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“If you could have one thing, what would it be?” Mayumi’s eyes bore into his as she asked.
Kokichi looked up from his slouched position, half-bored, half-tired in a way that couldn’t be fixed with something as simple as sleep. Besides, how do you even rest when you’re a ghost? Kokichi faked a sigh deep in his dead lungs and lolled his head back at an unnatural angle.
“Just one?” He shot back.
Mayumi put a hand on her hip and rolled her eyes; when she did this, she looked even more like the teenager who wanted to be seen as an adult. That kind of attitude, where someone postured to be above their peers, would usually grate on Kokichi. With Mayumi, however, he just found it amusing. Maybe because there was no one here for her to show off to. In this decrepit orphanage they had no choice but to call a home, there was not a single soul left besides their own. But this was just how they operated: a spider web of pretenses and fake acts.
Kokichi smiled over at her.
“I just had to ask!” He cheerily said. “I mean, how am I supposed to choose just one?”
“That’s a non-answer,” Mayumi flatly replied.
Kokichi hoisted himself up on the nearest table and kicked his feet in the air. He repeated the question under his breath a few times, hand to his chin.
“Ah, I know!” He snapped his fingers. “If I can only have one thing, then I’d say… I want everything.”
At Mayumi’s balking and general incredulity, Kokichi couldn’t help but giggle. He had to look away when his laugh got out of control at the mere sight of her. This was how he missed when Mayumi approached, then promptly pressed a knuckle to the top of his head. Kokichi fought to wrestle away, but her grip on him was unrelenting.
“That’s cheating, leader ,” she spoke the nickname with enough venom to make him wince.
Kokichi stuck his tongue out. “I said ‘everything’. That’s only one word, so there’s no way I’m cheating.” He held up one finger for Mayumi to see. “I can count up to this much, at least.”
“You should be able to count higher than that, actually,” she grumbled. Being the rude person she was, Mayumi took his hand and forcefully lowered his finger. “Don’t be so silly all the time.”
Kokichi wiggled the fingers in her grasp and winked. “Unfortunately for you, that’s my defining trait.”
*
He couldn’t understand the fascination people held for the dead. It really wasn’t as interesting once you experienced it yourself, and watching a group of unknown people stumble into the empty corridors of the orphanage while cowering and elbowing each other really didn’t make Kokichi feel too charitable towards the living.
It was only him and Himari today, and he had felt victorious over seeing her finally show herself, as she often preferred to stay hidden. A shy smile appeared on her face when she spoke, quiet enough that Kokichi almost didn’t hear her. The sound of footsteps cut her off mid-sentence, and Himari quickly dropped the relaxed expression at the sight of the three strangers. Kokichi clicked his tongue and made a shooing motion at her.
“Ugh, guess I’ll have to scare them away. I really don’t like playing the scary ghost, so you better be feeling grateful for my generosity,” he said. When Himari blinked owlishly at him, Kokichi sighed. “Just go hide for a bit, I’ll take care of it. You don’t need to go disappearing or anything, so don’t! You’re under strict leader’s orders, understood?”
Himari nodded and leaned closer to him. She cupped a hand around her mouth so her words carried, but it did little in amplifying the quiet tone of her voice. “I’ll leave it to you, leader.”
Kokichi watched her walk away with a hand on his hip. Once she dipped out of sight, he turned around. The group was close enough now that he could hear the trail of their conversation, but Kokichi didn’t bother absorbing the words.
“What now, huh?” Kokichi grumbled and stalked after them. It was easy not to make a sound, being a ghost and all. “You’d think a guy could get some peace and quiet around here after dying.”
Whoever said anything about death being peaceful was a goddamn liar .
Scaring others was boring business. A few ominous sounds here, a cold touch on the shoulder there. Suddenly they would be running without much work from Kokichi. It was almost amusing how easy it was to terrify the living, but it lost its appeal once Kokichi realized their reaction was always the same. Still, he did promise he’d get it done. If only his deceased caretaker could see him now—try and say he was a selfish brat again, old hag.
