The corridor outside was mostly empty.

He walked quickly, head down, still a little flushed.

Hana would be waiting for him.

He turned the corner.

He ran straight into someone.

Papers scattered.

Books hit the floor.

He caught the door frame to steady himself and looked up.

A girl stood in front of him.

Short black hair, pale skin, dark lipstick, three small piercings along her left ear.

A black fitted top that cut low, a short dark skirt, fishnet stockings running down her legs into heavy boots.

She was looking down at her scattered papers with her jaw set and her eyes narrow.

"What the fuck—" She looked up at him.

Her eyes were dark and sharp.

"Are you blind? Watch where you’re walking you absolute fucking idiot—" She stopped. Breathed through her nose. Her jaw tightened. "Pick those up. Now."

"Sorry," he said. He crouched and started gathering pages.

She crouched on the other side and gathered the rest without looking at him.

He stacked them neatly and held them out.

She took them from his hand without touching his hand.

He stood.

She stood.

Her eyes moved over him once, top to bottom, then away.

"If you walk into me again," she said, "I will curse you with such bad luck that you will trip over flat ground for the rest of your life."

She turned and walked away.

He watched her go for a second.

Then he turned and walked in the other direction.

The cafeteria was already past its peak rush when he arrived. He picked up a tray, took rice and fish and miso from the counter, and scanned the room.

Hana was at their usual table near the window.

Her tray was in front of her but her rice bowl was off to the side, slightly spilled, grains scattered across the tray. She was sitting very still with both hands in her lap and her eyes on the table.

That was not her normal posture.

He walked over and sat across from her.

"What happened?"

She looked up fast, startled.

Then her face changed — the tight look around her eyes loosened and the smile came back, a little sheepish.

"Nothing. It’s fine." She gestured at the spilled rice.

"I thought I saw a cockroach in my rice. I freaked out a little." She laughed, short and slightly forced.

"There was nothing there. I think I imagined it. I’ve been awake since like three in the morning."

"So early? Why?"

Her cheeks went pink immediately. She looked at the table. "I was just. Thinking."

"About what?"

She pressed her lips together.

"Today."

A pause.

"The dinner."

She looked up at him and then away and slapped her hand over her mouth.

"I did not mean to say that out loud."

She was red from her cheeks to her ears.

He looked at her face and felt his own face respond completely without his permission and looked down at his tray.

Neither of them said anything.

A group of students walked past their table laughing loudly.

A chair scraped somewhere behind him.

The cafeteria continued being a cafeteria around them while the two of them sat there red-faced and staring at their food.

"You can have some of my rice," he said.

She looked at his bowl.

"Oh." A pause. "Thanks."

She leaned over and took some with her chopsticks. He took some of his fish.

They ate.

The red faded slowly on both sides.

"We have a Psychology assignment due Friday," she said.

"I know."

"Have you started it?"

"No."

She pointed her chopsticks at him.

"Me neither." She took another bite of his rice. "I keep meaning to and then I just. Don’t."

"Same."

"At least we’re both failing equally," she said.

He ate his fish. "That’s one way to look at it."

She laughed.

He set his chopsticks down to pick up his miso.

In the surface of his tray, on the dull scratched metal, he caught a shape on the ceiling above and behind him.

Dark.

Pressed flat against the surface.

The outline roughly human but wrong, the limbs too long and folded too close to the body, the head turned at an angle that faced directly downward.

Toward Hana.

He looked up.

Nothing.

Empty ceiling.

Fluorescent lights.

A water stain in one corner shaped like a boot.

He looked back at his tray.

The reflection showed nothing unusual.

He picked up his miso and drank from it slowly.

One thing he had learned early as an exorcist — there were no hallucinations.

If he saw something the first time and it wasn’t there the second time, that didn’t mean it was never there.

It meant it moved.

Now...

He had confirmed.

It was a ghost. A troublesome one.

It knew he was an exorcist. It had felt his energy and pulled back the moment he reacted.

Testing. Measuring.

Deciding whether he was going to be a problem.

He set the miso down.

"You okay?" Hana asked.

She was looking at him with her head slightly tilted.

"Yeah." He picked his chopsticks back up. "Just tired."

She nodded and went back to her rice.

He looked at Hana.

She was still talking about the assignment, chopsticks pointing at nothing in particular, her light brown hair catching the afternoon light.

Her brow was slightly furrowed and her lips were twisted to one side and her eyes were bright.

"That sounds terrible," he said.

"It is terrible," she said.

He smiled.

He was going to exorcise it.

Whatever it was, wherever it was hiding.

He was going to find it and he was going to end it.