Chocolate fic for astrangerenters, PART 1
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 ♥
The entire ghost thing was because of some crazy person and a car, and all this was during the first year of university. As if she needed the extra pressure. And then after the car and accident, Keiko woke up to her mother practically wailing and saying oh baby, my baby girl, I thought we lost you and then actually sobbing over Keiko. Which was fine, because Keiko was glad to be alive but what she didn’t know was, hey, look. A ghost, and a true-to-god ghost sitting on the end of her bed two weeks later.
Ghosts are actually okay, she learns this as she goes through college. There’s a ghost from Hokkaido who was blown down by the winds, all the way south.
So the entire ghost thing, it just kind of happens to her.
Then there’s that ghost, the one who she wakes up to one morning and the guy is just sitting there, all blank eyes and confusion.
It’s not like she doesn’t adore Shihori. She really does, and Keiko is really glad Shihori’s new boyfriend isn’t mean and horrible. This boyfriend actually wears pants that fit him. But he does use too much hair product. Then again, this guy is practically a winner, going by Shihori’s track record.
But seriously.
“You’re telling me that you want me to play ghost buster.”
“Yes. No. But Keiko, please! I just need your super special awesome ability to talk to ghosts! Just tell him to take a long walk! We can’t renovate until the guy is gone. The renovation people are highly superstitious and told us that we can’t open a restaurant with a ghost in there. And Jun-kun, he’s been working towards this restaurant his whole life. And it’s not like we knew about the ghost. But it just so happens that you can talk to ghosts-oh god, please?”
Okay, so it’s not like Keiko’s an unhelpful person. She’s a very helpful person. She helped Shihori break up with her terrible ex-boyfriend, which was a good thing. For all of them. And now Shihori’s with this guy who has pasta skills and a restaurant and now, apparently a ghost as well.
Then again, nobody’s perfect.
“Shi-chan. I love you. And I know that you must be desperate. And-”
“Jun says you can have free pasta for the rest of your life.”
Now that gets her attention.
“Thank god you’re here,” he exclaims.
Keiko’s checked her calendar. She’s prayed at the shrine. She’s put on the hakama that her great-great-grandmother left for her that was inherited from some ancestor from some time ago. Keiko says a grumpy hello to Jun with her haraegushi.
“Don’t ask,” Shihori warns as Jun opens his mouth. “Don’t ask.”
“Just go with it,” Keiko replies before Jun really can ask. “Hello, Jun-kun. How are you?”
“When they said that they’d sell me the restaurant for a steal, they didn’t tell me there would be a ghost.”
Keiko rolls her eyes. What did he expect, for the original tenant to happily turn over a prime piece of land for absolutely nothing? But she does have to ask, “And when did the ghost turn up?”
“Yesterday. When I came in to show Shihori-chan the place, and it got super windy and she ran out screaming.”
“You!” Shihori hisses, “You were the one who ran out screaming like a little sissy!”
“You ran out screaming with me!”
“But the way you tell the story-”
“Guys!” Keiko yells.
The two of them stop bickering and look at her.
“So there was wind.”
“And umbrellas. It’s like there were lost umbrellas in there and then they went flying at us, and it just made the place seem really dodgy or haunted,” Shihori tries explaining and Keiko coldly raises an eyebrow. “Well, I don’t know what’s the difference between dodgy and haunted! That’s why you’re here. And besides, all you do is search for jobs you hate ever since you quit the old one and I was worried that you’ve become a shut-in and-ouch!”
“You!” Keiko says furiously, smacking Shihori over the head with her haraegushi. The paper flails in the wind and Shihori yelps and tries to hide behind Jun. “You!”
“I was going to totally cook you free pasta,” Jun says with utmost seriousness, as though his girlfriend’s best friend isn’t attacking with a purification broom. “Really!”
“And you!” she yells, turning on Jun.
And at that point, she starts chasing them up and down the street with the haraegushi.
When she first met Tomo, she wasn’t really sure how to feel.
This was in the last year of college and she had no idea what she wanted to do with life.
Get married, one of her aunts scoffed. A pretty girl like you, a degree’s more like an accessory. You know, like a Prada bag with a poodle in it.
Keiko never really liked that aunt.
But Tomo, he was sitting there on the edge of her bed, and even then, with the wide, wide eyes and asking oh my god, oh my god, you can actually see me? Are you a nice person? I’m very really lonely. You’re looking at me, you can see me. Right?
Yeah, she said. I can see you.
Never mind she was in her pyjamas and minus a bra.
Hi, he said. I’m Tomo.
Just Tomo, she asked him, just Tomo?
Just Tomo, he answered back. What’s your name?
“I’m Keiko.”
“Hello, Keiko.”
Keiko doesn’t really hate the ghosts. It wasn’t as though the dating pool was particularly spectacular and well, it’s a welcome break from studying every damn day with information that just seemed to leak out of her head the moment she reads it.
Besides, she’s always known something was strange since that time she was a kid and heard someone whispering when she offered incense at her great grandfather’s grave.
“Are you okay?” she asked Tomo.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I just. Hello.”
“I hate you both,” Keiko declares flatly as she sits across the two of them in a café a few buildings over with a chai latte and her arms folded across her chest. “You’re dead to me.”
“Keiko-chan,” Jun pleads. “Come on. I’ve always dreamed of opening a restaurant that can make Shihori smile.”
“Your gross declarations of love have no effect on me whatsoever. You’re more cheesy than a Getsu Nine drama lead.”
It just gets a little bit worse because both Shihori and Jun break out the puppy eyes as though they’ve rehearsed the whimpering sounds and wide sad eyes with the love me, oh just love me expressions. Keiko resists the urge to smack them over the head with the haraegushi once more.
The only reason she stopped chasing them down the street was because an old man stopped them and scolded her for inappropriate use of purification items. “You are desecrating the traditions that built this country!” he hissed as he snatched the haraegushi from her, waving it in the air. “What are you youngsters thinking, treating this like some cheerleader pom-pom and screaming as you run around with this,” and so forth and so forth.
The old man only stopped scolding them when they all gave him proper ninety degree bows and repeatedly apologised until he returned Keiko the haraegushi. At that point, Shihori said she could use a warm drink. Jun, the perfect boyfriend, found them a nearby café.
Stupid Jun. It makes Keiko wants a nice boyfriend.
Maybe one who doesn’t buy restaurants that are either dodgy or haunted.
“But you’ll help us check if there is a ghost, right?” Shihori asks pleadingly. “Keiko, please? There’s no other good restaurant and the area is nice and the place is just right. It was perfectly fine when Jun-kun saw it the first time. And that was before he signed the papers.”
“No, I’m just going to sit here and let you suffer,” Keiko drawls and Shihori lets out a horrified gasp. “Relax, I’m on to it.”
“How?” Jun asks.
“No idea, but I’ll help you.”
“Really?” Shihori asks, eyes widen and sparkling and Keiko rolls her eyes.
“Of course. I’ve been looking out for you since we were kids. Remember the guy who shoved you off the swing?”
“Oh, didn’t you break his nose?”
“You broke someone’s nose?” Jun splutters.
Keiko smiles and waves them off.
Shihori rushes over to Keiko’s side of the table to grab onto her, hugging her and telling her she’s the bestest friend ever and promising to always buy her better birthday presents. Keiko hugs her back. It’s what best friends do, she thinks. You break noses and banish ghosts. Or something.
She’s there for two more hours before she actually summons up the strength to go and deal with it. She’s already told Jun and Shihori to go home.
It’s fine, she told them. You two go do some cute couple-y stuff. I need to wait and figure out how to handle your ghost. Just give me the keys to the place.
Despite it all, they tried to stay. Shihori insisted that they could and Jun nodded. It is his restaurant after all. Keiko made up some excuse, about how they’d just get in the way and make the spirit angry and Jun’s hair product is offensive and Shihori’s too happy for the deceased. Something like that. They didn’t believe her, but at least they left.
She couldn’t help but smile when Jun helped Shihori into her coat and insisted on paying for all the coffees.
If anything, Keiko’s glad that he’s a good guy.
She dealt with a ghost two months ago.
The last one, she thinks. The last one had been a spirit who tried to leave this earth too soon. Spurned by a lover who found another, and Keiko took him to beach to run through the ocean and the salt mingling through the air and he laughed and laughed as the water splashed on them. Ghosts can feel too, he said. Yurei, just because we are yurei doesn’t mean we don’t matter. Our feelings don’t die with us.
He faded into the afterlife and Keiko wonders if he’s happy. Sometimes, she thinks about it and wonders if she even made a difference.
She’s had girl ghosts before. They’re the women with the long glossy hair, the white robes, sad eyes and poisonous tones. Sometimes they’re beautiful and vicious. They’re angry, sometimes. Their babies were stolen, or their husbands didn’t love them. Sometimes they just die young.
Sometimes, Keiko wishes she could wake up and not have made friends with ghosts.
It’s not like she’s particularly brave or wonderful. It’s just something she does. Common decency for the deceased. If they come find you when unrested, you have to put them to rest. It probably sounds downright crazy.
She told Shihori, a year or so after.
“I can see ghosts,” she blurted out when they were at a carnival. There was a haunted house Shihori desperately wanted go to, except Keiko downright refused.
“Oh. Are they nice to you?”
And Keiko told her some of the stories. And really, it didn’t change anything. They grew up and graduated and Keiko stopped working that job where that stupid boss kept on trying to asking her out and piling on extra work when she didn’t go out with him. That wasn’t why she quit, though.
Keiko knows it sounds weak, but she didn’t want to just keep sitting in a chair, picking up calls and organising meetings. She’s not an office girl. She has a degree, she has a brain. She doesn’t want to waste it away. But it was the only job she could get after college.
Maybe Shihori was right. She has become a bit of a recluse. Just going to read books at the library and writing down her encounters of ghosts. She’s been out of a job for six months.
It’ll change, she promises herself. You go in, deal with their crazy ghost and then you find a job and you change this, all of this. You can do it.
