Chapter Text
Nagisa doesn’t know the exact moment that Rei Ryugazaki died in his arms.
He does know that he pulled Rei’s body up onto the sand, coughing water and croaking Rei’s name, like that alone would be enough to open Rei’s eyes. He knows the panic that gripped tight around his lungs when Rei didn’t wake up, knows he’d thrown his head against Rei’s chest and listened so hard for a heartbeat above the sound of the storm. He knows his entire body had felt numb and slow—much too slow—as he dragged Rei further up the sand so the waves could not reach them, thumping Rei’s head down to ground again and again and again and crying out his name with each impact. “Rei-chan!” Thump. “Rei-chan!” Thump. “Rei-chan!” He knows that he beat on Rei’s chest and forced his head back to open his airway and puffed air down his throat until he felt dizzy, and knows he kept clutching at Rei’s arms, crying for him to wake up wake up wake up until Makoto and Haru ran across the beach to collapse by his side. He knows he kept screaming for Rei to just open his eyes—please, please just open your eyes—and he knows Makoto held him tight to his chest and let Nagisa clench helpless fists against his shoulders because nothing he could do could bring Rei back. Not anymore. Not anymore.
He knows he cried until he could barely move, his eyes puffy with salt and tears and his body shaking hard, even with the three of them huddled together as the storm slowly passed and the clear night began to shine overhead. The stars simply made it easier to see the expression on Rei’s face—so calm, just like he was sleeping—and Nagisa knows that at some point he left Makoto, curled up besides Rei’s body and drifted in and out of sleep, hearing snatches of conversation and the gentle lull of waves, the water so calm now.
He knows that Haru swam back to the main island as soon as he deemed it safe, and knows that the boat arrived with the dawn, at which point people Nagisa didn’t recognize dragged Rei’s body out of his grasp and took them all back across to the opposing beach and suddenly Ama-chan sensei was there and too many people asking too many questions with Makoto and Haru and Kou and even Rin and some other Samezuka boys hovering at the edges and Nagisa couldn’t take it, couldn’t take it at all, just pushed his hands over his ears and curled up so only he felt the hot splashes of tears he thought he’d cried out hours ago dripping down his face and falling to the sand.
He doesn’t know the exact time that he falls asleep, but he dreams of drowning. Of the way Rei’s struggle to breach the surface had grown weaker and weaker. And of how Nagisa had thought ‘just a little more, just a little more’, how he’d dived down deeper to wrap his arms tight around Rei’s chest, legs kicking desperately for the air so tauntingly close above them. Knows that somewhere in those few moments, Rei’s life slipped out of his grasp, and Nagisa wonders exactly which moment had been the last.
***
The next few days pass in a haze, a haze that seems to have wrapped entirely around his body and keeps him sluggish and reclusive and utterly alienated to those around him. His mother. His father. His sisters. Ama-chan sensei. Kou. None of them can understand. Not even Haru and Makoto, though he guesses they’d come the closest. But how can any of them know what it feels like? What it really truly feels like to know he’d been right there when Rei had died?
There is a wake.
There is a funeral.
Nagisa has a small bouquet of light purple hydrangea that he tucks right up beside Rei’s left temple in the casket, and he takes the chance to run his hand over Rei’s cheek. So cold. So cold and dead and gone and looking so strange in a tailored suit and missing his glasses which had never turned up. There are all these people Nagisa doesn’t know here with flowers and tears of their own and he’s not sure if he wants to cry or scream or grab Rei by the shoulders and beg for him to wake up, to stop playing pretend and still be alive and okay so Nagisa doesn’t have to hurt like this any longer, so no one here has to hurt like this any longer. It’s Kou who finally pulls him away from the casket so it can be sealed and taken for cremation. So Rei’s ashes can join the family shrine and he’ll forever hopefully be at rest.
