“Yuna! Look out!” I cried out.
Yuna and Omoyo whirled around, surprised by my outburst. They were face to face with the ghost, but didn’t pay any attention to her even though she had a pair of scissors in her hand. The ghost was also startled by my shout and froze. I took that chance to pull out my bag of salt and ran towards the girls.
I stuffed my hand into the plastic sandwich bag, grasped a fistful of salt and then threw it over the ghost’s head.
“Evil spirit begone!” I shouted. “Evil spirit begone!”
“Eek!” shrieked the ghost. She held her hands up and shrank away from the flying salt. “Hey! Quit it!”
“Whoa!” Omoyo cried out. “Where’d she come from?”
Astonished, I said, “Omoyo, you can see her now!?”
Omoyo looked at me, puzzled. “Now? Wait, is this girl the ghost you were talking about?”
The ghost swore. She didn’t make any movements, but Omoyo suddenly cried out, “What the - !? She’s gone! She’s disappeared out of thin air!”
“No, she’s not!” I said. “She’s still here!”
The ghost cried out indignantly, “Wha-!? You can still see me? How!?”
“It’s easy, Miss Stalker Ghost!” I shouted, pointing my finger at her. “In addition to my Psy-Armor, I have the power to see ghosts! Now evil spirit, begone!”
I threw more salt at the ghost.
She shrank away, scowled and shouted, “I’m not a ghost, you idiot! So stop throwing that at me!”
I stopped.
“You’re not a ghost?” I said.
The ghost took advantage of my pause to attack. She suddenly jumped up and drove her knee into my face. After that, she landed on the tip of her right toe, spun on it like a ballerina and then delivered a high kick to the side of my head. Startled, I stumbled.
Worried, Omoyo said, “Oota, you okay?”
“Y-yeah,” I replied. “Didn’t feel a thing.”
Thanks to my Psy-Armor, I suffered no damage.
Surprised that I didn’t go down, the ghost jumped back and looked at me warily. She must have noticed the space around me rippling because her eyes lit up and she muttered, “I see. No wonder you can see me. You got psychic energy cloaked around you.”
“Psychic energy? You know about psychic powers?” I asked. “Does that mean you’re a psychic?”
“What’s that about a psychic?” Omoyo asked. “The ghost’s really a psychic?”
“Hmph!” the girl sniffed. She turned her nose up and looked down at us haughtily. “That’s right. I’m a psychic. My power is Perception Manipulation. With this power, I can make myself invisible to everyone around me.”
“Not everyone,” I pointed out. “I can see you.”
The girl shot me a fiery glare.
“Anyway,” I continued, “who are you? Why were you stalking Yuna? Did you put that picture in her shoe locker? And were you the one who set those fires?”
“I don’t need to answer a plebian like you,” she said. “But I can’t stand any false accusations, so I’ll go right ahead and tell you straight out that I have nothing to do with the fires that this town’s locals are making a stink over. I will admit to the picture though.”
“I knew you had something to do with that,” I said. “What were you planning to use those scissors for?”
“I was only going to cut a bit of her hair off,” she replied. “It’s just a small prank.”
I did not agree.
Angrily, I asked her, “Why would you do that? Both that picture and those scissors. Just what do you have against Yuna?”
“Just ask her,” the girl said, pointing at Yuna. “I won’t say any more than that.”
And then she turned to leave.
“H-hey, wait! We’re not done here!” I called out to her and moved to stop her from going, but Yuna grabbed my hand and shook her head. I could tell that she was telling me not to follow.
“Yuna,” I said. “But - !”
She held her phone up to show me what she had typed into it.
“People coming.”
She also showed the message to Omoyo, who said, “We should go.”
I glanced back but the ghost, I mean, the invisible girl was gone. Not very far away, I could hear footsteps rapidly approach. Reluctantly, I said, “Alright,” and left the area with Yuna and Omoyo.
We ended up going to Omoyo’s house and gathered in her living room. There was no one else around since her folks were in another city on business, so it was the perfect place to have a private chat about the ghost.
Like any other living room in the world, there are two sets of couches, some tall lamps, and a two speaker sound system that sat on either side of a large, flat screen TV. A painting of a boat hung on the wall next to that, and the floor was made of faux wood planks. Omoyo, Yuna and I sat in conference around a rectangle, glass coffee table, through which, underneath, we could all see some magazines and newspapers stacked beneath the TV remote. (Just thought I’d describe the room in more detail for those of you nosy ones curious about other people’s houses.)
Omoyo started the meeting with a cough.
