Archive of Our Own

Harua woke up on the right foot. Literally. His left one had fallen asleep again. Like every morning.

From the kitchen came the smell of coffee (medium-burnt roast, just the way his roommate liked it) and a very characteristic sound: a spoon tapping the rim of a mug as if it were percussion carefully orchestrated by someone with ADHD.

“Sleepyhead, huh?” said a cheerful voice from the kitchen.

“Don’t talk to me before coffee,” Harua grumbled, dragging his slippers as if they were part of his soul.

“I already served you! Well, I tried. Not sure I got the ideal water-to-spoon ratio. Or was it ladle?”

“What did you make? Coffee or soup?”

Nicholas laughed from the table.

Everything in the apartment was exactly as it had always been. The same light coming through the old curtains. The same plants drying on the windowsill because neither of them actually had any gardening talent. The same blue mug with a barely visible crack at the base, the one Harua refused to throw away. And Nicholas, as always, waiting for him to have breakfast.

Anyone would say they were having a normal morning.
And in many ways, they were.
If you didn’t look too closely.

Harua sat across from him, stretching with a long yawn. Nicholas slid a plate of toast toward him… or well, he tried. The plate stopped halfway. Literally. As if it had gotten stuck in the air. Nicholas pushed it again with more force, smiling.
Harua just leaned forward a bit to reach it.

“What do you have today?” Nicholas asked, holding his mug with both hands as if the warmth could seep through them.

“Color theory class. New professor. He seems nice. Has eyes that say ‘I wanted to be an artist too, but the public administration got me.’”

“Oof. Good luck. I’ll be here… holding the fort.”

“Holding what? The plant that’s already dying or the rice you never cooked?”

“Hey. That rice was almost ready. It was just missing… all the steps.”

Harua rolled his eyes while spreading jam. Nicholas pretended to do the same. His knife had nothing on it, but he moved his hand with conviction, like he was acting in a very methodical play. Harua didn’t look at him. He kept doing his thing.

A cat meowed from outside. Nicholas went to the window and opened it. The cat looked inside, stared at him… and bolted away like it had just seen Satan in sweatpants.

“Such a weird cat,” Nicholas said, closing the window. “It’s not like I’m an ogre.”

“I swear cats are less dramatic than you,” Harua muttered.

Nicholas’s toast, mysteriously, remained untouched.

After breakfast, Harua showered while Nicholas sat on the living-room couch watching a Korean drama he didn’t understand but claimed to enjoy “for the aesthetics.” In the background there were screams, violins, and the occasional emotional explosion.

When he came out, Harua put on his Tuesday shirt. It was identical to the Monday one but had one extra little hole.

“I’m heading out. Want me to stop by the conbini and get you something?”

“Bring me pocky. Chocolate. Or strawberry. Or both. Or… maybe bring nothing. No, yes. What if I get existential hunger?”

“Make up your mind, drama queen.”

“Bring both! Thanks. Love you.”

“Mhm,” Harua replied, putting on his earbuds.

Nicholas followed him to the door, as always.

Harua grabbed his keys. Looked at them a second longer than usual.

“See you tonight.”

“I’ll be waiting. Don’t take too long,” Nicholas said with a smile.

The door closed. Silence.

Nicholas was alone in the apartment.
He walked to the kitchen. Tried to pick up his mug.

The mug fell to the floor.
It made no sound.
It didn’t break.
It passed straight through the ground.

Nicholas sighed.
He crouched down, trying to “pick it up” with both hands. His hands went right through it.

“I swear someday I’ll manage not to drop things,” he murmured, getting up with effort… even though he had no weight.

He stood there for a moment in the middle of the living room, staring at the mug that was no longer there.
And then, with a soft smile—like someone who’s accepted something for a while but still hurts to say it:

“Still… being dead isn’t that bad if it’s with you.”

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

Harua was sitting on the floor by the door, an undone coat slipping off one shoulder, wearing only one sock, and with his patience currently on strike.

“It’s not that I don’t want to go, it’s that I can’t go,” Nicholas said from the couch, as if they were inviting him to unanesthetized surgery instead of a casual walk to the park.

“Why can’t you? You got other plans? Meetings with spect… spectacular people?”

“I have sensitive skin,” Nicholas said, completely serious. “The sun is really strong today. Gives me allergies.”

Harua blinked. Stared at him. Then looked out the window. Cloudy. Completely cloudy. Almost gothic.

“The sun? The sun that does not exist right now?”

“What if it suddenly comes out? What do I do?”

Harua stood up slowly. Hands on his hips in full “fed-up mother” pose. The coat slipped off his shoulder and he didn’t pick it up—a visual protest.

“Nicholas.”

“Yes?”

“Are you afraid of going outside?”

“Afraid? Me? Please. I’m the physical embodiment of poise and bravery.”

“Uh-huh. So?”

Nicholas shrugged with a sigh so dramatic the plants moved a bit. In the distance, the vase on the table vibrated, but they pretended not to notice. As always.

“I promised I wouldn’t leave the house, okay?” Nicholas finally said.

“To whom?”

“To… my great-aunt.”

“The dead one?”

“Yes! Which is exactly why I take it so seriously!”

Harua looked at him like he was trying to figure out whether he was serious or improvising in real time. He knew him well enough to know the answer was: both.

“You’re sure you don’t wanna go get coffee at the park? The sakuras are blooming. There are tiny kids screaming funny things. The exact stuff you love and then tell me about for five days straight.”

“I just… I don’t feel like leaving the house today” Nicholas murmured sincerely.

Harua froze. Not because of the sentence itself, but because he knew that deep down, Nicholas wasn’t joking.

“Ok, you can stay”

Harua huffed. Bent down to look for his other sock.

“I’m going anyway,” he said as he put it on. “And when I come back, I’m gonna force you to watch a super boring documentary about the history of trains in Japan as punishment for your cowardice.”

“Perfect! I love trains! Not related to modern transit at all!”

Harua stopped. Turned his head just a little. The joke hit him weird. Not because of the joke… but because of how close it was to being real.
Nicholas noticed. His smile faltered.

“It was… it was a joke,” he said more quietly.

“I know,” Harua replied too quickly. “A terrible one though.”

Nicholas forced a smile. Harua accepted it.
They both put on their masks: the “nothing is happening” one and the “we’re functional people who have breakfast and make jokes and are not ignoring a fundamental fact of the universe” one.

“I’ll bring you pocky,” Harua said, grabbing his backpack.

“Chocolate,” Nicholas responded automatically.

“Or strawberry, if there’s no chocolate.”

“Or both, in case I get existential hunger.”

Harua nodded with a soft smile.
Nicholas walked him to the door, as always. Stayed there with his hands in pockets he no longer used, leaning on the doorframe.

“See you when I get back,” Harua said, like someone who hadn’t actually said it in thirty days.

“I’ll be waiting,” Nicholas answered, like someone who’d been waiting for thirty days.

The door closed.
Nicholas didn’t move.
He stared at the door for a while, as if with enough faith he could walk out with him without anything weird happening.
As if the rules of the universe could bend for him.
As if the world still recognized him as part of it.

Then he went back to the couch.
Lay down on his side, grabbed the remote—half of which dissolved in his hand—and put on a documentary about trains.
Just to practice.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

The flower shop where Harua worked was called Hanahana, which was an unimaginative play on words no customer understood, but it still sounded cute enough for the place to have a good reputation on Instagram.

It was on the corner of a street with trees that refused to bloom and street lamps that flickered like they were controlled by epileptic goblins. Nothing like the plants inside the shop, which seemed to live in a superior plane of existence. All thanks to Taki.

Taki was the type of person who could revive a bonsai just by talking nicely to it. He was also the type of person who, when faced with the idea of ghosts, responded with a shrug and a:

“Nah, you’re probably dehydrated.”

That day, Harua arrived five minutes late, hair tousled by the wind and a cherry blossom leaf stuck to his coat like an accidental souvenir from his walk with nobody.

Taki greeted him from behind the counter, wearing gardening gloves and an expression that said “I’m judging you, but lovingly.”

“You’re late, Haru. Did your imaginary boyfriend block the door again?”

“He actually got stuck,” Harua replied, dropping his backpack in its usual corner.

“Did he make you breakfast again? What was it this time? Invisible pancakes? Spectral toast?”

“You have a weird obsession with food that doesn’t exist.”

“You’re the one hanging out with people who don’t exist! We’re even.”

Harua didn’t answer. He went to the pre-made bouquet section and started rearranging a vase like his life depended on the perfectly symmetrical alignment of lilies. Taki watched him for a few seconds, then tossed a spray bottle at him.

He crossed his arms, wearing a smile that was half indulgent, half “I’m watching you.”

“Wanna tell me something?”

“Like what?”

“Like… why you talk to yourself. Why you say ‘we’ when you tell me what you did over the weekend. Why you sometimes laugh with someone who isn’t there.”

“I’m not alone. I’m with you. And you also laugh by yourself when you spend half an hour talking to the plants.”

“Because plants answer! See this hibiscus? It gave me a sign of life just by looking at it.”

“Nicholas looks at me too. Sometimes he even frowns when he hears you talk about him.”

Taki raised a brow.

“So now he gets offended too?”

“He’s sensitive.”

“To what? Reality?”

Harua set the flowers down for a moment and looked at him. Not angry. Just… tired. Like someone who’s gotten used to having to explain things he’s already decided he won’t explain anymore.

“Look, I don’t expect you to get it. But Nicholas is there. He’s always been there. And that’s enough for me.”

Taki lowered his gaze. Took off his gloves.

“I don’t need to understand it, Haru. I just want to know if you’re okay.”

Harua hesitated.
One of the flowers in the vase slowly turned on its own, as if aligning with his thoughts.
They didn’t notice. Or pretended not to.

“I’m okay,” he said eventually. “Really.”

