Chapter Text
Miko:
When Miko woke up, nothing was wrong. She went through her normal daily routine. She avoided looking at the tiny old men who ran across her desk. Avoided looking at the man who watched her brushing her teeth in the bathroom. Avoided looking at her dad and the massive creature in the living room. Except that day, the spirit wasn’t there, just her dad.
When her brother and mother came down, and when they all sat at the table, Miko took the chance to sneak a few glances at her dead father. No one batted an eye, it was common to see Miko glance at the empty chair. The ghost of her father didn’t look normal either, he didn’t look human, he looked like a translucent light figure. The only thing that was normal was his voice, happily talking to his family like he wasn’t dead. Her dad was also talking to the spirit which she couldn’t see.
’Where is it?’ Miko thought. She knew it was still there, probably looking at her food because she wasn’t touching it. But she started to take this new change as a good thing. If she couldn’t see the living room spirit, she won’t be able to see any other gruesome and horrific ghosts. She was sad she couldn’t see her dad, but her brain told her to give herself a break.
Miko happily ate with her family and left for school.
Yuria:
When Yuria woke up, nothing was wrong. She went through her normal daily routine. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and went back in her room to change. After that, she checked up on her newest test, which was two of the tiny old ghosts, trapped in a glass cup. She was going to test something before she went to school a habit she picked up after meeting Shindou Romm.
She marked the two glasses A and B before rummaging through her drawers, pulling out two small bags of white powder from under her clothes.
”Why does it feel like I’m hiding drugs?” Yuria scoffed as she looked at the small bags, also marked A and B. The test was simple; Yuria was going to see if the salt purified at a well-kept shrine (B) would be more effective than the salt purified at a less well-kept shrine (A).
Yuria slid a piece of paper under glass A and flipped it over, making sure the little ghost wouldn’t escape. When she removed the paper, she immediately poured the salt of bag A into the glass. The tiny old ghost immediately started to shrivel up and turn to black ashes, not that it was ashes, he’s already dead. Yuria simply watched the ‘burning’ of the ghost.
”Now where is my notebook…” She opened more of her desk drawers until…
“YOU CAN SEE THEM?”
Yuria froze up, but forced herself to relax. It was probably just another human-looking ghost who randomly found her room. Only those guys could speak, so she wasn’t too worried. She turned around to check the nightstand next to her bed and caught a real good look at the ghost. The ghost that was very much not one of the human-looking ones.
“YOU CAN SEE THEM?”
The thing was disgusting. A disgusting black mass with even more black spewing out of it like miasma. A disgusting wide smile with teeth made from the skulls of the human-looking ghosts Yuria had expected to see. Disgusting eyes with pupils the size of pins. Disgusting was all Yuria could think of, other than the persistent thought that she should not throw up.
”What the hell is that?” She thought, darting her eyes to the ground. Maybe she should throw the salt at it? Or maybe she could drive it away like what the Grandmother did. But Yuria remembered something she said months ago.
They do say a skilled hawk hides its talons.
Hide it, hide her talons. She should do that. Yuria left her experiment, the tiny old man remained could try to escape. She left her room to eat breakfast with her family, avoiding any and all eye contact. Leaving her house was the biggest mercy given to her.
”What was that…”