((This chapter is unbeta-ed, so any mistakes that you catch are mine and mine alone. I wanted to wait for the beta, but I'm going home for the weekend and back to the dialup connection of doom. I'll replace it with the beta-ed one eventually. Anyway, consider my inspiration reborn!))

Chapter Two

This night. Walk the dead.

In a solitary style and crash the cemetery gates.

-My Chemical Romance, Cemetery Drive

In sync with her normal routine, Sango woke up the next morning as soon as the sun made it impossible to stay asleep any longer. At least it was supposed to be a nice day; another bout of overcast skies wouldn't serve to keep her chipper and merry.

Of course, she had no inclination to be chipper and merry, anyway; no matter how much she tried to ignore it, the visitation from the night before was still fresh on her mind. She thought about it as she lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling as the gradually brightening sky threw shafts of sunlight across it and stretched the shadow of her light fixture into an elongated oval. It was quite unfortunate that she couldn't manage to banish the memory of the ghost as easily as she'd banished the very idea that he existed. After all, did she remember every single thing that she'd done in the last ten years of her life? The last two, even? How, then, was it completely improbable that she'd seen that nameless man before?

Sango remained in that pensive state for quite a while, finally brought out of her ruminations by the buzzing of her alarm clock. She always set it to go off at ten-thirty, unless she had somewhere to go (which was a depressingly rare occurrence). Irritably, she slapped at it twice before getting it to shut up, then sat up and swung her legs out of the bed. For some reason, her head was throbbing slightly, and she rubbed her temples for a moment before slipping her house shoes on and standing.

As much as her head hurt, she was actually glad for the feeling. It made it all the much easier to attribute the ghost sighting to some sort of drug that had been slipped into her coffee. It was either that, or Sango was finally going insane.

Needless to say, she preferred to believe that her best friend had slipped her narcotics.

Shuffling her feet slightly, Sango walked into the kitchen and rummaged in a cabinet until she found a clean cup. It was old, bearing the insignia of Tokyo Disneyland and a few pictures of cartoon characters that Sango couldn't even identify. She'd taken her younger brother there a few years back, but now, of course, he was too old for such things. A college student, Kohaku was too busy studying to even consider going to a theme park with his sister.

Setting the faded cup onto the counter, she bent at the waist and opened her small refrigerator, extracting an almost-empty half-gallon carton of orange juice. Studying it, Sango frowned slightly, then shrugged and poured the contents into the cup before tossing the carton in the general direction of the trash can. Not even bothering to see if the carton had actually landed inside, she took her cup and crossed the hallway into her small study.

She called it a study when it was, in fact, a media room. A laptop, a small television, and a Gamecube that had seen better days occupied this particular area. Slipping into her desk chair, she leaned back comfortably and took a small sip of the juice before setting it onto the desk beside her laptop. She then bent down to plug the end of the laptop cord into the wall, figuring that she could at least check her e-mail before heading out for the day.

Sitting up, Sango rapped her head against the underside of the desk and, predictably, began to curse colorfully. Rubbing the back of her head, she used the chair's wheels to backpedal away from the desk before sitting up again, her eyes watering. That did not help her headache at all. What was worse, she'd knocked over her orange juice, and the cup slowly rolled across the desk before falling to the carpet. Luckily for her, though, the direction of the spill was away from all things electronic.

With a sigh, she got to her feet and retrieved a cloth from the bathroom. Upon re-entering the study, though, she became distinctly aware that something was different. Very different.

Her laptop had been moved well out of the way of the spill, and her chair was pushed neatly underneath the desk. The discolored Disneyland cup was sitting upright on top of the television.

Sango stared at this scene for a moment, the cloth slipping until it was held only by her fingertips. Then, deep in denial, she shook her head and told herself that she was being silly. Of course she'd have moved her laptop away from the spill, and she could have picked up the cup, too. After all, people normally couldn't remember automatic actions; completely sane people often couldn't remember whether or not they turned their stoves off at home because they performed the action without thinking.

