The Ghost Glasses Girl

-"Are you really sure that's her?" He pushes up his glasses as he discreetly points at their target. His more confident (and fatter) friend casually strokes his chin, his arms crossed.
-"Ha! That is the jacket as described, my friend." Pointing in a less discreet manner than his fellow nerd, he gestures at the prominent print on her back. "It even says No Future there. It has to be her."
With only a vague physical description and an even vaguer rumor about a supposedly-cursed girl, the self-proclaimed ghost chasers shamelessly approach the third-year as she changes her shoes at the school entrance.

-”Good morning miss, we’re here to ask some questions about your curse”  The young man with glasses declares, with a smile that tries to be friendly but would make a middle schooler cry for a policeman.
-“... I beg your pardon?” the black-haired young woman asks, understandably startled. The question catches her by surprise while she puts on her uwabaki and sets aside her very worn out regular shoes.
-"The subject speaks in Tokyo-ben," notes the rounder of the two. "Which of course can only mean she is not here by mere coincidence." She watches the otaku write in his notepad, like some kind of overweight, badly-dressed detective.

-"Okay," she starts, her brows furrowed. "This went from odd to weird. Who are you two even supposed to be?" Her tone and expression are openly sour, now that she has decided that politeness is neither required nor reasonable at this point.
-“Hah!” The heavier of the two responds.  “A better question is… are you Mitsuki Shizune, the Ghost Glasses Girl, haunted maiden of the forsaken school?”


Shizune opens her mouth for a moment, about to plainly ask ‘what the hell’ to the two geeks, but produces no sound, simply forming a look of surprise mixed with disgust. The fact these two bizarre strangers somehow know her name weirds her out in a way that outweighs that outrageous title she had been granted.
-“Brilliant, a silence that speaks more than a thousand words! As for us, we are the Dotonbori Ghost Chasers, milady. Surely you must have heard of us” the more rotund nerd Kazu says, puffing his chest.
-”Three thousand subscribers and counting! ”Ishio, the skinnier of the two, adds.
-”Indeed. Our path to greatness is set,” Kazu concludes the boast after Ishio’s interjection, wiping his nose over with his thumb, proudly.

Shizune’s morning had already started worse than usual by missing her customary train to school, forcing her to ride one that was hellishly full, and still ending with a late arrival at school. Now that she’s being treated as some sort of local attraction, she has come to the conclusion that this day will be outstandingly terrible and has now set her mind on simply maneuvering herself away from these two weirdos.
-“This is fine,” she says, under her breath. After nodding without energy, she lazily raises her hand to chest level, and points at Kazu.
“First of all, no.” To her, this ‘no’ isn’t just an answer–it's her whole perspective on the situation. The best way to handle it, she believes, is to simply disassemble it.
“Second, what is this about a curse? Where did you even hear such a ridiculous thing?” she asks, with a tone that might make someone more socially adept than the two men in front of her perhaps feel a little shame.

-”It was one of our private agents–we can’t disclose that information!” Ishio responds, fixing his glasses, imagining himself as a cool character from a TV anime, but only managing to look even more dorky than before.
-”Sounds like you literally don’t know who told you this.” She squints at him, as if she were speaking to something unsightly, which causes the nerd to meekly recoil from Shizune’s cutting tone. “And aren’t you two too old to believe in ghost stories? In fact, aren’t you too old to be in a high school uninvited?”
The two otaku look at each other, tacitly admitting to the woman admonishing them that she has a point, even if Shizune has only guessed that they came here uninvited.
“And you’re looking for a high-school girl that doesn’t even know you? What is up with that?” Shizune’s tone sets the implication in a way that needs no clarification, and it’s clear she is completely unafraid of escalating in order to prevent further interaction with these two.

The so-called ghost chasers freeze momentarily, realizing how bad this might look from the outside. As if they had been ordered to, they immediately fall into a dogeza.
-“W-we just wanted to find a ghost story to post online! I’m sorry, please forgive us!” Kazu stammers out.
This, however, only makes things even more uncomfortable for Shizune, whose wincing can’t be seen by the two ground-facing otaku. She had simply expected them to go away on their own rather than do this ludicrous display at the school’s entrance. It was a small blessing that she was running late and there are no classmates to witness this, as the second-hand embarrassment might just kill her.

-“Okay, okay, uhhh... Look! I know of an actual ghost story! If you go to the basement of the old school building and, uh, read a poem… to… the ghost of… Hanako-san then you’ll meet her… little brother’s… ghost.”
Shizune herself doesn’t think that story is convincing at all, but as both otaku raise their heads with beaming hope and inspiration, she takes the chance and confirms it the best way she can in the moment.
“Yeah. That. Go do that. Real ghost stuff, there.”

After pointing in the general direction to the old building and receiving some similarly theatrical displays of gratitude, Shizune sees how the deluded ghost-hunters sprint out of her sight.
“Can’t I have a normal week for once?” she sighs, and passes her hand through her face, while the other holds her glasses. Having already confirmed the school’s entrance is empty, she shakes her head slightly, then tiredly speaks to what’s seemingly nothing.
“You saw everything, didn’t you?”

