Another chapter! Trying to make this as weekly as possible.
Thanks to Kokodoru for beta-reading!
Enjoy!
Luka happily stared at her screen: her savings in her bank account were looking good. She'd been in town for almost a year, and she was getting close to being able to get a car. Not a Ferrari, of course, but something that could drag her from one location to the next. Her savings were entirely composed of what she gained on her little jobs. She survived thanks to her actual, legal job; she worked at a desk, behind a computer and microphone, calling people to ask them questions. She didn't mind in the slightest that she spent half of her day trying to establish communication only to have client after client hang up on her. After all, it limited her hobby to evenings and nights, which made everything infinitely more interesting. She was getting used to the dark and knew all the best and worst streets, day and night. She was truly becoming an expert and she loved it.
One of the tabs in her browser flashed: she'd received a message. Two clicks later, she was presented with an unusual request: to follow someone who was not the sender.
She sighed: she'd stated in her post that she only followed people with their consent. She wasn't a private investigator in any way, shape or form. She typed that reply before going to browse different vehicles online. After a minute, she wondered if it would be worth waiting another month or two for a better car before her email flashed again. Same sender, a reply to her reply, and only a number was typed.
She couldn't believe what she saw. She hesitated a second. Only a second.
"Deal."
The hollow of the wall was bound to be incredibly useful. After the initial discovery, Luka returned every other night, carefully removing any superficial nails and bending over the tops of those she didn't dare pull out. She sprayed silicone spray on the edges of the cabinet to make sure it opened smoothly and noiselessly. Unlike the basement door, the hinges weren't the problem: that frame was just far too small. Then she carefully shoved the dust to the corners so that she didn't have to clean up after herself every single time she left. It took two weeks to make it almost habitable.
During that time, Miku hadn't manifested again in sleepless unrest. But after those two weeks, Luka had decided to make a full schedule of what the family did all day and all night. She needed to become unbelievably familiar with their habits if she were to operate smoothly. She was to become omniscient.
The day after the hollow was more or less clean, Luka brought in a small pillow and a book to camp there all night, every night. She slept after she came home from work, forgoing dinner, and moved into the crawlspace at midnight. She stayed up all night long. It messed up her sleeping cycle, which proved to be devastating for her day job. She couldn't care less, though; her present task was more important and ultimately more rewarding. At first, she left around four in the morning, not knowing when the family woke up. She'd go home, sleep a little, and then go to work. As the days went by, she left later and later, in sections of fifteen minutes. One day about a week after her first stay overnight, just as she was closing the cabinet door at six in the morning, she heard commotion upstairs. Her heart jumped to her throat and Luka fled to the basement, just barely getting the door closed behind her as the father went down the stairs. She went on unnoticed, luckily.
Over the course of that week, she had realized that Miku did indeed wake up frequently, but only later in the night, usually around three in the morning. She always made herself milk, and her longest stay downstairs was an hour and ten minutes, her shortest twenty minutes. It made Luka's heart ache, and as she wrote down her findings, she felt almost guilty.
After the near encounter with the father, Luka decided that she needed to find out what they did during the day as well. Luckily it was weekend the next day, so that Friday night she slept till four in the morning. She fought the feeling of jet lag and moved into the hollow mere minutes before the father woke up.
He ate breakfast alone and left the home at six forty-five on the dot. The man was a machine and Luka appreciated his reliability. Miku was much less regular, but Luka couldn't blame her. She would wake up in the late morning, eat alone, and spend the entire day in her room. She never went down the stairs unless she wanted to eat, which was usually around dinner time. She never had lunch, probably because she had breakfast so late. So Luka spent her entire Saturday in the hollow, waiting for something to happen, but only hearing sporadic activity from the upper floor. Sometimes, she played music on the stereo, but she never turned up the volume loud enough for Luka to distinguish the lyrics. Sometimes, she thought she could hear Miku singing along.
Miku was probably as bored to death as she was. Except Miku didn't know that she wasn't alone.
Whenever that thought struck Luka, she felt incredibly powerful and she hated herself for it. She was learning everything about this girl's routine. She already knew everything about her father's routine, so what could stop her? She knew them, she knew their home, she knew their lives. And they never knew she was there behind their walls, listening, watching, learning.