She wasn't fooling herself at all.

Kneeling beside the spill, she began to mop up the spilled juice, mentally muttering to herself. Just as the cloth began to turn faint orange, someone spoke from behind her. "What, no 'thank you'?"

Not even turning around, Sango said, "Go away. If I don't believe in you, you don't exist. Don't you things thrive on memories or something like that?"

The ghost moved closer, stopping just a hair's breadth from Sango's kneeling form. A wave of cold assaulted her, and she shivered. "Do I feel like a figment of your imagination?" Sango turned, ready to bite out a scathing remark that would hopefully cause the spirit to vanish as he had done on the previous night. He peered calmly back at her, a rather lewd smile on his face.

It took Sango a few moments to determine the reason behind that smile. Since she was facing him now, her front was facing him, and his semi-transparent hands were planted directly on her breasts. Of course, Sango couldn't feel his hands on her as if he were human; it was more of a cold, tingling feeling. It was the principle of the thing, however. With a shriek of "Pervert!", she lifted the hand that wasn't holding the cloth and swung her hand in a vicious arc, connecting with his cheek.

Well, so she would have wished. Actually, her hand went directly through his face, and immediately, her entire lower arm was experiencing the same chill as her chest was. With a wry grin, the ghost removed his hands and held them up in a gesture of surrender.

"You-!" Sango spluttered, her rage stopping the rest of her words halfway out of her mouth. Because of this, she just opened and closed her mouth uselessly for a few seconds before shouting, "Don't do that!"

The ghost actually had the audacity to look slightly put out. "Well, it's not like I can feel anything. The more interesting aspects of the female form are lost to me forever, you know. It's a little drawback that one experiences when dead."

Crossing her arms protectively (and futilely) across her chest, Sango tried to glare but only managed to lower her eyelids slightly. Was this what her world had turned into - being groped in her own home by a handsome specter? "I think it's the least of the favors that you can do for me," the ghost went on, lowering his hands now and looking oddly at home among the mild clutter.

Sango finally managed to push herself to her feet, her eyes narrowed and her arms crossed now with more annoyance than protection. "You're still on about that, huh? Listen, I've given it a lot of thought, and there's no possible way that I could have killed you. I've never met you before, and I'd appreciate it if you left me alone."

"Impossible," the spirit answered immediately. "I've told you, that's the one thing that I do remember."

"But if you don't remember anything else," Sango replied, forgetting her pact not to acknowledge the spirit's existence, "how do you know that what you're remembering is fact?"

The ghost looked at her for a while, giving her a very clear view of his disturbingly human violet eyes, then gave a shrug. "If I'm to be honest with you, I don't."

Sango tossed the semi-saturated cloth onto the floor, where it landed half-draped over the spill (which would probably stain, she thought fleetingly). "You're impossible, Ghost. Get the hell out of my hou-"

Sango had to blink a few times before what she had seen finally registered in her mind. As she'd been watching, the spirit had slowly become more and more transparent, until he'd vanished from sight completely. Rubbing her arm as the cold feeling slowly dissipated, she realized something with a jolt.

This wasn't her imagination. She was being haunted by someone that she didn't know, and as of now, there was nothing that she could do about it. He didn't respect her privacy - hell, he didn't respect her body - and there was nothing that she could do to be sure that he'd leave her alone for good. After all, he was haunting her because he was sure that she'd killed him-

In the process of opening her laptop, Sango froze. "That's it," she whispered to herself. If he was around her just because he believed that, if she could find his real killer, it should follow that he'd move on to haunt that person...

"Ghost!" she shouted, looking around as if expecting to see the summoned 'man' appear immediately, sort of as if he were her personal servant. When he didn't appear, she put her hands on her hips, truly irritated at his failure to appear. "Hey, Casper!" Still no answer.