An eerie violet aura begins to radiate from what appeared to be an empty corner of the room, where the wall meets the roof. A tall humanoid spirit adorned with ancient robes, a wild white mane, and crowned with menacing horns materializes before Shizune, casting no shadow.
-”That disgraceful display did pollute my eyes, yes,” the apparition snarls with his toothy maw, scratching its neck with the long gray nails of his left hand.
-”Sucks, doesn’t it?” Shizune fixes her schoolbag in place, before putting both hands in her jacket’s ample pockets.
“Things like these are why I keep telling you to stop following me to school.” Despite being later to class than she would’ve liked, this is not a school where such things are usually respected, so she walks with no haste towards her classroom.

-”Pathetic as it was, I never said it was boring. Appending that bizarre, yet fitting nickname to you did coax a laugh out of me,” the brutal-looking spirit smiles as he descends.
-”I’m so glad that was entertaining to you, Jagasaki,” Shizune responds, her sarcasm tangible.
-”You must be. You let the simpletons inconvenience you for a moment, fleeting as it was,” Jagasaki says with a shrug, striding around the hallways, each step a stomp.

-“It’s just two weird guys, what was I supposed to do?” she looks at him with annoyance, not expecting a reasonable answer, but compelled to ask nonetheless.
-“You should have blown them away with your power, of course,” the demon raises his right hand and crushes something invisible. This purple and more inhuman looking appendage that emanates dark energies is usually covered by a longer sleeve of his robes, unlike his left, more human-looking arm.
-”Yeah well, the last time I ‘blew someone away’, I ended up getting the most annoying idiot in Osaka on my back– I’m not going to try my luck again.” Shizune shrugs, remembering an intemperate incident from two weeks ago, that she now deeply regrets.
“Whatever” she says to herself, trying to scrub the thought off her brain. “What’s done is done. I’m not going to deal with those dorks again today” she finishes, seeing that her classroom is within sight.

-“A shame, they provided more entertainment than that ‘terebishon ’ of yours,” the demon jokes.
-“You almost have a point. But spirits don’t roam around freely these days, so you'll have to learn to enjoy staying at home.” She tries to reason with Jagasaki, nodding at him and then turning back to look at her classroom’s door. The spirit is unimpressed and simply crosses his arms, standing there.
“This is the part where you conceal yourself completely again,” she looks at Jagasaki as she walks towards her goal, now fully pretending she is walking alone.

-“Then at least let me congratulate you for your strategy before we separate” the demon looms over Shizune, smiling.
-”I just said the first thing I that came to my mind. I heard that building’s been there, half-demolished for god knows how long, so might as well use it” the black-haired woman says, now her being the unimpressed one.
-”No, Shizune–I mean that sending those two to meet the decaying spirit resting there is a great strategy. Not only does it relieve you of their presence, but if it feasts upon them, it will likely evolve into a stronger wraith and thus, a stronger bounty for us,” the demon says, pleased.

-“…” With her hand on the classroom’s door and a mere second before opening it, Shizune’s head snaps to the side to face Jagasaki.
“I sent them to the what ?”

-------------------------------------------------

The Dotonbori Ghost Chasers manage to reach their destination fairly easily. They even got some footage of the abandoned school building, which they consider to be decent content despite nothing of interest being there apart from some debris and trash.
The basement of the gym, where only some broken pieces of equipment and deflated basketballs lay, seems interesting to the duo, even if Ishio quickly proves allergic to the dust the room had accumulated and can’t decide where to aim the camera towards.
Kazu, however, sets himself to the mission almost immediately
-“ Appearing like dew,
vanishing like dew—
such is my life.
Even Naniwa's splendor
is a dream within a dream ”
He finishes reading from his cellphone, in the most ominous voice he could muster, looking around the room.

-“Are you sure that’s what the ghost wants?” Ishio asks.
-”She said a poem. That’s a poem! That’s the most poem-est poem I could think of!” Kazu replies.
-”But what if the ghost doesn’t know the poem?”
-”Are you calling the ghost an uncultured simpleton?”
-”Well, I didn’t know that poem” Ishio’s almost proud admission of ignorance almost takes Kazu’s thoughts out of their ghost hunt.
-”How can you not know the death poem of Toyo—”

Kazu is interrupted from his nerdy rambling by the strong sound of metal hitting metal coming from the room, breaking the silence, and sending both otaku into high alert. Two seconds of calm pass, and then another striking sound is heard. The source is easily located–an old cabinet in the corner of the room. They decide they don’t want to open it, but that choice is made for them, as a ghostly arm bursts out of it, barely lit by the cellphone’s flashlight. But the night vision mode of the camera pierces the darkness perfectly, granting Ishio the first proper look of what was appearing; a second elongated arm bursts from the cabinet and starts feeling around the room, blindly.

