one of the trees, a bus stopped in the street outside with a few people getting off. She always enjoyed the snow, but it seemed nonstop as of late, leaving the world constantly crusted in a cold blanket of white.

A world that felt dead.

“It’s rather lonely, isn’t it? The snow, I mean.”

Despite its dulcet lilt, the voice sent a jolt down her spine. Nene spun around, only to find herself face to face with her familiar supernatural-bound upperclassman.

“N-Nanamine-senpai!” she sputtered, nearly tripping over her firmly planted feet.

“Hello Yashiro-san. You’re here awfully late, aren’t you?” She spoke so calmly, so evenly, as if her voice was nothing more than a prerecorded tape, complete with the faintest distortions of scratched film. Nene didn’t linger too long on those details.

“I um….I fell asleep,” she slowly answered, holding back her retort on the irony of such a question.

Nanamine-senpai was someone Nene could never bring herself to fully understand. Deep down, she knew the girl was dangerous being bound to Tsukasa, but at the same time, she presented herself like a doll. Perfect. Beautiful. Harmless.

And because of that, Nene always found it difficult to keep her walls up.

The older girl gave a faint hum, returning her attention to the window. “It’s easy to do so, in weather like this.” And then softer, sounding much farther away, she added, “The first snow of the season is always so nostalgic.”

Nene glanced at her curiously, but kept her commentary tucked under her tongue.

“Um….what are you doing here so late, senpai?”

Nanamine didn’t seem to hear as she dragged her finger along the window’s condensation. Her porcelain skin reminded her a bit of Hanako’s, in a sense, pale as the weather itself. Nene did her best to ignore some underlying suspicion that if she touched the girl’s hand, it’d be cold as ice.

“Is something bothering you?” Nanamine asked, her voice muted under the heavy silence of the hallway.

Her head told her it was best to keep to herself. Her mouth told her differently.

“It’s just….” Nene began, taking in a gulp of stale air, “Hanako-kun’s been acting weird…...like he’s hiding something. And he’s been avoiding me.”

“Hiding something?”

“Mm……..just...he’s never around anymore…….and we kind of had a fight….well first I kind of kissed him and then we had a fight, and then I went to apologize but he was all beat up, but that was after I made him a lunchbox and then after that we had the fight because he ran off after we kissed and I got upset and then he’s been avoiding me and so-”

“Yashiro-san.”

Nanamine’s voice cut through her rambling, and Nene realized with dawning horror that she’d just done the exact thing she’d told herself not to. Good going Nene.

Damn, girl talk was the worst.

But the older girl didn’t seem to linger on the actual words that were said. Instead, she gave her a wistful look in a language she couldn’t decipher. Almost poetic- and Nene had never been one for literature. “You seem to have a better relationship with yours…”

Yours . As if she were speaking about a pet.

“So perhaps you should share your feelings with him. There’s only a few days left before winter break- I’m sure you wouldn’t want to stay upset the entire duration.”

It seemed so simple when put like that. As if anything with Hanako was ever simple. Just walk up and explain she wasn’t going anywhere, that she trusted him, that whatever pain he was going through she’d bare with him, just like she bore the mermaid scale.

Hell, maybe it would be easier to just handcuff herself to him and make him drag her along to wherever he was sneaking off to.

But Nanamine was right. She needed to fix things, and she only had a few days left…

……………

Nene watched her breath curl from her lips like smoke.

“Nanamine-senpai.”

“Yes?”

“What day is it today?”

The girl’s pink painted lips curled, but not quite into a smile.

“Monday.”

Nene bunched her fists, her fingers beginning to ache from the frost.

“Are you….quite certain?”

She could feel something in her chest, like an insect gnawing to get out. It took her a moment to realize it was her own heart. Thumping. Scraping.

“Quite certain indeed.”

She could see the older girl watching her from the corner of her eye. Nanamine was still as a mannequin, her hand still resting on the frosted glass. Delicate and lifeless.

The snow piled higher.

Nene felt her knees beginning to give.

It was Monday.

She took a tentative step back. Then another. Then with a gentle “I need to get going,” she hurried down the hallway, praying that her legs wouldn’t crumble beneath her.

Nanamine didn’t follow, and when she turned the corner, Nene broke into a sprint.

It was Monday.

How long had it been Monday?

She stumbled up to the front doors of the school, nearly slamming through the glass.

Locked.

