I'm glad as always that my current big project, "Valse Sentimentale" has been receiving a lot of much-needed attention. Lord knows I'd write something just absolutely dreadful without some helpful guidance, so as always I'm appreciative of what feedback I get!
In any case, I've recently had an idea pop into my head to explore something that I haven't seen too terribly much of when it comes to Katawa Shoujo, the supernatural. Specifically, and at risk of spoiling the first few hundred words of story, I wanted to look at how a certain ghost residing at Yamaku Academy might have some unique adventures of his own.
Actually, in order to dispel all of this cryptic ridiculousness, this is a fiction exploring the existence of Hisao as a ghost bound to Yamaku's roof after his untimely death at the hands(?) of Kenji in Act 1.
This is a lot more experimental for me than my previous, still ongoing story, so feedback is going to be even more highly appreciated here than it has been. I hope you enjoy what I've come up with so far, though!
Chapter Links:
Chapter 1: Cold (This post)
Chapter 2: The Cat
Chapter 3: Distractions
Chapter 4: Please Like and Share
Chapter 5: Bubble Bust
Chapter 6: They Did (Two halves)
Fanfiction.net mirror
Chapter 1: Cold
Reality is a cold bitch.
In the past I would append something along the lines of “sometimes” or “when it ruins your day the most,” but the events of the past few years have gotten me over that habit quite convincingly. At the very least there doesn’t seem to be anybody around to dispute the assertion anymore.
So with that kept in mind, I’ll reiterate my statement more boldly.
With conviction and finality, reality is a cold bitch.
The heart attack in the snow was just the beginning. In fact, thinking back on that day when Iwanako confessed to me might just be the reason I’m choosing to use the word “cold” right now. It’s strange considering I don’t even remember it being that much colder than what was needed for snow.
It’s even stranger to think about the sensation of cold itself.
You can’t measure cold, you can only measure heat. Cold is simply the absence of a comfortable level of heat, arbitrary, only useful by mental association rather than as a true, scientific measure.
I suppose the strangest part about the concept of “cold” now for me however is far less philosophical than that.
Since that night, the sensation has become an alien commodity, a distant memory. They say that the past can hurt or even feel as good as the present so long as it’s remembered, but I’ve done a lot of remembering what it feels like to be cold lately.
No amount of thinking is enough to overcome the lack of nerve endings becoming a spirit entailed.
The grand irony of my situation didn’t have a ghost of a chance to escape my observation. In life I never gave any real stock to ghost stories, even when I occasionally let myself be wrapped in the mutual paranoia for the sake of fun. Ghosts weren’t supposed to be real.
How fitting that I became something I never even believed in.
After that fateful day in January, I’d been bound to a hospital bed for somewhere around four months. The similarities between then and now are all too clear to me, and I imagine the sheer speed with which they came by my matchstick of a life has much to do with it.
I don’t remember much about the fall or the moments afterward, but I do remember waking up to bright sunlight and a quiet, sullen atmosphere. It was strange opening my eyes knowing the Sun was too bright for them and still feeling no pain.
At the time I still wasn’t sure where I was and what was happening. There was a me-sized hole in the fence, a crime scene assembled below it, and bouquets of flowers spread all around where the police allowed any kind of contact. I went to inspect it multiple times, but after only a few minutes I found myself back on the rooftop without any memory of what it was I saw.
It didn’t make much sense that I couldn’t visit the spot while it was being investigated, but I imagine it’s yet another cruel twist from reality keeping me from learning the details of my own death.
I tried to run away from it all, to flee the phantom Yamaku where nobody knew I was right there trying to talk to them. I only got as far as the wrought-iron gates that first welcomed me to the Academy before a powerful, magnetic force of some sort kept me locked in place.
I was and still am unable to go anywhere but the places I’ve been to before. The boys’ dorm, the main and auxiliary buildings, the track… All of these have become the limit of my world.
Even considering that, there are still places I can’t go even if I can see them clear as day. I never did visit the pool in the auxiliary building, and even though it’s a large room in plain sight from the halls, I can never cross over the window boundary to be there physically.
I can watch, at least, and I took full advantage of my existence as the perfect voyeur for a few days. Unfortunately, ghostly memory doesn’t seem to work as well for places I can’t visit either, and all I can retain is the perverse satisfaction I drew out of performing the act itself.
Perhaps that’s for the best, honestly. It’s not as if I could relieve stress if I even built up that variety anymore.
