The most obvious possibility, I supposed, was that if my soul remained here in limbo with Ayane’s, my body would just drop dead where we left it on the runway once time started moving forward again. As someone who was planning to kill themselves anyway, the thought didn’t disturb me all that much. The only problem would be that we’d no longer have a way of letting anyone in the world of the living know where the suitcase was in the event that we found it.
“I don’t think anything will happen, per se,” said Ayane. “At least that’s what my intuition tells me, anyway—the same way it told me that if I touched you, I could pluck your soul right out of your body. It’s just instinctive ghost knowledge, I guess. Something tells me that even if we don’t take you back, you’ll just wake back at the airfield in your own body when the time comes anyway.”
“Want to give it a try, just to see?” I asked, half-jokingly, but well aware that if her instincts turned out to be wrong, it could mean my death.
But instead, we headed back to the abandoned airfield, making small talk as we flew.
“If we want to have any hope of finding your body before summer ends, then I guess we can’t afford to take things slow. We’ll have to continue the search every night from here on out.”
While there was certainly some ambiguity in terms of when exactly summer ended and autumn began, there was no denying that we had precious few days remaining before Ayane could no longer appear—which, according to her, was indeed an actual phenomenon and not just a part of the urban legend.
“Yeah, no,” she said. “Once autumn rolls around, I won’t be able to see you again until summertime next year.”
“Do you know why that is, exactly?” I asked.
“I guess I just figure it’s because Obon happens during the summer.”
“I didn’t realize you were Buddhist, Ayane-san.”
Though deeply rooted in the ancient Japanese belief of ancestral spirits as well, there could be no denying that Obon was primarily a Buddhist festival.
“I’m not,” she clarified. “But everyone knows summer’s the season of supernatural stuff, right? That’s when they play all those ghost stories and whatnot on TV after all. Not that I would ever watch any of them myself—I’m way too afraid of ghosts.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“What?” she asked.
“…Never mind. But yes, apparently the whole ‘summer is a time for ghost stories’ thing does trace its roots back to Obon, originally.”
According to one famed scholar of Japanese folklore, the custom originated in the traditional kyogen plays based around ceremonies for the repose of departed souls that rural communities would perform during Obon. The art of kabuki theater would eventually adopt these customs into many now-iconic plays—perhaps the most famous of which being the Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan—and it was from these performances that the notion of ghost stories having a “chilling” effect that helped to stave off the brutal midsummer heat was born.
“That’s awfully culture-specific though,” I noted. “Like, if you were born in Mexico, for example, I wonder if you’d instead only be visible during the fall?”
“Sorry, I’m not seeing the connection here,” replied Ayane.
“Well, because they celebrate their ‘Day of the Dead’ in November.”
The famous Dia de los Muertos, known for its iconic painted skeletons, was a day of celebration for the departed. The West, in turn, had long observed a similar custom in All Hallows’ Eve on almost the exact same day—though this was originally more a time of reverence compared to the festive holiday it had now become. But as a result of these traditional observances, late fall had become for the West what summer was for Japan: a time to honor the spirits of the dead, and a time for scary stories in turn.
Ayane seemed impressed by this trivia. “You know, Tomoya-kun—for a high school kid, you certainly know your stuff,” she said.
And almost immediately thereafter, my vision blacked out.
Gravity regained its hold on my legs, and I fell to my knees on the asphalt, back in my body once more. A warm summer night’s breeze blew through the airfield, and the tall grass lining the runway began to stir. My sparkler lay extinguished on the ground before me, but the smell of burning gunpowder still hung in the air.
The ghost of Sato Ayane was now nowhere to be seen.
We were still quite a way away from the airfield when my soul instantly snapped back into my body—presumably because time had run out, just as Ayane described. I assumed this was a testament as to just how tightly bound the soul was to the body under normal circumstances—though it could also be that physical distance held no bearing over how quickly the two could be reunited.
I wondered, if I were to continue lighting sparklers one after another, if I could meet up with her again and continue our search for the suitcase all night until I ran out. But within seconds of being back in my own body, my head started ringing and I felt an intense sense of fatigue. The same thing happened last time—and back then, I assumed it was a result of my brain being forced to instantly process all of the stimuli and memories I experienced in soul form over the previous several hours. It was dizzying.
“Well…” I whispered to no one. “See you tomorrow, then.”
I could only hope, as I rose to my feet, that these words would somehow reach her, wherever she was. I let myself back out of the area via the hole in the rusty chain-link fence and headed for home.
The following night, I returned to the airfield as promised. The usual ritual ensued: the sparkler burned bright for a moment, and then the wind stopped, and all grew silent. The Summer Ghost revealed herself, emerging from between the tall blades of grass.
Ayane looked around, examining each of our faces one by one in the moonlight. “I see you’ve brought company today,” she said. “Evening, Aoi-chan, Ryo-kun.”
“Yeah, long time no see,” replied Aoi. She had been crouched down on the runway, gazing into her sparkler, but now she rose to her feet and smiled.
Ryo pulled his hands out of his pockets and bowed his head politely. “Tomoya got in touch, so we came along to help out,” he said.
“Just figured a team of four can cover more ground than a team of two,” I said.
Though we narrowed our search radius quite a bit, it didn’t change the fact that we were still underground, more or less groping through the dark. We needed all the help we could get—which is why I reached out to Aoi and Ryo via DM last night and let them know that Ayane was fully on board with the idea of us helping to find her body, assuming they didn’t mind helping. The two of them weren’t especially enthusiastic about the idea when I first brought it up back at the diner, so I was a little worried they might’ve said no. But as soon as I told them it was what Ayane herself wanted, they immediately changed their tunes and said they’d be happy to join the search.