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Do you wanna hear a new rumor going around Kamome Academy lately? It seemed like Nene Yashiro had a date coming up for this next Sunday!
Okay, well, it was a really specialized rumor, admittedly... but Hanako-kun of the Toilets — dramatic alias Honorable Number Seven of the School Mysteries, by the by — had definitely heard it. He’d heard it and felt his stomach drop into his ghostly shoes. Yashiro was Hanako’s living assistant, see, and he...
Uh... well.
Yashiro was important, you know? Of course she was important.
Hanako had promised to grant a wish keeping Yashiro alive despite fate, even, by now. Hanako genuinely cared about keeping that promise, too, without twisting the words around or finding some weird loophole he knew would make her sigh.
When he thought about Yashiro teetering on the edge of death... the same death that’d claimed him so long ago... Hanako felt the kind of desperation he hadn’t realized he’d known how to feel anymore. A desperation he wasn’t sure he had the right to feel, considering everything he was, now. Dead, for one. A murderer, for two. Let’s not forget that. Not to mention the kind of guy who still hadn’t worked up the nerve to lay his past out clearly for Yashiro, yet. Who made sure to remind himself it was always possible she wouldn’t want to play cards with him anymore, once she really knew who he’d been, or hold his icy hands, or tell him about anything exciting that happened from day to day.
But maybe that wasn’t fair, huh? Yashiro wanted Hanako to trust her, and it wasn’t that he didn’t think she was the kind of person he could trust. If he was gonna put himself out there for anyone at all, wouldn’t it be her? Hanako had sworn to defy the order of the universe for Yashiro, after all, if only he could. She had taught him that he could still care who lived, and who died, and who swung by the toilets after school to talk with him for a while.
Nene Yashiro had known Hanako was dead from the very beginning, at least: she’d summoned him the same way toilet-bound ghosts got summoned all across Japan. She’d summoned him to help her win the love of some handsome, princelike guy, and now it looked like maybe her dating-life dreams were finally gonna be fulfilled. Yashiro had him, of course — had had Hanako for a while now — but was a ghost’s attention ever gonna be enough? Yashiro, belonging to the living world, would move on and on into a future Hanako knew he just couldn’t hope to reach.
Yashiro told Hanako about her date while they were discreetly chatting together during class. Or, more accurately, while Hanako was floating behind Yashiro’s chair and resisting the urge to play with her hair again ‘cause she’d gotten so mad last time... talking in his normal, drawling voice and watching her write messages back to him with little accompanying drawings. Maybe it wasn’t the greatest thing for her grades, but Hanako trusted Yashiro would tell him outright if she really didn’t want him hanging around. Yashiro wouldn’t meet Hanako’s eyes and snicker when something funny happened in class, then, would she? She wouldn’t reach over and straighten his shirt collar every now and then, even if other people could see her miming something weird like that into thin air.
At first Hanako had only gone to see Yashiro during class when he was particularly worried about her... when he’d missed her so badly he knew his duties as a school mystery were suffering for it... but the days stretched on just so long while Hanako waited for Yashiro’s appointed toilet-cleaning time, too. Now that he knew he could get away with it — knew maybe Yashiro even sort of wanted him there, and she definitely missed him when he disappeared for a few days — swinging into classrooms every now and then was becoming something of a habit.
Not every day, mind you. But sometimes. That day, in particular. Maybe Hanako had just been sort of lonely, so soon after they’d left that artificial world he’d let School Mystery Number Four create behind. That world had been a first attempt to keep Yashiro safe from the fate that was coming for her... a fun, safe artificial classroom on a fancy painted artificial earth, where Yashiro could’ve maybe lived out eternity without ever knowing death. Hanako had been Yashiro’s classmate for a while, there, too. He’d sat behind her and passed notes the old-fashioned way and everything!
It was easy to miss that glimpse of life, even if Hanako wasn’t sure he’d deserved to experience even just that taste at all.
But back to Yashiro’s date, right?
