Chocolate fic for astrangerenters, PART 2
To: astrangerenters
From: cupid_johnny
Title: I fell for you like the stars.
Pairing: Kitagawa Keiko/Sakurai Sho, mentions of Kanjiya Shihori/Matsumoto Jun, Aiba Masaki/Becky and if you squint, Kitagawa Keiko/Yamashita Tomohisa.
Rating: PG
Summary: Keiko talks to ghosts. And then she meets Sho.
A/N: To astrangerenters, I sort of might have thrown together some prompts and tried to make cake. Like one prompt is flour and another is eggs and the other is sugar although this is more like I threw some of the lyrics of Haunted and Starlight Kiss into a blender with half the dramas clichés that exist. I hope you enjoy! Happy White Day ♥
Keiko lives with Sho for a week. She finds out that he’s probably really bad at art. Her curtains are water stained and mouldy so she has to get new ones. Sho picks the most ugly ones in the store and the guy nearly calls security because in his eyes, she’s probably arguing with either herself or thin air and that was scaring everyone.
He can’t cook worth a damn either.
“You should be freaking out that I can touch things,” he complained when he destroyed her toaster.
“I’m used to this type of thing. You could shatter all the windows right now and I wouldn’t be surprised.”
So Sho starts trying to surprise her. He gives her bits of useless knowledge, like the name of a palace in Thailand which he stammers out. He tells her how he had a pet hamster that he used to feed chocolate. She’s showering when he barges in, and she pokes her head around the curtain and starts throwing bottles at him.
“But I surprised you!”
They both used to play the piano. Keiko says she gave up because it just wasn’t her type of thing. Her mother wanted her to be a well-rounded young lady. Sho says he kept at it during college.
He lives with her for a week and helps fold her clothes, also sets off her fire alarm and asks what is she writing at night. Sho has no sense for writing but he likes to read her entries out loud. He narrates them like an old man, with voices and too much deliberation. Keiko thinks it doesn’t matter if he reads it. He’ll leave her one day, and it won’t matter.
She has to tell herself not to get attached.
“Tell me about Tomo.”
“Why, are you jealous?”
Sho is not her friend and he’s not anyone important. Sho is a ghost and Keiko is a human. She’s just helping him and he’s keeping her company. It’s all a fair trade.
Her mother calls her, asking if she’s doing alright.
“You know, your dad knows someone who has a job for you. It;s in a decent company and there are lovely people.”
“That sounds great, I’ll think about it.”
“You can come back to Kobe, you know.”
Keiko knows she can go home. And she doesn’t actually hate company life or anything of that sort. It’s just that after she sat at a desk and forced herself to smile and dealt with how she’s either going to have to cut some throats or sleep her way to the top, that’s just not what she wanted. And she still doesn’t want it.
She doesn’t talk about it until Sho watches her cook and asks what does she want.
“Journalism.”
“You, a journalist? Not an author? A journalist?”
“Why? Or should I be a model? Or you think I should marry rich?”
“You probably could,” Sho admits. “You’re pretty.”
“And he thinks I’m pretty,” she drawls. “Come on now, tell me more.”
“You’re aesthetically pleasing.”
“Did you just learn that word?”
Sho rolls his eyes. “I mean. You’re pretty and you’re nice, and I guess people - and I’m not saying me - but someone else might like that combination. The perfect mix of pleasant and pretty. So to people, who aren’t people, I think they would find you extremely attractive.”
“But not you?”
“I don’t know,” and Sho laughs awkwardly. “I was the guy who would stand by the crosswalk and stare at pretty girls out of the corner of my eye. I would think up lines on how to ask them out, or if they want coffee. Sometimes, when a car’s coming too fast and they take a step forwards, I want to grab them by the hand and pull them back. When they ask me why, I’ll say that oh, I just wanted an excuse to hold on to you. But I never had the nerve to do it.”
“Do you think that would work?”
“Would it work on you?”
Keiko thinks about it for a moment and she smiles.
“Would you try it on me?”
“Maybe. Would you fall for it?” Sho asks, smiling.
“Maybe.”
Keiko goes to Chiba once more and she asks if he wants to go Disneyland. Sho makes a face and so they go to the beach again. She takes the first train out and complains that Sho has it good, he doesn’t need to pay for a train fare. He just rolls his eyes and says yeah, “I guess being like this has its perks.”
Later, she throws sand at him and laughs when he runs away.
She has to buy fireworks from a small store with a guy who’s married to a girl who curiously asks if she’s going to play alone.
“I’ll be fine.”
The girl’s name is Becky and she helps Keiko pick out some snacks.
“I met my boyfriend, sorry, husband on that beach.”
Her eyes are grey and her smile is wide. Keiko thinks she’s gorgeous. Her husband’s name is Masaki and he cheerfully says he needs to go help restock some shelves. He leaves the two of them to chat.
“How did you meet him?” Keiko asks.
“Oh, I went out with some friends and I accidentally forgot my slippers. I ran back to get them and he picked them up.”
“And you fell in love at first sight,” Keiko deadpans.
Becky laughs, and shakes her head. “God, no. He tripped over his feet and threw the sandals at me. I thought he was the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met.”
“And now?”
“He still is.” Becky’s smile widens. “He asked me to marry him two years later and I was wearing the exact same slippers. Had no idea he would propose on that beach. I looked like a wreck because we just went swimming.”
Keiko thinks about it and sighs. “It must be nice, literally running towards something like that.”
“I don’t think you really plan it. It sort of just happens to you.”
The fireworks are out and sky is dark over the water. It’s getting colder and Keiko walks across the beach one more time before she has to run for the train.
“Do you like love stories?”
“Sorry?”
“The girl in the store, who fell in love with the guy because of her slippers. You were smiling a lot,” Sho says awkwardly. “Do you like love stories?”
“I don’t really have a preference, but it just sounds so nice and easy. People get to fall in love; I get hit by cars and talk to ghosts.”
“I got hit by a car,” Sho mutters.
That part she didn’t know, and Keiko doesn’t know how to respond. She’s never really been good with that type of thing. She lets them talk, usually. They talk and then say how they were sad about it and how they miss their wife or husband or mother or father or everyone.
“I got hit by a car, and I woke up and went on like this,” Sho continues. And that’s it. “I don’t think love stories sound easy. It’s more like fate or chance, or something and you have to deal with it, and what if terrible things happen? I wouldn’t want something so wonderful to have terrible things happen right after.”
“You know, I heard this thing about lovers,” Keiko cuts in suddenly. “They say that about five percent of people who fall with each other have been at the same place, at the same time at least once before they even truly meet each other. So they could just be walking right by each other, without even knowing that they just passed the person they’ll one day love.”
Sho’s confused and it suits him, a little. She likes when he doesn't know things. “How is that terrible?”
“It’s not,” and she shrugs. “It’s just, I was thinking about it when you said fate and chance. That’s all.”
Shihori sends her photo of the restaurant with the floors torn up and Jun standing around and talking to construction workers. She sends Keiko messages of thanks and proclaiming love and saying that she’s the bestest friend ever.
Keiko would smile at this, because she usually does.
She wants Shihori to be happy and she wants Jun to get his restaurant and she wants to be happy for them.
So that doesn’t explain anything, why her hands shake and she closes her eyes and tells herself to breathe.
Truthfully, she has to help him move on. Keiko can’t keep him around forever.
You have to find your next life, Tomo told her. You become someone not quite who you are, but someone else to be but the centre, you’re still there. There’s something about you that’s who you were. It’s complicated, being reborn. Some of us are afraid of it.