She looks out at the evening sky from the café window and sees the streetlights and signs glowing through the night.
There are no answers for her there.
“Hello?” Keiko calls out cautiously, letting herself into an empty space of just grey walls and pillars.
Tick tock, tick tock.
Someone’s left behind a clock, as though an empty restaurant space with little lighting could get any creepier.
Tick tock, tick tock.
“Hello?” she calls out once more and takes a few steps forward, looking around. Keiko has totally done this before. There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Except for the ticking clock. It’s seriously no big deal. She’s dealt with creepier, like the time she had to help the ghost in the high school. That was creepy. On a scale of creepy and creepiest, Keiko tells herself that it’s really not so bad.
“Hello?” she calls out to no one in particular.
There are umbrellas on the ground. There’s dust settling on the ground. There’s no one here.
Tick, tick, tick.
Keiko looks at the clock on the wall, the clock that’s just like any other clock except it’s stalled. She clutches at the bamboo of the haraegushi even tighter. Keiko’s done everything she’s supposed. She’s put salt on the doorstep, she’s washed her face, her mouth and her hands. She’s done everything right so far. And she has dealt with worse. It’s just a stalled clock.
The door open and then slams shut, and the wind in the vacated space picks up and Keiko ducks down, cowering and shaking her haraegushi with one hand and throwing salt with another because yeah, that’ll totally save her from a ghost throwing a tantrum.
“I’m just trying to help,” she yells, eyes squeezed shut because the door keeps opening and slamming shut and the clock is stalled and keeps ticking.
The door slams shut once more and Keiko tenses up even more. She forces herself to crack an eye open.
“Go away.”
She looks up and he’s there.
The door’s not swinging and the clock’s stopped ticking.
Dark hair, sad eyes and a nice mouth. She wonders if he was a heartbreaker in his days, he’s a good-looking ghost. Keiko’s met some good-looking ghosts. Tomo was a good-looking ghost. And that was hot ghost from the eighties.
“Please leave,” the ghost tells her.
Keiko stands up, and the ghost picks up an umbrella.
Keiko puts down everything in her arms: her bag that has the salt, the haraegushi and and the prayer book with the prayer beads, even though she has trouble reading half the kanji because it’s all handwritten.
The ghost puts down the umbrella.
“I just want to help you,” Keiko replies cautiously.
The ghost looks at her, and looks at the door over her shoulder.
She turns and watches, as it slowly swings open.
“Please, leave.”
The ghost takes a step forwards and he’s taller than her. He looks as though the weight of the world’s on his shoulders, as though he hasn’t let sunlight warm the cracks of his heart for a long time.
“I don’t want you here. I just want to be alone,” he tells her quietly. “Go live your life far away from me. Go away. Please.”
“I can help you,” she tries once more.
“Get out!”
The wind picks up and she squeaks. It’s embarrassing that she squeaks and the ghost looks a little bit sorry and she picks up her things and bows to him. It’s hard, she knows that it’s difficult after going on for a while and not even being there, not being known or loved or just even being there. She knows it’s hard. One of them chased her down an alleyway in Shinjuku. Another kept demanding that she sing and dance until he laughed. Keiko knows it’s hard.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” she says politely. “I hope that when you’re ready, you can find your peace.”
The wind dies down.
She straightens and the ghost looks at her, blank and silent.
“I hope you will find some happiness so you can find your rest.”
“What makes you say that?” he asks her.
Keiko blinks.
“Why would I find happiness?” the ghost repeats.
“Ghosts,” Keiko says, “Ghosts have feelings, too. Just because you’ve passed on does not mean that your feelings can crumble like incense after you light it. You look sad. That’s why I said that.”
She’s at the door when he calls out, “You. Hey.”
Keiko turns and the ghost fumbles over words, hands tugging at his white clothes.
“I’m sorry. For being so rude. Thank you for trying.”
Tick tock, tick tock.
And the clock has started once more. She tilts her head and he bows back a little. Keiko leaves the restaurant and the door gently swings shut behind her.
Keiko sends Shihori a message, an apology mainly. Sorry I couldn’t tell the ghost to go. He’s there. I’ll try again another day.
She’s lying in bed but she can’t sleep.
Keiko forces herself up, goes through her desk and fishes out one of her journals.
Tomo, she reads. Tomo was twenty something and lost and he told me that I was pretty.
She snaps the journal shut and throws it back into her desk drawer.
Truthfully, the money is running out. She doesn’t live extravagantly but it’s expensive sometimes, and she misses Kobe. Sometimes she thinks about moving back.
But that requires her to listen to naggy relatives on a daily basis.
She promises herself to deal with the ghost again tomorrow. Maybe he just hasn’t talked to anyone in awhile. Maybe he just floats around and smiles as children sleep. Maybe he fends off the hungry ghosts, the one with the thin throats and large mouths and she thinks, no, he probably hasn’t. It was as though he hasn’t spoken in a long time.
And she doesn’t know why, but she falls asleep thinking of that. What to say to someone who hasn’t spoken to anyone for awhile.
She’s armed with more salt, and some charms, and her prayer beads, and the books and the haraegushi when she enters the restaurant once more.
“Hi?” she says and listens for the clock.
It’s stopped.
“It’s me again,” she calls out.
Nothing.
“I don’t think we really got to know each other. My name is Kitagawa Keiko. I should have asked your name yesterday. So, uh. If you’re in here somewhere.”
Still nothing.
“I’m a graduate. I worked some weird jobs and some normal ones,” she says to no one.
“I have a cat. Or I had a cat. Jill doesn’t really like my ghost friend. Yeah, my cat can see ghosts.”
“I have been skinny dipping. My favourite drink is Pocari Sweat. I prefer sesame over green tea ice cream.”
She’s been sitting there for awhile when he creeps out from a corner. Standing there, looking at her. Keiko wonders how strange she must seem, sitting in the empty room and just saying stupid things like her cat and what she likes to eat and how her dad is a doctor and that her mother has given up on Keiko’s inability to hold her chopsticks properly.
“Where did you graduate from?” the ghost finally asks her.
“Meiji.”
“Oh.”
The ground is dusty. She’s going to have a grey patch on the ass of her jeans.
“I don’t know where I graduated from,” the ghost admits. “I know I graduated.”
“That’s okay. I’m sure we can figure it out.”
The ghost shakes his head, “I don’t want to figure it out.”
Keiko nods and stands up. “It was nice talking today,” she says awkwardly.
“My name is Sho.”
“I’m Keiko.”
“I know. I heard you. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Have a nice evening,” she says softly, taking her things and leaving once more.
Shihori looks at her helplessly, “I’m a terrible friend. I dragged you into his stupid restaurant and now you look sad.”
“Well, it’s usually a downer when they’re sad,” Keiko admits. “I’m fine.”
Jun comes by with their coffees and sits down beside Shihori. He awkwardly stares at his cappuccino and then, “I’m so sorry. I should have checked on the premise and asked if it was being occupied by the deceased.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Keiko sighs. “I already submitted so many forms for a masters; I feel like if I try and send out anymore of them, I’ll go crazy.”
“But you look so sad,” Shihori splutters.
Keiko rolls her eyes. “I’m fine. It’s just. I don’t know. You can get sad from talking to the dead.”
“What’s he like?” Jun asks her, oddly curious, and Keiko has to think.
“He’s, well.” Good-looking? Temperamental? “Lonely. I can try talking to him. Eventually, you know, they open up and you find out how to complete their life cycles.”
Shihori and Jun look at her, confused.
“It’s you know, the thing you do. When you try and make the ghost happy.”
“Maybe he likes liquor.”
“That’s you,” Shihori snorts, smacking her boyfriend on the arm. “Maybe he likes candy.”
“Now look who’s talking.”
The next day, Keiko arms herself with sake and candy. She sits there for two hours and Sho doesn’t appear at all.
“Haven’t seen you since you were dating a ghost.”
“For the last time, we weren’t dating,” Keiko snaps.
Nino laughs and rolls his eyes and shuffles a pack of cards.
“I don’t need my fortune told.”
He puts his cards away, mildly disappointed.
“You realise I do pay by the question. And I don’t take credit cards.”
She can’t help but smile at him and Nino smiles back.
Keiko plops herself on the cushion and pulls out her purse. The room’s air is thick with incense and tea.
“Glad to know some things haven’t changed,” she remarks and slaps a thousand-yen bill onto the table. “Ghost, sad and angry and haunting a restaurant. How to fix it.”
“You can’t make him move on. You know the rules. You can only help him.”
He tries to take the money but Keiko holds on stubbornly, glaring at him from across the table.
Nino’s grandfather, Ninomiya Senior, was the man Keiko’s mother consulted when she found out her daughter could see ghosts. Keiko’s mother might have found them through a dodgy internet site with a suspicious lack of reviews. Her mother might or might not have typed ‘my daughter can talk to ghosts’ in the search bar. Turns out that the dodgy website with the terrible url was Nino’s handiwork.
“So, did he dump you or something?” Nino asks her casually. “Wanna go out? For dinner. You’re paying.”
Keiko lets go of the money and Nino pockets it, all smug and puffed up for a guy who doesn’t look older than twelve. He’s actually thirty.
“The guy is occupying my friend’s restaurant. The renovators won’t start until he’s gone. I gave him sake, I gave him candy, I threw salt over the floor, I tried talking to him. I used a haraegushi. He’s not really very social. They’re not usually so isolated and stubborn.”
“There’s no alternative way to purify the place,” Nino tells her loftily, “You’ll have to communicate with the spirit. Or you can pray him away. Or you can get a monk to communicate and pray. Or you can try harder.”
“I’ve tried!”
“It can’t be that hard.” And he eyes her warily, “Oh. Are you still sad? Because ghost boy dumped you?”
“Tomo and I were just friends!”
“Yeah, is that what they call it now,” he drawls before pulling out a yellowing book with tattered and dog eared pages and flipping through it. “Seriously, what went wrong with the two of you?”