“He bought two tickets for us,” she wrote, “and even took the kind of movie I’d want to see into consideration. Wasn’t that kind, Hanako-kun?”
And Hanako said, “Yeah, well, that’s the least he can do!” even if part of him wanted to remind Yashiro that that was exactly what he’d done as his living self... as Amane Yugi... while they were in the painted world together. Buying movie tickets. Wondering what sort of film she’d like to see. Yashiro was never gonna be able to go out to the movies with Amane Yugi, though, not really. He didn’t exist, and all that remained of him — Hanako, yeah, hi there — couldn’t leave the school. Maybe it wasn’t worth saying anything at all.
And so Hanako listened as cheerfully as he could while Yashiro drew out the dress she was planning to wear on this date for him... showing where the lace was along the skirt, and how it swished when she spun around in it, and how it truly, absolutely looked much better in person.
“You’re... you’re gonna look great, Yashiro...” Hanako had murmured, glancing from the sketch of that dress up to her eyes. Yashiro was just so full of life, right then, and so bright Hanako had to look away. He could feel his face flushing a bit... which was incredibly unfair, given it wasn’t like he had pumping blood left to warm his hands up or anything, and he had seen Yashiro subconsciously jump when his eerily cold fingers brushed her skin. Nope, not fair at all.
“You really think so?” Yashiro wrote, grinning at Hanako like she knew some sort of secret he was too distracted to try and unravel, just yet. “What kind of snacks do you think I should get, at the theater?”
Oh, well. Hanako would try his best to answer this one, too. As Yashiro’s friend, even if he couldn’t help being a supernatural, or getting jealous sometimes, or anything like that. “Hmm, don’t people usually buy popcorn or candy, doing this kinda thing? Maybe a big soda and two straws, too, if you don’t mind this guy thinking about indirect kisses.”
“Thank you, Hanako-kun,” Yashiro wrote next. She was looking at him sort of like she had back in the painted world, when she’d held his face in her hands and asked him to run away with her. No, when she asked Amane to run away with her, even if she’d kept calling Hanako by his own ghostly name accidentally the whole time. She had said she didn’t hate Hanako, too — that she liked him, even...
That must have meant Yashiro thought he was an okay friend, anyway. At the very least. Hanako ruffled Yashiro’s hair, just a bit, and she brushed his hand away hissing a little through her teeth.
“If you braid my hair into a radish again, I’m not cleaning the toilets for the rest of this week,” Yashiro wrote, but she was smiling while she did it.
“I won’t, I won’t,” Hanako promised.
Cross my heart, hope to die. All that.
***
And then, like it did every week, Sunday came. Hanako was a little restless, honestly, even though he knew he probably wouldn’t hear any details from Yashiro’s date until the next day. Or, he’d thought he knew that, until he heard footsteps in the hall outside the bathroom. Until he heard Yashiro’s voice saying, “Thank you again for letting me in, again, Tsuchigomori-sensei,” and then that spider spirit/homeroom teacher combo answering back, “Just keep it short, alright? I don’t want to have to explain any of this to my boss.”
When Yashiro carefully eased the bathroom door open, calling, “Hanako-kun? Are you home?” she was wearing the same dress she’d doodled for him in class a couple days before. Hanako recognized the lace and everything. Was her oh-so-thoughtful movie date over already? Had it really gone badly enough that Yashiro’d turned up in the school toilets on a weekend to complain to a ghost about it, breaking the academy rules and... and, um...
Carrying a laptop bag, hanging heavy over her shoulder? Apparently? There was something else there, too. A portable DVD player, it looked like. Not that Hanako had ever gotten the chance to use a thing like that, though he had rescued one from the Mokke, once, and returned it back to the unsuspecting classroom where it belonged.
“Hi, Yashiro. Yeah, I’m here,” Hanako said, fading into view sitting propped up by the sinks. Kicking his feet a bit, and holding out his hands so Yashiro could give him the computer bag if she needed a little break. “Soooo, how was your very first date?”
