"How are you here?"
The words slipped from Teiichi's mouth before he could catch them, his breathing short, as if the incorrect word would scatter the moment like dust.
Yuuko stands there, her feet bare in the fading light, her form outlined by the shattered colors of sunset seeping through the dusty panes. It was so close to too beautiful to be true — a painting half-way between dream and memory.
Behind her, the old mirror groaned just a little, as if the glass itself were too scared to fully reflect her.
"Same as always," she murmured, smoothing long hair. "I linger."
She had not altered. Not in tone, not in weight. She had the same voice that breathed to him in corners of silence, the same voice that once made solitude feel like a fireside.
Teiichi advanced, warily, as if a single wrong move would send her off into nothingness like winter breath. His heart pounded, but it was not fear — realization.
She wasn't different.
No — not different.
Too the same.
There was no waning on her face, no grime on her uniform. She was a honed figure, not-real. A ghost — but one which did not vanish.
She was quiet. Rock-solid. Beautiful.
As if time could not permit itself to pass without her.
"You moved on," he breathed, his voice hardly above a whisper. "You… you were gone."
Yuuko's eyes drifted away, her smile smaller now, with something that resembled regret. "I tried," she said. "I tried to move on from this place. To where ghosts are supposed to go."
Teiichi swallowed hard, a constriction spreading through his chest. "What held you back?"
"You," she whispered, and this time the word punched him like a knuckle in the ribs.
The hall fell silent — much too silent.
Even the air did not dare to stir.
"You never forgot me," she whispered once more, slower this time, as if unpeeling something fragile. "And when someone remembers a ghost that much… they don't stay away. They are called back."
Her steps were quiet, but her presence weighed more as she approached. She extended her hand, quivering fingers barely above his cheek. She did not touch. She could not.
"But I didn't mean to come back," she said. "Not like this. Not… now."
"Is this real?" Teiichi gasped. "Am I dreaming?"
"If you are," Yuuko said, with that characteristic mournful slant of her smile, "then you've always dreamed of me."
He could've stayed like that forever, staring into the ghost of someone who made dying look like art. But the moment cracked — literally — with a sharp, jarring clink. Metal against glass. A sound that didn't belong in memory or dream.
Teiichi spun, his instincts catching up too late. Nothing there — just shadows and stillness.
Yuuko's face changed. The light in her eyes dimmed.
"We're not alone," she said quietly.
His back grew stiff. "What are you saying?"
Her smile never returned.
"The school… it did not stay empty when I left," she said quietly. "Ghosts do not allow a vacuum. When I died, something else took up residence in my place."
He stared at her. "Another ghost?"
Yuuko nodded, her gaze distant. "But not like me. Not someone who was loved. Something… else. Something vengeful."
The hallway grew cold all of a sudden. Not in temperature — in memory.
Yuuko let her hand drop to her side.
"Teiichi…," she trembled, only slightly. "Promise me something."
He approached her once more, not caring if she would disappear. "Anything."
"If this place attempts to take me again," she barely whispered, glancing quickly at the mirror behind her, "don't follow. No matter what you see. No matter what you hear. Let me go.".
He was about to say something, but before words could be arranged, a gentle crrrrk echoed through the air.
The mirror beside them shattered — only a fine hairline crack crisscrossing like a vein over the glass. But it was enough.
Enough to let something out from outside the glass.
Not light. Not shadow.
Something in between.
Yuuko stepped in front of him, suddenly more spirit than girl.
"Run," she whispered.