She stood there motionless, watching him — not in the way of someone with a temper, but in the way of something deceptively harmless that carried far more bite than it appeared. Like a cat with the disposition of a dog. A vast thought, that.
"How did he even think a ghost like me is going to carry those lavenders?"
Because — and this is the part nobody prepares you for — she was not the kind of ghost that came bearing benefits. She came bearing consequences. He might have spent one moment congratulating himself for being a gentleman, and the very next moment realizing he had committed himself to several more very unfortunate minutes.
They call it human nature. I, the writer, call it mental distance. What does a man expect from a ghost? Haunting? Dread? Cold air and shadows? What he certainly did not expect was this — a relentless, self-assured, uncontainable presence with a talent for turning up precisely where she was least welcome.
And now she stood directly in front of his house. After his very explicit, very final warning. Which, of course, meant nothing to her. She was a ghost. No law on this earth had ever been drafted with her kind in mind. He could try arresting her — but how exactly would he explain that to his colleagues? That a very aggressive current of air was pestering him? Inadmissible.
"Hi~" He cleared the ground beneath his feet by approximately half a meter. "I — I just warned you and you dare come inside." The unwelcome guest of all time, standing in his foyer without so much as an apology.
It makes no sense to warn a ghost. I said what I said.
"Oh, you warned me? My apologies — I must have missed that entirely." She waved his words aside with complete tranquility, blinking up at him with a smile that was either entirely innocent or entirely calculated, and the distinction no longer seemed to matter.
***
DAY 3
The café was considerably warmer than his house had felt lately. He had claimed the corner, settled behind a latte and his favorite blueberry muffins, eyes moving steadily across the documents open on his laptop, marking blunders with the quiet precision of someone who did this in his sleep.
The café hummed with a pleasant disorder he had grown to appreciate —
the grinding of the coffee machines,
the current of voices layered over each other,
the laughter of strangers,
the theatrical complaints of someone's secretary about a boss who apparently had no redeeming qualities.
The back and forth of the staff. All of it felt more natural than problematic, somehow. More like life than like noise.
He didn't hear footsteps approaching. He didn't catch a fragrance. He had no idea when she had slipped into the chair across from him and arranged herself into that expression — the one she wore like a comfortable coat, somewhere between serene and unnerving.
He looked up casually.
And went completely still.
His mouth opened and remained that way. He couldn't produce a single word. He pointed at her — forefinger extended — as a man points at something that should not exist. Then he decided, quietly and with great internal resolve, to simply pretend none of this was happening.
He packed his laptop into his bag, slung it over his shoulder, walked to the counter, paid his bill, and left.
Saki sat at the empty table.
"...Huh? What?"
***
DAY 4
He was at a restaurant, waiting for his meal. He had spent the entire day without encountering her and had privately awarded himself considerable credit for the successful evasion the previous afternoon.
What he didn't know was that she hadn't been chasing him at all — she'd been absorbed in listening to her siblings get scolded by their mother for failing to clean the yard. But now, with the evening settling in and her thoughts returning to him, the hunt was on.
"Here is your dinner. I apologize for the wait, sir." The waitress set the plate down with practiced ease. He smiled and dismissed the delay.
"I completely understand."
"Would you like to add a dessert later, sir?"
"No, thank you." She gave a small bow and moved away.
Then the real visitor arrived. No sound. No hurry. He was reaching for the tissue when something in his peripheral vision stopped him. His eyes traveled upward, slowly, until they reached the face he had mentally sworn to never encounter again.
Saki Kallistratos, seated across from him.
His throat tightened. He had been celebrating his freedom not five minutes ago. Now the singular question occupying his mind was a very sincere:
why me?
"You find this genuinely entertaining, don't you." He kept his voice low, pressing the irritation flat. The words carried straight through her anyway — sound traveled through her the way it traveled through open air.
She smiled faintly. "Tremendously. I actually came to talk to you yesterday — you rather pointedly ignored me."
He looked back down at his meal and resumed eating. Saki watched him for a moment, then said,
"You know, on my way here I passed a man selling cotton candy at the park. I was going to ask you to buy me some—"
"Check, please." He raised a hand toward the waitress, cutting cleanly through the sentence. Saki paused, assumed it was unrelated, and continued.
"Oh — and would you possibly buy me some cotton candy on your way home?"
He did not reply. She waited, patient, watching him the way one watches a slow-moving weather system. The waitress returned with the check and he looked up with a warm smile.
"That was a genuinely excellent meal."
"We're delighted you enjoyed it, sir. We hope to see you again." Saki felt the particular sting of being the only person in the room not included in that exchange, but told herself it was fine and that he would answer her in a moment.
He stood. So did she, expectant. "You will, won't you?" she said, still smiling.
He walked past her without so much as a glance.
She didn't follow.
