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Despite the concerned looks of the real estate agent, Rin was at a point where she couldn’t care less if the apartment was previously a crime scene, a brothel, or a slaughterhouse. It was dirt cheap, she was desperate, and all she thought was,
Could it get any worse?
Yes/no/maybe.
The apartment wasn’t horrible—apart from the fact someone had died in it just over three months ago, making it borderline unmarketable. It was tiny and dreary, like most low-end, central-Tokyo apartments, but it was enough. She just needed a place to eat and sleep during that 10-hour gap between one shift and the other.
She stood in the centre of the room, taking in the familiar scent of new tatami and the little light that slithered through the apartment window. It displayed a beautiful, grey view of the side of a skyscraper. No one was exaggerating when they said central Tokyo architecture was like a game of tetris.
With a sniff, she turned to the real estate agent—a thin, young woman with long blonde hair.
“It’s perfect,” Rin said, which was half-truth.
It was well within her very limited price range thanks to her very limited salary, its location was ideal—cutting commute time from two hours one-way to only twenty minutes—and it had all the necessities, if just barely. The whole death thing? She wasn’t very superstitious, so she didn’t care much. (But her parents probably would, and so she planned to just omit such a detail.)
SeeU, the real estate agent, blinked. Finally, she cleared her throat and asked, “Are you sure?”
Rin jutted out her chin, eyeing a patch of mold on the wallpaper above her head. “Very sure.”
“Okay…” SeeU said slowly, fiddling around with her papers. “You should at least read the, uh, report on the incident here, just to make sure.” Before Rin could respond, she shoved a piece of paper into her hands. “The apartment
is
fine, but…”
Some real estate agent
, Rin thought as she took the paper from her. She scanned the details of the previous tenant’s demise—male, mid-20s, committed suicide, decomposed for two weeks before someone found him—one of the typical stories that accompanied these ‘unmarketable’ apartments. It was usually either the latter, or death from age-related causes.
Neither really bothered her.
“As you know,” SeeU continued, eyes darting around the room, “we replaced the tatami where, uh, the
incident
happened. So there’s no need to worry about hygienic matters. But we only offer six-month or twelve-month leases, so if you change your mind, you’ll have to pay a fee to break the lease.”
“That’s fine,” she said.
SeeU grinned, despite it looking somewhat uncertain.
“Okay, well, I can give you the paperwork and you can take that to finish with your guarantor, then we can lodge your application and get started on the financial stuff… I’d say, if you finish your application today, you might be able to move in by next week?” She turned away to walk out of the room, and Rin went to follow, but hesitated when she thought she saw something move out of the corner of her eye.
When she turned to look back, though, it was just the curtain. She closed her eyes and sighed.
“Is everything okay?” SeeU asked from the door, her keys ready in hand.
Rin’s eyes popped open and she swallowed. “Oh. Right. Yeah.” She reached for her shoes in the entrance and slipped them on, before stepping out of the apartment and into the empty corridor.
SeeU probably thought she was strange—a 27 year old single woman wanting to buy some apartment the previous tenant offed themselves in—but she decided it didn’t matter. It wasn’t any new judgment to her. She’d reached peak crazy to some a while ago.
Miku’s jaw dropped to the table when she broke the news.
“You’re moving into an apartment a guy
killed himself in?
” She set down her drink on the table and brushed her fringe from her eyes. “Rin, you can’t be serious.”
Rin just smiled at her across the table, which earned a scowl.
Miku was her friend from high school, her
only
friend, who had a knack for dramatics at times. They met every weekend at a cafe halfway between their homes to talk, but more often than not, other commitments would make that meeting about once every month.
She was expecting this reaction from her friend when she broke the news—she was, well,
normal
; had a nice apartment in Yokohama, and a fiancee, and a car, and a well-paying job.
“You’re, like, practically
asking
to be haunted,” Miku said with wide, green eyes. “You seriously couldn’t try settling for somewhere cheaper, like Kawasaki? It’s not that close, sure, but…”
“I tried looking,” Rin answered, which was true. “I just couldn’t find anywhere that was available
and
affordable. You
know
how low my wage is.”
“Yeah, but…” Her eyebrows furrowed in thought. “Still. You obviously just didn’t look enough.”
Rin shrugged her shoulders dismissively. “Well, it’s too late now. I’ve already paid key money and everything. I’m moving in tomorrow.”
“Jesus, Rin!”
“It doesn’t bother me,” she insisted. “Really. I don’t care. I don’t believe in superstitions and all that. Even if the place
was
haunted, I doubt whoever was haunting it would do anything much. They’re just dead.”
Miku looked like she wanted to disagree, but pressed her lips together, deciding on a frown. “You say that, but…” she trailed off, reaching for Rin’s hands over the table. Her engagement ring glinted under the light. “I’ll leave you alone about this if you let me come over and sage your place.
And
if you salt, like, everything. Please.”
Rin wanted to laugh, but she could tell her friend was being serious, so she opted for another smile. “Alright,” she said after a moment of silence. “Just don’t set off my smoke alarm. I can’t afford the fines for that.”
“Okay. Good. Thank you.” Miku squeezed her hands hard before letting go, a grin breaking across her face. “Did you want any help with moving?”
“Actually, yeah,” Rin said. “I do, if you can. It would be a big help.”
"Of course! Why else would I offer?"
They discussed their plan of action for tomorrow, and she was more than relieved she didn’t have to somehow transport four-and-counting suitcases across the east coast of Japan just to get to her new apartment. Miku was nice like that. A little overwhelming at times, sure, but she was nice.
As she laid in bed that night, staring at her bare room and the silhouettes of her suitcases in the corner, she wondered about how she would feel in her new home that time the next day, staring up at the mouldy ceiling instead.
“It’s a shithole,” Miku blurted when Rin opened the door to her apartment and lead her inside. She dumped her handful of things beside the doorway and looked back in disgust.
Rin snickered. “Oh, come on. It’s not too bad.”
Miku rolled her eyes, venturing further into the room, exploring the pint-sized kitchen and analysing the bathroom that felt too crowded with just one person standing in it. “God,” she said with a shudder. “No wonder the guy killed himself. This place feels like a coffin.”
“Well, you always joked about me being a vampire.” Rin stepped over her mountain of things hogging the doorway, joining her friend standing in the centre of the tatami. She was referring to a time during high school when Miku had harped on and on in gym class about her skin being so pale she looked undead.
Miku eyed her. “I’m still speculating whether you are.”
She grinned, raising her hands to mock she was stalking her prey. Her friend just scoffed.
“Ugh, I’ve got goosebumps,” Miku said, rubbing her arms. “Are you sure it’s not haunted? I’m getting the sage.” She brushed past to find her bag in the hallway, hidden amongst the mess they’d dumped there.
Rin reached up to pull the string on the light, deciding the room was too dark. Once it was on, the atmosphere felt a lot less eerie. “Do you think the mold will be easy to get rid of?” she asked.
Miku unearthed a bunch of green-plant-like-somethings and a lighter from her bag, before looking over. “Hmm? Mold? I’d assume so.”