And it’s Kou and Haru and Makoto and even Rin who retreat to the quiet safety of Haru’s house. The bitterness between Rin and Haru seems to have abated, at least for now, even if they still eye each other warily from time to time as they all sit around the table and say barely anything at all, until Makoto tentatively suggests dinner. Kou flat-out refuses to eat mackerel, disappears to go shopping, and arrives back in triumph in about a half-hour. In the moments where Kou is berating Haru for having nowhere to put the new groceries because of his overabundance of mackerel and Makoto is trying to keep the peace before fish start flying, Rin slides on over to Nagisa and puts an arm around him. Nagisa sniffs and looks up at Rin, who smiles so gently, more gentle than Nagisa had remembered, and pulls Nagisa close, his arm and chest warm and reassuring. Nagisa had wondered if things had changed between the two of them way they had for Haru and Rin, but right now, tucked against Rin like this, it feels like nothing has changed at all over the years, nothing at all. Rin is still the big brother he remembers.
Rin and Kou lost their father to the sea, Nagisa realizes with a pang of remembrance, drawing his knees up to his chest and feeling Rin’s arm tighten in response. Maybe they can understand a little. Maybe the haze around him doesn’t have to be quite so thick.
But even as everyone sits and eats Kou’s mackerel-less meal, Nagisa can only poke around the plate. He hasn’t really been eating much lately. It’s like there’s this hole in his belly that only feels worse the more he tries to fill it. If anyone notices the way he just pushes the food around his plate, they don’t say anything.
After dinner has been finished and the kitchen cleaned up, they all sit out on the back porch, side by side by side. A couple of stray cats come up to the bowl of milk Haru has left out, and Makoto inevitably ends up with one in his lap. Nagisa ends up sandwiched between Rin and Haru, with Kou on Rin’s other side reaching across his lap to hold Nagisa’s hand, thumb moving gently over his skin. They’re all suffering, he knows, and feels guilty about not offering comfort to them in return, but they don’t seem to mind. Instead, they treat him like the slightest touch will make him shatter. And maybe it would.
Every night he jolts awake with the memory of water in his lungs and salt in his eyes and Rei unresponsive in his arms and feels a little closer to breaking.
Though the porch is silent and shrouded in misery, no one seems to want to leave. Kou’s phone goes off after a while, and she stands. Her mom wants her home. She drags Rin after her too, saying that Nitori can deal with Rin’s absence for one night at least. Makoto and Haru both draw closer until it’s the three of them and the cats, sitting there with the stars above them and the breeze tugging at the collars of their nicest funeral attire.
And then it’s Makoto who finally says the words, the ones he’s been dreading.
“Nagisa, it wasn’t your fault.”
Nagisa takes in a sharp breath and closes his eyes tight, fights down the words that try to claw their way up his throat and out of his mouth.
That he should have been able to pull Rei’s body up to the surface of the waves, should have been able to swim faster, swim better, anything to get out of the water so he could force the water from Rei’s lungs and force the life back inside of him in exchange. That Haru had managed to pull Makoto from the water, and there’s no good reason Nagisa shouldn’t have been able to do the same for Rei, if he’d only been better. But he wasn’t good enough. There are no excuses.
But he opens his eyes and nods and forces a small grunt out of his mouth, and neither Makoto or Haru look convinced but they don’t force the matter. And an hour later, Nagisa is sitting on the train alone, remembering how just a week ago Rei had sat at his side, and let Nagisa fall asleep on his shoulder with only a few minutes of grumbling later. Instead, now, Nagisa rests his head against a pole in the nearly empty car, and stares at his reflection in the opposite window, pale and exhausted and small, and he hates that reflection more fiercely than he ever has in his life.
Because Rei is dead, and it’s all his fault.
Dying, in the end, turns out to be quite easy, after the roaring rush of water and his own desperate cries and gasps for air have faded into an ear-ringing silence. The silence is broken only by the harsh intake of his breath, trying desperately to bail out lungs that had so recently filled with a salty water that’s left his body feeling chilled down to each finger and toe. But he’s alive, he thinks at first, and decides he can risk opening his eyes.
It’s bright, and he throws an arm over his eyes and moans. “Nagisa-kun?” They must be on a beach somewhere. And it’s morning already. How long has he been passed out?
