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A flash of silver hair as he crossed the bridge, and the world was suddenly gloomy again, heart-wrenching and heavy. The feeling lingered as he finished crossing, faded as he twirled needlessly and began to hum some song he’d heard on the radio the other day. He flashed a smile at the form walking beside him, the man with dark hair as short as his life must have been, who passed through obstacles every so often just to freak him out and who never seemed to notice the long streak of blood running down from his hair to his chin. The form smiled back, and the feeling of gloominess passed.
“Sorry, Momo,” apologized the ghost, face blurry but for the aforementioned streak of blood. “I didn’t mean to get all sad again.”
Momo just winked at the spirit, letting his voice mix with the crowd as he walked on. “Not a problem! It just means I get to give you more fanservice!”
The ghost chuckled, and the world was light and fluffy again.
“You don’t have to, you know? You’re not an idol or anything.”
“But I want to,” Momo returned, and surprisingly, he meant it.
Can you hear it?
What?
My voice? Can you hear me?
Of course Momo could hear. He wasn’t deaf or anything… but it would be nice if he could see whoever was talking to him. He’d just started a part-time job as a janitor here; he really didn’t need to deal with first day hazing right now, while he was cleaning this lightless stage. There was a stubborn stain right in the middle, whose color he couldn’t make out even with his phone’s flashlight held over it, but it was dark and smelled a bit more metallic than the rest of the musty air here. No matter how much he scrubbed, it wouldn’t come out.
You can see it, too… At last…!
Seriously, this was getting creepy. He finally stopped and looked up, searching for the voice’s source. “Who’s there?” he called out, the words bouncing against the walls, filling the room.
Thank you… for allowing me to return to this world…
Momo shivered, feeling a presence behind him but not seeing anything there. Maybe he should just quit this job. This stage seemed to be haunted.
He left, not realizing a man followed him out until he was all the way back home.
Momo got to know the ghost as the days passed.
He couldn't hear the ghost’s name — whenever it tried to tell Momo, the words always came out garbled and unintelligible. Momo had thus taken to simply calling it Mr. Ghost.
Mr. Ghost was fairly calm, not particularly prone to disturbing Momo’s life or causing a fuss. He didn’t tug at Momo just to check out something he was interested in or bug him when Momo was enjoying something he wasn’t. He was so unintrusive, Mr. Ghost almost may as well not have been there at all.
Except.
Except sometimes, Mr. Ghost got lonely. And this Momo knew for a fact, because everything Mr. Ghost felt resonated back to Momo, who the ghost had apparently possessed that day on the stage. Happiness, sadness, boredom, fury… Loneliness was no exception, and Mr. Ghost was so horribly, horribly lonely, the feeling crushing Momo with its weight. Mr. Ghost always looked so guilty whenever he realized it was affecting him… and that kind of compounded the horrible effect, so Momo decided to ask.
“Mr. Ghost… what makes you so lonely?”
Mr. Ghost turned away, apparently not willing to talk about it. In that case…
“Mr. Ghost… what can I do to help you feel better?”
Momo didn’t stop asking until he received an answer. Honestly, he didn’t know why Mr. Ghost didn’t just tell him in the first place. Singing and dancing and making a fool of himself every so often wasn’t so bad compared to some other things Mr. Ghost could have asked of him. At least he didn’t have to do anything insane, like… play some thousand-year-old board game that only old men in cigarette smoke-filled salons played casually anymore. That would be ridiculous.
“You always look so sad when you sing that song, Mr. Ghost.”
The ghost started, melody suddenly cut short. “Ah… Sorry, am I bothering you again?”
Momo shook his head, humming a negative. “Actually, it feels warm and full, right now. This song makes you happy, but your face tells a different story. Why’s that?”
The ghost turned away, and Momo thought for a second he’d avoid the question again. It was probably related to why he was so lonely all the time, Momo realized. He opened his mouth to apologize, but then the ghost spoke up.
“Because it’s incomplete.”
Momo cocked his head, confused. It sounded pretty complete to him, actually.
“My friend and I… we never got to finish it.” Mr. Ghost passed a hand over a spot on his head, and Momo realized that was where the streak of blood flowed from.
Oh.
Momo wiggled his toes where he sat cross-legged on the bed. “Um,” he started hesitantly, “I… do you want to, maybe… teach me? That song?”
The man’s clothes were too modern. The fixture on the stage had still been missing a light. The venue’s manager had let him go without a fight, believing the stage was haunted by the man who’d died on it not two weeks ago, at the time.
Maybe, if Momo sang it on the street, he could find Mr. Ghost’s friend, and Mr. Ghost would stop being so lonely.
The ghost was silent, at first. But then, he came and sat by Momo, frozen fingers not quite passing through his hand but not quite touching, either, with melody flowing from his indistinct lips and lyrics unmistakable, slow enough for Momo to haltingly follow along.
Mr. Ghost’s praise was really nice, to be honest. And singing and dancing at every opportunity, though embarrassing at first, had eventually evolved to be fun. Freeing, even. Like the world consisted only of Momo and Mr. Ghost. It didn’t matter if anyone else was watching, didn’t matter if Momo looked like an idiot. Only Mr. Ghost’s eyes on him mattered. Only the warmth that filled him when the ghost’s voice blended with Momo’s, when the ghost’s moves ebbed and flowed with Momo’s.