(She hadn’t been old, not really. Kokichi couldn’t remember much from when he was alive, but he did remember her carefully combed hair, the only thing in the orphanage that looked shiny and healthy.
He remembered wondering if that was where all the frequently-disappearing donation money went.)
Maybe it was time to change things up a bit. Kokichi remembered the times he had accidentally fallen through walls while distracted, how his companions disappeared entirely for periods of time—to rest? Take a break from seeing everyone else? He wasn’t sure, Kokichi had yet to prod them about it. He winced when a particularly loud squeak broke him out of his thoughts; then, the grimace changed into a smirk. No day like today to try out new things, right?
Once the three trespassers came to a pause, Kokichi sneaked behind them and reached out. He only touched their back at first, but with a bit of concentration, he was able to push his hand inside. Instead of going the whole way through, however, it hit something solid, and burning cold to the touch. Kokichi frowned as he wrapped his hand around it. That shouldn’t be an organ, right? That’d be gross. Besides… Kokichi peeked at the unchanging expression on the person’s face. Surely they’d be feeling it if Kokichi had somehow put a hand inside their heart or something. With that settled, Kokichi shrugged and pulled. Whatever it was, it came loose without a fight.
It also melted in his hands, but stayed firm enough so it didn’t seep through the cracks of his fingers. Kokichi rolled his hand around and the transparent liquid sparkled like jewels. It was easy to forget about the intruders with this new shiny mystery having quite literally dropped into his waiting palms. For good measure, Kokichi kicked the shin of one of them, hard enough to make them scream in fear and run for the exit, closely followed by their companions.
Kokichi swerved around. “Hey, Himari!”
Not even a full second later, Himari touched his arm, making Kokichi leap in fright. He held tighter to the liquid when it almost spilled over with the sudden movement.
“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?! I didn’t know you had such a mean streak in you.”
Himari tipped her head to the side, then motioned him to come closer. Kokichi shuffled over and offered her his ear.
“You’re not usually this much of a scaredy-cat,” she deadpanned.
The contrast between her voice and her words made Kokichi snort, though he was quick to cover it up with a pout. If he had the free hand for it, Kokichi would’ve pinched her for the insolence. He settled for sticking his tongue out at her instead.
Himari gently turned his head (and tongue) to the other side and leaned over to peer at what he was holding. She tried to dip a finger into it, but Kokichi held his palm above his head and narrowed his eyes.
“What did you find?” Himari asked innocently.
“Well, I don’t know , that’s why you can’t just touch it all willy-nilly.” Kokichi sniffed, then added, “Stupid.”
“But you’re touching it right now.”
“That’s because I’m special.”
They stared at each other. Himari just held her hands behind her back as she rocked on the balls of her feet. She shuffled closer. When Kokichi took a step back, she gave the tiniest of smiles, eyes expectant.
“Ugh, fine!” Kokichi dropped to the ground and sat cross-legged. He extended his arms towards Himari. “If something bad happens, you’re the one who’s going to explain it to Mayumi. I already have to deal with her enough as it is.”
Himari didn’t even nod in acknowledgement, two fingers already dipped into the liquid. She stirred it around and watched how it moved in slow circles. When no change presented itself, Himari raised her hand to eye level to stare at it. Carefully, she gave it a delicate sniff.
Kokichi huffed and moved to get a closer look himself, thinking that maybe it’d be different now that someone else had touched it, shoulder brushing against Himari’s.
His train of thought was interrupted by a shrill scream.
He jumped so far he got caught in one of the cracks in the ground. He blinked up at the ceiling. Only when he looked back at Himari, who was covering her mouth with both hands and half-hiding the bright color of her face, did Kokichi realize the scream had come from her.
“I didn’t know you even had that kind of voice in you, where were you hiding it?!” Kokichi patted his clothes down as he sat up once again. The liquid he had been holding went flying in his surprise and got all over his clothes. “Ugh, gross.”