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

Harua was sitting on the couch, a pizza box on his lap and the expression of someone who had just lost a war over an extra-cheese slice.

“This is robbery,” he muttered, watching Nicholas shove the last slice into his mouth with a level of shameless satisfaction that should be illegal.

“I ordered the pizza! You just contributed your existence.”

“I paid half!”

“Yeah, but I provided the heart.”

“You provided pepperoni.”

“And isn’t that love?”

Harua tossed the cardboard separator like it was a declaration of war.
Nicholas caught it midair, spun it dramatically between his fingers, and threw it back into the empty box with a satisfying ting.

“I owe you one,” he said, licking his fingers in a completely unnecessary manner.

“You better. I have it noted.”

“You keep a list?”

“Since high school.”

“I’m offended and impressed at the same time.”

That night they sprawled out in the living room like they always did when they had no homework, no responsibilities, and nothing else to do except invent problems involving pizza toppings.

The TV was blasting at a needlessly loud volume. A crime-drama series was yelling something about DNA and hidden clues. Harua wasn’t paying attention. Nicholas wasn’t either. They were competing to see who could flick pizza crust edges closest to the trash can without landing them in the plant pot.
Both lost.

“You owe me a pizza next time,” Harua said, pulling soggy dough out of a sansevieria.

“Of course. Anytime. I’m a responsible, financially stable citizen.”

“Ha.”

“What?”

“Nothing. ‘Financially stable.’ Sure.”

“I can pay! Totally. Whenever you want.”

“Great. Noted.”

There was a moment of silence. The kind that comes after lots of jokes and a tiny pause for the soul. Harua glanced at him from the corner of his eye. Nicholas was resting his head on the arm of the couch, eyes half-closed, smile still fresh.

There was nothing strange about it.
Not at all.
Not in how the lights sometimes flickered when he got too excited.
Not in how objects moved around him without ever touching them.
Not in how, once, Harua had found him in the kitchen staring at the oven door like it was a black-and-white movie.

Everything was normal. Because Nicholas was there.
Alive. Present.
Clearly. Obviously.

“Hey,” Nicholas said suddenly. “What if we order dessert?”

“You don’t have any money.”

“Then let’s use yours.”

“Bloodsucker.”

“That’s dietary discrimination!”

And between the laughter, the moment faded.
There were no unpayable debts.
No absences.
No… anything else.
Just pizza, crumbs, and the unquestionable certainty that everything was exactly as it should be.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

It was a peaceful afternoon in the neighborhood. The kind where everything looks like a Japanese postcard: cloudy but aesthetic skies, the smell of toasted bread drifting from some nearby window, and a stray cat with an existential-judgy face roaming the rooftops.

Harua had seen it several times. Always nearby. Always watching. Always with an expression that said I know things.
That particular afternoon, Nicholas was sitting on the front steps of the building, drinking a lemonade he didn’t need and definitely hadn’t made. Harua was beside him, flipping through a plant catalog with the concentration of an obsessive botanist.

Everything was peace and carefully maintained illusion—until the cat appeared.

A white cat with orange patches and eyes that screamed “I see ghosts and I’m not cool with it.” It jumped down from the neighbor’s wall and walked straight toward them, like it was conducting an inspection.

“Oh look,” Harua said, pointing without looking up. “The cat again.”

“I love that cat,” Nicholas said, setting his lemonade on the step with an imagined clink. “I’m gonna pet it.”

“You sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. That cat is kinda… intense.”

Nicholas extended his hand. The cat stared at him with a mix of disdain and ancient knowledge, like it had witnessed many things and none of them were impressive.

And then, in a perfectly feline and absolutely catastrophic motion, the cat kept walking.
And walking.
And walked straight through Nicholas’s abdomen as if he were a curtain made of smoke.

Harua froze, catalog in hand. Nicholas froze too.
The cat came out the other side as if nothing happened. No hiss. No jump. Not even curiosity. Just a slight “yeah, I figured” look.

Silence.
Long silence.
The kind that makes crickets leave out of secondhand embarrassment.

Harua cleared his throat.

“That cat is special,” he said without looking up from the catalog.
Nicholas stared at him.

“What do you mean, special?”

“Yeah. Like… spiritual?”

“Spiritual?”

“One of those cats that doesn’t believe in the limits of the physical plane. Very open-minded. Lots of yoga.”

Nicholas raised a brow.

“So it walked through me because it vibes high?”

“Exactly. Very sensitive to energies. Probably has, I don’t know, the fifth dimension unlocked or something.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Weird, right?”

“So weird.”

They fell silent again. The cat sat a few meters away, stared at them with a “seriously?” expression, then started licking itself with mystical boredom.

Nicholas crossed his arms.

“Don’t you think weird stuff has been happening to me lately? Like… unsolid stuff?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Objects avoiding me. Doors not pushing back. Sometimes I float.”

“That last one never happened.”

“I think it happened when I laughed too hard at that cooking reality show episode.”

“You were excited.”

“Or that glass that fell off the table by itself.”

“The wind.”

“There was no wind.”

“What if it’s static energy?”

“What if I’m…”

Harua looked at him. Intensely.
With those eyes that said don’t finish that sentence or I’m throwing a flower pot at you.

Nicholas swallowed. Or would have, if he had any physiological need for it.

“…what if I’m very magnetic?”

“Right. Like magnets.”

“Yeah. A human magnet.”

Harua went back to the catalog.

“Exactly. I already told you you’re special.”

The cat yawned. Stretched.
And, as if deciding its job there was done, hopped back onto the wall.
Left them alone.

Nicholas shrugged.

“Well, at least animals still like me.” 

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

Harua woke up before the alarm, which was never a good sign.
The sky was the color of old soda water and his head had the clarity of a crumpled sheet.

When he entered the kitchen, Nicholas was already there. Of course he was.
In slippers (that he didn’t actually use), holding a toaster (that didn’t actually work), and radiating an unfair amount of morning energy.

“Good morning, radiant star of the house,” Nicholas sang, tapping the toaster.

“Why are you singing?” Harua grumbled. “It’s Tuesday.”

“Exactly. Tuesdays need morale support, poor things. They’re always the second most hated after Mondays.”

“Not true. Thursday is a scam too.”

“But Thursday has hope! Tuesday is already resigned!”

Harua dropped onto the chair with the weight of a thousand academic responsibilities. He laid his head on the table.

Nicholas approached with two cups of coffee. One of them floated slightly before settling in the air above the table. As if by magic. Or by a suspicious lack of gravity.

Harua didn’t look up.

“Did you sleep badly?” Nicholas asked.

“I didn’t sleep.”

“Nightmares?”

“I dreamed giant ladles were chasing me and you were laughing from a rooftop.”

“Such a specific, symbolic dream!”

Harua sighed.

“Taki says I need therapy.”

“Taki also talks to plants.”

“And the plants answer him!”

“And I don’t?”

Silence.

Harua lifted his head. Their eyes met. His, tired and dry. Nicholas’s, with that hard-to-label brightness—you never knew if it was tenderness, pity, or the desire to steal your toast.

“You answer too,” Harua admitted, lowering his voice. “That’s why I think I’m crazy.”

“And what if you are?” Nicholas shrugged. “It wouldn’t be that terrible.”

“How not?”

“I mean, you’ve got plants, coffee, toast (sort of), and me. If that’s being crazy, doesn’t sound too bad.”

“And what if you’re not?”

“Not what?”

Harua stared at him. For a second. A millisecond.

But said nothing.

Like someone who leaned over an abyss and suddenly remembered he needed to water the jasmines first.

Nicholas held his gaze. With a soft smile.

One that said “let’s not say that today.”

One that said “I know too, but let’s not break this.”

One that said “keep talking to me like always, I’ll keep pretending I’m real.”

“What’s for breakfast?” Harua said, slicing the moment cleanly.

“Toast. Burnt toast. With butter.”

“Perfect. My favorite.”

Nicholas laughed.

He served the toast on a plate.

And while they ate in silence, Harua thought—without panic for the first time—that maybe he was a little bit crazy.

But if he was, he was crazy with Nicholas.

And that… didn’t feel so bad.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

Everything started because Harua was cleaning.

Not out of passion or conviction. He had dropped a plant, and while sweeping up the soil he ended up cleaning half the house, questioning his life choices, and wondering whether lavender could absorb environmental trauma.

Nicholas followed him around like an emotional Roomba, commenting on everything.

“Spring cleaning even though it’s fall?”

“It’s not spring cleaning. It’s ‘if I sweep this one more time maybe my life will fix itself’ cleaning.”

“Ah, cathartic cleaning. Familiar. I approve.”

When they stepped into the bathroom, Harua froze.

He saw it.

Or rather… didn’t see it.

The mirror.

His own reflection.

And beside it… absolutely nothing.

Nicholas, who was literally standing right next to him, didn’t appear at all.

Not a shadow.

Not a blur.

Not even a “oh, he’s kind of fuzzy like vampires in movies.” Nothing.

Nicholas noticed too.

Of course he did.

But he turned his face away with the dramatic speed of a soap opera actor and started examining the shelf of creams as if studying alchemy.

Harua swallowed.

“Hey, Nicholas…”

“Wow! You have aloe vera lip balm! How fancy. Have you always been this fancy?”

“You’re not in the mirror.”

“What?”

Harua pointed to the glass, finger trembling.

“Your reflection. It’s not there. At all.”

Nicholas blinked with exaggerated confusion.

“Ah, that. Mirror’s probably dirty.”

“I cleaned it yesterday.”

“Sure? Maybe it’s cursed.”

“Cursed?”

“Yeah, mirrors sometimes retain stuff. Like curses, energies, unpaid bills…”

“Bills?”

“Reddit thread. Very reliable.”

Harua stayed silent.

Nicholas, nervous, stuck his head under the faucet and wet his hair like it would help. Then shook himself like a happy dog. The mirror still didn’t show him.