She lit the ‘sage’ and it began to smoke, before she stalked over to the window and cracked it open. Then she got to work, waving the smouldering bunch around the room and muttering things like, “Bad energy, begone!”
Rin bit down on her lip, trying not to laugh. It was like she was in a movie, or something. She set her keys down on the kitchen counter, turning to her things. There were still a few bags and such in Miku’s car they’d have to run down for later, but for now she could arrange the room a little.
After Miku finished saging and she finished unpacking the kitchen, the two decided on making their second round down to Miku’s car to grab the last of the stuff.
When Rin reached for the last place she saw her keys, they were gone.
“What’s wrong?” Miku asked once she saw her confused expression.
“I thought I put my keys down here,” she said, squinting at the bench. Maybe she placed them elsewhere while sorting the kitchen, but couldn’t remember. She felt down her pockets, before searching the floor nearby. Eventually, she found them tucked up against the bottom of one of the counters, on the floor, a good distance from where she thought she put them. “That’s weird. Must’ve knocked them while I was unpacking.”
Miku’s eyebrows shot up, but whatever she was thinking, she didn’t voice. “Let’s go.”
They opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. Rin turned to close and lock the door, and as she reached for the handle, she glanced up.
Just for a moment, before she blinked, it looked like there was someone standing in the apartment.
Miku noticed her hesitation. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Rin said quickly, a little too quickly, pulling the door shut. It slammed in her face like someone had shoved it from behind—or maybe it was just a breeze—and the sound echoed loudly down the hallway. She winced.
Her friend just frowned at her.
It was just the wind
, Rin told herself as they walked down to the car.
It was just the wind.
“I think you should keep the sage,” Miku said while they were grabbing the last of her things.
“And walk around the apartment waving that stuff in the air, chanting for evil to leave? No way! I’ll just wait until setsubun to make a fool of myself.”
When Rin saw Miku’s serious expression, the smile dropped off her face.
“I’m not kidding.” Miku locked her car, locked it again, before checking the door
just in case
. “That place gives me the heebie-jeebies. It’s like… the eyes have walls.”
“The eyes have walls?”
“The walls have eyes.”
Rin glanced over at her friend, who wasn't sharing the same sense of humour. She ran her tongue along the edge of her teeth in thought, before sighing. “Okay. I get it. I’ll take the sage. I really just think it’s our overactive imagination, you know. Walls can’t have eyes.”
Miku said nothing, keeping her gaze to the ground.
Rin looked away to fumble for her keys to unlock the door. Once she unlocked it, she leaned on the handle to push it open, but it didn’t budge—as if someone was on the other side, leaning against it.
She laughed nervously, not wanting to alarm Miku, but finding it hard to ignore the dread rising in her chest. Her friend looked at her, then seemed to read the situation, her lips setting in a straight line.
“Maybe it got jammed when it slammed shut earlier,” Rin thought aloud before she could harp on again about her ghost-theory.
“Let me try,” Miku offered, stepping in to try the door. When she touched the handle, she flinched. “Actually, I think I’ll pass.”
“What?” Rin put her hand back on the handle, confused.
“Can’t you feel that? It’s ice-cold.”
“It is?” Her hands were clammy, sure, but the handle didn’t feel anything but normal to her. “I think you’re just shitting me now, Miku.”
Miku looked perplexed. “I don’t know. Try the door again.”
This time, Rin put
all
her weight into it. Like whatever was holding it shut had suddenly moved away, it swung open and she stumbled forward into the hallway. Miku caught her shoulder just before she face-planted the floor.
“The hell,” she muttered as she regained her composure. “Thanks, Miku.”
Miku gave a shrug, but she could tell she wanted to bolt out of there.
Rin peered into the apartment cautiously, as if checking whether there was really someone else in there, but it was only the two of them. Her stuff seemed fine, untouched at first glance, so she exhaled and put the remainder of her things down where she could find space.
“Are you sure you can live through a night, here?” Miku asked, setting down her armful and fiddling with her car keys. She was very much ready to high-tail it.
“Sure.” Rin looked at her pile of belongings, then back to the apartment. “A little bit of wind doesn’t spook me.”
Miku raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t seem so confident. “If you say so.” She swallowed, running her fingers over the ridges of one key, before folding the keys into her hand. “I-I should go, leave you to unpacking and stuff, so, um…” Her eyes darted to the door.
“Do you want me to walk you down?”
She shook her head hard, teal hair swishing around her shoulders. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.” Rin walked her to the door and she paused in the doorway, looking past her shoulder into the apartment. She dropped her gaze. “Text me tomorrow, so I know you’re safe?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Miku. I just want to know if
you’re
okay.”
Miku forced a smile. “Yeah. Don’t worry about me.” She took a step outside into the hallway, and Rin leaned against the doorframe, watching her. “If I don’t hear from you by midday tomorrow, Rin, I’m going to call the police.” She held up a finger, jabbing it at her chest, and although it sounded like she was joking, she probably wasn’t.
“Noted,” Rin said with a smirk. “I’ll text you to let you know that I’ve been gutted, murdered horribly by the mold in my room.”
“Don’t say that,” Miku exclaimed over her shoulder as she walked off. “I mean it, Rin! Poor Gumi is going to have to hold my hand when I go to the toilet tonight.”
The thought of that made Rin snicker. Once her friend had disappeared into the elevator, she turned and walked back inside, closing the door behind her.
Just to be sure, she deadbolted it too.
Rin sighed, gazing over at the collection of bags she had to sort through. She didn’t feel like unpacking everything she’d packed just days before, but her futon was somewhere in there, too, and she would need that to sleep later.
Unlike the strange chain of events earlier in the day, nothing else unnerving happened in the apartment. But by the time she’d settled for bed that night, she didn’t blame Miku for claiming the walls to have eyes.
For some reason, it really did feel like someone was watching her.
As she drifted off to sleep, she thought to herself,
Well, I hope they enjoyed the show
.
At around three in the morning, that night, she woke up to footsteps roaming around the room. They were slow and muffled, sort of like someone was shuffling across the tatami.
Rin kept her eyes closed as she listened for a while, not entirely sure whether she was dreaming or not.
Dread curled in the pit of her stomach when she realised she wasn’t.
The most logical thought that came to mind was that someone had broken in, somehow. Her heart thudded against her rib cage as she searched her mind for a way to handle the situation. When she came up with nothing, she opted for just listening.
It was like someone was pacing across the room, over and over, back and forth. If they were a thief—or a murderer—they weren’t being very subtle. Besides, wouldn’t they try… getting the job done, instead of walking around in circles?
Eventually, the footsteps moved past her head and stopped. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled and her breath caught in her throat. It was like she was being watched.
At that moment, Rin decided she would rather die putting up a fight for her life, rather than just lying there like an open invitation. She sat upright in her bed, eyes wide open, and swivelled her head around to search for the source of the footsteps.
The room was empty. She was the only one in the apartment.
Rin swallowed, putting a hand to her chest to ease her racing heartbeat. It couldn’t’ve been a dream, could it? She was awake the whole time it was happening, for sure. Then what was it? Her imagination?
