Chapter Text
April
Thursday
File One
One benefit of being blind, I had found, is that the dark and gloomy days didn’t frighten me out of telling a good ghost story.
“And then the woman led the policeman through the dark hallways to the public restroom in the back…” I said, continuing my tale to my two friends, Keiko and Michiru. The rain pelting the windows helped set the mood, lending to an even creepier atmosphere than we generally got. The water outside let its scent drift in, and even the usual smell of freshly cleaned classroom became more sterile and damp. I couldn’t help but lean into the dreary tone, just a little. “Once there, the policeman told her to go back inside and wait to see if she could hear the voice again… and she did just as she was told.”
There were many ways to adapt to a world without sight. One such way was to just listen more. Along the way of learning to listen, though, I learned to change my own voice. Not much, really. But definitely enough to make my voice do creepy and weird things for a story.
Such as now. “Do you want me to cover you with a red coat?” I said, and by the slight gasp I heard, it worked.
I switched my tone to a more normal one, for the unfortunate hero of the story. “She answered. “Y… Yes…” And then! She screamed!”
Another gasp from Keiko, and the shuffle of clothes as they shuffled closer together, both entrenched into the story.
“The policeman burst through the door and found the girl totally covered in blood, as if she had a red coat draped over her,” I finished my story with a bit of a flourish.
Michiru gave out a mild whine, the exact one I was going for. She wouldn’t fully admit it, but I managed to get her at least a little spooked. “Mai, you know we hate it when you use that creepy voice.”
I smiled and hummed as an answer, and thumbed the flashlight’s switch to ‘off’, as the tenji dictated on the plastic. I could only just see a slight variation in the gray I saw, turning just a tad bit darker.
Like looking through a smoggy glass, my vision was rather poor. The most people ever really looked like ‘people’ was the shape. They were usually blurs of color, and corrective lenses only helped so much, with the small keyhole of sight even that afforded me shrinking each year. Right now, I could tell the difference between light and dark, and as blurry as everything was, I could usually at least guess what it was supposed to be… usually. It was getting worse, though. My doctor visit last week ended up with her strongly suggesting that I use my cane more than I usually did.
I was, admittedly, being stubborn on the subject.
It wasn’t all bad, and life went on regardless of vision loss. I could walk to school by myself, take care of the chores I had to do, complete my schoolwork… Sure, I was dependent on visual readers and magnification lenses, but I could still read a little. Slowly. Using a ridiculously high magnifier and a large font.
Rather than make me trudge through normal print outs, my school gave me assignments in tenji, and I wrote them in kind, and usually took tests in the audiovisual classroom we sat in now. I still had kanji lessons, but was given far more leniency with the assignments. As well, instead of meeting with a club four times a week and the occasional Saturday, I went to a sort of tutoring session after school. It was more of a time to just do my schoolwork with a teacher there in case I needed help, and wasn’t something I was required to attend if I didn’t have anything to work on. I wasn’t even the only student at these sessions.
So far, today had been just like any other. I hadn’t had any reason to stay with the tutors and, as it was just the start of our first year, Keiko and Michiru hadn’t yet joined a club. On days like this, we would stay just a little later to tell ghost stories. There was even a slight game to it, using our flashlights. Each time one of us finishes a story, we switch a light off. Once everyone’s light was off, there was supposed to be one more light left. Then, we would count off, listening to hear if an extra person would include themselves in our count.
That extra light, that extra voice? Supposedly, its a ghost.
I turned towards the last little bit of light I could see in the dim room. “I think that’s enough of a pause. Its your turn, Michiru.”
“Okay,” she began, taking a slight breath. “This one is about the old schoolhouse.”
“Do you mean that creepy old building down the street that’s collapsing?” Keiko asked. I knew the exact place, it was on my usual route to school. I always felt a bit off when I passed by it, like I couldn’t get my feet to land quite right on the ground, but it was an old building. Some of them were just… like that.
“Yep,” Michiru said, her tone serious. “It’s not collapsing, though. It was being demolished when all the workers suddenly quit. They say it’s because of a curse.”
… A curse?
“Lots of people have died in that schoolhouse over the years. Most famously, a teacher that committed suicide. So, when they decided to build the new school, the one we’re in now, they started to tear down the old one… but then the ceiling collapsed on some of the workers. The demolition ended that day.”
A ceiling collapse…
“Last year, they started the demolition again to make way for a new gymnasium, but a truck driving by lost control and crashed into a group of kids inside, killing some students.”
I gasped, as did Keiko. Killed?
