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Maybe they’re a real estate agent.
She thinks when she ties her hair.
Or a neighbour.
She thinks when she unties them, taking a brush to carefully undo the knots that have formed overnight.
That would be awkward.
She winces, takes a look at the mirror.
Maybe they’re just a delivery person.
And really, she wishes she didn’t care about that. Her hair. She doesn’t care much about her hair, most of the time.
Or maybe I’ll just bump into them on the way there.
But she’s been told all her life that today was special. Everyone makes an effort for this day.
Fuck, then I’d risk being late to get the keys.
And she’s been thinking about all of this more than she cares to admit. She wouldn’t want a soulmate that would judge her based on looks. But she wouldn’t want her soulmate to believe that she doesn’t care about them. And dressing up is apparently a good way to show that you care. So she brushes her hair, and she puts on a dress.
Well, I could just give them my number and say that I’m in a rush.
She washes her face and grabs her bag. It’s ten in the morning, and the sun is shying away behind clouds.
Would that be insensitive?
She knew she shouldn’t have scheduled this today. But it was the soonest date possible. And she needed to settle in fast.
She remembers when the real estate agency called, gave her the date to sign the lease. It was familiar, a date she’d had on her skin for a very long time.
Now she avoids her brother and parents, fills a cup of coffee to go and rushes into the streets. Almost one hour of bus before she hits the city. Headphones on, she can’t help but look around. Faces look at their phones, she takes a seat, she closes her eyes.
She just got out and she already wishes today ends soon.
She doesn’t know if it’s the anxiety, the drive, the heat or the coffee but she feels a little nauseous and when she finally gets off the bus, all she wants is to lay there on the ground until it gets better.
She remembers the way towards her new appartement from the day she visited, and she takes back those same steps, nervous, her fingers gripping the strap of her bag. She walks fast to avoid thinking too much, and she jumps when her phone buzzes. It’s okay. It’s no one new. Just a text from her mom that says she could have drove her, and she should have said bye before leaving.
Her bag gets heavier and heavier as she walks, and she thinks it would have been smarter to take the subway, but it’s too late now, she’s only a block away.
Pidge hopes she looks okay, but she can feel how sweaty she is when she reaches the street — her street.
“Hi. Katie Holt?”
A woman. She smiles at her, and Pidge’s heart skip a beat. Tall, tidy and warm. She wears high heels —and she has to know that the appartement is on the fifth floor, right?— and a baby pink trousers suit, which is equally fantasist and professional. She is definitely not the person that made Pidge visit the place. Pidge holds out her hand, defiant. The woman isn’t laid-back, but she doesn’t seem to be extra careful either. Could it be her, Pidge is supposed to meet? She’s a bit… too out of her league for comfort.
“That’s me. And you are?”
“Allura Kouamé, I’m the owner of the building. I leave most things to the real estate agency, but I like to meet my tenants at least once. Come on, let’s get moving.”
She’s energetic, too, and for someone in high heels, she is walking up these stairs fast. When they are at the door, Pidge feels like melting cheese, and Mrs. Kouamé has not broken a sweat.
“So, you visited already, but take another look. I listed everything slightly off I could find in this document, like the scratches on the parquet and the discoloring of some part of the walls, but if you find anything else, write it down.”
Pidge walks around the place, finally putting her bag down. It’s empty. But it’s her place now. She goes straight to the kitchenette to drink a bit from the sink, before remembering she brought glasses with her. She takes them out of her bag, fills one.
“Do you want water?”
Mrs. Kouamé is standing in the doorway, her back straight, and she simply shifts her head to decline. Pidge nods in return, and when she finds nothing to add to the inventory, she is given the keys.
“You have two sets of keys, but if you happen to lock yourself out, here is my number; I live a few blocks from here and have another key. Do not call me in the middle night.”
Pidge nods, accepting the piece of paper. She wouldn’t have called in the middle of the night anyway. She won’t be stupid enough to lock herself out, right? Oh, she needs to give one of the sets of keys to her mother, in case that happens.
“I will send you an email with the emergency numbers you can call and other… pieces of information, about the building. The code to the front door is written at the back of the paper I gave you.”
Mrs. Kouamé politely nods, and as she moves to leave, Pidge almost cries out.
“Wait!”
She stops in her tracks, turning her head towards her new tenant.
“Yes, darling?”
“You… you’re not supposed to meet your soulmate today, are you?”
She turns completely towards Pidge to answer, her smile gentle and understanding.
“No, I am not.”
And with that she leaves, a smile on her face that has Pidge certain she knows more than she is letting on.
“Did you meet them yet?”
“Matt, there’s a reason I left without saying anything. It’s enough that my brain can’t focus on anything else, I don’t need to mutualize thoughts and assumptions.”
“Fair.”
She sighs, putting down her cup of coffee. She can hear her brother sigh into the mic on his end of the line and she sees clearly his smug face in her mind. The fucker. She’s in pain, and he dares smile.
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it? I can keep quiet and let you rant if you want.”
She grimaces, but he can’t see, and when she thinks about it, it isn’t such a bad idea.
“It’s eleven, and no, I haven’t met them. It wasn’t the person who welcomed me, it wasn’t any of the neighbors I met, it wasn’t the guy who delivered dinner, and I don’t especially plan on going outside between now and midnight. Fuck, do I have to?”
“Do you want me to answer that?”
“No. I’m just confused,” she sighs, puts the phone on speaker. Her coffee is cold now, and she moves to warm it up before remembering she doesn’t have a micro-wave yet. Cold coffee it is. She walks around the place a bit. It’s not familiar yet. It’s her new home. And where the fuck is her soulmate? “I’m scared they were right.”