To set the record straight, Keiko wasn’t dating Tomo.
She just talked to him.
And cared for him.
But they weren’t dating.
“He’s a ghost, I’m a person. What else could be more problematic?”
“So you did want to date him,” Nino says, peering over the top of his book.
Keiko counts to five, then ten and then recites the hiragana chart in her head.
“He and I were just friends. He stuck around for awhile. I helped him move on after. What does it matter, just help me with this ghost. My friend needs the restaurant. Or her boyfriend does. He’s my friend as well, I guess, but.” She stops talking, folds her arms around her chest and decides to speed things up a little. “Ninomiya Kazunari, I still know your grandfather. If you don’t help me, I will find him and tell him how you extort silly girls for money with your little love fortune business on the side.”
Nino pales and starts flipping through the book a little faster.
She sits there whilst Nino lights a few candles and then eyes him suspiciously.
“So why did I have to bring a picnic?”
“Because I don’t want to starve whilst waiting for the ghost? Don’t worry. You’re not my type,” he retorts, poking his tongue out and going back to lighting more candles.
“And what’s the point of this?”
“A get-to-know-you session.”
“You said I wasn’t your type!” Keiko snaps.
“No, you will get to know him.”
“And how does that help?”
“Just do it!” Nino snaps back, sitting down on the picnic blanket and fishing onigiri out of the basket. “So, start talking to him.”
Keiko protests, makes some stupid noises and grumpily pulls out some Pocari to drink before muttering, “I already tried that, and I don’t really want to talk about myself in front of you. You’ll blackmail me and I’ll forever have to give you money and help fund your illegal love fortune business.”
“Why else would I be here?”
At that point, Keiko ignores him and looks around the empty restaurant and at blank walls, sighing. If she’s going to get talking, she might as well start now.
“In Buenos Aires, there’s this lighthouse. And when you climb up there, all you do is think of the sad things in life until you reach the top. When you reach the top, all those thoughts fade away when you see the view. It’s meant to be the place where you let your sadness drop into the unknown.”
“What the fuck is that?” Nino mutters and Keiko elbows him in the side.
“I’ve never been there. I only heard about it in college. I don’t even know if it’s real.”
She tells Sho about Kaguya-hime. She tells him her version of the story about a girl who lived on the moon and she was meant to be married to a prince. But she fell in love with another man. So she found another girl to take her place on the day of the wedding. The prince was broken-hearted; Keiko remembers this story like breathing. Her mother told her the real story, the right version, but this is the one Keiko knows is better; this is her Kaguya, the one who was beautiful and just wanted to be free and to love who she wanted to love.
Because Kaguya, she didn’t want to marry a prince. She just fell in love with a man who collected the stars to make her smile. But she couldn’t marry him either. It’ll condemn him to death.
The prince did love her, Keiko remembers this part as well. The prince loved her too much, just from her beauty and her spirit, so he banished her. She was reborn as a beautiful girl found in a bamboo. She grew up, the most beautiful girl that ever lived. The man who collected the stars for her watched over her every night, and every time she cried, he would send down a shooting star.
“Then what happened?”
He’s there again, leaning against the walls and the glow of the candles casts a light on his face. and she can see the curve of his cheekbones and the sadness in his eyes, and Keiko wishes that she could do anything other than tell him stories of girls from the moon.
“She cried,” Keiko says quietly.
Nino sighs, “Well, that’s sad.”
“It was,” Keiko agrees. “She cried, because she loved someone so much and they couldn’t even be together. And she had parents that loved her. And people who wanted to marry her. She was a beautiful girl and that’s all she was. And she could get married and live comfortably, but that’s not what she wanted. Even the emperor wanted to marry her.”
“And she was still crying?” Sho asks.
“She cried so much that one night, there was a meteor shower. The man who collected the stars came down to find her. And he promised to take her away to a place where she’ll never cry again. So Kaguya said goodbye to her parents, to the emperor that loved her. He burnt letters for her. He went to a mountain and burn letters and a potion she gave him because she couldn’t give him love, but she could give him immortality.”
“But he didn’t want that,” Sho says. “Who would want to live forever and there’s no one there for you?”
Keiko says nothing. Because she knows the end of the story.
“Do they get to be together?”
“It’s a sad ending, isn’t it?” Nino asks her quietly.
“When she returned to the moon, the price for returning from exile is death. So Kaguya ran to the edge of the moon and threw herself off. She dissolved into a million stars. So every constellation you see now, it’s the man she loved, collecting her heart and soul and putting her together. Because even if she’s not there anymore, he wants to remember her as someone free and beautiful, and that he will never forget her.”
She looks at Sho, who stares at the ground and then at her.
“I think I knew the other version of the story. You know, the traditional one.”
“Traditional is boring.”
“Is this your boyfriend?” He changes the subject and nods at Nino, “You brought your boyfriend to meet me?”
“No, he’s a shaman.”
“I’m the grandson of a shaman,” Nino corrects. “I specialise in love fortunes.”
“Don’t trust a word he says. This is Ninomiya, by the way.”
“Nino,” he protests. “My grandfather is Ninomiya.”
It makes Sho laugh and Keiko’s glad that he’s laughing. He’s not free and he’s not happy, but at least he’s laughing.
Nino tells Sho about the time he decided to run away from home and ended up getting lost on the trains, and how he called his mother, crying and whining for her to pick him up. He tells Sho about the first time he met Keiko and she hides her face in embarrassment because Keiko’s mother was very concerned for her child, and Nino happily decided to douse her in salt and holy water. That was when their mothers suggested they date. Nino and Keiko were very displeased at that suggestion.
Keiko tells Sho about Shihori’s ex-boyfriend. The one with the attitude and the pants that were hanging off his butt and how he was from Tokyo but insisted on speaking Kansaiben. She decides to talk to him about Shihori and Jun, and Nino says Shihori sounds cute. Keiko smacks him over the head.
“You can’t have her,” Keiko says fiercely, “She’s mine.”
By the time Sho asks them to leave, Keiko knows he’s smiling. And she knows that she’ll come back.
“What went wrong with you and Tomo, anyways?”
They’re standing on the platform of a train station and Nino’s holding her picnic basket.
“He was in love with someone else,” Keiko says honestly.
Nino keeps quiet.
“He knew her, a hundred years ago. And he fell in love with her. And he saved her life.”
“It must have been hard,” he remarks, “Competing with a memory.”
The train arrives and they get on, sitting down on the fuzzy seats and staring at posters advertising beer and face creams.
Through the window, the city is a blur of shadows and lights.
“Not really,” Keiko says with a smile. “She’s who I was. And he just wanted to make sure I was safe before he moved on. He waited until she came back before he could become someone else.”
She’s half asleep when she hears Sho’s voice saying, “Talk to me.”
No, really. Sho’s voice.
Hold on.
Keiko wakes up as she tumbles out of the bed, trying to find the night-light and then seeing Sho and also grabbing the blanket to cover herself.
“What are you even doing here?” she asks, getting back onto the bed and rubbing her hip. Her tumble out of the bed wasn’t exactly graceful.
“I just wanted another story,” Sho says awkwardly.
“You followed me home?”
“I followed the train. I was above the trees. You were looking right ahead, that’s probably why you didn’t even see me,” he admits. “Sorry. I sound like a stalker.”
“Yeah,” Keiko mutters. “Don’t worry, I’m used to ghost stalkers. Just don’t follow me into the shower.”
“Sorry.”
She surveys him carefully before she asks, “What story do you want?”
“A happy ending,” he requests.
She pats the spot on the bed beside her and he sits down there with her.
“How about aliens? Do you like aliens?” she asks him. “Well, too bad. I’m going to tell you about an alien.”
“Aliens aren’t even real,” Sho complains.
“Says the ghost.”
He shuts up and Keiko smiles triumphantly.
She does tell him an alien story though. She tells him all about an alien that fell down from his planet because he accidentally crashed his space ship on earth. He fell in love with a pretty girl. This alien looked like a human, talked like a human. He was a very handsome human. He was fixing his spaceship the entire time he was loving her and they were happy, until she found out he had to go home. The girl, Keiko says, didn’t take it so well. She kicked him out of her house, threw a hairdryer at his head and told him to go back to planet whatever. She was angry, because even though she knew he was an alien, she thought that he loved her enough that he wouldn't leave.
Sho looks confused. “But his home is in space.”
“Well, that’s how you see it,” Keiko replies. “The girl saw a home as a place where you’re happy and loved.”
“How did the alien see it?”
“I don’t know. I was just making that story up for you right now.”
“Happy ending though,” he presses, and Keiko rolls her eyes.
“But I don’t know the ending.”
Sho falls quiet and Keiko sighs.
“The alien took her to see his ship. Even though she threw a hairdryer at his head. The entire ship was fixed, but there’s a photograph inside the ship and it was of her. Because he knew he would be sad the moment he goes home.”
“So then what happened?”
“He kissed her and said that he would rather the real thing instead of a photograph. So he takes her into his ship and brings her to his home, and sometimes they come back to earth to visit her parents and to see earth again but really, he said she was right. Home is where you’re loved and happy. So when he went back to his planet, the alien bought the biggest ship he could find and taught her how to pilot it. The girl flew the ship over space as he decided to decorate the inside and they lived happily in the galaxy, with each other.”
He grumbles and mumbles, “That sounds like a rushed ending.”
“Of course it is, I only did just make up the story for you,” Keiko scoffs, then yawns. “Your turn.”
“I don’t know about stories. I know about economics.”
“Then tell me about economics, it’ll put me to sleep.”
And he does. And she’s right. Keiko’s asleep within seconds.
That morning, she wakes up and sees Sho sleeping on the foot of her bed.
Keiko picks up her phone, dials Shihori and says, “You can tell Jun he can renovate.”
She has to hold the phone away for a bit as Shihori squeals from joy.
Keiko’s used to living with a ghost. She’s lived with ghosts before.