"Fine, then," she muttered to herself, retrieving the cloth from the floor and trotting to her room to deposit it into the dirty clothes hamper with a sigh. "If he won't come, I'll do it myself." Returning to her study, she plopped back into her chair and stretched back, yawning slightly and cracking her knuckles as she set to her original intentions.

Even so, she kept glancing over her shoulder every now and then, checking to see if the ghost had appeared.

---

After her obligatory e-mail check, which yielded nothing of great importance, Sango had dressed quickly and almost haphazardly. Spending less than a minute shuffling through her closet, she ended up wearing dark gray jogging pants with pink stripes up the side and a pink tank top. The top was significantly lighter than the stripes in the pants, but that was the least of her worries.

The library was farther from her home than the museum was, and it was for this reason that Sango decided to take her bicycle. It was a beautiful day for riding; the air was scrubbed clean from the previous day's rain, the remnants of which had all but evaporated except for small puddles here and there.

Sango was glad to find that her bike wasn't dripping wet and, within minutes, she was flying down the sidewalk with her ponytail flapping behind her. In mere minutes, she rode past the coffee shop where Kagome worked, and recalled that the younger girl wasn't working that morning. She made a mental note to give Kagome a call and ask how her classes had gone.

Splashing through a particularly deep puddle on the deeply pitted sidewalk, Sango finally turned into the cul-de-sac that served as the library's driveway. The large building was in the shape of a half-circle, sitting rather close to the curb. The large windows facing the street were framed with clusters of low bushes. These same bushes were planted on either side of the large, painted red door.

After chaining her bike to the rack near the door, she pushed the door open and entered. Unlike modern libraries, this one prided itself in its antique feel. Shunning bright fluorescents, the library was lit by specially crafted lamps that encased the flame in nigh-unbreakable glass, and would resist all attempts to alter the height of the flame. Even so, the lamps were so situated that the librarians' combined efforts could easily supervise them. Well-placed mirrors reflected the light and provided more illumination as well as a nearly overwhelming sense of hugeness.

Letting the door close softly behind her, Sango moved toward the long front desk where a bespectacled woman sat. The pale light of the lamp beside her threw her face into odd relief, but she was undeniably pretty. Her long, straight hair was piled atop her head in a stereotypical bun, and she was bent over a rather large book.

"Excuse me," Sango said quietly, approaching her and managing a friendly smile. The woman looked up with a friendly smile.

"Yes?" she asked, slipping a bookmark between the crisp pages and looking up expectantly.

Sango absently rubbed her arms; the day was humid, but the temperature inside the library was quite cool. It probably had something to do with protecting the books. "I'm looking for a newspaper article. It should have appeared in Tokyo Shimbun," she said confidently.

The librarian slid her chair back and reached into a low drawer, pulling out a small ring of keys. "Do you know when this article was published?"

Sango thought for a moment, then shook her head slowly. She had no idea when the ghost had died, and therefore had no idea what years that she should comb through for news of his death. If he had truly been murdered, then there should have been a report of it somewhere. "I'm not sure," she told the librarian, then added, "but I think it would have been within the past five years."

"I see," said the librarian with a nod, pushing her glasses up further onto her nose. "We are an old-fashioned library, so the two earliest years will be on microfilm, but the other three can be searched for at the computer terminal in the archive room." She stepped from behind the desk and motioned for Sango to follow her.

The pair wound through shelves crammed tightly with literature, finally reaching a door near the back of the building. Opening this door with a heavy-looking bronze key, the librarian ushered Sango inside. The room smelled of disuse and faint mold, owing to the stacks of newspaper that decorated the low tables. They were obviously merely for decoration; there seemed to be no organization to them. It was evident that this room was rarely used from the thin layer of dust coating the computer in one corner and the microfilm reader in another.