Nene could feel sweat trickling down her neck.

She had to get out. She gave the door a good shake, just for good measure, just with some naive hope that it might give a second time, a third, a fourth-

She had to get home.

She had to get home and go to bed and wake up and it would be Tuesday. And on Tuesday, Monday would be a distant memory, one she’d slowly forget as it became Wednesday, and then Thursday, and then Friday…

“Where are you going?”

The words struck her like a bucket of ice water. A voice so familiar, so childish, and laced with a lethal curiosity. Nene was slow to turn, but she knew who stood behind her.

Tsukasa examined her with a long, slow blink, as if attempting to translate any slight nuance in her expression, any falter that he could pounce upon with those pinprick eyes. He didn’t flaunt his usual cheeky grin or callow bounce, but stood as still as a statue.

“Tsukasa...kun…….” she began, feeling her throat beginning to shrivel. Keep breathing. Don’t make a move. “I was just…..heading home.”

“Why?” he asked flatly, but with genuine intrigue, “You’re not allowed to do that.”

“What do you mean...I’m not allowed?”

The moment of seriousness was cracked with the smile that spread across the boy’s face. It would have reminded her of Hanako, if not for the sickly stretch of his alabaster skin like a prop from some horror b-movie, only a snap away from tearing. She was afraid what lay underneath.

Tsukasa took a long, rocking step forward, the flicker in his eyes making her feel anything but warm.

“Because if you go out there, you’ll die!”

Nene felt as if the floor had dropped out from under her.

The room was beginning to spin. She could hear static, the grating drone clouding her ears, her vision. She could smell something like mud, something like the scent of her own open grave.

It came out little more than a squeak, but she echoed.

“Die?”

“Yep!” Tsukasa beamed, with a crack of his head that hurt just to see. “You go running out and hit that ice,” she watched as he motioned running with his fingers across his palm, before flinging them up and slamming his hands together with a jarring clap, “and SMACK! You’re dead!”

Her lungs were beginning to seize up now. She wasn’t sure if the room was getting larger or if it was the blood draining from her skull.

Steady. Breathe.

Focus.

“H-how do you know that...Tsukasa-kun?”

“How do I know? Well it’s happened before!” He continued his grinning as he stepped forward, and Nene could count every blue vein under his pallid skin, pumped full of embalming fluid. “Actually, it’s happened a few times.”

And she watched, as if by the flip of a switch, his face dropped. The glow in his eyes was puffed out, and the boy’s expression wiped clean of any enjoyment.

“It makes Amane upset, you know. When you do that.”

Nene could barely open her mouth before the boy’s jovial demeanor returned. “So that’s why he asked me to keep an eye on you!”

Hanako had…...asked him?

Tsukasa seemed like the last person Hanako would go to for help, yet there he stood, a good two feet from her face, a blink away from latching onto her throat at any given moment. He looked much more skeletal up close, even thinner than his brother as his clothes hung off him like a burial shroud, and Nene could smell the thick odor of decay.

She held down a retch.

Her foot groped for the floor beside her, taking a tentative step out from the corner he’d pinned her in. The ghostly boy was still speaking, but she couldn’t hear him as her senses spiraled.

I need to…..I need…..

“....need to leave….Tsukasa-kun.”

That seemed to get his attention, as his lips twisted into a frown.

“Hmm, Amane said you might be stubborn.”

And with a sudden jerk, he seized her arm, yanking her forward as a pair of fingers jabbed into her forehead.

Her body went limp, collapsing into his gaunt, boney arms.

“There there,” he cooed, giving her head an uncharacteristically gentle pat. Nene felt her consciousness slipping, but she was certain he was smiling.

“You just need to learn how to play by the rules.”

Hanako picks at the scabs on his arms.

It’s a funny feeling really- itching, that is. Something he thought he’d left behind in whatever unmarked grave he’d been dumped in. One of those unmistakably human experiences, like temperature, or the urge to sleep.

His nails finally break the skin, deep carmine bubbling from the wound. He watches it roll down his wrist.

“Honorable Number 7. You aren’t looking well.”

Hanako grinds his teeth as he pulls himself up to that voice crackly with age. He’s sure he’s heard it more in just the past week than he had in the past fifty years.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion on the matter.”

“....So you didn’t.”

He knows what’s left unsaid. Some half-assed concern for an overly sympathetic spirit, only extended out of courtesy for being their boss.