Though my hospital stay and now my existence as a spirit have many parallels, it seems my visitors died off even faster this time around than last. I know exactly why this is.
It was the day that my cold reality came into focus. A typical July morning, certainly sweltering and humid from the looks of it, didn’t seem that different from the other days I’d experienced since my death. Only this time, the spot where I died had been decorated again.
The investigation was naturally the first thing to go, within a day of my passing really. The flowers were next, and after that the wind carried off a placard with my name on it. Yet none of those really helped give me the context of my current situation until I saw that envelope sitting with its face up against the small memorial left to me.
Even a second tragic accident wasn’t enough for Iwanako it seems. Her name was unmistakable on the cover of the envelope. If she had had a third chance, I have no doubt now that she would have been the last to truly visit me for it too.
For days I raged at my inability to open or view the letter. At the time, it seemed like the letter was teasingly placed before me, the answer to my regrets in life that would let me move on from this pitiful existence as a rooftop spirit. I begged passersby to no avail, screaming and making unholy clamor in the hopes that they might hear. Instead, they only walked by faster it seemed. It was foolish of me to believe this, but at least it made me think I was able to affect the world around me.
The envelope came and went in a week’s time. I never saw who or what took it away, but ultimately all the mattered was that it was gone. It’s impossible to tell just how much time passed, even if the division between night and day was much clearer outside than it had been in the hospital.
Every waking moment was spent in writhing agony. Sensation may have left me, but the illusion of its existence is a constant. The thought that I could be stuck on this roof for all of eternity, lamenting regrets I can barely remember even now drove me literally insane.
Despite my raging, the roof slowly began to be occupied by students once again seeking a quiet sojourn for lunch or the like. I remember seeing at least a handful of confessions while my seemingly perpetual agony was taking place. I’m sure I would have caught a lot more things than just that if I weren’t busy trying to yell and wail like I’d become some kind of male banshee.
It was all useless for months, possibly even years. I couldn’t tell for certain how much time had passed anymore. The faces were vaguely familiar yet completely unknown to me. It only drove me deeper into the pool of despair.
My routine of making a ridiculous unearthly din was broken seemingly at random. A group of girls had come to the roof for lunch, but somewhere in my tirade I’d bumped against something, a shovel.
I’m not sure what it was even doing on the roof, but there was a strange resistance in the instant that my translucent arm passed through it. Suddenly, it fell loudly to the graveled ground, shocking the group of girls and prompting them to investigate. My insanity gave way to morbid curiosity, and I ran the same arm through the seeming leader of the group…
As it turns out, I only needed some time before I could start affecting the physical world again. I only succeeded in making the poor girl pass out, but the rumor mill must have started in earnest from there.
For the next week the roof was visited even more than usual, but the boldness of these expeditions diminished rapidly as I temporarily possessed their leaders or managed to cause any of their various possessions to act of their own accord. It didn’t take long for rumors of the rooftop poltergeist to completely overwhelm the student population.
The roof has become a lonely place since then. I still get visitors every now and again, and I feel more obligated than pleased to entertain their whims and desire to be spooked. I don’t think anybody has been able to fully enjoy a lunch up here since that first time I discovered my abilities.
Eventually, I was at least able to put a number to the number of years I’ve been stuck here. I’m not sure what prompted the sudden change in my ability to perceive time, but perhaps that’s just a part of the cycle of melancholy that comes with being a spirit.
It should be June again soon, almost nine years to the day that I lost my life falling off the roof. In that time, I’ve learned nothing I didn’t already know about my accident. That particular moment in time is still hazy, though I do at least know who was there and what we were doing.
I wonder how Kenji ended up faring. I find it highly unlikely that he escaped a circumstance like that without getting into some kind of deep shit, yet at the same time I can’t find myself really blaming him. He was more eager to entertain a guest than I thought was possible for such a strange, shut-in man.
While I think about it, how is it even possible that I’ve existed here for half as long as my actual life existed and failed to meet another like myself? For that matter, though I’ve come to haunt the roof I’ve still never once been seen by anybody still living. I shouldn’t be surprised, but there’s something inside me screaming that my situation is completely wrong.
I know for a fact I’m not the only student to have died while still attending here at Yamaku. Frankly, it’s statistically impossible knowing what I do know about the number of students here with life-threatening and shortening illnesses, even if that isn’t a terribly large amount.
For that matter, I should at least be able to be seen by somebody here. There’s no way to scientifically test it naturally, but those closer to death are supposed to be able to see ghosts more easily, right? The aforementioned internal screams try to assure me this is the case, yet I’ve never once been detected beyond my ability to influence objects in the physical world.