The father returned at eight in the evening. The two had dinner together in a semi-lively conversation. It was so obvious that Miku was happy to see her father and it almost brought Luka to tears. Her father, though, could only dream of matching her enthusiasm. His answers were short, emotionless. Then, after dinner, he went to his office and worked. She went to her desk and did work as well. They worked apart, on separate floors, facing opposite cardinal directions. Dinner was the only moment in the entire day that they actually saw each other. Then Miku would go to bed sometime between ten or eleven, while the father left his desk at exactly quarter to eleven. They would fall asleep, and Luka would leave.
She saw this happen both Saturday and Sunday, both days carbon copies of each other. But the workdays returned, and Luka was forced to go to her day job. She wondered what they did during the day, if there was a single day when the father actually stayed with his daughter, or if she was always so painfully alone.
It was essential information, but she hesitated. It wasn't until a week later that she actually quit her job so that she could learn all. From that point on, she could stay over the course of the entire day, all week long. It was a blessing to return to a regular sleeping pattern; she hadn't realized how much of a toll the irregularity had taken on her.
Getting used to the crawlspace for regular stays was another matter. While the temperature remained relatively stable, the air remained dry and oftentimes Luka would wake up, feeling like she was suffocating. A sleeping bag and a pillow were her new bed. No mattress was a true nightmare to get used to. She also had a reserve of batteries: she used her flashlight so often it ran out of energy frighteningly quickly. But thanks to the space, she could be a constant vigil. An uncomfortable vigil, but a vigil nonetheless.
After only a day she had realized that the workdays were identical to the weekends. The father would leave early and return late, and Miku would stay holed up in her room, and work at her desk in the evenings.
One evening, Luka decided that she knew enough, that her hiding place was safe. It was time to start acting, to work towards her new objective. Once again, she waited all night long, battling sleep with a thermos of coffee and a Sudoku, or a good book. Miku would, as expected, rise and make her milk in the very early morning. Luka almost didn't move, almost did nothing, but she saw time go by and the envelopes on her desk. Her heart rate, once again nervous, made her shake. She swallowed her fear, and brazenly knocked on the wall.
Miku jumped; Luka heard her chair scrape against the floor. But she didn't say anything. Luka hesitated; she couldn't hear the girl walk no matter how hard she tried; it was always the kitchen's pans and cabinets that betrayed her presence. Was Miku walking around, or was she still at the table? Soon, she heard her take her seat again. How shaken was she, really? She knocked again, on a different location on the wall, closer to the stairs, so that it sounded closer to where the girl was. Miku jumped again with a startled peep. Luka heard her put the mug down somewhat roughly, and decided that she'd done enough for her opening act. She sat down, totally still.
Maybe Miku had looked around the room for a minute or two, or maybe she had remained there until she was sure that she was alone in the room. Either way, soon Miku had put her mug away and had run up the stairs.
It hurt Luka to hear her run, to hear her move at all; her steps were suddenly heavy on the stairs, and Luka had heard them groan for the first time. She even heard Miku's door shut.
The intruder sighed quietly, but steeled herself. She'd continue. It was worth it.
She continued like that over the course of the next few weeks. Her sleep pattern shifted again, sleeping only when daddy was there and when everybody else slept: between eight in the evening and three or four at night. Sometimes, she'd knock on the walls when Miku was alone, startling her. She could tell that Miku was starting to feel insecure, but she never mentioned the incidents to her father. Luka wondered how much farther she'd have to go. So she pushed the limits a bit, knocking louder, reaching up across the floors available to her, making the illusion that the ghost was following her, for she knew where the girl was.
As the days went by, Luka became more and more confident as she realized that Miku truly never left her room. She allowed herself to quit her hollow and turn on a sink a little, letting it run enough to be noticed but not so much that it was a truly abhorrent waste of water. She moved the dining table or shoved a chair. Every day she did something different. Then she'd knock on the walls and quickly duck under the closest hiding spot if the hollow was too far.
Miku would notice. She'd go downstairs to prepare dinner and set the table, and pause when she saw the sink or the table. Luka heard her spot the remains of her activities when she was in the crawlspace, she saw her freeze when she was under a couch.
