Ayano has done her research. The library staff know her by name now, and they only laugh a little when she takes a sharp turn between the shelves and marches towards the paranormal section. Over the past weeks she's stayed up late and read every wikipedia article on ghosts she could find, squinting in the dim light as her little sister sleeps peacefully next to her. Despite struggling over words she doesn't know and dates she can't remember, despite not being the studious type at all, a fascination burns within her, and she's not about to give up yet.
When she was a child, Ayano wanted to be a superhero, to punch bad guys and fight crime and save the world. Now, at age sixteen, bright-eyed and determined, Ayano's dream is to be a paranormal investigator.
Her father frowns over her insistence, and she knows he worries that it's because of her mother's death, but it has nothing to do with that at all. It may have been at first, a certain strain of denial that led her to chasing ghost stories, a certain morbid curiosity that roused her interest in seances. These days, though she hasn't forgotten her mother, she has other priorities in mind.
Her fingers slide down the neatly lettered spines, checking for any books she hasn't at least tried to read, but nothing catches her attention. Satisfied, she turns and climbs the stairs to the art section, which is as dusty and deserted of life as it always is.
She waits.
Konoha appears slowly at first. The dust raised in the air by her light breathing and swirls and twists together in midair to form a face, eyes empty, expression neutral. In just a few seconds he is there, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her in the dim light. He's so close that they appear to be touching, but Ayano can't feel anything at all.
"Good morning!" she chirps, tucking her hands behind her back, and he tilts his head towards her in confusion before angling his gaze towards the far off window, where sunlight slants in and lights dust motes afire.
"Hungry," he states, his voice mournful, and she laughs. Konoha is a ghost, so he's unable to eat. It hasn't stopped him from trying.
When she first met him here he'd tried to introduce himself in stuttering syllables he only seemed to half-remember, sounds repeating and looping and scrambling until she picked out some sort of pattern. Konoha may not be the name he went by when he was alive, but it's what she calls him, at least.
"Did you sleep well?" she asks, and apparently a ghost can at least do that, because a little smile crosses his face, and he nods.
It always takes Konoha several seconds to speak, and she wonders how many years he haunted this corner without anyone to talk to at all. Even though she's known about his existence for only a few weeks, already he seems to be doing better, stringing together words in a way that almost make sense to her.
Now, he reaches for her arm to get her attention, fingers passing through her sleeve in a whisper. A troubled expression appears on his face, though it fades as usual in a matter of seconds.
"I dreamed about you," he says, and it's the clearest and most coherent thing he's ever said to her. That knowledge makes Ayano's face light up, and if she could touch him she'd pull him into a celebratory hug, whirling his taller frame around until they knocked books from the shelves. As it is, she has to make do with jumping up and down on the spot in glee, trying to keep her delighted squeaking at a minimum so the librarians don't come to investigate.
"That's great! I've been dreaming about you a lot too. I tried to ask Dad if he knew if any students had ever died in the school, y'know, since he's been teaching here so long but... He didn't want to answer that, I guess." She doesn't blame her father for being uncomfortable with questions of death, but she still wishes he'd satisfy her curiosity already.
Her fascination with Konoha's living identity is tearing her to pieces. She can't concentrate in school, and her grades are even lower than usual because of it. She wants to know what he was like. She wants to know how old he was, what his name was, whether he's in this specific place because he liked art or because he liked books or because he was meeting someone special.
At that last part, she feels a twinge in her stomach, but she pushes it away, determined to ignore it.
More than anything, Ayano wants to see a picture of Konoha when he lived, before he had white hair and luminescent red eyes that seem almost to glow in the low light, and she can feel her cheeks warm under his gaze. She can almost imagine what he'd look like alive, and maybe she spends too much time on such thoughts, but she wants to be sure. The only way to do that is a photograph, but her investigations of the school's old records has proved fruitless so far.
Ayano turns her attention back to him, and he's still waiting patiently for her, long white eyelashes blinking at her slowly.
"We'll figure it out together!" she insists, holding her hand up for a high five.
His palm only passes through hers when he tries to return the gesture, and goosebumps appear on her skin from the chill, but her smile doesn't fade one bit. After a second, he does his best to mirror it, corners of his mouth tipping upwards, and she feels like celebrating again. The answers are there, just waiting to be found. She can feel it.