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Of Galge and Imaginary Friends
Chapter 34
Last time in Of Galge and Imaginary Friends…
And, thus, the shimmering on the walls disappeared and Okaa-san, Matsuri, and Inori left the living room, leaving the twins and Kanata alone.
"Onee-chan?" asked Tsukasa, looking extremely confused by the entire situation. "What just happened?"
Kagami sighed. "Come on; I need to fill you in on today's stuff, anyway, so I'll try to explain as best I can."
Kanata -MB01-
Tuesday, June 7
Rarely was Kanata able to take advantage of the perks of being a ghost; she got bored too easily for her inability to sleep or talk to anyone except Kagami to be useful, while walking through walls lost most of its luster after a few months of spirithood. However, for once, she was able to use these factors for good.
After confirming that she could, in fact, still pass through anything except the floor and Kagami, a task wrought with difficulty due to what Kanata called, for lack of a better term, her green-touchy-focus-powered-barrier-thing, she spent the rest of the night pondering what, exactly, had happened. This out-loud thinking - why do it silently when only one person could hear her? - had a second purpose: helping a worried Kagami, who stayed awake hours later than usual, come to terms with the new turn of events. The spirit continued muttering to herself even after her hauntee fell asleep, of course, since there wasn't much else to do, anyway.
Idly sticking her hand through the wall for the fourth time in an hour (she'd long lost count of how many times she'd done it that night), Kanata continued her musing. "I can still do this. I couldn't do it when the walls were shimmery. The walls were shimmery only after Miki-san let go of Kaga-chan's necklace. Kaga-chan's necklace made it so she doesn't need to strain to hold back her electric…thing. It's not really a stretch to say that Miki-san can do strange stuff, too, including making things other than Kagami and the floor able to touch me."
Kanata shivered, despite having not felt cold for well over a decade, at the thought's continuation: if Miki could cause things to affect her, then Miki could probably kill her.
"Kill…rekill?" Any seriousness that had infiltrated the spirit's thoughts leaked out. "No, that doesn't really sound good. Unkill, since ghosts are undead? But that sounds like I'm being resurrected or something. Can you kill something that's dead, anyway?"
Light murmuring came from Kagami's bed, taking the spirit's attention from her thoughts and focusing them on the lavender-haired teenager. She wasn't awake yet - she fell asleep at two, just over four hours ago - but, then again, neither was anybody else. Kanata would wake her up like normal, later; it was a school day, after all.
As the blue-haired woman focused on her hauntee, she felt the finger still in the wall freeze. "Again?" she sighed, turning toward the offending appendage. It was surrounded by the green touchy focus-powered barrier thing. "This is getting annoying, you know," continued the ghost. "Every time I try to think about something seriously, you act up and make me have to focus on not focusing, which, of course, doesn't work at all, since that focus also keeps you…great, now I confused myself."
At that moment, said confusion broke the focus that was maintaining the green touchy focus-powered barrier thing, causing the spirit's hand to fall from the wall.
"…I wonder if this is how Kaga-chan feels when she wants to hit somebody." A moment, in which Kanata carefully considered the hand that had been stuck, passed. "I should probably learn to control this, right, Kaga-chan?"
The answer, if it could be called that, didn't come from Kagami at all.
"Onee-chan?" a very familiar voice said from outside the room. Slowly, the door opened, revealing Tsukasa, fully dressed and wide awake. "Onee-chan!" the girl called out again.
"No…no way," muttered Kanata in awe. "Everything else I can believe, but this…I must be dreaming. Or Miki-san's barrier messed up my brain or something. Right, Kaga-chan? …Right? Right?!"
The spirit's panicked cries apparently got to Kagami, whose eyes blinked open. Strangely enough, though sparks danced across the long-haired twin, they didn't arc like they usually did, likely, Kanata thought, because of the necklace. "What are you yelling-"
"Good morning, Onee-chan!"
"…I'm dreaming, right?"
"I said the same thing, Kaga-chan. Do you want me to pinch you?"
Kanata's offer was ignored. "Then…I slept through school?"
"It's morning, Kaga-chan."
"Ah!" Tsukasa exclaimed as she figured out why her sister was so surprised. Looking a little sheepish, she explained, "I couldn't go to sleep no matter how hard I tried."
A sigh of relief escaped Kanata's lips; this, at least, made far more sense than Tsukasa waking up early, a sure sign of the apocalypse. Kagami apparently thought the same, though she made an effort to conceal it.
"Well, you weren't really conscious most of yesterday," allowed Kagami, nodding slightly. "Since I'm now wide awake, I might as well get ready, too."
"Please take care of the house, Spirit-san!" Tsukasa whispered as she, Kagami, and Kanata left for school. The night before, in an admittedly habitual effort to hide the spirit's identity, Kagami had explained Miki's mention of the ghost as, "Okaa-san said that there's a spirit hanging around."
