Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If you listen closely between the sounds of the material and the immaterial, you will hear wails of disembodied souls. Now, some people call them ghosts. We will run with it because explaining the unexplainable to puny tiny minds creates confusion, and humans get so aggressive when they are confused. No, it’s better to let you all have a surface level understanding of what is and what is not.

And as you humans love to say, where there is evil, there is good. But if you would like to think of ghosts as evil, you mostly likely haven’t met more than a handful of them. Such is the case for a lot of ghost hunters.

Picture: a ridiculously wealthy family whose balance can amount to unlimited, famous in name, secretive in business affairs. The empire started with the current head of the house, Kikuko Kambe. She had a son who inherited the business and would take her place once she was gone. He married a woman who had his son, the illustrious, ever so serious and blunt Daisuke Kambe. And he had no chance of realizing this when he was under eight years old, but the Kambe family was the most well known in the ghost hunting community, flying under the radar from the public, of course. The mansion he had lived for the entirety of his life contained a laboratory in the, frankly not worthy of being called this, basement. A place his eight year old self had no real reason to visit or spend time at, so how would he know? It wasn’t like his parents told him what they did every time they disappeared for a few hours. And with a place as big as theirs, they could spend entire days inside without ever coming across one another. But you must know that a child’s curiosity leads to strange places. 

Said laboratory was the picture of what you’d find in science fiction stories, with equipment that looked like it came straight from a hundred years in the future and immaculateness you’d expect from a hospital. What caught Daisuke’s attention first was the big metal arches at the very back.

Clunky, silver, hard steel. Daisuke put his small hands over it and felt it cold. A shiver came up his spine. Some humans also believe that to be a sign that a spirit was behind you, or around you, or even inside you somehow. Maybe I am the first to tell you this, but the feeling of a spirit being in your vicinity is a lot more intense than a simple shiver. What Daisuke experienced then was merely a combination of a cold sensation and perhaps, his own anxiety. Ask him to confirm.

But now, would you please, refrain from blaming the child for what happens next. Because as he patted the machine, unaware of its functionality and purpose, his finger passed by a button, the on button. And no one would be able to see it if they weren’t searching for it. It is stupid but the thing was built into the structure, it wasn’t popped out like most buttons tended to be. As the machine powered up, a few flickers of very tiny green sparkles showed up inside the arch - it would catch any eight year old’s attention. So Daisuke was attracted to it. 

As he looked around, the space seemed to stretch on a horizontal line. And the green sparkles from before grew in size, grouping up with each other, becoming a great big blob of green. It all became a spiral around him. The child made himself dizzy trying to follow it and that’s when the sounds began. Names, pleas, incoherent mumbling - all in desperate wobbly pathetic voices but that to a child resonated as daunting and haunting. 

Black took over.

His consciousness slipped away before he had a chance to realize it was going. But don’t worry, he did wake up again. The eight year old brain he had chalked it all up to being a dream.

It was only later when he faced a mirror that he noticed the damage. 

His hair whitened, eyes glowy green and skin so pale it was nearly transparent. A closer inspection also revealed a dark grey stop on the left side of his neck. 

Running out, he called for his parents, for the mansion staff, any adults and even for his cousin, Suzue, not at all older than he was. And the people heard him, they could hear his voice, only because he screamed and only because they had heard him before the accident happened, yet… they would never be able to see him like that.

Listening to them call his name back, listening to them ask what was wrong, being unable to find him shocked the child to his core. The tears flowed as easily as water does when it rains. 

He ran. Or rather, slid away on air at a very high speed. His own feet wouldn’t have been able to take him very far, but being a ghost had its advantages like being able to float. Without a destination in mind, Daisuke ended up on a crowded street, but it’s not like anyone out there noticed him either. The crying had gotten so bad that he began sobbing his little heart out, screaming and hiccupping because it hurt.

Fear could etch into your being and make your heart ache in the worst possible way. It became tenfold for a child when they didn’t know what to do about it aside from cry and beg for help.

However, there was one person who managed to see him in his desperate glory. A child, like him, had looked him dead in the eyes and cocked his head to the side as if the sight, while a little bit concerning, was not at all strange.

Daisuke sniffed at the sight of the head of brownish hair and averted his gaze, trying to pretend he wasn’t pouring his eyes out. The other kid merely took his sleeve, held it in his palm and gently rubbed under his eyes, which made Daisuke look at his golden ones.

