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Have you ever had someone that you would consider to be a close friend, only to realize that you hardly know anything about them at all?
That was the mini crisis that Nene was currently having.
She considered Hanako to be a close friend and she really did care about him. Granted, he was the only one who thought his jokes were funny and he was far too clingy at times. But, they had fun together and he always kept her safe.
Maybe that was just because he viewed her as a useful asset, but she was the optimistic type.
Technically, they weren’t supposed to be as close as they were. Nene had only summoned Hanako to grant her wish, and he had only swallowed the mermaid scale in order to get an assistant. It was simply two people trying to get what they want through each other.
Mutual benefit.
But still, Hanako had saved her life on multiple occasions. He made her laugh when she was down about her grades. He listened when she ranted on endlessly about how she would never have a boyfriend.
Yes, he also made her clean the toilets, but the good outweighed the bad.
Hanako was her friend. It was as simple as that.
It had never occurred to her that, while she was spilling out her entire life story, he had never once talked about himself. If Nene considered him a friend, then, at the very least she should know something about him. But she was completely blank.
She didn’t even know if “Hanako” was his real name.
Probably not. Why would he have a girl’s name?
But this never really bothered her before. Perhaps because she kept seeing Hanako as a ghost. Some sort of supernatural being, not a real person. He was an apparition shrouded in mystery, that’s why she didn’t know anything about him.
Like the cute mascot character who came from another planet.
That had changed yesterday though, after he apologized for his fake confession.
For the first time, he had taken off his hat; his expression wasn’t carelessly goofy, it was remorseful, genuine and kind. For the first time, Nene didn’t see Hanako as a ghost that she had summoned in the school bathroom, she saw him as a real boy.
But then he had pulled her into a hug. His cold embrace reminding her that he wasn’t a real boy. He was the spirit of a real boy who had once been alive, but had died so very young.
It’s not fair, Nene pouted, walking to school. I tell him everything about myself, why can’t he open up a little?
Maybe … it’s because he doesn’t trust you, a small voice in her head whispered.
Nene shook her head firmly to clear it. No, that was stupid. Of course Hanako trusted her. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have chosen her as his assistant.
Maybe that was just because he didn’t have any other options—but she was still an optimist!
A small, niggling doubt still remained in the back of her mind, but it was easy enough to ignore as Nene strode through the school gates. Her mission for today was clearly made up. This would be the day she learned more about the ever-mysterious No. 7: Hanako-san.
~地縛少年~
The first attempt lead to him joking her off.
“You want to know what?”
“I said I wanted to know how you died,” Nene repeated, gaze intense, notebook at the ready.
Hanako frowned as he levitated, cross-legged. What had gotten into the girl to make her ask something like that all of a sudden? She had never cared much before. “
Why do you care about that?”
“I’m curious,” she responded absently. “After all, you’re a ghost. So, it’s only natural that I would want to know how you ended up like that.”
“Hmph, sounds more like you being nosy to me,” Hanako observed. “Still, it’s not a bad question so I suppose it deserves an answer.”
Nene’s heart lifted hopefully. Was it really going to be this easy to get him to tell her?
“My demise was a spectacular one,” Hanako announced dramatically. He paused for a moment to increase the desired tension of the atmosphere. “I was struck by lightning.”
Nene looked up from her notebook, one eyebrow quirking up in a clearly confused expression. “Really?”
“Yes, of course,” Hanako insisted, nodding fervently. “One day, on a dare, I climbed up to the top of the school roof in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. The wind whipped through my face as the pelting rain blinded me. But, being as brave and steadfast as I am, I didn’t falter as I gripped the flagpole, even though the gale was so close to blowing me away. Then, before I even had time to react, a bolt of lightning came crashing down from the heavens, whisking me away to the afterlife. Thus, ended my existence as a human and began my new life as Hanako the wholesome, toilet-haunting ghost.”
At this point, Nene’s eyebrows had climbed all the way up to her hairline. “That’s a total lie, isn’t it?” she asked flatly.