She lived with Tomo for two months before she had to let him go.
Sho floats around as she makes herself some breakfast and tea. and Keiko stares at him when he gives her breakfast a quizzical look.
“Raw egg on rice.”
“What’s wrong with it?” she asks defensively.
“I think I used to eat that a lot.”
“You think?”
“I don’t remember,” he admits. “I remember bits and pieces. Talking helps.”
“Uh huh,” she muffles out, happily starting on her breakfast, and then adding some soy sauce. “Want some?” she asks, offering him the bowl and Sho takes it. Keiko laughs, gets up and fixes up an extra bowl for herself.
“Am I bothering you?” he asks when they’ve finished with breakfast and Keiko’s washing up.
“Not really,” she admits. “I quit my job awhile ago and sometimes I write reviews on cafes, and if I’m lucky, get paid. But I don’t really have much to do.”
She leaves out the part about being a shut-in. Keiko doesn’t talk about how a month ago, Shihori stormed over and threw out all her instant noodles and forcibly dragged Keiko into the sunlight. I’m not letting my best friend turn into a vampire, Shihori yelled as Keiko grouched the whole time.
“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” he blurts out.
Keiko laughs, a little evilly as she dries the dishes dries a dish. “Why? Think I’m pretty? Feel bad for tormenting me the first time we met?” The awkward silence is a great big yes and she cackles a little.
Sho whines, and moans, “I’m sorry about that. I’m not even sure if I should have left.”
“It’s okay. I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m sexy, free and single.”
“You’re more pretty than sexy,” Sho mutters.
“Sorry, can’t hear you.”
“I said,” and he stops abruptly as she giggles at him. “I said,” he tries again.
“You must have been really bad with women when you were alive.”
“Don’t remember that part either.”
“Why did you leave the restaurant, Sho?”
“I think I’m older than you,” Sho remarks, “I should be Sho-san.”
“You tried to scare me away, you’re Sho.”
“I don’t know why I left. I suddenly got lonely and wanted another story.”
“Well, you can’t go back now,” Keiko says. “They need to renovate. They promised me free pasta if I could get you out of there.”
Sho looks rather miffed. “You traded me for pasta?”
Keiko shrugs. “One soul for free pasta, what would you do?”
He shuts up and then starts laughing.
“What’s so funny?” she demands.
“I like that you’re honest,” Sho admits. “It’s nice.”
It’s a good thing, seeing him smile. She wonders if that’s all he wanted. To be happy, to have some company. If he fades from this, if he crosses over, Keiko thinks it’ll be okay. He deserves to be happy; everyone needs to rest at one point.
Keiko buys herself a train ticket to Chiba.
Sho asks her why and Keiko shrugs. “Ghosts like it when I take them to the beach.”
He seems to just go with that and follows her. Sho sits with her in the carriage and stands when an old lady hobbles by for a seat. The lady doesn’t even notice him when she sits but Keiko smiles and mouths a thank you at him. Sho shrugs and Keiko smiles.
He must have been a nice guy, before all this.
The train ride has her staring at land that is wide and buildings that aren’t as high. When Keiko gets off at the train station, the air is fresher and she stretches her arm just because she can.
When they do get to the beach, it’s freezing cold. The wind has picked up and nobody’s there. The sky’s overcast and a little bit miserable. But Keiko takes off her shoes and walks on the sand, squishing her toes through it, turning and spinning around in the wind.
“You look crazy,” Sho informs her and Keiko shrugs.
“I’m allowed to be. I talk to ghosts; I’m unemployed, I can’t hold onto a decent man to save my life. I’m allowed to look crazy.”
He walks with her and then starts turning as well, flapping his arms as he does. He turns and spins and runs around until he falls over onto the sand and Keiko walks over and asks, well then. Who’s the crazy one now?
“Did you know I was asleep for a really long time?”
“I didn’t know that.”
Sho nods.
Keiko sits on the sand with him, and Sho remains where he is, sprawled and boneless and a little bit tired.
“I was sleeping. And I’d wake up and find myself in a place I didn’t know. Then I’d be sleeping and watching a family with two kids. A boy and a girl, and then they’re grown up. More adults than kids, and then I’d sleep again and I’d wake up. I was sleeping and I didn’t know where I was and no one would see me. And no one even missed me. You were the first person in a long time to talk to me.”
She says nothing, decides to lie down on the sand with him instead.
“I remember some things, you know. I used to go to university and I was smart. I think I had a girlfriend but she dumped me because I was always working. I get angry when I see fathers ignoring their kids. I must have had a daddy complex,” he laughs a little, and Keiko laughs as well. “I want to believe in happy endings but it seems hopeless. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear them. And I like reading newspapers. The renovators left newspapers there when I scared them off.”
“My mother wants me to go to an omiai. Apparently I’m at a respective age where I should be happily married.”
“Oh, I went to an omiai once. It didn’t work out because I accidentally got the places mixed up and went on someone else’s omiai instead.”
Keiko snorts. “Seriously, you can’t even remember who you are, but you remember that you went on the wrong omiai?”
“Yeah,” Sho says and he snorts as well, “Oh god. I must sound terrible.”
“You just sound a little silly. It’s alright,” Keiko reassures him, “Silly is good. Silly is cute.”
“So I’m cute now.”
She smiles because really, why not. “You can be cute, I can be pretty. I’ll be a human and you’ll be a ghost. I’ll help you and tell you stories. Why not?”
Sho looks grateful and confused by her kindness, and it makes her think that he must have been devoid of warmth a long time ago. As though he had nothing to keep him smiling; maybe he was drowning in the mass of conformity. Maybe he was a salaryman; maybe he had dreams that he shelved for a stable income and fulfilling expectations. Maybe he was someone and he was sad.
Keiko wants to change that, and it’s not out of kindness and it’s not because she wants to lay his soul to rest. She wants to change it and she doesn’t know why.
Shihori calls her. “Want to come over for dinner, Kei-chan?”
“Shouldn’t you be celebrating about Jun’s ghost-free restaurant?” she teases in response.
“I am! Well, we will! But I just want to thank you. And see you!”
“Go and celebrate,” Keiko insists with a smile, “You go and be happy.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll come by soon. I’m just having dinner with someone.”
“Who?” Shihori practically shrieks over the phone, “Oh my god, Jun! Jun!” she hears Shihori shouting into the background, “Jun! I think Keiko’s on a date!”
“A friend,” Keiko says, exasperatedly and really, “I don’t need you being all crazy about this. Just a friend.”
“Can I meet him?”
“No,” and she hangs up.
Sho pokes the omurice Keiko made for their dinner and asks, “Is that the happy girl? The one who was with the guy in the purple jeans?”
Of course Jun wears purple jeans.
“The happy girl’s name is Shihori. She’s been my best friend since forever. When I moved for college, she moved for college. And she dated terrible people who made her horribly sad for a long time until she found Jun. So she’s very happy. And yes, Jun’s the guy with the purple jeans.”
“So they’re happy together?”
Keiko remembers a day when Shihori and Jun were fighting so much they couldn’t even stand in the same room. Jun was angry because she went to collect her things from an ex-boyfriend and didn’t tell him. Shihori was angry because she just wanted her things back; there’s nothing more to it. They were fighting and Keiko played the awkward referee because Shihori was working in some company as an illustrator and Jun was cooking every afternoon and night, and they hardly spent enough time together.
Keiko tried to force them into the same room and it ended up with Shihori running off and refusing to speak to either of them.
And Jun, stupid and wonderful Jun said, “God, I must really fucking love her. Because even if she’s angry at me, I know that she’s upset because I’m angry at her because what I feel matters and I don’t care if she’s mad at me. At least we matter this much that we’re fighting.” And it was the stupidest thing she’s ever heard because Keiko doesn’t understand people in love and she certainly doesn’t want her best friend hurt by it either.
Keiko’s seen Shihori crying and upbeat and putting a smile on for the world. Keiko pushed boys over in sandboxes because they would pull Shihori’s hair. She once threw paint in art class because some girl was teasing Shihori about not really understanding tampons and for god’s sake, they were thirteen. Keiko’s been her protector, her best friend, and she didn’t want Shihori to like Jun that much, even though Jun was a prince compared to everyone else.
Shihori broke down a week later though and cried in Keiko’s arms because it really wasn’t about the things or about the ex-boyfriend or anything. Jun wanted them to live together, “In the same damn apartment, in one bedroom with a kitchen he’ll always use and a television set that I’m taking from my place and how will that work out? What if he gets sick of me? What if I don’t like doing his laundry?”
Keiko’s never lived with a guy before and that’s by choice. She likes her space, she likes her freedom and she likes staying up late watching movies or reading books that are more pretentious than anything else. She likes Shihori over at her place, making popcorn and having private dance parties to music that’s overhyped and terrible.
“Well, now they’re living together and they’re happy together, and he’s opening a restaurant because she believes in him and she’s now about to move jobs for a higher position because he believes in her.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?” she counters.
“You seem so focused on how happy they are. You came to chase me away because of them. What do you want?”
“Me? I don’t think I really need anything right now. I suppose I’m meant to help you,” she adds, “You know. Help you move on, find you whatever is missing in your spirit.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re a ghost who was glooming around in an empty restaurant.”
“You know, you’re not really freaked out. I thought you were a total scaredy cat,” he recalls. “You came in there, and then you were squeaking like a mouse.”
Keiko splutters and glares at him, “You threw a temper tantrum! That damn clock is creepy.”
“You were interrupting my peace,” he says seriously.
“What peace? You’re dead, you have all the peace in the world.”
“I thought you were helping me, or something.”
“Well,” she says loftily, “I might have changed my mind.”
“I know what I used to want,” Sho replies, with a shrug of his shoulders. “I used to want to be an archaeologist. You know, go to Egypt and dig up bones, and write about it and where they could have come from.”
He makes her laugh because he’s all clean cut and an indoor type of ghost who hides in restaurants, she can’t imagine. Keiko shouldn’t like that. But she does.
