Kaito sat back.
He looked down at his palm, still open on his knee.
It glowed.
Faint, barely visible, the kind of thing only he would catch.
A few stops back, while she had been looking out the window at the station they were passing through, he had drawn the detection pattern on his palm with the tip of his other finger.
Slow and quiet.
She hadn't noticed.
Nobody did.
The handshake wasn't awkward instinct.
He had wanted to know.
She had walked into class and sat beside him and waited for him to wake up and talked with him easily the whole way here.
Maybe she was just a normal person being normal.
But he had needed to be sure.
If she had been an Aberration he would have felt the shock the moment skin touched skin.
A Ghost, a Lingering Spirit, an Umbral — any of them would have set it off.
Nothing had.
Just warmth. Just a normal hand.
She was a normal girl.
She had talked with him.
He had talked with her.
It had gone well.
He had made her laugh more than once. She had called him pleasant.
She had waited for him to wake up and then walked with him to the metro and they had talked the whole way and it had felt easy.
He had talked to a girl.
A real one. And it had gone well.
He turned and pressed his face hard into his bag.
His ears were burning. His cheeks were burning.
He was very aware of how he looked right now and could not stop.
A woman across the aisle glanced over.
The man beside her looked up from his phone. They caught each other's eye and smiled quietly.
The train continued toward Kasuga park.
.
The ramen place was a ten minute walk from Kasuga park station.
He had spotted it his first week in the neighborhood — a small counter place, six seats, the kind that kept the menu short and got everything right.
He ordered at the counter, waited, took the plastic bag by the handles and walked home the long way.
There was no particular reason for the long way.
The evening was cool.
The streets were lit.
He wasn't in a hurry to get back to anything.
He passed a convenience store and didn't go in.
He passed a small park where an old man was walking a dog.
The dog looked up at him, studied him for a moment, then looked away.
A Lingering Spirit sat on the park bench nearby, watching the old man and the dog.
An elderly woman, her clothes from a different decade.
She didn't notice Kaito.
Her eyes were only for them.
Further down the street a young man in a school uniform stood outside a closed shop window, looking in.
Still. Patient.
Whatever he was waiting for wasn't coming. He had probably known that for a while.
By the time he turned onto his street the sky was fully dark.
The streetlights were on.
The neighborhood had settled into the quiet that came after dinner when everyone was already inside.
He pushed open the gate and stepped onto the front path.
"Welcome home, Kai~~~."
He didn't flinch.
He had stopped flinching at that months ago, or told himself he had.
She was right behind him.
He hadn't heard her.
He never heard her.
She simply wasn't there and then she was, her voice at his ear from a feet away.
He looked down at the ground in front of him.
Her shadow stretched forward over his, long and wide, swallowing it completely.
It reached the front door and climbed the wood.
He stood there for a moment.
The ramen bag in his hand.
His shadow gone under hers. The door ahead of him.
"How was your day?" Sweet. Completely unhurried.
"Normal," he said.
He reached into his pocket for his keys. Walked to the door. Unlocked it.
He turned the handle and pushed the door inward. Stepped inside. Turned around and pressed it shut behind him.
It stopped.
Two centimeters from the frame. He pressed harder. It didn't move.
He looked down at the gap.
Her fingers were there, four of them, pushed through the narrow gap from outside and braced against the inner face of the door.
Long fingers, nails neat, holding the door open with no visible effort.
He pressed with his shoulder. Nothing.
"Leave," he said.
He raised one hand, spiritual energy pale in his palm, and brought it down hard on her fingers where they pressed against the door.
She pulled them back.
He shoved the door.
It moved half a centimeter before her other hand came through the gap and braced again.
Still. Immovable.
His eyes moved to the key hook on the wall beside him.
A small metal keychain hung from it, catching the light from inside the house.
In its curved surface, against the darkness outside, one red eye looked back at him.
Completely still. Not blinking. Not moving.
The back of his neck went cold.
"Leave the door," he said.
She said nothing. The eye didn't move.
"Who was that girl, Kai~~~?"
"A classmate." Sweat at the back of his neck now. "Let go of the—"