Somehow, it still wasn't enough. She wouldn't mention the strange happenings to her father. Luka then decided to make her ghost manifestations a 24 hour per day issue, hoping that would suffice. She no longer cared about her sleeping pattern and decided she'd forgo sleep altogether if that was what she needed to do. She started at night, and knocked a few times on the wall or scratched against the planks. In the morning, after her father's departure, Luka unhooked a few paintings or pictures, or quietly set a table on its side. She acted on all floors except the fourth one, where Miku practically existed.
The midnight knocking stopped because Miku stopped going downstairs altogether. She would only descend the stairs for breakfast and dinner.
But she still said nothing to her father.
The ghost needed to do more. But by then she was already sleeping only at odd intervals, going home every other day to check her mail and write letters. If that didn't suffice...then she decided to become a true nightmare. If Miku wouldn't go downstairs, Luka would go to her. While the girl worked in the evenings, even though her father was home, Luka reached up as much as she could and knocked against the wall of Miku's workplace.
You're never safe, Miku, she hoped to say. Daddy can't keep you safe. But despite her never-ending haunting, no matter how much she moved the furniture or moved the paintings or misplaced objects, Miku would quietly put them back and put up with the noise and never, ever mention anything to her dad.
Luka realized that she hadn't ever managed to breach into Miku's cage, which had started to become the girl's haven. Yes, she would have to invade Miku's private space, her room, her sanctuary. But Luka hesitated. She'd only been in the room once before, and no longer knew when the girl was awake. She knew that there was no hiding place in there, so she wondered when she would approach, if she could at all.
By then a few months had passed. The haunting pushed into the summer. The crawlspace remained wonderfully cool despite the warm weather. When the second week of August rolled by, Luka finally found the courage to enter Miku's room in the middle of the night.
The room had hardly changed; the chairs had shifted somewhat, but that was it. Miku slept soundly, or seemed to, in her bed. Luka decided to close the door again and knocked on it quietly. If the girl was awake, she would have heard it. There was no response, so she stepped inside the space, keeping the door open behind her, just in case.
Miku was fast asleep. But she was different; she was curled in a tight ball, facing the wall. And all of a sudden, Luka was faced with the consequences of her actions, and it suffocated her for a moment.
She remembered her mission. Quietly, she crept into the bathroom. Quietly, she made her makeup look as if it's been struck and placed all of the tubes and sticks and brushes around the bathroom. Quietly, she crept back out and made the chairs face the girl. Then she decided to go a step further and placed them right next to her bed, making it look like two people had decided the sit there and watch her during the night.
Luka thought that it was enough. She refused to look at the girl again. Just think of the mission, she told herself. She retired back to her crawlspace and waited to hear a reaction.
The father woke up at six, as usual, and left forty-five minutes later, like clockwork. Three hours later, around ten o'clock, she heard Miku scream. Aside from her muffled conversation that Luka had heard through the walls and that one surprised peep the second time she'd knocked, that was the first sound she'd heard her make. It was the loudest Luka had ever heard her.
And then, a new sound managed to trickle through the walls, down the floors and into the hollow. Miku was crying. Luka bit her lip and put in her headphones. Her job. Think of the job. Surely the tealette would tell her father about her ghost now, wouldn't she? She had to.
But she didn't. After her initial shock, she'd probably put the chairs back, put her makeup in order, and continued with her day. Except she kept moving around all of a sudden. She didn't stay put no matter what. When she read a book, she changed seat with every page. If she was browsing the web she changed which outlet to power her laptop every ten minutes. It made haunting much more difficult that day, with such unpredictable movements, and it almost made Luka relieved.
Except she didn't tell her dad. She'd simply smiled, happy to see him, they'd eaten, then they worked and went to bed.
Luka was so defeated that she couldn't do anything at all for the remainder of the evening. She remained frozen.
That night she went home and called her parents. Her dad asked her why she had quit her job, and she said that it wasn't making her happy anymore. She's found something better, she said.
Luka sighed. She'd been home for a week, gathering her thoughts. She was seated at her desk, trying, in vain, to write a letter. She was too distracted by Miku's stubbornness. Why wouldn't she talk, ever? Why was her ghost to be hers alone…?
After sealing the envelope, she packed her stuff and went to bed. Even though she had had a week to get reacquainted with her mattress, her back still melted into the soft, comfortable surface. But she would wake up early the next day and return to her hollow to haunt.