She wonders if Tomo loved her, or who she once was.
But it didn’t matter, she knows that much. Tomohisa told her that he once fell in love with a girl who had a broken umbrella, and he held it over her head until they made it to the train station. It doesn’t matter that she was once you, because all I wanted to know is that you were alive and to see you before I go.
Keiko’s never had a boyfriend who actually gave a fuck.
It was usually a nice looking senpai at a goukon or maybe a handsome guy who sat across her in the library. There’d be awkward fumbling sex and then casual smiles and expectations of chocolates and bento, and Keiko wondered what was there for her in all of it. Just to make someone else happy, someone who she tries to care for but really, they have no substance between them.
So, when it turned out that a ghost cared for her more than any actual guy, she wanted to break something.
Keiko did, when Tomo left.
She pulled a plate out of a cupboard and dropped it on the ground because all she wanted to do was hear the shatter, watch it splinter, and at least she was the one breaking the plate. At least she made the choice to have a broken plate.
So she does know Sho has to move on and she won’t have broken plates. She shouldn’t answer anymore personal questions. Keiko has to focus and after that, pack her bags and move back to Kobe. She’ll stop writing. She’ll be a good girl and put on an ironed blouse and decent skirt, and bow her head and accept papers.
She shouldn’t be getting attached.
It never seems to be the right time to ask, but Keiko has to. Sho’s standing on her balcony and she asks him, “What can I do to make you pass over?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I help you remember anything else?”
“Tell me a story?” he requests quietly.
They’re both staring at apartment buildings and trees and empty streets and yellowed lights. Keiko doesn’t know what story to tell him. Sho likes happy endings. A few days ago, she told him about a princess who pretended to be someone else, just anyone else, and a guy who took her to see the world and made her laugh and cry and scream. Keiko changes the ending of the story. She tells him the princess gave up her crown and got on a ship to sail to Paris, and he met her under the Eiffel Tower.
“There was a man that married a girl who was weaving a beautiful cloth for him.”
“Doesn’t she leave him in the end? Because he finds out that she’s a crane.”
Keiko nods silently.
Sho keeps quiet and they listen for the wind whistling and Keiko wishes she could hear him breathing.
“That’s a sad ending,” he murmurs.
“I feel very sad right now.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask me why. Tell me how to help you.”
“Then tell me a story.”
“About what, Sho? About how I graduated into a not-so-wonderful economy? What about the time I fell asleep in an exam? Or the failed dates my mother sets me up on because if I have no direction, at least I’ll be taken care of? Oh, and how about when a ghost decided that he wanted to give a fuck because he fell in love with my past self, oh yeah, a winner right there. Just tell me what you want,” she hisses at him, “so I can help you leave.”
“Why are you so upset at me?” he asks her, calm stare and all.
He must have been a salaryman. He must have been really smooth, with his clear eyes and there’s nothing threatening about him. Sho would push paper like a second nature, wouldn’t he? Maybe he was, or maybe he had a thing for gambling. Maybe he was something perfect, and had a job and was settled.
“I can’t be upset? You asked me what I wanted. I want to be upset.” She lets out a frustrated sigh and tries not to hit the rail of the balcony with her palms. It’ll be rude and unladylike. But she’s shouting at him; she’s wants to be rude and unladylike. “I don’t know how to help you and you can’t stick around.”
“I forgot who I was for a very long time,” Sho snaps back. “I came back to this world and then I fell into darkness, and then suddenly I heard drilling or traffic and then I see darkness again. All I remember are the stupid things or useless things, or that you’re telling me stories that no one ever has. And you’re here and I’m here so why can’t you just let me be here until we figure it out? What’s the rush?”
“Because I want to move on with my life. I want to go and do something.”
“Move back to Kobe? Pretend you like it?”
She smiles wryly and shakes her head. “You have no right to comment on my life. You don’t matter. You’re going to disappear and be reborn into someone else who I won’t ever know. You don’t get to talk about that.”
“Why not?” he demands, “let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about the girl who chased me out of a restaurant for the sake of her darling best friend, to make her best friend’s boyfriend happy, and tells her stories with happy ending and yet you’re so inherently miserable.”
“I am not miserable.”
“Really now.”
She falls silent and then walks right inside. Sho follows her. He closes the door behind him and she looks at the glass and at him, almost daring him to shatter it. He could do that. She’s met ghosts who can shatter windows and explode drinking glasses. She knows ghosts that could topple bookshelves. Keiko wants him to be angry; she just wants to see if he has the nerve because she’s angry. She doesn’t want to be the only angry person here because what’s the point? Because this, he has no right to argue with her. Not about all of this.
It doesn’t matter to him.
“You don’t know me,” Keiko tells him quietly, “You don’t anything about me.”
“I know enough.”
“You’re dead. You don’t need to know me.”
“Why, because you’re waiting for the next ghost to come along to keep you company?” he snarls. “Oh yeah, have I begun to bore you or something?”
“You think I want to do this? Talk to people who leave me once I make them happy? Do I look like I enjoy this? I’m just doing what I have to do!” She can’t help shouting at him. Keiko wants to shout, wants to throw things, wants to shake him by the shoulders. But she won’t touch him. She’s not going to touch him because why should she? He’ll be cold and she’ll feel suffocated and not because she’s who she is and he’s going to cease to exist, but because she’s so angry right now because whatever he says, it matters. and he made her laugh and he destroyed her toaster.
“You’re saying that you feel compelled to help me?”
“All I’m saying is that one day I nearly got hit by a car and then I woke up and could talk to ghosts, and they won’t leave me alone until they can rest.”
“Do you want me to leave you alone, then?” he demands.
No, she wants to say. I don’t know anymore. Suddenly I remember what it’s like to have someone here to laugh with and to talk about stupid things or to chase out of the shower. Why do the people who make me feel like this, why are they always dead. Keiko feels incapable. She feels stupid and useless because why can’t she love someone who’s actually there? Someone who can tell her to buck up when work is bad, or someone who can buy her a replacement toaster when it’s broken; why can’t she love someone like that?
So instead she mutters, “You can do whatever you want,” as though that’s going to solve anything.
“I didn’t ask for this and I know you didn’t either.”
“Are you going to apologise?” Keiko asks him.
“No. I don’t think you’d accept that.”
He’s right. She wouldn’t.
“If I go,” he asks instead, “Would you miss me?”
She’s going to lie, Keiko will lie, “I have a life to live, don’t I?” as though that’s enough.
Keiko never asked for this. She doesn’t know if this is just what happens because it happens. Some people go to space and other people write books. She talks to ghosts.
She never asks to care and she never knows if it’s the right thing to do.
She’s touched a ghost before and they’re cold; they have no heartbeat and it’s obvious why.
Sho touches her, his hand on her cheek, leaning in close.
“If I go, I will miss you,” he whispers, and Sho’s kiss is not fleeting and it’s not cold. Sho kisses her and Keiko pulls him closer, and this is too greedy, this is actually stupid and she’s going to get hurt later. But it’s gentle and it’s promising something and she wants more and-no, just no.
She wrenches back and shakes her head.
“Why did you do that?” she whispers.
“I want you to remember me.”
“That’s not fair.”
Sho nods, but she rushes forwards and grabs him by the cloth of his white shirt and kisses him fully, wholly. She wonders if her heart is racing, if she could bring him to life with what warmth she possesses. She thinks of fairytales and sleeping curses and she thinks of how this isn’t her fairytale. Just one kiss won’t fix him. One kiss won’t fix her either. But Keiko kisses him, mouth against his and he’s cold like marble in winter.