“Who?”
“No, just. That’s not important.”
She doesn’t know the shadows of this place yet, the hum of the fridge is new, she’ll have to change the curtains, tomorrow she can worry about that.
“It sounded important.”
“Maybe I’m supposed to meet them online?”
“That’s unheard of. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
She wants to scream of frustration, but she braces herself. She rolls her shoulders, looks at her shoes. Maybe she should go take a walk. Maybe that’s all there is to do. They can’t have been right. They were stupid kids. They were bullies. She has a soulmate.
They’re just a bit late.
That’s unheard of, too.
“Look, I’m heading out. I’ll come by tomorrow.”
She hangs up without waiting for an answer. She knows he won’t be mad at her. When he meets his soulmate, too, she’ll accept anything from him. They can let go when they’re together. She takes her cup of coffee, decided to finish it even though it disgusts her a bit.
But it’s hot.
Not, like, warm. It burns her tongue, she gulps awkwardly, trying to contain her surprise. It was cold minutes ago. Which is normal. She brew the coffee an hour ago, it couldn’t be hot.
“Don’t go out.”
The voice comes from behind her. For all she knows, behind her, there are empty walls and a large window. Her sleeping bag and computer. Is her soulmate breaking and entering? Well, not breaking, she might have left the window open.
“Don’t go out.”
But the voice sounds… wrong, and as it says the same exact words again, in the same exact tone, she just wants to leave as soon as possible. She doesn’t want to look back. She’s curious. But something’s off. She takes a careful step towards the door. Nothing happens. Another one. Quicker, and another one, another one, and when her hand in on the handle she turns around.
Her window is closed, and she sees no one. She might have drank too much coffee. Lots of stress, plus the heat and… that could be a hallucination. Fuck, her grandmother is schizophrenic, are those the early signs? Isn’t she too young for that?
“Don’t go out.”
The exact same words. The exact same tone. But this time, it sounds closer. Like someone’s whispering in her ear. She turns the handle. But it doesn’t move. The door won’t open. And the voice talks again.
“Please. I won’t hurt you.”
Blind terror runs through her veins as she looks around, panicked, not letting go of the handle. Why won’t it move?
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“What the fuck? Where are you?”
“I’m right here. I’m holding your hand.”
And she looks at her hands, but both are free from any contact.
“Liar.”
“Just concentrate. Patience yields focus.”
She stares at her hands harder, and then looks around. She takes out her phone, but nothing is open. The voice doesn’t come from here. “What. The. Fuck.” She has said that already. She probably should go to the hospital. She really, really doesn’t want this to be a psychotic episode. She really doesn’t want to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Not so young.
“Look at your hands, harder. I promise.”
She shouldn’t listen to that voice. It’s a common mental health thing, she thinks, to not listen to the weird voice in your head, but she is so certain that the voice is somewhere else, close but not… not quite… and it promised. So she looks harder. The voice says to picture hands over hers, and she does. And they appear. Slowly. They’re translucent and off-white, nails painted black, and her eyes grow wider.
“What is this?”
“Well, those are my hands. I’m sorry.”
The hands move away from hers, come to rest near a translucent thigh. A translucent hip, translucent jeans, translucent shirt, and collar bones prominent under a translucent skin. Her gaze is reluctant to go above that.
“I’m sorry”, the voice says again, and she thinks she shouldn’t call it “the voice” because it is now visibly something more, it has a semblant of a body, and probably eyes, too. It probably shouldn’t be called a “it”, either. “You… you can still hear me, right?”
“Yes.” She sighs. “Yes, I can hear you. What are you?”
She still doesn’t look its eyes, and the thing extends its arm, the translucent skin now just below her nose. In faded ink, you can read today’s date. Her eyes grow wider. This can’t be true. This is unheard of, too. Even more unheard of than an online soulmate meeting. Even more unheard of than a late soulmate. Is there any way, she thinks, that this could be a prank?
She looks at its face. She can see the bones through the pale hue of the skin. The nose is sharp, and the lips are dry. Its eyes are two, mesmerizing holes. They seem liquid. Like petrol on the sea, dark, and deep and blue and black and purple, she can’t look away. Even when she wants to, even when holding its gaze feels like it’s turning her into stone, she can’t, and it… it smiles to her.
For a moment, the darkness of its eyes seems to swallow her whole. But maybe it’s just her passing out.
She has no idea what drowning feels like. But she can’t breathe. There is something heavy and liquid in her throat, in her lungs, the remnants of a bad dream and she coughs as she is abruptly thrown into consciousness.
The room is filles with sunlight, and the rays, as they come through the window, burn her skin. She quickly moves away from them, looks around.
She’s atop her sleeping bag. Her mug of coffee lies just beside her, near her laptop. The remains of last night’s meal are a bit further, near her future kitchenette. It’s tomorrow.
It’s the morrow of the day she was supposed to meet her soulmate, and she lays alone in an empty appartement, a cruel sun burning the floor and blinding her.
She breathes heavily, her throat feels sore, and tights, and she grips at her sleeping bag with all her strength, looking around desperately.
Crying first thing in the morning is never a good feeling.
But. They were right. She’s alone. And knowing Matt is just a call away isn’t enough of a reassurance as of now. It feels like her chest is being torn apart, and damn, her neighbors will hate her for crying so loudly, so early in the morning, she can taste her tears and her snot and every single thing hurts. She has to let it out, she thinks, and then she’ll bee free, but the utter grief and loneliness doesn’t seem to come closer to an end, no matter how long she cries. It’s an endless void, a blackhole, cold and blurry like a nightmare you don’t want to remember.
