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CH 4 Cliffside Shenanigans

Akihito started his day off by slipping out of bed and sweeping up the broken glass and salt. After tossing it all into the trash, he then shuffled through his bag and pulled out things he no longer needed on his person. Most of what he carried were necessities meant for home or travel and thus weren’t needed on a short outing, like his blankets, hygiene set, and sentimental items, which included a picture with his twin sister, which he set on his nightstand. He also had a few items meant for exorcisms and prayer, such as salt, his lighter, incense sticks, and a set of ceremonial clothes, the latter of which he set aside.

Once he’d finished unpacking, he threw his backpack over his shoulders and walked to the balcony.

Now that it was daytime, Akihito could begin to appreciate the view, which overlooked a shimmering sea, standing on a twenty-meter-tall cliff. It was certainly a refreshing sight to wake up to. It was quiet, too.

“New day...” he heard from behind him. “Wha- Oh, right, you’re here. Almost forgot.”

“I can’t blame you for forgetting if you’ve been cooped in this room for a month,” Akihito responded to the girl.

“Not the whole time,” Sophia said, her voice and footsteps approaching and his staff’s right bell chiming. He heard what sounded like the ghost placing her arms on the railing beside him.

“Well, I hope you’ve explored a bit because this is your life now,” he said, still staring into the distance. “Your second chance.”

“Hmm...so what do we do now? You said you won’t exorcise me, but that can’t be it, right? What, do I need to find my seven regrets to move on or something?”

Akihito shook his head. “No, I said this is your life now.”

“What...what does that mean?”

Akihito sighed. “You don’t have any special goal to achieve. Life goes on, at least that’s what I think.”

“So...you’re expecting me to just...continue living like a ghost as if nothing changed?” Sophia asked, her voice tense with anger. “I’m dead. I need to accept that.”

He shook his head. “Who told you that?”

“I-I dunno, everyone?”

Akihito looked to his right, hoping he was meeting the ghost’s eyes. “I think that person is wrong.”

There was a pause. “Then...” Sophia’s voice suddenly petered out, and a sullen one replaced it, “...then what should I do...?”

“That’s not for me to answer,” Akihito responded. “But I’ll be here if you ever need me.” He walked to the door on the other side of the room, and left, leaving the ghost within.

Akihito slowly made his way down the stairs, clinking his staff with each step, and eventually, opened the front door.

Not far down the path that led to the complex was a small parking lot for the inhabitants. A road led from the lot down to the town, about two kilometers downwind. Some people would consider it a long walk to get anywhere important, but, for Akihito, who was used to a six-kilometer walk to school, it was a lot closer than he was used to.

Just as he took a step out of the complex, his staff’s left bell chimed, and he felt a hand tug on his sleeve.

“P-please, don’t leave.”

He sighed. “I need to. I’ll be back later today.”

“I don’t want to be alone again...” Sophia stated.

He frowned. “How come you were so against me yesterday, then?” he asked curiously.

“Um...I just didn’t trust you.”

“Do you trust me now?”

The ghost hesitated. “Not...entirely.”

“Then why the attitude change?” he asked with a strangely genuine and calm curiosity lacing his voice once more.

“I...I know you don’t want to hurt me, at least. Even if I don’t know how much I trust you, I also...I’d rather be with you than cooped in a room all day again. I feel like I went insane being in there for so long.”

“I can’t stay with you the whole day. If you want to, why not follow me? You don’t seem bound to that building, so...”

“I can do that.”

He nodded.

“But where are you going?”

He pointed to the town. “A few places. I need some new shoes and a bike, and today is my college orientation.”

“Your college? We only have two around here, and the private one is pretty far away...so I guess you’re going to the community college?” she asked, rightly uncertain.

“No,” he said. “I think it’s a little more...weird than you’re imagining.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if I read right, their campus is supposedly located between the first and second spirit planes.”

“Mind speaking to me in a language I understand?” the ghost asked through a sigh. “First and second whats?”

Akihito turned his head away, then walked through the door, saying, “I gotta get going, let’s talk about this on the way.”

“Oh, sure.”

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For the next half-minute, they walked mostly in silence. Akihito seemed to be thinking as he quickly walked on, so Sophia let him take his time while she investigated something. She had noticed that his staff wasn’t...normal.

Yesterday, in the dead of night, as she had been whispering stories about her old friends’ many misdeeds to some of the wisps -a name she gave to the few small, whispering spirits that took the form of orbs, and could fly all about yet never dared to leave the premises of the complex- a flash of light had scared them all away.

That included her, yes, but she only dashed up the stairs in panic because it startled her and certainly not because it had scared her. After all, she was already dead, and it would’ve been preeetty embarrassing if she’d been scared of dying(again) in that circumstance.

But, moving on from that irrelevant detail, she had briefly looked back, after the shockwave of holy light, to see it had come from a boy her age -Akihito- who had clinked his staff on the floor. That was when he clinked it again, scaring- startling her into running upstairs.

What Sophia learned once he barged into her room was that his staff emanated not only light but also darkness. In its center, a sphere of blackness floated, and, in a fashion that reminded her of a lava lamp, bubbles of darkness occasionally rippled out of the center which dissipated quickly.