When they break apart, she’s trying to calm herself down by breathing slowly, and he looks torn into a million pieces, as though they’ve just destroyed something. Or maybe Keiko’s hurt him.
Some part of her wants him to remember her in his next life. If the last memory of who he is now should be anything, Keiko wishes it could be this, just this.
It’s not even fair, to either of them.
She lets him lie down next to her that night. Keiko mumbles that she should write a story and sell it. About a stupid girl who falls in love with a stupid boy. Maybe she’ll change it up. Maybe he can be alive and she can be the ghost.
Sho puts his head on her chest and says, “I can hear your heart.”
She closes her eyes and feels a cold hand finding hers.
“Your heartbeat is strong,” he murmurs. “Isn’t that a good thing to know?”
“Do you really like my stories?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“When you talk to me, I remember things. I remember I studied economics and that I played soccer. I remember trying to surf and falling into the water and being knocked over by the waves. It’s nice talking to you, because it doesn’t matter what we think of each other.”
Keiko squeezes his hand tight. She doesn’t have to let go, not right now.
“Tokyo, right?” she asks him. “Was it in Tokyo?”
“It must have been,” Sho mumbles.
“You must have been staring at a pretty girl.”
He laughs and she holds tight. What else can she do?
Keiko understands that she’s not exactly normal.
She knows that she shouldn’t let herself care so much and that these conversations about what she wants and what he remembers are something too personal. She should form a connection with someone real, someone who is solid and there for her and buys her flowers and then asks her to come up for coffee when they have no intention of drinking it.
It’s not that Keiko doesn’t want normal. Keiko tried normal and that was a job that suffocated her and people that she wanted to love but she can’t just do that. Keiko knows that if she wants to be with someone, then she can be with someone. But she didn’t, not then and well, the only other real attachment she formed was with her past life’s lover’s spirit. Which is pretty messed up, isn’t it.
She knows that it’s not really what people do everyday.
It’s not that she doesn’t want to be like everyone else.
But Keiko just wants something to work out. She wants to start believing again, believing in something.
She starts sending out portfolios and resumes. She photocopies old articles she wrote for her university newspaper, she writes about restaurants and cat cafes, and she writes a short story about meeting a ghost on a beach.
Sho is quiet when she works.
Keiko needs to drink some tea to calm her nerves. She has to co-exist with Sho and she has to do something about everything else.
When someone publishes her review on cheap cafes, she sends them more stories and writes about how to redo a wardrobe. She’s not sure if that’s helpful to anyone, but she just needs to get it out there.
“You don’t stay still, do you?”
“What?”
Keiko’s spinning around in her chair and Sho’s sitting cross-legged on her bed.
“You can’t just let things be as they are. You’re either cooking or trying to take me to places I might have been. Either that or you’re writing or spamming people with your list of qualifications.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s something I like about you,” he says and it seems to be truthful.
It’s flattery. It’s nice, it’s what guys say to girls when they want to kiss them and he’s kissed her and only that night. She hasn’t kissed him since because she doesn’t want to think about tomorrow, about the next moment, about what happens after if she kisses him once more and he fades away like light when the sun falls.
Keiko knows this will not work out.
This is not the something she puts her faith in.
“You know, I wish things could be different,” Sho tells her, “I wish I had been happier. I could have done things. I could have been someone.”
This is personal. This is Sho giving her his honesty and this is something she shouldn’t care about.
“I should have gone to Egypt or Turkey. I should have gotten a tan. Have you ever gotten a tan? I’ve gotten sunburnt from when I was in Okinawa. I was in the sun all day and I was red, so red and burnt. It was the type of burn that sears when you touch and I doused myself in calamine and yelled so loudly my father told me to stop being such a baby about it. It’s only a bit of sun, life has much worse things than sunburn. He’s right. But still,” Sho’s laugh is hollow and sad, and maybe he really wasn’t happy back then, “I wish I could have done all that.”
“Do you think you would have been happier, if things were different?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I never had the courage to do what I wanted. I just did what was expected,” he laughs a little sadly, “I thought that would make me happy. And I wasn’t happy. But I didn’t know anything else. So I just did it. And told myself that I was fine. But I wasn’t fine.”
Keiko knows that she’s helping him. She knows that he has to find some sort of peace to move on.
But he’s sad and she wants to change it and that part is the part which isn’t okay. It’s irrational and won’t make anything better.
“I know what you’re talking about,” Keiko says softly. “But you had the strength to keep going.”
“No I didn’t. I guess we quit in different ways.”
“Me,” she sighs. “I quit. I became a shut-in. I didn’t do anything. This will sound stupid, but I saved up all my money for the purpose of being a shut-in.”
“So what’s changed?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re changing that, aren’t you?”
She doesn’t know that either.
Sho’s looking at her in a way no one else has. She thinks of how he said she was pretty. She thinks of the way other people look at her, just a small glimpse of a girl who did the right thing but gave up. Sho looks at her and it’s different, as though he wants to know why, as though he would sit and listen and not tell her that she should have done something else. As though what she wants might matter.
But that doesn’t mean anything. It can’t.
Keiko is just a fleeting moment for him and Sho will forget her in his next life.
“Do you want to move on, Sho?”
He looks at her, hands clenching and unclenching. Keiko selfishly wants him to be confused and torn between choices.
“Would you miss me?” he asks her.
She answers, “I have a life to live.”
Sho gives her a funny little smile and she must have hurt his feelings.
Good.
She’s being unfair, but good. She’s glad she’s hurt his feelings.
He asks her about the haraegushi. And the first time, “And the salt and stuff you were throwing at me.”
Keiko’s reading her email from some magazine that wants to know if she wants to write a story about gardening. Keiko doesn’t know a thing about gardening.
“When I started seeing ghosts, I started talking to them. And then sometimes I would help my friends. Then there was this one time we had a cultural festival at my university and we turned a building into a haunted house, but then it really did become haunted. My mother found Nino’s grandfather, Ninomiya-san, on some website somewhere and he got me one and I’ve been using it ever since.”
“I thought it’d be like, inherited or something.”
“Would it make it more interesting if it were?”
“Yeah,” Sho admits sheepishly, “I just thought, you know. There’d be some story and it would have been passed from generation to generation since god knows when.”
“Sorry I’m not interesting enough for you,” Keiko deadpans.
“You’re interesting. The haraegushi, not so much.”
“So you think I’m interesting,” she drawls with much satisfaction and a smile, “Do go on.” Sho hides his face behind his hands and she grins.
She makes a call to Shihori one night.
“Hello moonbeam,” Shihori says cheerily and Keiko smiles too easily. “Are you okay?”
“How’s the restaurant?”
“Being fixed up.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” Keiko mumbles, “If you could just find people to take you apart and put you back together and you’re pretty and shinier and everything is working and people want to be around you? Why aren’t there people renovators?”
“I think plastic surgery is the beginning step to that.”
“True.”
They’re quiet for a moment.
Keiko’s standing outside on her balcony and Sho is in the living room, sitting on the floor and watching the news. He told her he hadn’t seen the news in a long time. Every night, he has to watch the news. Every morning, Keiko has to pull herself out of bed to get him the newspapers. And he remembers it. He knows about financial deficits and plane crashes and the hot artists of the moment. He knows about predicted storms and how the baby giraffe in the zoo is growing up healthily.
“Remember when we were in uni?” Shihori says suddenly.
“When?”
“That time I forgot to bring my stuff to tutorial. We were being marked. And then I forgot to bring my answers. And what did you do?”