Maybe it was one of her neighbours walking around in their room, and she was just getting confused.
The footsteps sounded too close to belong to a neighbour, though.
She pushed a hand back through her hair and sighed. Well, whatever it was, it had stopped.
Rin sat for a few moments more, staring at her knees in the darkness, before crawling out of her futon to use the toilet. When she returned, she noticed the futon was oddly cold, but put it down to the apartment having little insulation against the cooler mid-autumn nights.
Nevertheless, she fell back asleep.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Rin’s alarm honked obnoxiously at 6am, and she threw herself out of bed in a panic to find her phone. It was buried under a pile of clothes that needed to be put away, although she had no memory of putting it there (or putting it anywhere for the matter).After texting Miku to reassure her she was still living and breathing, she went to the bathroom to take a shower. She stripped off and glanced up to check her reflection in the mirror.Instead of her face, she looked at the words go away smeared across the glass in red.Rin gasped, but then snapped her mouth shut, reminding herself she didn’t have time to panic. The footsteps from earlier that morning flashed through her mind, but a part of her questioned, Why would someone break into your apartment to vandalise your mirror and not steal anything? Or, well, maybe they did steal something, but she hadn’t noticed yet. That was something to deal with when she wasn’t getting ready to go to work, though.Her stomach churned with unease and she squinted at the letters, before lifting a finger to rub at it. The writing came off surprisingly easy, and she brought her finger to her nose to sniff it. Her gaze then dropped to one of her red lipsticks discarded on the bench.Rin frowned. It was one of her expensive ones, too.Damn it.She put the lipstick back into her makeup bag and wiped the glass down as best she could with some wet toilet paper, sighing at the smudges left behind. It would need to be cleaned better later.Miku responded to her texts during the day, mainly asking if she'd slept okay and if any other weird stuff had happened. Rin responded to them during her lunch break. She wondered, for a brief moment, if she should tell Miku about the suspected break-in, like the footsteps and the lipstick words on her mirror.But instead, she opted for, Slept okay, and nothing major happened, although it does sort of feel like someone’s watching me in the apartment. Rin checked her messages again when she left work, seeing Miku had taken the bait. I told you it’s haunted! her message read.She rolled her eyes to herself, before sending back, Or maybe some pervert installed cameras in the apartment and is watching my every move? Lol. Miku called her when she arrived at her station, and they chatted idly on the phone while she walked home. She gushed on about how Gumi got a promotion at work, and now they could save better for their overseas-eloping-strategy.“Seriously, nothing else strange happened after I left at your place?” she asked when Rin mentioned she’d reached her apartment building. “I find that hard to believe. Are you just lying to make me sound crazy?”“Miku,” Rin said as she dug through her bag for her keys, “you are crazy. I’m telling the truth! It was fine. No problems at all.” She jabbed the key into her lock and pushed the door open with ease. “I haven’t even had any problems with the front door.”Miku huffed into the receiver. “Maybe the sage worked,” she said, sounding somewhat hopeful.Rin slid inside, almost tripping over a bag left in the middle of the entrance, before slipping off her shoes and dropping her things on the kitchen counter. “Maybe,” she echoed. Everything seemed relatively normal in the apartment, much to her relief. “Where did you leave that, by the way?” She hadn’t seen the bundle of sage since yesterday, when Miku had been using it.“I don’t remember, maybe on the kitchen bench?” Miku suggested.She looked over the bench, trying to spot any green among the clutter, but was unsuccessful. “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t seen it there. Maybe I moved it without thinking?”“Um… yeah. Probably.”Rin walked into the bathroom, switching on the light and tucking the phone between her cheek and shoulder. “It’ll turn up eventually. I probably lost it in the madness of yesterday.” She noted her makeup bag was open, and her lipstick was sitting beside the sink yet again, lid missing.An exasperated sigh escaped her as she wrenched her gaze up to the mirror.Like the morning, someone had scrawled across it in angry red letters, go away. Miku heard her. “What’s wrong?”“Oh, nothing,” Rin lied, packing away her makeup. She found the lid to her lipstick on the floor near the toilet, which was gross, but she was too shaken to care. “I should probably have dinner, now, anyway. I’ll call you back later, Miku, alright?”“Are you sure everything’s okay, Rin?” Miku asked. That girl was too good.“It’s fine,” she assured. “I’ll talk later. Bye.” Before her friend could protest, she hung up, setting down her phone beside the sink.Rin ran a hand through her hair, musing. Thief or not, it was irking her a little by whatever game they were playing. She turned away from the sink and leant her back against it, drumming her fingers against her upper arms.Finally, feeling a little stupid but somewhat indignant, she announced, “If you want to write stupid threats on my mirror, don’t use my fucking lipstick. It’s expensive. You don’t know how many paychecks I had to save to afford it. Use something else—I don’t care.”The only response that came was silence. Although she was expecting that, because she wasn’t even talking to anyone, she still felt a bit like an idiot.She dropped her hands to her thighs with a smack and turned back to the sink to wash up. As she did, though, her eyes caught the silhouette of someone standing behind her in her reflection.Rin’s head shot up to the mirror like a deer under headlights, but her reflection was normal. There was no one there. No one but her.She bit down on her lip and finished cleaning up, before leaving to warm up dinner in the microwave.
