“Is it true? That the orphan girl from apartment b12 has gone missing?” said one lady in her 40s.
“That’s what I’ve heard. My son told me that there was an outsider walking around the neighbourhood when he was coming home from a party late last night. I hope that is not related.”
As the two women talked on the narrow street in front of apartment b12, a police car drove past them. Siren off.
“Did they find anything?”
“Apparently not, they said there was no sign of someone trying to break in. But the girl was not there.”
From several meters away, a terrified scream can be heard. Not one of a young girl, but of a man. The woman jogs towards the source of the scream. It was a young boy trying to pull the water bucket from a well.
He thought the water that day was heavier than usual. Maybe he was just weaker. But as he pulled the bucket out of the well and put it down to the concrete ground, he saw the terrible thing.
A decapitated head of a young girl.
I wouldn’t usually stay close to this riverside. It stinks, at least back when I was still alive. Right now, all my senses are based on my pre-existing experience. If I choose to, I can choose to not smell certain things. But this very rule makes me unable to go to a neighborhood I never went to, cause I will just be blind there.
The other reason I choose to stay here is because my best friend lives somewhere close. There are times where I will miss the warmth of a living thing, and I can only re-experience it by standing, well more like hovering, close to those I have met.
Ken — I wished he would talk to me again. But sadly I don’t think he can see me. I often came to his house to see him reading the book we used to read together. A graphic novel version of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. We loved to imagine ourselves as whale hunters. I will be Ishmael and he will be Ahab, sailing on the great ocean. Now that dream is forever gone. I won’t ever be able to see the sea anymore — not the wide open sea.
Sometimes, at night when he’s sleeping, I would bring the book to his side. I have touched it before, so I can do in my ghost form. He wakes up confused, second guessing whether he misplaced it or someone in his family is messing with him.
One day, there is another man in the family. I think I have seen him before. Sen, yes, he is Ken’s brother. He is way older than us though, he moved away for reasons kids like us won’t understand. “Adult problems-” Ken used to tell me, perhaps that’s what Sen told him too.
Because I haven’t seen him in a long time, he appears blurry in my ghost eyes. But somehow, whenever I stare at him, I feel like, he stares back. “But human shouldn’t been able to see ghost?” I told myself.
“Nii-san,” I heard Ken loudly asked for his brother’s attention. “Did you put this book beside me while I was sleeping?”
“I did not,” Sen answered calmly still typing away on his… typing machine? With moving pictures attached perpendicularly.
“Hmmm… dare ka na?” Ken annouced this question to himself. “Okaa-san? Soretomo — otousan?”
“Hooo… Nihon go o benkyou shite iru ka?” asked Sen to Ken, surprised with his brother’s improvement in the Japanese language.
“Hai! Benkyou shiteru!” said Ken smiling.
“Hmm… well, I think I know who’s been putting your books beside your bed.” Sen said as he put his hand on Ken’s shoulder. Then, I realised, he was looking over Ken’s shoulder, straight at me. Then, I know that he can see me. He frowned a little before getting up and went back to typing.
That night, I was gonna do my routine again. I went to the bookshelves in the common room, navigating through the different books on the first row of books from the bottom. If my heart still beats, it will beat really hard cause I am really hoping for it not to be moved to the upper shelves, or I will have to move some chairs. Ah! I found it! It was a blue book with an angry looking white whale on the cover. “Or is that really how whales look like?” I wondered. Well, I will never know. I grabbed the book and ran off to the hallways and then toward’s Ken’s room. As I carefully opened the door, my eyes intuitively look towards where Ken’s bed is, yet that day my view is obstructed. In front of Ken’s bed, a tall man was squatting.
“Yo!” he said. It was Sen.
“Ak… you can see me?” I asked him.
“Yes, I can. You were Ken’s friend weren’t you?” he asked.
“I am still his friend!”
“Hmm… I don’t know if you can still say I am.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. It’s okay. You must not have felt your closure yet.”
“Closure?”
“Hmmm… sono… you know, when you pinch your friend but you are only being playful and don’t mean any harm.”
“Yes?”
“But then your friend took it seriously and left you, without you ever get the chance to explain you were just teasing them or say sorry.”
“Oh!”
“Yes.”
I smilied. That definitely had happen before, but usually I will meet them at school and say sorry a bunch of time.
“But you can’t do that now, can you, Citra-chan?”
“EH! YOU CAN READ MY MIND?”
Sen smiled. “Do you want to say sorry to him?”
“Yes!” I smiled. My non-existing heart is pounding from excitement.
