The professor was midway through a lecture on deviance and social norms.

Kaito was not listening.

He had his phone under the desk, angled just enough to hide it, and he was looking at a conversation he had been carefully constructing all morning.

hey, where are you? — sent at 8:12am.everything ok? — sent at 8:47am.you’re not usually this quiet — sent at 9:30am.hey you okay? missed calls too, getting worried — sent four minutes ago.

He had also called twice.

The first time he let it ring out.

The second time he hung up after two rings.

He did not need her to answer.

He needed the call log to exist.

He turned the phone face down on his thigh and looked at the board.

The plan was clean.

After this class he would walk to her apartment building, stand on the street outside with just enough hesitation, look confused, ask a neighbour if they had seen Hana recently, and wait for the information to come to him naturally. Someone would mention it.

Hospital.

Then he would react.

Concern first.

Then shock.

Then urgency.

He would go to the hospital as a worried friend who had no idea any of this had happened and had simply been trying to reach her all morning.

The texts were the proof.

A natural trail of escalating concern, timestamped, visible, ordinary.

Nothing forced.

Nothing suspicious.

He had prepared answers to approximately fourteen follow-up questions.

He had a story for the bruise on his jaw.

He had a story for the ribs.

He had checked that the stories did not contradict each other.

He had checked twice.

He had spent his entire metro ride thinking through this.

Adjusting it.

Refining it.

Running it again.

It was, he thought with a quiet exhale, an enormous amount of effort just to visit a friend...

Maybe more than a friend.

He picked up the phone again.

calling again, pick up if you can

He sent it.

He called.

It rang.

No answer.

He ended it.

Set the phone back down.

"You look like you got into a fight with a cat."

Kaito didn’t turn.

The old man was beside him.

Grey jacket. White hair. Hands folded on the desk, edges just slightly wrong, not fully there.

He was looking at Kaito’s jaw with narrowed eyes.

"A cat does not almost break ribs," Kaito said.

"Hm." The old man leaned closer. "Maybe it was a big cat."

Kaito didn’t react.

"So?" the old man said. "What really happened to you?"

"I met a ghost," Kaito said. "Last night."

The old man’s eyebrows shot up.

Then his whole posture changed.

He leaned forward, interested.

"A ghost?" He leaned forward. "What, did you go super saiyan? Did you Kamehameha it with your spiritual power? Did it explode in a big flash of—"

"No."

"No flash?"

"No."

"No explosion?"

"No."

The old man leaned back slowly.

He considered this.

"That’s disappointing."

Kaito glanced at him.

"You watch too many cartoons."

"No, I just have expectations," the old man said. "If it’s a fight between energies, i need a few blasts atleast."

"It’s not like that at all."

The old man nodded, accepting that.

"Still," he said. "Exciting life you have."

"Not really."

"Then why the long face?"

Kaito said nothing.

He looked back at the board.

The professor was writing something about conformity theory.

Chalk scraping.

The old man watched him instead.

Then his eyes shifted.

To the phone.

Back to Kaito.

Then back again.

He tilted his head.

Slow.

"The ghost last night," he said.

A pause.

"And you have been texting your girlfriend all morning."

Another pause.

"She is not replying."

Kaito didn’t move.

The old man leaned in slightly.

"hm...Was your girlfriend attacked by a ghost last night," he said, voice lowering, sharpening, "or was she possessed by the ghost?"

Kaito turned his head.

"Are you a detective?"

"Am I right?"

"And stop looking at my texts."

"Oh."

A small nod. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

"So I am right."

Kaito looked back at the board.

"I am sorry," the old man said.

His voice had settled into something quieter, stripped of the earlier curiosity. "That must have been frightening. I hope she recovers quickly."

"Thank you," Kaito said.

He meant that.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

Around them, chairs creaked. Someone two rows ahead flipped a page too loudly and then stopped, aware of it.

The professor turned, wrote Milgram Experiment on the board in uneven chalk, and began explaining obedience.

Kaito picked up his pen and wrote the name down.

He didn’t look at it.

"Your spiritual energy," the old man said.

Kaito glanced sideways.

"It feels off."