She wondered what more it would take. She didn't want to talk to her through the walls. She didn't want it to get too personal, and communication was all it took to get too close to someone. More 'pretending' that something is there watching her? More theatrics and sound effects and moving things? But Miku bore the brunt of it all so bravely. Luka hoped that the week of repose would lure the girl into a false sense of security and that crushing it would break her.
Luka couldn't sleep no matter how hard she tried for many hours. She wondered about Miku, the lonely, scared girl. The girl who smiled only for her dad and who worked only in the evenings, who had all day to do anything but who could do nothing. The girl who never went to the garden, who never answered the knocks, who started to make more and more noise as she walked through her own home to become her own ghost-chaser.
Luka fell asleep far too late and woke up far too early. But not early enough, somehow; it was with a jolt that she realized it was already nine o'clock and that Miku was probably awake as well, roaming the house.
But Luka had to return that day; she'd left the tealette alone for long enough, and needed to bring back the fear, the paranoia. If she returned any day later then she would have missed the chance to nab Miku while she was vulnerable; hopeful that the noises do not return, but still fearing them just enough.
Luka packed frantically only to calmly walk towards the house. The streets were busier than she liked, but still managed to duck into the alley without being noticed. The backyard was tricky, as she had to sneak herself past the grate in absolute silence, otherwise, she could attract the girl's attention if she happened to be on the ground floor. The garden had also become a trap of its own: backyard parties became popular as the temperature increased, and summer barbeques had become a terrible obstacle. She was lucky she didn't move often during the day.
Once she was in the basement, she felt safe again. The intruder had gotten used to the stressful fear of being discovered and her heart didn't panic as much as it used to. She crept up the stairs, used to feeling the air grow warmer.
Suddenly, she heard singing. Her father was still home! She checked her watch; it was almost ten o'clock, August the 31st. Not a particularly special day, as far as she knew. Why was he still home?
She pressed her ear against the door, then her heart dropped to her stomach.
It was Miku's birthday.
Luka backed down the stairs in a state of subdued panic. She shook her head, forgetting that this day was a thing, realizing that she's forgotten for far too long that Miku was a person, a human, a girl, a minor, and she was hurting her. A birthday... Her birthday! Her Day! How could she have gotten so mission focused, so information thirsty, to the point that she forgot that Miku...was a person?! The guilt filled her to the brim and Luka could barely breathe.
She calmed herself, gathering her thoughts, feeling her heart hammer in her chest and seeing her own fingers shake. Her legs felt numb and boneless. She wanted to collapse against the wall and give it all up.
She couldn't. She shouldn't. She had to continue.
The family had finished singing and Luka could only hear the quiet conversation through the door. She heard Miku's voice, the father's, and a third voice. That was new! Luka crawled back up the stairs, forcing the guilt away. She swallowed it down, a huge brick that hurt her throat and crashed into her stomach. Think objectively, Luka. Focus, just a little. She adopted a rigorous mindset, put on a mask for herself, and just breathed for a little while.
The mission. Nothing else. She repeated it to herself, like a mantra, until she felt ready to proceed.
She was thankful that the basement door opened inwards and that it had been totally silenced. With an outstretched arm, hiding in the shadows, she opened the door just a bit and looked through the gap.
She could see the dining table with a little bit of effort. She saw the father's back, a bit of Miku's side, and next to Miku...was a woman. Her mother? Luka had wondered where she was. She was probably the one who went abroad often. How kind of her to come home for her daughter's birthday…
But to abandon her the rest of the year?
Luka frowned. She felt trapped in the basement. She could, of course, stay where she was and observe through the narrow opening, but she felt too easy to find and didn't have a nearby hiding place. It would be impossible to get to her hollow wall unnoticed. She'd have to stay in the stairs and hope that there was absolutely nothing in the basement they would need to go get.
Presents? Luka realized that they could have hidden things in the basement because Miku only ever went to the room where laundry was done. She dashed downstairs and checked the rooms and found a few wrapped boxes with the wine. She thanked her foresight and went to hide in the laundry room, hoping that the chore wouldn't be even considered during this festive day.
