Free Book Girl and the Famished Spirit by Mizuki Nomura

heat-resistant desks and chairs.
    She wasn’t there!
    She couldn’t be a real ghost…
    Although I felt such fear that I was shaking, I started walking between the black desks.
    Then I felt something warm against my shin.
    My throat tensed and a scream slipped out. At the same moment, I heard a girl cry out at my feet.
    Dropping my gaze, I saw a girl wearing an old-style sailor suit hunched on the ground.
    “A-Amemiya!”
    She hadn’t disappeared. She held a rag in one hand and a spray bottle full of cleaner in the other, and she had pushed half her body under the desk to wipe off the wall behind it.
    “Wh-what are you doing? Amemiya?” I asked, wide-eyed. I was so surprised that I forgot to explain my own presence.
    She pursed her lips and glared at me.
    “My name’s not Amemiya. It’s Kayano. Kayano Kujo. I already told you that, didn’t I?”
    Your mom’s name, maybe.
But now was not the time to argue.
    “I’m sorry. What are you doing here this late on a Saturday, Kujo?”
    “I was erasing my letters.”
    Amemiya—no, Kayano—turned back to look at the desk darkly. I could see a faint string of numbers that she had started to erase.
    17-5-25-28-25-28-2-5-12-21-28-15-5-11
    “I thought they’d all been erased. I thought they were all gone. But these were hidden by a desk, and they survived… I don’t need things like this anymore…”
    She mumbled in a subdued voice, scrubbing at the numbers with her cloth.
    “Why don’t you need them?”
    “Because he and I are both dead now.”
    “You don’t look like a ghost to me.”
    Once she was done erasing the numbers, Kayano popped her head out from under the desk and grinned up at me, still on her hands and knees.
    “Oh? You looked rather pale when you saw me before. Your legs were all wobbly because you thought I was a ghost, no?”
    “Well, that was…”
    I trailed off and she stood up, chuckling. It was an innocent, bright laugh unlike the morbid, shrieking peal I’d heard in the school yard. Her eyes were teasing as they surveyed me. They greatly resembled the eyes of a girl I kept in my heart who I missed.
    Come on. I’ll know if you’re lying. Fess up, Konoha.
    It pops right onto your face. But I like that you listen when I ask for stuff and that you don’t know how to lie.
    I was seized by an uncanny feeling that I was seeing a vision of the past, and my chest constricted sweetly.
    Miu had often teased me like this, too.
    She had looked at me and laughed brilliantly.
    Obviously, the girl before me wasn’t Miu. I would never see Miu again.
    But I didn’t care if the vision was a delusion. I wanted to let these waves of nostalgia wash over me.
    Even though it could never be real.
    But what if…?
    “So why are you leaving notes in the book club’s mailbox? What do those numbers mean? Who’s the guy you keep mentioning?”
    Kayano put her cloth and bottle away in a locker with a clatter. She rummaged furtively with her white hands and then spoke in an ambiguous tone that revealed nothing of her true thoughts.
    “If you want to know, then come here again tomorrow. Then I’ll at least give you a hint.”
    The corners of her mouth curved in a slight smile, and she gazed at me invitingly, her eyes the color of strong tea.
    I still felt disconnected and dreamy as I watched her leave the room.
    Her fluttering steps.
    The skirt of her uniform, rippling below her knees.
    Did she just make me a promise?
    The next day—Sunday—I spent the entire day thinking about Kayano.
    Would she really be there tonight?
    I kept thinking about it until night fell, and then I headed to the school, feeling uneasy. I went down the hall just as I had the day before, climbed the stairs, and went to the chemistry lab.
    When I opened the door, Kayano was standing at the window, bathed in the moonlight. The lights were still off, but the curtains and windows were thrown open, filling the room with the cold silver light of the moon.
    When she saw that I had come,