Phantom – Part Three

It's not me
Buried wreckage my soul
It's not me
So who am I now?

-The Used, Light With a Sharpened Edge

Sango awoke early the next morning to the sound of the television blaring.

Needless to say, she was far from pleased. It wasn't as if she wasn't accustomed to waking up with noise in the background, but normally, that noise was her own fault. Groggily, she sat up, perturbed by the fact that the sun probably wouldn't have woken her up for another hour if she'd been allowed to remain asleep. Her eyes half-lidded, she climbed out of bed and stalked toward her study, exuding a palpable aura of semi-consciousness.

The ghost was sitting in her computer chair, hugging his knees to his chest. His eyes were fixed on the television, which displayed a rather cheesy-looking scene from an early-morning drama that she never bothered to watch, though she knew that Kagome watched it religiously and never spared Sango a single detail when a particularly good episode had aired.

He looked up as she came in, and offered a bright smile. "Good morning, Sango."

Sango blinked first at him, then the screen, then back at him. "Why are you watching my TV, Ghost-boy?"

Miroku gestured at the television. "I remember this show," he said, not really answering her question at all. "I think this is the episode where Itsukune professes his undying love for-"

Sango threw up a hand. "You're not answering my question. I'm running on about four hours of sleep, and your tangents may invoke unpredictable behavior." She spared a glance at the television, where a woman wearing makeup so thick that she probably couldn't lift her head properly was sobbing face-up on a bed.

"Well, I don't think any of your neighbors would appreciate their televisions turning on at this time of the morning," Miroku responded cheerfully. "Plus, I figured that you would lament a missed opportunity to be upset at me."

The woman paused for a moment, opened her mouth as if to argue, and shut it again. "Coffee," was her eventual response, and she shuffled off to the kitchen. Grinning, Miroku followed, making a point not to turn the television down so that the cheesy dialogue remained audible.

Grumbling to herself, Sango opened a cabinet and began to shift its contents aside, on a quest that would hopefully lead to the placidity that only early-morning caffeine could bring about. After a few seconds, she frowned and slammed the cabinet shut. Today, of all days, she was out of coffee. Cursing her luck, she turned to head off to her bedroom and almost walked right through the ghost, who was standing far too close for comfort.

"Excuse me," she said in a false-cheery voice that was a threat in itself. Admittedly, there wasn't much that she could do to a dead man, but she was willing to do her best.

"You could just walk through me, you know," Miroku informed her with a teasing smile. Sango suddenly had a very disconcerting image of herself being groped while halfway inside him.

"No, thanks," she replied, then sidestepped him and stepped out into the hallway, knowing that if she wanted coffee that morning, she'd have to seek it out. Miroku's voice called after her.

"I'll bet that you wouldn't find my touch so repulsive if I were alive."

Halting in the doorway to her room, Sango craned her neck back slightly to reply. "Somehow, I doubt that." She slipped into the room and shut the door behind her, for all the good it would do. It would appear that Miroku had learned to behave himself, though, and hadn't made any further intrusions after their first meeting.

Sighing, Miroku made his way back to his original seat in the study.

Sango didn't pause to say good-bye to her resident specter as she walked past the study and out of the front door. She'd drawn her hair into a high ponytail and thrown on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Under no circumstances could that be called 'dressing for success'—unless, of course, success entailed a steaming cup of java. He didn't attempt conversation, either, although he may just have been wrapped up in the ending of the terrible melodrama.

Checking her watch, Sango calculated that Kagome would be leaving her own house within the next few minutes; she usually left for the coffee shop right after the show that the ghost was watching went off. If Sango took her time, she'd probably end up arriving right when her friend did.

As she began to walk, she pondered her situation. It really hadn't taken long for her to accept Ghost-boy as a part of her daily routine, oddly enough. She'd gone from trying to hit him with a plunger to leaving him alone in her house watching soap operas. Despite what he was accusing her of, he wasn't really treating Sango like a criminal at all; on the contrary, he was behaving as if they'd been good friends while he was alive. Maybe he just wasn't one to hold a grudge.

In any case, Sango had made it her mission to figure out who had really killed him, if only to get him to leave her in peace. Her normally uneventful days were now anything but, though she now had something on which to focus her attention.