-“B-brother of Hanako-san-sama…?” the chubby paralyzed nerd weakly asks, but it gets no answer, other than a third arm bursting from the cabinet, shooting itself at the duo. The ghost chasers narrowly avoid that surprising attack and begin their escape from the basement. The fourth arm is faster than them, however, and with a single strike it destroys the poorly-fitted wooden stairs to the gym above. Now there’s four elongated, ghostly arms feeling around blindly, and with both otaku shrieking in terror and embracing each other, they are easily located by the apparition.

All arms shoot towards them, but in that instant, like a lightning bolt striking the earth, Mitsuki Shizune appears from above. Having decided to simply stomp the ground and break into the basement below, her landing smashes the arms under the pieces of floor she fell with, and is still standing on.

-“Ghost Glasses Girl-sama!!!” the two otaku say in unison, with the appropriate elation of someone whose life is being saved. Shizune answers them with a glare, disgusted by this new iteration of that terrible nickname. In that moment, another ghostly arm reaches for her from behind, only for Shizune to easily grab it by the wrist without needing to look back. She sighs, turning her full attention to the decayed spirit. Sparks momentarily dance across her palm before surging forth in a burst of electricity, discorporating the phantom arm in her grasp, then arcing through the remaining limbs before shooting towards the cabinet.

The magical lightning strike explodes the metallic shell upwards, ricocheting against the roof and back into the floor. After landing, more phantom limbs emerge from inside, along with the facsimile of a face.
-“That is the ugliest hermit crab I’ve seen in my life” the young woman comments, not having any reason to silence her thoughts. The only part of her body that looks to be on guard is her left arm; her posture is just as casual as it was when she was talking to the ghost chasers earlier, and her other hand rests comfortably in her jacket’s corresponding pocket.

The next assault is far wider, with several arms stretching at once towards Shizune like pincers. She abruptly closes her raised hand into a fist, and provokes a violent shockwave that strikes the entirety of the dark spirit at once, then immediately changing her hand motion to a clawed one. As if finally informed that this is a fight to the death, her whole body tenses in concordance with the surges of electricity. Before the apparition hits the ground again, it’s engulfed by a powerful lightning explosion emanating from Shizune’s hand, erasing the evil spirit completely in the span of a second, leaving only the now-deformed steel cabinet to hit the wall and then fall to the ground.

-”Safe,” Shizune sighs, glad that she didn’t commit involuntary manslaughter today, as that would’ve certainly reached a wholly new level of ‘bad day’.
-”A-a wizard! You saved us!!” Kazu says, crying tears of joy.
-”An angel! T-thank y-” Ishio adds, also crying of happiness, but with even less decorum than his friend.
-”No, we’re not doing this. I’m gonna mess with your memories now.” Shizune interrupts the incipient conversation, absolutely not wanting any further interaction, grateful or otherwise. She abruptly snaps her fingers and both men are put into a dazed trance, as if they were asleep with their eyes open.

Shizune’s next course of action is to find their camera, which Ishio dropped in their failed escape attempt and crashed against the floor. With the recording device already broken, it does not seem there will be visual evidence of the decaying spirit. She then addresses the two semi-conscious Otaku: “So you, uh… fell on the stairs and dropped the camera. Then you saw the… floor there collapse and decided to return… and then you saw the stairs falling apart… yeah, that works. Oh, and you decided that you’re not going to ask about Mitsuki Shizune ever again. And then tell your secret informant to, I don’t know, go to hell and never contact you again.”

Next, Shizune grabs both by the shirt and jumps back up to the gym, effortlessly making the four-meter vertical leap. She gently leaves them to rest on the ground before snapping her fingers again, putting them on a short sleep as their memories rearrange themselves to fit the narrative she provided them with.
Jagasaki floats up from the basement, holding a small crystal bead seemingly made of pure shadows, reflecting a dusty lime and emanating a soft mist of the same color.
-“Hm. What pitiful fruit” the demon comments before opening its mouth and devouring the bead.

-”Must have just been a wandering soul that got trapped there somehow–of course it’s not going to produce a strong gendama”  Shizune comments, already walking out of the old gym with Jagasaki following and still savoring the evil marble.
“... If anything, it’s weirder that it looked like a crab. Can’t imagine where it saw one of those to imitate down there.” The odd shape was something Shizune noticed during the encounter itself, but it made little difference to her. That thought is quickly replaced with a far more relevant one: “More importantly, why didn’t you tell me there was a wraith here!?” she complains to her ghostly companion, waving her arm in the direction of the storage room, quite indignant.

-“Do hawks feed on worms? Such lowly spirits are not worth my attention. I simply forget they even exist. I would rather ask you why you care for less than a truly demonic apparition. Slaying vermin grants no notoriety whatsoever… unless your goals have changed?” The demon asks, getting closer to her, in a slight provocation.
Shizune half-squints at Jagasaki’s rebuttal, but ends up not continuing the topic, or even justifying herself. After telling the demon to conceal himself again, she heads toward her classroom to continue the day as if nothing had happened.