“Sure is,” Hanako agreed cheerfully.
Nene sighed. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. “That’s a very nice story, but I didn’t ask for an extravagant lie. I was asking you for the truth. I want to know how you died.”
“I know,” Hanako giggled, now floating upside down. “But you have to admit, I sounded really cool in my story, didn’t I?”
Nene didn’t answer, her expression a deadpan.
“Okay, okay,” Hanako said, flipping right side up and landing back on his feet. “The thing is, I didn’t want to tell you because the truth is really embarrassing.”
“More embarrassing than the fact that you spend your afterlife haunting a girl’s toilet?” Nene questioned, but couldn’t deny that her curiosity was bubbling again. It showed on her face as she wondered what could be so bad to make him keep it a secret.
“Oh yes, much worse,” Hanako confirmed glumly.
“Well, what is it?”
“I was … run over by an ice cream truck,” Hanako mumbled, twiddling his forefingers and pulling the rim of his hat over his eyes as this confession was truly humiliating.
“An ice cream truck,” Nene repeated doubtfully, her hopes deflating once more. “I suppose this is another one of your funny stories?”
“Of course not!” Hanako cried indignantly, as though her questioning was hurtful. He laid a hand flamboyantly over his non-beating heart and pouted. “I’ll have you know that it was an extremely traumatic experience and has given me a severe PTSD for anything ice cream related. I can’t even get within three meters of a waffle cone.”
“That’s another lie, huh?” Nene asked dryly.
“And she figures it out again!” Hanako cheered, waving his fans. “How does she do it, ladies and gentlemen? We have a real life detective here!”
“Hanako-kun, I was asking you a serious question,” Nene half-shouted in exasperation.
The apparition cocked his head. “Yes, and I gave you a not-very-serious answer. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is that I wanted a real answer from you. I expected to hear the truth, not a stupid string of half-baked lies.”
“I beg your pardon,” Hanako huffed. “My lies are never half-baked. I always put the utmost care into crafting them.”
“That’s not the point,” Nene muttered. “I want to hear the truth and I’m not—”
The school bell rang, signaling that classes were to begin.
“Phew, talk about saved by the bell, eh Yashiro?”
“This discussion isn’t over,” Nene warned as she gathered up her books for class.
~地縛少年~
The second attempt led to him changing the subject.
Nene found herself in the usual position, mop in hand, cleaning the bathroom. Honestly, she didn’t mind all the craziness that came with being bound to a ghost, but being turned into a cleaning maid was the real low point.
Hanako was sitting on the windowsill, playing cards with the Mokke. The small furrow in his eyebrows was a subtle sign that the game wasn’t going well for him.
“Ne, Hanako-kun?” Nene ventured.
The seventh wonder gave a hum to show that he had heard, not taking his eyes of the cards.
Good chance, if he’s not paying attention, maybe he’ll answer without thinking, Nene reasoned to herself. “What time do you come from?”
“What time?” Hanako echoed, finally looking up.
“Yeah, like what year you were born and how old were you when you died. Stuff like that.”
Hanako perked up as if a brilliant idea had just occurred to him and floated over, a suggestive smile tugging at his lips. “Well, how old do you think I am?” he purred. “Do I look mature to you? Enough to be your senpai, perhaps? After all, such roguish good looks take time to develop.”
“You couldn’t be my senpai,” Nene scoffed. “For one, you’re too short. And, if I was going off your behavior alone, I wouldn’t call you the seventh wonder, I’d call you seven years old.”
Hanako fell the ground as if the girl’s words had been an arrow through his heart. “That’s just plain rude,” he sulked, floating listlessly back the windowsill so he could resume his card game.
“Your physical appearance aside,” Nene said, hoping to get the conversation back on track. “You never said what time you came from. I’ve heard others say before that you’ve been around for a few decades, but that’s pretty vague.”
“Hai, I suppose, as far as supernaturals go, I’m pretty young,” Hanako admitted. “Some are millennia old. Hey, do you know what’s really old? Card games! They’ve been around for millennia too.”
