A Ghost

  “This is pathetic.”

  Theo dully shifted his eyes from the dining hall windows to his sociable classmate, a neglected dinner bun hovering in front of his face. “What did you expect? The only people who really talked were you, Cyril, and Alex.”

  Kor didn’t even have the heart to pout, turning to the side to stare at the setting sun that Theo was fixated on. “What, you didn’t enjoy talking to us?”

  Watching her once-mischievous expression turn sullen, he guiltily lowered his own eyes and put his half-eaten bread beside the soup in front of him.

  After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, Callie chirped up, albeit staring at her food. “It’s not that we don’t enjoy talking…it’s just…”

  “It’s just pathetic,” finished Selene from beside Korinna, popping a cherry tomato into her mouth as she examined the rest of the dining hall. “There’s even fewer people around. Same time last year, there were plenty.”

  “Fourth-years got dispatched this morning—not two days into the semester,” Faris commented detachedly, stabbing the pie on his plate a few more times than he needed to before bringing a forkful up to his mouth.

  “Ah…I heard that too.”

  “How’s the eye?”

  “I can’t see you from here, so it’s a good start,” muttered the caster, not turning his head even slightly toward Elias.

  “D’ya think we could still tie in a fight?”

  Despite having lowered his head to eat another spoonful of soup, Theo stopped and gave their last remaining duelist a withering look. “Oh, come on, Elias.”

  The scowl and remark blew past him. “Hey, dude’s crazy for even waking up from that; the damage was bad. We could even hear it from—”

  “I’d be willing to watch.” Finally turning her head away from the window, Kor’s words were playful, but her sullen look did not drop. “But it looks like our dear caster’s of a different opinion.”

  Faris was silent for a few seconds before answering, “No.”

  “No what?”

  “No, I don’t think we could still tie in a fight.”

  “Because you know I’d win.”

  For the old Faris, this would have been the moment where he’d smirk, maybe even chuckle, and then they’d find an unused courtyard—against their tactician’s pleas—to battle it out for a few rounds before one person was forced to concede.

  Instead, he resumed stabbing his food again.

  “This is just sad.”

  Selene’s sharp words punctured the silence so deeply, it felt like a stab through Theo’s chest. He had been tasked with watching over the students, but it felt like trying to get a dysfunctional family together—nigh-impossible a feat, cataclysmic if successful.

  “We’ll get it together. It’ll take some time to get used to it, but we’ll get there,” he tried to offer with lowered eyes, working on his food, wondering if he was eating this because it was what she liked. The bread was soft. The soup was warm. It felt normal. It felt like a normal that would never return.

  “I miss Ty.”

  “She barely even spoke at dinner.”

  “I can’t miss her?”

  “It’s stupid to miss someone who’s gone, you’d—”

  “That’s extremely rude.”

  Everyone at the table stopped what they were doing. Even Faris, who had contented himself with minding his own business, turned to see how the royal would respond.

  “W-what? It’s the truth,” sputtered a red-faced Selene.

  “That doesn’t mean you had to say it,” replied Callie scathingly, setting down her spoon with a trembling hand. “It’s the same with the Alex comment from last time. It’s rude. You don’t need to say it aloud, even if it may be true. Keep it to yourself. It’s needlessly cruel.”

  With a face as red as the tomatoes still in her bowl, Selene continued to fight back. “So what if it’s cruel? You people need to face reality, no matter how mean it is—Ty this, Ty that—” She gestured at Theo, whose eyes narrowed at being included, “Look at Theo! Look at how pathetic he is—all of you would be better off talking about what’s going to happen and who’s going to replace her, not sitting around thinking about someone who abandoned us!”

  Callie didn’t back down either, clenching her hand into a shaking fist. Her voice rose to a volume that none of them had ever heard. “It’s been two days since the semester began, can you not give us two days to be sad about someone who’s been a part of our lives for far longer?”