It’s sharp like a blade between her lungs, except it’s everywhere, and she had no idea how much all of this stressed her before now.
She feels disappointed. And betrayed. And alone.
Does she really have to go through this?
Can’t she be like everyone else, for once?
She breathes and she feels and she likes peanut butter and green plushies.
She’s just a normal person, this was supposed to work.
This was.
This was the only certain thing, this and death.
When you’re brought into this world, you know two things. One day you’ll leave it, in a coffin or in ashes, but before that, you will meet someone that will change everything.
A friend or a platonic partner or a lover, someone that believes in you or that has the power to ruin everything, just.
Just someone.
She would have settled for a dog. A pigeon that would have flown through the window. She would have found it weird and upon examination, discovered a tattoo just like hers in their skin and felt blessed because she would have had someone.
“I’m sorry.”
She’s heard that before. It’s a voice from her dreams, she thinks, those nightmares that plagues her night, that put a thousand needles in her throat, that almost killed her in her sleep. It’s scary and abnormal and she starts hard to stop crying, but she can’t.
Then it’s warm on her back and her head jolts up, and it’s here.
Eyes like a marée noire, ghostly skin and this absurd smile.
“What… no, no.”
She can’t process it. The warmth leaves for a moment, and something shifts in her mind. She can’t process it, but she can accept it. Accept that this is just absurd. She gets up instantly, walks past the silhouette and to her kitchenette. She downs a glass of water, hoping to drown the headache coming in. She fills the coffee pot, closes it, puts it on the stove. Turns back to the thing.
“Are you my soulmate?”
“Yes.”
She nods slowly. She gulps.
“And what the fuck are you, except sorry?”
“I’m dead.”
She clenches her jaw. She can’t believe it. But this thing’s feet aren’t touching the ground, it’s floating and pale.
“OK. My soulmate’s a ghost. Fucking great. Do you know I don’t even believe in ghost? That my family doesn’t believe in the paranormal?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You said that already.”
She has many questions, now, but all of them can wait for the coffee to be done. She’s sweaty and disgusting from crying so much, so she grabs last day’s clothes and head to the bathroom, washing her face and changing quickly. When she comes back to the main room, it smells like coffee and she turns off the stove to pour herself a mug and sits on the counter to drink it.
“Now, tell me something I don’t know.”
“Um. My name is Keith?”
She opens her mouth, ready to say that she doesn’t care about that, but she contains herself and takes a sip of her coffee.
“You’re Katie, right? This is what Allura called you.”
“Call me Pidge. You know Allura?”
“Well I… see her. I guess. We, uh, talk sometimes?”
Pidge nods. So the landlady knew about this Keith ghost guy. And if she knows about the ghost’s soulmate tattoo, she probably guessed Pidge was the Lucky One.
“Are there others like you?”
“I… don’t know. I died here, so I can’t exactly leave.”
She wonders how many times he tried, to look so tired saying that. Now that she looks closer, she can see his clothes look old. Maybe he’s been dead for a long time. Or maybe he’s just into vintage fashion.
“How?”
Also, he ruled out the possibility of kicking him out. If he can’t leave when he wants to, he surely can’t leave against his will.
He frowns without answering, and she sighs. “How long have you been dead?” she asks instead.
“A bit more than a year. I’d be twenty by now.”
She nods, acknowledging the new information. He had been eighteen. That’s young to die. She looks at him again. It would be hard to tell how old he looks, with all the translucent skin thing and the obvious death painted over his features, but she feels a bit sorry for him. So she turns around, looking at the sink were two glasses lay.
“Do you want coffee? Well, can you drink coffee?”
“Not really.”
She sighs, defeated. If he can’t drink coffee, he probably can’t eat anything either. It’s not like she would have had much to offer anyway. She tries to remember every thing she read or saw about ghosts. She comes up with nothing useful. She tries:
“Is there any way you feed?”
“No.”
Something in the way he says it feels wrong, but she lets it go, and instead, takes her keys and leaves without saying goodbye. She needs a long, long walk.
She has a real mattress now.
A mattress, a micro-wave, an oven, most her clothes, her school stuff, some movie posters that make the room livelier. But knowing what she knows, it still looks mostly dead.
It’s been a week, and she managed to avoid the topic of soulmates with her family. Or, more accurately, she managed to avoid her family.
She had to talk to them a bit while gathering her stuff and driving to her new appartement in her mother’s car, of course, but she kept the conversation on down to earth matters like grocery shopping, putting internet inside her appartement, the administrative part of college…
She doesn’t want to lie to them.
But there is no way she can explain.
They asked if they could come over.
She said her appartement was too much of a mess for now.
They all believed her, of course, and her appartement is indeed a mess, but they also know her too well to trust this is the reason she doesn’t want them in her new home.
They were perplexed at first, but now they seem straight-up concerned, mostly sending her texts inquiring about her well-being. Matt has tried calling too, but she didn’t answer, and he didn’t insist.
If this is the way Keith is supposed to change her life, it sucks.
Plus, Keith is dead. She knows for a fact she can’t change his life.
“Hey, I’m home.”
Having a roommate is part of the college experience, though, and she puts the grocery bags on the counter. She learned that Keith can’t touch objects, but he still feels things in a way. He likes the way coffee smells in the morning, she notices, and sitting on the railing of the window. She wonders if he really sits or if he just pretends to, considering he doesn’t have a physical weight, but she hasn’t ask yet.