So, it came as a bit of a surprise when Momo’s sister, Ruri, finally banged on his door and told him to either shut up or find an agent, because she was in the middle of an important phone call and if he wasn’t going to keep it down then he had better at least try to get paid for it.
Sheepishly, Momo and Mr. Ghost shared a laugh.
Well, Mr. Ghost? Momo asked teasingly over their mental bond. Momo didn’t often remember to use it, too accustomed to having to speak aloud and Mr. Ghost typically not needing attention often enough to warrant it, but it was convenient at times like this. What do you think? Shall I go find an audition?
To his surprise, Mr. Ghost quieted, regarding him seriously. Momo gulped, suddenly feeling nervous.
“... Yes,” Mr. Ghost finally said, no joke or smile in his tone. “I think… no. I know you can do it. I believe in you, Momo.”
Very suddenly, the shattered dream of making it to the World Cup was swept away, Black or White taking its place.
Quietly, Momo got dressed and left the house, Mr. Ghost’s nerves and anticipation thrumming in time with his own.
The man with the silver hair was on the bridge again, but that wasn’t the first thing he noticed. Mr. Ghost’s usual intense thrum of sadness-loneliness-pain was nothing in the face of the feeling of his own heart, skipping beat after beat as he processed what met his eyes that day.
Silver had climbed over the railing, indescribable expression on what Momo could see of his face.
The intensity of emotion was suddenly overwhelming, and Momo dropped to the ground.
Mr. Ghost screamed a name, but Momo couldn’t hear it over the sheer agony ripping though him, dread, horror, terror, all sorts of fear mixing with despair.
Vision blurry, he raised his eyes, the world around him faded at the edges but the sight of Mr. Ghost passing through Silver’s body as he tried to pull him back shown in stark clarity, 4K against a 240p backdrop. The ghost’s tears were better defined on anything else on his face.
“Don’t you dare do this to me,” Mr. Ghost begged, voice cracking, anguish on display, more emotion than Momo’d ever heard in his voice before. “Yuki, please.”
Silver, an ordinary person unpossessed by the supernatural, who couldn’t hear a word out of Mr. Ghost’s mouth, lifted a foot and dangled it over the edge, still hanging on to the rail behind him but only for who knew how much longer.
Momo began to crawl. Forward, forward, one muscle after another, one limb at a time.
Silver — Yuki, Momo decided, because he’d already heard Mr. Ghost say his name, after all — murmured something too low for Momo to hear, but he thought it might be “I’m coming” and they were the most frightening words Momo’d never heard when coupled with the tear dropping from Yuki’s own pretty eyes.
“Yuki, don’t do this, come on, come back, get back on this side of the rail, I’ll sing with you, we can dance together again, I promise I’ll find a way to come back to life and finish that song with you, just please! Don’t do this… Yuki, I’m begging you…”
“I missed you,” Momo was close enough to hear, and he pushed with his legs and threw one arm back to the rail and the other out in front of him because Yuki just let go of the rail.
Forward, forward Yuki fell and time moved in slow motion, Momo’s fingers not stretching nearly fast enough, a cold warm presence around his wrist just as his own fingers slipped off the rail in a desperate bid to catch Mr. Ghost’s friend, the one he left behind, who always made him feel lonely because Mr. Ghost wasn’t able to stay by his side, bond of possession forcing him near Momo instead of letting him pick someone else to follow.
Momo fell back against the rail, Yuki in his arms, Mr. Ghost’s arms around them both, the only thing keeping them from losing their balance and falling again.
“What…” Yuki struggled, trying to free himself. “Who are you? Let me go! Why did you—”
“ Hitori ga kiraku to omoi kondeta boku ni… ”
The lyrics came easily, the melody like water, but his voice shuddered along with his body, fear and adrenaline still coursing though him. He didn’t stop, though. Momo didn’t dare stop, Mr. Ghost’s voice singing in unison with his own. Yuki’s breath hitched, and he struggled more. “No,” he denied, as desperate as Mr. Ghost had been moments ago, “that’s— that’s not yours, give it back, how do you even know it—”
“ Osoreru mono wa nanimo nakatta ano hi…! ”
“No!”
“ Sou sa mikansei na bokura wa — ! ”
“Stop it!” Yuki screamed, thrashing in Momo’s arms. “You’re not him! He’s dead! He’s dead and gone and I can’t have him back!”
“I know!” Momo roared back, agony intertwined with anguish. “I know he’s gone, Yuki… But he wouldn’t want this.”
“I want this!” Yuki retorted, voice giving way to a sob at the last word. He slumped in Momo’s arms, hiccuping, curling in on himself, legs finding their way back to the small patch of solid ground between the rail and the edge. Momo shuddered in relief, letting himself relax just a little, now that he wasn’t the only thing between the two of them and Mr. Ghost’s plane of existence. “I miss him… So much…”
Momo held him tighter. “I know,” he said softly, to a man he didn’t know, to a man he’d never met, but a man Momo didn’t want to see dead nevertheless.
“Ban,” Yuki choked out, crying in Momo’s arms. Momo tucked his head into Yuki’s neck and cried with him.
Ban, the ghost, cried the hardest out of the three, loneliness and anguish like a storm, harsh at its worst but petering out given time and release.
A ray of light and warmth finally peeked out from between the clouds.