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Haruka had once been asked whether he had intended to leave a will, and though the speaker, upon realizing the question was ill-placed, quickly tried to sweep them into another subject, Haruka only waved his hand in forgiveness and smiled. He said it was fine, and that he had, admittedly, considered it sometimes himself. But, he continued, he felt leaving a will would be bad luck. “Call it superstitious, maybe,” he said around a bashful smile, “but I feel like, almost, if you don’t leave a will, you just kind of keep on living.”
The initial speaker had in fact been Shintaro, and though Shintaro had been trying to change the course of conversation just moments before, before he had a chance to think better of it he countered: “What, forever, you mean?”
"Mm, not forever. I guess, just… you keep staying around. Lingering, maybe." (Haruka had taken to doodling idle loops in a blank space in his sketchbook, and was no longer looking at Shintaro.)
After a moment of apparent consideration, Shintaro rested his cheek on the palm of his hand, which had taken to leaning on Haruka’s desk, just behind where Shintaro had taken to sitting. “Like a spirit, basically.” A beat, and then a frank continuation: “Well, an evil spirit. In most religions good spirits don’t linger.”
At this Haruka had upturned his eyes and laughed. It was a small and harmless in sound but Shintaro had still taken an offended attitude, and before he could argue the reasoning of his insight Haruka spoke, his voice as generally jovial as he often was: “Do you really think I have it in me to be an evil spirit?”