“That’s nice,” Nene murmured. “But I’m not all that interested in card games.”
“Did you know that card games were first played in ancient Egypt?” Hanako went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “They were invented by the pharaohs who managed to harness shadow magic. They then used that magic to play games of great and terrible power.”
“Are you even listening to me?” Nene asked.
“But then one day, the magic got out of hand, and a brave pharaoh sealed it all away. Though, legend has it that one person will come around and bring the shadows games back. I think it’s just a tall tale though.”
“Hanako-kun!” Nene yelled.
“Yashiro!” Hanako yelled back happily.
Nene scowled, leaning the mop against a sink. “Fine, if you want to be that way, then I’m not going to clean the bathrooms for you. So there!”
“That’s fine,” Hanako shrugged, pulling a small aquarium out of seemingly thin air. “I guess you won’t mind being a fish again, either.”
Does he carry that thing around with him everywhere? Nene wondered.
“I’m cleaning, I’m cleaning!” she stuttered, hurriedly picking up the mop.
“There’s a good girl,” Hanako praised.
～地縛少年～
On the third attempt, she finally got a reaction.
The moment Nene approached him, Hanako had the suspicion that she was going to try and pry into his past some more. He supposed he had to give the girl kudos for her persistence, if nothing else, but it was starting to get old. As much as he loved winding his assistant up, her constant barrage of questions was triggering memories that he had been working for years to forget.
Like tugging persistently at a tightly woven knot until a few threads loosened…
“Ne, Hanako-kun?” Nene panted, leaning on the door to the bathroom. She didn’t have much time before class started for the day, but she wanted to try again. “Can I ask you something?”
“More questions?” Hanako tilted his head, letting his messy hair flop around. “My my, what a stubborn daikon.”
The girl’s face twitched at the nickname but she held back her temper, much to his disappointment.
“Did you have a family? What were they like?”
Family.
The knot unraveled.
Hanako froze. He had been expecting her to ask more questions about his death, but this had taken him off-guard. He hadn’t prepared himself for the onslaught of memories of himself and his brother growing up.
Tsukasa’s face always pulled into an impossibly wide grin. The grin that never faded, not even as the blood pooled beneath his body—
It shouldn’t have taken such a tiny prod to send his thoughts spiraling like this. But Hanako had spent the last fifty years in relative isolation with no one who knew, fewer who cared, and even fewer who dared enough to ask any questions about him.
He wasn’t ready for this.
Not now, and probably not ever.
But he hadn’t lost his touch, catching the loose ends of the thread and desperately tied them back together. With practiced ease, he smoothed over his expression into his trademark carefree smile.
Hiding everything from view.
“You really don’t quit with the questions, Yashiro,” Hanako said airily, a slight hoarseness in his voice the only indicator of his inner turmoil. “Look, it was fun at first, but haven’t you had enough of it by now?”
“How can I have enough when you haven’t told me anything!” Nene demanded. “Every time you either make a joke or change the subject.”
“That’s my business. It’s my life, and I’ll talk about it when and if I want to. If you were a real friend, you wouldn’t see the need to force me.” The words came out harsher than Hanako had intended, but he was still a little shaken up.
Nene gasped softly at the accusation, but grew angry nonetheless. “Yeah well, if you were a real friend, you’d tell me without me needing to ask. You’d trust me!”
“Just leave me alone!” Hanako shouted.
The two teens stared each other down heatedly, magenta eyes unflinching against amber.
That was until the bell rang.
Nene broke the gaze for one second but, in that instant, Hanako disappeared, leaving only a few wisps of smoke as proof he had ever been there.
~地縛少年~
“Are you alright?”
Nene looked up from her desk to find Aoi beside her, concerned. “Hm? Oh, I’m fine.”
“You seem to be in a bad mood today,” Aoi observed as they walked towards the cafeteria together.
“I got into an argument with a friend of mine,” Nene said heavily. “We’ve never actually fought before.”
“That sounds rough,” Aoi sympathized. “What were you arguing about?”