“What if we… put stickers on it?” Harua said, as if the idea had descended from the heavens.

“Stickers?”

“Yeah. A collage. Who needs a functional mirror?”

Nicholas considered it. Smiled.

“You could put one that says ‘the most important reflection is inside you.’”

“Oh my god.”

“Or a little happy face that says ‘Good morning!’ right where my head should be.”

“You’re insane.”

“An insane man with aesthetic taste!”

And so, with a pack of cat stickers, smiling clouds, and motivational phrases in badly translated Japanese (“Be your own happy noodle”), they redecorated the mirror.

By the end, the surface reflected nothing but pastel rainbows and shared denial.

Harua stared at it, torn between relief and the urge to cry.

Nicholas approached.

Placed a hand on his shoulder.

Or tried—his hand sank slightly into the shirt, but Harua didn’t flinch.

“Thanks,” Nicholas said softly.

“For what?”

“For… letting me be. However I am.”

Harua shrugged.

“As long as you don’t stick stickers on my forehead while I sleep, we’re good.”

Nicholas lifted a smiling octopus sticker and hid it behind his back.

“I would never.”

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

It was night.

One of those nights where the sky presses down on the world and makes everything sound louder than it should.

The tick of a clock.

The TV’s hum.

The crunch of Nicholas eating cereal.

“Is that breakfast?”

“Who decided cereal has a time slot?”

“Manufacturers.”

“And what if I’m a rebel?”

“You’re unbearable.”

“Thank you.”

Harua sprawled on the couch, legs dangling.

Nicholas sat on a blanket he didn’t need, eating cereal with a spoon that went straight through the milk but shhh—details.

Silence again.

Not uncomfortable. Just… elastic. Like the air was stretching between them.

Harua turned his head slightly.

“Hey, Nicholas…”

“Hmm.”

“Why are you still here?”

Nicholas stopped chewing.

The spoon froze mid-air.

“What?”

“Nothing, forget it.”

“No, wait. What do you mean why am I still here?”

Harua shrugged.

“Dunno. I mean… sometimes I think there are places one is supposed to go. Eventually. Staying too long in one spot must hurt.”

Nicholas stared at him. For a long time.

Then smiled—not with his mouth, but with something quieter. Smaller. Fragile.

“And leave you alone with that florist? No chance.”

Harua let out a short laugh.

“Taki hates you.”

“Taki respects me silently.”

“Taki thinks you’re a product of my fractured psyche.”

“Well, I can’t blame him. You’re pretty fractured.”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Silence again.

This time warmer. Less elastic. More like an old blanket.

Harua covered his eyes with an arm.

“I never said it bothers me that you’re here.”

“I know.”

“I was just thinking.”

“It’s good to think.”

“And you?”

“Me what?”

“Ever thought of leaving?”

Nicholas looked into the bowl.

As if all the answers he never wanted to say were floating in the milk.

As if dairy held truths.

“Maybe. Once.”

A second.

“But I forgot. Or I got distracted.”

“By what?”

Nicholas lifted the spoon and put it in his mouth.

“By you.”

Harua smiled—barely noticeable.

Just lowered his arm a little.

“You’re an idiot.”

“And you’re a disaster.”

“Perfect match.”

“’Til death do us part, right?”

Harua looked at him.
Nicholas looked at him.
Silence.
Again.
But this time… they both knew they weren’t going to say anything else.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

The morning light slipped shyly through the bedroom window.
The curtains barely moved, dragged by the tiniest breeze. One of those mornings that seem to ask for permission to exist.

Nicholas was sitting at the edge of the bed, legs crossed, reading a manga upside down. Not because he was eccentric—though he absolutely was—but because he clearly wasn’t paying attention to the thing in his hands. His gaze drifted every so often toward Harua, who slept tangled in the sheets like he was running away from something. From everything.

And then, Harua started to cry.

It wasn’t a dramatic cry. No screams, no jolts, no cinematic meltdown.
Just a thin line of silent tears sliding down his cheeks as he slept.
Like his heart had found a crack to escape through.

Nicholas placed the manga on the table without a sound.
He approached slowly, as if afraid to wake him. He sat on the edge of the mattress, rested a hand near—never on—Harua’s. His body didn’t touch his, but his presence filled the room all the same.

“Shh,” he whispered, more to himself than to him.

Harua frowned, turned over a couple of times in the sheets, and finally woke up.
He opened his eyes slowly, like his body wasn’t ready to release whatever he had just lived.

“...Nicholas,” he murmured, weakly.

Nicholas smiled at him.
His expression was warm, calm. Like he’d been there forever. Like he was always going to be.

Harua sat up, running a hand over his face. He was disoriented. His eyes red. His breathing ragged. A nameless ache crawling under his ribs.

“I dreamed,” he said softly.

Nicholas waited. He didn’t say anything. He just tilted his head slightly, as if reading between lines.

“I dreamed that… you lived with me.”

A pause.
Harua corrected himself instantly.

“I mean. That… we were somewhere else. A weird apartment. You had a bicycle. You were complaining because someone had scratched it. And you had… a horrible tattoo on your back.”

Nicholas smiled.

“What was it?”

“An octopus with sunglasses.”

“Clearly amazing.”

“Clearly stupid.”

Harua laughed quietly—but it was a broken laugh.
One that fell somewhere between relief and guilt.
He rubbed his eyes again, as if that could erase whatever he had felt.

Nicholas said nothing.
Instead, he moved a little closer.
He didn’t touch him. But he leaned in just enough for Harua to feel that impossible warmth.

He spoke with his body, with silence, with the simple act of staying.

Harua didn’t look at him. He just let himself fall to the side and rested his head on the shoulder he knew was there, even if he couldn’t feel anything solid.
And Nicholas stayed still. As if any movement might shatter that moment.

“I’m fine,” Harua lied.

“I know,” Nicholas said, just as much of a liar.

They stayed like that, wrapped in the morning. Without talking.
Without saying that.
Without naming what simmered under their skin and between their teeth.

Because there were things you didn’t say.
Truths that, if spoken out loud, might take everything with them.

And neither of them was ready for that.
Not yet.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

When Harua came back from the flower shop at noon, he noticed three things immediately:

• There was a smell of something burnt.
• Smoke was coming out from under the kitchen door.
• And there was a voice inside shouting, “NO! THAT WASN’T BUTTER! THAT WAS BATH FOAM!”

It was a loud, chaotic, dangerously fire-code-violating kind of welcome.

He walked into the apartment with the same enthusiasm one has when walking into an exam they didn’t study for. Opening the kitchen door, he found a scene worthy of a censored episode of MasterChef:

Nicholas was covered in flour up to his eyebrows—which was impressive considering he shouldn’t be able to get dirty—and he was holding a spatula that floated erratically like it was in the middle of a demonic possession.

“THIS IS NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE!” Nicholas yelled.

“It looks like attempted culinary homicide,” Harua replied, covering his mouth with his sweater so he wouldn’t choke on smoke.

On the table there was a frying pan broken in half (how?), a waffle floating in the air spinning like an anxious drone, and what looked like mashed potatoes with radioactive slime vibes.

“I was…” Nicholas lowered his voice, nervous, “I was trying to make you lunch.”

Harua looked at him with an expression that was half confusion, half murderous tenderness.

“And why is the waffle doing tricks?”

“I don’t know. It got excited. It has a competitive spirit.”

“And the mashed potatoes…?”

“That one scares me too.”

There was a crackling sound from the toaster. Something caught fire. Nicholas threw a wet towel at it with very little technique, and the fire went out mostly out of pity.

Harua leaned against the doorframe and let out a soft laugh.
Nicholas crossed his arms, coated in disappointment and edible dust.

“I wanted to surprise you,” he muttered. “You always cook. And I thought, well, how hard can it be? I’ve seen you do it. You put stuff in a pan and do fire magic!”

“…It’s not fire magic, Nicholas. It’s heat. And common sense.”

“And love!” he added dramatically.

Harua threw a dish towel at him—one that passed through Nicholas’s torso and fell to the ground.

“See! I can’t even grab things properly! How am I supposed to put cheese on toast if my hands go through the cheese?! Huh? HOW?!”

Harua approached, gently nudged the spinning waffle with his foot, and sat down at the kitchen table like this wasn’t the most ridiculous thing he’d seen all week.

“You didn’t have to do anything,” he said more softly now. “I was going to get home and make something, like always.”

“I know. But… I wanted to do it anyway.”

“Why?”

Nicholas shrugged, looking down.

“Because I like being here when you get back. Even if I can’t cook. Even if the mashed potatoes gain sentience. Even if objects start floating. I like you seeing me doing something. Like if I still…”

He didn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t need to.
Those things weren’t said.
Ever.

Harua got up, walked over to the disaster that had originally been meant as a gesture.
He grabbed a spoon, plunged it into the mutant mash with the bravery of a fallen soldier, and tasted it.

“This tastes like… plastic with unresolved trauma.”

“REALLY?! I wanted it to have rosemary notes!”

“And it does. If rosemary also has identity issues.”

Nicholas laughed. Harua laughed too.
Then Harua carefully grabbed the floating waffle (floating more out of stubbornness than physics) and split it in half.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For trying. And for not blowing up the kitchen. Completely.”

“I can always try again.”

“Please don’t.”

And like that, between laughter, smoke, and silent affection, they shared a lunch that didn’t fill their stomachs—but filled everything else.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

Night had fallen like a heavy blanket, the kind that crushes even your thoughts.
Harua and Nicholas were sprawled on the futon, surrounded by empty cookie wrappers, a lo-fi playlist, and the faint smell of eucalyptus candles blown out badly.
The TV was on but ignored—a Korean reality show with subtitles moving too fast. No one paid attention. They were in that perfect limbo where presence was the only thing that mattered.

“Let’s ask deep questions,” Nicholas said with a crooked smile and the voice of a philosophical podcast host.

“No thanks. I already have existential crises by default.”

