"Sumire!!!"
That was the last thing she heard and remembered before she woke up in the middle of the road. As she took in her surroundings, she heard an engine approach behind her, turning around to see a car barrelling toward her at a high speed.
"Aah!" The girl put her hands up and shut her eyes as she tried to block the impact of the car. However, she heard the engine pass by as if she was only standing near, but not in front of the car. Opening her eyes, she noticed that the car passed through her as she turned around to see it speeding away from her. She looked down at herself and noticed no damage to her body. In fact, it was completely transparent.
"Am- am I a ghost?"
Almost as if to answer her question, she began to float as she passed her hand through the nearby traffic light. Her eyes widened in amazement as she moved freely through the world around her.
As she flew around, she tried to remember what happened that made her a ghost, only to be met with the same word she heard as she woke up in the street.
Sumire.
Was someone calling to her? Was this her name? If it was, then hopefully someone she talks to would be able to recognize her.
"Hey, do you know where I-"
But before she could finish, the person she was trying to talk to walked right past her, she tried asking someone else, only for them to walk right through her this time.
"Oh right… ghost."
She concluded that if she was going to figure out where she is and what's going on, she'd have to find that out for herself.
--
2 weeks since she woke up, the girl floated around this city, which she learned was Tokyo in Japan. As she floated around in the large area people called the Crossing, she heard a voice call out to her from behind.
"Oh, excuse me!"
She turned around to see a tall boy with frizzy raven hair looking directly at her.
--
Akira exited the subway, not interacting with anyone as he rushed aboveground.
'So I need to get to… where again?' Akira thought as he pulled out his phone. Tokyo was incredibly different from the countryside where he lived, so for the time being, he probably needed his navigation app to get around. However, there was an odd app on his screen that he didn't remember installing. It was red with a black eye drawn on it, a star replacing the pupil.
Akira tried to delete the app but accidentally tapped on it. When it did nothing, he attempted to tap it again only to look up and notice that the world around him was brought to a halt.
'Is this some elaborate prank?'
Out of the corner of his eye, Akira noticed a slight amount of movement in the center of the crossing and turned toward it. A blue flame flickered in the middle of a crowd before erupting into a pillar, somehow not burning the frozen people around him.
Akira was frozen into place as he watched the pillar of flame coalesce into a humanoid figure, wings on its back while wearing a red fiery smile. Suddenly, Akira saw his own face in the face of the figure, before the fire disappeared and the crowds moved on, oblivious to what Akira just saw.
Suddenly, Akira found himself nearly walking into a brown-haired girl with glasses.
"Oh, excuse me!"
The girl turned around and floated away before she suddenly realized she was being addressed. Floating back, she asked, "Wait, were you talking to me?"
"Sorry, I'm new here and I need to fin- wait… are you… floating?"
This girl, whoever she was, continued to look at him in disbelief as she landed in front of him.
"How are you talking to me? I haven't been able to talk to anyone for the past two weeks!"
"Why?" Akira tilted his head. Oddly, no one seemed to have noticed the girl in front of him despite the fact that she floated not too long ago.
Akira's blood ran cold as the girl shrugged and casually said, "I think I'm supposed to be dead."
"...You think you're dead? Are you a ghost?"
"I don't know what else I could be, so I guess yes?"
Akira noticed someone approach him, walking through the girl in front of him.
'So she is a ghost, then…' Akira was snapped out of his thoughts by the stranger, wearing a concerned expression, beginning to talk to him.
"Excuse me, but are you ok? You looked like you were talking to yourself."
The stranger had a look of concern in his eyes, a far cry from the looks of disdain and hatred he got from the people at home.
"No, it's nothing," Akira waved off the stranger. "I was just… thinking about someone."
"Just… take care of yourself. I wish the same could be said of my daughter…" The stranger trailed off before he shook his head. The man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small business card, the name on it reading 'Shinichi Yoshizawa'. "Here's my contact information if you ever need someone to talk to. I wish you the best, young man."
Akira smiled as he said, "You too, Yoshizawa-san."
The two waved to each other and the man named Yoshizawa left as Akira turned back to the girl, who seemed to be clutching her head.
"Hey, come with me." Akira motioned for her to come with him to a more secluded corner of the square.
--
That man… Why did he look familiar?
As he walked through her, she got a sudden headache (Could ghosts get headaches? The more you know.) She saw the frizzy-haired boy talking to the man, but she didn't hear anything they said due to her headache.
After the man left, the girl looked up to see the boy motion toward her to follow him. They went into a corner where they wouldn't be disturbed as the ringing in her head went away.
"What's your name? I'm Akira Kurusu." The boy began to reach out to hold her shoulder, but remembered that she was a ghost and left his hand hanging.
"My name is Sumire… I think."
"You think?"
Sumire shook her head. "That's the thing. I don't remember anything from my past, like who I was or what I did, or even the people I knew. But the man who just talked to you… I think he triggered some sort of memory in me, but... I swear I remembered something from him! I just… I lost it somehow…"
Akira held up a business card between two fingers as he smirked, "I have his contact information, so if you ever need to meet him, I can find an excuse to talk with him."
Sumire beamed.
Akira had a contemplative expression on his face as he began, "Well you have nowhere else you know you can go, I'm apparently the only one who can see you, and you somehow briefly remembered something about your past life when you were with me, so maybe you can come with me. I'm going over to live with someone and-" Akira paused as he pulled out his phone with a look of shock. "Oh crap, I'm going to be late! Hey, do you by any chance know where Sojiro Sakura lives?"
Sumire put a finger on her chin, trying to recall anywhere she heard or saw the name "Sakura."
"No, I don't. Do you know anything about him?"
"I heard something about him working at a cafe called Leblanc. Do you know where that is?"