The bell over the door let out a sharp 'ding' as Sango moved inside and took a seat at the bar. One of the morning waitresses, a woman whose name escaped Sango at the moment, smiled and gave her a cheerful nod that was understood to mean 'I'll get to you in a second'. Sango amused herself by pulling a coffee stirrer out of a nearby dispenser and beginning to twist and bend it.

Not two minutes after she'd entered, the door opened once more and Kagome stepped in. A grin crossed her face as she saw Sango, who was the only patron except for the man whose coffee the other worker was preparing and a woman sitting at one of the booths. "Morning," she greeted, walking through the waist-height swinging doors that led to the other side of the counter. Stooping, she retrieved her red apron from beneath the counter and tossed it over her head, expertly knotting it behind her. "What can I do for you?"

"Coffee," Sango replied gruffly, not in the mood to debate with herself over the different styles of coffees and flavorings. She'd let Kagome choose.

Kagome nodded and reached for a cup. "Long night?" she asked as she crossed to the espresso machine. From the refrigerator beside it, she produced a gallon jug of milk and poured a bit into the cup and chased it with flavoring before setting it beneath the machine's dispenser to let it work its magic.

"You have no idea," Sango said with a groan, dropping the red stirrer and glaring at it. "Actually, I just failed at falling asleep and woke up far too early."

Kagome laughed. "That much, I can tell. It's been a while since I've seen you in here this early. Oh, well. At least I get to tell you about the episode of Like-Love-Romance that aired this morning while it's still fresh on my mind!" She pulled the cup away from the machine, topped it with whipped cream, and set it in front of Sango.

Sango stared at the drink, then took a big gulp. It scalded her mouth, of course, but she couldn't bring herself to mind too much. "Don't bother," she said. "Itsukune professed undying love for somebody-or-other, right?"

Kagome gave her a strange look. "I didn't know you followed the show."

With the coffee cup pressed to her mouth again, Sango couldn't reply. She used the time to think up a viable excuse. The last thing she wanted was to explain to Kagome why she knew what this particular episode had been about. Any explanation that she gave might hint at the fact that it had actually been airing on her television.

Setting the cup back on the counter, she said, "I suppose I remember you talking about it at some point or another, that's all. Call it intuition."

The younger girl blinked, then shook her head. "It couldn't have been that. Today's episode was the season finale—a new episode."

Now, it was Sango's turn to stare. The ghost had told her that he remembered this episode, hadn't he? How could he remember something that hadn't happened until after his death? Of course, he could have just been mistaken about it... but it was far too coincidental. Maybe ghosts got premonitions... "I might have heard someone talking about it on the way here," Sango said finally. "After all, everyone seems to watch it but me."

Kagome nodded as if she accepted this answer, but there was something in her eyes that hinted that she wasn't completely convinced. The bell over the door dinged again, and Kagome moved off to the new customer, leaving Sango to enjoy her coffee and think.

The next time Kagome passed by her, Sango's cup was empty and she was preparing to leave. She figured that, since she was fully alert now, she could get a couple of hours of searching done at the library before grabbing a bite for lunch. Sliding the cup into the hole in the counter that camouflaged the trashcan below, Sango flagged down Kagome one last time.

"Hey, Kagome? This might seem like an odd question, but do you know of any murders that have happened around here recently?" If she was going to do this right, she might as well use sources that she could think of.

Kagome tapped her finger on the counter and frowned. "Not any that I can think of right off the bat. There was that woman who was found a few weeks ago, but that's still under investigation since it may have been a suicide."

Sango shook her head. "The murder I'm talking about involved a young man," she amended. Though she knew Miroku's name, now, she was reluctant to use it. There was no sense in getting herself wrapped up too deeply in this—though, with a slain man's ghost haunting her, how much deeper could she bury herself?

Kagome didn't think nearly as long this time. "No, I don't think so. There's been nothing like that, as far as I've heard. Why do you ask?"

"No reason, really," Sango said, her voice full of false cheeriness. "Just... wondering, sort of." She hopped off the stool. "Are we still on for movies tonight?" she asked.

The younger girl beamed. "You've got it," she affirmed. "See you at eight?"

With a nod, Sango sealed the deal and left the coffee shop.

Stepping onto the sidewalk and into the ample crowd of people beginning their morning commute, it dawned on Sango that she could at least make significant headway at the library in her search for the ghost’s true killer, now that she knew his name. Of course, since this had just occurred to her, she hadn’t thought to bring her bike along. It would take her quite a while to walk there, so if she really wanted to go, she’d have to head back home to get it.

