Chapter 3

  "Scraps Again"

  He lasted one day.

  He thought that was worth something. One day of corridors and classrooms and twenty-three faces running calculations every time he walked in. One day of sitting at the desk nearest the door and understanding roughly half of what was written on the board and spending the other half watching people exist in ways he didn't have a language for yet.

  One day before he stopped going.

  He didn't make a decision about it. That was the honest version. He just woke up on the fifth morning and his feet took him to District 0 instead of District 3, and he let them — because arguing with his own feet at five in the morning was not a fight he had the energy for.

  The abandoned building was exactly as he'd left it. Of course it was.

  Nobody else wanted it.

  He stood in the doorway and looked at the cardboard on the floor.

  Then he went to find food.

  — ? —

  He was behind the convenience store on the third day back when he heard the footsteps.

  He knew them before he turned around. That particular rhythm — unhurried, no agenda in it.

  Kageshiro stood at the entrance to the alley, hands in his jacket pockets, taking in the scene with an expression that didn't have disappointment in it. That was the first thing Ghost checked for.

  It wasn't there.

  "You found your way back."

  Not an accusation. Just an observation, the way you'd note the weather.

  Ghost looked at him for a moment, then back at the scraps in his hand.

  "I was always here."

  Kageshiro came and stood nearby — not close, just present. The same way he'd done it on day one. Like existing near Ghost without demanding anything was simply a thing he did.

  "How's the arm."

  Ghost's jaw tightened slightly.

  "Fine."

  It wasn't fine.

  The cut above his left elbow had been angry for two days now — hot to the touch, the skin around it tighter than it should be. He'd wrapped it tighter and stopped thinking about it, which in his experience was a reliable system.

  "Ghost."

  "I said it's fine."

  Kageshiro was quiet for a moment.

  "Come back."

  "No."

  "Alright. Why not."

  Ghost set the scraps down. Turned to face him properly.

  "You saw what happened. First day. First corridor. Someone tried to help me and I—"

  He stopped. Started again.

  "I don't belong there."

  Kageshiro looked at him steadily.

  "That corridor incident. The reason it happened — do you know what it actually was?"

  Ghost said nothing.

  "Your body protected you. Automatically. Without asking permission."

  Kageshiro's voice was even, unhurried.

  "You spent twelve years in a place that required that. You can't turn it off in a day. Or a week. Or probably a month."

  He paused.

  "That's not a reason you don't belong. That's proof of what you've survived."

  Ghost stared at him.

  "The student you reacted to. He came to my office afterward."

  Ghost went very still.

  "He wasn't angry. He wanted to know if you were alright."

  The alley was quiet.

  Ghost looked at the ground for a moment. Then back up. His expression hadn't changed — but something behind it had moved slightly. The way something moved underwater when you couldn't quite see it clearly from the surface.

  "Come back. That's all."

  Ghost picked up the scraps. Put them down again.

  "Tomorrow."

  Kageshiro nodded like that was a completely reasonable thing to say.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  "I'll be at the gate."

  He left.

  Ghost stood alone in the alley.

  — ? —

  He was back at the gate the next morning.

  Kageshiro was there. Of course he was.

  They walked in without saying much. Ghost kept his left arm slightly closer to his body than usual. The sleeve of his oversized jacket sat low enough that nothing showed. He'd rewrapped it that morning with a strip of fabric from the building's broken curtains.

  It was fine.

  The lesson was geography — maps, districts, the city's infrastructure. Ghost sat at the desk nearest the door and found District 0 on the board immediately. Bottom left corner. Smaller than everything else. No labels on it.

  He looked at it for a while.

  Then he looked away.

  He was copying something from the board — slowly, carefully, the letters giving him trouble the way they always did — when his sleeve shifted. Just slightly. The fabric rode up two inches when he reached across the desk for the pen.

  Two inches was enough.

  The cut above his elbow was visible for approximately three seconds before he pulled the sleeve back down. Red-edged. Swollen. Clearly not the only one — just the most recent, the angriest, the one that had stopped pretending to heal.

  He looked up.

  The boy two seats over — black hair, the one who'd slid him the pen on day one — was looking directly at it.

  Ghost met his eyes.

  The boy looked back with an expression that was trying very hard to be casual and not quite getting there.

  "I'm fine."

  Pre-emptive. Final.

  The boy nodded slowly. Looked back at his notebook.

  Ghost looked back at the board.

  He found out the boy's name twenty minutes later, when the teacher called on him and he answered with the easy confidence of someone who'd never once had to think about whether answering questions was safe.

  Zenith.

  Ghost filed it away without deciding to.

  — ? —

  Zenith appeared at the door of Kageshiro's office eleven minutes after the lesson ended.

  Ghost knew this because Ghost was in the corridor — on his way somewhere else — and stopped without meaning to at the sound of Zenith's voice carrying through the partially open door.

  “—the cut on his arm, it looked infected, like properly infected, I don’t know how long it’s been like that but—”

  Ghost stood in the corridor.

  Then he turned around and walked in the opposite direction.

  He made it to the east corridor before Kageshiro's voice came from behind him.

  "Ghost."

  He kept walking.

  He started walking faster.

  "Ghost."

  Kageshiro again, closer. And then, beside him, slightly out of breath — Zenith, who had apparently decided that keeping up was simply a thing he was going to do.

  Ghost stopped.

  Turned around.

  Looked at Zenith.

  Zenith looked back with the expression of someone who had made a decision and was committed to it regardless of consequences. Cheerful about it, even. Which was somehow the most aggravating possible response to the situation.

  "I'm fine."

  "Yeah. You keep saying that."

  "Because it's true."

  "Can I see it."

  "No."

