Chapter 4 — Monday Is Mio

Monday morning found me sitting on the floor of my room, back against the bed, staring down at a sheet of paper like it owed me money.

Somewhere over the weekend, the laminated cheat sheet Mio had handed me had apparently not been enough, because a second one had shown up in my bag without explanation, blank, waiting to be filled in, like homework nobody had assigned but everyone expected done anyway.

SAKURABA — IDENTIFICATION REFERENCE (BLANK COPY)

(Due to honeyfeed not allowing me to create a table I, cannot show it. The table includes Walking posture, Favorite word, Favorite food, Hated food, Laugh (sound), Laugh (trigger), Handwriting tell, Chopstick grip, What they do when nervous, What they do when lying, Reaction to compliments )

Not a single box filled in. A sticky note was attached to the corner in handwriting so precise it looked typed: Complete by Friday. — M

"I have homework," I said out loud, to nobody, "for identifying two people who are the same person on paper and different people in every other way that matters."

Nobody answered, because I lived alone in an apartment where the only other living things were three dying houseplants and whatever spiders had unionized in the corner of the bathroom.

I stared at the sheet a while longer. Wrote "tight" under Walking posture for Mio, then crossed it out because "tight" wasn't a walking posture, it was a vibe. Wrote "efficient" instead. Sat there for a solid minute trying to describe how Hina walked, gave up, wrote "dice roll," and moved on before my brain could spiral about it further.

My phone buzzed.

I checked it mostly on reflex, expecting Ren, who had texted me four separate ghost theories over the weekend, each one somehow worse than the last. Instead, the screen showed a contact name I didn't recognize saving, in a contact I definitely hadn't added myself.

SORA (Do not ignore this one)

I didn't remember naming a contact that. I definitely hadn't. Someone had clearly gone into my phone at some point and taken matters into their own hands, and I had a very short list of suspects.

SORA 
good morning!! are you awake ?-?

I stared at the message for a second, already running the math. Sora meant either of them, which meant I had exactly zero ways to know who I was talking to before I answered.

Me
awake. barely

SORA
good!! random question
do you like aquariums

Me
never been to one

SORA 
WHATTT
okay that's being fixed
there's a huge one downtown, they have this tank you can walk through and it's like the fish are just swimming right over your head
and there's this one fish that looks personally offended at all times, I forget what it's called, but it's got the meanest face I've ever seen on an animal
we should go sometime

I typed out a reply, deleted it, typed a shorter one instead.

Me
sure. sounds fun

SORA
!!!
okay good
anyway I have to go, Sora will be at student council meeting today, don't be late to class because of me

I read that last line twice. Sora will be at student council meeting today. Not I'll be. Not she'll be. Just Sora, flat and impersonal, the exact careful phrasing of somebody who managed a shared identity for a living and never let the wording slip, even in a text about fish faces.

Which told me absolutely nothing about who I'd actually been talking to for the last two minutes.

I put my phone in my pocket, grabbed my bag, and headed out the door, already regretting how much time I was about to spend during homeroom trying to figure it out anyway.

I got to homeroom four minutes late, out of breath from jogging the last hallway stretch, and skidded to a stop in the doorway expecting some kind of reaction.

Godai-sensei didn't even look up from his coffee. "Morning," he said, flat, already turned to write something on the board with his free hand, the exact same tone he'd use whether I'd walked in four minutes late or exactly on time. Somewhere in the corner of the board, his little tally read a single digit.

I decided not to question my luck and slid into my seat next to Ren, who was already leaned halfway across the aisle toward me before I'd even set my bag down.

"Okay, so, new theory." He kept his voice at the volume he thought was a whisper, which was not, in fact, a whisper. "What if it's not one ghost. What if it's twins. Ghost twins."

"That's not too f—" I caught myself half a beat too late, the words already halfway out. "—that's a stretch."

"A stretch? It's genius. Statistically, if there's two of something supernatural, it's usually twins, that's just how folklore works, I looked it up—"

I sat very still for a second, doing quick math on whether he'd noticed anything, and decided the safest move was to just let him keep talking, since stopping now would only draw more attention to the fact that I'd almost agreed with him for entirely the wrong reason.

"You... looked up ghost folklore."

"I looked up a lot of things this weekend, Kazuki, I had a whole night." He straightened up, entirely too proud of himself. "Anyway, theory number two, what if the ghost is actually two separate ghosts who just look really similar because they died on the same day—"

The bell rang before he could finish burying himself further.