“But there’s more,” Michiru continued. “I heard about this from an upperclassman. One night a student was walking past the old school. She was walking her dog, and just so happened to glance up at the school building. There, in one of the windows, she saw a glowing figure. It stared at her, she stared back. Then it just… vanished. Like it was never even there.”
I sucked in a quick breath. Michiru was good at suspense, and she always sounded so factual about it. It almost always convinced me the story was real, at least for a moment. That’s part of what made these sessions so fun. Michiru sounded factual, I sounded creepy, and Keiko always had the most creative stories.
Because of that, I couldn’t help but wonder—was it true?
Michiru lifted her flashlight. “Here goes…” It clicked off in her hand, leaving all of us in the dark. “One.”
“Two…” Keiko said.
I bit down on my nerves. “Three.”
… There, nothing, all of us spoke, and it was—
“Four.”
—not fine.
All three of us shrieked. My own cry was quickly cut off by Keiko latching onto me for dear life, nearly strangling me in the process. A chair screeched against the floor, and Michiru shouted something about ghosts and murder and murder-by-ghosts. I wondered for half a second if she was going to sacrifice Keiko and me to get away.
A click somehow interrupted the tension, the faint buzz of electricity following after, and the room was flooded with light.
Michiru sighed, almost in relief. “Oh please tell me that was you just now!”
The voice spoke again. “Am I interrupting?”
Keiko let go of me, apparently reassured now that the person had revealed themselves as probably not a ghost. No guarantees on the murderer part. I tried to focus through the blurriness at the shape in the doorway, but other than the fact this person was a little tall, all I really understood was that whoever it was seemed more like a shadow than a person.
Well, the lights did just suddenly come back on. It’d be a moment before I adjusted to the brightness level.
I rubbed my neck. Keiko certainly didn’t seem it, all sweet voice and twin tails, but she was strong.
Speaking of, Keiko gave her own sigh of relief. “I thought for sure it was the ghost!”
“Sorry,” Doorway Guy said, sounding just a bit amused. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here, but then I heard your voices and couldn’t help myself.”
I frowned. Even before my vision became worryingly bad, I had a good sense of where people were. Kind of like how, when opening an oven or walking into the hot outdoors, the heat felt like a physical press on the skin. Sometimes, objects had the same sort of feeling. Usually only sentimental or old things, and it was never very strong, but a sort of presence nonetheless. Not that there was really anything to it; people claimed all the time that some things develop a personality of their own, and its not like I was actually noticing something profound that no one else could. Everyone gets a sense of something being old and personable, I was hardly special.
People, though, always had some kind of presence. It wasn’t exactly a feeling, or a pressure, it was just sort of… well. Michiru, for example, felt kind of like the soft, crisp pages of an old book or dictionary, but also like the stiff hardback spines of textbooks. Similarly, Keiko was more soft, like a strawberry shortcake, but also the taste of hard metal from the fork when you took a bite. There was just some sort of atmosphere that people always had.
It was probably just how people could tell when they’re being watched, or that someone is behind them, and the association I gave to people was just that—an association, nothing really serious about it. I probably only felt it as strongly as I did because I used that ‘people sense’ a lot, navigating in a busy city like Tokyo.
This person, now that I took the moment to get out of my own head and focus, felt a bit different than most.
There was just… a lot, to the point I was surprised he snuck up on me at all. Some people were faint, and it usually took me a while to really register what an individual person felt like. Not so with this guy, at least for the first part. The best way I could describe it was when a person literally bit off more than they could chew, to the point where I couldn’t really discern any other association yet because of just how much it was right then. A sort of fullness that was hard to ignore. And something about that fullness was… not quite right.
Somehow, despite being sure that Keiko and Michiru should also be able to tell something was strange about this guy, they both started giggling and making their way over to him. “Oh no, it’s totally fine!” Keiko said, as if she hadn’t almost choked me out not thirty seconds before.
Unfortunately, I recognized the giggle. They both were prone to doing it when someone they called cute came by. For obvious reasons, my standards were a bit different, and I had a hard time relating—it was a good day when I could even tell half of my classmates apart without one of them speaking first. Keiko in particular was prone to fawning over whoever caught her eye.
I tuned back in to hear the question of what year he was in.
“I’m seventeen this year,” he answered, which… weird. Normally, someone would just say their grade, or that they were an upperclassman—our uniform ribbons and ties were color coded by year, and all three of us girls had Freshman Bright Red.
I squinted at his clothes. Sure enough, there were no colors at all—just… dark.
… Suspicious.
“We were just telling ghost stories,” Michiru said.
“I see,” he said. “Maybe I could join you guys sometime.”
Keiko made a delighted sound. “Wow! Does that mean you like telling ghost stories too?”
“Yes.”