“It’s going to be okay!” He said in all his - admittedly justified - childish naivety. “You can cry if it takes the pain away, but I want you to know that it’s gonna end well! I promise!”

And I don’t know how much you remember from when you were eight years old, a lot, if you’re lucky, but it seems that most people remember few things. Daisuke was fortunate enough to have been blessed with a good memory so he might’ve remembered this exchange regardless of the added bonus but… the fact that it was someone seemingly his age who told him that his bizarre situation would be okay made it extra memorable.

Adult Daisuke retained that encounter and kept it locked away in a little corner of his mind for specially difficult days. Because the child hadn’t been wrong, it did turn out okay. Child Daisuke had spent a couple of days missing because he was invisible and he did not know where to go but eventually he turned back to normal and later he found how he could change between his appearances at will. It had taken him a lot of sleepless nights and pure determination that would only come from an eight year old but he got there.

So he grew up and held onto those words as if his life depended on them even when both of his parents died, merely a few months later. When he had watched his father kill his mother only to end his own life a couple of minutes later. He had to believe that would be okay too. 

Human minds are a strange thing. Belief is stronger than fact for you. But then again, it was the only reason Daisuke was able to have a semblance of recovery over that trauma so perhaps it’s not such a bad thing.

Chapter Text

He is grieving, in case you're wondering. Present continuous tense; the action is not done yet. And it won't be until the end of his own days. I know it sounds terribly morbid and I can’t say that it isn’t, but that is part of human life’s nature - death and grief. Daisuke will carry it with him but that doesn’t mean he will always be miserable because of it. You humans have very complex and deep emotions that are never truly set but they always matter because they always leave an impact.

I will argue that grief is the strongest of any human emotion - it lasts the longest because absence is felt more strongly than presence. 

Twenty seven years of life is not much either, in the grand scheme of things, but Daisuke has been parentless for grueling nineteen of them and that would certainly leave scars on your soul now, wouldn’t it?

Humans… such fragile, fragile things.

Daisuke is lucky enough to have a good support system. For one, his cousin Suzue. She has no knowledge of him being a ghost but she is older and took the role of a… not exactly parent but more so that of an older sister. In addition, there was his childhood best friend, Saeki Mahoro.

This human is a very sweet individual who does pay a lot of attention to the sounds between the material and the immaterial I have mentioned prior and so she knew Daisuke had become half-ghost without him ever saying a word. Now, it is true that children have an easier time seeing the supernatural, it has something to do with their innocence… I’m sure. Humans are already weird enough, do not get me started on children. However! As I have said, it was because of the sounds, not the sight. And to her credit, even as an eleven year old, she took it quite well. It was simply now her new normal - that her best friend was half dead. But then again, her childhood itself was quite the story, albeit not for this work of fiction you are reading.

It was a good thing those two were in his corner because it seemed like his grandmother, Kikuko, was not and that was who he, regrettably, lived with for a good number of years. He moved out the minute he turned eighteen years old. The amount of times that any displays of grief Daisuke had shown until then were shot down by the elderly woman was enough to turn her grandchild into a rather… emotionally stunted person. I may be blunt but I do have a lot of care for the character, I can soften blows.

As he grew older and as the grip of Kikuko Kambe loosen, Daisuke became aware of the fact that some things have never quite added up about his mother’s death. That fateful day, his father was supposed to be away on a business trip, how did he get back so quickly? And the police has ruled it a suicide, how would they do that when the body has stab wounds on its back? It seems like questions that even an eight year old could be aware of, of course… Unless you had just turned half of yourself into a ghost and was trying to wrap your head around the fact, as well as trying to deal with the loss of your parents. Yes, circumstances always matter.

So Daisuke began investigating on his own. His resources were rather low, considering he wasn’t say, a police officer, however, he didn’t have to be in order to have access to classified information.

The Tokyo Metropolitan City Police Department - what a name, would humans really not be able to tell it was the Tokyo Police were it not in the name? - had their files right where half-ghost Daisuke would reach them. Because not only had the learned how to control his transformation, but along those nineteen years he also learned a handful of tricks he could do in wake of his condition, such as but not limited to:

• phasing through solid objects
• going completely invisible
• and turning other objects invisible

All of which helped him a great deal in breaking into the records room. And so by the time he went back to his apartment, he had gathered much of what he needed.

Noting that very few people were allowed in his home, Daisuke had the picture of those records all pinned to a board above his bed, where he could look at every day and add his theories to it when he managed to come up with some.