She waited a long time, almost an hour. Finally, someone went down in the basement to get the presents. Luka felt the goosebumps cover her as whoever it was walked past her room. There was so much in those few seconds that Luka could barely comprehend what she was even feeling. What if she hadn't thought about the gifts in the first place? What if she had chosen a different hiding place? What if that person had decided to enter the laundry room? Simply too many possibilities existed which allowed her to be revealed, she could have messed up in so many ways, and she could have been mistaken in her predictions far too often. It all gathered within that handful of seconds, those few footsteps, the one unblinking moment. Then, whoever it was left the basement, and closed the door behind them.
Luka evacuated everything within her with one deep, deep sigh. She had been too scared to even shake. After gathering her thoughts and pulling the mental mask back on, she somehow summoned control over her limbs and went back up towards the door.
There was more partying, and at some point, the family got a bit emotional. Miku would thank her mother for a trinket from another country, or her father for remembering a comment she'd made. Despite the parent's absent behavior, they truly seemed to care for their daughter. There was laughter and cheering sometimes. Then they remembered, together, a few of the vacations they'd had, the places they'd seen, the people they'd met. It went on like that for hours on end. When they all left the dining room to go outside and sit in the afternoon sun, Luka was suddenly left with just herself, as numb as she could ever be. Seated on the first step, leaning against the wall, hiding behind a door in a home she was intruding, she realized that she was crying.
She was deeply sad.
Despite that, she snuck out of the basement and quickly settled back into the hollow wall. Even though the family was just outside, she knew she was swift enough. What was once a challenge had become a simple routine. The irregular sleeping patterns, the staying behind a wall for days on end seriously dented her diet. Add all of the practice she'd gotten, and she could get in and out of her sanctuary within seconds in utter silence.
Her sanctuary didn't protect her from herself, though. She could still hear the sounds of the family's happiness. But she blocked it all out, swallowed her emotions, directed her thoughts to the task at hand.
She needed to break the happiness swiftly. She had to do it before the parents left; their common presence could loosen her tongue.
But she couldn't manifest in front of the parents; her haunting was for Miku alone, she'd decided. If the parents saw what she did, then they would probably call legal forces. She needed to scare the girl, she needed to scare them away, and Miku needed to be the reason they left. If she was 'lucky', she could convince the parents that their dear little daughter was mentally unwell, that she was seeing ghosts. They would go abroad for the best treatment there is.
What could she do while they were all outside? Heart racing, she left her sanctuary and went to Miku's. She moved everything a little. The desk wasn't against the wall, the bed covers were shifted, the chairs were turned towards the door, the mirror in the bathroom was tilted, the books were set on the floor haphazardly. A corner of the rug was folded over, the stereo was unplugged and set on the desk.
The moment she was done, Luka looked out of the window and made sure they were all still in the garden. Certain that they would stay there, Luka went back down to the ground floor and hid away.
Miku never commented on the state of the room. She'd simply bid her parents good night, closed her door, and put everything back.
She didn't sleep well, though. Neither did Luka, who woke up when Miku was in the kitchen. This startled the intruder; it had been weeks, months, since the girl had gone downstairs on her own. She was once again preparing warm milk. She felt safe once again.
Luka gulped; was the scene in her room not enough? Did she feel so confident? Maybe she'd overestimated how scared she'd made Miku, and the tealette had probably been comforted after the consecutive days of rest.
Luka berated herself; she'd failed to break her. It was time to go back to basics and remind her that she wasn't alone. She wouldn't ever be left alone again.
Just as she was about to knock on the wall, she heard a door close upstairs. She froze. Soon, the voice of Miku's mother was heard in the dining room. They talked in quiet, hushed voices. Even if Luka pressed her ear against the underside of the stairs, which was the closest to the two women, she couldn't make out what they were saying. Despite that, she could distinguish their mood, how they were speaking. Miku seemed sad, melancholic, while her mother showed regret or seemed to wave some issues away. Every now and then Miku got a little bit angry, and she would raise her voice a little. But nothing indicated that she was talking about the mysterious noises or things moving. Luka expected outrage or worry if the mother were to hear that, but Luka heard none.
They talked for a long time, before going silent. Luka wished she could see something, anything of what was going on. Just as she considered moving away from under the stairs, the steps groaned under the weight of the two women, making Luka jump. That was probably the closest she'd ever been to anyone in that house; their feet were mere centimeters above her head, and only a wooden plank and a rug kept them apart.