  Without the checked-out Kor to stop her this time, the royal stood up, slamming her hands down on the table and attracting the gazes of the remaining people in the hall who weren’t already watching the drama unfold. “No! You know how much two days is when we’re on the field? We all saw what Ty did in Ceph—”

  Also standing up, the glassy-eyed Callie didn’t even give her a chance to finish her sentence. “And we’re not on the field! We’re in school! Can you not see who’s around you right now, where you are? Or are you that self-deluded?”

  Before more angry words could escape Selene’s mouth, Theo’s patience finally ran out. “Okay, both of you, stop it right now,” he spoke above their voices, in a volume he hadn’t used in a long time. “Or I’m going to send you both to the infirmary. Try me.”

  As Selene puffed up her cheeks and stomped her way out of the dining hall, Callie, too, silently sat back down, unabashedly wiping the tears from her face with her sleeves.

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  “Ugh. My head hurts,” groaned Kor, slumped in her seat and passing her hands over her face.

  There was only Elias left to respond. “Not gonna go check up on your other half?”

  “No. Not today.”

  “…You good?”

  Another unintelligible groan left Korinna’s lips again as she sat up and gathered Selene’s dishes to put on top of hers. “No. I’m tired. Believe it or not, I didn’t want to enroll in the Academy. When I did, though, I steeled myself for fighting others, not our own.”

  Eyeing his own half eating the rest of her food with tears still streaming down her face, Elias offered words with underlying seriousness. “Eh. Was bound to happen.” He turned to Theo. “When you gonna become tact, anyway? Everyone knows Ty was prepping you for it.”

  The physician could offer only empty words. “She was. And I don’t know.” He turned to Faris on his right, who was stacking his plates and getting up. “Are you heading back already?”

  Holding onto the end of the table, carefully getting up and steadying his cane on the floor, Faris held out his free hand to reach for his plates. “I’ve got some reading to do.”

  Theo grabbed the dishes and slid them toward himself before Faris could get to them. “We don’t have homework yet.”

  Faris straightened and glared menacingly at Theo. “You can put away my dishes for me if you’d like. I’m leaving.”

  From the corner of his eye, Kor waved her hand dismissively at the caster tapping away with his cane while she put her feet up on the seat beside her. “Let him go. If I were him, I’d wanna be asleep or alone, too.”

  “Sleep,” mumbled Elias, stretching his neck before yawning. “I could go for a nap.”

  Theo looked at what remained on the table. Unfinished soup. Half-finished vegetables. Almost-finished bread. The remaining crumbs of the three slices of pie that had been requested. No remnants of the cheese and butter.

  And then a tired-looking Kor, staring out the window, unfocused. A rare, bitter frown on her face instead of a thin line of indifference. Elias, leaning back in his seat, eyes closed as if trying to nap right there. His left hand extended behind Callie, who quietly observed the remaining food on the table with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her bloodshot eyes the only remnant of her tears.

  Was this truly the world she wanted so desperately to save?

  Inhale. Exhale.

  He stood up and picked up everyone’s dishes, placing them onto an empty tray. “It’s been a long day. You all should head back to the dorms. I’ll take care of this.”

  “No, I-I can help,” spouted Callie immediately, getting up only to have her hands swatted away by Theo.

  “No, really. Get some rest. You were up early.”

  Biting her lip, looking like she was about to cry again, Callie didn’t fight hard against him. “You were up early, too,” she whispered.

  Theo shook his head and shuffled off the booth, already working on gathering the rest of the dishes. “It’s okay, I’m not too tired. You guys go ahead.”

  One by one, they shuffled out of the booth and out of the dining hall.

  “Thank…thank you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Thanks, Theo. Owe ’ya one.”

  When he finally turned around, balancing his classmates’ dishes in his hands, they were all gone.

  Setting down their trays at the front of the dining hall, Theo couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of the students running around and laughing in the back kitchen. How he wished that their own class had remained that lighthearted. Baking cakes for birthdays. Bread in the morning. Darius’s flower soup.

  “Excuse me.”

  Stepping to the side, offering a brief apology, Theo let another student place their trays down as he walked back to their booth, the one that Ty had loved so much. Another part of her they could not let go. Another part of her that remained when she was gone.

