Cupid's Arrow (the old one) (again) - Yoshida, Nao
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[justify][font=century gothic][size=380][color=transparent]XX[/color] [color=#6C1B06][b][i]Yoshida Nao[/i][/b][/color][/size]
[size=130][color=black]Nao has never really believed in ghosts, but enough has happened in a few short weeks to make him think they might just be real, and that there's one haunting either him or his house.
Haunting [i]him[/i], most likely, because things only ever seem to go missing from [i]his[/i] bedroom.
In just under three weeks, Nao has lost notebooks, textbooks, his favorite pencil, the batteries to his desk lamp, his phone, and his entire schoolbag. And while he found everything eventually - in different parts of the house, including the backyard - he's convinced [i]something[/i] doesn't like him.
Or perhaps just really hates school. It doesn't slip Nao's attention that the stolen items all have to do with school in some way, though he's not quite sure why a dead dropout would haunt [i]him.[/i]
The more he thinks about the logistics of his maybe-ghost, the more outlandish the idea seems.
Nao does his best to ignore the problem, though it does start to get on his nerves the third time he has to track down his homework and finds it in one of the kitchen cupboards. What purpose does a ghost have in hiding things? They're not even trying that hard to get [i]rid[/i] of the things they steal.
Then one night he comes back into his room after showering to find his manga shelf has been reorganized. Or rather, books have been pulled out and put back in the wrong places.
He doesn't fix the shelf, doesn't want to put any more energy into the idea. But try as he might, Nao ends up distracted from his studies by conjured images of some hikikomori floating around his room, reading his manga and watching him sleep. Nao doesn't sleep well that night, all told.
The next morning, nothing has been moved, not even the still-unorganized manga on his shelf.
Nao silently hopes his maybe-ghost is gone for good.
School is expectedly normal, the normal amount of classmates stopping Nao on his way to class and initiating conversations that are the normal amount of bland. Nao puts on his princely smile and [i]converses[/i], then files away the new names he's learned and prays no one else bothers him.
A perfectly normal morning.
At least, perfectly normal on the surface.
It isn't until Nao takes his seat in class that he realizes something is different. The desk in front of his, which was perfectly empty the day before, now holds a head of blonde hair he's never seen.
He expects the homeroom teacher to announce a transfer student when she walks in. She doesn't. He then expects his classmates to question the new girl when they see her. They don't. No one so much as bats an eye at her existence until halfway through homeroom, when Tachibana takes the chalkboard to discuss some new school decorum and her gaze lingers on the new girl.
It's then that Nao realizes there's another girl he's never seen sitting in this classroom, and as if by some miracle, he can see Tachibana realize too. At least now he knows he's not seeing things.[/color][/size][/font][/justify]