Ghost Hunt 
by No. 13

Pure, stainless white and the smell of disinfectants were the first things Tezuka became aware of after opening his eyes. Disoriented, he closed them again, trying to gather his bearings.

He was lying on a comfortable bed, buried underneath a warm blanket, his body felt heavy and lethargic. Somewhere from his right he heard water gurgling. With his senses still submerged in fatigue he tried opening his eyes once more to assess his situation – which, for a reason that currently eluded his hazy mind, was strange.

With the slightest bit of uneasiness coiling in his stomach, he looked around.

It was far too light to be his own room, because he usually closed the curtains before going to sleep. Neither did the wall sport a van Gogh print nor was painted this sterile white colour.

Even though his pounding head advised him to stay down and close his eyes again, Tezuka raised himself on his elbows. More white-washed walls, a small table holding a vase with flowers and several cheap white plastic chairs – hospital issue.

So that…

With a groan he sank back on the mattress, closing his eyes from the memories assaulting his mind. Tatsunori Ichirou, standing amidst a sea of flickering candles; Fuji Yumiko laughing coldly, a dead little girl waving at him to follow, Fujiwara Amane approaching with a sweet smile and a pointed hairpin, Fuji clutching at metal bars, his desperate attempt to reach out, to…

“Kunimitsu! Are you awake?”

He only noted his eyes were burning, when his mother’s worried voice drew him from his spinning thoughts. Blinking he looked over to his left and found his mother leaning forward on her hospital chair.

“Mo…” he had to stop half-way through the word, because his voice came out hoarse and distorted and his throat was sore.

“Here, drink a little water.”

She held out a small plastic cup and Tezuka did as told, afterwards sinking back onto his pillows, feeling strangely worn-out. The stab-wound on his stomach was aching badly, his head was pounding and his neck was stiff.

“I’ll call a nurse and ask for some painkillers.” Tezuka Ayana announced with a soft smile, having read the barely perceivable changes in her son’s expression correctly. Yet, even though her smile was gentle as ever, Tezuka could not overlook the dark circles underneath her eyes nor the paleness of her face.

His poor parents must have been horribly scared.

When Tezuka hadn’t come home for dinner as he’d promised, they waited. Waited hours and hours, starring out into the darkness, hoping just to see a sign of their son returning. They shouldn’t panic, they’d told themselves. Their son was responsible, there certainly was a good reason to him being late.

But if he’d been in an accident?

They should have been notified immediately, either by the police of the hospital. … and yet, memories of the previous days, of that evening when he’d returned, drenched and pale and sporting bruises – what if something had happened again?

He’d said he’d go to Fuji’s. The house had never been mentioned and Ayana was certain, he wouldn’t have gone back voluntarily. Still… it was ten at night and hadn’t come home.

It had only been minutes later that Kuniharu had declared that they’d waited long enough, he’d drive up to that house – just to make sure.

What they found had been beyond their worst nightmare. Ayana knew that she’d never forget the suffocating silence smothering the tranquil scene. The eerie calmness of unmoving trees, the lake’s undisturbed surface, biting cold – it had felt like a graveyard.

Yet not even the dreadful atmosphere hanging over the building could have prepared them for the scene awaiting them inside.

Overturned candles, some still flickering, casting ghastly shadows over polished tiles, dirtied by spots of water and thicker liquid of darker colour – and for the first time that night Ayana had been grateful for the suffocating darkness that made it hard to tell reality from imagination.

That relief though, had been short-lived. Just a split second later, just a small movement of Kuniharu’s wrist to the left revealed a body, motionless on the floor.

Fuji Yumiko. She’d been cold and they’d feared the worst when she failed to wake or to react – but she’d been breathing. Frighteningly shallow and slow gulps of air, but at least for her there had been hope.

There’d been no trace of their son.

Yet there were blood stains on the ground. And Yumiko suffered from no superficial injuries.

That was when the frantic search had begun – it might haven been hours or seconds, the passage of time became blurred by worry, distorted by an anguished heart.

Only when the flashlight’s beam eventually came to rest on two unmoving figures, that time started to move again. Disbelief froze hearts for those moments, she looked without feeling the pain that was sure to set in at one point. She saw her son lying, half-leaning over another person’s body, face hidden by hair, but he was still, so frighteningly still and lifeless. And yet, he still seemed to be desperately clutching onto that other figure; his black-sleeved arm a stark contrast to the gleaming silk of the other person’s kimono.

Fuji’s face had been hidden, turned into Tezuka’s direction and away from Ayana and Kuniharu; and she’d almost no recognized him in the beginning. She’d seen that figure her son was holding dearly and wondered dimly who it was, eyes following the folds of richly coloured silk to where the wide sleeves spread over dark moss, revealing deathly white fingertips.

Confusion, heart-wrenching fear and pain warred for supreme dominance in her mind, but shock and adrenalin kept her going. She could see the same state of emotional distress mirrored on her husband’s face – yet without a word they stepped forward and did what they had to.

Tezuka Ayana was torn from her recollections by her son’s voice – which sounded so calm and collected, even if she could sense worry and urgency underneath. The nurse – having done her work – left the room with a promise to return with the doctor in charge, but as the door clicked shut, both, mother and son let their masks crumble.

“Mother, what … what happened to Fuji?”

His voice sounded oddly choked to himself, but it had to be expected from the way Tezuka was clenching his jaw. It had taken every ounce of self-control not to burst out into questions with the nurse fussing about; to keep the questions tormenting his heart inside only a little longer.

