Luke froze.
He walked slowly to the door and looked through the peephole.
Yuki was standing there.
She was wearing a cute little dress, something floral and light. Her hair was down, falling over her shoulders. She looked like she'd stepped out of an anime. Perfect. Beautiful. Like nothing bad had ever happened.
Luke's hand hesitated on the doorknob.
BUT he finanly opened the door slowly.
Yuki smiled at him. that same small, polite smile from Halloween night, the one that had turned into a nightmare later and still gave him goosebumps whenever he thought about it.
"Can I stay at your place tonight?"
she asked.
**
What happened next was kind of predictable, if Luke was being honest with himself.
The truth was, from the first moment he saw her face on Halloween night, he'd wanted her. That thought had been sitting in the back of his mind this whole time, even through all the chaos and humiliation.
But now their relationship was weird and complicated. He hadn't even asked her why she deleted her account yet.
And then somehow they were already done.
Luke sat on the couch afterwards, catching his breath.
His apartment was still a mess. Nothing had changed except now Yuki was here again, sitting cross-legged on his bed wearing one of his oversized t-shirts, her hair messy and her cheeks still a little flushed.
"So," Luke finally said. "Why'd you delete your account?"
Yuki looked at him with those dark eyes and smiled.
"Because I want us to be TIED together."
"What?"
"Like, bound. Connected."
She crawled over to sit next to him on the couch, tucking her legs under her.
"We're going to be a couple channel now. One person exploring alone is boring. From now on, you take me with you everywhere."
She leaned against his shoulder, her voice getting playful. "Like, there's this abandoned hospital in Riverside I've wanted to check out forever. And that old theme park in Clearwater? The one that closed down in the 1970s?"
Luke's brain was still foggy. "Wait, you mean you want to.."
"Make videos together, as a couple."
Yuki traced a finger along his arm. "Think about it. Everyone already thinks we're together anyway. The comments, the shipping, all of it. We might as well make it real."
She tilted her head up to look at him, her lips curving into a mischievous smile.
"Plus, you're kind of broke now, right? No job. I can help with that. We'll split everything 50-50. Views, money, all of it."
She had a point. Several points, actually.
"And if I say no?" Luke asked.
Yuki giggled and pressed closer against him.
"You won't. You like me too much.I can tell, dummy."
**
After that, Luke's videos changed completely.
His channel name went from "Luke's Dark Side" to "Luke & Yuki: Dark Travels." Every video now featured both of them. The comment sections exploded since people just loved seeing them together, loved the dynamic between the skeptical American guy and the mysterious Japanese girl who seemed to know way too much about supernatural stuff.
Yuki started sharing Japanese folklore in their videos. Not the cute stuff tourists heard about, but the really dark, twisted stories that made people uncomfortable.
Like the tale of the Funayūrei.
"They're the ghosts of people who drowned at sea," Yuki explained to the camera one night as they explored an abandoned lighthouse on the coast. The wind was howling outside, and the beam from Luke's flashlight kept catching her face at weird angles. "But they're not like Western ghosts. They don't just haunt. They actively try to drown more people."
"How?" Luke asked, filming her.
"They rise from the water with wooden ladles," Yuki said, her voice getting quieter. "Hishaku, we call them. They approach boats in the dark, seem very friendly at first...these pale figures in the water, asking for help, but once you let them close, they start filling your boat with water.
Scoop, by scoop,by sccop...
until your boat sinks and you join them..
at the bottom of the ocean."
She paused.
Then she turned to look at Luke, her expression strange.
"Have you ever seen a green ocean?"
Luke blinked.
"What? No, oceans are blue. You mean like dark green? Like a deep lake or...?"