“Come on. Let’s play ‘if you could…’”

“I don’t want to play ‘if you could.’ You always end up asking stuff like ‘if you could have three kidneys, where would you put the third one?’ and I’m not in the mood for that.”

“I promise this time I’m serious!”

Harua shot him a skeptical but resigned look. He rested his head on the arm of the couch.

“Okay. Shoot.”

“If all your memories were erased except one, which would you keep?”

Harua thought for a moment.

“Once you gave me a hideous keychain shaped like an eggplant.”

“That one was excellent!”

“It was horrible. But I laughed so hard that day I still remember it.”

Nicholas smiled, delighted.

“And you?”

“I’d keep the day you taught me origami and I made a frog with scoliosis.”

“Oh, right. That frog suffered a lot.”

“She lived intensely.”

“She was missing legs.”

“But she jumped with passion!”

They laughed.
A short silence. Comfortable.

Nicholas stared at the ceiling.

“If I died, would you miss me?”

It was a question thrown into the air. A question that sounded casual.
A question that should’ve gotten a laugh, a “shut up,” something light.

But no.
Silence settled like an unexpected shadow.

Harua didn’t answer right away.
He blinked. Swallowed.
Didn’t look at him.

“What a stupid question,” he finally said, weakly.

“It’s not stupid. It’s valid.”

“And why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. Curiosity. Philosophy. Things one asks when they’re kind of… not fully themselves.”

Harua got up. Walked to the kitchen without a word. Opened the fridge. Closed the fridge. Took nothing.
Came back with an empty water bottle.

“You forgot to fill the water bottle,” he murmured.

Nicholas smiled faintly. But it disappeared instantly.

“So…?”

“So what?”

“Would you miss me?”

Another silence.
Harua sat down again, this time farther away. Like the question was still hanging between them, burning.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t like thinking about that.”

Nicholas looked at him. The softest gesture in the world.

“That’s okay. Me neither.”

They stayed quiet.
The TV kept babbling in the background. A contestant was crying because his omelette hadn’t risen. Human drama carried on, unbothered.

Harua looked away.

“My turn,” he said, voice tense. “If you could go back in time… would you?”

Nicholas went still.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It depends. If I went back… would I still find you?”

They didn’t say anything else that night.
They turned off the TV. Turned off the light.
Silence was the only language possible.
And even so, they understood each other perfectly.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

The house was silent.
A silence unlike other nights.
Deeper. Thicker. As if the air itself were holding its breath.

Harua slept.
Face half-buried in the pillow, hair flattened in chaotic directions, one leg dangling off the futon like he had surrendered to the absolute laws of rest.

Nicholas watched from the other side of the room. Sitting, still, wrapped in the faint blue glow coming through the window.

He didn’t blink.
Didn’t breathe.
Didn’t feel sleepy.
And that… destroyed him.

He got up—barefoot out of habit even though he made no sound. He paced the room aimlessly. One lap. Another. Another.
Every so often, he looked at Harua.
And each time, the ache burrowed deeper inside him.

He sat next to the futon, legs crossed, arms loose over his knees. Like a sad monk or a kid punished by the universe.

“What are you dreaming now?” he whispered.

Harua answered with a soft snore and a kick to an innocent pillow.

Nicholas smiled. But the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“I want that too,” he murmured without meaning to.

I want to sleep.
I want to dream.
I want to be with you there, too.

Harua’s world was full of things Nicholas could no longer touch. But what hurt the most wasn’t the visible stuff.
Not the couch that couldn't hold him.
Not the cats that walked through him.
Not the waffles he couldn’t cook.

It was the invisible.

The fact that Harua could close his eyes and live a whole story.
Dream anything.
And he couldn’t.

He couldn’t dream.
Not for lack of desire—
but because he didn’t sleep anymore. That door wasn’t open to him.

He lay down beside the futon—not on it, but beside it, as if being close was enough.
He watched Harua’s breathing rise and fall, like a secret rhythm Nicholas was no longer part of.

“I dreamed you were alive,” Harua had said days before.
And Nicholas had hugged him with the strongest silence he had.

Now he wanted the same.
To dream he was alive.
To dream Harua didn’t wake up alone.
To dream things were different.

He lay on his back and closed his eyes.
Just to see if, by some absurd cosmic loophole, today—
just today—
they’d let him.

Let him dream a little.
Of Harua.
Of the eggplant keychain.
Of laughter.
Of afterward.

Nothing happened.
Obviously.

No slow blinking.
No blurry shapes forming behind his eyelids.
Just him.
And the echo of the most human desire: to be present even in the places you’re no longer allowed to be.

And yet…

Harua, half-asleep, murmured:

“Nico…”

Nicholas opened his eyes.
Looked at him.

Harua said nothing else.
He just shifted, instinctively, as if searching for something in the air.

And his hand rested, unknowingly, right over Nicholas’s chest.
He didn’t touch him.
But Nicholas felt it anyway.

A tear slipped out before he could stop it.
And Nicholas closed his eyes again.

Not to dream.
But to stay in that instant.
As if it were everything he needed.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

It was one of those weird days where the weather couldn’t figure itself out.
Not cloudy, not sunny, not cool, not warm. An atmospheric limbo.
Like the sky, too, had mixed feelings.

Harua was sorting a pile of old papers on the living room floor—university assignments, past tasks. One of those “cleaning sessions” people do not to organize but to avoid thinking about something else.

Nicholas lay face-down on the couch.
He had no reason to—no tiredness, no need for furniture—yet there he was.
Dramatizing existence with his forehead pressed into the cushion.

“Remember when you helped me study art history?” Harua asked without looking up.

“Of course. I did the drawings. You made the ridiculous associations to memorize stuff.”

“Thanks to you, I’ll never forget that Bernini sculpted faces like ‘ah yes I’m dying BUT MAKE IT FASHION.’”

Nicholas let out a soft laugh.

“That sculpture of Saint Teresa’s ecstasy. You literally described it as ‘the mystical orgasm statue.’”

“I’m not entirely sure I was wrong.”

Silence again. Comfortable. Full.

Harua pulled out a folded sheet from between the papers. It had doodles of Nicholas scribbled on the margins, some with arrows saying things like “guilty of crimes against aesthetics” and “still owes me my blue pen.”
He folded it and slipped it into his pocket without comment.

“Can I ask you something?” Nicholas said after a moment.

“Do you have a daily quota?”

“No, but this one’s existential.”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

Nicholas sat upright—or something close to it. His silhouette hovered with a minimum of physical commitment.

“Why did you used to get so mad after our sleepovers?”

Harua froze.
He didn’t answer right away.
He looked at the floor, at the space between papers, at the memory. At a past that didn’t wash away with soap and water.

“Because you left without saying bye,” he finally said quietly. “Because one day we’d hang out, laugh, mess around, and suddenly—poof—you were gone. A text an hour later saying ‘I went home.’ Like staying one more minute didn’t matter. Like saying ‘see you’ wasn’t worth it.”

“…And that made you think I didn’t want to stay with you anymore?”

“No. It made me think you didn’t know how much I liked when you stayed.”

Nicholas lowered his gaze.
The room felt colder for a moment.
Or maybe that was just the memory.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“You don’t have to be,” Harua replied quickly.
Too quickly.

“It’s fine. It’s over.”

Another silence.
More uncomfortable.
More crowded.

Nicholas stood up. Walked—without touching the floor—toward the window. Looked outside, where nothing was urgent.
Where the world kept going without them.

“I guess… I still do it.”

“What?”

“Leaving without saying goodbye.”

Harua swallowed. Didn’t look at him.

“You’re not leaving.”

“…But I didn’t say goodbye either.”

Harua shut his eyes. His fingers tightened around a crumpled worksheet.

“Don’t you dare.”

Nicholas turned around.
His expression almost broken, almost beautiful.

“What?”

“Saying goodbye.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good. Because if you do, I don’t know if I’ll be able to…”

He didn’t finish.
He didn’t need to.

Nicholas approached.
Sat—or hovered—beside him.
Watched him quietly.

And like so many times before, he didn’t say it.
They didn’t mention what they knew.
They didn’t name what hurt.

But the message was there.
Clear as daylight.
Screaming between the lines:

“Don’t go.
Not yet.”

And Nicholas… obeyed.
As always.
Or maybe as never.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

Everything started with a date.
Or worse: with the possibility of a date.
Which, in Nicholas’s words, was basically an apocalypse.

“What does ‘we could go get a drink sometime’ even mean?” Nicholas demanded, standing five centimeters from Harua’s phone as if that would help him read the message. 

“It means we could… go get a drink. Sometime,” Harua answered without looking up from his container of rice.

“That’s courtship! That’s a disguised invitation! That is a social ambush with romantic intent!”

“You know what else it is? A very effective strategy to prevent me from eating lunch in peace.”

Nicholas crossed his arms with such aggressively passive-aggressive energy that two leaves from the monstera by the window started wilting.

“Tell me you’re not going out with him.”

“Who?”

“That new florist with ‘I share my Spotify Premium family plan’ smile!”

“Kaito didn’t propose marriage, Nico. It’s just a coffee.”

“A coffee today. A shared plant adoption tomorrow.”

Harua looked at him with the ancient calm of someone who has already handled his dramatics once or ten times.

“And if I do go out? What are you gonna do?”

Nicholas leaned in with such a serious expression even the aloe vera looked uncomfortable.

“If you go out with him, I’ll haunt your plants.”

Harua blinked.

“Sorry?”

“I swear. Every time he gets near a flower, it’ll wilt in real time. Roses will cry petals. Sunflowers will turn their backs. Lavender will smell like guilt. I will transform your inner garden into a floral exorcism.”

“That sounds more like witchcraft than love.”

“It’s not love! It’s prevention!”

Harua put down the tupperware, turned toward him, and gave him a look halfway between amused and resigned.

“You’re jealous again.”

