Chapter Text
When the rain in Osaka is a stuffy, humid mess, trailing down the windows like bleeding from a carcass, Shinonome Ena would lean back in her chair, run a calloused hand through her hair, and bask in the joy that she had stayed in Tokyo for university.
That night, her window was spotless. It was cooler, colder, with milder summers she was always accustomed to, even as the sound of the air conditioner was a nuisance at night sometimes. A goldilocks zone, where she was always happy to stay in, even when the sun would not always be the brightest, nor would the snow stay for too many inches a time.
After all, the good art schools were all in Tokyo — was something she would have said if she had been compelled to stick to her true feelings. It was one of the battles that she no longer regretted she lost, she told herself, not when her biology night classes were finally paying off.
“Yeah, I’ve tried the conditioner you were talking about…” Kanade was smiling at the camera through the screen. A small portrait of Ena was asserting itself in the bottom right, the bit of eyebag that she had failed to wipe away unusually distinct. “My hair is still just too… floppy, though. It might just be the weight of it.”
“Mm-hm, probably.” Ena brushed a few strands of hair out of her face, looking at the her on the screen to make sure they stayed. Her braid was missing — she had undone it when she got home, because it was bothering her a bit — and Kanade’s hair was just messy enough to make her want to comb it.
“Have you been okay, Ena? You’re a little quiet.” Kanade was looking at her hair too now, her eyes landing somewhere just above Ena’s.
“Yeah! It’s been alright, I think,” Ena waved her hands in front of the screen, finding a chuckle as she noticed a small cobweb in the top right corner of her dorm. “Thanks, though, Kanade. Are you free next Saturday? We should grab food.”
“Same place? Sure,” Kanade smiled, her face brighter as she adjusted her lamp. “It’s about time to sleep for me, I think. Are you staying up longer?”
“Probably,” Ena replied automatically, “It’s not that late yet.”
“Don’t sleep too late.”
“Roger that,” Ena breathed, “Good night, Kanade.”
“Good night.” Kanade looked around her screen and nodded at the corner as she disappeared.
Kanade’s room, with its singular poster and dreamy blue wallpaper, gave way to Ena’s desktop, a mess that she did not have the energy nor the motivation to sort out. Ena groaned, letting the feeling of annoyance, not at Kanade — she would never say that — but at the day, roll out into the dormant air of her tiny dorm room. She had four lectures today, and each of them was somehow worse than the last. Airi had dropped by earlier to grab lunch with her, but Ena’s stress had been at a cruising altitude that would only be lessened by the landing of sleep.
She stood up, stretching as her back protested being forced to conspire against its own folding. Glancing at her unmade bed, she reached her door in just two strides and flicked the light off.
A comfortable darkness bled into her dorm room, her shadow tracking from the Tokyo lights against the door. Ena looked down at her chest, an inexplicable blindness formed by the undeveloped thoughts that she had brought to the forefront of her mind so she could throw them away before they told her something she didn’t want to know.
She pulled the curtains closed so the lights from Shibuya wouldn’t bother her anymore. Yet, she still needed her medication, and so as she jumped onto her bed, she felt around her pillow until she found a switch.
And when she flicked it, a lamp in the design of a stack of two souffle pancakes brightened half the room, bathing it in a deep, orange light that tried its best to make Ena feel warm inside.
It was good enough. So Ena relaxed, grabbing her box of medicine and turning away from the lamp.
“Pfft.”
Ena rolled her eyes, willing them to pop out of their sockets, though if she was telepathic she would have never gotten into this situation in the first place.
“What do you want?” She wrestled with the stupid push-then-turn mechanism, laughing farcically as it refused to budge once, then twice.
“Nothing.” Ena finally turned around, and it was them again.
Ethereal, translucent, yet not as transparent as Ena wished. They still wore that outfit of theirs, that white shirt and that lilac skirt, somehow colourful even though Ena had grown up to believe that ghosts should have been just a constant hue of blue. Almost a firefly in that strange, non-blue light.
“I’m a biology student now, you know,” Ena snorted, finally popping the container open. “The scientific method tells me that I need to exorcise that lamp.”
“Or maybe I’m just misleading you by only showing up then?” Mizuki shrugged, winking, and for a moment — a moment — Ena swore that they were totally solid, but it was gone before she blinked.
Mizuki touched the ground, and then swung their legs up and sat down on the bed next to Ena, making the latter flinch and clutch her container, staring Mizuki down as she grabbed a few capsules.
“What do you want?” Ena repeated, narrowing her eyes so that only Mizuki’s nose and mouth appeared in her vision.
“Nothing,” Mizuki also reiterated, “Except, perhaps, to stop Enanan from taking three of those mystery capsules when the prescription clearly says two.”
Ena looked down at her hand. Grumbling, she tossed one back in the container, closing the lid on top, and then popping the other two in her mouth.
“They’re probably disgusting, huh?” Mizuki crossed their arms, looking straight into Ena’s eyes.
“That’s because you chew them. No normal human being chews capsules.” Ena drank a sip of water, effortlessly banishing them into her body where she wouldn’t need to think of them until the next night. Mizuki smiled again — she knew that meant they would be annoying.
“Maybe I’m not a normal person,” They flourished, and then stuck a hand inside Ena’s bed. “Can normal people do this?”
“Seems like you’re not just physically abnormal.” Ena groaned, “Okay, shut up, Mizuki. I need to sleep. I have a lecture at eight in the morning tomorrow. You are not making me lose any more sleep.”
“But you just summoned me!” Mizuki protested, and their face fell as Ena pulled the sheets over herself and turned to face the wall. “What am I supposed to do now?! Sit around while you get your beauty sleep?”
“Normal sleep. I dunno. Ghost sleep? Do something else.”
Hearing Mizuki’s grumbles get quieter, Ena smiled with her eyes closed. Perhaps Mizuki was really listening this time. She imagined Mizuki walking along campus, ethereal and sadly bright, a blue glow in the dead of the night. Going through the promenade, past where Ena had her biology classes, past where she would have coffee with Airi when she was in town, and maybe even looking, with that smile she liked, down the path that would lead back to Shibuya, and then back to Kamiyama.
An icy presence brushed into her left ear.
Ena screamed something that she wished she could forget as she got up at lightning speed, pulling the covers even tighter over herself. The dumpling lamp went out. She locked eyes with Mizuki, who had backed away so far that their ponytail and half their body had fused with Ena’s closet.
“What. Are. You. Doing.” Ena enunciated, rubbing her ear and blinking in the darkness again, the only thing she could see being Mizuki’s glowy, pouty, look of shame.
“Sorry, Enanan,” Mizuki scratched the back of their neck, “Your hair was falling into your face. I just wanted to help.”
“You almost scared me to death,” Ena rolled her eyes, but she let her shoulders droop and her head tilt to the side. “Apology accepted. You don’t have to go anywhere. Just… watch over me while I sleep?”
She looked away before lying down and closing her eyes again. Because she knew Mizuki would look smug. She didn’t even need to look to verify.
What an annoying ghost.