This threw both of my friends back into their giggle fit. Stick one boy with a nice voice in a room with a group of teenage girls, and suddenly it didn’t matter that Michiru was a reigning martial arts champion and Keiko’s dad was a detective, or that this guy just scared the heck out of all of us for his own amusement—they were just happy that he said he liked what they liked.
Not to say he was lying. But. He was lying.
Or at least, he wasn’t telling the whole truth.
I stood up. One of us had to be levelheaded, and it wasn’t going to be either of my friends.
“You seem like a cool guy,” Michiru said. A perfect demonstration of forgetting his little prank just because he was probably cute and said pretty words. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Kazuya, Kazuya Shibuya.” Again, something just didn’t ping right with that. At this point, though, I brushed it aside. His name was less important than his motives, and at the moment I probably was just going to be suspicious of anything he said regardless of truth.
“So, Shibuya,” I said, approaching the group. “I have one question for you. Why are you here?”
He turned slightly towards the door. Maybe a bit off-put by the one girl not currently falling over herself. “There are some things I needed to take care of.”
“What are you waiting for, then?” I asked, gesturing vaguely towards the principals office. There wasn’t much a stranger would want with a school unless they were going to the administrator's office, which was my best guess at what this guy was doing, should he actually have business here.
My friends continued their giggly flirting. “Do you need our help or anything?” Michiru asked.
“No, it’s quite alright,” Shibuya answered. “I would love to be invited to join you the next time you tell ghost stories, though.”
“Of course!” Keiko said, and I could even hear her heels click on the floor as she bounced on her toes. “You’re welcome any time!”
“How about tomorrow, right after school?” Michiru suggested. “None of us have a club then, so we’ll have plenty of time.”
Shibuya nodded. “Okay. Where should we meet?”
“Right here!” Keiko said. “You know how to get here on purpose, right?”
Their chat continued for a few more moments, giving him specific instructions to this room as well as our homeroom. Shibuya waved off any other questions or concerns and left, taking the… muchness with him.
… Something was just suspicious about this guy, and I didn’t trust it.
“He was so cute!” Keiko gushed as we ourselves got ready to leave. “Do you really think he’ll come? I don’t think I could stand it if such an attractive guy stood us up!”
“I hope he shows…” Michiru said as she grabbed her bag from under a seat, grabbing mine as she did so and placing it into my hands. I gave her a small thanks as she pulled her arms through the shoulder straps of her own bag, and she nodded her welcome back to me. “Most guys aren’t into ghost stories, and some of the ones that are… they can kind of be…”
“Strange and unusual and mess with schoolgirls for no reason but their own enjoyment?” I finished for her.
“Yes, that!” Keiko said with a bright voice. Either she didn’t notice the insinuation, or she ignored it.
“Have either of you even noticed this guy on campus before?” I asked. “Because I haven’t.”
Michiru hummed. “Our school is a decent size… but you’re not wrong. He also wasn’t wearing the school uniform.”
“Doesn’t that just mean he’s a transfer student?” Keiko said. “He was dressed nicely, maybe he had a meeting with the principal or something.”
“This late, though?”
“We’re also here this late,” Michiru pointed out. “Do you know this guy, Mai? You seem kind of put off by him.”
I sighed. “I don’t… really know? But he did introduce himself by scaring us first. Is he trying to make friends at a new school, or is he trying to create a distance?”
“A mischievous type,” Keiko giggled. “It was just a prank, Mai. You’d probably have done the same.”
I pouted. “…Okay fair, but I wouldn’t flirt afterwards.”
Michiru outright laughed, and the conversation soon drifted away from boys to actual schoolwork as we headed towards the footlockers.
I really didn’t know what it was… But if Keiko and Michiru wanted to hang out with him, if it was going to a… a thing that happened, then I needed to get to the bottom of his whole deal. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding, getting off on the wrong foot. He could very well have actual reason to be in the school. Didn’t mean I was just going to trust him as easily as my friends did.
Well. That is. If I even needed to. He could very well just ditch tomorrow, and unless he actually was a transfer student, he might not show up on campus ever again. Even if he did show up after school, I could go straight home instead of sticking around. And somehow, I severely doubted he was going to go to school here, or that he even lived nearby. Something told me he was actually very far from home, something I couldn’t pinpoint but trusted all the same.
And if he was a transfer student, well. He wouldn’t even be in our year. Plus, based on how Keiko and Michiru acted, it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to avoid him. Shibuya would be too busy dealing with the swarm of schoolgirls that’d follow him around, especially any that would actually share classes with him, to deal with me not immediately falling for him.
There was no guarantee I’d ever meet Shibuya a second time. Really, what were the chances?
I pushed him from my mind and walked home.