Keiko laughs. “I said I didn’t have mine as well. I didn’t pull out my book and I pretended I also forgot mine.”
“You lost marks with me. You could have either saved yourself or given me your answers,” Shihori recalls.
“Why are you thinking about that?” Keiko asks her.
“I just,” Shihori sighs, “I just wish I could be there for you the way you are for me. You sound so sad, Keiko. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
They’re silent for a bit before Shihori asks her, “If I got married, would you still be my best friend?”
“You know, the boyfriend should be the best friend. I read that somewhere.”
“What, in a magazine?”
Keiko smiles a little at that.“Yeah. I did. I thought it was stupid.”
“Maybe it works for someone else.”
“Not for us?”
“You’re still my best friend. Jun can be my boyfriend. If you love me and he loves me, you both can love each other. Or like each other.”
“I don’t mind Jun,” Keiko admits. “Actually, I do like him. It’s just so fun to give him a hard time, you know. Once in awhile. It keeps him on his toes.”
“Like that time you had dinner with us and didn’t say a word?”
“Well,” Keiko scoffs, “If he can’t endure that, then he’s weak.”
“And how you told him I wanted super expensive Prada for my birthday when I really wanted flowers?”
“If he believed that, then he’s an idiot.”
“And. And,” and Shihori’s laughing and sighing and Keiko wants to think that she’s smiling, “You know. I want you to be happy as well.”
“I’ll be happy, Shi-chan.”
“I’m going to believe that.”
“Night, sunshine.”
“Goodnight, moonbeam.”
It’s not so surprising when he comes barging into her bathroom. Sho doesn’t need to shower. He doesn’t get dirty and he doesn’t get itchy and he has no scent whatsoever. He can touch things and eat them but he doesn’t get a pound or make an imprint. Sho has barged in on her before, but that was to make her laugh or to hear her shout.
Keiko has to wash her hair. She has to remind herself not to eat too much chocolate and that people will notice if she wears the same outfit twice in a week. It’s tedious and sometimes she wants to go braless or maybe wear oversize t-shirts in the summer, but she can’t.
He pulls the shower curtain back and she throws her sponge at him. She turns off the water, ignores him and takes the towel.
“Why aren’t you screaming?” Sho complains.
“Because you haven’t given me something to scream about,” Keiko says snootily. “Besides, you did this to me two weeks ago so it’s not a big shocker,” she continues, wrapping the towel around herself and squeezing the water out of her hair. “Did you need something?”
“Not really.”
Keiko stares at him and she swears, he gets a little colour on his cheeks.
“Did you have a girlfriend?”
He shakes his head. “I dated. Didn’t really connect. But not at the time, no.”
Keiko starts on her skincare and Sho stares in awe as she starts with toner and then essence and she puts a little bit of essence in her hand, turning and smoothing it over his cheeks. Soft gentle pats and then circular motions and then over his jaw, gently pushing and following the tense lines.
“You’re not offended?” he asks.
“Well, you aren’t really aging so this might be a waste of my essence,” Keiko teases.
“No, I mean.”
“The naked thing?”
“Yeah,” Sho mumbles, “It was rude.”
Keiko shrugs, starting on moisturiser. “You’ve seen me naked before.”
“Do you want to see me naked?”
“You mean, you’ll show me yours because you saw mine? How generous.”
“When you put it that way,” he complains, “now I just seem intrusive.”
He now sleeps in her bed and he’s been eating her food. Sho edited her resume and he went through her notebooks, read about each and every encounter. He leaves newspapers lying around the house and Keiko misses Jill. She knows Jill can see ghosts and she thinks Jill might just paw at Sho until Sho gives in and scratches him on the tummy. Everyone’s a sucker for Jill.
She dries her hair and Sho lurks around awkwardly.
Keiko decides to tease him, sly smile and all. “Did you like it?”
“What?” he asks, startled out of his thoughts.
“Seeing me naked,” and she brushes out her hair, letting it fall over her shoulder. Keiko waits and waits as Sho gulps and so she asks again, “Did you like seeing me naked?”
He stammers and mutters and immediately goes running out of the bathroom.
Keiko cackles with laughter.
“Can I see you naked?” she asks him a few days later. “I mean, you offered.”
Sho turns a deep shade of pink.
Keiko laughs, and it feels good.
Am I warm, she asks. They’re pressed against each other in her single bed. It’s late and she’s tired, and he’s proofreading something she wrote about shopping for curtains. Some magazine asked if she could do it and she said yes because well, there’s a paycheck there.
Am I warm when you touch me? Can you feel my heart racing? What are you thinking when you touch me?
Sho’s hand is in hers and Keiko wants to fall asleep; she just wants to sleep and feel safe. Just for a little bit.
She should ask when is he leaving.
She doesn’t.
Keiko should be helping him.
She tries.
This isn’t meant to last.
She ignores that.
She goes to an interview for a magazine and she’s not sure how it’s going to turn out.
Keiko tells her mother she’s interviewing for jobs. Her mother tells her to walk carefully, eat properly. Just take care of yourself, keep in touch. Keiko knows her mother is just worried for her and she wants her mother to stop fretting. I’m alive and kicking, you raised a good daughter.
Sho’s been quiet the whole day.
Keiko knows she has to build a life for herself that’s just for her and for a future that means an income for one person and no ghost roommate. She doesn’t care if his feelings are hurt because Keiko has to keep going. She’s not going to sit there and stare as the world passes her by.
“Keiko?”
When he says her name, she thinks of how he said she should be calling him Sho-san and she didn’t. She likes when he says her name, how rarely that is.
Sho knows her insecurities; Sho knows she’s been skinny dipping.
Keiko knows he wasn’t happy.
They know enough to be more than strangers, enough to be friends.
She’s walking home from the train station. Sho’s walking with her. It’s late and no one is there to hear her talk to a ghost. To anyone else, she’s either talking to herself or to the vapour in the air. They keep walking.
His fingers graze the back of her hand and then they jerk away.
Keiko feels his hand brush against hers.
Their shoulders touch and Sho stops.
“You keep touching me, we need to hold hands,” he announces and takes her hand as they walk. “Because you keep touching me.”
She smiles and lets him hold her hand the entire walk.
Later, Sho kisses her under the streetlights with a hand on her waist and another cupping her face. He kisses her and she hopes that if he keeps touching her, she can give that warmth to him. It’s sad and hopeful. Keiko’s mouth on his and his tongue in her mouth. She likes, wants it. And isn’t that terrible, because Keiko’s falling back into a pattern of wanting what she won’t have.
He’s gone the next morning.
She rushes out of the room, checks the kitchen.
Keiko runs out onto the balcony.
She looks around the living room.
There are newspapers on the table.
There’s no one.
Sho’s gone.
He didn’t even say goodbye.
Keiko has no right to be hurt. She knows that life is not logical. Keiko knows that this isn’t really her problem, and she could have said no and she chose to take it on so she has no right to be angry.
But she can’t say anything for an hour.
She might be happier just not talking, maybe packing a bag and moving to Okinawa where she’ll feel the sun on her skin and burn up hot until she’s raw and red. and at least she’ll feel something else, something that happens to normal people when they go out into the sun.
Keiko feels hurt, she feels herself about to break or shout or scream or cry because this is not fair but she also has no right.
She chose to help him. This didn’t have to be her problem.
She let herself care.
Keiko knows this is messed up.
She could have gone on dates. She could have kept working at her old office. She could have ignored the ghosts from the first day she saw them.