The old man wasn’t looking at his face now. His gaze moved slowly up and down his body, like he was tracing something that didn’t sit on the surface.

"There is something dark mixed in," he said. "Subtle. But it is there."

Kaito looked down at his hands resting on the desk.

"It is probably the nightmares," he said.

"Nightmares? Are they different than the usual?" The old man asked, curious again.

"Strong aberrations leave traces of dark energy in the atmosphere when they pass by. Void ghosts. Umbral remnants." He shifted his fingers slightly, watching them as he spoke.

"Usually our spiritual energy keeps it out. But when I deplete badly, my defences drop, and that ambient dark energy slips in."

He paused.

"It gives me nightmares. Painful ones." His gaze stayed on his hands.

Another small pause.

"I’m used to it."

He paused, listening to his own voice as if it belonged to someone else.

"It usually clears by the next day."

"That happens to you often?"

"Enough."

The old man tilted his head.

"The others too? Other exorcists?"

Kaito shrugged.

"Maybe."

He looked at the board.

"In my family it was considered a sign of weakness. Frequent nightmares meant you weren’t strong enough to keep the dark energy out."

A small pause.

"My cousins used to tease me about it when I complained about them."

His pen rolled once under his fingers.

He stopped it.

He didn’t elaborate on the rest.

His father’s speechless expression.

His sister’s mocking laugh.

His mother’s quiet consolation, soft enough to be kind, visible enough to make it worse when the cousins noticed.

The old man went quiet.

Something was moving behind his eyes, slow, pieces shifting into place.

"Ah," he said.

Kaito glanced at him.

"I remember it now."

A beat.

"What?"

"Where I know it from."

The old man’s gaze dropped.

To the desk.

To the seat.

"That dark energy in you," he said. "I’ve seen it before."

Kaito’s fingers stilled.

"Where?"

"Here. right here."

The old man gestured lightly at the classroom, but he wasn’t looking around it.

He was looking at the exact spot Kaito was sitting.

"Right where you are sitting."

"About a week ago," he went on, "my son came back late at night. He had forgotten a book in his office. I came along."

A chair scraped somewhere behind them.

The professor kept talking.

Chalk against board.

The old man didn’t break.

"He got the book and was leaving. Passed through this room."

A pause.

"Then I saw it. There was something sitting exactly where you are sitting now."

Kaito didn’t move.

"It was late," the old man said. "Dark. But I saw it."

His voice slowed, not dramatic, just careful.

"A figure. Tall. Large. Curvy and big boobs I think."

"..."

"Just sitting there."

He leaned back slightly.

"I thought nothing of it at the time."

A small shrug.

"But the dark energy..."

He glanced at Kaito.

"...it’s the same. I can feel it."

Kaito looked down.

At his seat.

The edge of the desk.

The faint scratches in the wood.

The place where his hands had been resting.

The room was full.

Students shifting.

Afternoon light coming through the windows.

The professor’s voice steady, explaining something that didn’t reach him.

None of it touched him.

The cold at the base of his spine didn’t move.

Whatever that thing was, it had probably been coming to this university long before he had joined this university.

Moving through the buildings. Sitting wherever it wanted. Passing through empty rooms.

This place wasn’t anything special.

But maybe for it, it was.

He had only been here two weeks.

The seat was just a seat. The fact that it had chosen that specific chair and he had also chosen that specific chair was nothing more than two people independently picking the same spot.

Coincidence.

That was the simple version.

That was the version with high probability.

He almost believed it.

But then another version came to him.

It had been there first. He had pushed it aside.

That it wasn’t a coincidence.

That whatever had been here had known exactly which seat to sit in.

That what he saw in his dream last night wasn’t random dark energy slipping into him while he was depleted.

...Darling~~~~

That voice had felt familiar.

Not enough to place.

Enough to notice.

Maybe.

That it had been watching.

For him.

He sat with that for a moment.

His hands were very still on the desk. The pen was clenched tighter than he realised.

The old man said nothing. He watched Kaito instead, noticing the tension, the way he had gone quiet all at once.

TRIIIIIIING

The bell rang.

Kaito exhaled.