Chapter Text
Two weeks. It took Akali two weeks after moving in to come to terms that her apartment is haunted or that there is a serial killer hiding in her closet. At first she thought it was just her anxiety making things up as she stressed out about unpacking things and her programming work.
But after a few nights of the fleeting touches she felt during her sleep and left over food seemingly having small bites taken out of them overnight, Akali accepts that there’s something in her apartment.
Like any other sane person, Akali was scared of whatever that’s occupying the same living space as her and so, one day she couldn’t concentrate on her work because of the lingering thoughts that she could get murdered. She spent the entire day with a kitchen knife in one hand while searching every nook and cranny in her home.
Her search didn’t yield any results, much to her relief and disappointment. Glad that she didn’t get murdered by a hidden serial killer yet disappointed that she wasn’t able to find anything at all. Since there wasn’t any physical indication that there is another being moving around the small apartment, the programmer gave up trying to find tangible proof and went to sleep.
That same night, the fleeting touches happened again. Although this time instead of feeling it linger on her ankles like every other night, she felt a light brush on the back of her hand, it was almost too gentle to be considered sinister.
A month passes after Akali’s frantic search and she’s been too busy with work to think much about whatever haunts her house. Too much work was dumped onto her since someone decided to quit without prior notice.
She’s been falling asleep in front of her computer screen too many nights in a row to notice anything different about her apartment. The shadows around her have been watching her, they ebb and billow from where the human can’t see.
Another week passes and Akali is just a few more codes away to be free from her job for a few days. She writes the final code in and begins checking her work for any errors. After she’s done, she moves to her dimly lit kitchen and settles on a cup of instant ramen as supper.
As she waits for the water to boil, her eyes watch over the cramped apartment. ‘When was the last time I cleaned this place.’ , the tired programmer thinks and out of the corner of her eyes, she catches sight of something moving. ‘Am I trippin’ or did the shadows just move?’ , she closed her eyes and massaged them with her hands.
Akali opens her eyes when she hears the whistle of the kettle indicating the hot water being done. She pours the hot liquid into her ramen cup and grabs a pair of chopsticks before she takes a seat at the kitchen counter, her body still facing the rest of the messy apartment.
Her cerulean eyes scan over the entire room for a minute to pass before she begins eating the instant noodles. The spice tingling on her tongue as she slurps up the noodles, drinking some of the soup as she eats.
‘One cup isn’t enough.’ , she finished eating and was about to move to start boiling more water but it happened again, something’s moving in the shadows and the programmer can’t pinpoint it. She looks around trying to find the movement again till she sees the shadow of the ramen cup moving.
‘What the fuck?’, the programmer’s eyes widen. The shadow of the ramen cup sways and Akali starts to wonder if it’s due to her being sleep deprived or the supposed ‘ghost’ is messing with her. She shakes her head and starts to boil more water anyways, she’s still hungry after all.
This time she grabs two cups from the cupboard and places them onto the counter and she fills them up with the boiling hot water when it's done and waits for the noodles to soften again. When the noodles are ready to eat, she pushes one of the cups towards the other side of the counter as a test of sorts.
She was prepared to see the shadow of the plastic cup move but her right brow twitched when the shadow of her chopsticks moved instead, not what she was expecting after all. Now she is reluctant to touch them now so she grabs another pair.
Wordlessly Akali starts to eat from her own cup of ramen while keeping her eyes on the swaying shadows on her table. She’s studying it's behavior and the shadow would ebb and sway as if it has a mind and will of its own. Though right now it isn't moving drastically, the subtle movements are still noticeable when she focuses on them.
She is now damn sure that the shadows in her apartment are related to whatever is haunting this space. ‘If it’s just some shadows, it shouldn’t be able to hurt me.’, Akali tells herself but she’s just lying to herself because if she can feel the shadow’s touch, that means it has a tangible form.
The very next moment, she sees the shadows moving into the plastic container, ‘Woah, is it eating the ramen?’, the scene fascinates the programmer. ‘Wait, it’s been eating my leftover food… So it should have a physical form as well. Which means... Shit.’, the programmer’s eyes widened in fear, ‘It could actually kill me. Fucking hell.’
Realizing her own situation, she drops her chopsticks and her mind starts to race with the possibilities of being murdered in her sleep by something she probably isn’t able to get rid of, much less kill it. Her shoulders are stiff and her hands are clamped together on the surface of the kitchen counter.
Akali snaps out of her thoughts when from the corner of her eye, she sees the shadow snaking its way across the table slowly, as if cautious. The programmer’s panicked mind thinks it’s being very suspicious and detaches her hands to try and push it away. But the next second, the misty black form gathers into a small sphere and rolls into the palm of her hands, oddly enough it fits snuggly in her palms.
“Uhhh, what?”, she confusedly says aloud. The small ball starts shaking slightly in her hands, as though laughing at the programmer's expression. ‘This little ball is laughing at me?’, for a moment Akali forgets that she’s holding onto some otherworldly existence and pouts.
Not amused that it’s making fun of her reaction, how else is she supposed to react anyway? Throw the shadowy ball away? Wait. That’s exactly what she should have done. Yet she’s here cradling a smoky sphere that’s made itself comfortable in her palms and thinking that the way it’s acting is kind of cute.
Akali stares intently at the shadow, weighing the pros and cons of everything happening right now. She wants to figure out a rational solution to the situation she’s found herself in but with a mysterious lifeform made entirely out of shadows living in the space as her, there really isn’t a reasonable conclusion anymore.
So maybe the programmer has thoughts of coexisting with the shadow since it doesn't seem to be trying to hurt her. Each time it interacted with her, it only ever briefly came into contact with her, lighty grasping her ankle or gently brushing her hand and fingers. Even when hungry, it only ate the leftovers on the kitchen counter and never did anything bad.
Humming to herself, she sets her mind on an extremely illogical and irrational decision, ‘maybe I’ll get some cake on the way back tomorrow.’ Akali is now fully intent on feeding this small existence that’s been sneaking bites out of stale leftovers which she thinks is really sad. No one likes cold leftover pizza.
Also, the programmer cranes her neck to look into the cup of ramen that the shadow went inside earlier and sees that it’s empty, not even any soup left. Seeing that it consumed all the contents of the cup, the programmer thinks that it’s appetite is actually larger than the few sneaky bites of food it took. ‘I’ll have to start feeding this little thing from now’ , she thinks it should be eating it’s fill.
After settling on the decision to take care of the shadow, Akali carries the little ball in her hands to bed and leaves it on the bed before going to brush her teeth. She returns to lay down beside the ball of shadows, not at all worried that it’s gonna hurt her. Sleep finds Akali and the last thing she sees before her eyes shut, is the ball melting back into the darkness.
A few hours later, the programmer’s mind wakes up to the sensation of a soft touch on her hand. Thinking that it’s the doing of the little ball of shadow, she doesn’t bother opening her eyes to check. But she should have at least taken a peek. The fingers of a clawed hand that began and ended with shadows was brushing against her smooth skin. Akali really should have opened her eyes.