First things first, as they say, and she guesses first things, right now, is learning how to live together. Well, living together is a strong word.
He is indeed “sitting” by the window right now, and barely acknowledges her. It’s not the first time he does that, and she doesn’t mind much. It gives her the impression she’s alone, and that’s a relief.
She can still sense his presence, though. He told her he doesn’t sleep.
And he can’t leave the appartement. So whenever she sleeps, he’s around. She doubts he is the kind to watch her in a creepy way, but the thought makes her uneasy nonetheless. She knows he can’t help it, so she doesn’t bring it up.
She puts the vegetables she purchased in the fridge, even though she has no idea how to cook them. Internet is here for something, right? Plus she wanted to feel like a proper adult. If she doesn’t learn how to cook she won’t survive.
“Do you have any idea what your unfinished business is?”
She micro-waves her coffee, sitting on the counter. This time, he acknowledges her.
“What?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. You know, soulmates are supposed to be people that change your life, right?” she turns off the beeping of the micro-wave with her toes, too lazy to pick her coffee right now. “Well you’re a ghost. And most times, ghosts are ghosts because they couldn’t go through with something. Like, someone you didn’t say goodbye to, or, revenge on the person that murdered you.”
“I wasn’t murdered!”
“Well you get moody every time I bring up your death; I can’t rule out anything.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She sighs, and this time she gets her mug from the micro-wave. It’s a bit too hot. She blows stream off the mug, taking a hesitant sip that burns her tongue. He gets off the railing, starting to float around the place.
“Did you live here?”
“No.”
He doesn’t look like he’s about to elaborate, so she jumps off the counter, walking towards him. He walks through her. She told him she hated it. First, because it’s weird, and second, because contrary to what she would have thought, he isn’t cold. He’s warm in general, and he gets burning hot when he’s angry. When he walks through her like that, she feels her blood boiling.
“I can’t help you if you don’t help me.”
“Well maybe I don’t want to be helped.”
“And maybe I don’t want to live with a ghost forever.”
“Bad news, that’s the future you’re looking at right now.”
She looks him dead in the eyes, and here it is again. This uneasy feeling, the impression she will drown in his eyes. It’s disgusting. She huffs, shaking her head before walking away to open her computer.
“Well, I won’t be living here forever. One day I’ll move out, and I won’t be able to come back here ever again, and you’ll be stuck. I’m looking at a year or two, you’re looking at all fucking eternity.”
He doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t try to start the conversation over. When she eats dinner while watching a show on her computer, she can feel how hard he wants to join. But he stays hidden in the shadows, so well she almost can’t see him.
“Proud brat,” she mutters, and she knows he can hear her.
Two days pass like that, and the shared silence she previously thought of as unsettling but bearable grows heavier with each passing minute. She can feel that he listens to everything she does, whatever it is, whether she is trying to code or to read, to cook or to go through Voltron blogs to find the perfect fanfiction to read, she is deeply aware of his presence.
And of course it bothers her. Because, of course, it is harder to focus. Reading is mostly okay, but she’s making rookie mistakes when she works on a program she usually would code with her eyes closed, and most of what she tries to cook ends up burnt. By the end of the second day, she’s tired of eating overcooked pastas with vegetables that taste like dirt and ashes, so she settles for a bowl of cereal instead. That counts as dinner, still, and that’s quick enough to eat that she can hope she’ll go to bed early.
Last sunday night before classes start, and she finds herself restless, constantly fidgeting. She hoped a Mamoru Hosada movie would be enough to calm her down and lull her to sleep, but oh boy she was wrong.
It’s two in the morning, her alarm is due to ring in six hours, and she can’t find it in her to close her laptop. She’s been scrolling through tumblr, watching videos, basically she just let herself get lost in the comforting depth of the internet, and she knows she won’t stop before she passes out.
She doesn’t consider herself an insomniac. Sleep mostly comes easy to her. Of course, she has to find a thousand thoughts of things she could do whenever she closes her eyes, but those are reassuring thoughts. If she’s not too restless, she can just let them drift in her mind, let them drift away until sleep swallows her consciousness. But some nights, she finds that she doesn’t want to sleep.
It feels like a waste of time. Those hours of silence are precious and should be used to work. But on the other hand, she knows that she should be sleeping. So she can’t really start working. So instead, she spends hours distracting herself from this dilemma, effectively losing time to not have to think about how she should spend it.
And tonight is one of those nights.
She doesn’t expect to hear something coming from the bathroom. It’s faint but clear, it sounds like crystal, like broken glass, but it’s unmistakably a voice. She can’t quite make out the words, and it doesn’t sound like English at all. French, she would say? It’s a bit raspy and flat.
But maybe those aren’t even words. She closes her eyes to listen more intently, keeping her breath as silent as she can. It’s a sweet melody, a simple tune and she really wishes she could understand. She tries to recognize words, some are similar to Italian, but it’s so low and devoid of intonations.
She doesn’t realize it lulls her to sleep before the sun is peaking through the newly installed curtains and her alarm is waking her up violently.
Somehow, the melody is stuck in her head. She almost breaks the silence between Keith and her out of curiosity, but instead, she starts to hum while making coffee. If she is always aware of his presence in the room, she can feel it clearer than ever. His full attention is on her as she hums his little tune, her voice mixed with the sound of the coffee pot over the stove.
She hums all through her breakfast, doesn’t stop when she gets dressed, and when she closes the door behind her, she can feel his empty black eyes on her back. And she finds that she likes that feeling.
.
She’s hearing it again.