But she didn’t.
Part 3.
From: cupid_johnny
Title: I fell for you like the stars.
Pairing: Kitagawa Keiko/Sakurai Sho, mentions of Kanjiya Shihori/Matsumoto Jun, Aiba Masaki/Becky and if you squint, Kitagawa Keiko/Yamashita Tomohisa.
Rating: PG
Summary: Keiko talks to ghosts. And then she meets Sho.
A/N: To astrangerenters, I sort of might have thrown together some prompts and tried to make cake. Like one prompt is flour and another is eggs and the other is sugar although this is more like I threw some of the lyrics of Haunted and Starlight Kiss into a blender with half the dramas clichés that exist. I hope you enjoy! Happy White Day ♥
Keiko lives with Sho for a week. She finds out that he’s probably really bad at art. Her curtains are water stained and mouldy so she has to get new ones. Sho picks the most ugly ones in the store and the guy nearly calls security because in his eyes, she’s probably arguing with either herself or thin air and that was scaring everyone.
He can’t cook worth a damn either.
“You should be freaking out that I can touch things,” he complained when he destroyed her toaster.
“I’m used to this type of thing. You could shatter all the windows right now and I wouldn’t be surprised.”
So Sho starts trying to surprise her. He gives her bits of useless knowledge, like the name of a palace in Thailand which he stammers out. He tells her how he had a pet hamster that he used to feed chocolate. She’s showering when he barges in, and she pokes her head around the curtain and starts throwing bottles at him.
“But I surprised you!”
They both used to play the piano. Keiko says she gave up because it just wasn’t her type of thing. Her mother wanted her to be a well-rounded young lady. Sho says he kept at it during college.
He lives with her for a week and helps fold her clothes, also sets off her fire alarm and asks what is she writing at night. Sho has no sense for writing but he likes to read her entries out loud. He narrates them like an old man, with voices and too much deliberation. Keiko thinks it doesn’t matter if he reads it. He’ll leave her one day, and it won’t matter.
She has to tell herself not to get attached.
“Tell me about Tomo.”
“Why, are you jealous?”
Sho is not her friend and he’s not anyone important. Sho is a ghost and Keiko is a human. She’s just helping him and he’s keeping her company. It’s all a fair trade.
Her mother calls her, asking if she’s doing alright.
“You know, your dad knows someone who has a job for you. It;s in a decent company and there are lovely people.”
“That sounds great, I’ll think about it.”
“You can come back to Kobe, you know.”
Keiko knows she can go home. And she doesn’t actually hate company life or anything of that sort. It’s just that after she sat at a desk and forced herself to smile and dealt with how she’s either going to have to cut some throats or sleep her way to the top, that’s just not what she wanted. And she still doesn’t want it.
She doesn’t talk about it until Sho watches her cook and asks what does she want.
“Journalism.”
“You, a journalist? Not an author? A journalist?”
“Why? Or should I be a model? Or you think I should marry rich?”
“You probably could,” Sho admits. “You’re pretty.”
“And he thinks I’m pretty,” she drawls. “Come on now, tell me more.”
“You’re aesthetically pleasing.”
“Did you just learn that word?”
Sho rolls his eyes. “I mean. You’re pretty and you’re nice, and I guess people - and I’m not saying me - but someone else might like that combination. The perfect mix of pleasant and pretty. So to people, who aren’t people, I think they would find you extremely attractive.”
“But not you?”
“I don’t know,” and Sho laughs awkwardly. “I was the guy who would stand by the crosswalk and stare at pretty girls out of the corner of my eye. I would think up lines on how to ask them out, or if they want coffee. Sometimes, when a car’s coming too fast and they take a step forwards, I want to grab them by the hand and pull them back. When they ask me why, I’ll say that oh, I just wanted an excuse to hold on to you. But I never had the nerve to do it.”
“Do you think that would work?”
“Would it work on you?”
Keiko thinks about it for a moment and she smiles.
“Would you try it on me?”
“Maybe. Would you fall for it?” Sho asks, smiling.
“Maybe.”
Keiko goes to Chiba once more and she asks if he wants to go Disneyland. Sho makes a face and so they go to the beach again. She takes the first train out and complains that Sho has it good, he doesn’t need to pay for a train fare. He just rolls his eyes and says yeah, “I guess being like this has its perks.”
Later, she throws sand at him and laughs when he runs away.
She has to buy fireworks from a small store with a guy who’s married to a girl who curiously asks if she’s going to play alone.
“I’ll be fine.”
The girl’s name is Becky and she helps Keiko pick out some snacks.
“I met my boyfriend, sorry, husband on that beach.”
Her eyes are grey and her smile is wide. Keiko thinks she’s gorgeous. Her husband’s name is Masaki and he cheerfully says he needs to go help restock some shelves. He leaves the two of them to chat.
“How did you meet him?” Keiko asks.
“Oh, I went out with some friends and I accidentally forgot my slippers. I ran back to get them and he picked them up.”
“And you fell in love at first sight,” Keiko deadpans.
Becky laughs, and shakes her head. “God, no. He tripped over his feet and threw the sandals at me. I thought he was the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met.”
“And now?”
“He still is.” Becky’s smile widens. “He asked me to marry him two years later and I was wearing the exact same slippers. Had no idea he would propose on that beach. I looked like a wreck because we just went swimming.”
Keiko thinks about it and sighs. “It must be nice, literally running towards something like that.”
“I don’t think you really plan it. It sort of just happens to you.”
The fireworks are out and sky is dark over the water. It’s getting colder and Keiko walks across the beach one more time before she has to run for the train.
“Do you like love stories?”
“Sorry?”
“The girl in the store, who fell in love with the guy because of her slippers. You were smiling a lot,” Sho says awkwardly. “Do you like love stories?”
“I don’t really have a preference, but it just sounds so nice and easy. People get to fall in love; I get hit by cars and talk to ghosts.”
“I got hit by a car,” Sho mutters.
That part she didn’t know, and Keiko doesn’t know how to respond. She’s never really been good with that type of thing. She lets them talk, usually. They talk and then say how they were sad about it and how they miss their wife or husband or mother or father or everyone.
“I got hit by a car, and I woke up and went on like this,” Sho continues. And that’s it. “I don’t think love stories sound easy. It’s more like fate or chance, or something and you have to deal with it, and what if terrible things happen? I wouldn’t want something so wonderful to have terrible things happen right after.”
“You know, I heard this thing about lovers,” Keiko cuts in suddenly. “They say that about five percent of people who fall with each other have been at the same place, at the same time at least once before they even truly meet each other. So they could just be walking right by each other, without even knowing that they just passed the person they’ll one day love.”
Sho’s confused and it suits him, a little. She likes when he doesn't know things. “How is that terrible?”
“It’s not,” and she shrugs. “It’s just, I was thinking about it when you said fate and chance. That’s all.”
Shihori sends her photo of the restaurant with the floors torn up and Jun standing around and talking to construction workers. She sends Keiko messages of thanks and proclaiming love and saying that she’s the bestest friend ever.
Keiko would smile at this, because she usually does.
She wants Shihori to be happy and she wants Jun to get his restaurant and she wants to be happy for them.
So that doesn’t explain anything, why her hands shake and she closes her eyes and tells herself to breathe.
Truthfully, she has to help him move on. Keiko can’t keep him around forever.
You have to find your next life, Tomo told her. You become someone not quite who you are, but someone else to be but the centre, you’re still there. There’s something about you that’s who you were. It’s complicated, being reborn. Some of us are afraid of it.