Apparently, Tsukasa believed Kanata to be some sort of house guardian, which started the ghost a-giggling for the first time since the sudden "discussion" with Miki the day before. Perhaps due to the record-breaking absence of laughter - from all accounts, she had even giggled in her sleep when she was alive - or, more probably, at the image she had of herself flailing uselessly at unknowing burglars, what would normally be a shorter round of light laughter became one that lasted all the way to the station.
When Kanata's giggles finally faded, she took in the scene before her. On a bench, far from anybody else at the unusually early hour, sat Kagami, eyes nearly closed as she tried to hold back her tiredness (she wasn't as wide awake as she had claimed, apparently), and Tsukasa, staring off somewhere by the vending machines. Neither of the twins noticed a third figure, swaying slightly and wearing mismatched shoes, approach from behind a nearby pillar. Kanata had to bite her lip to keep herself from giggling again.
Only when that figure bent down right in front of Kagami's face did anybody react. Startled, the twintailed teenager cried out, incidentally knocking Tsukasa from her reverie, and swung her sparking-but-not-arcing left fist at the head of her "assaulter." Apparently sensing danger, the new arrival leaned away, though she wasn't fast enough to avoid it.
Wha-boom!
"Ow~!"
"Wha-oomph!"
Most likely, only the smaller girl's quick reaction kept her from being thrown across the platform; as it was, though, she had rolled into a ball, clutching her head and repeating, "Ow!" repeatedly. Kagami, on the other hand, was slammed back into the bench seat rather forcefully, knocking the breath out of her.
"Kagami used Thunder Punch," muttered Konata after a few seconds. "A critical hit…ow…"
"Wah!" Tsukasa cried, looking back and forth between her sister and classmate, completely unsure of what to do.
Kagami, rolling her wrist, also looked shocked - Kanata giggled a little at the accidental pun - though she quickly recovered. "Konata, are you okay?" she asked, rushing toward her fallen friend. However, she didn't dare touch the girl; her anxiety apparently started her sparking again, though it still wasn't arcing.
"…Kagami is worried about me," the blue-haired teenager uttered, slowly beginning to rise. "Points…obtained." As she reached her full height, she weakly raised one hand in a victory pose.
Kanata sighed a little; not only was Konata exaggerating her condition, she was also still taking the spirit's final (living) words too seriously.
Apparently (Kanata was becoming both rather fond of this word and annoyed by how often she seemed to use it), Kagami picked up on either the living Izumi girl's embellishment or the dead one's exasperation at it. "I'm being serious, Konata."
"Oh, well, in that case, I'm just a little winded." She definitely sounded it, though her voice regained most of its usual strength. "I'm a bit sho-no, no pun…surprised that you learned a new attack since yesterday, and that your electricity isn't jumping anywhere, and that you both are back to normal…and that Kagami's wearing a necklace?" Konata paused, looking rather like she was face-to-face with something that defied basic logic, which she was, though there was no way she knew. "You were just joking yesterday about the magical necklaces, right?"
Giggling again, Kanata commented, "Kaga-chan said something similar. How close she's grown to my daughter!"
The sparking grew, while not stronger, more energetic, for lack of a better word. "Of course I was. This is just a coincidence. Why are you here so early, anyway? Don't you get off at a different platform?"
It was a change in topic designed to distract Konata long enough to not notice Tsukasa's obvious "I know something that I can't say" look. Though it probably didn't work, Konata allowed the change - Kanata's mildly rusty family training could tell that much, at least. "Tsukasa called me, of course," the spirit's daughter said with a tone of, "It's obvious, right?"
Giggling again, Kanata couldn't help but wonder how, if she was so easily amused by her own thoughts and self-created descriptors, she could become as bored as she sometimes did.
Kagami's accidental explosive punch did confirm one thing, though. The necklace held back whatever ability she seemed to have to just above her skin; at least, this explanation fit why she was sparking but not arcing, how it activated when her sparking fist hit Konata, and why Miki, the most likely perpetrator, only set up the Kanata-can't-pass-through-this-ha-ha barrier only after she let go of her necklace - she couldn't affect anything besides herself while it was in her possession.
The thought of the Hiiragi mother cut the ghost's giggles short just as the train came to a stop before the three high schoolers and their incorporeal tag-along.
AN: Rushed again… Meh, whatever. Anyway, this is -MB01- done! Next time, -MB02- begins and the reason why I'm differentiating them here will become clear!
Kanata had a lot of time on her hands and nothing better to do than think things through, so that's exactly what she did.
Also, thanks to redlerred7 for pointing out that error. It has been fixed.
Lastly, yes, Kanata's accidental pun really was accidental - I hadn't realized I made it until editing.
Anyway, thank you very much for all of the reviews, comments, follows, and favorites thus far! Here's a preview for next chapter, Chapter 35, Kagami -MB02-:
Next time in Of Galge and Imaginary Friends, Kagami considers a problem.
'When Konata learned of Kagami's diet, she thought the idea stupid and, when the opportunity arose, destroyed it. Now, though, it was Konata's stupid idea that needed destroying, whether she liked it or not (I still don't like her "solution," actually.).'