Chapter 1 — The Locker Room Ghost

My social life was over.

Not "give it a week and it'll blow over" over. Over as in finished, cause of death listed as one plastic bucket and my own bad decisions.

That won't make sense yet. Give it a second.

It all started five minutes ago.

"Broski." Ren hefted a box of paintbrushes like it was breaking news, headphones sitting around his neck the way they always did, plugged into nothing, worn like jewelry instead of anything functional. "That TikTok was straight up fire."

"Six TikToks today, Ren."

"Six fire TikToks today."

"Can you fire-Tik-Tok-ing while walking. We have forty minutes."

Forty minutes to get supplies to the festival meeting or our homeroom teacher was going to do the face. Not the yelling one. The tired one. Which was somehow way worse.

"This guy did a triple flip off a vending machine and just landed it. Landed it, Kazuki."

"That's the third vending machine flip you've talked about this morning."

"I was like, bro."

"You keep saying bro like that makes it a full sentence."

"It's the fullest sentence there is."

I had my sleeves rolled up, one arm higher than the other because I'd done it without thinking and never noticed until it was too late to fix without looking like I cared, which I didn't, so it stayed like that. Ren, meanwhile, had his blazer hanging open over a T-shirt that definitely wasn't school-sanctioned, phone already back in his hand like it had teleported there.

Ren suddenly stopped dead in the hallway.

"Wait."

"We don't have time to wait."

"Wait wait wait." He set his box down on the floor with no warning, and I nearly ate dirt trying not to trip over it. "Is that..."

Down the hall, half behind a pillar, two people stood close together, talking in the voice people use when they don't want to be overheard.

Ren's whole face rearranged itself into the expression of a man who'd found free food.

"A COUPLE." A volume that defeated the entire point of the whisoering. "I NEED NAMES. TIMELINE. WHO CONFESSED FIRST."

They looked up and immedietly ran.

Ren ran after them.

He also managed to left his box on the floor.

I stood there holding my box, his box, and a bucket of paint, watching my best friend disappear around a corner yelling something about journalistic integrity, and decided, not for the first time, that I needed better friends or one who could carry their own stuff.

I hauled everything to the storage room myself.

Everyone called it the old locker room. Everyone also refused to go in alone, which was less about the rusted lockers and more about the fact that one kid two years ago swore he heard someone crying in there and told the story so many times it basically became school legend. Nobody believed it. Yet everyone still knocked before going in.

I did not knock. I had a bucket and definately no free hand.

I pushed the door open with my foot and heard someone talking inside, which should not have been possible, given that it was after hours and this room had nothing going for it except spiders and abandoned gym mats.

Every hair on my arm stood up like it had been personally notified before the rest of me caught up. My brain skipped past every reasonable explanation and landed straight on the least reasonable one available.

Ghost. This is a ghost. There really is a ghost in the locker room and I have walked directly into its office hours.

My legs voted to leave immediately, no discussion needed.

But I'd watched enough of these situations play out in every horror movie Ren had ever forced me to sit through, and the rule was always the same. You run from the thing in the dark and it will decides you're a prey and follows. You walk toward it calmly, like you pay rent here, and half the time it's just pipes. Basic ghost etiquette. Showing fear was how you ended up as the opening scene of somebody else's story.

And if that logic somehow failed and I died here tonight next to a bucket of semi-dry paint, there was a second problem waiting on the other side of that. Ren was going to make it his entire personality. He'd tell the story at my funeral. He'd get details wrong on purpose because the wrong version landed better. He'd probably name the podcast episode something like "My Best Friend Got Ganked By A Locker" and it would outperform everything else he'd ever made.

So really, I had two separate reasons to walk forward and zero good ones to walk away.

I put the boxes down and crept toward the voice and peeked around a locker.

A girl stood near the back, sleeves not rolled at all, cardigan buttoned all the way to the top button despite the weather, hair pulled into a ponytail so tight it looked less like a hairstyle and more like a policy. One strand had escaped near her temple anyway, the single piece of her that hadn't gotten the memo. She held her phone but wasn't looking at it. I recognized her the second I saw her face.

Sakuraba Sora. The one and only class rep. The reason teachers said "some of you should be more like Sora" in front of the whole room, a sentence nobody appreciated, least of all Sora, probably.

"You weren't convincing," she said. "At all."

I forgot to breathe for a second that felt like several.

That was not how Sora talked. Sora answered roll call like she was reading it off a script in a very calm hostage situation. This voice had an edge sharp enough that I actually took half a step back before I caught myself.

"I said I was sorry," said a second voice, from somewhere behind the lockers.

Same voice. Yet nothing close to the same tone. Higher, faster, wobbling at the edges like she was two seconds from laughing or crying and hadn't decided which yet.

Somewhere in my chest, the ghost theory quietly filed an appeal.

"It's exhausting, okay? Being cold for six straight hours, I don't know how you do it every single—"

"Because I don't smile at people like I'm a salesman pitching a life insureance."

"I wasn't selling anything, I was just... being friendly."

"You were being Hina."

I didn't know a Hina. I was fairly confident I'd have noticed a Hina, seeing as she apparently owned Sora's exact voice.

I leaned further around the locker, heart going at a pace no doctor would sign off on.

Same face.

Same everything, actually, down to the exact angle of her jaw, the same faint mole near her collarbone, features I'd apparently memorized from three rows away in class without ever admitting it to myself.

Except her hair was down instead of tied back. Sleeves pushed up past her elbows. A band-aid on one finger that looked fresh, no cut visible under it anywhere I could see. One hand rubbed the back of her neck, the universal signal for I know I'm in trouble, please don't start yet. She stood with her weight tipped onto one leg, like part of her was already leaning toward the door before the rest of her caught up.

I did the math a second time, just to be sure I hadn't use the wrong formula.

Two of her.

Standing three feet apart. Arguing. Like this happened every single Tuesday, like it was a scheduled event, like somewhere there was a calendar invite for it.

My brain, having burned through both "ghost" and "leave immediately," gave up entirely and returned no results. The bucket left my hand before any part of me approved, it hit the floor with a crack way too loud for a plastic bucket, and both of them turned and looked straight at me at the exact same time.

Which was, all things considered, a genuinely stupid way to find out my social life was over.