After that first day, strange things kept happening.At three in the morning, every night, she would hear someone pacing around in her room. Empty threats would occasionally appear on her mirror—whoever was writing it resorted to using tomato sauce from the kitchen as an alternative to lipstick. Things would mysteriously go missing, but turn up in random places later on—like the sage, which she found a week or so later in the trash while sorting through her rubbish. Sometimes her front door would jam, or a ‘breeze’ would slam it shut when she was leaving.There were also the humanoid shadows in her peripheral vision, as well.Rin knew it was all too coincidental, and she was past the stage of thinking it was a thief, but she didn’t want to admit to it being paranormal. Whatever it was, whoever it was, was obviously just being a pain in the ass, and she didn’t want to give it the joy of amusement.So she refused to acknowledge it for a long time, or for as much as she could. She didn’t speak a word of the strange and unexplained to Miku, who soon learned to stop asking about her apartment, anyway. If she ignored it, the less bad it seemed.Eventually, everything going wrong just became normal to her.Because of that, Rin didn’t think twice when she came home piss-drunk one night in the arms of a work colleague, and she didn’t think twice when they started undressing in her futon. For a moment, just a moment, the alcohol and the heat of the moment made her forget that her apartment had a mind of its own.She wrapped her arms around Kaito—her colleague’s—neck and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek as they straddled on the floor. His hands fumbled over her back, trying to unhook the band of her bra, his breath shaky.It wasn’t their first time sleeping together. Although Kaito claimed to be in an on-and-off relationship with someone else when sober, he would drink himself senseless and start kissing her after work outings. He wouldn’t remember a thing afterwards, but Rin always did.As she moved to kiss him on the mouth, he stiffened in her arms and dropped his hands to his sides. She pulled away to look at his face, noticing his sudden physical withdrawal from the situation.“What’s wrong?” she asked, noting his startled expression.Kaito swallowed, the colour draining from his face. “D-dead…” was as much as he could choke out before tearing himself from her arms.Rin’s eyebrows shot up and she turned her head to search for whatever qualified as ‘d-dead’, but all she saw was the rest of her messy room and that one shitty little box window.When she looked back to Kaito, he was rushing to pull his pants back on and button up his shirt, a whole lot of drunken fumbling. She handed him his jacket with a look of confusion.“I don’t understand,” she said.He refused to meet her eye. “T-there’s a dead guy in your room, Rin, what the fuck,” he spluttered, voice tilting with panic.Just to be sure, she checked over her shoulder again, but nope, no dead guy.“No,” she said, perplexed. “There’s not?”Kaito grabbed for his shoes and bag, not even tying his laces properly. He whipped his head around to look at her, before his eyes shifted to something behind and he blanched, slapping a hand over his mouth.As a reflex, Rin handed him her trash can to throw up in, but he pushed it away and kept his eyes to his feet.“I can’t,” he said through his hand, already halfway out the door. “Sorry, Rin.”And with a slam, he was gone, leaving her standing in the hallway looking very lost.Rin took a moment to process the situation, running the tips of her fingers along the fabric on her thighs. She didn’t see any dead guy, but Kaito was adamant. He basically went ass-up out her door. God, and she was finally going to get laid after months! Stupid apartment.Pissed, literally and figuratively, Rin turned on her heel and marched (stumbled) into her kitchen, slamming her palms down onto the counter. She exhaled, closing her eyes and opening them, before spotting her phone sitting nearby.She pressed the home button, checking the time. 1:19. Miku wouldn’t mind, right?Well, it didn’t matter, because she was seething and horny. And drunk.Really drunk.Miku answered her phone on the sixth ring. “Rin? What’s the matter?” she asked, her words slow and muffled. “Why are you calling me at this time? I was asleep, you know.”“Miku, this is an emergency.”“What? Rin, are you drunk?”“No!” she exclaimed, before sighing. “Okay, yes. Maybe. But it’s an emergency .”“Look, Rin, I’m not driving all the way into Tokyo to pick you up off the road because you missed the last train—”“It’s not that!” Rin exclaimed, flustered. “I want to know something.”Miku groaned. “What?”“How do you kill a fucking dead person?”Her friend was quiet, before repeating slowly, “What?”Rin rolled her eyes, although she couldn’t see it. “You heard me. A dead person. How do I kill them?”Miku hesitated. “Do you mean, like, an exorcism? Or are you trying to dispose of a dead body? I don’t understand.”“Yes! An exorcism!”The room suddenly went cold, but Rin was too drunk to notice. She was also too drunk to notice the tomato sauce leaving her cupboard.“Uh, okay—give me a minute—” Miku must’ve put her hand over the phone, because she heard some muffled speaking. She was probably talking to Gumi. The talking stopped and her voice returned. “Do you want me to call you an ambulance?”“An ambulance?! I’m not the one who’s fucking dead!” Rin smacked her hand into her forehead, exasperated. She added as an afterthought, “But I might be if I set this fucking apartment on fire.”A beat, and then, “Oh no.” Rustling came from Miku’s end. “Rin, I—your—I knew your apartment was haunted, but—oh god—what did you do? ”Why the heck was she asking that? “I did nothing! I was literally just kissing Kaito, but then he went all strange and ran away because he said he saw a dead guy behind me! I’m so mad! ”“Okay, first of all, why were you kissing one of your coworkers? Second of all, are you still in the apartment? ”“Kaito and I sleep together like every few months,” Rin blurted, although her sober-self would probably have her by the neck for admitting that. “Also, yes. Of course I am.”“What the fu— okay, okay. Rin? Get out of the apartment.”“Why?”Miku’s voice went awfully high. “Are you thick? Well, of course you are—you’re drunk. But I’m not letting my drunk best friend get murdered by some creepy ghostie in her haunted apartment! Get out! ”Rin scowled, turning to leave the kitchen. “Okay, whatever. I’m leaving.” When she looked up from the ground, she came face-to-face with her wall, covered in tomato sauce letters.It said:
for the upteenth time
GO AWAY
if you’re going to fuck people in my apartment
GET OUT
“Ooh,” she said.“What is it?” Miku asked, alarmed.“Tomato sauce letters,” was all she gave away.Miku said nothing, clearly too lost for words.Rin reached for her shoes and paused when she spotted something green and familiar poking out of one of her boots. When she reached for it, it turned out to be the sage she put away in a drawer three weeks prior. She held onto it, deciding it would be a good weapon to fight a ghost with.(Or whatever was in her apartment.)When she attempted to open her door, she realised it wouldn’t budge. Her keys were missing, too. The door had been unlocked moments before, though, so that wasn’t the problem. It was jammed yet again. How coincidental.“Oh jeez,” she muttered.“Rin, are you okay?” Miku sounded very concerned.“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” asked Rin.“Um… what?”Rin didn’t repeat the question. “The bad news is that my door won’t open. The good news is that I found the sage again. It was in my boot!”A silence stretched out between them, before Miku finally said, “Rin, are you… should I call the police?”Rin spun on her heel away from the door, ready to look for something she could beat the door down with, but sucked in a breath when she noticed a figure standing at the end of her hallway. It didn’t disappear when she blinked.“Rin?” Miku repeated.“Um…” she said, unable to tear her eyes away from the… thing staring her down. “Uh… Can I call you back?”“What’s happening? Rin?! Don’t you dare hang up on me! I—”Rin hung up on her anyway. She continued to watch the thing —the ghost? The demon? The monster?—as it stood in her hallway, eerily still and eerily quiet. She waited for it to move or kill her or something , but it didn’t.She couldn’t see its face—or anything. It was just a shadow. Of a dude.A shadow dude.Rin remembered the sage in her hand and pointed it at the figure. She licked her lips, ignoring a sudden wave of nausea, and squinted at it. “I’ve got sage and I’m not afraid to use it!”Silence.She waved it around. “Be gone, demon!”More silence.It was around then, Rin bent over and vomited into one of her shoes. It wasn’t in her plan of action, but when she looked up while wiping her face with the back of her hand, the shadow was gone.But the room around her was getting awfully dark, all of a sudden.She blinked once, then twice, and
