Kaede settled into the apartment with no trouble. Shuichi tried to help as best he could, which mostly translated to staying out of her way. Just about anything else he did would be the opposite of comforting.

He didn't disappear altogether, though. He was still too attached to the place for that. He started out by treating his apartment the way he had the neighbors', waiting for Kaede to leave before messing with her things at his leisure. He only imposed two rules on himself. He refused to turn on the TV or anything, mindful of Kaede's electricity bill, and he stayed out of her room in an effort to grant her some privacy.

Generally, neither was particularly difficult. He read the books she'd bring home and stack without ever shelving. He played around with Kaede's keyboard, though he couldn't read the sheet music. He was content.

But contentment and comfort made it easy for Shuichi to let his guard down. He stopped being quite so vigilant about not interfering with Kaede's life. He learned that she liked having background noise, for instance, often music but occasionally TV. She cared more that there was sound than what that sound was. Once Shuichi realized how little attention she paid to it, he began to intervene.

It wasn't much. He'd nudge a CD into view, change the channel when she left the room. He didn't know what exactly what he was looking for. He felt like he'd watched the news some, before, but there didn't seem to be much point in keeping up with current events when they couldn't affect him. It would only remind him of what he was missing.

Instead, he flipped around at random, stopping on whatever caught his eye. This meant he ended up watching a lot of pop science. He'd never considered how saltwater taffy was made, but seeing the machines in action was fascinating.

Even better were the times that Kaede decided to watch a movie. The plots were self-contained enough that Shuichi could safely get invested, and even if the movie itself was boring, Kaede herself wasn't. She was the sort of person who reacted to everything onscreen as if she herself had an audience, gesturing wildly and yelling at the characters when she got particularly invested. Watching her was as much fun as the movie itself.

It was an arrangement that suited them both, up until the night Kaede got it in her head to watch a movie with a dog on the cover. Shuichi knew as soon as he saw it that it was going to be a mistake.

Sure enough, by the time the credits began, tears were rolling down Kaede's face. "He just wanted to protect her…" she whispered.

Shuichi was sniffling himself, but he had to work to hold back laughter. Kaede sounded so betrayed. He had to wonder what she'd expected.

She finally stood up and, rubbing her eyes, went straight back to her room. The half-empty bowl of popcorn was abandoned on the coffee table, as were the unwashed dishes from her dinner.

Shuichi looked at them. The dishes did not react. He tried to talk himself out of doing something silly. Staying hidden was working out for him so far.

But he'd enjoyed living with Kaede, and he wanted to do something for her for once. It wasn't like this one thing would make her jump to the conclusion that the apartment was haunted. She'd probably assume she'd done it herself and forgotten about it.

Just to be sure, Shuichi listened to make sure Kaede had gone to bed. There didn't seem to be any sound coming from her room, at least.

Good enough for him. He was going to do the dishes.

It went about as he'd have expected. The most interesting part was the dissonance of going through practiced motions he had no memory of ever performing. He wouldn't have called it fun or anything. But it was remarkably satisfying. It had been a while since he'd allowed himself to have a lasting effect on anything. It was nice to know he still existed to the world, even if he was dead.

He felt the water cooling under his fingers and realized he'd been caught up in thought. He scrubbed the plate one last time and left it to dry.

After that night, he kept finding excuses to do small chores. He tried to give Kaede the benefit of the doubt, to let things sit if she seemed likely to come back to them later. Things that had been sitting out for a while or that were clearly unnecessary were fair game.

It wasn't a huge change or anything. Kaede was fairly neat to begin with, and she spent a lot of time in her room anyway. But Shuichi enjoyed feeling like his presence was improving her life in some small way.

He was ready to settle into this new routine. It was good, the best he'd had since dying. He'd sharpen his awareness right after Kaede left the house and look around for something to do before leaving to hang out somewhere else.

Then he "woke up" to find a notebook lying open on the kitchen counter. He drifted over to check if Kaede would need it later, only for the contents of the page to catch his eye.

"Hi!" the paper said. "I feel a little silly writing this, but I've noticed some things recently and I figured this was worth a shot.

"So if you're reading this, could you introduce yourself? It would be nice to know that I'm not crazy, for one thing. And if you do exist, I need to have something to call you other than 'the mysterious being that lives in my apartment and does my chores when I'm not looking.' There are a weird number of things that are supposed to do that, according to the internet.

"Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing from you! Feel free to just write a response under this message. It's not like I was doing much with this notebook before now.

"Your impromptu landlord,

"Kaede."

Shuichi read the note. Then he read it again, trying to convince himself that he'd missed something. He'd been careful, he'd been willing to stay hidden. It was so much simpler.

But he hadn't been careful enough, and now everything was going to change yet again. Sure, he could just ignore the note, but then he'd have to go back to not doing anything, and he didn't want that. And Kaede deserved the truth.

He picked up the pen she'd left by the notebook and rolled it between his fingers, trying to decide what to write. There was no good way to explain that you were haunting somebody.

"Sorry," he finally wrote. "I didn't mean to freak you out. I'll leave you alone." He considered offering to leave altogether, but there didn't seem to be much point. He'd only create a problem for someone else. Besides, this was his apartment. If anything, he was doing Kaede a favor by staying in the background. It would be so simple to assert his presence and drive her away. The apartment would be all his again, he could take it over and do whatever he wanted, no one could stop her –

He shook his head. Why would he want to do that? He'd had enough of being alone to last a lifetime. Or whatever the equivalent was for a ghost, he guessed.

Shuichi tapped the pen against his lips, trying to refocus, but he couldn't think of anything else to add. He ended up just signing his name at the bottom. Then he floated into a neighboring apartment to play with their cat. It sounded much simpler than trying to be a person.