“Nagisa-kun?” he asks again, lowering his arm slowly and blinking around at his surroundings. Which appear to be a lot of white, but he doesn’t have his glasses to help him. “Nagisa-kun?” The last thing he can remember is Nagisa pulling him through the water. They must have made it to this beach. Is Nagisa alright? Rei remembers with a wince the way he’d struggled and thrashed and panicked, and probably pulled Nagisa under the waves with him a few times. Utterly embarrassing. “Nagisa-kun?” He struggles to his bare feet, and stares down at whatever he’s standing on. It’s smooth, and white like everything else. This isn’t a beach. A hospital? Did he have to be hospitalized?
But no. He’s still wearing his swimsuit, and he can feel the goggles around his neck. Wouldn’t he be in a gown if he was in a hospital? But this isn’t a beach. It’s like a big white box that goes as far as he can make out. “Hello?” he calls, and the sound doesn’t echo back to him, swallowed by the endless white nothingness.
He only has two choices at this point. To stay put or try to find something, someone, anything. Maybe if he stays here Nagisa will come back and explain everything. But with the way Nagisa has latched onto Rei the past few weeks, the fact he hadn’t been there when Rei woke up is odd. Maybe Nagisa has been hurt. Maybe Rei had pulled him under for too long, in his panic to reach the surface.
It’s enough to propel him forward a few paces before he stops and wonders which way he should go. There’s just nothing everywhere he looks.
“Nagisa-kun?” he shouts again, cupping his hands around his mouth and sighing when, once again, nothing echoes back. “Haruka-senpai?” he tries, a little softer, and closes his eyes, letting his arms flop at his sides. “Makoto-senpai?” Nothing. This is incredibly strange and he’s beginning to feel increasingly nervous.
He heads left, because he’s always had a preference towards it, and walks along briskly. The air is strange too, he realizes. Like he’s walking through a thin fog. Not smoky. Just misty. And weird.
He wishes he had something to wear other than his swimsuit.
FIve minutes pass and he doesn’t find anything but more nothingness. Ten minutes. Twenty. And then he’s not sure how long he’s been walking anymore.
Something is very wrong.
He flops to the ground and sits cross-legged, chin in his hands. Maybe this is some sort of prank?
“Nagisa-kun?” he calls again. “Nagisa-kun, where are you?”
No answer. Not that he’d expected any.
He groans and hides his face in his palms. “Where am I?” he whispers.
And of course, that’s when he gets an answer.
“The Netherworld,” a voice says from behind him, and Rei yelps as he rolls forward, scrabbling back on all fours to get away from the man who is sitting quite peacefully right behind where Rei had been.
“W-when did you get there?” Rei babbles, trying to collect himself. The man is just sitting there, smiling in a pretty non-threatening manner. Without his glasses, Rei has trouble making out some of the details of his face, but the smile he’s pretty sure of.
“You asked where you were, so I came to answer,” the man says.
“But...but…” Rei gets himself sitting back upright and crosses his arms across his chest, feeling oddly exposed. “Where did you say?”
The man tilts his head to one side and lifts the opposite hand, gesturing to the nothingness around them. “The Netherworld. The In-Between Place. Limbo. It has several names.”
“I-I-I…” Rei blinks, and rubs at his face, and hurts his neck whipping his head around so fast to look all around him. “The Netherworld?”
“Oh.” The man’s tone brings Rei’s gaze back to him. “You haven’t caught on yet.”
“Caught onto what?” Rei’s voice breaks a little at the end.
The man leans forward, and Rei leans instinctively towards him. A hand is offered, palm up, and Rei does hesitate then, but the man’s face is soft and kind and Rei scoots forward until he can place his hand down on the man’s. The man closes Rei’s hand in both of his, and his hands feel oddly...like nothing. Not warm. Not cold. Rei can feel the pressure, can see his hand encased in the other’s, but surely there should be some sort of warmth? Just what sort of place is this Netherworld? How did he end up here after Nagisa must have dragged him onto the beach? What hasn’t he caught onto yet? What…
Oh.
Oh no.
“I’m dead,” he says, and the man nods, patting Rei’s hand.
“It often takes a while, when you’re young.”
“I’m dead.”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Rei sits back, letting his hand slide back into his own possession, and slumps where he sits. He’s dead.
No. More than that. He drowned.