Part 2.
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 ♥
The entire ghost thing was because of some crazy person and a car, and all this was during the first year of university. As if she needed the extra pressure. And then after the car and accident, Keiko woke up to her mother practically wailing and saying oh baby, my baby girl, I thought we lost you and then actually sobbing over Keiko. Which was fine, because Keiko was glad to be alive but what she didn’t know was, hey, look. A ghost, and a true-to-god ghost sitting on the end of her bed two weeks later.
Ghosts are actually okay, she learns this as she goes through college. There’s a ghost from Hokkaido who was blown down by the winds, all the way south.
So the entire ghost thing, it just kind of happens to her.
Then there’s that ghost, the one who she wakes up to one morning and the guy is just sitting there, all blank eyes and confusion.
It’s not like she doesn’t adore Shihori. She really does, and Keiko is really glad Shihori’s new boyfriend isn’t mean and horrible. This boyfriend actually wears pants that fit him. But he does use too much hair product. Then again, this guy is practically a winner, going by Shihori’s track record.
But seriously.
“You’re telling me that you want me to play ghost buster.”
“Yes. No. But Keiko, please! I just need your super special awesome ability to talk to ghosts! Just tell him to take a long walk! We can’t renovate until the guy is gone. The renovation people are highly superstitious and told us that we can’t open a restaurant with a ghost in there. And Jun-kun, he’s been working towards this restaurant his whole life. And it’s not like we knew about the ghost. But it just so happens that you can talk to ghosts-oh god, please?”
Okay, so it’s not like Keiko’s an unhelpful person. She’s a very helpful person. She helped Shihori break up with her terrible ex-boyfriend, which was a good thing. For all of them. And now Shihori’s with this guy who has pasta skills and a restaurant and now, apparently a ghost as well.
Then again, nobody’s perfect.
“Shi-chan. I love you. And I know that you must be desperate. And-”
“Jun says you can have free pasta for the rest of your life.”
Now that gets her attention.
“Thank god you’re here,” he exclaims.
Keiko’s checked her calendar. She’s prayed at the shrine. She’s put on the hakama that her great-great-grandmother left for her that was inherited from some ancestor from some time ago. Keiko says a grumpy hello to Jun with her haraegushi.
“Don’t ask,” Shihori warns as Jun opens his mouth. “Don’t ask.”
“Just go with it,” Keiko replies before Jun really can ask. “Hello, Jun-kun. How are you?”
“When they said that they’d sell me the restaurant for a steal, they didn’t tell me there would be a ghost.”
Keiko rolls her eyes. What did he expect, for the original tenant to happily turn over a prime piece of land for absolutely nothing? But she does have to ask, “And when did the ghost turn up?”
“Yesterday. When I came in to show Shihori-chan the place, and it got super windy and she ran out screaming.”
“You!” Shihori hisses, “You were the one who ran out screaming like a little sissy!”
“You ran out screaming with me!”
“But the way you tell the story-”
“Guys!” Keiko yells.
The two of them stop bickering and look at her.
“So there was wind.”
“And umbrellas. It’s like there were lost umbrellas in there and then they went flying at us, and it just made the place seem really dodgy or haunted,” Shihori tries explaining and Keiko coldly raises an eyebrow. “Well, I don’t know what’s the difference between dodgy and haunted! That’s why you’re here. And besides, all you do is search for jobs you hate ever since you quit the old one and I was worried that you’ve become a shut-in and-ouch!”
“You!” Keiko says furiously, smacking Shihori over the head with her haraegushi. The paper flails in the wind and Shihori yelps and tries to hide behind Jun. “You!”
“I was going to totally cook you free pasta,” Jun says with utmost seriousness, as though his girlfriend’s best friend isn’t attacking with a purification broom. “Really!”
“And you!” she yells, turning on Jun.
And at that point, she starts chasing them up and down the street with the haraegushi.
When she first met Tomo, she wasn’t really sure how to feel.
This was in the last year of college and she had no idea what she wanted to do with life.
Get married, one of her aunts scoffed. A pretty girl like you, a degree’s more like an accessory. You know, like a Prada bag with a poodle in it.
Keiko never really liked that aunt.
But Tomo, he was sitting there on the edge of her bed, and even then, with the wide, wide eyes and asking oh my god, oh my god, you can actually see me? Are you a nice person? I’m very really lonely. You’re looking at me, you can see me. Right?
Yeah, she said. I can see you.
Never mind she was in her pyjamas and minus a bra.
Hi, he said. I’m Tomo.
Just Tomo, she asked him, just Tomo?
Just Tomo, he answered back. What’s your name?
“I’m Keiko.”
“Hello, Keiko.”
Keiko doesn’t really hate the ghosts. It wasn’t as though the dating pool was particularly spectacular and well, it’s a welcome break from studying every damn day with information that just seemed to leak out of her head the moment she reads it.
Besides, she’s always known something was strange since that time she was a kid and heard someone whispering when she offered incense at her great grandfather’s grave.
“Are you okay?” she asked Tomo.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I just. Hello.”
“I hate you both,” Keiko declares flatly as she sits across the two of them in a café a few buildings over with a chai latte and her arms folded across her chest. “You’re dead to me.”
“Keiko-chan,” Jun pleads. “Come on. I’ve always dreamed of opening a restaurant that can make Shihori smile.”
“Your gross declarations of love have no effect on me whatsoever. You’re more cheesy than a Getsu Nine drama lead.”
It just gets a little bit worse because both Shihori and Jun break out the puppy eyes as though they’ve rehearsed the whimpering sounds and wide sad eyes with the love me, oh just love me expressions. Keiko resists the urge to smack them over the head with the haraegushi once more.
The only reason she stopped chasing them down the street was because an old man stopped them and scolded her for inappropriate use of purification items. “You are desecrating the traditions that built this country!” he hissed as he snatched the haraegushi from her, waving it in the air. “What are you youngsters thinking, treating this like some cheerleader pom-pom and screaming as you run around with this,” and so forth and so forth.
The old man only stopped scolding them when they all gave him proper ninety degree bows and repeatedly apologised until he returned Keiko the haraegushi. At that point, Shihori said she could use a warm drink. Jun, the perfect boyfriend, found them a nearby café.
Stupid Jun. It makes Keiko wants a nice boyfriend.
Maybe one who doesn’t buy restaurants that are either dodgy or haunted.
“But you’ll help us check if there is a ghost, right?” Shihori asks pleadingly. “Keiko, please? There’s no other good restaurant and the area is nice and the place is just right. It was perfectly fine when Jun-kun saw it the first time. And that was before he signed the papers.”
“No, I’m just going to sit here and let you suffer,” Keiko drawls and Shihori lets out a horrified gasp. “Relax, I’m on to it.”
“How?” Jun asks.
“No idea, but I’ll help you.”
“Really?” Shihori asks, eyes widen and sparkling and Keiko rolls her eyes.
“Of course. I’ve been looking out for you since we were kids. Remember the guy who shoved you off the swing?”
“Oh, didn’t you break his nose?”
“You broke someone’s nose?” Jun splutters.
Keiko smiles and waves them off.
Shihori rushes over to Keiko’s side of the table to grab onto her, hugging her and telling her she’s the bestest friend ever and promising to always buy her better birthday presents. Keiko hugs her back. It’s what best friends do, she thinks. You break noses and banish ghosts. Or something.
She’s there for two more hours before she actually summons up the strength to go and deal with it. She’s already told Jun and Shihori to go home.
It’s fine, she told them. You two go do some cute couple-y stuff. I need to wait and figure out how to handle your ghost. Just give me the keys to the place.
Despite it all, they tried to stay. Shihori insisted that they could and Jun nodded. It is his restaurant after all. Keiko made up some excuse, about how they’d just get in the way and make the spirit angry and Jun’s hair product is offensive and Shihori’s too happy for the deceased. Something like that. They didn’t believe her, but at least they left.
She couldn’t help but smile when Jun helped Shihori into her coat and insisted on paying for all the coffees.
If anything, Keiko’s glad that he’s a good guy.
She dealt with a ghost two months ago.
The last one, she thinks. The last one had been a spirit who tried to leave this earth too soon. Spurned by a lover who found another, and Keiko took him to beach to run through the ocean and the salt mingling through the air and he laughed and laughed as the water splashed on them. Ghosts can feel too, he said. Yurei, just because we are yurei doesn’t mean we don’t matter. Our feelings don’t die with us.
He faded into the afterlife and Keiko wonders if he’s happy. Sometimes, she thinks about it and wonders if she even made a difference.
She’s had girl ghosts before. They’re the women with the long glossy hair, the white robes, sad eyes and poisonous tones. Sometimes they’re beautiful and vicious. They’re angry, sometimes. Their babies were stolen, or their husbands didn’t love them. Sometimes they just die young.
Sometimes, Keiko wishes she could wake up and not have made friends with ghosts.
It’s not like she’s particularly brave or wonderful. It’s just something she does. Common decency for the deceased. If they come find you when unrested, you have to put them to rest. It probably sounds downright crazy.
She told Shihori, a year or so after.
“I can see ghosts,” she blurted out when they were at a carnival. There was a haunted house Shihori desperately wanted go to, except Keiko downright refused.
“Oh. Are they nice to you?”
And Keiko told her some of the stories. And really, it didn’t change anything. They grew up and graduated and Keiko stopped working that job where that stupid boss kept on trying to asking her out and piling on extra work when she didn’t go out with him. That wasn’t why she quit, though.
Keiko knows it sounds weak, but she didn’t want to just keep sitting in a chair, picking up calls and organising meetings. She’s not an office girl. She has a degree, she has a brain. She doesn’t want to waste it away. But it was the only job she could get after college.
Maybe Shihori was right. She has become a bit of a recluse. Just going to read books at the library and writing down her encounters of ghosts. She’s been out of a job for six months.
It’ll change, she promises herself. You go in, deal with their crazy ghost and then you find a job and you change this, all of this. You can do it.