I think I know the answer for half of this, though, and it’s something I can only wish I’d realized while I was still alive.
Yamaku Academy is not a place where regrets run rampant.
It’s hardly surprising then that my untimely death would result in this cold reality where I’ve been confined to a lonely existence on the roof. My only week here was an unmitigated disaster. I spent my time doing equal amounts of bumbling, moping, and inadvertently pissing off people while also managing to come off as a willing asshole to boot.
I never really made a friend despite the opportunities. Kenji did his best, but his demeanor was too strange for me then, and it was his efforts that led directly to my demise anyhow.
So now here I am, doomed to another year watching Yamaku Academy go about its business from the roof of one of its haughtily-built buildings. The ultimate irony is that in my own struggle to come to grips with my existence, I’ve repeated history yet again. I’ve driven away any hope at companionship by haunting the roof, all others being spooked away by my behavior and demeanor.
This damned purgatory needs to go to hell.
At the very least I only get to feeling this ridiculously depressed around the anniversary of my death. The week is already nearing its end, and my manner is starting to feel more melancholy than truly angered by now.
It’s not that I’m unused to going long periods of time without visitors, but it would be rather nice to have something. Especially when the day is so pleasant like this, with blustery winds knocking about the few green leaves not quite strong enough to remain on their parent trees.
“What the hell are you getting so worked over, Hisao?” I sigh to myself, hanging off the fencing that had failed to save my life nine years ago. “It’s just another day in the non-life of a ghost, isn’t it?”
I try to tug uncomfortably at my uniform shirt, but the gesture is only successful psychologically. It’s strange that I’ve been able to move shovels and even people for the past several years but not the clothing on my own back. Given there’s no sensation in my body, I’m fairly certain I’ve completely forgotten everything there was to know about my own unclothed form.
I at least remember the scar over my heart, and I look down at it, the gravel of the rooftop visible through the unsightly blemish. I might have forgotten it too, but I must have unbuttoned the top layers of my clothing at some point before my fall. Even still, my shirt usually falls in such a way that it’s covered up.
A sudden gust of wind rattles the fence and causes me to flinch even if there’s no threat of pain or harm. Groaning, I pull away, floating back to the floor level and finding a spot near a bench, paying little mind to my surroundings.
“Nine years, huh?” I murmur to myself again, closing my eyes and contemplating my entire existence once again for a few moments. It’s been like this for nine whole years…
“Since what?” A voice cuts across through the wind, completely out of nowhere.
“W-wha–!?” I jump suddenly, feeling as if I’ve vaulted fifteen feet into the air. Strangely, I remain rooted to my spot despite being able to accomplish this kind of feat with ridiculous ease typically.
“A-ahhh!?” The same voice repeats and there the sound of thrown gravel as my ghostly senses return to me.
Sitting before me is a girl wearing Yamaku’s standard uniform, the top button undone and her ribbon either forgotten or kept away intentionally. Her position appears to have been compromised by our shared reactions to one another, and if I angle my head down a bit I’d be able to see…
Okay, you got over that kind of thing a long time ago, Hisao.
“A-are you okay?” I blink in surprise as I look towards this mysterious girl, before realization starts to dawn on me.
I can’t see through her the same way I can see through myself. Her glasses reflect real sunlight and her long, wavy brown hair is blown about by the wind whereas even my unfortunate cowlick is never affected so.
“Yeah I’m… Ah… This isn’t good…” She starts to reply before something stops her in her tracks. She leans forward to touch at her ankle before wincing heavily. “F-fuck… Dammit that’s not good at all…”
There’s no way this could be happening now of all times, could it?
“Y-you can see me?” I blink, unsure of how else to react even though she’s clearly in pain.
She looks up, looking far less calm than her tone of voice had been suggesting previously. Her eyes are a mixture of fearful and hopeful rolled up with a metric ass-ton of pain.
“I-I guess I c-can…” She starts, but suddenly those same strangely captivating brown eyes roll back into her head, the rest of her body following suit and collapsing into the gravel with a light crunch.
So this is how it is then, huh reality? Nine years almost to the day of my death, and a person finally able to see me injures herself and faints before I can even comprehend what’s happening.
I guess there are colder things you could have done to me today, but I’m standing by what I said earlier.
You’re a stone cold bitch.
You were expecting an OC-free story? Too bad! It was a Tuba story!
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