I could tell this had been Ayane’s room—left untouched with all its furnishings and the bed still made for the past three years, presumably, aside from the thin white linens draped over some of the furnishings to prevent them from collecting dust.
Ayane seemed wistful as she looked around the room.
“I just kept on going, running right through the storm without so much as an umbrella,” she continued. “Growing up, there was only ever one place I would go at times like that—the old neighborhood library. It was past closing time, but I figured that maybe I could at least take shelter from the rain beneath its eaves and wait out the storm. But just as I was crossing the street, I saw two blinding white lights come barreling toward me through the rain.”
“Headlights, I’m guessing?”
“Yeah. Some car ran a red light probably, since I had the right of way. All I remember is the light getting brighter and brighter, and then all at once, a massive shock ran through my body…but I didn’t die from the initial impact. I actually remember coming to, lying there on the asphalt—but everything was so hazy. I couldn’t move my body, or even tell if I was in pain or not, really. Then, through my blurred vision, I saw the silhouette of a man step out from the driver’s side door and start walking toward me where I lay…”
At this point in her explanation, Ayane walked over to her desk, crouched down, and crawled through the chair into the leg space beneath it. I couldn’t imagine why, but she was now peeking out at me from underneath her desk, sitting with her legs hugged tight to her chest.
“When I next awoke, I found myself trapped in a tiny little space like this. It was probably a big suitcase, or at least that’s my theory. Like one of those oversized ones designed for long vacations. I could tell from the composition and texture of the interior fabrics. It seemed like the driver curled me up into a ball and zipped me up inside—I couldn’t move an inch.”
“Jesus…” I muttered. “What kind of monster…”
“He probably mistook me for dead, I’m guessing. He thought he already killed me, so he threw me in his trunk and drove off to bury the evidence.”
“Wait… He buried you?”
“Oh, yeah. That part was pretty terrifying. I could hear him piling the dirt on top of me and everything. I tried pounding on the lid of the suitcase and calling out for help, but it didn’t do me any good. I was too weak to hit very hard, and could barely choke out anything more than a pathetic groan… Even so, I strained my ears and listened for any indication that he could hear me. All I could make out though was the sound of other cars passing by. I guess he must have buried me pretty close to the roadway or something. But anyway, yeah—it was just that and the sound of him shoveling dirt until eventually there wasn’t enough oxygen left for me to breathe. At that point, my consciousness started to fade…and that’s the last thing I can remember. And then I was dead. Just like that.”
Ayane rose to her feet once more, phasing right through the desk.
“The next thing I knew, I was drifting through the sky, looking down at the city below. To this day, my body still hasn’t been found. I know that from watching my mom go about her days. She’s still waiting for me to come home.”
She cast her gaze down to the ground, her expression despondent. When I imagined how it must feel, as a mother, to hold out hope that your daughter was still alive for years when you knew the odds were greatly stacked against you, I couldn’t help but empathize with her. A stabbing pang of sorrow shot through my chest.
“Do you know where you were buried?” I asked.
“I don’t, unfortunately,” replied Ayane. “I looked all over, but eventually gave up. It wasn’t like finding my body would change anything, after all. Can’t very well dig myself up or make a police report as a ghost, now, can I?”
She then slipped through the curtained window and back outside. I followed suit, and we now stood on the rooftop, with the starry night sky as our only backdrop.
“It’s pretty depressing sometimes, though,” she said. “I mean, I had so much left I wanted to do with my life…like go out and see the world, you know?”
“Isn’t traveling one of the few things you still can do? Heck, you don’t even have to pay for airfare anymore.”
“Well, you’ve got me there,” she said, narrowing her eyes in amusement—but the gesture belied the sorrow and resignation I could still sense deep within her. “Come on, Tomoya-kun. Let’s get you back in one piece.”
Upon our return to the abandoned airfield, we found my body right where we left it, sparkler still in hand. It still felt just as weird as it had a few hours prior, though, to see myself in the third person.
“Come to think of it,” I said, “didn’t you say there was some sort of time limit for how long we can interact? I feel like it was a lot shorter last time.”
“It’s because you were in soul form this time,” said Ayane.
My body was my vessel—it bound me to the world of the living, and through it I was able to interact with society and the world around me. But if your goal was to commune with the souls of the dead, it was apparently only a hindrance.
I walked over to my vacant vessel and pressed a weightless palm against its back—and an instant later, I was back in my own skin. As gravity once again took its hold over me, I very nearly fell to my knees. Almost immediately, an aching fatigue shot through my head. My only guess was that, as part of the body-soul reuniting process, my physical brain was overheating from being forced to process the past few hours of stimuli all at once. I lifted my weary head and saw that Ayane’s spectral form—that was so clear and vibrant to me just a moment ago—had grown hazy and indistinct. It was as though she could vanish into thin air at any moment.
“I had fun today,” she said. “Thanks for hearing me out, Tomoya-kun.”