Pathetic.

They all want to say it. He can see it in their faces every time they come crawling to him with another complaint, another plead over a cause that he frankly finds to be none of their damn business. And sure, he can’t say he hadn’t considered it. It’d be much too easy, to point his knife inwards just for old times sake and carve out that mermaid scale that sat in his stomach like bubble gum. Probably wouldn’t even hurt as much the second time around.

But Hanako is selfish.

He’s selfish for the warmth of her lithe fingers curled between his own. He’s selfish for the silky feeling of her hair. He’s selfish for some sliver of acknowledgment that didn’t stem from three quick knocks and a childish wish.

Hanako stares at his battered, beaten arms that stung just to look at. At this point, he can just about trace every notch in his ulna.

It was a pain he could bear. He’d had far worse, anyways.

“Honorable Number 7….we think-”

“ Don’t .”

The apparition’s face flickers to something much less than divine, a malice shading his dulled gaze that branded anyone who dared cross it. Any argument is slain in an instant.

“Don’t interfere. Just do your job.”

They always wanted to argue. It seemed Hanako was the only one capable of actually doing his job.

The old man lets out a sigh, raising his cane.

“As you wish.”

There’s a tap.

Nothing happens.

And then, as if the safety pin’s been pulled, the entire school seems to tear from its position in the universe and is thrown straight into a spiraling black hole.

It’s spinning. He can feel it as his knees grow weak, his stomach shredding itself, and what seems to be a thousand invisible needles pulling at each individual hair, thread, goosebump. Tearing at his skin as it shrinks against his body, pumped with some life he can no longer grasp, while threatening to rot and slough from his bones in a heap of decaying meat he knows he should be by now. It’s too bright, yet not at all; he’s certain his eyes have jostled loose inside his skull like a magic 8-ball. There’s a pressure in every body cavity, he can feel as it tries to squeeze whatever’s left of his organs out through his orifices, bathing him in a hot fire to jab each scar that makes up his person- his still burned tongue from their picnic, the notch in his shoulder from Number 2’s scissors, the crook in his wrist from a long-ago fracture after Tsukasa knocked him from a tree, the hundreds of minuscule lacerations across his fingertips that pile on all at once and threaten to program the pain of every moment he hasn’t felt in years into his very cells that he prays to some unknowable god that he doesn’t have left. The gash in his stomach breaks through its stitches, and he can feel something reaching, pulling out some stretch of organs like the unraveling of his frayed uniform, further, further-

And in an instant, he’s thrown back into his body with such a force that it nearly knocks him from his feet. Hanako stumbles just a bit, grasping for the painted blue wall that seems to shift out from under him.

“Well,” the other supernatural begins, head held just as high as it was a moment ago. Untouched. “Let’s hope that was the last time, Honorable Number 7.”

He’s said that before.

He always says that.

Hanako pulls his gaze from the man as he turns to leave, holding up his impossibly thin, jittery fingers.

There’s a new scrape, just across his left most knuckle, and he can feel it sting as he wiggles his pinky.

Hanako feels an ache in his ribs.

On Monday it snowed.

She spent most of the day doodling in her notebook, passing notes with Aoi, and lost in a daydream framed by falling snow. Nene couldn’t help but wonder if she’d find Hanako in the bathroom that day.

But before she went to check, she made her way to the gardening club. Winter vegetables were ready to be harvested, and the members would be needing to sew for spring and summer plants soon. She’d decided she would plant camellias this year- pink ones, to be exact- and the thought of gifting her friends her hard-earned blossoms only served to heighten her excitement.

Nene made her way to the gardening shed, finding her tools tucked away on the top shelf. Just out of reach, she climbed up the wooden shelving.

The cabinet gave a wobble.

She first sees the watering cans come pouring down as she hits the dirt. Then the trowels. Then the wood of the structure itself, hitting her sternum with a sickening crack as she folds around the shelving like paper.

Nene tastes copper.

On Monday it snowed.

Nene hurried to school in her bright pink boots. Her morning had stretched into pure chaos after she’d forgotten to pack a lunch the previous night, and just on the brink of tardiness she made the snap decision to take the elevator instead.

It was only after she had stepped inside and clicked the foggy, yellow button that the door closed, clasping ahold of her necktie.

The dim metal box whirred to life.