They would probably never know that someone was under their stairs as they had ascended them. They would probably never know how close an intruder was to them. They would probably never know that someone was living with them in their home.
Luka waited, hoping that they would fall asleep soon. After an hour of patient waiting, she pushed open the cabinet door without making a single sound and crawled out.
The moment the cabinet door was closed again, Luka started up the stairs quietly. When she arrived at the fourth floor, the intruder wondered if she had to knock to make sure the girl was asleep. But she felt uncertain; the parent's bedroom was too close for comfort, and while the father slept like a brick, she didn't like the fact that the mother was also awake so late. Maybe Miku had inherited her sleepless nature from her, and she didn't want to test the possibility.
So, knock or look? It was dark out, but the window was by the door, and even moonlight was a good light source.
She decided to tempt fate a little and opened the door very slowly. There wasn't a single noise in the entire household. She was scared to breathe.
Gently she peeked around the corner to see if Miku was awake. Her form was lying the bed, curled in a ball, facing the wall.
Luka sighed through her nose and stepped inside, leaving the door open. Miku didn't move, seemingly oblivious to her presence. The intruder hoped she truly was.
Briefly, she wondered how to scare the girl. The chairs weren't enough, the whole dismantling of her makeup arrangement wasn't enough, nothing was. She spied the girl's computer on the desk, still open and logged in. The screen's brightness was at minimum, its luminosity hardly comparing with the moon's.
This gave Luka an idea. She opened a word document and typed two words. She hoped it would be enough. It had to be.
Just like that, she left the room on her tiptoes, leaving behind her own wish of 'Happy Birthday'.
Luka decided to sleep through the night, thinking that there would be plenty to study the next day if the mother was home. Maybe things would change, and Luka absolutely had to keep check of that. Her sleep was uneasy, though. When she woke up, it was to the sound of Miku wishing her mother a pleasant trip. There was crying and hugging and more crying, and Luka found herself disappointed. She was leaving so soon?! And she left quickly, too; within moments Miku was once again alone, for her father had left, as per usual, at six forty-five.
Luka knew immediately that Miku hadn't told her mother of the message on her computer. Maybe the girl hadn't even noticed it yet, but the intruder doubted it.
She silently swore. What would it take?!
She gave Miku two hours of peace. Then she knocked. Miku hardly seemed startled, and Luka detected some form of denial. She knocked again. Miku went upstairs, and Luka quickly took down the paintings again, and opened cupboards. She hid under the couch when Miku returned.
The girl had frozen at the sight of Luka's modifications. Then she turned around, again and again, before running up the stairs, running through the home. The intruder took advantage of her absence to disappear behind the wall and heard Miku go back downstairs and clean everything up, before sobbing with all her heart.
Father returned in the evening. Luka knocked against Miku's office wall while she worked. Luka moved her furniture as she slept. Luka knocked against the wall when she went to prepare milk. Luka cleaned up behind her when she abandoned the task and fled back upstairs. Luka turned on sinks, switched around photos, rearranged the furniture, reoriented rugs, switched off the lights, pulled out the fuses, unplugged computers, put shoes in the cupboard and plates by the door, drew little smiles on her bathroom mirror, set the table for dinner, switched the salt and the sugar. She scratched and knocked and groaned from behind her wall. She switched and replaced and hid objects. She turned on and off and broke and repaired.
And she did so for months.
But Miku never talked.
Luka grew numb.
November was cold. The leaves were all gone, fog hovered over the city constantly. The moon lit up the fog, turning it into a giant spotlight of sorts. Luka sat in the garden, against the wall, behind the rose bushes. Distractedly, she was again taking all of the thorns off of the branches, simple maintenance, but as her mind wandered her hands simply stopped moving.
She wanted to go home. She wanted to go home and eat, sleep. She wanted soup and a hug. Something warm, something comfortable, something effortless. She looked up and observed the fireflies as they danced in the air, trying to keep track of their tiny bodies as they flew around in the dark. Stupid flies. She turned her head and heard the party happening just next door. The lights were on, the people were loud, and somehow neither helped her. The light, yellow and blinding, somehow managed to find its way past the bushes, past the fences, dotting the dark garden with gold. It was as if the grass was a sparkling dress and the fireflies a shimmering necklace for an invisible woman Luka could not see. So many pretty things, even the entire world, were right in front of her, but Luka had never felt so isolated.