She wonders if Tomo loved her, or who she once was.
But it didn’t matter, she knows that much. Tomohisa told her that he once fell in love with a girl who had a broken umbrella, and he held it over her head until they made it to the train station. It doesn’t matter that she was once you, because all I wanted to know is that you were alive and to see you before I go.
Keiko’s never had a boyfriend who actually gave a fuck.
It was usually a nice looking senpai at a goukon or maybe a handsome guy who sat across her in the library. There’d be awkward fumbling sex and then casual smiles and expectations of chocolates and bento, and Keiko wondered what was there for her in all of it. Just to make someone else happy, someone who she tries to care for but really, they have no substance between them.
So, when it turned out that a ghost cared for her more than any actual guy, she wanted to break something.
Keiko did, when Tomo left.
She pulled a plate out of a cupboard and dropped it on the ground because all she wanted to do was hear the shatter, watch it splinter, and at least she was the one breaking the plate. At least she made the choice to have a broken plate.
So she does know Sho has to move on and she won’t have broken plates. She shouldn’t answer anymore personal questions. Keiko has to focus and after that, pack her bags and move back to Kobe. She’ll stop writing. She’ll be a good girl and put on an ironed blouse and decent skirt, and bow her head and accept papers.
She shouldn’t be getting attached.
It never seems to be the right time to ask, but Keiko has to. Sho’s standing on her balcony and she asks him, “What can I do to make you pass over?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I help you remember anything else?”
“Tell me a story?” he requests quietly.
They’re both staring at apartment buildings and trees and empty streets and yellowed lights. Keiko doesn’t know what story to tell him. Sho likes happy endings. A few days ago, she told him about a princess who pretended to be someone else, just anyone else, and a guy who took her to see the world and made her laugh and cry and scream. Keiko changes the ending of the story. She tells him the princess gave up her crown and got on a ship to sail to Paris, and he met her under the Eiffel Tower.
“There was a man that married a girl who was weaving a beautiful cloth for him.”
“Doesn’t she leave him in the end? Because he finds out that she’s a crane.”
Keiko nods silently.
Sho keeps quiet and they listen for the wind whistling and Keiko wishes she could hear him breathing.
“That’s a sad ending,” he murmurs.
“I feel very sad right now.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask me why. Tell me how to help you.”
“Then tell me a story.”
“About what, Sho? About how I graduated into a not-so-wonderful economy? What about the time I fell asleep in an exam? Or the failed dates my mother sets me up on because if I have no direction, at least I’ll be taken care of? Oh, and how about when a ghost decided that he wanted to give a fuck because he fell in love with my past self, oh yeah, a winner right there. Just tell me what you want,” she hisses at him, “so I can help you leave.”
“Why are you so upset at me?” he asks her, calm stare and all.
He must have been a salaryman. He must have been really smooth, with his clear eyes and there’s nothing threatening about him. Sho would push paper like a second nature, wouldn’t he? Maybe he was, or maybe he had a thing for gambling. Maybe he was something perfect, and had a job and was settled.
“I can’t be upset? You asked me what I wanted. I want to be upset.” She lets out a frustrated sigh and tries not to hit the rail of the balcony with her palms. It’ll be rude and unladylike. But she’s shouting at him; she’s wants to be rude and unladylike. “I don’t know how to help you and you can’t stick around.”
“I forgot who I was for a very long time,” Sho snaps back. “I came back to this world and then I fell into darkness, and then suddenly I heard drilling or traffic and then I see darkness again. All I remember are the stupid things or useless things, or that you’re telling me stories that no one ever has. And you’re here and I’m here so why can’t you just let me be here until we figure it out? What’s the rush?”
“Because I want to move on with my life. I want to go and do something.”
“Move back to Kobe? Pretend you like it?”
She smiles wryly and shakes her head. “You have no right to comment on my life. You don’t matter. You’re going to disappear and be reborn into someone else who I won’t ever know. You don’t get to talk about that.”
“Why not?” he demands, “let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about the girl who chased me out of a restaurant for the sake of her darling best friend, to make her best friend’s boyfriend happy, and tells her stories with happy ending and yet you’re so inherently miserable.”
“I am not miserable.”
“Really now.”
She falls silent and then walks right inside. Sho follows her. He closes the door behind him and she looks at the glass and at him, almost daring him to shatter it. He could do that. She’s met ghosts who can shatter windows and explode drinking glasses. She knows ghosts that could topple bookshelves. Keiko wants him to be angry; she just wants to see if he has the nerve because she’s angry. She doesn’t want to be the only angry person here because what’s the point? Because this, he has no right to argue with her. Not about all of this.
It doesn’t matter to him.
“You don’t know me,” Keiko tells him quietly, “You don’t anything about me.”
“I know enough.”
“You’re dead. You don’t need to know me.”
“Why, because you’re waiting for the next ghost to come along to keep you company?” he snarls. “Oh yeah, have I begun to bore you or something?”
“You think I want to do this? Talk to people who leave me once I make them happy? Do I look like I enjoy this? I’m just doing what I have to do!” She can’t help shouting at him. Keiko wants to shout, wants to throw things, wants to shake him by the shoulders. But she won’t touch him. She’s not going to touch him because why should she? He’ll be cold and she’ll feel suffocated and not because she’s who she is and he’s going to cease to exist, but because she’s so angry right now because whatever he says, it matters. and he made her laugh and he destroyed her toaster.
“You’re saying that you feel compelled to help me?”
“All I’m saying is that one day I nearly got hit by a car and then I woke up and could talk to ghosts, and they won’t leave me alone until they can rest.”
“Do you want me to leave you alone, then?” he demands.
No, she wants to say. I don’t know anymore. Suddenly I remember what it’s like to have someone here to laugh with and to talk about stupid things or to chase out of the shower. Why do the people who make me feel like this, why are they always dead. Keiko feels incapable. She feels stupid and useless because why can’t she love someone who’s actually there? Someone who can tell her to buck up when work is bad, or someone who can buy her a replacement toaster when it’s broken; why can’t she love someone like that?
So instead she mutters, “You can do whatever you want,” as though that’s going to solve anything.
“I didn’t ask for this and I know you didn’t either.”
“Are you going to apologise?” Keiko asks him.
“No. I don’t think you’d accept that.”
He’s right. She wouldn’t.
“If I go,” he asks instead, “Would you miss me?”
She’s going to lie, Keiko will lie, “I have a life to live, don’t I?” as though that’s enough.
Keiko never asked for this. She doesn’t know if this is just what happens because it happens. Some people go to space and other people write books. She talks to ghosts.
She never asks to care and she never knows if it’s the right thing to do.
She’s touched a ghost before and they’re cold; they have no heartbeat and it’s obvious why.
Sho touches her, his hand on her cheek, leaning in close.
“If I go, I will miss you,” he whispers, and Sho’s kiss is not fleeting and it’s not cold. Sho kisses her and Keiko pulls him closer, and this is too greedy, this is actually stupid and she’s going to get hurt later. But it’s gentle and it’s promising something and she wants more and-no, just no.
She wrenches back and shakes her head.
“Why did you do that?” she whispers.
“I want you to remember me.”
“That’s not fair.”
Sho nods, but she rushes forwards and grabs him by the cloth of his white shirt and kisses him fully, wholly. She wonders if her heart is racing, if she could bring him to life with what warmth she possesses. She thinks of fairytales and sleeping curses and she thinks of how this isn’t her fairytale. Just one kiss won’t fix him. One kiss won’t fix her either. But Keiko kisses him, mouth against his and he’s cold like marble in winter.