Yet with every moment that passed, with every moment he had to stay calm, the pain inside grew more violent. It took all he possessed to keep the horrifying ideas from forming, to banish those blood-freezing memories until he could get answers – but no painkillers, no drug in this world could have stopped his mind from replaying the despair, the sheer hopelessness, that had taken possession of his heart not even twenty-four hours ago.

And the way his mother sighed, eyes deeply grieved and pain-stricken did nothing to calm his frantically beating heart.

It couldn’t…

“Kunimitsu…”

“Fuji…” he couldn’t keep his voice steady, but he didn’t care. Only the faintest flicker of hope still lingering in the depth of his chest kept the tears burning in his eyes from spilling; only that irresponsible desire to deny what he had seen last night, to name those events a nightmare in the light of this new day.

Even if it went each and every of his principles to cling onto a frail, frail hope, when he’d held that cold, motionless body in his arms, he still couldn’t forsake the only fragment of light left to him. Because if…

… if he had to be rational…. and accept the things he’d seen last night…

He’d rather have died, too.

“Is Fuji…?” he whispered again, not caring about the frightened expression of concern on his mother’s face.

“Kunimitsu…” she uttered, suddenly leaning forward and drawing him into her arms, “Don’t… don’t…”

She heaved a sigh, one hand instinctively reaching up to tousle his hair, a gesture he still remembered from years ago, whenever he was sick.

“Fuji-kun didn’t die, Kunimitsu.” She finally said softly, a tentative smile ghosting over her lips, „Neither did his sister.“

He had been so afraid of hearing the answer to the question plaguing his soul that her words didn’t immediately register. But then they did. And Tezuka closed his eyes, swallowing the lump constricting his throat, swallowing the tears and buried his face in his mother’s shoulder.

“They’re both alive, Kunimitsu.” Ayana repeated and from the way her voice shook Tezuka could tell it had been a close call, “Not in best shape, but alive.”

Pressing her lips together in a grim smile, she continued. “I wish they were better, though.”

“Mother?” he asked in return, subtly tensing up again.

“The doctors won’t tell us any details because we aren’t family… but from what I gathered it’s not good. Especially Fuji-san’s condition…

“Mother.” Was all he said, because he was lacking the words to express his consternation. There were – in all languages he knew, and perhaps even in all languages in this world – no words to adequately transmit his feelings. And unlike those who used all the words they knew to only approximately describe what was happening inside his chest, he choose to remain silent and return his mother’s embrace.

“It’s okay… it’s okay.” She whispered, and her voice sounded oddly pressed, “It’s okay… You’re alive. It’s okay. You’ve got no idea how…”

Had Amane stabbed him only mere centimetres higher, he would have died within minutes. Had that hairpin hit him any other place, he’d have been as good as dead. There were so many fragile organs, that it was a sheer miracle for him to have escaped with nothing but what was barely more than an extraordinarily deep stab wound.

The doctor’s pronouncement of ‘no strenuous activities’ for at least three weeks left a bitter aftertaste, but after seeing Tezuka’s glum expression, the doctor added with a frown, that had the needle struck him about five centimetres on the right, he’d currently be on the waiting list for a kidney transplant.

With tennis completely out of question for the next two to five years.

Tezuka could only listen to those words with eyes wide from disbelief; hands clutching the bed sheets until his knuckles were white, just to keep them from trembling.

“Though, everything considered,” the doctor eventually said, “You should consider yourself extremely lucky.”

The statement ought to have been called lie, yet, sitting upright in this too-white, too-sterile room, with his body numb from pain killers, and his heart fluttering from previously unknown emotions, he could only nod his speechless agreement. Lines of worry drawn on his mother’s pale face spoke volumes; and the fact that he’d woken up to see that white ceiling overhead alone, was more than he had hoped for.

Right now, he did not want to recall the last time he had closed his eyes. The turmoil within his chest, the despondence, the sudden void – his heart was still shaking from the aftershocks. If he was to recall everything in its horrifying glory – he felt it ought to be his death.

Even now, huddled under warm blankets, he could barely believe that he survived. That he really lived through all those things he wouldn’t have expected in his worst nightmares.

Not even a week ago he had not thought the existence of ghosts possible; Tezuka contemplated, while half-listening to his mother conversing with the doctor. Had been willing to write everything off as chance, as … something more natural and earthly than spirits.

And still, sitting here, watching life go on as it usually did, watching the unchanged world, it would be too easy to fall back into his old routine, to dismiss last night’s events, delete everything from memory and pretend nothing had ever happened.

Yet besides that sort of behaviour being improper and disrespectful, those were memories that despite their immanent desperation, their connotative horror were precious. Precious for teaching him that his seemingly stable grasp of the world was fragile in the end, only a fragile mental construction, no matter how scientifically knowledgeable he was.

But even more, that persons were precious.

The lesson was not new, no, he’d always held his family dear, treasured those he considered friends and respected all other acquaintances. Yet he’d never known what the feelings binding him to those persons really meant, hadn’t realized how deep losses could cut, how easily a heart could be torn apart, how easily a world could shatter.

And how much he would regret, had Fuji really died. There were so many things, smaller, bigger, those confused feelings unsettling his heart – that he’d spontaneously called love, even though understood next to nothing of that emotion – the promises they’d exchanged, prospective tennis matches, study sessions, let’s go there next break, I’ve never climbed a mountain before, let’s go together –

“Excuse me, doctor.” Tezuka suddenly said, surprising himself, as well as the man in the white coat who’d just been about to leave the room, “Perhaps… the patient that was brought in together with me…”

“You mean Fuji-kun?” the doctor replied with a benevolent smile, indicating that he was well-informed, even though Fuji was none of his own patients.

“Would it be possible to go and see him?”

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it and if you have suggestions or comments, please share them with me.

On to Chapter 18~