She looks out at the evening sky from the café window and sees the streetlights and signs glowing through the night.
There are no answers for her there.
“Hello?” Keiko calls out cautiously, letting herself into an empty space of just grey walls and pillars.
Tick tock, tick tock.
Someone’s left behind a clock, as though an empty restaurant space with little lighting could get any creepier.
Tick tock, tick tock.
“Hello?” she calls out once more and takes a few steps forward, looking around. Keiko has totally done this before. There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Except for the ticking clock. It’s seriously no big deal. She’s dealt with creepier, like the time she had to help the ghost in the high school. That was creepy. On a scale of creepy and creepiest, Keiko tells herself that it’s really not so bad.
“Hello?” she calls out to no one in particular.
There are umbrellas on the ground. There’s dust settling on the ground. There’s no one here.
Tick, tick, tick.
Keiko looks at the clock on the wall, the clock that’s just like any other clock except it’s stalled. She clutches at the bamboo of the haraegushi even tighter. Keiko’s done everything she’s supposed. She’s put salt on the doorstep, she’s washed her face, her mouth and her hands. She’s done everything right so far. And she has dealt with worse. It’s just a stalled clock.
The door open and then slams shut, and the wind in the vacated space picks up and Keiko ducks down, cowering and shaking her haraegushi with one hand and throwing salt with another because yeah, that’ll totally save her from a ghost throwing a tantrum.
“I’m just trying to help,” she yells, eyes squeezed shut because the door keeps opening and slamming shut and the clock is stalled and keeps ticking.
The door slams shut once more and Keiko tenses up even more. She forces herself to crack an eye open.
“Go away.”
She looks up and he’s there.
The door’s not swinging and the clock’s stopped ticking.
Dark hair, sad eyes and a nice mouth. She wonders if he was a heartbreaker in his days, he’s a good-looking ghost. Keiko’s met some good-looking ghosts. Tomo was a good-looking ghost. And that was hot ghost from the eighties.
“Please leave,” the ghost tells her.
Keiko stands up, and the ghost picks up an umbrella.
Keiko puts down everything in her arms: her bag that has the salt, the haraegushi and and the prayer book with the prayer beads, even though she has trouble reading half the kanji because it’s all handwritten.
The ghost puts down the umbrella.
“I just want to help you,” Keiko replies cautiously.
The ghost looks at her, and looks at the door over her shoulder.
She turns and watches, as it slowly swings open.
“Please, leave.”
The ghost takes a step forwards and he’s taller than her. He looks as though the weight of the world’s on his shoulders, as though he hasn’t let sunlight warm the cracks of his heart for a long time.
“I don’t want you here. I just want to be alone,” he tells her quietly. “Go live your life far away from me. Go away. Please.”
“I can help you,” she tries once more.
“Get out!”
The wind picks up and she squeaks. It’s embarrassing that she squeaks and the ghost looks a little bit sorry and she picks up her things and bows to him. It’s hard, she knows that it’s difficult after going on for a while and not even being there, not being known or loved or just even being there. She knows it’s hard. One of them chased her down an alleyway in Shinjuku. Another kept demanding that she sing and dance until he laughed. Keiko knows it’s hard.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” she says politely. “I hope that when you’re ready, you can find your peace.”
The wind dies down.
She straightens and the ghost looks at her, blank and silent.
“I hope you will find some happiness so you can find your rest.”
“What makes you say that?” he asks her.
Keiko blinks.
“Why would I find happiness?” the ghost repeats.
“Ghosts,” Keiko says, “Ghosts have feelings, too. Just because you’ve passed on does not mean that your feelings can crumble like incense after you light it. You look sad. That’s why I said that.”
She’s at the door when he calls out, “You. Hey.”
Keiko turns and the ghost fumbles over words, hands tugging at his white clothes.
“I’m sorry. For being so rude. Thank you for trying.”
Tick tock, tick tock.
And the clock has started once more. She tilts her head and he bows back a little. Keiko leaves the restaurant and the door gently swings shut behind her.
Keiko sends Shihori a message, an apology mainly. Sorry I couldn’t tell the ghost to go. He’s there. I’ll try again another day.
She’s lying in bed but she can’t sleep.
Keiko forces herself up, goes through her desk and fishes out one of her journals.
Tomo, she reads. Tomo was twenty something and lost and he told me that I was pretty.
She snaps the journal shut and throws it back into her desk drawer.
Truthfully, the money is running out. She doesn’t live extravagantly but it’s expensive sometimes, and she misses Kobe. Sometimes she thinks about moving back.
But that requires her to listen to naggy relatives on a daily basis.
She promises herself to deal with the ghost again tomorrow. Maybe he just hasn’t talked to anyone in awhile. Maybe he just floats around and smiles as children sleep. Maybe he fends off the hungry ghosts, the one with the thin throats and large mouths and she thinks, no, he probably hasn’t. It was as though he hasn’t spoken in a long time.
And she doesn’t know why, but she falls asleep thinking of that. What to say to someone who hasn’t spoken to anyone for awhile.
She’s armed with more salt, and some charms, and her prayer beads, and the books and the haraegushi when she enters the restaurant once more.
“Hi?” she says and listens for the clock.
It’s stopped.
“It’s me again,” she calls out.
Nothing.
“I don’t think we really got to know each other. My name is Kitagawa Keiko. I should have asked your name yesterday. So, uh. If you’re in here somewhere.”
Still nothing.
“I’m a graduate. I worked some weird jobs and some normal ones,” she says to no one.
“I have a cat. Or I had a cat. Jill doesn’t really like my ghost friend. Yeah, my cat can see ghosts.”
“I have been skinny dipping. My favourite drink is Pocari Sweat. I prefer sesame over green tea ice cream.”
She’s been sitting there for awhile when he creeps out from a corner. Standing there, looking at her. Keiko wonders how strange she must seem, sitting in the empty room and just saying stupid things like her cat and what she likes to eat and how her dad is a doctor and that her mother has given up on Keiko’s inability to hold her chopsticks properly.
“Where did you graduate from?” the ghost finally asks her.
“Meiji.”
“Oh.”
The ground is dusty. She’s going to have a grey patch on the ass of her jeans.
“I don’t know where I graduated from,” the ghost admits. “I know I graduated.”
“That’s okay. I’m sure we can figure it out.”
The ghost shakes his head, “I don’t want to figure it out.”
Keiko nods and stands up. “It was nice talking today,” she says awkwardly.
“My name is Sho.”
“I’m Keiko.”
“I know. I heard you. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Have a nice evening,” she says softly, taking her things and leaving once more.
Shihori looks at her helplessly, “I’m a terrible friend. I dragged you into his stupid restaurant and now you look sad.”
“Well, it’s usually a downer when they’re sad,” Keiko admits. “I’m fine.”
Jun comes by with their coffees and sits down beside Shihori. He awkwardly stares at his cappuccino and then, “I’m so sorry. I should have checked on the premise and asked if it was being occupied by the deceased.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Keiko sighs. “I already submitted so many forms for a masters; I feel like if I try and send out anymore of them, I’ll go crazy.”
“But you look so sad,” Shihori splutters.
Keiko rolls her eyes. “I’m fine. It’s just. I don’t know. You can get sad from talking to the dead.”
“What’s he like?” Jun asks her, oddly curious, and Keiko has to think.
“He’s, well.” Good-looking? Temperamental? “Lonely. I can try talking to him. Eventually, you know, they open up and you find out how to complete their life cycles.”
Shihori and Jun look at her, confused.
“It’s you know, the thing you do. When you try and make the ghost happy.”
“Maybe he likes liquor.”
“That’s you,” Shihori snorts, smacking her boyfriend on the arm. “Maybe he likes candy.”
“Now look who’s talking.”
The next day, Keiko arms herself with sake and candy. She sits there for two hours and Sho doesn’t appear at all.
“Haven’t seen you since you were dating a ghost.”
“For the last time, we weren’t dating,” Keiko snaps.
Nino laughs and rolls his eyes and shuffles a pack of cards.
“I don’t need my fortune told.”
He puts his cards away, mildly disappointed.
“You realise I do pay by the question. And I don’t take credit cards.”
She can’t help but smile at him and Nino smiles back.
Keiko plops herself on the cushion and pulls out her purse. The room’s air is thick with incense and tea.
“Glad to know some things haven’t changed,” she remarks and slaps a thousand-yen bill onto the table. “Ghost, sad and angry and haunting a restaurant. How to fix it.”
“You can’t make him move on. You know the rules. You can only help him.”
He tries to take the money but Keiko holds on stubbornly, glaring at him from across the table.
Nino’s grandfather, Ninomiya Senior, was the man Keiko’s mother consulted when she found out her daughter could see ghosts. Keiko’s mother might have found them through a dodgy internet site with a suspicious lack of reviews. Her mother might or might not have typed ‘my daughter can talk to ghosts’ in the search bar. Turns out that the dodgy website with the terrible url was Nino’s handiwork.
“So, did he dump you or something?” Nino asks her casually. “Wanna go out? For dinner. You’re paying.”
Keiko lets go of the money and Nino pockets it, all smug and puffed up for a guy who doesn’t look older than twelve. He’s actually thirty.
“The guy is occupying my friend’s restaurant. The renovators won’t start until he’s gone. I gave him sake, I gave him candy, I threw salt over the floor, I tried talking to him. I used a haraegushi. He’s not really very social. They’re not usually so isolated and stubborn.”
“There’s no alternative way to purify the place,” Nino tells her loftily, “You’ll have to communicate with the spirit. Or you can pray him away. Or you can get a monk to communicate and pray. Or you can try harder.”
“I’ve tried!”
“It can’t be that hard.” And he eyes her warily, “Oh. Are you still sad? Because ghost boy dumped you?”
“Tomo and I were just friends!”
“Yeah, is that what they call it now,” he drawls before pulling out a yellowing book with tattered and dog eared pages and flipping through it. “Seriously, what went wrong with the two of you?”