Her windpipe crushes like an aluminum can. Nene tries to scream, to yank her herself free, but her nails meet her own skin and the cold, useless steel.

Her face runs white, and the floors run crimson.

On Monday it snowed.

Nene sprinted to school this time, nearly making it to the school gates.

All it takes is a single shard of glass.

On Monday it snowed.

She barely makes it to the stairs of her apartment building.

On Monday it snowed.

Monday.

……

It’s snowing outside.

On Monday it snows.

Nene digs out her pink boots that still carry the smell of new rubber. She heads to school with her bag and her legs heavy. She can only ever go to school.

On Monday it snows.

Nene sits in class and listens to the drone of a lecture she knows by heart now. There’s a static in the air and the faint smell of ozone. There’s a storm on the horizon, but it’s been there for days. It’s always snowing. It never stops. The school should be covered by now, the earth plunged into another ice age, but the blanket on the ground remains little more than an inch deep. She watches the frost form on the windowsill and reads the same passage as always.

On Monday it snows.

Nene drags herself to the girls’ bathroom. She doesn’t remember why anymore. She thinks she had a friend that lingered there, a boy oddly enough, one who she might have been in love with, once upon a time.

Nene leaves as quietly as she came.

On Monday it snows.

Nene doesn’t want to die.

There’s a million things a teenage girl dreams about: getting her first boyfriend, graduating high school, getting married in a snow-white dress in front of all of her friends. She thinks it’d be nice to do those things one day, when Monday finally ends.

Nene meets a boy with a familiar face and a toothy grin. She feels like she should know him, and asks if he has a brother. The boy only smiles wider, and she can smell rot.

“Aren’t you tired of playing this game?” he asks in a singsong, callow voice that gurgles out of his throat and feels anything but childish. She wonders if there’s anything beneath that old white shirt of his, or if it’s just a hollow cavity where his chest should be.

But she nods. She is tired. She’s tired of playing a game that she doesn’t know the rules for. She’s tired of it being Monday. She’s tired of Tuesday never coming.

Nene doesn’t want to die.

But she’s tired. She’s so tired. Nene wants to rest.

Maybe there’s rest in the snow. In the concrete.

Maybe there’s rest in her own hands.

Nene finds a kitchen knife in the home ec room and tucks it into her bag. It carries a weight a bit too familiar to put her finger on. It carried a red handle that, strangely, reminds her of a moon she’ll probably never see again.

On Monday it snows.

Nene goes to school with the intention of not returning home.

Nene points a kitchen knife inwards.

Nene-

“STOP!”

Nene jolted awake, panting and sweating.

She must have fallen asleep.

Because when she opened her eyes, the sun was just scratching the horizon, and she sat alone in an empty classroom.

“You know, Amane doesn’t like it when you do that.”

Nene nearly jumped from her skin at the voice, cracking her hip painfully against the edge of the desk as she whirled around to the voice. And behind her, with legs pulled up in a criss-cross, sat a familiar spirit dressed in a hakama and a jagged grin. She grabbed a chair feebly for support.

“Tsukasa….kun?”

“Hey, you remembered this time!” he chirped, his smile spreading even wider. Nene was certain she could outline every crook in his skull under his paper thin flesh.

“This time……?” she echoed softly, her eyes drifting up to the clock on the wall.

5:55.

Way past the time of her to be cleaning bathrooms.

Tsukasa shrugged, rapping his fingers along the desk in slow, rhythmic taps. “Sometimes you forget. Sometimes you don’t even remember your own name!” he laughed a little at this, a low, wheezing laugh that sounded like it hurt, as if choking out of a hollow chest. It almost made her feel sympathy towards that apparition that sparked some visceral horror within her. “But you always ask for Amane! Even if you don’t remember his name, you always go looking for Amane. Isn’t that funny?!”

Nene didn’t find the joke in his words. Instead, they sent a shiver up her spine, every muscle in her body growing rigid and locking into painful knots.

Her gaze trailed out the window. To the trail carved through the snow from the main entrance to the gates of hundreds of footsteps. To the sloppily built snowman just under the maple trees. To the ice on the windows etched in fractals she’d nearly memorized at this point.

Ah.

It was Monday.

It was always Monday.

“Tsukasa-kun…..” Nene returned her attention to the boy. He watched her much in the same way a cat might watch a bird, pupils blown wide and never dropping that uncomfortably cartoonish curl of his lips. She swallowed her hesitation. “Where is Hanako-kun?”

