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A Gundam Wing Fanfic
by: Yuuki Miyaka
I was once like you. I didn't believe in ghosts or spirits and laughed at those who did. Yet I have felt the spirit I will tell you about with my own being. I am not a fanciful man, like some of my friends are. I believe only in the here and now. And what I felt was definitely in the here and now.
There is a place not far from here, a house in the country-side. One of my friends left it to me after his death, and I lived there happily for only a few nights before I began to feel a presence within it. While I am not fanciful, I do have a rather bad case of paranoia. I'm certain it's due to the war, a survival instinct in a place where I do not feel safe. So I ignored the feelings, continuing to go about my daily life despite the certain feeling that I was being watched.
A few days later, it occurred to me that the feeling was strongest in the upstairs bedroom. I actually slept in the next room over, but I'd made it a sitting room, where I studied. And it was during these study sessions that I was being observed. After realizing this, I decided to perform a small experiment. I moved the studying to my own bedroom, and slept a night in the room in question. It was, perhaps, one of the stupidest mistakes I'd ever done.
Instead of just being watched, as I had expected, I began to hear noises. Early in the evening, just after sunset, they were barely more than whispers, mutterings that were incomprehensible to any but the speaker himself. As the hour grew later, the voice grew louder, the mutterings becoming audible beyond tiny whispers. Don't get me wrong. They were still whispers. But now, I could understand a word or two from time to time, just enough to know that the speaker must be mad. How did I come upon this conclusion? Simplicity itself.
At the time, I had yet to identify the speaker, let alone understand under precisely what circumstances he was talking. All I knew was that he spoke of being a traitor to the cause. And as his ramblings became more audible, I discovered that no one seemed to know of his 'traitorous' activities. Shocked, I continued to listen, hearing the voice moan about betraying not only the cause, but his own heart. I say 'his' you'll notice. This isn't just a guess. Even at the time, it was clear that the whisperer was a man.
Eventually, around eleven, the voice trailed off. I relaxed only a few moments before I felt the bed I was sleeping on, a king-sized piece of luxury I saw no point in removing, dip. It took me a moment to realize that someone was sitting on the bed beside me. I sat bolt upright at that, and felt the dip leave, as though whoever-it-was had risen again. Wildly, I gazed about the room, trying in vain to see the person who was with me. There was no one there.
Enough, you say? I'm telling you nothing that you haven't heard before? Very well then. Let me continue and you will understand precisely what I'm talking about.
Determined to prove to myself that it hadn't been a dream, I invited the most pragmatic of all of my friends to stay over the next week. Telling him nothing of what I'd felt, I put him in the same room that had frightened me so and waited. To my surprise, I received no visit that night, and had to wait until the following morning to find out that he'd experienced the same situation I had. Blinking, I asked him about the presence on the bed, and he said that in curiosity, he'd waited to see what would happen. After the initial dip of the spirit, for that is the only explanation my mind can come up with, sitting, my friend went on to say that he felt the spirit shift into a prone position for sleep. My friend went on to explain that he'd stayed awake the entire night, and it was just like sleeping with someone else in the same bed, right down to the periodic tossing and turning.
Stunned, I began to do research on the house, only to discover that it'd been built during the war and had never housed any but my late friend and myself. So how was I to explain it? Was it the spirit of my late friend? But I couldn't credit the idea. After all, he'd been completely dedicated to our cause throughout the war, never straying from his beliefs.
As if that weren't enough, I began to feel another presence in the downstairs portion of the house. Initially, I assumed that it was the same being, and ignored it as I had while studying. But instead of ignoring me as well, it began to follow me. As the days continued and I noticed this phenomenon, I began to grow more frightened. You see, I felt more violence in this one. And it was because of this that I began to realize that the spirit here was a different one from my 'guest' upstairs.
Once I realized the potential for violence in the ghost downstairs, I began to experience it firsthand. The first situation occurred in the library. I'd been looking at a particular book of poetry, considering reading it. When I finally reached for it, it flew across the room, hitting the wall opposite. Stunned, I stared at it for a long time before going to pick it up, thinking that somehow I'd managed to toss it there. But before I could get halfway to it, it flew back to the shelf again, lodging itself firmly in its place and refusing to budge no matter how much I pulled at it.
That was just the first event of many. I believe they're called poltergeist episodes. Whatever they're called, the ghost upstairs was now beginning to wander himself. From time to time, I would wake to feel him at the foot of my bed, watching me. During one of these visits, I had the greatest shock to date.
I'd grown used to being watched while I slept, and rarely woke anymore at that point. But for some reason, I sat upright in my bed that night, eight months after I'd first moved into the house, staring at the foot of my bed. The whispers had started again, loud enough that I could understand a few words every once in a while. To my surprise, I heard the spirit speaking my name. Wondering about it, I listened closer, and discovered that he was apologizing-to me! Stunned, I asked quietly why I should be the one to receive the apology, and was actually answered!
"I was the reason OZ kept finding out our plans, Heero," the ghost moaned softly. "You trusted me, but you shouldn't have. No one should have." With that said, the presence was gone again, leaving me stunned. There was only one person this could be. You must understand, of my friends in the war, only one is now dead. Chang Wufei had passed away peacefully.