Coming from inside her appartement, and she doesn’t want to get inside. She knows he’ll probably stop singing if he hears her. It’s louder than the night before, and this time, she can pick up some words.
Today, she asked if there were any seats left in French 101, for extra credit. She’ll have an answer by tomorrow. When the tune comes to an end, she unlocks the door. And she starts humming. And he looks at her. She likes when things are predictable. Not all the time, but this. This is nice. Doing something knowing she’ll get his attention. She drops her bag in the corridor, comes into the main room, and fixes herself a drink and something to eat, never stopping to hum.
He stands still, like a hunting dog waiting to strike, and she easily finds his eyes. He’s unmoving, dead, and yet his eyes seem brighter now. Still scary and dangerous, but brighter.
“It wasn’t fair to ask about your death,” she says, and she warms up coffee, taking the bottle of milk out of the fridge. She hopes he likes how it smells, too. “But if you stop being a moody ghost, you can pick tonight’s movie.”
He makes a move towards her, like taking a step except his legs don’t move. His arms are crossed. He frowns, defensive. “What are you up to?”
She squints at him for a sec, shrugs. “Well, I’m not going anywhere and neither are you. You can’t exactly watch a movie on your own, can you?”
“No.”
“Right. So your choices are talking to me or floating around without doing anything. If I were you, I’d have gone crazy.”
“Well you’re not me.”
She rolls her eyes at the obvious aggression in his tone, deciding to ignore it. He died at eighteen, she can try to be the bigger person. She’s only nineteen, but she’s alive and if she got her fair share of traumatic events in the last few years, dying isn’t on that list.
“No, I’m not. Which means I can touch my computer and search for a movie you could watch, so you don’t die of boredom over and over.”
He stays quiet for a while, going back to his corner, and Pidge thinks she lost that fight. If her soulmate wants to stay a depressed ghost, so be it. She just wished his darkness didn’t stain the walls like it did.
She sips her coffee while going through the papers she gathered today, color-coding her schedule and sharing it from her laptop to her phone. She makes a list of the books she’d have to buy this week. She has a two-hours break on Wednesdays, that should be a good time to go furniture shopping. Almost three hours have passed when she’s done sorting everything out, and he just says:
“Heathers.”
She freezes, looking at him. He’s sitting on the railing. She nods, searching for a torrent of the movie.
When you’re a ghost, Netflix asking you if you’re still here can be cruel.
And not being able to do anything except warm things up gets frustrating.
It’s not even like he could produce fire or something. Well, he doesn’t know what he would do with a ball of fire either. Make the only place he can inhabit go up in flames? This may be his only way to die for good, but it doesn’t seem like a good idea still.
Plus, Pidge has all her stuff here. She would be pissed. And probably sad.
Keith never gave much importance to material possessions, but they seem to be a great part of who Pidge is. She can talk about every little thing in her appartement for hours, where she got it, why she keeps it, how long she lost it, who it reminds her of… and, a bit despite himself, he listens. It’s better than being deaf, he thinks. At least it is a little distracting.
She recently put up a postcard on the wall. It’s a black and white photograph, a street at night. She said when she saw it, it made her think of him. And he likes it. He would never have bought something like this. It’s not useful, so it doesn’t belong in his appartement. Well. He doesn’t really have a home anymore. He guesses his room is now hosting someone new, a kid that might be just like him.
They probably threw all his stuff away. Like he said, he didn’t have much. Basic clothes, black. Cigarettes, a collection of lighters he forgot to throw away, his mother’s knife. He wonders if they threw it away. If they sold it. Or if they kept it.
Keith hid it well, and somewhere in his mind, he hopes they didn’t even find it. Maybe it’s still there, hidden in the vents, waiting for a new kid to find it.
It was his, and now it’s… gone. He’s gone. It is something he left behind, just like it used to be something his mother left behind.
Maybe he should ask if Pidge could retrieve it for him? Break into the building, he’d have to explain how it works to her, but he thinks she’d be a great thief. She’s clever, and quick, and she can be silent when she wants to. Even though it’s not often.
But no. That’s not important enough. And that’s more information than she needs.
For the longest time, he thought it was her. His unfinished business. He thought he just had to meet her, and then he could die.
But September is coming to an end, and he hasn’t been put to rest yet.
He was stupid. He was so certain nothing could kill him, as long as he hadn’t met his soulmate. A date in his skin. Until then, whatever happened, he wasn’t supposed to die. He guesses he was wrong. He should have done some more research. But, well, he never was the patient kind.
What he wanted, he wanted fast.
And what he wanted, he never got.
“I always wanted to have a dog.”
They’ve been roommates for over two months now, and it’s still rare he shares anything too personal. She learned about him, of course.
First, she learned about his taste his movie, which was rather unsurprising. Dark comedies, fantasy, horror… Movies about ghosts had both of them laughing awkwardly, too. She doesn’t have enough resource to make real conclusions about ghosts, with only one specimen, but still. She feels just a bit… superior, now, and she guesses he does too.
She learned that when he was alive, he spent most his time outside, too. He never said if he had troubles at home or just friends outside, but this piece of information is important on its own. It must feel awful, being confined in such a narrow place when you’re used to the city being your home.
Nothing much she can do about it, though, except collecting pictures of the streets and hanging them on the walls and on the fridge.
But still. It’s rare he spontaneously gives her information, and she puts down her picture of Bae-Bae to look at him. Maybe he’ll elaborate. She waits for a minute, but he just stares at the picture.
“Do you… think you’d want to meet Bae-Bae?”
He jumps a bit, visibly not expecting her to talk again. “What?”