“Amane doesn’t want to see you.”

She flinched at the emptiness in his tone, his face faltering just a second before his jovial expression returned, wider now and nearly at bursting. Tsukasa leaned closer.

“Amane doesn’t want to see people he likes. That’s why he keeps them locked away, because he cares about them so much!”

Nene struggled to process his words. It didn’t make any sense, but he said it with such conviction, such certainty that she couldn’t help but take it as gospel.

“Because...he cares…?” she parroted.

“Yep! Amane really likes you, so that’s why he lets you stay here and relive Monday every day!”

“T-that doesn’t-”

“And it’ll be Monday over and over and over again, and you’ll stay here because Amane cares about you!” His breath grew shallower with every word, and Nene watched as he began to tremble with some sort of euphoria, some manic joy that could barely be contained in his tiny frame.

“You’re just like me, see? See?” He jabbed a shaky finger at the seal on his cheek. “See? Amane really loves me! And that’s why you have to stay here! Because….because, because-”

His voice rattled with his violent shakes, and against her better judgment, Nene reached out to steady him.

“T-Tsukasa-kun-”

A hand snatched her wrist, and Nene barely got out a yelp before his jagged nails dug into her flesh. Tsukasa dragged her close, his lips pulled back in an ecstatic snarl, and she heard a pop that she prayed wasn’t her own bones.

Nene could smell the rot on his breath, smothering and smoldering. But something else was there too, something sweet, like….like-

“Because Amane loves you,” he purred softly, a sharp contrast from the hysteria of his body. Gentle, joyful, and so very full of hatred. Despite his freezing touch, she was certain she could hear her flesh sizzling. “So you have to learn to play by the rules! Because Amane’s rules-”

A crack rang out.

Nene stumbled away, barely registering the pain in the palm of her hand. And Tsukasa blinked with his needlepoint eyes, slowly reaching up to touch his reddening cheek.

She didn’t stay to learn his reaction. She bolted from the classroom with nothing but her own adrenaline to fuel her.

It was Monday.

She hurried to the main entrance, tugging uselessly on the doors she already knew were locked.

It was Monday.

She had to get home. She had to get home and go to bed and not think about what Tsukasa said and not think about how she was trapped in an endless Monday, knowing that when she woke up it would be Monday again and it would be Monday the next day and it would be Monday-

“Where are you going, Yashiro?”

A familiar voice. A voice she was certain she hadn’t heard in ages, maybe years. A voice she had heard so many Mondays ago that she nearly forgot how sweet, how calming, how filled with concern that it made her ribs ache for its source. To be wrapped in a jagged, bone-rattling cold, like sleep to the freezing.

A voice she knew meant danger.

Nene slowly turned around.

Hanako watched her with an unreadable expression, his eyes hidden beneath that same old school cap they always wore. He didn’t carry his usual enthusiasm or boyish smile, only watching with his feet planted firmly on the ground. Curious and calculating.

“H-Hanako...kun….” she stuttered out, holding back a shiver from some nonexistent draft. Tasting every syllable of his name, slowly. She found them flavored like bleach from her cleaning sessions.

Nene could feel her hands beginning to sweat. She could feel her knees beginning to give under what should have been a comforting stare, one that should have made her heart leap with joy and her stomach churn with butterflies.

Instead, she bit back a frightened squeak.

“I was…...I was….”

“Yashiro. You should know how this goes by now.”

He took a step forward. Her legs refused to listen.

“W-What do you mean?” she whimpered, reaching for some support in the icy glass door. Something to whisk her away from this sad, skinny, sickly schoolboy who her heart would have ached with sympathy for had she not seen the glimmer of that damn kitchen knife tucked behind his back.

“You know what I mean.”

He was nearly toe to toe now. The air tore at every inflamed goosebump that covered her skin, leaving her painfully aware of the itchy fabric of her dress, the beads of sweat rolling from her neck, the pure, unadulterated helplessness she felt in the face of a boy she should have loved.

She still did love him.

She feared that she loved him.

“Why….” Nene barely choked out. Her words were failing. Don’t stop now. “Why are you doing this?”

That seemed enough to stop him.

Hanako finally looked up at her. With those hazy, ochre eyes and those pudgy, youthful cheeks and that slice across the bridge of his nose and that indigo, mottled bruise across the cusp of his jaw and that emaciated neck that barely fit inside his uniform collar. With that face she’d grabbed ahold of and kissed, all those Mondays ago.