Chairs scraped. Conversations dropped into that half-hushed pre-class murmur. And then the door slid open, and Sora walked in.

"Morning, Sora," Godai-sensei said, without looking up from the board, the only proper greeting he'd given anyone all semester.

A few heads turned, more out of habit than anything, the same low ripple of attention that followed her into any room. But this time there was someone right behind her.

A girl I didn't recognize stepped in a half a step back, books held stacked against her chest instead of at her side, like she was using them as a small shield. Twin braids, neat and even, glasses that caught the light for a second as she turned her head. She said something to Sora too quiet for me to catch, walking with her all the way to her seat, Sora said something back, and then the girl smiled.

Not a polite smile. Not a hallway-nod smile. A real one, bright enough that it looked almost out of place on someone who carried herself that carefully, gone as fast as it appeared, replaced by her usual composed expression the second she turned to head to her own seat.

Next to me, Ren had gone completely, uncharacteristically silent.

"Did she just... smile," he said, quiet, almost reverent, as if he'd witnessed once in a lifetime event. "Like, an actual smile. With teeth and everything."

"I mean, yeah, people do that."

"Not her." He grabbed my sleeve without looking away. "Kazuki. Kazuki. Do you know who that is."

"Um... no?"

He turned to stare at me like I'd just confessed to not knowing my own name. "YOU don't know who that is."

"Should I?"

"That's Aoyama Shizuka." He said it the way you'd announce a celebrity sighting, low and urgent. "Class 2 rep, top three in the entire grade, does like four club committees at once, never smiles, I've heard actual seniors say she's never smiled once in two years, and you're telling me you just watched her smile and you don't even know her name—"

Somewhere behind us, a low murmur of agreement rippled through a cluster of other students who'd clearly overheard.

"Wait, Aoyama smiled? At who?"

"I heard she doesn't even smile at teachers—"

"That's so weird, she's usually so serious—"

Up at the front, Sora had already settled into her seat, back straight, notebook open like nothing unusual had happened at all. But halfway through Ren's continued rambling, she turned around just slightly, just enough to catch my eye for half a second.

Her expression didn't say anything dramatic. Just a small, knowing look, the exact kind of look that said I know how it is, before she turned back around, right as Godai-sensei set his coffee down and called the room to order.

Lunch came and went without a single glimpse of her. I told myself I wasn't looking, and then caught myself scanning the hallway outside the council room on the way back from buying a drink, which meant I was, in fact, looking, and lying to myself about it on top of everything else.

Class ran long after that, some review session Godai-sensei clearly didn't want to run any more than we wanted to sit through it, so there wasn't a real chance to talk either, just Mio three seats up, answering questions in that same even voice, never once glancing back.

By the time the final bell let out, the room emptied fast, chairs scraping, bags zipping, the usual end-of-day noise.

"—no, for real, everyone's going after the second years' thing on Friday, you should come—"

"I have cram school Friday—"

"Just skip it once, Karaoke Palace has that new room with the disco ball, Erika's already in—"

"If my mom finds out I skipped cram school for karaoke she will actually end my life—"

I let the noise wash past me while I packed up, half listening, half still thinking about that morning and the empty hallway outside the council room. I was three steps from the door when a shadow fell across my desk.

"Takamine." Godai-sensei stood there with his coffee cup, glasses pushed up into his hair as usual, looking like standing up straight was costing him something he'd rather not spend. "The class rep is moving gym equipment. Alone. Go help."

"Why me specifically."

"You're still here." He said it like that settled the matter permanently. "Everyone else left faster."

Before I could point out that this was, in fact, a punishment for being slow to leave, someone near the back of the room screamed.

"SENSEI THE TABLE'S ON FIRE."

I turned. There was, in fact, a small fire, contained to roughly one corner of a desk, courtesy of a sparkler someone had apparently decided was a good idea to light indoors for reasons nobody would ever adequately explain.

Godai-sensei looked at it. Looked at his coffee. Looked back at the fire.

He walked over to the corner of the chalkboard, picked up the chalk, and calmly erased the tally there, replacing whatever number had been written with a single, deliberate zero.

"Someone open a window," he said, to the room in general, already turning away like the matter was closed.

"Sensei, the desk is ON FIRE—"

"I'm aware." He capped the chalk, set it down with more care than the moment called for, and walked directly into the supply closet, emerging seconds later with his bag already over one shoulder. "Extinguisher's under the sink in the staff room if the window doesn't work fast enough."