“My dog. Bae-Bae. I could bring her here. I’d take a long walk with her before so she’s not too excited to stay in a small place for a while. I don’t know, if I can see you, maybe she can, too?”
Keith grimaces, but he doesn’t answer. From what she has learned, he isn’t the type of person that goes out of his way to please people. At least, to please her. She doubts he’d hesitate to tell her off if he really didn’t want to meet Bae-Bae. But she can’t just decide in his place. So she asks again:
“Would you like that?”
He pinches his lips, and she wonders how much he feels his own body. He squints at the picture, nods slowly. She smiles, moves to bump his shoulder but goes through him instead, falling into her mattress. Right. Ghost stuff. She laughs nonetheless. “It’s settled then.”
Bae-Bae likes him, and it’s the most peaceful Pidge has ever seen Keith. He sits next to the dog, his hand ghosting over her fur, mimicking a caress ha cannot provide. But Bae-Bae relishes into the warmth, like it’s enough.
Of course, he could never feed her, or throw her a ball. But if he could find away to get out of this place, he could run alongside her, he could laugh with her, give her warmth and kindness and yes. It could be enough.
That’s her soulmate, Pidge thinks. And she’s been spending months wondering how to get rid of him, how to get him to die for good.
She never wondered if it would be okay for him to stay.
A thorn of guilt pierces her heart.
Arms holding her close, the scent of someone else, a breath on her skin.
God, she didn’t realize she missed that.
Touching someone. Someone with skin and bones and flesh and blood. Someone alive.
She almost cries in Matt’s arms. No, she thinks. She didn’t even realize how touch-starved she was. She didn’t feel lonely exactly, because Keith is always here. And she tried to make it so that he would be enough for her. So that she could imagine living the rest of her life with him.
And she likes him. He is kind in his own way, and he notices little things, he pays attention, he’s caring and a very good person to argue with.
But, she realizes, no matter how hard she tries, this won’t ever be enough for her.
“I missed you, sis.”
She hugs him tighter before letting him go. They talked on the phone, sure, with the promise to never bring up the subject of soulmates, but she has not touched him for months, and that’s more than she ever went without seeing him, apart from that time.
“I missed you too.”
Keith had assured him that other humans can’t see him, most of the time. Allura can, but she apparently has a thing with magic and paranormal stuff. Last year, another student was renting this place, and they never noticed Keith’s presence. He said he stayed hidden most the time, keeping his eyes closed and pretending to sleep. But even when he got upset and started throwing a tantrum, the tenant didn’t notice. They only opened the window, for the appartement was suddenly so hot.
Pidge still feels a bit uneasy as she lets Matt in, looking at Keith sitting on the railing, his legs half outside, half inside, going through the window like it isn’t even there. He avoids her eyes and she smiles, thankful.
“It’s not as messy as I thought it would be. I’m disappointed, I wanted to take pictures.”
She shrugs. Of course, she can’t tell him that a little voice over her shoulder gets angry when she doesn’t clean up, and once threatened to burn her stuff. She’s not even sure he can do that.
“I’m becoming a proper adult.”
“Your fridge is full of caprisuns.”
She growls a little, before taking him on a mini-tour. There isn’t much to see, but she likes how she arranged the place. It’s comfortable, and he spends a lot of time looking at the pictures on the wall. He asks if it’s a new hyperfixation or something, and if she wants to go to the flea market Sunday to see if they find some others.
He brought her stuff, obviously. A new green plushie, something she can bite, a picture of the both of them on her tenth birthday, and a plant. Of course their mother made him bring her a plant. At least it’s a cactus.
When he leaves, she almost forgot Keith was there. He appears from the shadows beneath the counter, and she jumps.
“You look close.”
She nods.
“We are.” She bites her lower lip, before remembering her brother especially brought her a new toy for that. She bites it instead, it feels nice against her teeth. Fulfilling. “Do you… hmpf, did you have any siblings?”
He crosses his arms, but his eyes stay open as he floats towards the window. Go, he looks like a tiger in a cage. “Not exactly,” he mutters.
“What does that mean?”
When his face turns back towards her, his all being is closed, out of reach. He seems even more dead than usual.
“It means it’s private.”
She want to make a remark about how her conversation with her brother was private, too, but she knows how inappropriate that would be. So she chews on her new toy harder. They’re watching Alien tonight, and she decides Keith will have no say in that.
Weeks speed by like days, and soon, the trees are free from leaves, the night is everywhere and Pidge hears it might be snowing next week. She doesn’t really have time to think about it though, as her first exams are approaching and she spends most waking hours working on them.
And maybe a few pet projects.
But she needs that to stay focused.
Keith, on the other hand, grows more restless every passing day. If she’s not using her computer, she’ll leave it to him so he can watch something, but she knows this isn’t nearly enough. He paces back and forth so hard she’s certain she can hear him, even though he just floats a feet above ground.
“You should take a break.”
He says that often, too, and she barely shrugs to tell him off. She adjusts the blankets over her shoulders, making a mental note to call Allura in the morning. Her heater stopped working earlier today, and the chilly air of December is poisoning the room. She made tea, but her throat still feels tight.
“It’s late to be working.”
“Look, if you’re bored I can put on music or an audiobook, but I really don’t have time for you right now.”
“What?”
“I’ll be available to hang out in ten days,” she says without raising her eyes from her screen, “you can hang on for that long.”
“You think this is about me?”
“What?”
He doesn’t make sense, and seriously, why did she take French again? Oh, yeah, because of him. She takes a sip from her tea. She should buy honey. She adds it to her mental list for tomorrow, even though she knows she’ll have forgotten by then.