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Rin sat up abruptly to the sound of someone banging on her door, and she looked around, momentarily disoriented. She had a mind-splitting headache and there was a disgusting aftertaste in her mouth, and she was in nothing but her tights, underwear and a bra.It all came flooding back to her when she looked down at her vomit-covered shoes.“Rin? Are you in there? Open up!”She realised Miku was knocking on her door, and she didn’t sound exactly calm. Her phone was on the ground beside her, and when she checked it, she had 16 missed calls and 25 text messages, all from Miku.God. What the fuck happened last night?Rin pushed her aching body off the ground and unlocked her door—did she lock it? She couldn’t remember—peering around to find a very red-faced, panicked Miku.“Oh my God,” Miku said, forcing the door open and pulling her into an airtight embrace in the doorway. “Oh my God, Rin, I thought you were dead! I’ve been trying to call you all morning. Do you know how fucking worried I was?!” She froze, suddenly, and pulled back, sniffing at her. “What’s that smell? And why are you naked?”Rin’s eyes dropped to the shoes by her feet and Miku’s gaze followed, before she pulled a look of disgust.“You should put something on,” Miku then said, not questioning the mess.Rin turned away stiffly and walked to the nearest pile of clothing, pulling a shirt down over her head. When she was half-decent, she turned to look at Miku expectantly, who was still standing in her doorway like a statue.“Aren’t you going to come in?” she asked.Miku looked down at the mess on the ground again, before looking back up to Rin and saying, “No. I’m fine here.”Obviously, something very bad went down last night, and Rin had no recollection of it after she came home with Kaito.Strange. She didn’t drink that much, did she?“Where’s the sage?” Miku asked.“The sage?” Rin asked back, confused. She looked around her. “What about it?”“You said you found the sage, remember? Last night. When you called me.”She gave her a blank look, before turning away to look in the kitchen. “The sage is in the drawer… Oh .” The drawer she pulled open had no sage in it, but it did have a bottle of tomato sauce in it. “The sage is not in my drawer,” she clarified, setting the sauce on the bench to be put away later.Rin then turned back to walk down the hallway, but noticed the writing on the wall for what felt like the first time, but was probably the second. She reached out and touched a letter, confirming it was what it was.Miku saw it, too. “What’s… that?”“Tomato sauce writing,” Rin said, before turning away as if it was nothing.“You said that last night, too.”“I did?”“You… really don’t remember last night?”Rin stopped in front of her, frowning. “No, I don’t. I came home with…” she trailed off, and Miku raised an eyebrow. The blood rushed to her cheeks. “Oh no. What did I tell you?”Miku folded her arms over her chest. “You came home with your work colleague, Kaito,” she said. “And you told me you two hook up every few months. I thought he was dating someone else?”Rin shrugged. “I don’t know. He seems to forget that when he’s drunk.”“Oh my God , Rin.” Miku rubbed her forehead. “Anyway, you were pissed off because you said he saw a dead body or something in your apartment and left. So you were asking me about how to kill a dead person…”Her eyebrows went up. “That’s logical.”“You were adamant,” said Miku. “I told you to get out of the apartment, and then you said you couldn’t get out but you had sage, and next minute, you were hanging up on me. I was shitting myself, Rin. I thought you had died. I couldn’t sleep so Gumi told me to come check you were okay. I waited until sunrise, though, just in case, but you never called me back or anything, so I came.”“Oh.”“Do you remember now?”Rin took a breath. “Nope.” Miku looked unimpressed. She held her hands up in defence. “Look, I swear I didn’t drink that much. Usually I remember things from being drunk anyway! I have no idea what happened.”“Rin,” Miku said in her matter-of-fact tone. “You’re being haunted.”She blew a raspberry. “No, I’m not.”“Someone sees a dead body in your apartment that you can’t see, then you have writing on your wall in ‘tomato sauce’, and you suddenly get locked in by some invisible force — then you just hang up on me —”“Maybe one of my drinks were spiked, and I was losing my mind,” Rin suggested. Although she wanted to believe her words, a more sensical part of her brain told her that wasn’t the case and she was just spouting excuses.Miku looked on in disbelief. “Seriously, Rin,” she said. “I’m not making it up. I know you don’t remember any of it, but I do. I doubt you were tripping on something. Have you tried contacting Kaito?”Rin shrugged. “He wouldn’t remember anything. He never does.”Miku pressed her lips together in frustration. “I’m concerned. Even Gumi is concerned, and she’s just as doubtful about this stuff as you are. I don’t want you living in this place, Rin. I don’t know what else you haven’t been telling me, but I feel like you’re downplaying a lot of what’s been happening to you so I wouldn’t worry.”“Okay, maybe I have,” she said slowly, dropping her eyes to her hands. “Sure, maybe some weird things have been happening, but I’m not really worried. It’s just… minor stuff, like things going missing or the door jamming, or tomato sauce on my walls, but if the— apartment , or whatever it is, wanted to harm me, it would’ve done so already. I just ignore it.”“Rin! How does last night not count as the apartment trying to harm you? There’s vomit everywhere! And you passed out in the hallway!”Rin winced, suddenly remembering she had neighbours. They were probably listening to the conversation, thinking they were insane. “I was drunk , Miku. The vomiting and passing out were just part of that.”“You don’t remember anything, though,” Miku pressed. “That’s weird. You could’ve seen something, but you don’t even remember!”She just chose to shrug again. “I don’t care.”Miku tugged on her pigtails, groaning in irritation. “Rin! I wished you did! Why are you not terrified? Why are you just putting up with this?”“I don’t know, Miku,” Rin answered. “Of course I’m scared at times, but—” She sighed, brushing her fingers back through her fringe and scrunching it up. “I kind of just don’t care. I guess I don’t have anything to lose?”Her friend pursed her lips, before reaching out to put her hands on Rin’s shoulders. “Oh, Rin,” she said, her voice soft. “Please don’t say that. You know I would be devastated if anything happened to you. Gumi, too.”“I know. I appreciate it.” Rin closed her eyes. “But I’m still not ditching this apartment.”Miku dropped her hands and scrunched up her face. “You’re an idiot .”“Yes, I know! Thank you.” Rin smiled thinly at her. “I’m an idiot, and I’m too poor to move, even if I wanted to. I’m going to have to deal with this mess until I can afford to leave. You hear that, ghost?” She threw that last part over her shoulder.Miku just shook her head. “I’m… Okay . Fine. I’ll leave you be with your creepy little haunted house, but I’m not helping you exorcise anything, alright? If you need a safe place to stay, my couch is always open, but I’m not stepping a foot in your apartment. Ever. I don’t want any of your haunted voodoo ruining my life.”“Understandable. So, I’m guessing you’re not here to help me clean?”“No?”“Well, thank you for checking on me, but I’m going to need some time to cry over ruining my favourite pair of boots.”Miku held a hand on the door, stopping her from shutting it in her face. “Rin,” she addressed with a firm tone.“What is it now, Miku?”“Please don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”Rin looked at her face and noted she seemed serious.She licked her lips, nodding. “Okay.”Miku smiled wryly. “Text me later just so I know you haven’t died.”“I will. Thank you, Miku.”After she shut the door and Miku was long gone, she put her head in her hands and sunk to the ground, letting out a very, very long sigh.