For a moment, she debated forgetting it for the day and spending the day shopping, but curiosity was getting the better of her. What with the oddity of Miroku knowing about the morning soap opera, this was a mystery that she wanted to solve as soon as possible.

Making up her mind, Sango turned to head in the direction that would take her back to her home, her eyes on her feet and her mind deep in thought. Apparently, her sudden change of course in the middle of the crowd took those around her by surprise; her shoulder hit that of a passing woman hard enough to make her drop her purse. Apologizing, Sango knelt to pick it up, but was swatted away and huffed at by the woman, who grabbed it herself and continued to walk. Straightening and shaking her head, Sango moved forward again, only to run into someone else.

This collision wasn’t as harmless as the other. The man had been holding a nearly full cup of orange juice in his hand, and when he was hit, it tipped out of his hand and splashed all over Sango’s front. In an attempt to ward off the juice, Sango leapt backward, only to overbalance and land on her back on the ground. “Ow,” she grumbled pointedly, before looking down at her hopelessly stained pale blue shirt. At least she hadn’t chosen to wear white.

“I’m sorry!” the man said quickly, extending a hand to help her to her feet. Sango ignored the hand, standing on her own, then gazing morosely down at the large stain on her shirt. “I should have been paying a bit more attention. Are you okay?”

Sango sighed and nodded. “I’m fine. Just a little embarrassed. I-” She lost the thread of what she was going to say as she looked up at the man’s face. Every one of his features was frightfully familiar, and in the same second that she made the connection in her mind, his name came out of her mouth. “Nakano?”

Indeed it was. From the black hair in a ponytail to the sincere violet eyes to the earrings, he was the spitting image of the ghost who had been haunting her for the past couple of days. He raised an eyebrow at her, then smiled. “You know my na-?” He was cut off as Sango seized his upper arm and jerked him off the sidewalk, toward a bench.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed angrily, looking around at the passerby and hoping that they didn’t see her speaking to midair. “I swear, if this is part of your plot to make my life miserable, I will never forgive you!”

He blinked. “Wha-”

Sango wasn’t quite done. “I mean, really, this is the last straw! Not only are you everywhere I go, but you show up and spill orange juice on me? What kind of thanks is that for my helping you?” she seethed, her eyes narrowed.

He stared at her for a few more seconds, then rolled his eyes skyward. “What have I done this time?” he muttered under his breath, then spoke to her. “I’m sorry, but have we met?”

“What do you mean, have w... of course we...” Sango paused, then, and began to actually go over the situation. What sense would it make for the spirit to be walking around on the sidewalk, much less with a glass of orange juice? And why... why was she able to hold on to his upper arm, which was warm, solid, and very real? She realized then that her hand was still on his arm and released it as if she’d been burned.

This man... this Nakano... was alive.

Sango’s mouth dropped open. Luckily, she was saved having to reply by Nakano, who snapped his fingers in recognition. “Ah, now I remember! I saw you at the coffee shop a couple of days ago. I held the door open for you on my way out.” He gave her a charming grin that didn’t affect her much through her haze of disbelief. “I never forget a pretty face,” he said matter-of-factly, crossing his arms.

“Ah,” Sango said weakly, her mind racing. “Right. I should... be going, then...”

Nakano seemed unperturbed. “All right. I hope I didn’t ruin your day with the orange juice,” he said. “Maybe I’ll make a better impression on you if we happen to meet again.”

“Uh-huh,” Sango said, without thinking, then turned as if to walk away. She’d only taken a few steps before she felt a brush on her backside. With no hesitation, she whirled and whacked the offender across the face (who would it be but Nakano?). He tottered and almost fell into a store display before catching his balance. Cradling his cheek with one hand, he used his other to wave cheerfully at Sango, who reddened, glared, and strode off.

Her life had gotten a whole lot more complicated, but it wasn’t nearly bad enough for her to forgive a pervert, whether he was supposed to be dead or not.

It seemed to take Sango no time to reach her front door, though her perspective was likely altered by the fact that she had so much on her mind. She'd undergone several changes in mood, from confusion to anger at Nakano to, finally, anger at the ghost who was probably sitting with his feet up, watching her television.