"I'd recommend starting with the computer and working your way backward in time, moving to the microfilm when you must," the librarian said, moving to a metal cabinet near the door. The cabinet was obviously better organized than the rest of the room; in moments, she'd pressed two rolls of microfilm into Sango's hand. "I'm sure that you already know this, but please do not remove these from the room. When you finish, you may leave them at the front desk." With the obligatory spiel done, the librarian excused herself from the room with a shallow bow, the heavy door shutting behind her.

Rubbing her arms again, Sango sighed and slid into the seat at the computer. This was the easy part; it would take her no time to search through the virtual entries for the word 'murder'.

Judging by the clothes that ghost-boy had been wearing, Sango figured that he couldn't have died all that long ago. She limited the search to those in the last three years, clicked the 'search' button, and was immediately deluged with thousands of articles.

"Oh, gods," Sango sighed to herself, and quickly changed her search terms to include the exact phrase "young man" as well. Now, when she clicked 'search', she received almost a round nine hundred. Well, it was better than nine thousand, that was for sure. Taking a deep breath, she began to work her way through the hits.

---

"...the striking story of a young man falsely accused of the murder of his lover, premieres on July 19, 2004."

There was a solid thunk as Sango's head hit the desk next to the keyboard. She was a little less than halfway through the returned articles, but she had yet to come across much that referred to something that wasn't related to the arts or another country.

"This would be so much easier if I knew his name," she snarled into the desk. Her eyes stung with fatigue, and she wondered just how long she'd been there, trying to find something, anything, about the person who'd become the ghost that was haunting her. When she'd left her house, it had been a quarter past eleven; checking her cell phone, which was clipped to her side, she saw that it was now almost four in the afternoon. The library closed in a couple of hours.

Rubbing her face with her hands, Sango calmly told herself that there was no way that she'd be able to get to the microfilm that day. She wouldn't even be able to get through the rest of the internet queries that day.

"What are you up to?" a voice asked from behind her. Sango halted halfway though a stretch and turned around so quickly that she almost upended her chair.

The voice had come from the other side of the room, where the microfilm reader sat. "Who-" Sango began, moments before her eyes fell on the figure perched weightlessly atop the reader.

The ghost sat there, an inscrutable smile on his face. Sango was vaguely aware that he seemed much more there than he had before, more translucent than transparent. In the dim light, he looked far more like a stereotypical ghost than he had before. There were no lanterns in the room since the fire hazard was a bit higher with the old papers scattered around; all of the light came from the computer screens and a single shaded lamp in the corner. Because of this, the slanted rays of light actually caused the ghost to cast odd, barely-there shadows.

The moment of eeriness lasted only a moment, then the ghost hopped weightlessly from the top of the machine and took a few steps toward her. "Sango?"

She cleared her throat, remembering that he was expecting an answer from her. That moment, seeing him in such ethereal lighting, had reminded her of just how real her problem was. "I'm doing research," she answered finally, turning back to the computer screen and beginning to click around once more and trying to look busy. Of course, this tactic failed to accomplish anything.

A gust of cool air hit Sango's cheek as he leaned over her shoulder, peering at the screen. Her shoulder tensed, but she didn't turn around. After a few long moments, the specter finally spoke up. "What are you up to?" he asked again, a slightly cold edge in his voice.

"I'm trying to find out who killed you," Sango replied succinctly. Bluntness was probably best in this situation. "I know that it wasn't me, and I figure that you'll leave me alone once I find you someone else to haunt."

The coldness over her shoulder vanished, and its absence was so sudden that Sango couldn't help but turn around. The ghost stood just behind her, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes still trained on the computer screen. His expression was once more unreadable. "Well, that's rude," he said stiffly. "I'm here, sure of only your name and your connection with me, and you immediately try to prove that my entire existence is a lie."

"Fair enough," Sango snapped. "It is."

The spirit looked at her then, his semi-transparent violet eyes adding another level to his otherworldliness. He didn't speak, just contemplated her until she began to get slightly uncomfortable. "Wh... where have you been, anyway?" she asked finally, as the silence between them grew painful. "I would have told you what I was doing sooner if you'd answered when I'd called you."