“Ahem!” she said. “So, I tried calling Toshiro and Aika, but it seems like those two are busy. But they both said we should go ahead and clear things up before bringing them up to speed.”
She gave Yuna a quick glance before turning her gaze to me. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking.
“So, let’s start with you, Oota,” she continued. “We all saw the girl and heard a bit of your talk with her, so I already have an idea of what went down. But it’s better to take things from the top and get all the details just to be sure. The floor’s yours.”
“O-okay,” I said.
After taking a deep breath, I began to tell the girls everything. Since Omoyo wanted me to take things from the top, I started with when I first spotted the ghost at the cemetery when we went to pay respect to Yuna’s departed parents. I told them how I kept spotting her following us, and how I saw a picture of her in a newspaper article about one of the fires, which led me to think that she was behind them somehow.
“And since she was always looking at Yuna, you figured that Yuna might be her real target,” Omoyo said.
I nodded and said, “That’s right. So, I thought I’d try look for her and perform an exorcism.”
“That explains the table salt you were throwing everywhere,” Omoyo muttered. “And then what happened?”
“Well, I saw the ghost walking up to Yuna with a pair of scissors,” I said. And then I told them what happened between us.
When I was done, Omoyo crossed her arms, leaned her back against the sofa’s base, and went, “Hmm. So her power’s Perception Manipulation. I’ve never heard of it, but it’d explain a bunch of things. The girl you thought was a ghost because no one could see her was actually a psychic who could make herself invisible to people. Going by the name of her power, I’m guessing the way it works is she sends some kind of brainwashing ray to everyone so they won’t notice her. But since you, Oota, always have your Pys-Armor on whenever you go out, the brainwashing ray never reached your head, so you could see her. Is that about right?”
I nodded.
“I really wish you spoke up more about the ghost, but let’s just move on,” Omoyo said. “Yuna, do you think you can tell us about the girl Oota thought was a ghost. It sounds like she’s someone with a grudge against you. She’s someone who can make herself invisible with Perception Manipulation, knows how to fight like a ninja, and I think she might have gone to the same middle school as you, guessing from the picture we found in your shoe locker.”
Our eyes turned to Yuna who just quietly stared back at us with a face of stone. We waited with bated breath for her response. And then, after a couple of seconds of silence, Yuna lifted up her phone and began to type. When she was done, she hit the play button and the phone spoke.
“I only got a quick glance, but I think she might be Kyouko, Kyouko Azamume,” Yuna said. “We were classmates since elementary school and rivals, I think.”
Omoyo raised an eyebrow. “You think? You’re not sure?”
Yuna typed into her phone and it said, “My head was a mess for a couple of months, and it took me medicine to calm down. I’ve stopped taking those medicines a while ago, but my memories are still muddled right now.”
Neither Omoyo nor I said anything. Who could after a revelation like that? So we just sat in silence as Yuna’s words sank in. Finally, Omoyo spoke.
“Has there always been a bit of bad blood between you and . . . Azamume?” she asked.
Yuna shrugged and then shook her head.
“Well, she definitely has it in for you,” I said. “That picture and how she snuck up on you with a pair of scissors made it pretty obvious that she must hate you. Any idea why?”
Yuna typed into the phone and it said, “I remember that our families didn’t get along. I think that’s how this whole rivalry thing started. But I don’t think things were that bad between us before.”
“Maybe it’s something you did before the . . . you know?” I said.
Yuna looked at me and then cast her eyes downward while rubbing her chin thoughtfully. And then she shook her head. She apparently couldn’t think of anything.
Omoyo looked disappointed, but she said, “Well, don’t strain yourself. I’m sure we’ll figure something out eventually. And if we don’t, we can chalk it up to Azamume being an unreasonable jerk because of the thing between your families.”
But despite what Omoyo said, the worry lines on Yuna’s face did not disappear.
Later, on our way home, I asked Yuna, “Do you really think that Azamume’s just bullying you like that because of the thing between our families? In the first place, what did our family do to hers?”
Yuna looked at me and then shook her head before typing into her phone. The device read aloud, “I don’t know what went on between our families, but I don’t believe that’s the reason she did those things. Back during our middle school days, despite our rivalry, she was never that hostile towards me. But this time’s different. Omoyo didn’t say anything, but I’m sure she must have sensed the animosity in Kyouko. All I can really say is that it may be my fault she hates me now.”
I haven’t gotten to know Yuna all that well since she started living with me and my family, but from what little I did know about her, I was really doubtful she would do anything to make anyone hate her so much. To me, I thought that Omoyo hit the mark when she said that Azamume was just being an unreasonable jerk.
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