“I’m protecting the emotional ecosystem of this household.”

“Right. Because nothing says emotional stability like cursing begonias.”

Nicholas floated—dramatically, as always—to the plant shelf. He stroked the leaf of a succulent that was, honestly, already looking kind of depressed.

“Did you know plants can sense vibes?”

“Oh, so now you read Doreen Virtue?”

“No, but I am a vibe. Literally.”

Harua laughed.
He stood up.
Walked toward him.
Stopped a few steps away, crooked smile in place.

“And if someone asks me out, and I say no?”

“Then… nothing happens. I’ll make you hibiscus tea and we’ll celebrate being single but emotionally codependent.”

“And if I say yes?”

Nicholas lowered his gaze.
For a second, the joke vanished.
Just one second.

“Then I’ll do what any responsible roommate would do.”

“You’ll spy on me?”

“No.”

“You’ll let me be happy?”

“…I’ll change the labels on your plant pots.”

“…”

“The basil will be parsley. The jasmine will smell like garlic. You’ll live in aromatic confusion until you come back to me.”

Harua burst out laughing.

“You’re completely insane.”

“I’m not insane! I have a lot of free time!”

Nicholas smiled.
Quietly.
Internally.

Because yes, he was jealous.
Because yes, it hurt.
Because yes, he wanted him all to himself, even if he couldn’t say it.

And Harua… didn’t say anything else.
He just stepped closer and placed a hand—almost not touching him—on his nonexistent arm.

“Nico.”

“What?”

“Relax. No one’s replacing you. Not even someone with Spotify Premium.”

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

That night, the living room was darker than usual.
Not because the lamp didn’t work, but because sometimes shadows come from inside, as if someone switched off the will to turn on the light.

Harua lay sprawled across the couch, head hanging back as if he was ready to let his brain slide out through his neck.

Nicholas floated—casually—several feet away, shuffling a deck of cards he couldn’t quite touch.
The ace of hearts kept slipping through his fingers.
A walking metaphor, basically.

“I’m hungry,” Harua said.

“I have intentions,” Nicholas replied. “We’re evenly matched.”

“Can you cook me something with intentions?”

“Only if you want burnt food with a hint of eucalyptus vapor.”

“I’ll pass.”

Silence.
One of those weird, heavy ones, like someone had left a box full of unasked questions on the table and the air didn’t know where to put it.

Nicholas dropped the deck.
It made no sound.

Harua closed his eyes.

“Have you ever been in love with me?”

Just like that.
No warning.
No warm-up.
As if he were asking about the weather.
As if it weren’t a nuclear bomb disguised as a simple sentence.

Nicholas blinked.
Or… pretended to.
Old habits.

He didn’t respond.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe.
Literally and emotionally.

The ace of hearts hit the floor.
That did make a sound.

Harua didn’t say anything else.
He didn’t look at him.
Kept his eyes closed, as if it were just a casual comment thrown at the universe.

But it wasn’t.

The silence that followed was huge.
An abyss between them.
A void so full it felt like the air couldn’t move through it.

Nicholas thought of a thousand ways to answer.
Laughing it off, joking,
“HAHA WHAT ARE YOU SAYING,”
“You’re delusional, you and your florist,”
anything.

He said nothing.

Because if he said “yes,” Harua might pull away.
And if he said “no,” he’d be lying.

And his existence was already unreal enough without adding lies to the mix.

So… silence stayed.
Heavy.
Dense.
Almost tangible.

Harua opened his eyes.
Stared at the ceiling.

“See? You’ve always sucked at goodbyes and at answering important questions.”

Nicholas smiled without joy.

“Maybe it’s because I never want the conversation to end.”

Harua didn’t respond.

The silence didn’t hurt because it was empty.
It hurt because it said everything.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

It all started with a mug.
A broken mug, to be specific.

Harua had left it on the table.
A white mug with a drawing of a meditating panda and the phrase “today I won’t break, thanks.”

Well.
A little too optimistic for real life.

“CAN YOU STOP TOUCHING MY THINGS?!” Harua yelled from the kitchen.

“I DIDN’T TOUCH IT! IT FELL BY ITSELF!”

“How is it gonna fall by itself if nobody touched it?!”

“EXACTLY!!”

Harua appeared in the doorway, furious, sleeves rolled up, an apron full of dirt (he’d been repotting succulents), and the face of someone whose attachment to that mug outweighed geopolitical stability.

“I liked that mug, Nicholas.”

“And I like being able to open a door without phasing through it, do you want to keep listing impossibilities?”

“This isn’t funny!”

“WHEN DID I SAY IT WAS FUNNY?!”

Harua went silent.
Nicholas too.

And then it happened.

He floated.
Literally.
Half a meter.
As if the tension had lifted him, as if the anger overrode his ghostly self-control. His feet (or whatever he had now) came off the ground, drifting with very suspicious supernatural energy.

Harua saw it.
Nicholas saw it.
They both froze.

“I… didn’t see anything,” Harua said, stepping back nervously. “Probably an optical illusion. I’m tired. A daisy talked to me today, I’m falling apart.”

Nicholas tried to come down.
He couldn’t.
He rotated in the air like a balloon with emotional issues.

“Control it, Nico, control it,” he muttered to himself. “Think of heavy things. Really heavy things. Repressed emotions, tax forms, the ending of that movie you hated…”

“ARE YOU FLOATING OR AM I HAVING A BREAKDOWN?!”

“NEITHER OPTION IS GOOD!”

And then Harua yelled it.
Didn’t think it.
Didn’t filter it.
Just exploded:

“STOP LOOKING AT ME WITH THOSE SOULLESS EYES!”

Silence.
Brutal.
Absolute.

Nicholas floated even higher from the emotional shock.

“…that was very specific,” he said softly.

“It’s just that… you’re looking at me like you know things you’re not saying. Like… like something hurts and I can’t see it.”

Nicholas slowly lowered.
Touched the floor.
Or whatever counted as “floor” for him.

“I… don’t want to scare you.”

“Then stop acting like you’re not… dead.”

Silence again.
Too much of it.

Nicholas looked at him.
Really looked.
No laughing. No floating. No pretending.

“Quit acting like you don’t know,” he said.

They stayed like that.
Face to face. Eyes wide open and their souls finally spelled out between the lines.
The air was charged.
The silence was now the main character.

“We don’t talk about this,” murmured Harua, trembling.

“No. Never.”

“And we’re not talking about it now.”

“Perfect.”

“Excellent.”

And they sat down.
On opposite ends of the couch.
Not saying another word.
But something had changed.
Neither said it.
But both knew it had.

The broken mug was still on the floor.
The panda wasn’t meditating anymore.

The next day, they didn’t talk about the unauthorized spectral flight incident.
Nor the scream.
But everything else… also sounded different.

Nicholas floated lower. He walked instead of gliding.
And Harua… Harua spoke more softly. As if his voice was also processing something.

“Today’s my turn to restock daisies,” murmured Harua, tying his shoelaces with surgical slowness.

“I like daisies,” said Nicholas, leaning against the doorframe as if he actually weighed something. “They’re simple flowers. They don’t need much to be pretty.”

“You didn’t need much to be unbearable.”

“Thanks, that was sweet.”

They laughed.
A little.
Half-fake.
But they laughed.

Harua stood, slung his backpack over one shoulder, and paused before leaving.
The doorknob in his hand trembled just a little.

“Hey…” he said, without turning around.

Nicholas lifted his gaze.
“What?”

Harua hesitated.
He knew that if he said anything, there’d be no turning back.
And yet…

“Do you ever think… about leaving?”

A silence.
One of those with shape.

Nicholas lowered his eyes.
“Sometimes.”

“And?”

“And sometimes I can’t.”

Harua nodded slowly. Tightened his grip on the doorknob.
Turned it.
But didn’t leave.

“I don’t know if I want to forget you,” he confessed, barely a whisper.

Nicholas snapped his head up, alert.
“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”

“Sounded like something important.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

Harua finally opened the door.

“And you?”

“Me what?”

“Do you want to go?”

Nicholas swallowed phantom spit.
And that was the most physical thing he could manage.

“I don’t know if I want you to let me go.”

They stayed like that, each holding half a sentence.
Each holding a truth they were too afraid to release into the world.

Harua looked down, hiding the tremor in his hands.
Nicholas stepped back, just in case the air between them became too real.

“See you later,” said Harua.

“Okay. Don’t take long. I have to tell you something.”

“Oh? What?”

“...Later.”

And the door closed.

Nicholas was alone.
With a wilted flower in the hand he couldn’t quite hold anything with.
And with a heart—if he still had one—full of words that, for some reason, couldn’t be spoken.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

It was one of those washed-out afternoons.
White sky. Wind that doesn’t cool. Silence thick as cold soup.

Harua was sitting on the floor of the living room, halfway through repotting a new plant, dirt under his nails, a crooked trowel, and a soul a little more disordered than usual.

Nicholas watched him from the sofa.
With that expression that looked neutral at first glance, but which Harua—expert in reading what isn’t said—knew meant cosmic-level gloom.

“What’s wrong with you now?” Harua asked, without looking at him.

“Nothing,” Nicholas answered, the oldest and saddest lie in the world.

Harua dropped the trowel, wiped his hands with a towel, and stood up.
Not abruptly. Not angrily. With that weird mix of annoyance and concern you only use with people who matter.

“Are you mad about something? Was it me? Did Taki say anything? Did you read my notes in the notebook? Because if you read the part about ‘pretty-eyed idiot,’ that was sarcasm and it was academic context.”

Nicholas didn’t answer.
He just lowered his gaze.

And that’s when Harua noticed it.
The transparency.
Subtle. Barely perceptible.
As if his outline were losing focus. As if the edges of the world whispered, “eh, I’m not registering him anymore.”

“Nicholas,” he said, taking a step toward him. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar. You’re coming apart.”