  Zenith looked at Kageshiro. Kageshiro looked at Ghost with that particular expression — the warm, steady, immovable one.

  "It needs to be looked at. Properly."

  "I've had worse."

  "I know."

  Something in Kageshiro's voice when he said it made Ghost go briefly quiet.

  "That's not the point."

  Ghost looked at them both. Kageshiro — patient, certain. Zenith — committed, slightly fidgety, clearly prepared to stand here for as long as it took.

  He tried to leave.

  Zenith stepped sideways. Not aggressively. Just — sideways. Blocking the exit with the cheerful determination of someone who had decided this was a completely normal thing to do.

  Ghost stared at him.

  Then, quietly, to the wall rather than either of them:

  "I don't know what a hospital is."

  The words landed flatter than he'd intended. Just information. Nothing else.

  He'd meant it as an argument. It didn't quite work as one.

  The corridor was quiet for a moment.

  Kageshiro's expression did something careful and brief, pulled back quickly.

  "That's alright. I do."

  — ? —

  The hospital was loud in a different way from the school.

  Louder and quieter at the same time — the specific acoustic of a building full of urgent things happening behind closed doors while the surfaces stayed determinedly clean and bright. Lights that didn't have warmth in them. A smell he didn't have a name for.

  He sat in a plastic chair and looked at the ceiling and kept his left arm close to his body.

  Zenith sat two seats away and did not comment on any of it. Did not explain the hospital. Did not narrate what was happening. Did not fill the silence with reassurance.

  Just sat there. Present. The same way Kageshiro had once stood at a distance near a convenience store and simply existed without demanding anything in return.

  Ghost noticed that. Didn't say anything about it.

  A nurse came and looked at the arm and said things to Kageshiro that Ghost caught about half of. The half he caught was enough to understand: two more days and it would have been significantly worse.

  He looked at the ceiling again.

  Twelve years of managing wounds the way District 0 had taught him — wrap it, ignore it, wait it out. It had always worked before.

  Except apparently it hadn't always worked. It had just worked well enough that he'd never had to find out what happened when it didn't.

  He looked at his arm when they were done.

  Clean bandage. White. The kind of white that meant something had been properly cared for. He'd never had a bandage that looked like that before.

  He looked at it for a long time.

  Zenith was still two seats away, looking at his phone, not making anything of any of it.

  "Why did you come and get him."

  Zenith looked up.

  "Kageshiro?"

  "Yeah."

  Zenith shrugged. Like it was obvious.

  "Because you weren't going to do it yourself."

  Ghost looked at him.

  "And because—"

  Zenith paused. Seemed to genuinely consider it.

  "I don't know. It seemed like someone should."

  Ghost looked back at his arm.

  Didn't say anything.

  That was the thing about Zenith, he was already beginning to understand. He didn't require a response. He just said things and let them sit there without needing Ghost to do anything with them.

  That was either very irritating or something else entirely.

  He hadn't decided which yet.

  — ? —

  The east corridor was empty at lunch. Ghost had found that out recently and filed it away — useful, no further comment required.

  He sat on the floor with his back against the wall beneath the city mural, sleeve pushed up, trying to rewrap the bandage with one hand and his teeth. The hospital wrap was coming loose at the edge. He'd caught it pulling away from the skin that morning and ignored it through two lessons before it started to feel wrong in the specific way that meant he couldn't keep ignoring it.

  He almost had it.

  "You're going to make it worse doing it like that."

  Ghost went still.

  He hadn't heard anyone come in. That alone was enough to make something tighten in his chest — not the words, just the fact of it. He looked up slowly.

  The boy was leaning against the opposite wall a few metres away. White-blonde hair. Sharp green eyes that were doing considerably more work than the rest of his face suggested. He hadn't been there thirty seconds ago.

  Ghost was certain of that.

  Ghost pulled his sleeve down.

  The boy didn't react to that either. Just looked at the bandage for a moment — the way you looked at something you recognised — then pushed off the wall and crossed the corridor without asking.

  "I don't need help."

  "I know."

  The boy crouched beside him, unhurried. Reached into his jacket pocket and produced a roll of clean bandage — not a hospital one. Just fabric. The kind you sourced yourself because you'd learned not to rely on anything you couldn't carry.

  Ghost clocked that immediately.

  So did something quieter in him.

  "I said no."

  "You did."

  He held the bandage out. Not pushing it forward. Just present. Waiting.

  "Infection gets in under a loose edge. You know that."

  Ghost looked at him.

  The boy looked back. Not at the scar. Not at the sleeve. Just at Ghost — with an expression that wasn't pity, wasn't performance, wasn't the careful kindness of someone who didn't understand what they were looking at.

  He understood exactly what he was looking at.

  Ghost looked away first.

  He moved his sleeve up slowly. Didn't say anything. Didn't nod. Just made the decision visible by not stopping it.

  The boy worked without comment. His hands moved the same way District 0 taught everything — efficiently, no wasted motion, the specific economy of someone who'd done this without equipment, without a clean surface, without anyone to show them the right way first. He checked the skin at the edges before rewrapping.

  That detail. Ghost noticed that detail.

  When he was done, he sat back on his heels, looked at his work once, then stood.

  "Change it tomorrow. Earlier if it gets hot."

  Ghost said nothing.

  The boy picked up his jacket, shrugged it back on, and headed for the exit — like they'd simply shared a space for a few minutes and that was the entirety of what had happened.

  At the door, he stopped.

  Didn't turn around.

  "Kaishi."

  Just that.

  Then he walked out.

  Ghost sat alone in the east corridor with the clean bandage on his arm and the city mural behind him.

  He looked at his arm for a moment.

  Then he pulled his sleeve down and went to find somewhere to eat.