The water stinging in his eyes and sloshing in his mouth and pouring into his lungs...it killed him? No, no, that’s can’t be right, Nagisa had been there...Nagisa wouldn’t have…
“Nagisa-kun?” He jolts upright. “Is Nagisa-kun alive? And Makoto-senpai and Haruka-senpai, are they alive?”
“Friends of yours?”
He hesitates. Friends? No. Not exactly. “Teammates.”
The man shakes his head no. “You’re the only teenager to come through here for a few months.”
Rei relaxes and rubs at his forehead. “Thank you.” At least there’s one thing good in this.
He stays in that position for a while. So. Dead. Now that it’s over with it seems like a rather silly thing to have been worried about all the time. The biggest complaint at the moment he has is that he’s still stuck in this stupid swimsuit, though he guesses that the endless nothingness of whatever this Netherworld is will get boring very soon and join the list of complaints. The man just sits there and keeps watching him, with a sort of endless patience that must be a trait of anyone who spends much time here.
Nothing seems to matter here as much as it had when he was alive. Vaguely, he feels guilty for dying on his family. For not giving his mom that extra hug before he left in the morning to go to the islands. For leaving that book half-read on the end of his bed. For missing classes at the high school and losing his chance to place nationally on exams. And he supposes the swim team will need a new fourth member. He wonders who it will be. Maybe Nagisa will tug on the sleeve of some other boy on the train, and lure him in with that smile and those smooth words and that will be that and Rei will be replaced and forgotten so easily. Because it’s not like he was truly a part of the team yet anyways.
The team that he died for.
The anger boils quick and unexpected in his stomach, and he pushes himself to his feet, arms crossed. But he forces the anger back down for now, fists clenching once and then relaxing. It wasn’t the team that decided to go swimming at night. That’s on him.
But Makoto didn’t die. The thought pops up in the back of his head, and he frowns. Haru must have saved Makoto, pulled him back up out of the water, gotten him to land. Why couldn’t Nagisa have done the same? Isn’t it Nagisa’s fault that Rei is here now? The thought seethes in that little bitter part of his brain.
That’s when the larger, more logical side of his mind reminds him that he’s much bigger than Nagisa. He’s taller with more muscle density.
But Makoto is much bigger than Haru. And Haru managed. That tiny spiteful part of his mind, voicing an opinion once more.
So just what happened with Nagisa? Did he unlock Rei’s arms from around his throat in order to keep himself from drowning too? Leave Rei’s body to be tossed back and forth through the waves?
Well, that would have been the logical thing to do, of course, once Nagisa realized Rei was dead. He shouldn’t risk his own life making sure a corpse makes it to shore. The thought still stings a little. Just a little. Like when Nagisa had complained about wanting to sleep with Haru instead of with Rei. A little sting that doesn’t make much sense but is still there nevertheless.
He’ll ignore it for now. “So,” he starts, turning back to the man. “This is the afterlife? Just this…” He gestures around them, letting his hands finish the question.
The man shakes his head. “No. This is the In-Between Place. For those of us who are dead but not quite ready to move on all the way yet.”
Rei waits for more of an explanation, but it doesn’t come. “Why aren’t you ready to move on? Is the afterlife...bad?”
The man hums and turns where he sits, one arm going out to trail aimlessly through the mist. And as his hand moves, Rei watches the color trail behind, so bright against the endless white.
“What is that?” he asks, and the man stops moving his hand. The colors disappear.
“The afterlife isn’t anything to be afraid of. This is just a place where souls can choose to wait.”
“Why would you want to wait?”
The man turns his head and smiles in Rei’s direction. “We wait, and we watch over those who might still need our guidance.” He moves his hand once more, and the colors spill into existence, and this time Rei can see the blurs of movement, and the mumbles of inaudible conversation. “See?”
Rei grimaces. “Not very well. I need my glasses.”
“Oh.” The man swipes a hand up, and the whiteness returns once more. “I keep a watch on my family. To make sure my children and wife will be alright. And if they truly need my guidance, from here, I can make them feel my presence. Even if they write it off as just a feeling.”