The… thing had left a message on her mirror again. you should listen to your friend , it said.Rin wiped it off in one clean sweep with her cloth, before rinsing and wringing it out in the sink. She found the tomato sauce sitting on the edge of her bathtub and put it back in the cupboard.She cleaned the wall and salvaged her shoes and tidied the rest of her room to hide the last of that night’s shenanigans. Whatever had happened was just between her and… the thing.And Miku, probably.Was the guy who killed himself haunting her? Maybe, most likely. She didn’t really know what to refer to him as, though. A ghost? A demon? A poltergeist? What happened if labels offended him?Rin didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know whether she should carry on as usual, ignoring his… haunting as best as she could, or if she should try apologising or something for trying to get laid in his apartment?Hers, actually. She was the one paying rent.After she finished cleaning, she walked into the centre of the tatami and folded her arms over her chest.“Okay,” she said aloud, her voice surprisingly even although she wanted to shit her pants from nerves. “Alright. Okay. So. Dead guy.” She paused and waited, but no response came, as expected. She cleared her throat awkwardly. “I’m sorry for trying to… sleep… with one of my work colleagues in the place you died.”It sounded so, so incredibly stupid, but she kept going.“I get it. The act of creating life in a place of death is very ironic, I know. To be honest, I wasn’t thinking straight, but I’m sure you’re well aware of that. Or I hope you are. I don’t remember what I did last night, but if it was anything stupid, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to mock your death. Alright?”Rin looked around the room, but it was completely silent. Either the thing—the dead guy, the whatever —was ignoring her, was listening, or just didn’t exist.“But I am paying rent, and I do live here now, and as much as I would love a really nice, fancy penthouse in the middle of Shibuya, I don’t even have enough savings to move out. So I’m asking you to please, please put up with me for a while. Or haunt me just a little lighter. I promise I won’t try to bring a guy home again, okay?”Still no answer. Her cheeks were burning. She hoped the neighbours couldn’t hear her, especially after that conversation with Miku.Ugh.Who was she kidding? Miku’s made her believe in some batshit concept. Of course there wasn’t any ghost in her apartment. It was just her imagination.Right? Your imagination doesn’t write with tomato sauce on the walls, Rin, a voice in her head reminded her.Well, whatever.Rin went to speak again, but her voice caught in the back of her throat when something cold touched her shoulder. It was like that part of her skin had gone numb, pins and needles and static, as the weight of something pressed down on her.She stiffened, not turning her head to look. She didn’t need to look to know what was happening.Her neck prickled as a cold breeze hit the skin of her ear, like someone was right there, breathing . She resisted the urge to shudder, wanting to crawl out of her skin and run for the hills, but her knees were locked in place, terrified, and she couldn’t move.A voice said into her ear, “I’ll think about it.” The air left Rin’s lungs in a gasp, and she suddenly gained the ability to move again, spinning around to look behind her.No one was there.The cold, numb feeling had left her shoulder and her ear, but it still felt like someone was standing behind her, watching. She didn’t bother looking back again and reached up to rub the place she was touched, resisting the urge to be sick.Finally, she found some words. “Okay,” she said, her voice quiet and shaky. “Okay. Thank you. For listening.”When no response came, she left it at that.
Things stopped disappearing, the door stopped jamming, and the ghost stopped using tomato sauce to tell her to go away. There were still footsteps pacing around every night, however, and the sensation of someone watching her every movement never left.It was enough for Rin to live somewhat peacefully, at least.Miku asked her about what had happened, and she just explained she’d struck a deal with the ghost. Although her friend seemed dubious, she didn’t press any further. Maybe she didn’t want to.The following months were slow and uneventful. Winter rolled in, and Rin scraped up enough money to buy a heater so the temperature of the apartment was bearable, telling herself it was a birthday gift. She even apologised to the ghost about it, but she wasn’t even sure why she did so.It was mostly okay, otherwise.It was mostly okay, until one night.She was standing in the hallway, just come home from work. The apartment was dark and she couldn’t see anything, and all she could remember was just feeling cold. Cold. When she found the light, she took off her shoes and set down her things before looking towards the tatami.There was a body. Dull and grey and lifeless, it lay in the centre of the room, back against the floor. A rope was tied around its neck, and its arms were folded over its chest, hiding a black-and-white business suit.Rin approached it, peering down in curiosity. She didn’t know why she had walked over to look at it, drawn to it by some invisible force, but the sight of it made her uneasy, tight to the chest.Just as she was about to leave the body be, something black scattered across her foot and her eyes jumped to search what it was. A large spider ran across the tatami, out from under the corpse, and disappeared into a crack in the wall.She looked back at the corpse.Before she could tear her gaze away once more, its mouth and eyes opened slowly, and thousands and thousands of spiders began to spill out them.The corpse screamed. She immediately followed suit.The wave of spiders skittered up her legs and she jumped away, shrieking as the corpse reached out for her in desperation. Her skin was itchy and she could feel them, crawling up under her clothes, crawling up into her mouth— her eyes— Rin started, sitting upright in her futon, her heart pounding in her chest. She tore the blankets off her, the sensation of spiders still running over her skin, and she jumped up, swatting her hands over her body and crying out in a panic. Tears stung her eyes.Finally, it clicked and she stumbled, caught herself against the wall. She realised there was no corpse in her room, and there were no millions of spiders scaling her body. It was a dream, and she was awake. She put a hand to her chest, trying to steady her heartbeat, and took a deep breath.