He wouldn’t tell me how he died, Nene explained silently. “It’s … complicated.”
Aoi nodded. “I don’t know what’s going on, but the rule of thumb for this situation is to try and put yourself in their shoes.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You just had an argument, right? You know what position you took, and why you took it. You have a reason for feeling that way. It goes by logic that your friend should have a reason for taking their side of the argument. Try and understand where they’re coming from and how they’re feeling. Imagine yourself in their position.”
“Imagine myself as Hanako-kun?” Nene murmured.
For the entirety of lunch, she was lost in her own thoughts.
Picture herself as Hanako. She was a ghost having been dead for decades and had no friends to speak of. That in of itself must have been hard. She would probably really miss her old life, as well as her friends and family. The past would be painful, so she might avoid thinking about it.
Maybe that’s what he was doing, Nene thought. If he missed his old life, then he probably wouldn’t want to think about it too much. And, if his old life wasn’t a good one, then he wouldn’t want to think about that either.
And what did I do? I kept pestering him for details. What if his death was really painful and traumatic? I just dragged up his bad memories. And why did I ask about his family? He probably misses them so much. And it’s been decades, what if they’re all dead by now?
Nene knew she had made a mistake asking him about his family. That was insensitive. And not only that …
It was only there, just for a fraction of a second, but she saw Hanako’s expression shift when she mentioned his family. He stiffened and his eyes widened. They flashed with what almost looked like guilt and horror. But he was back to smiling so quickly that she assumed she had imagined it.
“If you were a real friend, you wouldn’t see the need to force me.”
“He’s right,” Nene whispered to herself.
In the end, it was Hanako’s business whether or not he wanted to talk about his past, she had no right to force him. Instead, she let her own curiosity and insecurity get the best of her. It didn’t matter how little about him she knew. She knew that they were friends and that was enough.
I’ll apologize later.
~地縛少年~
Hanako was sitting on the school roof, mulling over everything that had happened as he looked up at the darkening sky. The stars would be out soon. He still loved looking at them, his only constant companions through life and death.
He and Nene had never fought before. Sure, they quarreled on a daily basis, but it was all in good faith.
It’s her own fault for being so nosy, Hanako thought mulishly to himself. He was still upset about being forced to remember so much in the past couple days. He didn’t want to talk about his past. After all, Yugi Amane didn’t exist anymore, so what was the point in talking about him?
It was far easier to just be Hanako, the happy go lucky ghost. It was easy, though it was lonely.
Until Nene had shown up.
She had brought something into his life that he didn’t even realize he was missing. She was his first ever friend and funny assistant.
“If you were a real friend, you’d tell me without me needing to ask. You’d trust me.”
“Is she right?” Hanako wondered aloud. He didn’t want to talk about the past because it brought up his bad memories, it wasn’t because he didn’t trust Nene, right? It’s wasn’t because he thought she would hate him once she knew everything about him.
No, that wasn’t it. After all, she stuck by him, even after Kou blatantly called him a murderer. But … would that change when she found out the person he killed was his own brother?
Maybe he didn’t trust her. Maybe he kept these secrets in part because he didn’t want to lose her. Because Nene didn’t know the full extent of his sin. If she did…
If she knew what a monster he was, she wouldn’t have anything to do with him.
Quiet footsteps alerted Hanako to the presence of another and he turned to find none other than Nene, staring down at her feet and playing with her fingers.
“Yashiro?”
“Ne Hanako-kun,” she looked up with a watery smile.
Trying to defuse the situation with humor as he always did, Hanako cracked a smile of his own. “Um, should I start planning my escape route now before you start asking me what my mother’s maiden name was?”
Nene shook her head. “No, I’m done with that. I just want to sit with you, if that’s alright.”
Hanako gestured to the spot beside him and they sat in silence for a long time.
“Gomen,” the both blurted at once.
