In a perfect world, he'd have been willing to leave it there. He would have found ways to occupy himself until Kaede went to bed, and go back to not really crossing paths with her. Things would have ended as simply as they'd begun.

Unfortunately for him, he was absolutely terrible at letting things go. He ended up spending the next few hours drifting in and out of his apartment, trying to find something else to occupy him for those few hours until Kaede got back and saw his response. Had days always been this long?

He ended up sitting at the kitchen counter and letting his mind wander. He didn't expect to be able to relax, but managed to distract himself enough to flinch at the sound of the door opening. Kaede came in in a rush, dropping her backpack in the entrance with her shoes and rushing over to the counter. Shuichi took a step back just in case. Kaede had only walked through him once before, but it had not been a pleasant experience for either of them.

To his surprise, Kaede barely glanced at the notebook. Admittedly, there wasn't that much to read, but she didn't seem to take it in at all. Instead she went over to the refrigerator and pulled a camera out from on top of it.

Shuichi blinked. It was a good plan, and he probably should have thought of it. He was too impressed to be particularly dismayed about it. Besides, he didn't actually know if he'd even show up on camera.

He came up behind Kaede to look at the screen with her. It looked like she'd had it filming all day, which had to take up a lot of memory. It looked like a nice camera, though. He wondered where she'd gotten it.

And he was getting off-topic. He refocused his attention to the screen, where Kaede was stepping back to admire her handiwork. The real Kaede began forwarding through the video until Shuichi came into frame.

It turned out that the answer to whether he appeared on video was "kind of." The figure in the video was a fuzzy dark-blueish blob in a roughly humanoid shape. It picked up the pen and caused that to blur as well.

Shuichi really didn't understand the logic behind that, but just as he was about to accept it, the image began to sharpen. His face was still indistinct, but it was now possible to distinguish his clothing from his skin. His mouth opened just enough to bare his teeth. The air around him seemed to darken.

Then he shook his head, and his form fuzzed back into a blob.

Shuichi backed away from the camera, eyes wide. That was new. He wondered what Kaede would have seen if she'd been there at the time, and was suddenly very glad that he'd agreed to stay out of her way.

Kaede, for her part, was looking a little pale. She seemed surprised to have captured anything on film, and what she had gotten wasn't exactly reassuring.

She rallied remarkably quickly. She turned back to the notebook still lying on the kitchen counter and actually read Shuichi's addition. Shuichi fought the urge to fidget, feeling that unique brand of awkwardness that comes from having someone looking at something you've created while you're right there. He wanted to leave the room, but at this point he kind of owed Kaede the answers to any questions she had regarding the whole "haunted apartment" thing. Hopefully that would be enough to get her to stop trying to contact him.

"All right," Kaede said after another minute. "Shuichi? You don't seem to be dangerous, so if it's all right with you, I want to talk. I want to know more about you if we're going to be roommates."

Shuichi steeled himself, then fully materialized.

Kaede took an involuntarily step back. Her face was very pale, and Shuichi tried not to wince. This was exactly what he'd been trying to avoid. It was too late to change his mind, though, so he just smiled awkwardly. "Hi." He immediately wished he'd come up with something cooler to use as an opening, but to be fair, he was kind of out of practice with this whole social interaction thing. "Um, you said you had questions?"

"Uh, yeah." Kaede stepped forward again. "First of all, nice to meet you. It's good to see that you're not just some crazy guy living in my house." She paused and made a face. "Good for me at least. I guess you might prefer that to this."

Shuichi shrugged. It was weird to admit, but he'd gotten used to being dead. He didn't say that, though. He didn't need to freak Kaede out more than she already was. What he actually said was, "To be fair, you still don't have any proof that I'm not crazy."

"You've been stuck with me for a month and the worst you've done is do my chores when I was too lazy to. I think I can trust you." She shook her head. "I'm getting off topic. You're a ghost, right? Is there something you need me to do to let you move on or whatever?"

"Not that I know of? I don't actually know why I'm still here." Shuichi looked away. "I'm sorry.

"No, you're fine! I just wanted to make sure you weren't trapped here or something." Kaede paused. "Okay, my other questions are going to be really nosy, so let me know if I cross a line. But how old are you? Why are you haunting this apartment? Do you have any cool ghost powers other than invisibility?"

"I don't know how old I was before, but probably college age? And I've only been dead a few months, so that should still be pretty accurate. I think this is where I lived before, but I don't know why I'm stuck here specifically. As for cool powers…" He shrugged. "I can walk through walls, disappear, and fly, but that's about it. And flying isn't very impressive when I can't leave the building."

"It's more than I can do, so I'm impressed. You don't need to sell yourself short like that." Kaede smiled. "Anyway, that's probably enough prying for the moment. I still want to try to figure out some ground rules, now that I know we're living together."

"You don't have to worry about that," Shuichi said. "Like I said, I'll leave you alone. If you want, I'll leave the apartment altogether whenever you're home."

"What?" Kaede frowned. "That doesn't seem fair. You were here first."

"And you can see how well that worked for me."

"That's not really your fault, and from the sounds of it, neither is you being here now." Kaede shook her head. "If you really feel like you need to leave, I can't stop you. But I'd be happy to have you stay. You seem nice, and how many people can say they're friends with a ghost?"

Shuichi bit his lip. The easiest thing to do would be to disappear right now, before Kaede realized he was the least cool ghost imaginable. He really didn't need to get used to human interaction again right before she decided he wasn't worth it and started ignoring him.

But she seemed sincere about wanting him around, and it would be really nice to have someone to talk to.

"Okay," Shuichi said. He wasn't going to give himself the chance to overthink this yet again. "What did you have in mind?"

Kaede beamed, and they set to work figuring things out.

As far as Shuichi was concerned, nothing much would change. He'd still keep out of Kaede's room and do small household tasks for her. They worked out a system for Kaede to indicate when she wanted him to put something away, though she said she'd try to avoid abusing it.

Kaede asked if he wanted anything from her, but he couldn't think of anything. Just being acknowledged was more than he thought he'd get, and he was still a little convinced that it was going to fall apart.

In the meantime, though, he had the password to Kaede's Netflix account and permission to choose the next movie for movie night.

All of that settled, Kaede retreated to her room, citing homework. Shuichi sat in the kitchen and stared at the wall for a while. Maybe that would make the day's events sink in.

When that didn't work, he decided to take his mind off of it and start thinking about what sort of movie to choose. A comedy, he thought, something light-hearted to get things off to a good start.

The realization crept up on him while he was thinking. Once it hit, he wasn't sure how to react.

It was the first time since he'd died that he had something to look forward to.