Himari lowered her head in shame. “I’m sorry,” she said—or rather, Kokichi chose to believe the mess of mumbled words that came from her mouth was an apology. After a moment, she took a peek at Kokichi to make sure he wasn’t hurt. “You’re also very jumpy,” she pointed out.
Kokichi narrowed his eyes. “And what are you trying to say, hm?”
“You usually aren’t.”
“Well, neither are you, but here we are,” Kokichi threw back without missing a beat.
They exchanged a look. Ooooh , right. Neither of them usually acted like this. Right now, the only different factor was the liquid Kokichi had stolen from that stranger. Hadn’t that person been particularly scared, standing out even among their frightened companions?
“Did I steal his fear?” Kokichi mused.
“Is that possible?” Himari asked with a frown of her own.
“We shouldn’t be able to exist either, so that’s not important. We need to focus on the facts.” Kokichi sprung to his feet. “I need to run some tests, tell the others I went out!”
Kokichi didn’t hear Himari’s response, nor did he look back at her, but somehow Kokichi knew she waved his way up until he disappeared through the door.
*
First, Kokichi went to Youta. He had a good head on his shoulders, and frankly was the only one out of their weird little group that still had all his screws in that brain of his.
“If you could choose a feeling to have as yours, what would you choose?” Kokichi asked, failing to take into account how much Youta could talk .
“That’s an intriguing question, and it begs further reflection on what makes an emotion,” he started. “Let’s choose happiness as our example. What does it mean to be ‘happy’? It could be satisfaction over a well done task, or content in times of peaceful quiet. Being loved generally makes us happy, but isn’t love an emotion itself?”
“Youta—”
“So, where does one emotion begin, and the other ends? The possibility of separating them is what intrigues me the most.”
“That’s not what I asked—”
“Would acquiring one come interlaced with many other emotions, causing a domino effect? If so—”
“I’m leaving.” Kokichi mumbled an excuse and ran away at record speed.
It was with exasperation that he realized he didn’t even get an answer to his question.
Refusing to lose enthusiasm now, Kokichi asked each member of his group, though the rest of them were just as uncooperative. All it got him was the desire to pull out his hair one by one, so this little interview would have to be redone at a later time when Kokichi could bully them into being relatively normal for five seconds.
(Tsubasa specifically hadn’t even looked up from where he was lying with his face to the ground.
“A nap,” he had answered, without missing a beat.
“That’s not a feeling.”
“It could be.”
Kokichi was this close to strangling him.)
Tired, Kokichi seeked out Mayumi as his last resort. Though she was often the most responsible one, she was also the kind to ask if he had hit his head whenever Kokichi came to her with this sort of question.
Warily, he slouched on the floor next to her. “So, what would you want?”
Mayumi looked up from the old book she had been reading. After a moment’s consideration, she shut the book, though one of her fingers remained at the page she had been reading.
“Is this some sort of retribution for what I asked the other day?”
Kokichi bounced one of his legs impatiently. “No! I didn’t even remember that anymore—” he did, actually, but it wasn’t important —“I’m asking because I might be able to do something about it. I mean, at least if it’s an emotion, and I can find the right person, and if I can get the timing right—”
“Okay, alright, slow down.” Mayumi pressed two fingers against her temple and released a long-suffering sigh. “I’m not even sure what you’re talking about—”
“Just hypothetically! You know, like when people ask what you’d do if you had a lot of money to spend or something.”
She put a firm hand on his bouncing leg so it was forced to stop. “I said calm down .”
Kokichi stared at the rings on her long fingers and pried one away for himself, with no resistance from Mayumi. He rolled it around his thumb and stared up at Mayumi, counting the seconds until she continued her sentence.
“And stop interrupting me.”
“I’m not.”
“Not anymore, you are not! Anyway.” Mayumi tapped her index finger on her chin long and hard. Kokichi imitated her and earned a glare for his troubles. “Just one?”
“To start with, yes. Make it simple.”