Rei sighs, and, after a moment, joins the man on the floor. “I don’t think there’s anyone who needs my guidance. I’m only fifteen. I don’t think I need to stay here.”
The man shrugs one shoulder. “Well, maybe it’s not always guidance. Haven’t you heard people say that the dead are never truly gone?” Rei nods. “Well, it’s because the ones we left behind need to be able to feel us sometimes, to know that we haven’t abandoned them. That we still love them.” The man gives out a short bark of a laugh. “Except in very special circumstances when we want to be sure those still alive to remember how much we hated them. That’s when a haunting occurs.”
“A haunting?”
“It’s not quite as dramatic as some movies would make it out to be. No hell-portals opening up, no messages written in blood on the wall. Mostly a returned spirit just acting as a malevolent presence. I wouldn’t recommend it. It doesn’t help with the whole ‘passing peacefully’ sort of vibe I think we’re trying to achieve.”
Rei raises his eyebrows and turns his head forwards, steepling his fingers and resting his chin atop. “A returned spirit? So that means we can return. Return to the living?”
“Yes. We can. A lot of young people do, actually. To say goodbye.” The man shifts, turning to look in Rei’s direction once more. “I like to encourage it. It’s a good way to achieve closure and accept the circumstances of your death.”
This man speaks like he’s had years of experience. Rei frowns. “Just how long have you been here?”
“Long enough. Long enough to get to know the place. To understand it.” The man grunts as he pushes his hands to his knees to stand up.
“And you just...spy on your family?” Rei starts to feel a little horrified. His grandmother had died a few years back and he hates the thought she’s been watching him from this Netherworld. There are some parts of his life he definitely doesn’t need anyone else looking in on.
The man must catch the direction of his thoughts, because he laughs again and stretches his arms above his head. “I give them the privacy they need. Mostly I watch them when I think they’re having a difficult time. Or when I get lonely.” He smiles softly when Rei turns his head to stare at him. “It has been years. I miss them very badly sometimes.”
“But aren’t there other people who stay here? That you could talk to?”
The man nods, running a hand through dark hair. “Yes. Of course. Not many of us stick around as long as I have, but there are a few. In this area, at least. I haven’t wandered the Netherworld as much as I could have, I suppose, since the connection to my family seems to weaken when I get too far. Which makes me think that the Netherworld does correspond to Earth, but that’s just a theory.”
His grandmother died in Tokyo. Hopefully that was a weak enough connection. Rei relaxes a little.
“So...what was that you were saying about returning?” Rei follows the man back up onto his feet. Experimentally, while the man’s back is turned, he tries sweeping his hand through the mist. Nothing.
“You have to be thinking about them,” the man calls back over his shoulder, and Rei’s cheeks go hot at being caught so easily. But he tries again, picturing his parents in his mind. For a moment, as his fingers cut through the mist, he can see snatches of color, what might be the shade of his mother’s hair..and then it’s gone.
“It takes some practice.”
Rei frowns and crosses his arms once more. “But I don’t need to practice, right? Not if I return?”
The man shrugs. “It’s your choice. You may go back, make peace with what happened, have a chance to say goodbye. And then move on through the Netherworld to the true afterlife.” He moves over to Rei’s side and swipes his hand through the air before them, and Rei’s eyes are besieged by the sudden burst of color and sound. The Iwatobi train station, if he can trust his blurry vision. In the bustle of the morning rush, the sounds of talking and banging and the trains settling into place and then moving slowly down the tracks. The yells of people desperately trying to reach the train before it leaves, and he catches sight of the colors of the Iwatobi High uniforms.
It’s home.
And suddenly he aches with how much he wants to be back among that throng of people, pushing and shoving towards the doors.
He’s dead. He’s well and truly dead. He won’t even ride the train again, or eat breakfast with his nose in a book, or go jogging, or pet the dog that lives down the street. He won’t buy food from the vendors and eat it while walking along the beach. He won’t go to festivals, he won’t take notes in class anymore. He won’t forget to water the plant in his room until it dies and his dad brings home a new one for the death sentence. He won’t lie on his bed in the dark and feel the cool press of the pillow against his face. He’s dead. He’s dead and there’s still much he had to do. It’s unfair. It’s so completely unfair. He can give up the larger dreams of finishing top of his class at one of the country’s best universities, or winning the Nobel Prize in physics. He just wants to ride that noisy, crowded train and feel the press of people all around him once again.