“I’m not coming apart. I just… feel weird.”

“Weird like ‘I had a funky dream’ or weird like ‘I’m emotionally evaporating in front of your face because I don’t know how to deal with this unresolved bond?’”

Nicholas said nothing.
And his feet—if those still counted as feet—were already a blurred shadow.

“Nico!” shouted Harua, real panic in his voice this time.

He rushed forward. Tried to touch him. Failed.
His hand went right through.

“You can’t disappear every time I talk seriously!”

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” whispered Nicholas. His voice was faint. As if he were speaking from another room. Or from the memory of a voice.

“Then what is this? An emotional glitch?”

“I think… I think when I get like this, when I don’t know what to do with all of this… the world starts letting me go.”

“And you’re just gonna let it?! You’re gonna let nothingness absorb you just because you’re having an emo day?! SOLID MODE, NOW!”

Nicholas smiled.
Small. Almost invisible.

“You always get like this when you worry about me.”

“Because I don’t want to lose you again, idiot!”

Silence.
Silence that cuts the air.
Silence that screams everything unsaid.

“...You’re not gonna lose me,” Nicholas finally said. “It’s just… sometimes it’s hard to hold myself together. Like part of me already knows this can’t last.”

Harua shook his head violently. Wiped his eyes with his sleeve, as if he weren’t crying.

“No. You’re not disappearing. Not now, not tomorrow. Not as long as I still need you.”

“And what if one day you don’t?”

“Then you’ll scare my plants until I remember.”

Nicholas laughed. And the sound—despite everything—made him a bit more visible.
A bit more real.
As if laughter were the antidote to oblivion.

Harua looked at him.
With anger. With tenderness. With a painful mix of everything he felt and didn’t say.

“Nico…”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t leave me alone.”

“I never wanted to.”

And for a second—just one—Harua felt that his hand didn’t pass entirely through Nicholas’s body.
It wasn’t a touch. It wasn’t real.
But it wasn’t nothing either.

It was just enough to keep going.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

Sunday afternoon.
Classic “I need to fix my life so I’m going to clean compulsively as if that solved my emotional turmoil” moment.

Harua had headphones on, a full bucket, and a broom he wielded with the dignity of a housewife possessed by the spirit of productivity.

Salsa was playing. Energetic salsa. Salsa of “move or die.”
And Harua moved.

Nicholas watched him from the doorway, leaning against the air, wearing the expression of “this is the best thing I’ve seen since I stopped having a pulse.”

“Are you fighting the floor or seducing it?” he asked, amused.

Harua, without stopping, gave him a paso doble and a murderous look.

“I’m cleaning. With rhythm. It’s an ancestral technique.”

“Ancestral as in… ‘my mom blasted Celia Cruz on Saturdays while mopping’?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh. Then I’m joining.”

Harua stared at him.
Really stared.

“You know how to dance salsa?”

“I know lots of things you didn’t know I knew.”

“Like levitating.”

“Like spinning with style.”

And before Harua could say anything else, Nicholas glided (because you can’t say he walked) to the center of the room, raised a hand toward the broom, and, as if he were in a haunted ballroom, marked the beat.

Harua blinked.

“What… are you doing?”

“What you’re doing, but good.”

“Since when do you know how to dance salsa?!”

“Ever since I learned not to feel embarrassment in the afterlife.”

Nicholas spun, did a side step, and ended with an absurdly unnecessary bow.

Harua looked at him like he’d just discovered his fridge could play the violin.
“Did you take spectral dance classes or what?”

“There’s a salsa club for dead people in the afterlife basement. They give us imaginary mojitos and prizes for not stepping on the living.”

“Stop messing with me.”

“I can’t touch reality, but I can touch hearts. And Caribbean rhythms.”

The song’s volume rose just as Nicholas dared to throw him a nonverbal invitation to dance.
Harua shook his head… and also his feet, which were already marking the beat.

“This is insane,” he muttered. “I’m dancing salsa with a ghost in my living room.”

“And you’re forgetting the most important part: you’re losing.”

“Losing what?”

“The rhythm battle!”

“That doesn’t exist!”

“Then why are you sweating from the stress?”

“Because I’m wearing a hoodie, you idiot!”

“Or because you can’t handle these dimension-transcending hip movements?”

Harua burst into a laugh that forced him to stop.
He leaned on the broom like he needed physical and emotional stabilization.

Nicholas floated beside him, triumphant.
He wasn’t sweating—obviously—but his ego was drenched in glory.

“You knew I wouldn’t be able to handle you dancing better than me,” Harua murmured.

“Exactly. That’s why I did it. It’s all part of my plan to melt you slowly.”

“What?”

“What?”

“What did you say?”

“What did you say?”

Pause.
Silence.

Harua cleared his throat. Straightened. Grabbed the broom like he had never danced with it.

“I’m gonna finish cleaning. In peace.”

“With salsa?”

“With salsa. But without you.”

“Too late, darling, I already infected you with the rhythm.”

“Don’t talk to me like you’re a tropical virus.”

“And what if I am?”

“Then I need an urgent vaccine.”

Both laughed.
They laughed hard.
They laughed like the air wasn’t so heavy between them.

And for a while, it wasn’t.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

The house was quiet.
Quiet in that way that isn’t peace, but pause.
A long, uncomfortable pause flavored with unsaid things.

Harua had left early. Or at least that’s what he said.

Nicholas was alone.
Or at least he believed he was.

He floated in the kitchen, staring at a cup of tea he couldn’t drink.
A cup Harua always prepared the same way, with two spoonfuls of sugar and a pinch of cinnamon “because it gives you Christmas-spirit vibes.”

He spoke to the cup.
Or maybe to the nothing.

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.”

His words were quiet. Quieter than ever.

“I wake up every day hoping you won’t notice. Hoping you’ll keep playing this game with me. This ridiculous game where we both pretend we don’t know.”

He touched the rim of the cup with a translucent finger.

“But you do know. I feel it. I see it. Your voice shakes when you talk to me. You get weird when you accidentally walk through me. You avoid my eyes when you laugh at my jokes.”

He sighed.
It made no sound.

“And I can’t blame you. I died for you. Literally. And I’m not telling you that to guilt-trip you. I’m telling you because it was the last thing I thought before everything went black.”

He lifted his gaze, talking to the walls, to the plants, to the air.

“I was running to see you. Because you’d yelled at me on the phone. Because you were mad. Because I was late. Because I didn’t want you to be alone.”

He swallowed nonexistent saliva.

“And if I had to choose, I’d do it again. Because that last thought… it was you. Always you.”

“I didn’t stay here because I have nowhere else to go. I stayed because I don’t want to leave your side. Because… I still don’t know how to stop loving you.”

A soft step.
Behind him.

Nicholas didn’t notice.

But Harua was there.
Still. Pale. Hand still on the doorknob.
He’d come back because he forgot his phone.

And he walked straight into a confession he never expected to hear.

His mouth hung open. His heart was just white noise.

He didn’t say anything.
He couldn’t.

He just turned around.
Left as if he’d heard nothing.

But the world now sounded different.
As if something inside him had cracked… or maybe opened.

Night had fallen over the city with that soft gray that seems to apologize for existing.

Harua was in his room. Sitting on the edge of the bed.
Hands around a cup of cold tea.
Head full of burning thoughts.

Nicholas was in the hallway. Floating just slightly, as if his body didn’t want to make noise. As if he wasn’t sure he had permission to enter.

“Do you want to come in?” Harua asked, without looking at him.

Nicholas swallowed air. Or tried to.
He entered.

He didn’t float. He walked.
He sat on the floor beside him, in that strange posture of someone who isn’t sure if they’re allowed to be comfortable.

Harua spoke first.

“I know what happened.”

Silence.
Thick. Sharp. Real.

“I… was coming back from class. I remembered you said you’d pass by the park that afternoon. I texted you. You didn’t answer. I called you. I remember yelling at you. ‘Hurry up, idiot, I’m getting there first and I’m spitting on the bench.’ Something like that.”

Nicholas lowered his gaze.

“And then I got the message from the police.”

Harua squeezed the cup, knuckles white. He wasn’t looking at him. He couldn’t.

“Since that day, every night I tell myself that if I hadn’t called you, if I hadn’t rushed you, if I hadn’t made you run… you’d still be here.”

Nicholas looked up.

“I am here.”

“Not like before.”

“No. But I’m here.”

Harua finally met his eyes. They were red. But he wasn’t crying.
Not yet.

“You don’t know what I felt when you appeared at home. I thought I’d lost my mind. Or that I was dreaming. Then I thought you didn’t know. That you didn’t know you were dead. That if I told you, you’d leave. That you’d ‘accept it’ and disappear. And I wasn’t ready to lose you again.”

Nicholas’ eyes were red too. But without tears. Or without tears the world could see.

“I didn’t tell you either because… I thought you didn’t know. That if I confirmed it, you’d let me go. And… Harua, I don’t know how to exist without you. Even if I’m not… complete.”

A silence.
Short. Fragile.
Like the space between two notes in a sad song.

“Do you know what’s the worst part?” Nicholas said, voice trembling. “That I’d forgive you. Even if you had been the one to kill me. Because nothing, nothing, would make me stop loving you.”

And then the tears.
Both of them.

His, visible.
Nicholas’, less.

Because as he cried, his form began to blur.
As if the pain was too real for what remained of his body.

Harua leaned toward him. Hugged him.
Through him.
Despite everything.
With everything.

“Don’t go,” he whispered against a chest that wasn’t there.

Nicholas closed his eyes.

“I don’t want to.”

Harua held him tighter. Held nothing. Felt everything.

“Even like this… I want you to stay.”

“Even like this… I do too.”

And they stayed like that.
One made of body and tears.
The other, of grief and love.
Both clinging to the memory of what they were—
and the foolish hope of what they could still be.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

The next day, the house smelled like smoke.
Not the existential kind. The real kind.

