ENTITLED: Our Eyes Closed
FANDOM: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun
GENRE: Supernatural
DISCLAIMER: Your questions are hurtful.NOTES: My feet are cold. This is horrible. Why does this always happen! What's wrong with my circulation? I'm only twenty! Am I going to have a heart attack?
LENGTH: 7/21
SUMMARY: Natsume and Sasayan tackle every genre fiction has to offer. And it is sexy. – drabble collection, seventh: supernatural.


Her stolen exam crinkled underneath her shirt as Natsume loitered about in the hallway outside the teacher's lounge. She knew it would have been smarter to leave immediately, and start cramming the correct answers into her head as quickly as possible, but—

The door slid back, and Sasayan shuffled out, looking exhausted. Yamada-sensei gave him a final clap on the back, and said cheerfully, "You'll be a very welcome edition to the group! I expect to see you next Wednesday!"

"Thank you," Sasayan said miserably, and slid the door shut. Natsume stared at him, her eyes enormous, certain that he was about to yell at her.

"No more favors," Sasayan muttered. "For a month."

"No. I promise."

"And I want ice cream after school."

"Yes," Natsume agreed immediately. She was so sorry she probably would have bought him a dozen ice-creams, if he'd asked for it.

Looking pained, Sasayan turned to go, and Natsume ducked into the nearest bathroom to begin reviewing the answers for the exam she would inevitably have to retake. Hopefully.

The bathroom she had chosen was seldom used, being at the very end of the hall, and even before the bell had rung for class, the place was deserted. Natsume settled into the last stall, and started working through the problems.

It was very quiet, once everyone else had gone to their classrooms. One of the faucets was a little broken, and dripped fairly heavily. Something about that sort of bothered her.

Trigonometry was stupid, Natsume decided, and erased her work for what must have been the third time. What was the point in understanding something that was mostly theoretical anyway?

The faucet had stopped dripping.

Natsume tensed.

Why wasn't anyone using this bathroom, anyway? There were some classes nearby, after all, and it was a fairly large school. It was weird that—

Wait.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

Natsume remembered. There'd been an incident, years before she had even been born, about bullying at this school. Some girl—Sayumi? Sayuki? had been pushed too hard and had accidentally struck her temple against one of the sinks.

The faucet was still quiet.

Had that girl died? Hadn't it been over a boy?

Natsume gripped her test a little more tightly as the silence continued, and then winced as the hard edge of one page cut through the skin of her index finger. She watched as a hot, bright bead of blood grew, and then fell to the floor. It landed just as the sink began to drip again.

Natsume put her hand over her mouth. She was being stupid. Stupid. The dripping was getting louder. She remembered now. The girl's name had been Sayumi and she'd had a reputation for using her looks to manipulate boys. A nasty girl. Probably a nasty ghost. But then, weren't all ghosts angry, in some way?

But, of course, Natsume reasoned, all of that might have been completely untrue! Poor Sayumi had probably just been a victim of the same rumor that Natsume had suffered!

It was funny how the two of them came to be in exactly the same bathroom, though. It was almost like they were kindred spirits. It was almost like Sayumi was just a little too close—

Without warning, the toilet Natsume had been sitting on flushed.

Natsume shot to her feet, crammed her unfinished exam back down her shirt, and bolted out of the stall. The mirror by the sinks had fogged up. There were little smudges in the corners that looked suspiciously like handprints.

And there was red in the sink.

Natsume stared. Her mouth opened.

"You don't understand I know that he likes me and okay so maybe I used him a little bit but I didn't mean for him to sign up for the math club and oh my god things just got way out of hand and I really, really didn't mean to have that happen but I swear I will study next time and also I will buy him ice cream and try to value his friendship properly and I would leave but there are hall monitors and I don't want to get in trouble but I DON'T WANT TO DIE. "

The final bell rang, every single toilet flushed ominously, the lights went out, and Natsume got the hell out of there.