“Shit,” she whispered to herself.After another moment passed, and she was sure, really sure she was no longer dreaming, she went to the bathroom. She flicked on the light and squinted over the basin, turning on the tap to wash her face.As she tried to calm down, her mind began to wander. Was the corpse in her dream the person who died in the apartment? She didn’t even know what he looked like. She couldn’t even remember what the body in her dream looked like. He was left for two weeks to decompose before being discovered , a voice in her head reminded her, as if it was important information.Rin shuddered into the basin, the image of spiders running out of some decomposing body in her apartment.Their apartment.She blinked, wiping her eyes and turning off the tap.She dried her face on a towel and switched off the light in the bathroom, walking back to bed with her head down, careful not to trip on anything in her path. She stopped in her tracks when she saw two white feet standing beside her pillow.Rin blinked, expecting them to disappear, but they didn’t.The room’s light was also on, which hadn’t been just before.She sucked in a breath and looked up, ready to scream.A man stared back at her, his eyes wide as saucers. He was pale, unnaturally pale, and his hair was light like hers. His lips moved, like he wanted to say something, but he settled for a frown. She could see the window behind him, right through his head. He was a ghost.He was a ghost. Before she could react, he reached up and switched the light off.The man disappeared with the light.Rin’s legs gave out and she fell to her knees beside the futon, releasing the breath she’d been holding. She heaved for air, then groaned, then pressed the heel of her palms into her eyes, trembling.It’d been him.It had to have been him. Once she’d settled, she closed her eyes and crawled into bed, pulling her sheets over her head. Although she could hear the footsteps again, pacing and pacing, she didn’t peer out once, and stayed that way until she finally fell asleep.The next morning, tomato sauce was on her mirror again.This time, the message said, I’m sorry. Rin stared at it for a while, partially because she was tired, but also because she was trying to understand what he was sorry for. Eventually, she wiped it off and climbed into the shower. She tried not to think about it too much for the rest of the day.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Rin met up with Miku later that week, who brought Gumi along to listen to their banter quietly. The first thing Miku asked was about the apartment, as Rin was anticipating.“It’s fine,” she said after an awkward pause that definitely wouldn’t be picked up by Detective Miku.Her friend raised an eyebrow. “And the ghost?” she pushed.Rin stared down at her tea. “He’s fine, too.”“Something happened,” Miku said, pressing her palms down onto the table. She looked to Gumi for support, who just nodded wordlessly. “Are you alright? Has he harmed you?”“No, no, no,” Rin said, looking up. She closed her eyes, taking a breath. “It’s just… I had a weird dream, is all.”“A weird dream?”She looked between Gumi and Miku, who were staring at her intently. “Well,” she said, rolling the word off her tongue. “It was more so a nightmare, but there was a dead body in my apartment with spiders crawling out of it. And then…” She trailed off, sucking in her bottom lip in thought. “I don’t know if I was still dreaming or not, but I woke up freaking out and went to the bathroom to calm down. When I came back, my light had been switched on, and…”A few moments of silence passed, before Miku asked, “What?”Rin tucked her hair behind her ear. “It sounds stupid when I say it aloud.”“I don’t care, you already are stupid,” said Miku.She pulled a face. “Well, I was looking at the ground and I noticed a pair of feet by my pillow. So I looked up and… there was a man standing in the middle of my room.”“A man?” Gumi echoed, joining the conversation. “A real man?”“No—well, I don’t know,” Rin answered. “He disappeared when he turned the light off.”Miku picked up her cup of coffee, taking a mouthful before setting it back down on the table. “So you saw your ghost.”“I guess.”Gumi scowled. “Ew.”“I know right, Gooms? And yet this girl continues to sleep there every night,” Miku said, turning her attention to her fiancée. “I don’t understand her. Sometimes, I think she enjoys her suffering.”Rin shifted in her chair. “I’m right here, you know.”Miku ignored her comment and fixed a wry smile, returning to investigator mode. “So, what did he look like?”“I don’t know. Dead?” Rin said. “I was too busy trying not to have a heart attack out of fear.”“You must remember something. Like, was he wearing any clothes… or was he just standing in your room, stark naked…”Rin flushed. “He was wearing clothes. I would’ve noticed if he wasn’t.”Miku gestured for her to go on.She cleared her throat and reached for her tea. “Maybe he was wearing a white shirt, like an undershirt or something, but I didn’t really pay attention. What’s so important about his clothes, though?”Her friend rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Do you remember his hair colour? His eye colour? Was he hot? Does he look like he wants to slice you open and eat your organs?”After putting her cup down, she settled for, “He had light hair, like mine, I guess. His eyes were… light as well, I think. He was really pale. And translucent. Like a ghost. But it wasn’t really that creepy, apart from the fact he was dead and standing in my room.”“What do you think, Gumi?” Miku turned to her fiancée.Gumi blinked, before blurting, “You should ask if he’ll appear for you again.”“What?” both Miku and Rin chorused, their mouths dropping.Gumi fiddled with a strand of green hair, eyes flitting up to the ceiling of the cafe. “Well, if he didn’t have red eyes and blood dripping down his chin, I don’t think it’d do you any harm.”Miku smacked her forehead. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re encouraging my best friend to befriend a ghost haunting her apartment. I brought you here to talk sense into her, not give her more god-awful ideas.”Rin smirked behind her cup. “Look,” said Gumi, suddenly serious. “It sounds like Rin is going to be living there for a while. If the ghost is friendly, she really should make the effort to be chummy with it. Maybe he’s lonely?”Miku groaned into her hands.“He did apologise for it,” Rin mentioned offhandedly into her drink.“Apologise?” Miku questioned.“In the morning, I found he wrote that he was sorry on my mirror in tomato sauce.”Gumi snorted. “Why tomato sauce?”“I don’t know, I think he started using it because it looked like blood,” she said. “At first, he was using one of my expensive red lipsticks, so I told him to stop. Then he started using tomato sauce instead.”“Isn’t that a waste of ketchup?” was all Gumi was worried about.Miku added, “I guess it’s better than actual blood.”The trio nodded in mutual agreement.“Imagine if he used her menstrual blood.” Miku and Rin looked over at Gumi, who blinked at them innocently.“What?”“I’m so close to divorcing her,” Miku said to Rin. “It was a mistake to bring her out with me today.”Rin snickered. “So that was it? You saw him in your room? He didn’t do anything else to you?”She shrugged. “No? It’s been pretty calm lately. He doesn’t even move my stuff around anymore.”“Wow, he sounds like a nice guy,” Gumi commented.Miku held a finger up to her fiancée’s lips. “Gumi. Just don’t.”Gumi pouted.Seeing as her life was no longer a topic of interest, Rin asked Miku about hers. As expected, the girl launched into a long rant about her and Gumi’s plans to get married overseas and her family’s great big dislike for lesbians.Rin listened, but she felt like she wasn’t really there the whole time. The second nightmare happened a month later.Rin was sitting on the floor staring at the window of her apartment. She could see nothing outside, though—it was pitch black. At any moment, something would appear from the darkness.Her phone began to ring and she looked away to see who was calling.
Mother.