Wow, way for a feeling to kick in when he’s least expecting it.
He aches to be alive. He aches for it in every fibre of his body, whatever it is his body is made up of now. Dying was much too easy. He’s not ready for it yet.
“I’m really dead, aren’t I?” he whispers as he stares at the vibrant life of the train station, and the man doesn’t say anything in reply. Probably understands it wasn’t a question.
But returning. Returning is an option. Going back, making peace, whatever that was. Maybe...maybe if he has to accept the fact that he’s dead, going back to say goodbye will help. He thinks about his mother, and his father. His brother away at university. Probably home now, actually, for the funeral that must be happening. It would be nice, to be able to walk among them, one last time, even if they could only possibly feel his presence.
He frowns, and bites at his lip a bit before looking over and asking the question. “But I thought that funeral ceremonies prevented us from returning?”
The man laughs again, and makes a little wavy gesture with his hand. There goes Iwatobi Station. “With rules and beliefs changing so quickly these days, it makes for a little bit of leeway. The only thing I know for sure is that beyond here is a place of peace, the true afterlife for those who are ready to leave the world behind entirely. Here is the In-Between Place, for those who still want to keep an eye on things. And then there’s the living world, where we no longer belong. But it doesn’t do anyone much harm if you want to pop in and say goodbye to your parents and that sort of thing. I told you that I encourage younger people to do that. Go down for a few days, say their goodbyes, make peace with things left unfinished. And then most of them go on to the other side. Most of those who stay here are a bit older, like me, who feel they have a bit more responsibility. Watching my kids grow up, making sure they don’t turn out complete delinquents. But for young people like you? There’s so much more on the other side. And when their time comes, the people you love will cross to the other side too, and you’re reunited once more. Really, for all that people fear it, death isn’t such a bad deal after all, is it?”
Rei sighs and taps one finger against his chin. He glances down at his bare chest, and his swimsuit that still feels damp from seawater. His goggles dangle against his chest, and he sort of wants to pull them on over him eyes so he can see a little better, but he feels ridiculous enough sitting here in just a swimsuit. He doesn’t so much as sit back down as collapse in exasperation.
“Any chance I can change clothes?” he asks, voice a little plaintive. The man shoots him an apologetic grin.
“Not that I’ve seen so far. But you’re not the worst one off, trust me.”
“Wha—”
“No. No. Really, just trust me.” The man laughs again. Rei frowns a little and juts his chin out, sitting up straight. “So I can just...go back? And no one will be able to see me?”
“Well, I’ve heard of a few cases, and of course there’s all the ghost stories that have come out of it but…” The man shakes his head. “I doubt it. Not unless there’s an incredibly strong pull.”
“A pull?”
“Between you and another person. Sometimes it happens between spouses, or close siblings. I’m assuming you’re unmarried…”
Rei thinks about his brother, Katsumi, and the forts they’d used to build together, back when Rei had first started school and his brother was beginning junior high. They’d strung sheets together and tucked the corners behind chairs and thrown pillows all over the floor and created a little haven where they could play board games and video games and laugh over whatever constituted as funny at that age. Rei remembers the way they’d slide their homework out from under the confines of the tent for their mom to check, and how she’s slide the paper back along with snacks and a drink, so they could continue their camping until it was time for dinner. Of course, the appeal of forts had diminished over the years and ever since Katsumi left for university their conversations were mostly limited to texting and…
No, Katsumi probably won’t be able to see him. It doesn’t actually hurt to admit that. There was nothing left unfinished between him and Katsumi. They were brothers, they loved each other, and Katsumi is hurting now and probably always will a little, but he’ll move on, and be happy, and Rei has no reason to haunt him.
“What about my parents?” he asks, turning his head to watch the man. “Isn’t there a pull between us?” The man sighs, and dips his head a little before he replies.
“Parents tend to be able to sense the presence of their child stronger than anyone else. So yes, there is a pull, if the relationship between parent and child was a positive one. But there’s also age to take into account.”