Since she had nothing better to do as she followed the spiritualist, she moved to Akihito’s right side to get a better look at him and his staff.

Akihito appeared fairly ordinary at first glance. Like most Japanese men, he had short, black hair and brown eyes, and he was even quite short, standing about two inches shorter than herself, though she was pretty tall for a girl. He wore a tight, grey, long-sleeve shirt tucked under a modest pair of jeans, both of which were rugged and dirt-stained from travel. At that, his boots were worse for wear, indicating that they had seen countless miles of use. Perhaps the only objects that set him apart from any other hiker was his obviously expensive and hefty staff and the pearl earring threaded through his right ear.

As she moved to get a better look at him, the staff’s right bell suddenly chimed.

Then, Akihito’s eye drifted to her eyes...roughly.

Curious, Sophia walked to his left. In response, the left bell chimed between his steps, and his eyes moved left. Admittedly, he had been clinking it on the ground, but Sophia could tell that something was up -finally.

She began juking back and forth like she was dribbling a ball, causing the bells to chime over and over again. Left, right, left, right, left, right- Akihito slowly put his hand to his eyes to massage them.

“Just what are you doing back there?” he asked, looking backward with a wry smile.

“What’s with your staff?” Sophia asked.

“My staff? It’s a relic.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“A relic? So it’s magical, right?”

“Spiritually attuned,” he corrected her.

Sophia looked deep into the staff’s sky-dark abyss. “Right. So what does it do?”

“It can sense the presence of spirits,” he said. “Among other things.”

“What else?” she asked.

Akihito didn’t respond.

“C’mon, can’t you tell me what else it does?” she asked, placing a hand on his shoulder as she spoke like they were buddy-buddy.

He sighed. “It’s a focus for spiritual energy, alright?”

“So what’s that mean?”

“You just don’t let up, do you?”

“When I have questions, I’m dead-set on the answers.”

“Ah...” Akihito emoted thoughtfully. “Everyone exists on different planes.”

“What?” Sophia didn’t understand what it had to do with her question.

“So by that, I mean that I exist on both the physical and first plane at the same time.”

“What’s the first plane?” she asked, struggling to follow him.

“You exist on the physical, first, and second spiritual planes, but you only partially exist on the...physical and second. Most spirits like you can move between the two at will, which lets you phase through objects if you want, but never people, whose spirits also reside on the first plane. That’s why you can punch me. For example, if the college campus is between the first and second plane...” Akihito paused, his eyebrows furrowing in thought. “Actually...I don’t know what that means.”

“So...about the staff...” Sophia said, still dead-set on answers.

Akihito suddenly raised his staff and lightly bopped the invisible spirit on the head.

“Ow!” she said, rubbing her head.

“I’m not going to explain it.”

She grumbled annoyedly. “How mean...”

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“You know, you punch pretty hard,” Akihito said a while later as they passed by a cliffside house.

They were approaching the bulk of the town after a dozen minutes of walking. Akihito walked quickly, especially since he was going downhill, so they had covered a little more than a kilometer rather quickly. Sophia seemed to be keeping up, either because she was already quite athletic or just because she was a ghost and may not have been capable of exhaustion. Considering she needed sleep, though, it was probably the former.

“Of course,” Sophia said. “I had to learn how to.”

“Why?”

“Why?” she asked like it was a silly question. “You can’t avoid getting into a fight when everyone hates you.”

“Then life wasn’t exactly ideal?”

“An ideal life doesn’t lead a girl to break into an apartment,” Sophia retorted.

“Ah...so I guess your parents wouldn’t help out?” he asked, knowing she already had a dislike for them. Casting aside one’s last name was, at least back in Japan, a serious statement.

He heard the girl scoff. “Ch! Nobody had the time to bother, I guess. Other girls picked fights with me, and nobody cared enough to stop them, so I learned to show them why it was in their ‘best intrests’ to stay away.”

“So it was mostly girls that tried to fight you?” he asked.

“Yeah. Until they found boys they could manipulate into fighting me instead, and I can’t compete with you monsters. Though, once it was a boy beating the shit out of me, the white knights came.”

“White knight?” Akihito repeated, unfamiliar with the term.

Sophia paused for a strange amount of time. “The type of people who pretend they want to help you when you’re at your lowest, but only because it’s convinent for them. ‘Oh, are you alright, good lady?’” she said the last phrase like she had a frog in her throat.

“And what did you say?”

“‘Yeah, thanks,’” she deadpanned. “One time, a guy asked me out a few days after breaking up a fight after I’d already been sent down to the ground. I didn’t even know his name. Not that I needed to to know what sort of guy he was.”

“It must feel unfortunate to be on your own like that.”

“Yeah. Hey, so how are we going to get to this college? You never explained how we were going to find it.”

Akihito stopped and rested his staff against his shoulder as he pulled his phone out and checked his email. “Once I told them where I would be staying, they sent me this message: ‘Walk northward from Cliffside until you spot a square boulder. Speak, ‘s2lo04’ and wait until 9:45, at which point, you will see the bus. You may bring only up to two visitors with you at any given time. Do not share this code with anyone.’”