“You look like hell. You haven’t slept a full night for a week.”
“Welcome to college.”
She stops. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to say. Maybe, if he had lived just a bit longer, he would’ve gone to college too. Maybe she would have met him there. Well, no, since their date was in the summer but… maybe they would have had a magical encounter in the streets, but they would have been too busy to talk. They would have forgotten to exchange numbers and she would have been fucking restless until he would have magically appeared on the college campus. He would have been sitting on the third floor balcony, smoking a cigarette, a coffee in his hand, and she would have been so fucking glad to find him.
She looks at him, but he doesn’t look upset. Just… mildly concerned. His gaze is on her, heavy and dark and she has to shake her head. It’s been long since it was this uneasy.
“Look, I don’t know what to tell you, Keith. Just… Leave me alone for a while.”
She doesn’t look at him. She guesses, somehow, that he must look hurt or something, but she doesn’t have the time to deal with it.
Coffee gets her through the exams, and when the adrenaline wears off, her body gives in.
She forgot to call Allura or the real estate agency about the heaters, she didn’t buy an electric one, and of fucking course she didn’t rest enough to stay healthy.
She’s coming home for Christmas in two days, but for now she can’t even get out of bed. The world is blurry.
She’s freezing cold, even under the covers. Turns out, people were right. It started snowing. And it didn’t stop. Now everything is cold and humid, and sur, the city is white and pretty but Pidge wish she didn’t get her feet wet yesterday.
“I told you so.”
She groans, shifting under the covers to find a position that doesn’t make her neck ache so much. That’s the last thing she needs to hear.
“Fuck off…”
Keith looks at the kitchenette, a bit helpless. He wishes he could make soup or something. Tea. Hot cocoa. Or get out to buy paracetamol. But he can just watch her toss and turn, unable to sleep or to stay fully awake.
“If you admit you were wrong, I can warm the place up.”
“Keith… Bad. Bad soulmate.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
She groans again. She mumbles something. He choses it means she was wrong, and soon, the appartement is warmer.
She’ll pester him later about not doing this sooner.
She feels a bit bad. He acted as a personal heater for two days, and now that she’s better, she’s leaving him alone. Christmas, alone. If he wasn’t depressed enough, that would do the trick.
“Is there anything I can bring you?”
She stays in the doorway, while he floats in the air. He’s higher than usual, close to the ceiling.
“Christmas tea.”
“You like Christmas tea?”
“Shiro always drank that. The one from Mariage Frères, with cinnamon and almonds.”
“Shiro?”
He smiles mysteriously, and before she can ask more questions, he says:
“My sort of brother.”
And the door closes on its own.
Shiro. That’s a name she already heard before.
Not in the best of contexts, too. He disappeared along with Matt and her father, four years ago. She’s pretty certain it couldn’t be the same Shiro they are talking about. After all, his full name is Takashi Shirogane, she’s not even sure his family calls him Shiro. Adam calls him Takashi.
But Keith is her soulmate.
And soulmates are literally meant to be.
Maybe Life has back-up plans. Maybe the way she met Keith wasn’t predestined. Maybe there were a hundred ways she could have met him that day, be it on the streets, if she had had a job, or, through Shiro and Matt.
The thoughts twirl in her mind as she tries to think of ways to find out. Facebook would be the easier option. She doesn’t think Shiro has an account though, she heard he deleted it when he got back. Too many “Rest In Peace” on his wall. That would creep anyone out.
Through Adam, maybe? They were engaged even before Kerberos, right?
“We can invite them, if you like.”
“What?”
Samuel Holt is looking at her, and she snaps out of her thoughts, looking at dinner.
“You were muttering about Shiro. It’s been a while since we last saw him and Adam. Honey, do you think we could invite them tomorrow?”
Colleen rolls her eyes, and then it’s settled.
Pidge can’t think about anything else for the whole night, nor the whole morning. It has been decided that they would come over for tea, and that reminded her she needed to do some shopping. When she gets back home, a shopping bag from Mariage Frères in her hands, Shiro and Adam are taking off their coats. It seems she isn’t too late.
She greets them vaguely, joining her father in the kitchen to ask if the tea was done already. She put out the metal box out of her bag, making Samuel frown.
“Since when do you buy Christmas tea?”
“It just… smelled good. I love things that smell good.”
He smiles fondly, agreeing to brew that tea, saying it smells oddly familiar. When they go back with the trail, tea pot and fancy cups and shortcakes, she waits for a reaction. Anything.
And when Shiro smiles at his cup, she deems it enough evidence to make all her theories plausible. Too plausible to not ask. But she can’t exactly ask, “Hey, do you have a dead almost-brother named Keith?” and she can’t find a way to bring up the topic subtly. This is more Matt’s strong suit, and maybe he could help, if he only knew what was going on.
God, her family always told her that being so private and secretive would bite her in the ass someday. Well, they said “you should be more open, people won’t be able to help you if you don’t trust them with your problems”, but she got the message. And she hates that they were right.
Do you have a brother? Do you know a Keith? Are you wearing black cause you’re grieving the death of a close one? How’s you family situation? Do you believe in ghosts? What was supposed to happen on august the tenth this year? Did Keith ever mention his soulmark to you?
“Fuck, asking if you have a dead brother named Keith would be so much easier.”
A spoon falls on the table, and suddenly all eyes are on her. Nice. Nice, nice, nice.
“Fuck.”
“Language, young lady.”
