Work Text:
It starts when Futakuchi is laying down an audio track for a group project, sweating in his too hot apartment. It’s pure labor. He’s stuck at that bizarre stage in an assignment where you know you’re shit at something but have to keep at it anyway: him and his freeware editing program and his freesound.org and the stifling summer heat, his lonely box fan turned off because it was making too much background noise.
When he plays the song back he hears a scratchy noise that he definitely hadn’t included and definitely isn’t just static. No matter how much he fiddles with it the aberration refuses to go away. Futakuchi gets close enough to wanting to rip his hair out to consult a friend about the issue, which is how he winds up on Ennoshita’s doorstep, a self-proclaimed weirdo and aficionado of all things supernatural that could be stuffed into a terrible horror movie, who hooks a pair of earbuds into his ears to listen to the track, hums, and says as if affirming a day’s dismal weather by looking out the window: “Yep. Ghost.”
And so Futakuchi’s dilemma: A ghost dwells somewhere in his shoebox of an apartment. Of all places – what was the appeal? There is hardly any room to haunt. His fridge is nearly empty. He has a scenic view of the parking lot. His couch is covered in plastic and tries to rip the very skin off his legs every time he sits down.
Ennoshita suggests talking to it. Peaceably, he adds, because they’ve known each other for a while now.
“Kindly fuck off,” Futakuchi mutters into his empty apartment. He half expects the lights to dim or a bulb to shatter in response.
Nothing happens.
Futakuchi walks to the door and opens it, sweeps an arm in a polite ‘after you’ gesture, and says, “There’s an entire complex out there. See? Lots of other people to bother who aren’t working to meet a freaking deadline. Clap once if you just left.”
He waits for a sign. A pale, long-haired woman to appear, a real life jump scare to pop up and give him a heart attack. He earns a baffled look from a passing neighbor.
There’s not much else for it then, except when he pauses before his bathroom mirror an hour later he recalls the story of Bloody Mary. How did it go? Chant her name three times and she’ll appear? It’s no Bloody Mary that he wants to summon, and he doesn’t even know this ghost’s name, but if the trick works maybe he’ll get a chance to tell it to go away properly.
And if it doesn’t work, well. He’ll only lose a little dignity in the privacy of his own home.
Determined, Futakuchi sets both hands on the rim of the sink basin, looks his reflection straight in the eyes and chants, “Nuisance, Nuisance, Nuisance!”
Behind him, the temperature suddenly plummets.
“That’s not my name.”
“Holy shit,” Futakuchi curses, spinning around.
If Futakuchi wore glasses this would be the comedic moment where he takes them off and tries to wipe away the sight of the smudge that’s hovering near the towel rack, but he doesn’t, so he rubs his eyes instead. The smudge remains. When he blinks again the figure stutters into a more solid form, a flicker of a human-shaped light brown haired something, but in the next moment the vision is gone, replaced by an ambiguous, fuzzy presence.
“Are you haunting me?” Futakuchi demands.
The ghost scoffs. Scoffs, and then disappears not in a puff of smoke or some other cool cg spectacle, but simply vanishes, leaving Futakuchi gawking in his bathroom before he stomps out to see it blinking back into existence on his sofa. A glowy, oblong shape taking a seat like it’s something it does every day.
“Don’t think I won’t hire an exorcist and bring him in here.”
“Don’t bother. I’m only here because of this,” Nuisance announces, moving like a glitchy stop motion animation toward Futakuchi’s music set-up. Which is to say, his laptop, a small pair of portable speakers, and a borrowed soundboard that still looks like a panel from an alien spacecraft with how many buttons it has and little he knows what to do with them.
“What, petty theft? Hate to break it to you, but ghosts can’t touch anything so that’s a pretty lame threat.”
“The music, you… Whatever you’re making, it sounds terrible.”
“You don’t know what I’m making.”
“I’ve been watching and it sounds terrible. You clearly don’t know how to use any of this stuff.”
“First of all: creepy. Second of all, you think you can do so much better?”
In answer, the ghost reaches for a switch. Its finger phases through the soundboard. The speakers emit an awful nails-on-a-chalkboard screech that makes Futakuchi’s teeth grind.
“Wow,” he says. “Because that was such a wonderful addition.”
The ghost gives a frustrated look at its own hand before whirling on Futakuchi. “Hit that switch right there.”
“Hit it?”
“Push the lever up. You knew what I meant.”
What an attitude for a dead thing. Futakuchi heaves a sigh and slides the switch up until Nuisance says stop.
The instructions keep coming. The ghost quite literally hovers over Futakuchi’s shoulder while telling him what to do, which buttons to push, what sounds to edit away or enhance. It’s almost feels like a collaborative efforts until Futakuchi remembers that he’s the only one literally sweating over a laptop, bossed around by a know-it-all ghost that makes a passing comment about producing like it’s a dead dream with a voice that sounds like it’s eating gravel.
“Now play it again,” it demands.
“I don’t see how a few little changes like that will magically make anything better –“
Nuisance lunges for the laptop in a streak of ghostly residue like taillight caught in long exposure, trailing comet-like behind it. It loses shape, melting into wispy things that reform a second later and righteously jabs an entire arm straight through Futakuchi’s laptop. Twice. A fission of static scrolls down the screen; the mouse cursor turns into the pinwheel of death. The lights even begin to flicker above, shadows playing on the wall like some dripping macabre puppet show, and it’s all so horrifyingly cliché that Futakuchi rushes to hit play just to make it stop.
Music begins to pour from the speakers as the lights give a final flicker. That scratchy note which plagued Futakuchi’s earlier recording is now mysteriously gone and, even more baffling; the track isn’t total shit anymore. The melody is cleaner, the bass less muddled, extraneous parts trimmed away to reveal a halfway decent result.
“You’re welcome,” Nuisance says afterwards while Futakuchi is too busy frowning into the silence to admit thankful defeat. “And my name is Yahaba.”
“You do know that you’re dead, don’t you?” Futakuchi blurts.
Yahaba graces him with a look. A real look, that shapelessness shifting into concrete features; the face of a young man with eyes as light brown as his hair, lips downturned, brow furrowed, gore dribbling down one side of his face hinting at a gruesome death that Futakuchi didn’t even want to know about.
Futakuchi shrinks back, and then heads toward the couch. “Fine. Fine, whatever, yay we’re done. I’m turning on the fan to celebrate.”
So he does, flopping onto the couch with an ugly squelch of plastic.
After a long moment Yahaba joins him, the fan blowing noisy between them, sitting all silent and cold until he isn’t.
“If anyone ever wants to raise the dead,” he says. “I’ll refer your original song to them.”
“Ha fucking ha,” Futakuchi bites back.