When they break apart, she’s trying to calm herself down by breathing slowly, and he looks torn into a million pieces, as though they’ve just destroyed something. Or maybe Keiko’s hurt him.
Some part of her wants him to remember her in his next life. If the last memory of who he is now should be anything, Keiko wishes it could be this, just this.
It’s not even fair, to either of them.
She lets him lie down next to her that night. Keiko mumbles that she should write a story and sell it. About a stupid girl who falls in love with a stupid boy. Maybe she’ll change it up. Maybe he can be alive and she can be the ghost.
Sho puts his head on her chest and says, “I can hear your heart.”
She closes her eyes and feels a cold hand finding hers.
“Your heartbeat is strong,” he murmurs. “Isn’t that a good thing to know?”
“Do you really like my stories?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“When you talk to me, I remember things. I remember I studied economics and that I played soccer. I remember trying to surf and falling into the water and being knocked over by the waves. It’s nice talking to you, because it doesn’t matter what we think of each other.”
Keiko squeezes his hand tight. She doesn’t have to let go, not right now.
“Tokyo, right?” she asks him. “Was it in Tokyo?”
“It must have been,” Sho mumbles.
“You must have been staring at a pretty girl.”
He laughs and she holds tight. What else can she do?
Keiko understands that she’s not exactly normal.
She knows that she shouldn’t let herself care so much and that these conversations about what she wants and what he remembers are something too personal. She should form a connection with someone real, someone who is solid and there for her and buys her flowers and then asks her to come up for coffee when they have no intention of drinking it.
It’s not that Keiko doesn’t want normal. Keiko tried normal and that was a job that suffocated her and people that she wanted to love but she can’t just do that. Keiko knows that if she wants to be with someone, then she can be with someone. But she didn’t, not then and well, the only other real attachment she formed was with her past life’s lover’s spirit. Which is pretty messed up, isn’t it.
She knows that it’s not really what people do everyday.
It’s not that she doesn’t want to be like everyone else.
But Keiko just wants something to work out. She wants to start believing again, believing in something.
She starts sending out portfolios and resumes. She photocopies old articles she wrote for her university newspaper, she writes about restaurants and cat cafes, and she writes a short story about meeting a ghost on a beach.
Sho is quiet when she works.
Keiko needs to drink some tea to calm her nerves. She has to co-exist with Sho and she has to do something about everything else.
When someone publishes her review on cheap cafes, she sends them more stories and writes about how to redo a wardrobe. She’s not sure if that’s helpful to anyone, but she just needs to get it out there.
“You don’t stay still, do you?”
“What?”
Keiko’s spinning around in her chair and Sho’s sitting cross-legged on her bed.
“You can’t just let things be as they are. You’re either cooking or trying to take me to places I might have been. Either that or you’re writing or spamming people with your list of qualifications.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s something I like about you,” he says and it seems to be truthful.
It’s flattery. It’s nice, it’s what guys say to girls when they want to kiss them and he’s kissed her and only that night. She hasn’t kissed him since because she doesn’t want to think about tomorrow, about the next moment, about what happens after if she kisses him once more and he fades away like light when the sun falls.
Keiko knows this will not work out.
This is not the something she puts her faith in.
“You know, I wish things could be different,” Sho tells her, “I wish I had been happier. I could have done things. I could have been someone.”
This is personal. This is Sho giving her his honesty and this is something she shouldn’t care about.
“I should have gone to Egypt or Turkey. I should have gotten a tan. Have you ever gotten a tan? I’ve gotten sunburnt from when I was in Okinawa. I was in the sun all day and I was red, so red and burnt. It was the type of burn that sears when you touch and I doused myself in calamine and yelled so loudly my father told me to stop being such a baby about it. It’s only a bit of sun, life has much worse things than sunburn. He’s right. But still,” Sho’s laugh is hollow and sad, and maybe he really wasn’t happy back then, “I wish I could have done all that.”
“Do you think you would have been happier, if things were different?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I never had the courage to do what I wanted. I just did what was expected,” he laughs a little sadly, “I thought that would make me happy. And I wasn’t happy. But I didn’t know anything else. So I just did it. And told myself that I was fine. But I wasn’t fine.”
Keiko knows that she’s helping him. She knows that he has to find some sort of peace to move on.
But he’s sad and she wants to change it and that part is the part which isn’t okay. It’s irrational and won’t make anything better.
“I know what you’re talking about,” Keiko says softly. “But you had the strength to keep going.”
“No I didn’t. I guess we quit in different ways.”
“Me,” she sighs. “I quit. I became a shut-in. I didn’t do anything. This will sound stupid, but I saved up all my money for the purpose of being a shut-in.”
“So what’s changed?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re changing that, aren’t you?”
She doesn’t know that either.
Sho’s looking at her in a way no one else has. She thinks of how he said she was pretty. She thinks of the way other people look at her, just a small glimpse of a girl who did the right thing but gave up. Sho looks at her and it’s different, as though he wants to know why, as though he would sit and listen and not tell her that she should have done something else. As though what she wants might matter.
But that doesn’t mean anything. It can’t.
Keiko is just a fleeting moment for him and Sho will forget her in his next life.
“Do you want to move on, Sho?”
He looks at her, hands clenching and unclenching. Keiko selfishly wants him to be confused and torn between choices.
“Would you miss me?” he asks her.
She answers, “I have a life to live.”
Sho gives her a funny little smile and she must have hurt his feelings.
Good.
She’s being unfair, but good. She’s glad she’s hurt his feelings.
He asks her about the haraegushi. And the first time, “And the salt and stuff you were throwing at me.”
Keiko’s reading her email from some magazine that wants to know if she wants to write a story about gardening. Keiko doesn’t know a thing about gardening.
“When I started seeing ghosts, I started talking to them. And then sometimes I would help my friends. Then there was this one time we had a cultural festival at my university and we turned a building into a haunted house, but then it really did become haunted. My mother found Nino’s grandfather, Ninomiya-san, on some website somewhere and he got me one and I’ve been using it ever since.”
“I thought it’d be like, inherited or something.”
“Would it make it more interesting if it were?”
“Yeah,” Sho admits sheepishly, “I just thought, you know. There’d be some story and it would have been passed from generation to generation since god knows when.”
“Sorry I’m not interesting enough for you,” Keiko deadpans.
“You’re interesting. The haraegushi, not so much.”
“So you think I’m interesting,” she drawls with much satisfaction and a smile, “Do go on.” Sho hides his face behind his hands and she grins.
She makes a call to Shihori one night.
“Hello moonbeam,” Shihori says cheerily and Keiko smiles too easily. “Are you okay?”
“How’s the restaurant?”
“Being fixed up.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” Keiko mumbles, “If you could just find people to take you apart and put you back together and you’re pretty and shinier and everything is working and people want to be around you? Why aren’t there people renovators?”
“I think plastic surgery is the beginning step to that.”
“True.”
They’re quiet for a moment.
Keiko’s standing outside on her balcony and Sho is in the living room, sitting on the floor and watching the news. He told her he hadn’t seen the news in a long time. Every night, he has to watch the news. Every morning, Keiko has to pull herself out of bed to get him the newspapers. And he remembers it. He knows about financial deficits and plane crashes and the hot artists of the moment. He knows about predicted storms and how the baby giraffe in the zoo is growing up healthily.
“Remember when we were in uni?” Shihori says suddenly.
“When?”
“That time I forgot to bring my stuff to tutorial. We were being marked. And then I forgot to bring my answers. And what did you do?”