To set the record straight, Keiko wasn’t dating Tomo.
She just talked to him.
And cared for him.
But they weren’t dating.
“He’s a ghost, I’m a person. What else could be more problematic?”
“So you did want to date him,” Nino says, peering over the top of his book.
Keiko counts to five, then ten and then recites the hiragana chart in her head.
“He and I were just friends. He stuck around for awhile. I helped him move on after. What does it matter, just help me with this ghost. My friend needs the restaurant. Or her boyfriend does. He’s my friend as well, I guess, but.” She stops talking, folds her arms around her chest and decides to speed things up a little. “Ninomiya Kazunari, I still know your grandfather. If you don’t help me, I will find him and tell him how you extort silly girls for money with your little love fortune business on the side.”
Nino pales and starts flipping through the book a little faster.
She sits there whilst Nino lights a few candles and then eyes him suspiciously.
“So why did I have to bring a picnic?”
“Because I don’t want to starve whilst waiting for the ghost? Don’t worry. You’re not my type,” he retorts, poking his tongue out and going back to lighting more candles.
“And what’s the point of this?”
“A get-to-know-you session.”
“You said I wasn’t your type!” Keiko snaps.
“No, you will get to know him.”
“And how does that help?”
“Just do it!” Nino snaps back, sitting down on the picnic blanket and fishing onigiri out of the basket. “So, start talking to him.”
Keiko protests, makes some stupid noises and grumpily pulls out some Pocari to drink before muttering, “I already tried that, and I don’t really want to talk about myself in front of you. You’ll blackmail me and I’ll forever have to give you money and help fund your illegal love fortune business.”
“Why else would I be here?”
At that point, Keiko ignores him and looks around the empty restaurant and at blank walls, sighing. If she’s going to get talking, she might as well start now.
“In Buenos Aires, there’s this lighthouse. And when you climb up there, all you do is think of the sad things in life until you reach the top. When you reach the top, all those thoughts fade away when you see the view. It’s meant to be the place where you let your sadness drop into the unknown.”
“What the fuck is that?” Nino mutters and Keiko elbows him in the side.
“I’ve never been there. I only heard about it in college. I don’t even know if it’s real.”
She tells Sho about Kaguya-hime. She tells him her version of the story about a girl who lived on the moon and she was meant to be married to a prince. But she fell in love with another man. So she found another girl to take her place on the day of the wedding. The prince was broken-hearted; Keiko remembers this story like breathing. Her mother told her the real story, the right version, but this is the one Keiko knows is better; this is her Kaguya, the one who was beautiful and just wanted to be free and to love who she wanted to love.
Because Kaguya, she didn’t want to marry a prince. She just fell in love with a man who collected the stars to make her smile. But she couldn’t marry him either. It’ll condemn him to death.
The prince did love her, Keiko remembers this part as well. The prince loved her too much, just from her beauty and her spirit, so he banished her. She was reborn as a beautiful girl found in a bamboo. She grew up, the most beautiful girl that ever lived. The man who collected the stars for her watched over her every night, and every time she cried, he would send down a shooting star.
“Then what happened?”
He’s there again, leaning against the walls and the glow of the candles casts a light on his face. and she can see the curve of his cheekbones and the sadness in his eyes, and Keiko wishes that she could do anything other than tell him stories of girls from the moon.
“She cried,” Keiko says quietly.
Nino sighs, “Well, that’s sad.”
“It was,” Keiko agrees. “She cried, because she loved someone so much and they couldn’t even be together. And she had parents that loved her. And people who wanted to marry her. She was a beautiful girl and that’s all she was. And she could get married and live comfortably, but that’s not what she wanted. Even the emperor wanted to marry her.”
“And she was still crying?” Sho asks.
“She cried so much that one night, there was a meteor shower. The man who collected the stars came down to find her. And he promised to take her away to a place where she’ll never cry again. So Kaguya said goodbye to her parents, to the emperor that loved her. He burnt letters for her. He went to a mountain and burn letters and a potion she gave him because she couldn’t give him love, but she could give him immortality.”
“But he didn’t want that,” Sho says. “Who would want to live forever and there’s no one there for you?”
Keiko says nothing. Because she knows the end of the story.
“Do they get to be together?”
“It’s a sad ending, isn’t it?” Nino asks her quietly.
“When she returned to the moon, the price for returning from exile is death. So Kaguya ran to the edge of the moon and threw herself off. She dissolved into a million stars. So every constellation you see now, it’s the man she loved, collecting her heart and soul and putting her together. Because even if she’s not there anymore, he wants to remember her as someone free and beautiful, and that he will never forget her.”
She looks at Sho, who stares at the ground and then at her.
“I think I knew the other version of the story. You know, the traditional one.”
“Traditional is boring.”
“Is this your boyfriend?” He changes the subject and nods at Nino, “You brought your boyfriend to meet me?”
“No, he’s a shaman.”
“I’m the grandson of a shaman,” Nino corrects. “I specialise in love fortunes.”
“Don’t trust a word he says. This is Ninomiya, by the way.”
“Nino,” he protests. “My grandfather is Ninomiya.”
It makes Sho laugh and Keiko’s glad that he’s laughing. He’s not free and he’s not happy, but at least he’s laughing.
Nino tells Sho about the time he decided to run away from home and ended up getting lost on the trains, and how he called his mother, crying and whining for her to pick him up. He tells Sho about the first time he met Keiko and she hides her face in embarrassment because Keiko’s mother was very concerned for her child, and Nino happily decided to douse her in salt and holy water. That was when their mothers suggested they date. Nino and Keiko were very displeased at that suggestion.
Keiko tells Sho about Shihori’s ex-boyfriend. The one with the attitude and the pants that were hanging off his butt and how he was from Tokyo but insisted on speaking Kansaiben. She decides to talk to him about Shihori and Jun, and Nino says Shihori sounds cute. Keiko smacks him over the head.
“You can’t have her,” Keiko says fiercely, “She’s mine.”
By the time Sho asks them to leave, Keiko knows he’s smiling. And she knows that she’ll come back.
“What went wrong with you and Tomo, anyways?”
They’re standing on the platform of a train station and Nino’s holding her picnic basket.
“He was in love with someone else,” Keiko says honestly.
Nino keeps quiet.
“He knew her, a hundred years ago. And he fell in love with her. And he saved her life.”
“It must have been hard,” he remarks, “Competing with a memory.”
The train arrives and they get on, sitting down on the fuzzy seats and staring at posters advertising beer and face creams.
Through the window, the city is a blur of shadows and lights.
“Not really,” Keiko says with a smile. “She’s who I was. And he just wanted to make sure I was safe before he moved on. He waited until she came back before he could become someone else.”
She’s half asleep when she hears Sho’s voice saying, “Talk to me.”
No, really. Sho’s voice.
Hold on.
Keiko wakes up as she tumbles out of the bed, trying to find the night-light and then seeing Sho and also grabbing the blanket to cover herself.
“What are you even doing here?” she asks, getting back onto the bed and rubbing her hip. Her tumble out of the bed wasn’t exactly graceful.
“I just wanted another story,” Sho says awkwardly.
“You followed me home?”
“I followed the train. I was above the trees. You were looking right ahead, that’s probably why you didn’t even see me,” he admits. “Sorry. I sound like a stalker.”
“Yeah,” Keiko mutters. “Don’t worry, I’m used to ghost stalkers. Just don’t follow me into the shower.”
“Sorry.”
She surveys him carefully before she asks, “What story do you want?”
“A happy ending,” he requests.
She pats the spot on the bed beside her and he sits down there with her.
“How about aliens? Do you like aliens?” she asks him. “Well, too bad. I’m going to tell you about an alien.”
“Aliens aren’t even real,” Sho complains.
“Says the ghost.”
He shuts up and Keiko smiles triumphantly.
She does tell him an alien story though. She tells him all about an alien that fell down from his planet because he accidentally crashed his space ship on earth. He fell in love with a pretty girl. This alien looked like a human, talked like a human. He was a very handsome human. He was fixing his spaceship the entire time he was loving her and they were happy, until she found out he had to go home. The girl, Keiko says, didn’t take it so well. She kicked him out of her house, threw a hairdryer at his head and told him to go back to planet whatever. She was angry, because even though she knew he was an alien, she thought that he loved her enough that he wouldn't leave.
Sho looks confused. “But his home is in space.”
“Well, that’s how you see it,” Keiko replies. “The girl saw a home as a place where you’re happy and loved.”
“How did the alien see it?”
“I don’t know. I was just making that story up for you right now.”
“Happy ending though,” he presses, and Keiko rolls her eyes.
“But I don’t know the ending.”
Sho falls quiet and Keiko sighs.
“The alien took her to see his ship. Even though she threw a hairdryer at his head. The entire ship was fixed, but there’s a photograph inside the ship and it was of her. Because he knew he would be sad the moment he goes home.”
“So then what happened?”
“He kissed her and said that he would rather the real thing instead of a photograph. So he takes her into his ship and brings her to his home, and sometimes they come back to earth to visit her parents and to see earth again but really, he said she was right. Home is where you’re loved and happy. So when he went back to his planet, the alien bought the biggest ship he could find and taught her how to pilot it. The girl flew the ship over space as he decided to decorate the inside and they lived happily in the galaxy, with each other.”
He grumbles and mumbles, “That sounds like a rushed ending.”
“Of course it is, I only did just make up the story for you,” Keiko scoffs, then yawns. “Your turn.”
“I don’t know about stories. I know about economics.”
“Then tell me about economics, it’ll put me to sleep.”
And he does. And she’s right. Keiko’s asleep within seconds.
That morning, she wakes up and sees Sho sleeping on the foot of her bed.
Keiko picks up her phone, dials Shihori and says, “You can tell Jun he can renovate.”
She has to hold the phone away for a bit as Shihori squeals from joy.
Keiko’s used to living with a ghost. She’s lived with ghosts before.
She lived with Tomo for two months before she had to let him go.