Sumire thought for a while as she thought to all the times she flew through areas with coffee, and remembered an odd cafe in Yongen-Jaya that served curry which was called Leblanc.
"Yeah, I remember a cafe called Leblanc… If I remember correctly it's in the backstreets of Yongen-Jaya."
"Thanks, Sumire. Lead the way. Tokyo is huge compared to my hometown."
--
Akira got off the train, looking back to see Sumire letting go of the pole. Despite her ghostly state, she somehow didn't get left behind by the train. Akira decided not to question it as Sumire floated by him, guiding him to the cafe. They walked through a bunch of backstreets before they stopped in front of a red door in one of the more secluded back roads.
"So this is Leblanc, huh…" Akira stared up at the awning with 'Leblanc Coffee Curry' written in black letters. "Sumire, where-"
Akira looked around to see that Sumire was nowhere to be found. As he waited by the door, he saw Sumire float back to where he was.
"Sorry! I was just looking around for Sakura's house. I think I found it."
"Lead the way, Sumire."
While the two were walking towards the house, Sumire asked Akira about his past. As he explained his situation to her, she clenched her fists in anger.
"And your parents wouldn't even get you a lawyer?" Sumire gasped. To her knowledge, parents usually supported their kids through thick and thin. Why did Akira's abandon him when he needed them?
"They tried, but the ones that were available were too expensive. The trial made it not even matter, though. The politician that sued me seemed to have a hand in everything, meaning the trial was pretty much just for show." Akira shrugged.
Sumire seemed to have an outburst, which Akira almost hushed before realizing that no one would have heard her anyways. "What a jerk! I may not know what my morals used to be but I can assure you now that you did the right thing."
A warm smile seemed to creep onto Akira's face for the first time since his arrest. "Thanks for giving me support about this, especially now."
They stopped in front of the house Sumire believed Sojiro Sakura lived in. Reading the nameplate, Sumire observed, "The nameplate here says 'Sakura'; it looks like this is his house."
Wordlessly, Akira reached out and pressed the doorbell next to the front gate.
Ding*
Dong*
…
"Is he not here?" Akira asked Sumire, who just shrugged in response. To their right, they heard a deliveryman approaching holding a medium-sized package.
"No one's home… Sakura-san is usually at his cafe at this time though… I'll do my other deliveries first and loop back here."
As the delivery truck drove off, Akira looked towards Sumire and said, "Well, guess we were right the first time. Let's go back."
The short walk back was quiet unlike their walk to the Sakura residence. Eventually, Akira found himself standing back in front of the door. Taking a deep breath, he turned the handle as a bell chimed.
--
"Alright, that's the last of the stuff. Whew…" Akira pushed his box of stuff into the shelf by the stairs. There was some dust still floating in the air from his cleaning attempt in the attic above Leblanc.
After introducing himself to Sojiro Sakura, he was brought up the stairs to a dusty attic with a bed in the corner, being told that this would be his home for the entirety of his probation. With a bit of searching in the closet downstairs, Akira grabbed some cleaning supplies and got to work, Sumire helping to find places to clean Akira wouldn't be able to see otherwise. After 2 hours of cleaning, Akira collapsed on his bed, leaving the cleaning supplies by the stairs. A pair of footsteps grew louder as Sojiro poked his head out from the stairwell.
"What the heck? I heard you making all sorts of noise up here, but I thought you were just talking to someone on your phone, not cleaning. The place doesn't look too bad, but who were you talking to anyway?"
Akira had to make something up. If he said he was talking to a ghost girl he met earlier today he might get thrown into a mental hospital instead of out onto the streets.
"Just a friend of mine…"
"Well go to bed. We have to meet up with the principal of Shujin tomorrow, and I bet you have nothing better to do. Well, see ya kid."
With a smug smirk, Sojiro went back down the stairs, leaving the cafe with a faint jingle from the bell on the door. Sumire looked at the clock and gasped lightly.
"It's pretty late. Looks like you've been cleaning for a while."
Akira nodded and moved towards the bed, but froze and turned towards Sumire.
"...Um...How are we gonna manage our sleeping arrangements...?" Akira had a light blush as he wasn't expecting to have to sleep with someone, let alone the ghost of a girl.
Sumire shrugged and floated to the couch. "I can't really make another mattress appear out of thin air, and sleeping together would be a bit awkward, so I guess I'll sleep here." She took off her glasses and put them on the table, sitting down on the couch.
Akira was trying to process how Sumire's glasses sat on the table while she sat on the couch before shaking it off as some bogus ghost physics that wouldn't make sense to him in the long run. Sumire curled up on the couch as Akira put on his loungewear and got in bed.
"You know…" Sumire began. "All this time I've just been floating around with nowhere to go. I just slept wherever I could, usually on the sidewalk. It's weird having somewhere soft to rest now, even if it's just a couch."
Akira grinned as he looked towards Sumire. "We've both been through a lot, huh?"
After a brief pause, Akira thought out loud:
"I wonder what Shujin's like."
School. Sumire did think sometimes about what her school life was like. Would they see some of her old friends? Do they still think about her? Did she even have friends back when she was alive? Those questions would have to wait until later. For now, tomorrow would be the beginning of a new life, or rather afterlife, for her.
Akira pulled out his phone to look at the time and set an alarm for tomorrow. He noticed the red app he thought he removed earlier today and scrunched his eyebrows in confusion.
'Wait, maybe Sumire might know something about this. It definitely doesn't look like a normal app, and I met her after I used it, so…"
Akira's thoughts trailed off as he looked towards Sumire. "Hey Sumire, do you re-"
He saw Sumire was fast asleep, her shoulders rising and falling as the soft sound of her breathing barely reached his ears. Akira set his alarm, turned off his phone, and drifted off to sleep.
'Poor girl. She probably hasn't slept this well in a while.'