When Saeki entered the place for the first time after he put it up, her eyes had shifted between him and it for a few number of times before she ultimately said, “I see.”

“Of course you do, you have a working pair of eyes.” Daisuke had shot, with no hint of sarcasm, might I add.

“Well yeah,” Saeki had grunted, “I meant I see what you’re trying to do, Dai. I just-” And then she sighed, putting her hands on her hips, “I’m worried about where it might take you, that’s all.”

“It’ll be alright.” He had said. “I’ve died once, I can do it again.”

The joke he had made with the straightest of faces hadn’t gone over Saeki’s head. She had laughed at it for a little while, but eventually, concern washed over her face once again. 

“Promise you’ll be careful.”

He had given a mere nod in response. “I do.”

And you humans love to break promises, what is up with your stubborn inability to keep your word, it is utterly frustrating! 

Daisuke had managed to get caught around the 372823th time he went into that records room to check if they had updated the records since or if he had by chance managed to miss any pieces of information any of the previous times he had been there. They hadn’t added anything in those nineteen years, if you are wondering, but it was interesting that they had kept removing information. It made Daisuke wonder how much he had lost in-between the actual murder until he began investigating. 

But that was not the pressing matter then, now, was it. No, the pressing matter was his ghost-self being trapped inside a gadget that seemed to look like a thermos. 

“HA, I got you now, you bastard.” He heard, words somewhat muffled.

And it hadn’t seemed too foreign to him either…

For a little bit of chemistry talk, inside a gadget such as Daisuke’s new prison, it tended to turn ghosts into semi-molecules, semi-solid things so it would actually have any materials to contain inside. Since Daisuke was already human, this worked in a rather… confusing way for his body, it didn’t quite happen the way it was supposed to. No, his molecules bounced all over the space until they just- made it out on their own and his form was whole again.

And this is where he is able to understand why the voice of his captor was not quite the stranger to his ears - it was the same boy who comforted him out in the street after he ran away from home.

Voice deepened threw him off and it had been quite a number of years but the light brown short and messy hairstyle that hadn’t changed since he was a child gave away his identity and so did the golden eyes that looked at him and widened in scared surprise.

“What the fu-”

“You are welcomed to try and capture me again.” Daisuke shot, hovering not too far away from the considered… threat. 

“I will, you- you Victorian looking child!” They pointed the thermos at him again.

“Victorian?” He had time to question before being sucked in again.

It was not even five minutes later before he was out again. It took another three for the ghost hunter to realize it.

Once he did, he spun on his heels, stomped back to the spot where Daisuke awaited and pointed a finger at his face. “WHY DON’T YOU STAY THERE?”

“Eh…” The man shrugged. “Too stuffy. Don’t you have a better thermos in your giant bag somewhere?”

“It’s not a thermos! But you don’t get to know what it is!”

It was amusing to Daisuke that the other didn’t seem to remember him. The encounter had been a lot more meaningful to him after all so it made quite a lot of sense. But he wondered if he would be treated the same if he knew. So he decided to just… test how long it could take the ghost hunter.

“Alright, am I free to go now?”

“Free- NO YOU’RE NOT FREE TO GO, YOU’RE A GHOST!”

“Actually, I am a twenty seven year old human man-”

“THE HELL YOU ARE, JUST STAY INSIDE THE THERMOS!”

“You called it a thermos, why can’t I call it a thermos?”

“BECAUSE IT’S MY GADGET NOT YOURS-”

“Well then, what may I call it?”

“Nothing! YOU, only get to go, INSIDE HERE!” He pointed at it.

“Ah well, you are welcome to try again.”

 So he did. “Shut up.”

This time when he was pushed out, Daisuke decided to just leave. The ghost hunter would notice it eventually and, judging from his character so far, probably throw an angry fit somewhere… hopefully in his own home rather than on the streets - that would be quite a show to watch. But then again, humans stop to observe quite the weirdest things.

But now that there was no buzzing in his ears, Daisuke wondered how the man got inside in the first place. He was hardly a ghost, and unless he worked there… Oh, he was a cop. How did such a sweet naive little kid grow up to be such a vile creature? He lost the sweetness and kept the naivety.

Daisuke let out a long sigh on his way home thinking about the possibility of meeting him again and it being a continuous occurrence. Maybe as the eight year old kid his ghost body still resembled he’d be thrilled at the idea, but as a young adult who has come to understand that people change, something that could be as random as it was certain, he felt annoyed.

But then again, for all that his supernatural abilities allowed him to do, they would never let him see the future.