Sho floats around as she makes herself some breakfast and tea. and Keiko stares at him when he gives her breakfast a quizzical look.
“Raw egg on rice.”
“What’s wrong with it?” she asks defensively.
“I think I used to eat that a lot.”
“You think?”
“I don’t remember,” he admits. “I remember bits and pieces. Talking helps.”
“Uh huh,” she muffles out, happily starting on her breakfast, and then adding some soy sauce. “Want some?” she asks, offering him the bowl and Sho takes it. Keiko laughs, gets up and fixes up an extra bowl for herself.
“Am I bothering you?” he asks when they’ve finished with breakfast and Keiko’s washing up.
“Not really,” she admits. “I quit my job awhile ago and sometimes I write reviews on cafes, and if I’m lucky, get paid. But I don’t really have much to do.”
She leaves out the part about being a shut-in. Keiko doesn’t talk about how a month ago, Shihori stormed over and threw out all her instant noodles and forcibly dragged Keiko into the sunlight. I’m not letting my best friend turn into a vampire, Shihori yelled as Keiko grouched the whole time.
“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” he blurts out.
Keiko laughs, a little evilly as she dries the dishes dries a dish. “Why? Think I’m pretty? Feel bad for tormenting me the first time we met?” The awkward silence is a great big yes and she cackles a little.
Sho whines, and moans, “I’m sorry about that. I’m not even sure if I should have left.”
“It’s okay. I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m sexy, free and single.”
“You’re more pretty than sexy,” Sho mutters.
“Sorry, can’t hear you.”
“I said,” and he stops abruptly as she giggles at him. “I said,” he tries again.
“You must have been really bad with women when you were alive.”
“Don’t remember that part either.”
“Why did you leave the restaurant, Sho?”
“I think I’m older than you,” Sho remarks, “I should be Sho-san.”
“You tried to scare me away, you’re Sho.”
“I don’t know why I left. I suddenly got lonely and wanted another story.”
“Well, you can’t go back now,” Keiko says. “They need to renovate. They promised me free pasta if I could get you out of there.”
Sho looks rather miffed. “You traded me for pasta?”
Keiko shrugs. “One soul for free pasta, what would you do?”
He shuts up and then starts laughing.
“What’s so funny?” she demands.
“I like that you’re honest,” Sho admits. “It’s nice.”
It’s a good thing, seeing him smile. She wonders if that’s all he wanted. To be happy, to have some company. If he fades from this, if he crosses over, Keiko thinks it’ll be okay. He deserves to be happy; everyone needs to rest at one point.
Keiko buys herself a train ticket to Chiba.
Sho asks her why and Keiko shrugs. “Ghosts like it when I take them to the beach.”
He seems to just go with that and follows her. Sho sits with her in the carriage and stands when an old lady hobbles by for a seat. The lady doesn’t even notice him when she sits but Keiko smiles and mouths a thank you at him. Sho shrugs and Keiko smiles.
He must have been a nice guy, before all this.
The train ride has her staring at land that is wide and buildings that aren’t as high. When Keiko gets off at the train station, the air is fresher and she stretches her arm just because she can.
When they do get to the beach, it’s freezing cold. The wind has picked up and nobody’s there. The sky’s overcast and a little bit miserable. But Keiko takes off her shoes and walks on the sand, squishing her toes through it, turning and spinning around in the wind.
“You look crazy,” Sho informs her and Keiko shrugs.
“I’m allowed to be. I talk to ghosts; I’m unemployed, I can’t hold onto a decent man to save my life. I’m allowed to look crazy.”
He walks with her and then starts turning as well, flapping his arms as he does. He turns and spins and runs around until he falls over onto the sand and Keiko walks over and asks, well then. Who’s the crazy one now?
“Did you know I was asleep for a really long time?”
“I didn’t know that.”
Sho nods.
Keiko sits on the sand with him, and Sho remains where he is, sprawled and boneless and a little bit tired.
“I was sleeping. And I’d wake up and find myself in a place I didn’t know. Then I’d be sleeping and watching a family with two kids. A boy and a girl, and then they’re grown up. More adults than kids, and then I’d sleep again and I’d wake up. I was sleeping and I didn’t know where I was and no one would see me. And no one even missed me. You were the first person in a long time to talk to me.”
She says nothing, decides to lie down on the sand with him instead.
“I remember some things, you know. I used to go to university and I was smart. I think I had a girlfriend but she dumped me because I was always working. I get angry when I see fathers ignoring their kids. I must have had a daddy complex,” he laughs a little, and Keiko laughs as well. “I want to believe in happy endings but it seems hopeless. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear them. And I like reading newspapers. The renovators left newspapers there when I scared them off.”
“My mother wants me to go to an omiai. Apparently I’m at a respective age where I should be happily married.”
“Oh, I went to an omiai once. It didn’t work out because I accidentally got the places mixed up and went on someone else’s omiai instead.”
Keiko snorts. “Seriously, you can’t even remember who you are, but you remember that you went on the wrong omiai?”
“Yeah,” Sho says and he snorts as well, “Oh god. I must sound terrible.”
“You just sound a little silly. It’s alright,” Keiko reassures him, “Silly is good. Silly is cute.”
“So I’m cute now.”
She smiles because really, why not. “You can be cute, I can be pretty. I’ll be a human and you’ll be a ghost. I’ll help you and tell you stories. Why not?”
Sho looks grateful and confused by her kindness, and it makes her think that he must have been devoid of warmth a long time ago. As though he had nothing to keep him smiling; maybe he was drowning in the mass of conformity. Maybe he was a salaryman; maybe he had dreams that he shelved for a stable income and fulfilling expectations. Maybe he was someone and he was sad.
Keiko wants to change that, and it’s not out of kindness and it’s not because she wants to lay his soul to rest. She wants to change it and she doesn’t know why.
Shihori calls her. “Want to come over for dinner, Kei-chan?”
“Shouldn’t you be celebrating about Jun’s ghost-free restaurant?” she teases in response.
“I am! Well, we will! But I just want to thank you. And see you!”
“Go and celebrate,” Keiko insists with a smile, “You go and be happy.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll come by soon. I’m just having dinner with someone.”
“Who?” Shihori practically shrieks over the phone, “Oh my god, Jun! Jun!” she hears Shihori shouting into the background, “Jun! I think Keiko’s on a date!”
“A friend,” Keiko says, exasperatedly and really, “I don’t need you being all crazy about this. Just a friend.”
“Can I meet him?”
“No,” and she hangs up.
Sho pokes the omurice Keiko made for their dinner and asks, “Is that the happy girl? The one who was with the guy in the purple jeans?”
Of course Jun wears purple jeans.
“The happy girl’s name is Shihori. She’s been my best friend since forever. When I moved for college, she moved for college. And she dated terrible people who made her horribly sad for a long time until she found Jun. So she’s very happy. And yes, Jun’s the guy with the purple jeans.”
“So they’re happy together?”
Keiko remembers a day when Shihori and Jun were fighting so much they couldn’t even stand in the same room. Jun was angry because she went to collect her things from an ex-boyfriend and didn’t tell him. Shihori was angry because she just wanted her things back; there’s nothing more to it. They were fighting and Keiko played the awkward referee because Shihori was working in some company as an illustrator and Jun was cooking every afternoon and night, and they hardly spent enough time together.
Keiko tried to force them into the same room and it ended up with Shihori running off and refusing to speak to either of them.
And Jun, stupid and wonderful Jun said, “God, I must really fucking love her. Because even if she’s angry at me, I know that she’s upset because I’m angry at her because what I feel matters and I don’t care if she’s mad at me. At least we matter this much that we’re fighting.” And it was the stupidest thing she’s ever heard because Keiko doesn’t understand people in love and she certainly doesn’t want her best friend hurt by it either.
Keiko’s seen Shihori crying and upbeat and putting a smile on for the world. Keiko pushed boys over in sandboxes because they would pull Shihori’s hair. She once threw paint in art class because some girl was teasing Shihori about not really understanding tampons and for god’s sake, they were thirteen. Keiko’s been her protector, her best friend, and she didn’t want Shihori to like Jun that much, even though Jun was a prince compared to everyone else.
Shihori broke down a week later though and cried in Keiko’s arms because it really wasn’t about the things or about the ex-boyfriend or anything. Jun wanted them to live together, “In the same damn apartment, in one bedroom with a kitchen he’ll always use and a television set that I’m taking from my place and how will that work out? What if he gets sick of me? What if I don’t like doing his laundry?”
Keiko’s never lived with a guy before and that’s by choice. She likes her space, she likes her freedom and she likes staying up late watching movies or reading books that are more pretentious than anything else. She likes Shihori over at her place, making popcorn and having private dance parties to music that’s overhyped and terrible.
“Well, now they’re living together and they’re happy together, and he’s opening a restaurant because she believes in him and she’s now about to move jobs for a higher position because he believes in her.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?” she counters.
“You seem so focused on how happy they are. You came to chase me away because of them. What do you want?”
“Me? I don’t think I really need anything right now. I suppose I’m meant to help you,” she adds, “You know. Help you move on, find you whatever is missing in your spirit.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re a ghost who was glooming around in an empty restaurant.”
“You know, you’re not really freaked out. I thought you were a total scaredy cat,” he recalls. “You came in there, and then you were squeaking like a mouse.”
Keiko splutters and glares at him, “You threw a temper tantrum! That damn clock is creepy.”
“You were interrupting my peace,” he says seriously.
“What peace? You’re dead, you have all the peace in the world.”
“I thought you were helping me, or something.”
“Well,” she says loftily, “I might have changed my mind.”
“I know what I used to want,” Sho replies, with a shrug of his shoulders. “I used to want to be an archaeologist. You know, go to Egypt and dig up bones, and write about it and where they could have come from.”
He makes her laugh because he’s all clean cut and an indoor type of ghost who hides in restaurants, she can’t imagine. Keiko shouldn’t like that. But she does.
Part 2.