He offered a lopsided smile, if she could even call it a smile in the first place.

“Why am I doing this?” he echoed, lingering on the thought for a moment. And then, he stretched out a hand.

Nene stepped away instinctively.

“D-don’t,” she choked, fighting back whatever sad sob was itching in her throat. Hating her reaction as much as she hated the visible wince he gave in sympathy and understanding. Staring at her with that look that told her he was okay with playing the villain, that “It’d be okay, Yashiro,” and “Not much longer now, just be patient.”

She didn’t want his excuses.

She wanted those soft, chilly, mittened hands to take hold of her in a wintery embrace.

She wanted Monday to be over.

“Yashiro-”

“Don’t touch me!” she snapped, and made a break for it. She couldn’t see through the film of her tears, only letting her memory guide her through the halls of the school, around the corner, and to the courtyard. She wasn’t sure if Hanako was following, but she didn’t care as she threw open the doors to the December air, and-

“Yashiro!”

Her foot slips.

Nene feels herself go airborne.

She tumbles down the icy steps, bounce by bounce, knock by knock.

One.

Two.

Three.

And hits with a crack, a noise she knows is her own skull shattering against the frozen concrete.

Nene tries to gasp for breath, but her lungs have collapsed under her cracked and crumpled ribs. She tries to scream, but her tongue is limp and useless.

She feels hands cradling her broken skull. She knows half of whatever was inside is left scattered across the sidewalk in an abstract display of crimson mush.

It’s a boy, she can tell. Someone she’s certain she should know, with his strange little cheek sticker with characters too blurry to read. Someone she’s certain made her heart flutter when it could still pump in nervousness and elation, before it became the useless tumor now wheezing beneath her sternum.

He’s saying something she can’t hear. All she can hear is static, and buzzing, and...ticking?

He’s saying something, but she can read his lips.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

It’s not okay.

Nene is dying.

She knows that.

She wishes he’d say something else, something more than a hollow reassurance. She wishes he’d tell her that he loves her.

Nene wishes she could repeat the words back to him, and give comfort to a boy she knows is already dead.

It’s okay.

If she could still feel her arms, she imagines reaching up and brushing away his tears. Nene has a feeling he’s gone through this before. Nene has a feeling he doesn’t deserve that kind of pain.

She stares up with her failing eyes, and watches the snow fall into the sky.

She watches, what she assumes are, her own tears fall with it.

Nene blinked, and found herself lying at the bottom of the courtyard stairs on the icy concrete.

The world was still.

She could feel lithe, soft fingers entwined with her hair, and followed them up the black expanse of his thin arms, all the way up to his face.

Hanako was trembling.

Hanako was crying.

Shallow, desperate, aching sobs that shook his small body with every gasping breath. Nene had seen him cry before, but that had been fear. That had been pain.

“It’s okay,” he repeated softly, feebly, “It’s okay.”

She wondered if he was saying the words to her or to himself.

The tears barely made it to his chin before evaporating into the particles of dust and snow. Into whatever it was ghosts were made of. If she could set aside her shock, she may have conjured up some poetic imagery- “of ectoplasm and broken dreams, of stardust longing for space.”

Hm. It sounded a bit too sad like that.

But Nene could only stare in some mute consternation.

“It’s okay.”

His voice could barely form the words through the wobble of his throat.

“Hanako-kun….”

His chilled hands caressed her head, grasping for something in a frantic attempt to know she wouldn’t fade away under his touch. She reached a hand up to his pallid, tear-streaked cheeks, in an attempt to quell his sobs.

It’s okay, Hanako-kun.

I’m okay.

Nene felt a drop.

She paused, moving her hand to her own face where it hit, and pulled away her fingers to reveal a streak of red. Her eyes drifted up, watching as the blood rolled from the boy’s forehead, down his gaunt cheek, and dripping off his chin straight onto her own flushed skin.

“It’s okay.”

It’s okay.

“Hanako…….kun?”

He didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy holding her tight, something she would have loved had it been any other circumstances. She’d spent so many nights longing for such a gentle, freezing touch.

“It’s okay…..”

Hanako drew a long, shuddery breath.

And with a tremble wracking his frame, she watched as his pale skin began to blue.

“It’s………..”