“Age?” Rei asks, a little vaguely. This being dead thing is becoming increasingly complicated.
“Yes, well, everyone knows children are more susceptible to the presence of the supernatural. So while your parents may have a very strong bond to you, they’ll write it off, whereas a child is smarter than that. If you have a younger sibling with whom you have a strong connection, they’ll probably be able to see you. Of course, adults think it’s just a manner of coping and after a while the dead will decide to move on, and the adults will think the child has gotten over a phase. But kids are always more ready to believe in things like ghosts.”
“Ah.” Rei frowns and lifts his head, stretching his legs out in front of him. His bare feet knock together—once, twice, three times. His legs still look a little wet, in this lighting. He turns to look over his shoulder. As he watches, a droplet of water makes its way down his back and splashes into nothingness. Eternally in a bathing suit and goggles around his neck and eternally wet as well? He doesn’t like the sound of it.
“But then there’s the matter of unfinished business.” The man crouches down so Rei is forced to meet his eyes, which crinkle at the edges. “I need you to hear me out on this, because this is where the horror stories about ghosts come from.”
Rei nods. “Alright.”
The man sits back and puts a hand on each knee. “Sometimes those who have died have stuff left on earth that still needs doing. That can mean a lot of things. Avenging your murder is the most well-known but not necessarily common one. Most of the time it’s something small, and it’s different for every person. Just something that keeps your soul from moving on to the afterlife, because it still needs doing. A few months ago an old lady who lived pretty reclusively returned to the living world to prompt her neighbor to go check on her house. Nothing special. Didn’t even appear to her. Just planted the thought that maybe it would be a good idea to check on the old woman next door. Which led to the simultaneous discovering of the body and release of five cats that would have starved to death otherwise, which was the intent of the haunting in the first place.” The man laughs. “I think finding the body wasn’t that much of a concern to her honestly, as long as her cats were alright.”
It’s enough to make Rei smile. “And that’s what you call a haunting?”
The man nods. “Yep, exactly. And then, when her business was finished, the Netherworld pulled her back. It always pulls us back, in the end, to make sure spirits don’t stay past their time.”
Rei nods. It makes sense. Wouldn't want spirits wandering around all over the living world. It would get messy.
“Can you think of anything you left unfinished at all?” the man asks.
“Besides the rest of my life?” He tries to smile a little to show it's a joke.
The man just nods. “Yes, besides that.”
Rei sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. Something left unfinished? Something to keep him from going peacefully into the afterlife? He can’t think of anything. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Alright.” The man nods. “Well then, I doubt you’ll be visible or exert much influence over anyone in that case.” He smiles again. “I’ll warn you, when I went to say goodbye, it had been a few weeks since I’d died, so there will be a time-gap.”
“Wait, what?”
“A time-gap. I think it’s because it takes a little while for our souls to find their way here, but again, that’s just me guessing. Maybe we hang around our bodies for a while, in case some handy mouth-to-mouth or defibrillator happens to make a difference.”
“Oh.” That’s for the best, probably. He’s not sure he wants to return just to see his dead body being hauled out of the ocean. But he does want to return. Wants to see his parents, try to offer some comfort if he can. Let them know he loves them. Wants to see the school, and the train, and the town, and imprint it all onto his memory so that when he returns to this Netherworld, he’ll be ready to step right past it into the true afterlife.
Yes. That will work.
He turns to the man and manages to smile. “So...how do I get back?”
The man frowns a little and crosses his arms. “I’ve only done it once and it was years ago, so I might not be a lot of help. This tends to be a pretty personal thing.”
Rei shakes his head dismissively. “That’s alright, I can figure it out.”
“Well. I would start by focusing on the place you died. Your soul came here via that route, so it will automatically gravitate back that way.”
The place he died. Somewhere in the ocean, beneath the waves. Rei tries closing his eyes, to remember, to focus on the chilling embrace of the water all around his body and inside, wrapped tight around his heart and lungs as Nagisa’s arms pull feebly upward…
He starts forward, eyes flying open. No, not there, that’s not a good place to start. If he’s going to do a proper haunting, he wants to begin on solid ground.