“I have no idea what you’re planning…” Though she sounded skeptical, Mayumi continued to ponder on the question. She played with the hoops of her earrings as she always did when she had something weighing on her mind. “If I could have any feeling in the world…”
She retreated her hands, but left her ring in Kokichi’s hand. She took a moment to gently blow Kokichi’s fringe away from his eyes before she stepped back. She didn’t look at Kokichi afterwards, eyes glued to the nearby window.
“The feeling you’re doing enough.”
Kokichi stilled. He looked down at the ring, too big on his bony fingers. He hummed quietly.
“That would be a hard one to track down,” he warned. Kokichi hoped Mayumi couldn’t hear the guilt in his voice.
She grinned at him. “Don’t I know that.”
Staring at the open way she smiled, Kokichi hopped down from his perch on the chair. He put the ring back in Mayumi’s hand.
“I’ll find it,” he promised her.
*
“Hey boss, I got you the stuff you needed,” Tsubasa announced.
It was the only warning he gave before setting a huge sack of glassware down on the ground. Kokichi winced when they clinked together. A bottle rolled out of the overflowing sack; it crashed with a bang, the delicate glass flying everywhere as it shattered. Tsubasa only gave it half a second of his attention.
“There you go,” he said.
Kokichi stared at the glass for a while. Well, someone would take care of it. Or they’d all collectively pretend it wasn’t there. What was a little more debris when you lived in an abandoned building?
“More importantly, it’s not boss , Tsubasa. It’s Joker. Joker!” Kokichi crossed his arms. “I thought we had made that clear.”
“We decided on codenames, like, two days ago,” Tsubasa replied. “I don’t hear you calling me Spades either.”
Kokichi tilted his head. “Oh, I didn’t? Silly me.”
Kokichi lost interest in that line of conversation quickly when he caught a glimmer at the corner of his eyes. He squatted next to the heavy sack to get a closer look at the contents and whistled at the masterfully crafted little bottles. The crystal lids on top were somehow even fancier than the rest of the bottles.
“These are pretty good! I didn’t think you’d actually go through with stealing all these. Maybe you all have the potential to be great criminals after all!”
“You did ask.”
Kokichi put a hand under his chin as he looked up at Tsubasa. “Is that really all it takes to get you guys to do something? Aren’t you eager to please.”
“Well, yes.”
Kokichi absentmindedly played with his hair. It would be so easy to manipulate these people. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he already knew this. With the way they gravitated towards Kokichi with attentive ears, hanging on his every word, it’d be impossible not to notice. But this was the first time Kokichi came face to face with the reality of that fact. He didn’t speak for a moment.
“We should start making plans, then,” Kokichi mused. “Picking a target should be time-consuming, but not that hard. The timing is our biggest problem. If we get it wrong, we might take the wrong emotion. Same if the target somehow realizes we’re there before we can finish. We’d just end up with another goo of fear. Which, by the way, is gross.”
He chewed on his thumbnail as scenarios spun through his head. “Is this even possible…?”
“Are you done?” Tsubasa asked as soon as Kokichi trailed off.
Finger still half in his mouth, Kokichi blinked at Tsukasa. “Huh?”
“I don’t like repeating myself, so pay attention,” Tsubasa instructed. “Megumi likes stalking people—”
“She prefers the term ‘people watching’, actually—”
“—so she knows a lot about the people in the nearest town. She wrote diagrams and everything, you should look at those later. Youta is good at, uh. Human relations or whatever. He came up with scenarios that would cause specific emotions, based on the information he got from Megumi. If we play our cards right, we could do this.” Tsubasa was about to add something, but he blew his bangs away from his left eye and slumped. “There’s more, but you can ask the others about it. Thinking about all the little details they came up with is giving me a headache already.”
Tsubasa handed him a notebook. Kokichi took it and absentmindedly thumbed through the pages. He recognized Megumi’s horrendous handwriting, illustrated with Himari’s childish sketches of faces he had never seen before. A few more pages in, and the chicken scratch was replaced by Youta’s elegant penmanship. Knowing his own handwriting was not much better than Megumi’s, Kokichi felt almost envious over the precise strokes.
“You guys sure acted quickly,” Kokichi commented, with a note of genuine awe in his voice.