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO SET THE PAN TO MAX POWER, NICHOLAS!”

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO TRUST A GHOST TO COOK!”

“BUT YOU INSISTED ON USING ‘MENTAL ENERGY’ TO WHISK THE EGGS!”

“AND IT WORKED! LOOK AT THIS MIXTURE!”

Nicholas held it in the air with pure spectral willpower. It floated like a slightly murky cloud with the texture of a well-mannered slime.

Harua covered his face with both hands, laughing despite himself.

“Oh my God, this is a culinary crime. You’re gonna haunt my intestines.”

“That requires you to have intestines. I don’t anymore, and look at me: splendid.”

“You’re literally partially see-through.”

“Glowing from the inside, like a star.”

Harua gave up.
He threw a napkin at Nicholas’ head—it went through him—and sat at the table with a lukewarm coffee.

Nicholas floated closer, leaving the pancake mixture orbiting in the air like a tiny satellite.

“You okay?” he asked suddenly.

Harua looked at him.
Really looked.

Those eyes without corneas that still managed to say everything.

“Yeah. Today, yeah.”

“And tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. But today you’re making me breakfast. Half-burnt. Half-horrible. Half made with paranormal powers. And it’s the best thing that’s happened to me all week.”

Nicholas smiled.

“I… I’m good too. Today. I felt more… present.”

“Even though you made a pan combust?”

“Especially because of that.”

They laughed.
This time without tears.
Without tension.

The laughter of two people who love each other even when they don’t know how to keep going.
Even when they're broken.
Even when one of them is a little dead.

Nicholas spun the mixture in the air, gave it an exaggerated French-chef gesture, and finally poured it into a new pan (on moderate heat this time).

“You know,” Harua said, watching him, “if eternity is gonna be like this… I don’t mind as much.”

Nicholas raised one ghostly eyebrow.

“Burning things and having breakfast together?”

“Yeah. Even if we can never eat the same thing.”

“I can smell it, at least.”

“And?”

“It smells like home.”

Something in Harua’s chest settled.
Didn’t heal, didn’t close—just stopped hurting so sharply.

“Then it’s worth it.”

“What is?”

“Staying.”

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

It was nighttime.
His university class had been a thick fog of theory and half-erased chalkboards. Harua had come home with a heavy head and low shoulders. He didn’t say it, but it was obvious: he was emotionally exhausted.
The kind of tiredness not even a bucket of ice cream can cure.
Only silence. And maybe… a ghost.

The house was quiet.
Nicholas was sprawled—floating diagonally, because even dead he refused to respect gravity—reading a gardening magazine he had clearly stolen from Harua.

Harua set down his backpack, kicked off his shoes, went straight to the kitchen, and began washing the dishes from breakfast (and lunch… and the attempt at dinner that was basically bread and shame).

Nicholas hovered closer with all the discretion of a curtain shaken by the wind.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Harua, and the dish soap knew he was lying.

“Liar.”

“Ghost.”

“Touché.”

Nicholas leaned (floated) against the counter, watching him.
And in that moment—without any big reason, without drama or tears, with nothing happening at all—Harua turned around and looked at him.

Looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.
Or as if truly seeing him.

“You know something?”

“What?”

“You’re more present than most living people.”

Nicholas blinked.
Literally. A gesture so human that for a second he didn’t seem dead.

“Is that a good thing?”

“It’s weird. But… yeah. I guess it is.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“There are people who are alive, fully, with bodies and everything, and they still don’t stay. Don’t listen. Don’t show up. Don’t make terrible pancakes with spectral energy.”

“It’s a talent.”

“It’s an attempt. And I appreciate it.”

Nicholas smiled—not like someone receiving a compliment, but like someone being handed a warm coat right when the cold starts.

“Sometimes I wonder,” he said quietly, “if you’ll be able to keep going with your life while I’m here. Floating around. Interfering. I don’t want to hold you back.”

Harua turned off the faucet and wiped his hands. Dried them with a dish towel full of lemon drawings (Taki’s fault). Then he leaned against the sink and looked at Nicholas with half-squinted, half-wide-open eyes.

“You don’t hold me back.”

“No?”

“You remind me I’m not alone. And that makes me want to keep going.”

Nicholas lowered his gaze. Bit his lip. Or made the gesture, at least.

“If one day you need me to leave…”

“I’ll tell you.”

“And if you don’t tell me?”

“Then stay forever.”

A soft silence.
A good silence.
The kind that doesn’t weigh—just wraps around you.

Nicholas extended his hand.
Harua did too.
And when their fingers “touched”—quotation marks, cross-dimensionally, reality-optional—it didn’t feel cold.
It didn’t feel like nothing.
But it felt like something.

And sometimes, that’s enough.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

It was dawn.
Everything was still—except the anxiety.

Nicholas floated in the living room, silent, staring at his hands.
Their edges were blurry.
Sometimes they faded, like smoke. Like the world no longer knew how to hold him.

Harua came down the stairs half-asleep, half-worried, as if something had called him without words.

He froze when he saw him.
The blue glow from the TV reflected off Nicholas—but… not fully. As if even the screen didn’t know where to aim.

“You okay?” Harua asked, rubbing his eyes.

“I don’t know.”

The answer was quiet. Strange.
Real.

Harua stepped closer without thinking. Touched his shoulder. Or tried to.
His fingers passed straight through, as if Nicholas were a reflection on water.
For the first time in weeks, Nicholas didn’t even try to stay solid.

“Nico?”

Nicholas didn’t look up. He kept staring at his hands, moving them slowly. Carefully. As if they were slipping away.

“I’m… fading.”

Harua felt something unhinge inside him. As if his body were a house full of doors blown open by the wind.

“Since when?”

“Since that night. Since we… since we talked. Since we said things out loud.”

“And you think that caused it?”

Nicholas hesitated.

“Maybe… that was what was missing. Maybe when you finish what you came to do… you go. Like in movies. Closure, you know?”

Harua shook his head hard. Too fast. Too violently.

“No. No. Don’t give me that cinematic bullshit. This isn’t a story. It’s my life. And you’re part of it.”

“Harua…”

“I don’t care if we had ‘closure’! I don’t care if you ‘completed your arc’! I’m not done. I don’t want to be done.”

Nicholas closed his eyes.
A piece of his shirt vanished for a second before reappearing—like emotional poor connection.

“I don’t want to leave either. But I don’t know if I can stay. This isn’t my choice. It’s like something is… pulling me backward. It doesn’t hurt. But it’s scary.”

Harua came closer. Not knowing what to do. What to touch.
Every gesture screaming quietly.

“And if I refuse? If I hold on to you even if I can’t hold you? If I tie you to this house with words and promises and… whatever?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“How do you know? No one gave us a ‘relationships-with-the-afterlife’ manual! We’re improvising!”

Nicholas smiled—brokenly.

“I swear, if I could stay, I would. A thousand times. I’d stay to dance salsa, to make awful pancakes, to hear you complain about your professors, to watch bad movies until you fall asleep.”

Harua’s eyes were full of tears. Not crying yet—just the doorway to it.

“Then stay.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Try.”

“Harua…”

“Please.”

And in that “please,” there was no demand.
Just plea.
Just love.

Nicholas took a step toward him. Slowly.
His hand reached for Harua’s.
His fingers dissolved at the contact. But still—somehow—they held the air between them.

“I can’t promise. But I’ll fight.”

“With whatever you have.”

“With anything.”

They stayed like that.
Two bodies—one real, one almost.
Two hearts—one alive, one clinging to a beat in someone else’s memory.

And when the clock hit 3:33, Nicholas was still there.
Fainter.
But there.

The house was silent.
Not the silence of shared dawns, or burnt pancakes, or video games Nicholas commented on without holding a controller.

Another kind of silence.
Hollow.
Like a room locked from the inside.

Harua woke at nine. Not because of class. Not because Taki spammed him with offensive memes.
Simply because… something was off.

He opened his eyes. The light came in the same as always.
But the air… wasn’t right.

He got up. Went to the kitchen.

The table was empty.
No floating pancake batter.
No serviettes phasing through anything.
No Nicholas complaining the microwave hated him.

“Nico,” he called softly.

Nothing.

“Come on, you already pulled this on Halloween. It’s not funny if you actually disappear.”

Silence.

He checked the living room.
No ghost at the TV.
No static. No flickering lights.

He checked Nicholas’s “room”—the couch and half a shelf.
The blanket was folded.
Too perfectly folded.

Harua stood in the middle of the house.
Still.
Looking everywhere.
And nowhere.

Then he saw the note.

A piece of paper on the fridge.
Held with a cat magnet that said “Don’t die on me.”
Irony doing gymnastics.

The handwriting was unmistakably Nicholas’s.
Round. Slightly crooked.

“I’m not leaving because I want to.
I’m leaving because the world seems to be letting go of me.
I don’t know where I’m going.
If I’m going anywhere at all.
But if there’s a way back…
I’ll come back.
Thank you for not letting me go earlier.
Bye, for now.”

Harua read the note three times.
Then sat on the floor.
And said nothing.

He didn’t cry right away.
He didn’t get angry right away.
He just… stayed there.
As if part of him had evaporated along with Nicholas.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

The house didn’t creak.
The lights didn’t flicker.
The stray cats didn’t sneak in like before.
Everything was normal.
Terribly normal.

For the first time in a long while, Harua was alone.
And “for now” wasn’t enough to stop it from hurting.

The first day without Nicholas was…
Quiet.
Not like a pause.
Not like a breath.
The kind of quiet that crushes your chest.

Harua woke up before the alarm.
Not because he had something urgent to do.
Just because there was no noise.
No eighties music blasting from the speaker.
No one asking if he wanted pancakes even though he never finished them.

There was only Harua. And the echo.

The flower shop was as full of colors as always.
But that day… they all looked dim to him.