She'd tried everything she could dare to try. Anything more direct would require her opening her mouth or showing her face. She'd tried it all, again and again, but it was never enough. Miku never peeped. She never complained. Her parents didn't know of the ghost that plagued their daughter.
And Luka had tried so hard. She'd become so good at what she was doing. Miku's nomadic behavior, once a real hindrance, had become just another thing to dance around, a new tool to work with. Even as Miku went up the stairs Luka would go down, even as Miku looked around Luka hid.
But it wasn't enough. She had become the god of the household...and it wasn't enough. And suddenly, she couldn't even go home, because the neighbors just wanted to hang out with their friends and family, have fun, have one last party before the winter settles in.
"You have no power here..." she mumbled with a sad laugh, quiet enough for her voice to be drowned by the party's laughter.
The only tool that Luka hadn't totally exploited, she thought, was Miku's bedroom. Of course, she'd invaded that room to hell, turned it upside-down, trashed it once beyond recognition. But maybe she could do more?
But it was rare that she even dared enter Miku's room. Luka had been there one night, sitting in one of the chairs in the middle of the room, staring at Miku's sleeping form from only a few meters away. The laptop had been, as usual, on and logged in. Sometimes Luka wondered if the girl had been filming herself in her sleep, but it never was the case. Maybe she didn't think she'd actually catch anything on camera. Poor fool, thought the intruder. If Miku had thought of filming her and gone through with the idea, Luka would have been caught red-handed. But apparently, surveillance never entered the poor girl's mind.
So Luka had sat there, watching the girl sleep. It had, again, been months since Miku had made herself a mug of milk, it had been months since Miku only fell asleep around three in the morning no matter how hard she tried. But it was the first time Luka had paused to reflect, staring at her.
What would it take? How long would this go on? How much longer would Luka have to pay rent for a room she hardly used anymore? How much longer would she have to lie to her parents and her friends as she answered letter after letter?
Luka groaned at the memories, at the questions that kept returning. At that point, the girl had become little more than an annoyance. The mission was taking too long, the girl was too stubborn, and the task was becoming too challenging. Luka had been at total ease, sitting there in the open, because she knew everything she needed to know. She knew that the girl would wake up at ten thirty, judging from the time at which she fell asleep. She knew that Miku wouldn't open her eyes, even if that was all it would take for Luka to be discovered. She knew everything.
But she didn't know how to break her.
Luka groaned again, so close to the party but so far from the entire world. She plucked at the thorns with some more vigor, more rage, before deciding that she would just camp in the Hatsune residence for one more night. The grate was set aside, replaced, and she disappeared into the home.
Going up and down the residence had become a walk in the park. She knew the time, she knew that everyone was dead to the world, the home was hers'. Yet...
Luka paused as she passed the room with the wine. She briefly eyed the door. Those bottles, gathering dust in a dark corner of a silent home...
Luka shook her head and continued up the stairs, up to the next floors, all the way to Miku's room. No knocking out of fear, no peeking. She knew that Miku would be dead to the world for the next hours if all went well, and considering how regular her pattern had gotten, she could count on Miku's sleep as much as she could rely on her father's punctuality.
She pulled up a chair and sat down right next to the teen. The intruder didn't even know why she went there, why she stared at the girl. Maybe she wanted to find answers. Maybe she wanted to just sit down with someone for a little while.
Miku had been suffering a nightmare, the pinkette realized with a slight start. Her blankets were disheveled and her expression was uneasy. Luka could only frown at the sight. Nightmares, of course. Miku could get nightmares but she couldn't convince her parents to just leave. She sighed, not bothering to stay silent. The whole affair had truly become bothersome. This little eighteen-year-old was a chore.
Miku whimpered, and Luka half-heartedly considered hiding under the desk, should she wake up. But Miku faced the wall again, hugging a pillow she'd taken to sleeping with, and grew still again.
Luka relaxed fully once more, leaned against the back of the chair, staring at the girl as she slept, hoping that observation would bring her some semblance of an answer. But no matter how much she stared, she found nothing. Miku's blurry dark silhouette conjured no answers. Luka wanted to throw caution to the wind and give up, but bit her lip.