Keiko laughs. “I said I didn’t have mine as well. I didn’t pull out my book and I pretended I also forgot mine.”
“You lost marks with me. You could have either saved yourself or given me your answers,” Shihori recalls.
“Why are you thinking about that?” Keiko asks her.
“I just,” Shihori sighs, “I just wish I could be there for you the way you are for me. You sound so sad, Keiko. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
They’re silent for a bit before Shihori asks her, “If I got married, would you still be my best friend?”
“You know, the boyfriend should be the best friend. I read that somewhere.”
“What, in a magazine?”
Keiko smiles a little at that.“Yeah. I did. I thought it was stupid.”
“Maybe it works for someone else.”
“Not for us?”
“You’re still my best friend. Jun can be my boyfriend. If you love me and he loves me, you both can love each other. Or like each other.”
“I don’t mind Jun,” Keiko admits. “Actually, I do like him. It’s just so fun to give him a hard time, you know. Once in awhile. It keeps him on his toes.”
“Like that time you had dinner with us and didn’t say a word?”
“Well,” Keiko scoffs, “If he can’t endure that, then he’s weak.”
“And how you told him I wanted super expensive Prada for my birthday when I really wanted flowers?”
“If he believed that, then he’s an idiot.”
“And. And,” and Shihori’s laughing and sighing and Keiko wants to think that she’s smiling, “You know. I want you to be happy as well.”
“I’ll be happy, Shi-chan.”
“I’m going to believe that.”
“Night, sunshine.”
“Goodnight, moonbeam.”
It’s not so surprising when he comes barging into her bathroom. Sho doesn’t need to shower. He doesn’t get dirty and he doesn’t get itchy and he has no scent whatsoever. He can touch things and eat them but he doesn’t get a pound or make an imprint. Sho has barged in on her before, but that was to make her laugh or to hear her shout.
Keiko has to wash her hair. She has to remind herself not to eat too much chocolate and that people will notice if she wears the same outfit twice in a week. It’s tedious and sometimes she wants to go braless or maybe wear oversize t-shirts in the summer, but she can’t.
He pulls the shower curtain back and she throws her sponge at him. She turns off the water, ignores him and takes the towel.
“Why aren’t you screaming?” Sho complains.
“Because you haven’t given me something to scream about,” Keiko says snootily. “Besides, you did this to me two weeks ago so it’s not a big shocker,” she continues, wrapping the towel around herself and squeezing the water out of her hair. “Did you need something?”
“Not really.”
Keiko stares at him and she swears, he gets a little colour on his cheeks.
“Did you have a girlfriend?”
He shakes his head. “I dated. Didn’t really connect. But not at the time, no.”
Keiko starts on her skincare and Sho stares in awe as she starts with toner and then essence and she puts a little bit of essence in her hand, turning and smoothing it over his cheeks. Soft gentle pats and then circular motions and then over his jaw, gently pushing and following the tense lines.
“You’re not offended?” he asks.
“Well, you aren’t really aging so this might be a waste of my essence,” Keiko teases.
“No, I mean.”
“The naked thing?”
“Yeah,” Sho mumbles, “It was rude.”
Keiko shrugs, starting on moisturiser. “You’ve seen me naked before.”
“Do you want to see me naked?”
“You mean, you’ll show me yours because you saw mine? How generous.”
“When you put it that way,” he complains, “now I just seem intrusive.”
He now sleeps in her bed and he’s been eating her food. Sho edited her resume and he went through her notebooks, read about each and every encounter. He leaves newspapers lying around the house and Keiko misses Jill. She knows Jill can see ghosts and she thinks Jill might just paw at Sho until Sho gives in and scratches him on the tummy. Everyone’s a sucker for Jill.
She dries her hair and Sho lurks around awkwardly.
Keiko decides to tease him, sly smile and all. “Did you like it?”
“What?” he asks, startled out of his thoughts.
“Seeing me naked,” and she brushes out her hair, letting it fall over her shoulder. Keiko waits and waits as Sho gulps and so she asks again, “Did you like seeing me naked?”
He stammers and mutters and immediately goes running out of the bathroom.
Keiko cackles with laughter.
“Can I see you naked?” she asks him a few days later. “I mean, you offered.”
Sho turns a deep shade of pink.
Keiko laughs, and it feels good.
Am I warm, she asks. They’re pressed against each other in her single bed. It’s late and she’s tired, and he’s proofreading something she wrote about shopping for curtains. Some magazine asked if she could do it and she said yes because well, there’s a paycheck there.
Am I warm when you touch me? Can you feel my heart racing? What are you thinking when you touch me?
Sho’s hand is in hers and Keiko wants to fall asleep; she just wants to sleep and feel safe. Just for a little bit.
She should ask when is he leaving.
She doesn’t.
Keiko should be helping him.
She tries.
This isn’t meant to last.
She ignores that.
She goes to an interview for a magazine and she’s not sure how it’s going to turn out.
Keiko tells her mother she’s interviewing for jobs. Her mother tells her to walk carefully, eat properly. Just take care of yourself, keep in touch. Keiko knows her mother is just worried for her and she wants her mother to stop fretting. I’m alive and kicking, you raised a good daughter.
Sho’s been quiet the whole day.
Keiko knows she has to build a life for herself that’s just for her and for a future that means an income for one person and no ghost roommate. She doesn’t care if his feelings are hurt because Keiko has to keep going. She’s not going to sit there and stare as the world passes her by.
“Keiko?”
When he says her name, she thinks of how he said she should be calling him Sho-san and she didn’t. She likes when he says her name, how rarely that is.
Sho knows her insecurities; Sho knows she’s been skinny dipping.
Keiko knows he wasn’t happy.
They know enough to be more than strangers, enough to be friends.
She’s walking home from the train station. Sho’s walking with her. It’s late and no one is there to hear her talk to a ghost. To anyone else, she’s either talking to herself or to the vapour in the air. They keep walking.
His fingers graze the back of her hand and then they jerk away.
Keiko feels his hand brush against hers.
Their shoulders touch and Sho stops.
“You keep touching me, we need to hold hands,” he announces and takes her hand as they walk. “Because you keep touching me.”
She smiles and lets him hold her hand the entire walk.
Later, Sho kisses her under the streetlights with a hand on her waist and another cupping her face. He kisses her and she hopes that if he keeps touching her, she can give that warmth to him. It’s sad and hopeful. Keiko’s mouth on his and his tongue in her mouth. She likes, wants it. And isn’t that terrible, because Keiko’s falling back into a pattern of wanting what she won’t have.
He’s gone the next morning.
She rushes out of the room, checks the kitchen.
Keiko runs out onto the balcony.
She looks around the living room.
There are newspapers on the table.
There’s no one.
Sho’s gone.
He didn’t even say goodbye.
Keiko has no right to be hurt. She knows that life is not logical. Keiko knows that this isn’t really her problem, and she could have said no and she chose to take it on so she has no right to be angry.
But she can’t say anything for an hour.
She might be happier just not talking, maybe packing a bag and moving to Okinawa where she’ll feel the sun on her skin and burn up hot until she’s raw and red. and at least she’ll feel something else, something that happens to normal people when they go out into the sun.
Keiko feels hurt, she feels herself about to break or shout or scream or cry because this is not fair but she also has no right.
She chose to help him. This didn’t have to be her problem.
She let herself care.
Keiko knows this is messed up.
She could have gone on dates. She could have kept working at her old office. She could have ignored the ghosts from the first day she saw them.
But she didn’t.
Part 3.