"Right. First I'm a liar, and now, I'm a butler," he shot back, but the look of hurt that his eyes had carried just moments earlier was already fading. "I couldn't answer you. I couldn't even hear you," he said seriously. "When I affect the real world, like when I moved your stuff around this morning, it kills my energy. I don't know where I go when I leave here..." he paused to shiver, an odd sight, "but I just know that I don't like it. There's no light. As soon as I could, I brought myself back into this world, into this very room."

He spread his arms out to his sides, as if inviting her to study his form. Of course, she couldn't help but comply, and she noticed the differences in his appearance even more clearly than normal. The purple of his t-shirt was more vibrant than it had been yesterday, and his hair had a glossy sheen that it had lacked before. She'd already noticed his eyes, but she realized for the first time that he was barefoot. "I'll just keep getting dimmer and dimmer until I'm pulled... away," he finished vaguely, dropping his hands to his sides.

Sango pinched the bridge of her nose with the fingers of her right hand. "So... when you're not here... you're there?"

"Not really," the ghost said with a grin. "I am a ghost, after all. I don't have to be visible to exist."

As if to illustrate this point, he suddenly vanished.

Sango looked around, thought she knew it was futile. If he didn't want to be seen, chances were that he wouldn't be. She turned to the computer again, contemplating whether or not to continue or stop for the day, when icy fingers wrapped around her neck from behind. Alarmed, Sango raised her hands to her throat, but they touched only her own flesh. The sensation didn't vanish, however, and she was beginning to panic until she felt another touch. This one happened to be on her left breast.

"Ghost-boy!" she snarled, lashing out backward before remembering that there was no substance to hit. As a result, she upended her chair and went tumbling backward into one of the dusty, almost rotting piles of newspaper. The feel of the hands disappeared, but she could definitely hear the sound of the ghost's laughter.

She was about to begin a long-winded rant, but before she could even begin, the heavy door swung open and in walked the librarian. Her glasses were now perched on top of her head instead of in front of her eyes. "Are you all right?" she asked, sounding rather concerned even though a small smile quirked the corner of her mouth. "I was shelving books nearby and I heard you shout."

"Fine," Sango growled out, climbing gingerly to her feet and setting the chair up, rolling it back under the desk. "I think I'm done here," she sighed, gesturing to the rolls of microfilm. "Will I be able to come back and look at these later?"

"Of course," the other woman answered with a polite nod. "We will be closed for much of this week for inventory, but we'll be open again on Friday."

Sango sighed inwardly. Friday. Today was only Tuesday, meaning that there would be nothing that she could do about her haunting issues for quite a while. "Thank you," she said finally, grabbing up the microfilm and handing it to the librarian. "I'm leaving now."

"I hope you find what you're looking for," the librarian answered cheerfully, stepping aside to allow Sango past. Retracing her steps through the shelves, Sango sighed again as she exited the building, the warm air reminding her of just how cold it had been when the ghost had touched her. Shaking her head, she walked over to where her bike was chained and gasped as, when she touched the chain, she felt that it was almost freezing. "What the..."

Upon closer inspection, she noticed a small slip of paper wedged into one of the chain links. Kneeling, she plucked it out with some difficulty. The link was very small and the paper had had to be rolled until it tore in a few places, but that was of little consequence. Smoothing the paper between her fingers, she read the note three times without really understanding it.

Then, with an almost hopeful look around, she stuffed the paper into her sock (the pants that she was wearing had no pockets) and unchained the bike, riding off swiftly. Her head pounding, she hoped that this new information would help.

The note had been written in large, shaky letters, almost like those of a child. Obviously, the pen that had been used had kept slipping into the ghost's fingers. It had read:

Sango-

I remember. My name, that is. It's Nakano Miroku.

You can still call me Ghost-boy if you want.

Your phantom,

Miroku