“We still need to set a couple things up,” Yashiro said, “and then we can get started with it, okay?” She shifted in her brand-new shoes, smiling that secret, teasing smile from earlier. It was possible she suddenly looked a little bit shy. “Or... did you not mean it, when you asked if I wanted to watch a movie with you on Sunday? Surprise, Hanako-kun... I didn’t forget.”
“I didn’t forget, either,” Hanako said, maybe a little too quickly. He hoped the relief in his voice — the gasping, baffled relief — wasn’t as obvious as it felt. It was probably written all over his face, wasn’t it? Maybe Hanako should let spectral invisibility swallow him up again for a minute. Just to be sure.
Yashiro pulled some pillows out of that huge computer bag, then, and a couple bags of convenience store candy. She asked Hanako to set up the pillows some way that seemed comfortable — they were sitting on the floor of a school bathroom, after all — and she’d run to a vending machine to get some soda. She probably couldn’t get one giant cup for them, not this time around, but she’d buy two bottles of the same flavor, at least. Alright?
“A — alright,” Hanako said. Yashiro had brought a DVD copy of one of the earlier movies in the “Hamster Space Wars” franchise, and now she was bustling away to buy him a soda, pretending the school was their personal sort-of movie theater. It didn’t feel like the kind of thing that was supposed to happen to a ghost like him. That was allowed to happen, rather? Even if Yashiro meant this in a “friendship” kind of way... even if Hanako wasn’t her type after all... would she really wanna sit and watch a movie with him, as if Amane Yugi still had a future in this world?
Hanako had tried explaining to Yashiro what exactly he was, mind you: he was like the light from a star that went out before she was born. A metaphysical fingerprint left behind on the world, and if he hadn’t bound their fates together — long story, don’t ask — by all rights Yashiro’s hands should’ve drifted right through him.
Every time Hanako hugged her, that was a stolen thing. Every time he rested his cheek on Yashiro’s shoulder and closed his eyes, or pulled her around by the hand, or whispered a secret in her ear. Stolen. Yashiro was squeezing a memory’s fingers as she asked what kind of soda he felt like drinking that day, and it was hard to accept that she could just not think about all the things that memory could never be again. Everything Hanako couldn’t give her, even if he wanted to.
Even though he wanted to? Even though just “wanting to” was maybe edging too far into his brother Tsukasa’s territory, trying to unravel the order of things.
Hanako was dizzy. Hanako was thinking back to some of the stuff he’d daydreamed about doing, whenever he could rationalize allowing himself to sneak back into Number Four’s painted world for a visit... into Amane Yugi’s stolen life. Yashiro really wanted someone to write her a love letter, so maybe Hanako would’ve done that, at some point. She wanted somebody to do an exchange diary with, so maybe he would’ve gotten one going. Yashiro wanted stuff like that, and Hanako thought he might’ve finally found a way to provide it all. Or... heh, that wasn’t okay, was it?
Would Yashiro have really, honestly wanted a love letter from the ghost bound to her school’s toilets? It wasn’t like soccer-playing, good-intentioned, genuinely-alive-and-also-slightly-taller-than-her astronomy nerd Amane Yugi could’ve been writing it, not anymore. A love letter from a supernatural couldn’t be so simple, no matter how long he spent agonizing over just how to phrase things to make the recipient squeal into her hands.
Though... maybe things could be simple, sometimes, too? Despite everything. Maybe things were simple right now.
Yashiro flopped down onto the pillows Hanako arranged, and she made sure the lights were off and he was settled down next to her before she started the film up, on a laptop propped between them. She opened one of the candy bags and offered it to Hanako, grinning one of those much-too-alive smiles that made him feel like he was falling.
Hanako accepted a fistful of candy, and said “Thanks, Yashiro. I mean it,” in a strange, quiet voice. It wasn’t Amane’s living voice, was it? Not anymore.
But for now, against all odds, maybe it was the voice Yashiro had been hoping to hear.