Chapter Text
Hajime Hinata has always had an ordinary life.
Just your average baby: he was born in an ordinary way to two ordinary parents.
Just your average child: he was raised to be ordinary, and turned out to be ordinary at everything. Ordinary looks, save for the sharp brown spike on his hair that looked like it could kill someone if he nodded too hard, and even that wasn’t very unusual; it was just a cowlick. Ordinary interests, and an ordinary intellect.
Just your average high school student: he attended an ordinary high school, and received decent, ordinary grades.
Just your average guy trying to get by. Ordinary, ordinary, ordinary.
Hajime Hinata’s life was undoubtedly ordinary to the bone. And after years and years of being left in the dust of his more talented and exciting peers, he could not stand it. He craved something more . So he moved out of his parents’ home in his hometown to find a better life for himself, in hopes that he would find something new that could be worth living for.
HOWEVER. When he had told himself that he wanted a more interesting and enriching life, he had NOT said that he wanted crazy and paranormal .
So when he had moved into his new apartment for the first time and saw the transparent spirit sitting on his new kitchen counter, after an intense mental whiplash, he decided, Nope, I’m not doing this today , and chose to ignore the ghost as though he did not see it. I close my eyes, I do not see.
But really, how the hell was he supposed to react? Say a merry Cheerio! To the spirit and move on with his daily life as though that were completely normal? Scream, call his local police, and hope that they wouldn’t refer him to a therapist? Did this new city have a team of Ghostbusters by any chance?
I’m just imagining things. Yup, this ghost isn’t really here. I’m just nervous after making such a big life change, that’s all. This vision will eventually disappear once I’ve gotten used to being here. And no, I am NOT CRAZY.
Though, he had to applaud his imagination. This vision looked really vivid, and had a lot of intricate details to him: light gray eyes, with a fluffy head of cotton for hair and a serene smile on his face. He also had an interesting fashion sense: a flowy green jacket with some type of red square pattern on the shoulders, with black jeans and strange shoes with zippers instead of shoelaces.
But it was his imagination all the same. Yup, nothing to be worried about .
At first, it had really seemed that way. After the first day he had seen the ghost, the apparition disappeared and did not return. Hajime unpacked all of his things with no problem, and called his best friend, Chiaki, to let her know that he had made it to his new place safe and sound. He spent the next few days preparing for his new job at the local sweets store, which had an odd, but pleasant name: “Nevermind Sweets.” Though his baking skills were completely ordinary, this job would have to do for the moment.
But then… a strange thing started happening. Not the typical “my apartment is haunted by an evil spirit” kind of thing, but… still too strange to brush off as imagination.
After he got home from the supermarket one day, Hajime set his grocery bags down and tiredly plopped on the sofa, burnt out from walking all the way from the parking lot and up the stairs to his small apartment. His eyes wandered around his living room, still getting used to his new surroundings, and then landed on something strange sitting on the table.
He reached out, and discovered… a clover. A four-leaf clover, sitting on his coffee table.
“What the… when did this get here?” Hajime looked around at his apartment, but found nothing else out of the ordinary. His living room window was open, so it could have blown in from there; but he lived on the 4th floor of this apartment building, way above a clover’s reach, even with a gust of wind blowing by.
This is pretty cool, but… I’ve never found a four-leaf clover. Where did this come from?
He stared at the small plant in his palm in awe, and then stood up to place it on his desk in his bedroom.
Little did he know that it wasn’t the only clover he would come to find.
Over the next few days, clovers kept on appearing on spots in his apartment, almost like little surprise gifts waiting for him everywhere he went. While Hajime would normally brush this off as chance, that plants just happened to fly in through his windows, he noticed something odd about all of these clovers: all of them had four leaves. What were the chances of that happening?
“I guess I’m just… getting really lucky all of a sudden? This is still kind of weird though…” Hajime muttered to himself as he picked up the seventh four-leaf clover he had found that week from his kitchen counter.
In any case, his collection was starting to get huge, so he decided to buy a mason jar and put all of the clovers in there. It was a nice decoration for his coffee table.
In time, these occurrences started getting out of hand. A week and a half after he had moved in, Hajime had collected about 30 clovers, all of them with four bright green leaves. Hajime stood at his coffee table, scratching his head. It was getting way too weird to be chance.
And then, one day, he realized the real reason for the clovers.
The culprit had gotten too careless and bold. Hajime was in his bedroom, reading So Lingers the Ocean by the renowned author, Toko Fukawa, and had gotten up to get a drink of water. As he stretched his arms above his head, he walked through his doorway, looked to his right at his living room, and immediately stepped back, heart racing like he had started a marathon.
What… WHAT THE HELL?!?!
Hajime crept back to his doorway and peeked around the corner. He had to be imagining this. He HAD to be.
Standing at his window was a man, slightly transparent and floating a few inches above the floor. In fact, it was the apparition Hajime had seen just a little over a week ago. That green jacket and fluffy white hair were not easy features to forget. Unlike before, when he had been smiling, the man’s eyebrows were furrowed in concentration.
As Hajime watched, the fluffy-haired spirit floated slowly closer to his coffee table, seemingly being careful so as to not drop something that he cupped inside his hands. Since the man was transparent, Hajime squinted, and was able to see what he was holding: a clover .
The spirit set the clover down on the coffee table, and immediately sighed in relief, his entire body immediately becoming more transparent than it had been before. He clapped his hands and did a happy little spin in the air, smiling as he celebrated his small victory. Before Hajime could even think about stepping outside his bedroom, the man floated up and disappeared into the ceiling.
The moment the coast was clear, with new suspicions planted in his mind, Hajime immediately walked towards the table, and picked up the clover to confirm them. To his amazement, the clover was real. So everything he had just seen had been real.
“What the…” Hajime’s eyes widened. He dropped the clover into the mason jar and immediately sat down with a thunk on his sofa.
Hajime fiddled nervously with his tie, mind racing at a hundred miles a minute.
Was that a ghost ??? What was a ghost doing in his apartment? Ghosts exist???? Or was this really, truly his imagination? Was he going crazy? What was he supposed to do?
And the most mind-boggling of all… had this ghost been leaving him clovers, ever since he moved in? Were the clovers for him? Could ghosts even… interact with objects? A clover was light, but… could ghosts really do that? And if this ghost was leaving him gifts… was it a friendly ghost?
Hajime shook his head, bringing a hand up to massage his temple. Who was he kidding? The real issue at hand was: GHOSTS EXIST?!?!
He considered calling Chiaki to ask her if she knew anything about ghosts, but then he realized that might not be such a good idea. Chiaki was open-minded, but… to the paranormal? Would she believe him?
No, wait… I don’t even really know for sure if what I saw was real yet. I should wait, see if this “spirit” shows up any more times.
Yeah… that’s what he would do. He would go about his life as usual, and if the ghost showed up again, he would pretend like he didn’t see it. Maybe if he didn’t interact with it, it would eventually disappear as just a figment of his imagination.
Hajime slapped his hands on his face, bringing him back to reality, and got up to get himself a glass of water. Yeah, that was a good plan.
He would just have to wait and see what happens next.