There had to be something.
Slowly she stood and stared at the girl from above. Miku was so tiny, when she was curled into a ball. She was hugging the pillow tightly, burying her face in it. Luka couldn't see what expression she was making, if she was having a pleasant dream or if the nightmare continued.
In any case, Luka was making progress, if Miku's sleeping was any indication. The pillow-hugging was relatively new as far as she could tell, what with the frequency of her visits, so maybe she'd break soon. That was the only thing that gave the intruder strength to keep trying. Miku wasn't neutral. She was being heavily affected. She'd break soon.
Suddenly Miku rolled over, making the blanket slip from her form. She faced Luka, her face was no longer pressed into the pillow. Luka sat down in front of her and noticed the crease in the girl's brow. She looked so worried when asleep...almost angry. The intruder remembered how the girl had slept all those months prior...so relaxed, face at peace.
Luka frowned at the crease. It would become permanent if Miku pulled that face all night every night. And she looked so tense; her jaw was set and there was a small scowl on her face. Her fingers disappeared in the pillow because of the strength with which she gripped it. Miku probably woke up with a thousand aches. Her mind was probably plagued by a thousand fears. Yet...she never did anything. No attempts to leave the home.
Luka wondered if that was because she was taught not to do anything no matter how much she hated something. Her whole life she was holed up in various houses, moving around to her parent's whim. Was she submissive, passive in all ways? Yet she smiled so dearly for daddy and mommy, she tried so much to make them happy. Had they forced her into a never complaining silence?
For the first time in weeks, months, Luka felt her heart crack a little. Yet she refused to be guilty, to feel guilty. The mission, the mission…
But the crease on Miku's brow was growing deep and Luka hated it.
She was so sick of the never-ending task, she was so mad at Miku's stubborn submissive nature, she so hated the crease that in a swift, soft movement, she brought up her hand and rested her thumb between Miku's eyebrows, smoothing over the skin there. Her other fingers rested on her forehead, a feather-like touch.
And all of a sudden it hit Luka like a brick to the face. No matter how light the touch, it was the first time she was in contact with another person in...months. Ever since she'd quit her job, even. She'd forgotten how it felt, to be...in contact with anyone at all. The onslaught of emotions made her go slack, somewhat, releasing thousands of tension points of her own, and all she could do was stare at where her finger touched the girl's forehead.
She briefly considered pulling her hand back. She was too tired, she thought. She was letting her emotions get to her and she was starting to fuss over useless details again. The mission, the mission…
But the girl relaxed as well.
With widening eyes, Luka watched as slowly Miku's jaw dropped slightly, her features growing soft. Her death grip on the pillow loosened, her fingers emerging from the deep canyons she'd pressed into the fabric. And she felt how warm Miku's head was, how smooth her skin was, how soft her hair was. Suddenly the little annoyance became a girl again, her victim, a suffering human.
And then she sighed.
Luka had kept perfectly still, watching as the rigid structure before her melted into a puddle. And suddenly she recognized that face from months before, back when she was still seventeen, so young and bored yet happy in some monotonous way, so free of worry. Free of her.
She pulled her hand back, seeing that the crease had disappeared, that all of her worries and nightmares had been washed away by only a simple touch.
Luka watched, amazed. She'd erased the mark she'd made on the girl. She'd erased the very scar she'd inflicted.
She stood, her head spinning. She couldn't look at that face, she couldn't let it get to her, she couldn't forget…
Miku shivered, and Luka couldn't help but notice that it was a cold autumn, and even in summer, Miku slept with her blanket covering her from head to toe. Luka's hands were shaking for the first time since...she couldn't remember. Miku's birthday? She couldn't think. All she could manage was pull the blanket over the girl and leave as quietly and quickly as she could manage.
She had to make an effort to not make a sound. She almost stumbled and tripped down the stairs. It would have been disastrous. But Luka couldn't find it in herself to care. She forced her way through the floors, just barely managing to control her volume, and broke into the wine room. One bottle off of the rack, one trip to the kitchen and one escape to her sanctuary later, she tried to drown the emotions that threatened to drown her. She felt too much.
She didn't dream.
Only nightmares.