When the morning came, I began to dig up the records of Wufei's death, to understand it better. And it was with a feeling of anti-climax that I discovered that he'd passed away peacefully in the room across from mine. Well, that would explain his presence, but what about the being downstairs? I was still puzzled.
I decided to systematically search the house for any clues as to who it might be. When the initial search revealed nothing, I began to search the room where Wufei had died, checking the walls and floorboards as well as any other hiding place I could think of. And finally, I found what I was looking for.
Under the chair I'd always studied in, a rather heavy armchair, was a loose floorboard. Under that floorboard, lay a leather-bound and dusty book. I glanced through it, then realized that it was handwritten in an almost completely defunct Chinese dialect. I headed to the library to find a dictionary, only to have the volume swept out of my hands the moment I hit the bottom floor. The spirit there was furious. I could feel the rage. Blocking out my fear, I grabbed the book back up, searched the library until I found what I wanted, and headed back upstairs. I could feel the spirit try to follow, only to be blocked at the stairs. Once upstairs, I settled into the chair and began to puzzle out the contents of the book.
It was Wufei's diary, of course, deliberately written in an almost-dead tongue so that it would be more difficult to translate. Slowly, painstakingly, I began to realize that all the while Wufei had been a pilot, he'd been seeing Treize Krushrenada, leader of OZ. As much as the idea surprised me-Wufei had always been something of a prude-I began to understand why he thought of himself as a traitor. Perhaps Treize had pumped him of information about the rest of us. But that wasn't where the story ended.
Apparently, Wufei had invited Treize to stay with him after the war was over. We'd all thought Treize dead, but obviously he hadn't been. According to the diary, their first weeks together had been peaceful enough, but as Treize took over more and more, Wufei became disillusioned with the relationship, especially since as long as he was with Treize, he couldn't ever tell any of us the truth.
And then I found the reason for the ghost downstairs. They'd fought, Wufei's diary said, and fought badly. Wufei had decided to leave Treize, but Treize wouldn't allow it. So they'd fought, and Wufei had struck Treize. Treize's death had been an accident, one that had destroyed Wufei's spirit. Unable to tell anyone, Wufei had disposed of the body-just where he didn't say-and holed himself up in the house. After that, the diary ended.
I could feel Wufei's relief that I'd finally discovered his secret, and I asked him to show me where he'd put Treize's body. But no answer was forthcoming. Determined to get to the bottom of this, I invited the other pilots over, all except for Milliard Peacecraft, whose duties in the Sanq Kingdom kept him occupied.
It amused Trowa to find out that the guest he'd been bothered by that entire night was truly Wufei. The rest were stunned to learn of Wufei's lingering presence, and Duo was especially shocked to learn that the reason he'd never been able to get close to the Chinese pilot was due to Treize. Quatre immediately went downstairs, opening himself to the other presence. The rest of us watched from the stairwell.
But the kind gesture on Quatre's part angered the ghost, who shoved him back. Trowa sprang to his rescue, and we all heard hollow, mocking laughter. I demanded that Treize show us his body, and the laughter stopped. The entire room went chill, and beside me Duo shivered. And then, suddenly, I felt the presence recede into the library. I followed, curious. As the others tiptoed after me, I felt the being stand just before the back wall of the library. Looking back at the others curiously, I headed toward it.
"Maybe it's a spinning wall and you have to pull something to get it to turn," Duo chirped, and I shot him a dirty look. Such things were found only in movies. But nonetheless, I began scouring the books. Each dusty volume seemed to fit Wufei's tastes well enough, and just as I was about to give up, I saw it. The volume of poetry I'd been considering reading the first time I'd encountered Treize's ghost. I stared at the book for a long moment, then turned toward the east wall. Immediately, I could see the one I'd found, the one that had startled me by flying across the room.
With shaking hands, I reached up, grasping the volume and pulling. There was a click, and then the column of shelves swung open. The four of us looked at each other, then down into the darkness. There was a stairwell going down, but the blackness was so complete that we couldn't see beyond the light of the secret door.
Trowa went to get flashlights, and we headed down, carefully. It was cold in the basement room, and it smelled rather unusual. "The smell of death," Duo said. After we'd reached the bottom of the stairs, we found only one door to go through. Opening it, we were greeted with a small room empty but for the table in the center and the half-decayed skeleton on the table. Quatre choked and turned back, refusing to go in further. Trowa fell back to make sure Quatre was all right, as Duo and I headed in to investigate. It didn't take long to determine that what was left of the uniform belonged to an OZ general.
We looked at each other, then headed out of the room, closing it up firmly. That night I packed some clothing and stayed at Duo's. There was no talk of what we'd learned about Wufei. I never went back to the house, instead having my things delivered to a new place. I've never sold the place, preferring instead to let the dead rest in peace. But I wonder if perhaps Wufei had wanted me to find out his secret. Perhaps, just perhaps, he'd finally grown tired of carrying the weight of it alone.
I understand that the groundskeeper is sometimes plagued by ghostly voices and strange presences. But every time he complains, I merely scowl at him. And now you know the story. Do you believe yet?
-Owari-