When he failed in his first attempt to engage with the ghost, Akihito turned off the lights and lit his candle once more, as his flung body had startled the flame, putting it out.

Under normal circumstances, he could use a spirit art to stun or bind the ghost, but this wasn’t ‘normal’ circumstances.

At least in his native schooling, he understood that most ghosts fit into a few categories similar to the ones that spiritualists like himself did. One such type of classification described how bound a spirit was to the physical plane.

Descending in rarity, there were:

Wind-class ghosts, who were able to manipulate small things like wind, noise, or sometimes lights.

Then fire-class, who were capable of manipulating small objects like lighters and could only sometimes be seen by revealing lights such as a sacred flame, though only in flickers.

Next, there was water-class, who were still only sometimes visible to the naked eye, but revealing lights would work on them. In addition, they could make physical contact with people, which made them able to injure.

And finally, there were earth-class ghosts, whose souls were often so tied to the physical plane that they could be seen and heard by anyone and might even pass as a normal human.

Considering the sheer power behind her punch, this ghost was certainly stronger than a fire-class, and since she was invisible, she probably wasn’t an earth-class. That meant she was most likley a water-class spirit.

Akihito chewed on his nail for a bit, thinking on how he could handle such a powerful spirit, then decided to resort to his usual tactic.

He unlocked the door again, then pushed against it. Something was blocking the inside.

“Now how am I meant to get in there?” he said to himself. He quickly shook his head with a determined expression. “Hello?” he said quietly, his head pressed against the door. “Are you in there still? Can we talk? I’m not going to hurt you.”

He waited a few seconds in silence.

He sighed. He wasn’t even sure if the ghost was listening to him or just sheltered in a corner. No, she was probably lonely, maybe scared. He was sure she would listen.

“Look, if you don’t come out, I...” he considered threatening her but was definitively against it. “can’t really do much. The owner is probably gonna tear down your room because you’re causing trouble.”

Another thirty or so seconds passed, but the ghost didn’t respond.

He leaned down and pulled a deck of cards from his pack. “Are you bored? We can play a card game. I could invite someone else to play if you wanted.”

...

“Are you angry the room got refurbished? Did the owner take something of value from you?”

...

“Are you loney? Scared?”

...

“I just want to help you.”

There was a sharp response from behind the door: “You’re here for a paycheck.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then for what?”

“For a discount on housing,” he said humorously.

...

“I’m also here to help you,” he insisted.

“Doubtful.”

“Are you here to help yourself?” he asked, trying to pry something of substance from the conversation.

“Yes.”

“Could you tell me how being in there helps?”

...

“I will not exorcize you.”

“I hardly know what that means.”

“It means: to send a spirit to the third plane.”

“Never heard of any planes in the afterlife.”

“Well, you don’t need to because I won’t be sending you to any.” He sighed. “Can you just open the door so we can talk?”

“No,” she said like it should have been obvious. “Just go away.” He heard footsteps moving from the door.

Akihito slowly nodded his head up and down, sarcastically. “Plan C, then.”

He twirled his staff and bumped it on the ground. The relit candle flame spiraled up from its end, then disappeared into the metal. He then moved the staff to the door. It phased through the wood. He prodded around the other side, then suddenly jerked his staff like a pool stick. It hit a chair propped under the door handle, sending it sprawling to the floor.

He quickly threw the door open and jingled his staff. “I must speak with you!” he declared before swirling his staff again.

Just as a flame leaped from the candle to illuminate the room once more, he saw the girl dashing towards him again, gritting her teeth and running low to the ground. From where he was, she looked like a tiger, too quick and ruthless for him to react.

He braced himself this time, but the girl’s fist still made a concave in his gut and flung him into the hall’s wall. “I said go away!” she yelled, standing over him, before shutting the door in rage once more. After a click and the sound of moving furniture, he heard her walk away.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Akihito was not done, however. Once more, he unlocked the door and tried to bat away the chair keeping the door shut. Unfortunately, as his staff moved through the door, he noticed that something bigger was blocking his way.

“I’m coming in,” he said, a bit quieter since he was trying to be mindful of the other residents. Not that he knew if there were other residents on the second floor, but he figured it was best to be polite.

He then planted his feet and pushed against the door with all his might. He heard the furniture behind it creak under the pressure as he did, straining himself for the sake of the ghost within. He heard the soft swish of wooden legs moving across a hardwood floor and smiled with glee for just a moment, but forgot the fact he was moving a door, and when the furniture propped against it finally gave way, his feet slipped.

His hands, pressed against the door, flailed as his face slammed against the wood, then began to slide down. He grabbed his staff with both hands as he tried to avoid faceplanting, but his efforts were too late, leaving his cheek squished against the ground.

He sighed.

A long day indeed.

Then, he heard creaks.

When Akihito looked up, the phantasmal visage of the girl was looking down on him with a disgusted grimace, illuminated barely by the fire.

“Dude, just give up. I’m not going away.”

“That’s not an option,” Akihito said, not making a move to stand.

“What, you’re just that poor?”

“Well, that, too. But I can’t let you go on like this.”

“Like what?” she said. “Annoying some damn complex owners? Give me a break.”

“No,” he said lightly, though as if what he was about to say was a given. “I can’t let you hide in a room all day.”

“The heck? What are you, my mom?”

“Why do they keep comparing me to...yes, darn it, I’m here to help you.”

“Psht, ok,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We’ll see how long your maternal instincts will keep chugging.”