He swayed, and hit the ground with a thud.

“ Hanako-kun! ”

Nene dabbed the cut with antiseptic.

Hanako hadn’t been too difficult to carry. He thankfully wasn’t too heavy, a fact that she attributed to him being little more than air, or whatever ghosts were made of. A fact she didn’t linger too long on, not wanting to toy with any other possibilities relating to the reality that she could feel his ribs through his thick woolen school jacket, and the reality that she could count the vertebrae in his neck, and the reality that underneath that youthful curve of his cheeks he looked pale and languid and emaciated. Just side effects of being dead, she told herself. She couldn’t find the courage to entertain any alternatives.

So she sat in the familiar classroom, first aid kit on her lap, cleaning his numerous wounds. As if ghosts could get infections to begin with.

Nene knew what she’d seen. She knew she’d seen the skin on his forehead split as if by a knife- perfectly smooth one second and gushing blood the next. She knew she’d felt her head shatter when it hit the pavement, and reaching up to scratch the back of her head she half expected to come up with a handful of gray matter. Instead, she just found dandruff.

It didn’t make sense.

It couldn’t make sense.

But she knew what she’d seen.

She smoothed the bandage out underneath his choppy bangs and moved to his arm, rolling up the wrinkled school shirt he always wore. And as she did, her eyes trailed up to his slender arm, past that worn sticker on his cheek, and up to a pair of glazed, ochre eyes watching her.

Nene chewed her lip, and turned back to her first aid box.

“What are you doing Yashiro?”

His voice barely broke a whisper, the labor of his chest ending her name on a wheeze. It took every bit of composure to keep herself from breaking down right there, so she pressed her lips into a tight frown to keep her emotions from slipping.

What was she doing, getting all worked up over a ghost of a boy who died long ago? The rational side of her had worked through it before, about how she’d grow up and graduate, about how Hanako would stay behind, still fourteen as he always was. About how she’d probably die before then, and he wouldn’t even be able to attend her wake. About how her story couldn’t have anything remotely close to a happy ending, no matter how much she wished she was in a shoujo manga.

Nene wasn’t stupid. She knew the genre of her life was much closer to tragedy.

“These are all from me, huh?” she finally mumbled, fighting the wobble of her mouth as she forced on an amicable smile. It’s okay. Push through.

............

…….Nope. Shit. She was crying. Good going Nene, crying in front of the boy you like. She smothered whatever broken sob tried to squeeze out of her throat, before feeling an icy hand wipe away her tears.

“Yashiro…..please don’t cry,” Hanako pleaded, ever so softly. He rubbed his hand across her flushed cheek. “It’s okay, really. I’m already dead.”

It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay that with every final tick of her ever unwinding clock that he was subjected to the same thing. It wasn’t okay that Hanako had each of these injuries tucked into the folds of his very being as the many patches to whatever life Amane Yugi had lived.

She gripped the roll of bandages in her hands tighter. She thought of Tsuchigomori. She thought of that little boy with the moon rock.

She didn’t even feel Hanako pull her into his shoulder, but she was grateful that he did. And Nene buried her face into that worn, itchy wool and let herself cry silently, without having to fear for the world seeing her puffy, mascara smeared face.

He released a heavy sigh as his fingers trailed up through her hair.

“It’s okay,” he coos into the curve of her ear, so quietly she almost misses the waver in his voice, “I’m okay with this. I promised I’d grant your wish, Yashiro. I promised I’d help you go off to college...and go out drinking…...and wear that white wedding dress of yours.”

He squeezed her tighter, and she could feel his face burrow into her shoulder. “I…...I promised I’d make those happen. No matter how long it takes me. I want you to have your happy ending, Yashiro.”

A happy ending he said.

She almost laughed at that.

“......Hanako-kun, you dummy.”

Nene drew a long, steadying breath.

“Y-you keep…..talking about the future,” she began, praying her words would work, “but…..I want Hanako-kun to help me with my spring exams……...and I want Hanako-kun to come to my graduation...a-and…...and…………….”

And a lot of other things she was too embarrassed to list. She saved those for her diary pages.

“And I want Hanako-kun to be the best wish granter he can be.”

And she finally broke apart, wiping away her tears and most certainly leaving her face a complete mess. But she didn’t care. She pushed on a smile.

“B-because I’m Hanako-kun’s assistant, right?”

Right.