“I brought you coffee with an extra shot of emotional pain,” Taki said, placing the cup on the counter with the delicacy of an emotional bulldozer.
Harua smiled without meaning it.

“Thanks.”

“And a cookie. Because I know you eat like an orphan of repressed emotions.”

“Wow. Romantic.”

“I try. How are you?”

Harua shrugged.

“Weird. The house is empty.”

“Yeah. Well. Technically, you also lived alone before Nicholas.”

“Yeah, but… it was different. I was alone. I didn’t feel alone.”

Taki looked at him in silence.
He didn’t say “I get it.” He didn’t say “it’ll pass.”
He just touched his arm, and that was enough.

“Your plants are still doing fine,” Taki said, as if that were relevant information.
“I talked to them this morning. Told them your ectoplasmic boyfriend will probably come back. That he just went on a short spiritual trip.”

Harua looked at him with a mix of tenderness and annoyance.

“He wasn’t my boyfriend.”

“I know. That’s why it hurts more.”

Harua lowered his gaze.

“I miss his nonsense. How he floated without realizing. How he laughed too loud. How he made me mad every time he said ‘I died laughing’ like it wasn’t offensive.”

Taki handed him a tissue.

“Missing someone is a way of still loving them. It’s like a memory that refuses to die.”

“How cheesy.”

“I learned from you. When you talked to yourself and said your ‘imaginary friend’ didn’t have a reflection.”

Harua let out a small laugh.
His first one of the day.

That night, the house greeted him with the same stillness as in the morning.
He left his keys in the bowl.
Hung up his coat.
Made himself tea and set it on the table. In front of the other cup.

The empty cup.
The one still waiting for someone.

He didn’t talk. Didn’t pretend someone was there.
But he… left the cup there.
In case he came back.

Because some part of him was still convinced Nicholas would return.
Because the silence, though loud, wasn’t final yet.

And in that silence…
something moved.
Softly. Barely.
Like a laugh.
Like a breeze.
Like the air had tried to hold in a ghostly chuckle.

Harua didn’t say anything.
But he smiled.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

Harua woke up with a smell in his nose.
Not toast. Not smoke. Not Taki.

Jasmine. Jasmine with a touch of mint.
A very specific scent. Very Nicholas.
One he used because, according to him, “forest spirits also want to smell nice.”

Harua sat up. Looked around.
Nothing.
The window was closed.
The plant hadn’t bloomed since November.
The jasmine oil bottle had been empty for two months.

And still… the scent was there. Strong. Fresh. Familiar.

He got up slowly. Walked through the house.
Everything the same.
Everything… almost the same.

At the flower shop, Taki noticed something.

“Are you… smiling?”

Harua blinked at him, half on autopilot.

“Huh?”

“You’ve got that little smile of ‘something weird but cute is happening and I don’t want to talk about it because it’ll vanish.’”

“I have that smile because I slept more than six hours, probably.”

“Lies. I know that face. It’s the same one you made when Nicholas learned how to float horizontally without bumping into shelves.”

Harua lowered his gaze to the bouquet he was arranging.
A rose shifted into place on its own.
Literally on its own.
Not one of those gravity things.
One of those touched-with-invisible-affection things.

Harua stared. Said nothing. But Taki had seen it.

“Again…?”

Harua shrugged, almost apologetically.

“There are weird things. The perfume. The flowers. The coffee maker started on its own this morning.”

“Ohh, the ghost is back!” Taki threw his arms up like he’d won something. “Did you tell him we got new soil for the succulent?”

“He hasn’t shown himself yet.”

“And are you gonna wait for him?”

Harua thought.
Breathed.

“I don’t have to wait. He’s already here.”

Taki smiled. Walked over to one of Harua’s favorite plants.
Turned the pot a little.

On the side, someone had drawn a little smiley face with black marker.
One that hadn’t been there yesterday.

“This…?”

“Yeah,” Harua said, holding back a laugh.

And for the first time in days, they both laughed.

That night, Harua made two cups of tea.
As always.
Left one on the table. In the usual spot.

He didn’t say anything.
But when he turned around to grab a blanket…
the cup, all by itself, let out steam.
More than it should.

As if someone invisible had just picked it up.
As if he was right there.
As if he’d never really left.

Harua wasn’t scared.
Didn’t even ask.
He just sat down, crossed his legs, and drank his tea.
In peace.
In company.
With a small smile.

Because sometimes love comes back in flowers, in scents, in quiet laughter.
And sometimes, in a cup of tea steaming without explanation.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

It was Saturday.
Mid-autumn.
Light filtered through the window in that golden tone that makes everything look like a memory, even things still happening.

Harua was in the living room, sitting cross-legged on the couch, a notebook on his lap and a half-dead pen in hand.
He was writing without much purpose. Loose words. Thoughts like scattered leaves unsure which season to fall into.

And without meaning to, he spoke.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” he said, like someone dropping a stone into a well just to see if there’s an echo.
Pause.

“I don’t know if you’re fully gone either. Sometimes I think you are. Other times… I feel you in the corners. In the air. In that stupid jasmine smell that shows up every time I’m about to cry.”
Pause.

“Is it possible to come back from the afterlife by sheer will?”
Another pause.

“If you want it enough… can you stay?”

Silence.

But this time… a different kind of silence.
Not the same one from the past weeks.
Not so closed. Not so lonely.

And then, soft. Almost a whisper. Almost a laugh.
“Depends. Are there pancakes?”

Harua froze.
Turned his head, slowly.

There he was.
Nicholas.
Sitting on the counter like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t vanished. Like he hadn’t left a goodbye note. Like the afterlife had just been a school field trip with no recess.

“… ”
“Hi.”

Harua said nothing.
His face was a mix of shock, relief, and the urge to throw the nearest cushion at him.

“You came back?”

“I tried not to. But dimensional traffic is a nightmare. And also… well, I missed your ‘just woke up and already defeated’ face.”

“YOU DISINTEGRATED RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!”

“I dematerialized with style! There’s a difference.”

“YOU LEFT ME A NOTE!”

“With excellent handwriting!”

Harua stood up abruptly.

“I spent weeks talking to myself! Taki almost called an exorcist!”

“That florist who hates me and loves me at the same time?”

“YES, HIM!”

Nicholas floated down from the counter like he had invisible springs.
He stepped closer. Not too close. Just enough.

“Sorry.”

Harua took a deep breath. Lowered his head.
He was trembling.

“How… how are you even here?”

Nicholas shrugged.

“I don’t know. I guess sometimes love is stronger than death. Or at least that’s what my favorite romcom says.”

“And you came back because…?”

“Because I missed you. Because I wasn’t done. Because I didn’t want what we had to end as an unfinished chapter.”

“And if you fade again?”

“Then I’ll come back again. And again. And again.”

“For how long?”

“Until you don’t want me to anymore.”

Harua looked at him.

“Don’t say things like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I love you, and I don’t know what to do with that if I can’t touch you.”

Silence.
But the good kind. The heavy kind.

Nicholas lifted a hand. Brought it closer.
His fingers trembled—like the air itself resisted.

Harua didn’t move back.
He let him try.

And for a second. Just one second…
there was contact.

Not physical.
But something sparked.
A tingling. An electricity. A certainty.

“I’m here,” Nicholas said. “I don’t know how, but I am.”

“And you’re going to stay.”

“If you ask me to, yeah.”

Harua swallowed hard.

“Stay.”

And they stayed there.
In the middle of the living room. In the middle of the impossible.
Two people. Half-spoken love. A reunion with no rules.
And a story that, against all odds, wasn’t over yet.

👻ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི 𐙚⋆.˚ ༄

A week later, Harua no longer flinched when Nicholas floated half a head above the ground.
Or when he appeared behind him in the bathroom, commenting on his skincare routine.

(“That serum wasn’t approved by any dermatologist from the afterlife, just saying.”)

They didn’t argue much anymore about the logical impossibility of their situation.
They’d made peace with the absurd.

“How long do you think you can stay?” Harua asked one morning, watering his plant, which now had a new flower.
A weird one. Almost translucent.

“No idea. But I’m not dematerializing, so… until further notice, I’m your personal bedside ghost.”

“Cool.”

“Besides, I’m not leaving you alone with Taki. I like him, but he looks like the type who’d adopt another plant and call it ‘Nicholas 2.’”

“He already did.”

“See? Menace.”

Nicholas spun in the air like someone with too much free time and too little corporeal mass.
Harua watched from the couch, cup in hand.

“Can you imagine us in twenty years?” he said, tossing it out casually—like a stone not meant to bounce. “Me old and gray. You… floating around being equally annoying.”

“We’d have a routine. Paranormal marriage vibes. I cook badly, you pretend you like it. You arrange flowers, I accidentally wilt them.”

“I go to work, you complain the remote doesn’t respond to you.”

“And if you bring someone home?”

“A date?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Harua thought.

“Well. They’ll have to deal with having a dead roommate. And you’ll have to approve them too.”

“Obviously. I’ll haunt them subtly. Throw things. Float in the shower. The basics.”

They laughed.
A laugh so them it hurt with how soft it was.

That night, they shared a moment like many others: tea, a terrible show, and comments only they understood.
An inside joke every five minutes.
A knowing glance every two.

Nicholas floated upside down, making shark noises.
Harua threw a pillow that passed right through him.

“I hate you,” Nicholas said, spinning like a vengeful dolphin.

“I hate you too. Stay forever.”

Nicholas lowered a little, looking at him from above.
That expression—right before saying something serious.
But not saying it.

“You know I’m not going anywhere, right?”

“I know.”

“We don’t have to promise it. Or swear it. Or say it out loud.”

“No.”

Silence.
The good kind.

And that’s how it stayed.
No goodbyes.
No finales.
No tidy endings.

An extra cup always served.
A flower that didn’t wilt.
A laugh that never fully disappeared.

A home.
One living.
One dead.
And an unspoken pact:

Companions for eternity.