She jammed the key into the lock and shoved the door open, her eyes immediately darting around for any sign of her otherworldly houseguest. When he didn't greet her at the door, she stepped inside, slammed the door behind her, and called, "Ghost-boy, get out here!"

There was no answer. Kicking off her shoes and dropping her keys on the small table near the door, Sango made for the study. The television was still and silent, and there was no sign of the ghost. Folding her arms, Sango shouted, "Damn it, don't try to hide from me this time! Where are you!"

Just as she was about ready to admit that perhaps he'd moved out of existence like he had the previous day, someone spoke from the doorway. "How may I be of service?"

Sango didn't bother to react to the mildly teasing tone of his voice; he was probably pleasantly surprised at her seeking out his company. "You. You're haunting me for no reason." She narrowed her eyes and stepped forward. "I was out walking today, and who should spill orange juice all over me but... you."

The ghost stared in silence for a moment. "Wait... what?"

"You. Are. Not. Dead. By the way, don't bother trying to tell me that everyone has a double or something like that. He responded to your name and is just as much of a pervert as you are." Suddenly tired, she sat down in her desk chair and lifted a hand to her forehead.

Neither spoke for the next few minutes. After a few minutes, Miroku shook his head and said, "That can't be... I told you, that's what I remember. It was what brought me here. It doesn't make sense."

"Yeah, well, your being here doesn't make much sense, either," Sango pointed out wearily. It was as if she had never had that cup of coffee. "I don't know—maybe you have out-of-body experiences or something."

"That wouldn't explain how I knew your name," he said matter-of-factly. "You'd never met this 'other me' before, right?"

"Right," Sango replied, too perplexed to be angry any longer. Something was bothering her, though; there was something that she was forgetting...

It came to her in a flash. This morning, the ghost had said that he'd seen that episode of that soap opera before, but it had been a new episode, according to Kagome. The only way that he could have recognized it was if... The day just kept getting more and more bizarre. "Like-Love-Romance's season finale was what you were watching this morning. There's no way that you could have seen it before you died, unless..."

After a moment, realization widened the ghost's eyes. Haltingly, he finished the sentence. "...I'm not dead... yet." Miroku managed to sit down heavily on the floor, even though he was completely incorporeal. "Well, damn. I'm a ghost from the future." He blinked a few times, then looked up at Sango with a large grin. "Would you like a conspiracy theory to go with your Twilight Zone?"

"This is not funny," she snapped. "If you're not dead yet, then why are you here? I don't even know you—the living you, I mean—so there's really no chance that I'll end up killing you."

"On the contrary," Miroku said, his grin turning into something a bit more sly. "If I'm not here to punish you for killing me, then I'm here to keep you from killing me."

Sango turned to her desk and clicked on her computer with a sigh. "You won't have to worry about that," she said, "since I have no plans to see the living you again. So you can just leave me a-" Looking back at the doorway, she was greeted with nothing but empty space. Miroku was gone. "...lone," she finished irritably, then tilted her head back and called out. "Kagome's coming over at eight, so you'd better behave yourself!"

Putting her elbows on the desk, she rested her head on her hands and stared unseeingly at the computer screen. Her situation was now drastically different; instead of merely having to prove that she hadn't killed someone, she now had to make it clear that she didn't plan to kill him, an altogether more difficult task.

There was a new e-mail sitting in her inbox amid the smattering of newsletters that she regularly received. It was from an address that she didn't recognize, but the subject line caught her attention rather quickly: 'Kagome asked me to tell you not to kill her'.

Dread pooling in her stomach, she clicked the message.

Dear Sango,

Though you may delete this before getting completely through it, I figured it was worth a try. Kagome told me your e-mail address; I think she wants you to get out more. In any case, I hope you'll give this poor pervert a bit of your time.

Sango gaped at the screen, but couldn't help but read on.

I don't want you to have a bad opinion of me because of this morning. Well actually, it was only about half an hour ago, and I'm sending this from an internet café, but that's beside the point. As such, I'm volunteering to make it up to you. How about going out to dinner sometime? Of course, I don't expect you to go with me alone; Kagome has volunteered to come along with one of her male friends. Call it reimbursement, or whatever you wish. (I, of course, will be calling it a 'date'.)

You can get back to me at this address. I'll be awaiting your response.

Nakano Miroku

As Sango's disbelief began to fade, she realized that staying away from Nakano might be a lot harder than she'd first thought.

With a click, she deleted the message, and deemed that a good start.