  An empty booth. They would all be gone one day. It was inevitable. The things she loved would not remain stationary forever, and the remnants of her would disappear into the wind just like the proof of her existence. Just like everything. The halcyon days that would never return.

  Lowering his head, he walked out of the dining hall. Returning not to where he would be surrounded by safe walls, but where the remnants of their halcyon days still shined brightly in his mind.

  * * *

  Bathed in the night, he took step after step deeper into the dark forest.

  “What do I do?” he whispered to the darkness as he continued to shuffle through the grass and snow, the thicket so dense and the moonlight so shy he could neither see what was in the distance nor the footsteps they must have made the last time they visited.

  Still, he continued. He continued even though he didn’t know where he was going. If fate truly existed, if the universe could truly hear him…would he arrive at their clearing, where they had begun?

  “What do I do, Ty?” he continued to plead to the night despite knowing that he was going nowhere, digging himself deeper into a hole of his own making.

  Step after step, head full of unintelligible chaos, Theo continued. His feet were cold. He was tired. His head had been hurting since he had woken up, and he had class tomorrow morning with everyone. He had Moriya’s packet to read. He had reports to check. Broken classmates to check up on. Promises that could not be taken back.

  He stopped.

  This was a horrible idea. A terrible, terrible idea.

  Feeling in his pockets for his tomes first, he wiped his face, pulled his hood over his head, and then turned around.

  Red.

  He froze. Wiped his eyes again.

  Still, red. In the instance. Two tiny circles in the darkness. Eyes.

  The frame of what looked like a hooded figure—inhuman-looking with its rounded head at the top, and the shape of their figure flowing straight down instead of curving like it normally would for the shoulders. The legs.

  “W-who is it?” He felt cold all over as he stuttered, teeth chattering, his breaths submerged under the blanket of the night.

  The red eyes did not reply, growing bigger. Advancing.

  A shield spell left his lips first, and then a light second—but the latter did not appear. Not even a spark in return for his perfect words.

  In the blink of an eye, the red-eyed figure advanced again, this time at such an impossible speed that, before he could even let the final words to his non-functioning Illuminate spell disappear in the wind, they were in front of him.

  Darker than the night. Redder than fire and blood. A shroud by every definition of the word as he stared into their beady eyes and watched the creeping darkness reach out from inside the cloak, wrap its tendrils around his neck, shatter his shield, and then seize his throat.

  Lifting a trembling hand up to his neck, Theo managed to tear his eyes away from the blood-red eyes to look down. His feet were no longer touching the floor. He was in the air. The mist gripping his neck was thick and cold, yet he could not get a firm grasp on it, tear it away, release him; there was only his necklace, the one that—

  Blue. It was blue.

  As soon as realization dawned on him, he could feel the space under him give way, and the shadow in front of him fade into the dark forest.

  Landing backwards onto the snow, Theo immediately sat back up only to see that there was…nothing. There was nothing to see. Only the stifled moonlight. The shadows of the trees, and the path, far, far away. Scattered, frantic footsteps that must have been his.

  Through labored breaths, he spoke out another shield spell before getting up to a crawl and hauling himself up, desperately dismissing the burning feeling around his neck. Continuing, continuing. In the cold of the night, surrounded by a darkness so deep he could not tell if he was going further or returning. Step after step, not looking down, not looking back, making sure that he could get away, not thinking about the repercussions of his actions, of danger, of his ghost, of how the shroud had been chased away by something he could not see.

  Until finally, lights in the distance. The Academy, the dorms.

  Theo collapsed onto the ground, back against a tree. Among the screaming voices in his head, the ones that his ghost had always banished away for him, there was a smaller voice that belonged entirely to him. It was accompanied by the sound of rain, though none fell.

  I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe in the Earth Mother, in destiny, karma, reincarnation, or in any of that crap. I believe in what’s real, what’s here right now, the life we’re living.

  He looked down, past his burning neck, at his necklace. It was no longer glowing.

  Yet he waited. He sat there, watching the blurry lights in the distance, waiting as if she would show up, knowing that it was an impossibility because fate would not be so kind to him, because fate would not be so kind to a ghost who returned. A ghost who returned. A ghost.

  And yet he waited.