“s2lo04,” Sophia repeated, her smugness almost palpable.

Akihito massaged his eyes in exasperation. “Please...”

“I’ll make sure to tell it to everyone I see~ s2lo04, s2lo04, s2lo04, s2l004, s2l04, s2l04.”

He merely sighed and put away his phone, continuing down the road. “Yes, you’re such a mischievous spirit, aren’t you?” he said sarcastically.

She smiled mischievously behind her veil of invisibility.

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“So...why are we in a shoe shop?” Sophia asked, walking behind Akihito with her hands behind her back as he browsed a catalog of shoes. At this point, they were partway into the town, at a strip mall vaguely familiar to Sophia. She hadn’t been to this particular store before, though.

“Because I need shoes,” he responded.

Although the exorcist could be outgoing, he was usually rather reserved and often appeared deep in thought. Sophia wondered if his thoughts went beyond the natural or if the boy was simply thoughtful. It was difficult to get a read on him at times, and she felt as if she was normally quite good at getting reads on people.

“Huh. So...you aren’t from here, right?” she asked, leaning close to him.

Akihito was sitting on the ground with his staff propped on his shoulder as he tried on a set of heavy black boots. To his right, his old boots, which were worn and stained, laid. “I’m from Japan.”

“Why’d you move?”

“Well, I wanted to get out and see the world, right?”

“Right?” Sophia said, leaning back up as she listened.

“My own village is pretty small. I lived at our shrine, and I mediated supernatural conflicts in the place. I was...uhh, known for being the ‘ghost kid.’ Most people thought I could see ghosts, but...” He looked to the side, gritting his teeth. “...I can’t, not without spirit arts.”

“Can mediums not see ghosts, then?”

Akihito sighed, leaning back onto his hands and looking up. “No, they can.”

...He seemed a bit sullen, admitting that.

“Anyway,” Akihito continued, “I’ve always loved to learn about ghosts, so, as I grew up, everyone across the village began relying on me, particularly since my father had begun traveling farther and farther for exorcisms. I never had a permenant fix for problems, though. Ghosts can be a pain in the ass, and since I refused to do exorcisms in most cases, I couldn’t do anything but settle conflicts over and over...”

If I’m such a pain in the ass, why not just exorcize me? Sophia wondered, averting her eyes.

“Well, that’s a lie,” Akihito continued. “I wasn’t the one who thought that, it was everyone else. Ghost this, ghost that, they just kept appearing because I wouldn’t cull their souls.” He sounded scornful, true anger leaking into his voice for the first time since Sophia had met him. “Nobody understood that the ghosts weren’t some rodent shuffling through their trash but real people. Sometimes even family members. They just didn’t know how to communicate with each other.”

Sophia once more found herself perplexed by the boy’s reasoning. Weren’t ghosts born from regrets and stuff? The whole point of her existence beyond life was to say goodbye to those things, but he insisted otherwise.

“I kept having the same disagreements with my family and neighbors, and I got sick from it. That’s when Saint Juliva University contacted me. They were scoping out talent, and I ended up on their list.”

“Talent for what?” Sophia asked.

“Spirit arts.”

“There’s a school for that?”

“Yeah,” Akihito said as he stood up with a shoebox in hand.

He had picked a set of thick black boots, similar to the ones he’d considered earlier, but these were even larger and were a bit elevated. He walked the box to the register, and while he checked it out, Sophia thought about what an exorcist school would be like.

Once he was checked out and began walking to the door, she asked, “But how? If you’re going to live at the apartment, that means the school is here, in my town.”

He nodded. “Yeah...?”

“But we don’t have a...’spirit arts’ university.”

Akihito nodded as he scratched his head, walking outside. “I found it weird, too. I was told to find a place to stay on the West Coast of the United States, and after I told them where I would stay, I was sent that email. I was also offered to stay at their dorms, but they looked expensive, and July offered me half-off on housing if I took care of you.”

“Yet I’m still living in her place rent-free. Sounds to me like you aren’t doing your job,” Sophia said with a laugh.

“I said take care of, yes?”

Sophia slowly nodded.

“Now I’m doing it in a more literal way.”

“Touche. Oh, and before I forget,” Sophia began walking into the middle of the shopping mall’s parking lot and holding her hands to the sky dramatically as if she were presenting the whole sky to Akihito. “Welcome to my town, Cliffside!”

Akihito looked above, but not through her, towards the collection of buildings, trees, and houses behind her.

She followed his gaze. He had mentioned something about Sophia’s town being large, but she was more than sure that it most certainly was not. The bulk of the town was only two or three kilometers across, and over half the residents were scattered far from it, all across the cliffed plateau. Admittedly, Sophia hadn’t gone to many larger cities before, even though it had always...

She suddenly started to tear up. It had long been her dream to move to Los Angelos. Away from her family, away from the lonely town, away from her life.

Now, she couldn’t do that.

As Sophia thought that, she found herself hit by a bike.

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