That’s the first reaction she gets, and it’s not so bad. It’s not as bad as the pain in Shiro’s eyes, or the fury in Adam’s. Matt and Sam just look… baffled, and she guesses she would be to, if her brother were to blurt out something like that unprompted. Shiro takes a sharp inspiration, and now all eyes are on him. Maybe that’s her cue to leave and run away forever? But she can’t find it in her to break the silence. Something important is happening. She has no idea what she could do with that information, but she needs it.
Maybe this is Keith’s true unfinished business. Maybe he was trying to find Shiro, or waiting for him, maybe Keith needed to know that Shiro was safe and sound before dying for good. Maybe she just killed him. Maybe when she’ll go back to her appartement, she’ll tell him that Shiro is okay, grieving but alive and well enough, and Keith will disappear from her life forever.
She doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want Keith to be dead. She doesn’t—
“He isn’t dead…”
She swears she can hear an unspoken yet at the end of the sentence.
“What do you mean he’s not dead?”
“Pidge!”
She ignores her brother, focusing solely on Takashi Shirogane. She needs to hear more. She can bear Adam’s deadly glare for now.
“Did… someone tell you Keith died? Adam, did you tell people that?”
“No, I didn’t. I swear, I don’t know where she’s getting that from.”
“I’m confused. Who’s Keith?”
Attention turns on Colleen. She’s maybe the more composed of the group, even though perplexed. Shiro clears his throat, and Pidge swears she can feel how tight it is.
“He’s my… little brother. Well, not exactly. He lived in the military halfway house where I worked.”
“If he isn’t dead, what the hell is happening?”
Did someone take over his body? Another ghost? Does she have to go on a paranormal quest to get it back? She’s not trained for that.
“Why would you think he is dead?”
“Please, just answer my question.”
“He’s been in a coma for two years.”
Pidge nods. Maybe that means she’s supposed to unplug him? To help Shiro let go of him?
Or maybe. Maybe she can learn from Shiro. Maybe Keith will wake up. Maybe she can make that happen.
Fuck, she thinks. Keith is alive.
Keith has a heart that beats somewhere. Everything is just… misplaced.
“I gotta go.”
“Pidge! Pidge, where are you going?”
She ignores her family’s voices, storming out of the house. Fucking holiday bus schedule, she thinks, and if something is worth ruining herself taking a cab, it’s probably Keith. She’s almost screaming to the poor driver to go faster, so loudly he doesn’t even fight back.
She rushes out of the car as soon as it’s parked, climbing up the stairs with a stamina she never had before. Her keys tremble in her hands and when her door is finally open, she cries in relief.
“You’re here.”
He can’t go anywhere. She knows that. But he’s here. All ghost or spirit or whatever, his eyes unnaturally black and his mouth thin with concern.
“Pidge?”
She realizes she fell on his knees. Her legs are giving up, and of course Keith’s extended hand toward her can’t help her up, so she settles for the wall. She closes the door behind her, her whole body is shaking. She’s ecstatic.
“Five years ago, Takashi Shirogane, Matthew and Samuel Holt disappeared on a mission in Kerberos, Russia. I was fucking restless, Keith. The government said they were dead. I didn’t believe it. You didn’t believe it either.”
“What are you–”
“Keith, you died maybe a month before they resurfaced!”
She’s walking around like crazy, and she knows for a fact if she stops, she’ll fall on the ground. Every muscle in her body is tense, ready to give up.
“Well, you didn’t die. I don’t know what happened, Keith, but your body is still out there, fucking breathing!”
“I didn’t– Pidge, wait, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’re alive, in a coma, and maybe, maybe we can get you to wake up. Fuck, Keith. You’re alive.”
And that’s when she falls, right into her mattress, and everything is too filled with energy to really hurt. Keith has a look on his face she can’t make out, he mutters something in French, something about trying and deserving and she rolls to be on her side, to try to face him.
“Keith. Don’t go all emo right now. That’s good news.”
“Shiro is fine?”
“Yeah! Well, he lost his arm. And he probably has severe PTSD and… he’s trying. He’s trying hard to be fine.”
“He’d be better off without me.”
“I bet he’d disagree.”
“Why didn’t I die?”
“I don’t know. Because you hadn’t met me yet. Because Shiro was still missing. What’s with that face, did you want to die?”
“Yes.”
She opens her mouth to answer, bites her lips. That’s not as shocking as it should be.
“Well I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I’m…”
She gathers all her strength to sit up, back on the wall for support.
“Keith. If you want me to sneak into the hospital to unplug your life support, I will. Being trapped in a small appartement isn’t doing it for you, that much is obvious. So if that is your choice… that’s what will happen. Cause I’m your soulmate, and that’s kind of what I’m here for. This isn’t what I want, but as much as it hurts to admit, I don’t think this is about me. You’ve had two years to think, to see what you’re missing. And you can’t ignore that people care about you, that your brother wants you alive so bad he’s willing to keep you on life support for two years, do you know how hard that must be? That’s not something you do if you don’t think your life is better with someone. So. Two years ago, you wanted to die. Do you still want to?”
He takes a step back, away from her.
And she’s terrified. She should have told him that he didn’t have to make a decision now. They could wait. Think about this longer. She could try to convince him to live. Talk him out of death.
She doesn’t think she’s even seen him cry before.
“No.”
The room is burning hot, and she wishes she could hold his waist.
“I want to wake up.”
One day, she will do that. She’ll hold him by the waist as he sits on the railing smoking a cigarette, and she’ll ask him if he isn’t tired of defying death. For now, she can smile as widely as humanly possible.
“Then we’ll make it happen.”