Nene Yashiro. Class 1-A. Fish when wet. Assistant to School Mystery Number 7.

And she was okay with that.

Hanako was quiet for a long moment, and she let him be. She’d set his hat aside when she tended to his wound, and she could see as the cogs in his head turned behind those puffy, bloodshot eyes.

Thinking. Trying to understand.

“......You’re so selfish, Yashiro. Asking me for all these wishes.” He laughed a little, a sound strained and filled with some fraudulent joy. “You just might make me fall for you, if you keep doing that....”

She waited for the punchline.

He didn’t offer one.

And Nene tried to beat down the flutter in her chest.

“W-well I’m your assistant!” she insisted, grabbing hold of his calloused hand, “I’m supposed to help you with these things, r-right? Wishes and such…….”

And maybe love. But that was a conversation for another time.

He curled his other hand over hers. And compared to the chill of the classroom, Hanako felt warm. Like in that perfect world. Like how she imagined Amane Yugi once felt.

“You want to help me?”

Was that even a question?

She nodded eagerly, and Hanako smiled. A genuine one this time.

One a bit too big for his chubby cheeks, his round wide eyes. One oh-so-very Hanako.

“Okay then, Yashiro. Close your eyes.”

She followed his instructions and took in the moment.

The flutter of the snow against the glass. The ticking of the heater in the pipes overhead. The lingering taste of chalk and ballpoint pen coating the air around the old school desk. The tickle of the tag she’d forgotten to clip from her uniform, just a bit too tight around the waist. The fracture in her left pinky’s nail that only stung when she thought about it. The arrhythmic breathing of a boy who’s lungs should have shriveled and turned to dust by now.

The tap of something soft and cold against her forehead, so lightly, that she couldn’t be sure if it was his fingers or his lips.

On Monday it snowed, and Nene, as always, wore her pink boots to school.

She arrived long before the first bell, long before the rest of the students, and wandered the empty halls. One Monday, long ago, it may have felt frightening, to be alone in the universe so neatly compacted down to Kamome Academy. Now, it simply felt natural, and she found a familiar calm in the silence.

A silence that was fractured by a voice, so soft she nearly didn’t recognize it.

“Back again?”

Nene whipped around, growing rigid as a statue as she locked eyes with two pinprick pupils, dipped in a honey color that was anything but sweet. She nearly lost her balance on her firmly planted feet.

And barely under a whisper, she choked out, “Tsukasa…..kun?”

Tsukasa didn’t acknowledge her greeting, only watched her through a fogged nictitating membrane like a wounded predator. A shadow drenched his blank expression as he swung his translucent legs slowly, rhythmically, and he picked at the fraying waistband of his hakama. The ghost looked small and sad sitting there on the railing, and Nene almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

But whatever hint she’d just gleaned from his face was pocketed in an instant, and with a renewed spark in his eyes, the apparition spread his signature smile from ear to ear. Much more like the Tsukasa she knew, with a childish bounce in his step and his cheeks scrunched up in a cattish grin.

“Guess that’s the end of the game then,” he purred, clapping his hands together. A crack like lightning, muted by the stillness of the school. “Let’s play again sometime!”

And without another word, he slipped to his feet and headed off.

Just like that.

Nene reacted before she could think it through.

“W-wait, Tsukasa-kun!”

She reached for his wrist, towards a scar she hadn’t noticed before just at the base of his sleeve.

She wasn’t sure why she did it. Maybe to get some answers out of the strange apparition that wore such a familiar face. Maybe to ask what the hell kind of game he was referring to. Maybe just to make sure he was real.

But as her hands met fabric, she found them slipping straight through his form like a projection.

Tsukasa’s skin shifted. Distorted. Rippled under her touch into something black. Something red and burned. Something smelling of charred flesh.

She thought she heard a snicker, or maybe it was just her imagination.

And in a blink, Tsukasa was gone.

On Monday, Nene stood in the third-floor girls’ bathroom, and raised her fist to knock in a motion that felt second nature now.

One. Two. Three.

“Hanako-kun, Hanako-kun. Are you ready?”

She waited for the creak of the door. She waited for his playful greeting and the flash of his black, outdated, and certainly not trendy uniform. She waited for some ghost she had the audacity to love.

She felt a gentle mittened hand on her shoulder, feeling its chill through her uniform.

She felt the faintest of whispers in her ear.

“I’m ready.”