And then he left through the side door, sipping his coffee, like the building catching fire was less of an emergency and more of a mildly disappointing update to a running spreadsheet.

"He's just... leaving?"

"Our classroom is on fire and he told us where the extinguisher is instead of using it himself."

"That tracks, honestly."

"WHY does that track—"

Somebody finally grabbed a water bottle and doused the worst of it, the fire giving up with considerably less drama than it had arrived with, and a thin curl of smoke drifted up toward the ceiling fan while half the room stood around debating whether what had just happened was normal.

I decided, with the clarity of someone who'd learned to pick his battles, that none of this was my problem, and headed for the gym before I could get roped into fire duty on top of equipment duty.

The gym was mostly dark by the time I got there, half the lights off to save on electricity, one row still on above the equipment closet doors. "Sora" was hauling a stack of folding mats across the floor by herself, both arms wrapped around the top one, dragging more than carrying, her ponytail coming slightly loose at the base from the effort.

"You're doing this alone?"

"Obviously." She didn't look up, just kept dragging.

"There's an entire gym committee for this."

"The gym committee left at three. I stayed for council notes."

I set my bag down and grabbed the other end of the mat stack without asking. "Let me help."

"I don't need help."

"You're visibly struggling."

"I am visibly finishing." She yanked the stack half a step forward to prove it, which mostly just proved my point instead.

"Sora..."

"I have a system."

"Your system is dragging things until your arms fall off."

"That's a very reductive summary of my system."

I didn't let go of the mat. Neither did she. We stood there in a brief, silent standoff over a stack of gym mats, which was, on reflection, a genuinely stupid thing to be having a standoff about, and eventually she exhaled through her nose, sharp and annoyed, and let go of her end.

"Fine. If it means you'll stop talking."

"Deal."

We worked in relative quiet after that, hauling equipment from one side of the gym to the other, mats first, then a cart of volleyball nets, then a box of cones that had somehow ended up scattered across half the court like they'd been abandoned mid-battle. She didn't thank me, exactly, but she stopped arguing every time I picked something up, which from her, I was starting to understand, was close enough.

"Can I ask you something," I said, somewhere around the third trip.

"You're going to regardless."

"Do you actually like doing all this? Class rep stuff. Council. All of it."

She considered the question longer than I expected, setting down the last cone with more care than a cone really required. "Yes," she said, eventually. "I like being good at something that's mine. Even if it's technically Sora's name on the paperwork."

"That's not nothing."

"It's not everything either." She glanced at me sideways, the closest thing to an unguarded look I'd gotten from her all day. "People assume I'm doing this because I have to. I do have to. That's not the same as not wanting to."

I filed that away somewhere I wasn't planning to bring up again unless she wanted me to.

By the time we'd finished, the gym was fully dark except for the one working light strip, and she was tightening the last strap on the equipment cart with the same precision she probably used for everything.

"Kazuki." She didn't look up from the strap. "Do you know who Sora was, today?"

I opened my mouth, the answer sitting right there, obvious, easy, but that's when the gym door banged open.

"Sora!" A girl came half jogging in, books hugged tight against her chest, out of breath like she'd sprinted the whole way from the main building. Neat twin braids, glasses slightly crooked from the run. Same girl from that morning. "Sorry, sorry, I know you're busy, but the budget forms need your signature before the office closes, I can't submit them without—"

"It's fine," Mio said, already moving, voice sliding straight back into the same clipped, composed tone I'd heard her use with everyone but me all day. "Show me."

And just like that, whatever she'd been about to ask, or whatever answer I'd been about to give, got swallowed by paperwork and a closing office, and I was left standing alone in a half-dark gym holding an empty equipment cart.

I got home, showered, ate something that barely qualified as dinner, and was lying on my bed scrolling through nothing in particular when my phone buzzed.

SORA
Thank you for your assistance with the equipment today. It was appreciated, and it allowed me to complete the council forms on schedule as well.

I stared at the message for a second. Then read it again.

Nobody who actually knew how to text like a person wrote allowed me to complete the council forms on schedule as well. Nobody added a comma there for rhythm. Nobody, apparently, except one specific person I'd spent the entire afternoon hauling gym mats with.

I let out a short laugh, alone in my room, at nothing in particular.

"So Monday is Mio, huh," I said out loud, to nobody, and put the phone down still smiling slightly, which was a stupid thing to be doing over a thank-you text, and I decided not to examine that too closely either.