She ignored it, but kept her eyes glued to the screen. All of a sudden, she was frozen, and a voice in her head was chanting, Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look. Eventually, she dragged her gaze away from her phone and back up to the window.Staring back at her was a man’s face, dangling from a rope, his expression pulled into something that of horror.Rin screamed.Her eyes flung open and she was staring up at her moldy ceiling, her heart pounding in her ears. Immediately, she burst into tears. She didn’t know why she was crying, but she was terrified.She wiped her eyes and nose, sniffling, before letting curiosity get the better of the doubt. Her eyes drifted over toward the window, and much to her relief, there was no one hanging there.After staring up at the ceiling a little longer, she closed her eyes and went back to sleep. A few weeks later, one of Rin’s work colleagues committed suicide.No one openly admitted it was, but she could tell from the language they used and from the atmosphere at work that it was. It hadn’t been the first time it’d happened since she’d started working there. Someone else had done it earlier in the year, as well.It made her think about the ghost. She thought about what sort of pain he had to go through to make that final decision. She thought of him all alone in her apartment, suffering, with no one else to turn to for support. Eventually she stopped thinking, because it felt like she was poking her nose into business that wasn’t hers.The small service they had for her work colleague was nice, though. She talked to people she didn’t usually talk to. No one spoke wrong about the victim. It was sad, but it was respectful.“If only someone had reached out,” one of her colleagues had mentioned in conversation.“If only,” she agreed. If only.When Rin got home later that day, the apartment was cold. It usually was, but after the day she had, it was harsher and harder to ignore. She turned on the heater and crouched in front of it, enjoying the gradual warmth spreading to her toes.She understood the concept. The death. The wanting to die. She understood.There were many days of her life where she wondered the point of it all. All she did was wake up, eat, go to work, come home, eat, then sleep every day, barely making it to the next paycheck. Her relationship with her parents was strained. She had no love of her life to come home to. She had no great hobbies. She had no grand life plan.It was just surviving.But whenever her mind would stumble into doing the unthinkable, she’d remember the man in her apartment and his lonely, decomposing body.How awful would it be to have been discovered weeks after dying? That no one else had noticed you’d disappeared?It broke her heart.Maybe Gumi was right about trying to befriend the ghost. Maybe he just… needed someone to acknowledge him for once?Rin squeezed her eyes shut. Or maybe she was being ridiculous?She lied in bed that night, waiting for the footsteps to start. They did, eventually, as routine. She waited and waited, long enough until she told herself it would be a waste of sleep if she didn’t say anything at all. Her heart pounded against her ribcage, nervous all of a sudden.After taking a breath, she asked the ghost in a whisper, “Are you lonely?”The footsteps came to a halt somewhere across the room.Rin took it as a sign to continue. “I know we’re not friendly or anything, and you’re just putting up with me being here. But I promise I won’t freak out if you want to talk to me. If you’re ever lonely.”She waited for an answer, for the footsteps to start up again, but she fell asleep before either happened. Before anything interesting happened between her and the ghost, Rin had to travel back to her hometown for a relative’s funeral.Another death.It wasn’t particularly sad or anything; she wasn’t close to the relative and everyone was expecting their death at that stage, but she didn’t want to be there. Her interactions with her parents were forced and awkward, and the first thing her mother said to her was, “You’ve gotten fat.” There was a reason why she chose to stay in a crummy motel in town, as opposed to trying to stay with her parents while maintaining sanity.Miku called a few times to check on her though, which was nice—she was understanding about the whole shitty parent thing, considering she wasn’t on good terms with her own due to Gumi. In a way, Miku was more family to her than real family was.And her shitty haunted apartment in Tokyo was home.She hoped the ghost wasn’t missing her (he probably wasn’t). She had made the effort to tell him she was leaving, but had he even listened?Rin hoped he didn’t get up to mischief, at least. The last thing she wanted to do when she got home was scrape dried tomato sauce off the walls.Her grandmother cornered her after the funeral.“How’s work going, my dear?” she asked.Rin pulled on the ends of her black suit jacket nervously. “It’s going well,” she said. “I might get promoted in a month.”Might was a bit of an optimistic word choice. Usually her boss only promoted men, and kept women at the same entry-level position until they grew frustrated and quit. “It’s because females tend to leave to have a family,” one of her male colleagues had reasoned. “So he keeps them where they can be easily replaced.”It was stupid, and frustrated her to no end, but nowhere else would want take a 28 year old woman; to employers, she was just a high contender on the list of suddenly getting pregnant and quitting, despite being woefully single.Her grandmother smiled, squeezing her hand. “You’ve grown to be such a fine woman, Rin. Surely you’ve found yourself a man?”Rin laughed aloud unintentionally. “No, grandma,” she said. “I haven’t.”“Oh, he’ll come when you least expect it, my dear,” her grandmother told her endearingly. “You keep working hard.” She then moved on to interrogate some cousins.The train ride home was long and boring. She picked up a bento for dinner on her way home. Within that time, it began to snow.It was a little unusual it snowed in February, and more unusual it snowed for the first time so late into winter. Tokyo didn’t get much snow anyhow, not like her hometown did. She stopped for a moment in the middle of the pavement and looked up, watching as the white flakes drifted down from the night sky. They hit her cheeks, ice cold and wet, and she smiled a little.She wasn’t a fan of winter, but the first snow still made her heart race like a kid.Her hands were freezing by the time she arrived at the apartment. She forgot to bring gloves, so that was a mistake of her own. She dug around her coat pocket for her key, fumbling with numb fingers, before she jammed it into the lock.Rin breathed a sigh of relief when the door opened easily. The ghost hadn’t barricaded it to keep her out.The apartment looked untouched from what she saw as she stumbled inside, rushing to switch on the heater. There were no messages on the mirror in the bathroom, either, just her red nose and wet, matted hair.She settled down in front of the heater after microwaving her dinner, and called out to the ghost, “Did you miss me?”No answer.Rin grinned to herself and kept talking. “You know, I kinda missed you. I know you don’t say or do anything much, but at least you don’t call me fat like my mother does.”Nothing. It was getting awkward.“Please don’t spite me by writing that I’m fat on the mirror though,” she added with a mouth full of food. “I already cry in the shower enough.”Leaving it at that, she finished her dinner in silence and cleaned up the kitchen. When she curled up in her futon later that night, it felt like someone was sitting in the corner of the room, watching her. Rin had another dream in the beginning of spring.She was standing on a chair in the centre of her apartment. Part of her wanted to step off, but another part was begging her to stay still. She stood there under the light as it flickered, watching the dark corners of the room from where she stood. Her knees wobbled, but she didn’t move.For some reason, she knew that if she did, something horrible would happen.Then she woke up to the sound of her phone vibrating next to her head.Rin groaned, squinting over at it as she read the screen. It was eight in the morning, and her mother was calling.She answered, her voice coming out in a croak.“Rin? About time you answered. I called you twice and you didn’t pick up.”She sat up in her bed and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Sorry. I had my phone on silent.”Her mother sniffed. “You were sleeping, weren’t you? Do you ever do anything with your weekends, Rin?”“Yes,” Rin said, her voice hitching. “I do. It’s called doing chores. Why are you calling me?”The woman sighed. “I just wanted to let you know your father is in hospital.”God, was she at that age when everyone started dropping like flies? Rin licked her lips. “Why?”“It’s a respiratory infection,” she told her.“Oh,” Rin said. “Let me guess, from smoking?” She didn’t try to mask the bitterness in her tone.Her mother answered with silence. It meant yes, but that was a word she never said. Rin pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. “Is that all?” “No,” she continued. “I was also calling to say that your aunt recommended to me a diet for you to try out sometime—”“Mum,” Rin addressed. Her voice cracked and she paused, taking a breath. She wanted to tell her to shut up. She wanted to tell her that she didn’t care. But she didn’t. Instead, she asked, voice strangled, “Why am I never good enough for you?”Her mouth snapped shut as soon as she said it. It was like someone had punched her in the gut. Her ears burned, and she was glad they were talking over the phone and not in real life.Her mother paused, before saying, “What?”Rin rubbed her forehead. “It’s… nothing. It was nothing. I’ve got to go.”She hung up the phone and looked at it in her hand. Something hot bubbled under the surface of her skin, angry and festering, taking form in the stinging tears rushing to her vision. Her hand trembled, knuckles going white. Before she could think any better, she raised her arm and slugged her phone at the wall.Something stopped the hurtling object mid-throw, though. An invisible force seized it, wavering in the air across from her, like it was dangling from an invisible string. It then lowered and was tossed back to her feet.She stared down at the unharmed phone in awe, then looked back up to the empty space between her and the wall.Rin didn’t panic, for once. She didn’t feel scared. She was surprised, sure, but she didn’t feel as scared as she should have.“Thank you,” she said earnestly after a minute of silence. The ghost didn’t respond.She stared at the space for longer and necessary, as if waiting for a face to appear or some jumpscare or something, anything at all. But there was nothing.Rin laid back down in the futon and continued to sleep until noon.