Chapter Text
Christie tore the page out of her notebook, ripped it up, crunched it into a ball, shoved it into the bottom of her bag. Really, what the hell was she thinking?! It’s embarrassing in hindsight, but she can’t help it.
It was hard enough holding in her excitement at seeing the ghost-Tsuru, he called himself- in the… flesh? ... Air molecules? She’d only barely gotten glimpses of the supernatural before this, and now she’d seen one so close and talked to him too. God, what a dream come true!
Though, unfortunately, she let him get away while in a daze. Who can blame her though? She was never good at talking to people, much less ghosts. She did hear his parting words, to deliver a message to Audrey, which she did. Audrey did know this ghost for whatever reason, and smirked with ill intentions at the mention of him, so Christie decided against prying. Oh, maybe she was a ghost exterminator or something! That would mean she’d seen other ghosts before, and she got kinda jealous.
That was one of the things she didn’t expect, him knowing a living human. The other thing was him being so attractive. Really, he looked just like a 18 year old anime character would. That long, flowing white hair of his tied at his neck with a ribbon, his calming, shimmering yellow eyes, the pink floral hoodie loose draped around his thin figure. He just looked so… pretty. But then again, knowing supernatural things, he probably wasn’t 18 like he looked, rather much older. Besides, she wasn’t about to hit on a dead person, was she? That’s necrophilia, as google helpfully told her.
Even then, she wasn’t fully sure how exactly she liked him. She was fairly certain it was in the way a boy liked a pretty girl, but it could be the passion a scientist has for their field of science just as well. The way an older sibling looks after a younger one is up for debate as well. It was such a weird feeling. She’s been into the supernatural for as long as she could remember, and always wanted to meet one, so in a way it’s kind of like seeing a whale for the first time and really getting a feel of how small you are. Then again, apart from the cold and wrong atmosphere about him, he seemed perfectly normal. Like a perfectly alive human being. He slept with insecurity and loneliness, making him seem all the more human. It almost made her want to grab a blanket and tuck him into a bed, maybe make some pancakes for when he wakes up.
The idle scratching of her pencil brought her back to reality, and she cringed at the page of messy doodles of Tsuru from memory. What a terrible habit, it’s gonna bite her in the ass someday. Tap, tap, the pencil went on the paper, and she continued pondering.
She really wanted to see him again, if not just for a little chat. It was nice talking to him, in all honesty. But how would she go about it. First, how would she even find him again in the first place. It’s unlikely he’d still be on the rooftop after just now. Audrey seemed to know him, maybe she could ask her? Oh, but what if she is a ghost exterminator and wants to get rid of him?
The sun was almost setting, so she decided it was high time to leave for home finally. Then, 2 voices came down the hall towards her classroom. Only one set of footsteps though?
“...Come on~ Go talk to her, she’s just Chris, she’s probably into you aleady just from lunch~” Was that Audrey?
“I’ve never talked to a girl before…”
“Oh, so I’m not a girl?”
“Bingo!”
Definitely Audrey. And from the sound of it, Tsuru too. Now that she’s hearing them together, they did sound kind of similar. They do look a bit similar too, if you turned Audrey into a guy, made her 3 years older and gave her white hair. Heck, that’s exactly Tsuru. Something was definitely up.
Just then, the two rounded the corner.
Audrey saw Christie first and her face lit up, grabbing both of Tsuru’s shoulders, pinning him down. He spotted her a moment later, and exhasperation washed over his features. The face of someone ready to admit defeat.
Alright, keep it cool, that was all she was good at wasn’t it?
“Hey, you’re that ghost from this morning! I’ve been wanting to talk to you!” He gave a forced smile. “Uh, yeah, sure, about what?”
“I’ll leave you two to it, don’t bore each other to death!” Audrey chimed in before she sped out the room cackling.
“How do you know Audrey?” She really didn’t know what to say, so she just said whatever was at the top of her mind at the moment. Which might have been a bit prying? She was never very good at being considerate.
“I’m her older brother,” he said without missing a beat. What, was he so bad at conversations he rehearsed this? Though, that really wasn’t what she had been expecting. She didn’t really expect anything specific, but it certainly wasn’t this. That really explained a lot of things.
“How, uh, how did you die?” God, if this wasn’t intrusion of privacy, she didn’t know what was. “If you dont mind me asking,” she added, not that it would help.
“Oh, no it’s fine! I fell off the roof of this building 3 years ago.” Oddly calm and cheerful reply aside, Christie felt suddenly unsettled again. A sense of deja vu, perhaps. For some reason, she felt she knew exactly where he fell.
Pushing the weird feeling down, she went through the list of things she wanted to say again. 3rd is…
“I think you’re very pretty!” An interesting concept: running her words through her head before she says them. Agh, it’s out, she’ll just have to see how he responds. Worst case scenario, whatever it was, she can just get up and run.
He blushed. The most amount of emotion she’d seen him express in the 10 or so minutes she’d been with him. He looked so uncomfortably flustered that she almost regretted saying it. But alas, a life of almost is a life of never.
“U-Uh, thanks? Y-You’re pretty too?” He managed to stammer out. An awkward silence for a few seconds, then the embarrassment caught up to Christie. She got up, “I’m g-gonna go now! It was nice talking to you!” and ran out.
Better than expected was a way to put it, but never again.