Akihito had a bad feeling that pain was inbound, from the ghost’s expression, but couldn’t do much more than pray pray as a foot swiped through the door and collided with his chin, dead-on. He was uppercut with the kick and sent slamming back into the wall and onto his butt once more.

The door shut, and more furniture moved. Then, the girl briefly poked her face out of the door to taunt him. “Or you could just leave now. That’d work, too.”

Akihito’s vision rocked from all the beatings, but he still didn’t waste any time standing with his staff, then gathering his things and walking down the stairs.

He stopped at the reception desk again and clicked the bell.

The woman walked from the back door again. If his head weren’t spinning, Akihito would have found the quick reception a bit impressive.

“WOAH,” she said, taking a step back as she took a longer look at him. “Are you alright? You don’t-”

“A ladder and bucket of water.”

“Huh?”

“La-dder and bu-cket of wa-ter,” he sounded out, a bit more aggressively than he intended.

“O-oh, I got it. Where should I bring them?”

He started slowly walking away on his staff to the exit. “Behind the building.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” July asked.

Akihito nodded, standing at the base of a large wooden ladder, which was propped against a porch railing. Not far away was a declining cliff, almost thirty feet tall, which overlooked the beach. Normally, it would provide a nice view for the balcony, but the cliff was close enough to make falling down a conceivable possibility for anyone who fell off while climbing that ladder.

Akihito began climbing up with his staff in one hand and a bucket in another, and July held the base of the ladder for him. She knew quite well how dangerous ladders were.

He finally set the bucket on the porch, then climbed on himself. He clicked the end of his staff on the ground, causing a stream of water to flow up and circle around him, coalescing into a ring. He grabbed the sliding door handle.

Locked.

“I’ll give you one last chance,” he spoke through the glass. “Open the door and we can talk this out, or else.”

A small, flat ring of water diverged from the main ring and circled around Akihito’s head. Through the transparent ring, he could see the ghost. She was sticking her tongue out at him.

“Ok, initiate plan D.” He raised his staff, and some water coalesced in the metal ring in the top, like a bubble stick. “Sorry, June,” he said.

“Wait...what do you mean?” he heard from below. “Let’s think about-”

Then he smashed it into the glass. The bubble popped when he did, shattering the whole door in an explosion of force.

“Seriously, man!?” he heard.

“Sorry.” He walked into the room through the newly made entrance, his eyes closed, and staff tilted to the right, another bubble forming in its center.

Water couldn’t reveal spirits as well as firelight, but there were other ways to do it.

One such way...

His staff’s left bell chimed, and he quickly turned to face the sound, gritting his teeth with determination and planting his feet and staff’s bottom against the wood floor.

A valley was carved into his stomach as an invisible fist thrust into him.

He didn’t budge. Instead, he identified the spirit through the angle of the pain and quickly swung his staff at her.

It collided with the spirit, and the bubble exploded. As she was flung into the wall, she was fully revealed.

She stood up, a hand on her stomach. “So, I guess you got fed up.”

Akihito twirled his staff, causing a spiral of water to encircle it. “Yep,” he said breathlessly.

She dashed towards him, and as he readied to parry with his staff, it showed to be a feint, and she instead kicked his leg. The ghost smiled in satisfaction as the pain and impact made the already overwhelmed boy tumble, but she didn’t pay attention to the end of his staff, which he had quickly retaliated with, jabbing into her stomach as he fell yelling. Like a spring, the spiral of water catapulted into the ghost, flinging her into the barricade of furniture across the room.

“So much for helping me, huh?” she said, mocking the spiritualist as both of them stood back up.

He sighed through a hoarse throat. “Tough love...”

The girl moved while he spoke, grabbing a chair from the barricade, and then running at the spiritualist with it.

“...comes in many forms.”

He calmly hit the ground with his staff, the bells chiming just before she whacked him with the chair. The ring of water formed a barrier and intercepted her at the last moment, forcefully flinging the chair into the ceiling. Akihito quickly followed it up with a left-handed jab to the gut, making the ghost hold it pain, then kicked her abdomen before she could recover, sending her tumbling to the ground.

Finally, she breathed out hoarsely, clutching her stomach. “Congratulations,” she said sarcastically, her voice small and unsteady. “You win. Good job.”

He looked over her with a vaguely disgusted expression. “Hardly. But sometimes the nicest way to teach someone is the beat the shit out of them.”

She put an arm over her eyes, shielding them as she breathed in and out on the floor, defeated. “You can end it now. I don’t care if you exorcise me. There’s no point...no point in remaining here.”

His expression didn’t change.

Her voice grew even more strained and quiet, yet higher in pitch. “I don’t want to keep living...like this, anyway. There...there’s nothing left in this world for me.” Her voice was almost a squeak at this point. “Nobody to talk to, nothing to do, just sadness, left for people like me who can’t move on.”

She began to sob, sniffing back the loud cry for help held in her throat.

Akihito sighed, then kneeled down. He wrapped his arms around her, lifting her up and holding her to his chest in a hug. “It’s alright, now. I’m here.”

“J-just exorcise me...” she said, her arms limp.

“I would never do that so easily. You deserve to have your life.”

“I could hardly keep it when I had it, why...why would I be able to live when I’m dead?”

“You aren’t dead,” he said. “Afterlife can’t be spelled without life, and I’ll make sure everyone spells it right.”

“That...” she said. “That’s so dumb.”

Akihito chuckled. “I’d rather be dumb than dead.”

“You...” She wrapped his arms around him, finally reciprocating the hug. “You are.”

“Dumb or dead?!” he asked in confusion.

She sighed, holding in a chuckle. “Dumb,” she said before finally crying.