His head drops forward and his eyes shut once more. One hand finds its way to his chest, feeling as it expands and contracts, expands and contracts. Does he even need to breathe anymore, he wonders, or is it just force of habit? Before he can check for a heartbeat though, the man’s hand is back on his arm. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” Rei’s arms drop back to his sides and he draws his knees up to his chest. “Just…”
“You don’t need to explain it.” The man’s smile is warm, and Rei blinks up at him, suddenly wondering which family he watches over. Which children live on not even realizing how diligently their father watches them, how much he loves them, how ready he is to lend his guidance whenever they need? He’s not just a man. He’s a father, and it must be a father thing because the man puts both hands on Rei’s shoulders, thumbs rubbing gently up and down. “It’s over now. Whatever happened, it’s over.”
Rei takes in a deep breath, and another, tries to steady himself. He’s not going to fall apart over this. He won’t. He shrugs the man’s hands off slowly. “I think I’ll try a different place,” he says, refusing to meet the man’s eyes. School, perhaps. Or his bedroom. Either is familiar enough.
“It’s easiest to get back when it’s connected to how you died,” the man tells him softly, as if he can read Rei’s mind. Maybe he can. Maybe there are all sorts of secrets about being dead Rei has yet to learn.
“Yeah. I’ll just...I’ll just…” Rei scoots further away and situates himself so he’s cross-legged, hands folded in his lap with eyes squeezed tight. Ready to concentrate. A place to pull him back...a place to hold onto…somewhere familiar, where he can anchor himself and push his soul back to the land of the living.
Home? His room? He hasn’t been spending all that much time at home lately, to be honest, not since the semester began and became involved in track, and then tangled up in the swim club. School will do.
School. School will work. School, school, school…
No sucking sensations. No ghostly wailing. He opens his eyes and meets the man’s smile. “Keep trying!”
Rei eyes him up but gets back into position, and closes his eyes once more. School. School. School.
“Try to immerse yourself in the memory,” the man says very quietly, and Rei nods as he breathes out slowly. He pictures the classrooms. The chalk left behind on the boards and the desks in neat little rows. Inhales. The books stacked in the cubbies beneath the desks, and the way the wall along the back had been damaged years ago, pockmarked black in the left corner. Exhales. The hallways, filled with students, chatting and bustling and laughing and meeting and blushing and frowning and worrying. Their bags held clutched in their hands, uniforms worn in a variety of ways. With sweatervests, even in the summer heat. The buttons undone at the top. Ties askew, or done up tight. The girls’ skirts at various heights until some teacher tells them off, hair up in a bun or let loose around their shoulders. Inhales. The teachers’ office, filled with the sound of typing and the rustle of paper. The track field, scattered with water bottles and pieces of equipment. The pole vault all set for someone to try to leap over it. Perfect form. The smell of sweat and new sneakers. Exhales. The roof, with groups of students eating lunch together, the luckiest one having snagged a spot in the shadows. A few dangling their feet off the edge, sucking on juice boxes or milk. The locker rooms, a place where Rei changed quickly, eyes very firmly locked onto the bare contents of his own locker. Inhales. The pool. The pool, sparking blue. The pool where he’d sunk down again and again and again as he tried to learn to swim, unable to swim for Nagisa, or Makoto, or even for Haru. Even with the butterfly stroke in his arsenal, he still feels embarrassed thinking about how he sunk over and over under the water as he failed the breaststroke and the backstroke and the crawl, water in his eyes, in his mouth, in his lungs and oh gods he has to stop thinking about this because he hasn’t felt anything and thinking about the school is obviously not going to work and he might not be able to return at all and the memories of the pool are making him feel like he’s drowning all over again...
He opens his eyes and throws himself backwards with a gasp, and then squeezes his eyes shut once again as the pain flares across the back of his head.
“It’s not working,” he mutters, sitting up and rubbing at his head. Things like that shouldn’t hurt when you’re dead; that’s not fair. “It didn’t work,” he says, and opens his eyes to look at the man.
But the man isn’t there.
Instead, Rei stares up into a sky speckled bright with stars.