“Well, yeah, you were looking all gloomy thinking of things on your own, so.” Yawning, Tsubasa shrugged and rubbed at his eye.
How he always looked so tired, Kokichi would never know. Did ghosts sleep after all and he just missed the memo?
Tsubasa perked up a bit as he remembered something. “Ah, right. Himari wanted me to tell you to cheer up, by the way. It sounded like an order.”
“Why didn’t she tell me herself?”
“She’s doing her disappearing thing.”
“Right.”
“Anyways, you heard the lady.”
Tsubasa waved lazily as he left, and Kokichi watched him go, notebook squeezed to his chest.
Easy to manipulate, indeed. But, then again — was he much better? Kokichi wondered, a grin that refused to disappear plastered to his face.
*
“I know we decided to do something easy for our first try, but really? This?” Kokichi stared at the two little figures drawn side by side with hearts surrounding them. “I don’t want to crash some stupid couple’s date! Which one of you even came up with this?”
Kokichi stared at his group one by one, but mostly they just looked bored. With the exception of Megumi, who was hiding her giggles behind her hand—badly, might he add.
“Well, there’s no point in going back now, might as well go for it,” Mayumi pointed out. Everyone else nodded their assent.
Kokichi sighed and crumpled the sheet into one of his pockets. Not like those drawings would do him any good anyway. Plus, it was an easy operation. Find the couple, stealthily take the emotion from one of them while they were busy staring into each other’s eyes or whatever, retreat and quickly put the goo in its flask. Easy peasy.
The whole scenario was so boring . Kokichi watched for a long time while they chatted animatedly with one another. At the end of their stroll, one of them plucked a wildflower and offered it to their date, eagerly putting it in their hair when it was accepted. That was the most basic, ridiculously mushy thing Kokichi had ever seen. Still, a job was a job.
It worked well in his favor that they were both facing away from him, so it was easy for Kokichi to stand behind them without being seen. Like before, his hand went in without resistance, through the back of the one with the flower in the hair. When Kokichi felt that familiar solid barrier, he grasped it and pulled it loose.
Hands cupped and quick on his feet, Kokichi left before they could tell the difference. He was quickly surrounded once he retreated and the goo (a faint yellow this time) was carefully transferred to its flask. Kokichi was lost in thought as he kept studying the residue left on his fingers.
Megumi, noticing this, was the first to deliver a kick to his ankle to get his attention. Kokichi bit down on a squeak and glared at her.
“What?”
“You’re quiet. Tell me what’s wrong,” she demanded.
Kokichi rubbed his fingers together and hummed. “I don’t think that was love. Or affection, or fondness, whatever you want to call it.”
Megumi stared at his fingers like she was considering trying it herself. “You messed up, then. You did a shitty job on your first attempt, it happens.” As an afterthought, she added, “Leader.”
Kokichi elbowed her in retaliation. “I didn’t mess up! We just didn’t predict things as well as we thought we did.” He remembered the perfectly cheerful smile on that person’s face as they received the flower, and smirked himself. “Oh, I get it.”
Under Megumi’s skeptical stare, Kokichi gesticulated with a flourish.
“It’s exasperation. Even though they looked like they were being all lovey-dovey. That’s sooo funny!”
Megumi’s eyes widened. “I’ll have to add that to my notes.”
“Stalker.”
“Shitty leader.”
It was a quick track home after that, the group talking loudly with each other as the flask was passed around and prodded at. Himari stuck by his side when Kokichi fell back to watch them all. She tugged on his sleeve to get his attention.
“Is this what you wanted?” She whispered close to his ear so she could be heard over all the racket.
Kokichi glanced from her to the rest of the group. Faintly, he could hear their suggestions for their next “heist”, talking over each other in their excitement. His gaze fell on Mayumi, who was scolding everyone without ever pausing—not that that stopped them, but Mayumi wasn’t deterred.
“Nope.” Kokichi clapped his hands behind his back and tipped his body forward, grinning at Himari. “We’re just getting started.”