She simply stood in the middle of that warm, crowded room and watched him disappear into the evening, swallowed by distance.
***
DAY 5
She didn't go to his house. She didn't seek out the places she had learned to associate with him. Whatever had been pulling her in his direction seemed to have quieted, at least for today. Her spirit drifted back to the cemetery — that familiar, sun-warmed space of swaying grass and accumulated silence, where stone and memory kept each other company.
Her fingertips grazed the gravestones as she walked among them, unhurried.
Some were bare.
Some held flowers.
Some held letters.
And one held both — a letter pinned beneath a smooth stone. She recognized it before she reached it. She slowed halfway there, because her mother was already sitting beside it.
Saki smiled, something tender and aching in it. She walked the rest of the way and settled next to her gravestone, watching her mother pray with closed eyes and folded hands.
"You think they can hear you up there." she said quietly. "I'm not even there, Mom. You should be asking them to let my soul rest, so I can find my way to that place." She gestured toward the open, luminous sky.
She moved closer as her mother opened her eyes and lowered her hands to her lap. Saki reached toward her cheek —
Her hand passed straight through.
Melancholy washed across her face. She managed a smile anyway, the kind that costs something. "I wish you were Yahya, Mom. You would love listening to me talk without stopping. You'd follow me everywhere I went and buy me whatever I wanted." Her voice came quieter now, and tired.
"You always did."
"Saki."
Her mother spoke to the stone, one hand resting on it. And Saki felt that touch — not on her skin, but somewhere deeper. Her whole soul stirred like something flowering.
"I really... miss you, sweetheart." Her mother's voice split halfway through the sentence. Her hand remained on the stone.
"I would stay here the whole day but I have to take Ninan to the hospital." She turned and lifted a neatly packed bag from beside her, setting it gently in front of the gravestone — directly in front of Saki.
"I brought cotton candy on my way. I'm sorry I couldn't make blueberry muffins — Ninan has an appointment today, sweetheart." She rose, smoothed her coat, and walked away.
Saki came apart slowly. A soft, involuntary sound escaped her. She pressed her hand over her mouth, tears arriving before she could stop them.
She opened the bag. Pulled out the cotton candy. And then she saw the letter folded inside it. She drew it out with careful fingers.
*Saki (aunt to-be),*
*Hey, little one. I hope you made it to heaven and that you're reading this while eating the cotton candy Mom bought at the park last night when she took me for a walk. We really miss you.*
*I don't know if you can actually read this but — I'm pregnant. Eight months along. Mom has been taking me to every checkup. You're going to be an aunt.*
*I'm sad you won't be the first one to hold my baby. But I want you to bless them. I wish you were here, right next to me.*
*Your loving sister,*
*Ninan.*
Saki pressed the letter to her chest. Her breathing came in short, uneven pulls. She sat with it for a long moment before wiping her face and reaching for the cotton candy.
"I bless you with a healthy baby, Ninan." She whispered into the bright, indifferent afternoon. "I'm sorry I left so soon."
***
DAY 6
"She's actually gone."
Yahya moved from room to room, pausing repeatedly at his front door, eyes drifting to the space beyond it.
"Isn't this what I wanted?" He said it to himself with the tone of a man trying to convince a jury.
"She's finally gone. That means privacy. Freedom. Peace."
He hopped into the kitchen and made chicken — his favorite, prepared with the particular satisfaction of a man reclaiming his own space. He arranged it on a plate and carried it to the dining table.
"Ah. No talking while eating—" He stopped.
Saki wasn't there.
He looked at the table.
He had made two plates.
He stood in silence, staring at the second plate — the one that would not be touched, the one arranged out of a habit he had apparently developed without noticing. He remained there long enough to feel genuinely unsettled by his own hands.
"Come on. You're not worried about her. You're absolutely not." He said this firmly. He washed up. He went to the living room. He put on the film he had been anticipating for weeks.
Halfway through, he leaned sideways and said quietly, "Watch this part. That man's about to tear his shirt clean off like the Hulk." He turned, already prepared for a shriek of delighted laughter.
He found silence.
He looked around his house. Not the ordinary quiet of an empty evening, but a specific, unfamiliar silence — the kind that existed only because something that had been filling it was gone.
The laughter.
The chatter.
The spectacular sound of something shattering against a surface it had no business being near. All of it had left with her.
He leaned his head back against the cushion. Eyes on the ceiling. His thoughts kept returning to the previous day — to the absence of irritation, of noise, of someone inserting herself cheerfully into every corner of his existence. Of all the things that had been missing from that day.
Nothing, he realized, was not as peaceful as he had imagined.
His gaze drifted sideways to the dining table. To the small box of cotton candy sitting on it.
He had bought it on the way home.
He hadn't been able to explain why.
"Come back, Saki." he whispered.