“Me first,” Hanako said. “I need to apologize for earlier. I never meant it that way, honest. It’s not that I don’t trust you, because I do, you’re my friend and that means a lot to me. It’s just that …”
I’m a coward and I don’t want to lose you yet…
“It’s okay,” Nene assured him. “Because I need to apologize too. I shouldn’t have pressed you so hard. It’s not that I don’t trust you either. It’s just …”
Because I want to know more about what makes you, you…
“This is your past and I shouldn’t force you to tell me about it,” she continued. “As your friend, I should respect your wishes. So, you don’t have to worry, I won’t ask about that anymore.”
“You gave up on that quickly,” Hanako remarked. “What made you change your mind about it so fast?”
Nene shrugged. “I tried to put myself in your position and I realized that I would probably be a bit secretive too. After all, dying can’t be easy, right? I hope this means that things can go back to normal for us.”
Hanako nodded his agreement and they lapsed into another silence, albeit a much more peaceful one this time. Still, there was one more thing he had to ask. “Yashiro, why did you want to know this stuff so badly in the first place?”
“Because we’re friends,” Nene said simply. “I thought that meant I needed to know a lot about you. But, now I see that’s not the case. You don’t have to know a lot about a person to be close, you just have to enjoy their company. And I have fun with you, Hanako-kun. So, that’s enough for me.”
The boy was silent for a long time. The sun had now completely set and the stars were twinkling in the night sky like glittering fireflies.
“Astronomy.”
Hanako’s voice was so soft it was barely audible. Nene barely even realized he had spoken. “What?”
“When I was alive, I used to love astronomy.”
Nene blinked in shock. He had actually told her something about himself! She was practically bursting with the desire to start asking more questions and press deeper, but she resisted. If she pressed him, he might shut down again. Better to keep quiet and let him say all he wanted to say.
“I used to have a telescope,” Hanako continued, his tone barely above a whisper. “But I didn’t use it that much. I liked to look at the moon and stars from down here. Even now, it still makes me happy knowing that the same stars are watching over me.”
Nene smiled, the night casting beautiful shadows on her gentle face. “Arigatou, for telling me that.”
“Gomen,” Hanako mumbled. “I bet you were hoping to hear something more interesting.”
“No, this is interesting,” Nene insisted. “As for the more personal stuff about how you died, I won’t say I’m not curious, and I hope you’ll tell me one day. But, I meant what I said, I wanted to know more about you as your friend. Learning that you like astronomy is more important.”
Holding her bright gaze, Hanako soon blushed and turned his attention to the sky. “Do you see that cross-shaped constellation up there? That’s called Cygnus, the swan.” He pointed up to it.
“I think I can,” Nene replied, squinting.
“The brightest star is called Deneb. It’s a supergiant which means it’s one of the really big stars that will go supernova one day. By that, I mean when the star runs out of hydrogen to fuse, it will start fusing heavier materials until it eventually reaches iron, which doesn’t give off any energy. When that happens, the star collapses in on itself, but then it becomes so dense that it literally explodes with all the force of gravity on it.
“That’s the death of the star. But, even when that happens, it creates a nebulous haze like a big shiny cloud. Inside that cloud, a bunch of new stars are created from the stuff the old star left behind. And that one next to it …”
Nene looked at Hanako as he rambled on excitedly about star facts. His eyes were bright and shining like a boy talking about a new video game. It was actually adorable.
I never knew he was such an otaku, she thought, giggling silently.
Hanako noticed her gaze on him and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, I’m boring you, aren’t I?”
“No way.” Nene shook her head fervently. “I never knew all this stuff before, it’s really cool.”
Embarrassed, Hanako looked down and scratched his cheek. “You’re the first to think that,” he admitted. “No one else ever cared enough to listen before.”
In response, Nene smiled and scooted closer to the ghost, letting her head rest comfortably on his shoulder.
Hanako could feel his face heating and was grateful for the darkness of the night. If he had a functioning heart, it would have been beating out of his chest by now.
“I like hearing you talk about the stars, Hanako-kun,” Nene murmured. “You’re kind of cute when you start geeking out over them. I’ll listen for as long as you want to talk. So please, tell me more.”