He has to look up what mnemonic means as he walks home that afternoon. It lies, tidy and small, in the lower right corner of his desk back in Dr. Umino’s Chemistry classroom, in a handwriting that only a ghost can conjure up. His thumbs type in the unrecognizable word as he makes his way down the sidewalk. A wall decorated with ivy hugs his right side. Every so often, a car passes on the left, and he looks up out of instinct and feels the rush of air kiss his face. Then he looks back down, thinks the word looks strange and incorrect, and deletes it all and tries again, because that word by that ghost is far away now, and he can’t remember how to spell it.

Eventually, Google takes pity on him and fills out what he’s been trying to type out for the past six minutes.

Mnemonic — a learning technique that uses patterns or association to assist in remembering something.

He thinks about Helium - Capture the Sun and wonders why a ghost would need to remember things such as elements. What was there in the afterlife that made a ghost go to Chemistry class and use memory techniques to understand the periodic table?

Sasuke thinks about Kakashi’s warning, about not messing with the unknown.

He thinks about how his mother told him to not cause trouble.

And then he thinks about the notes in his textbook, written in a shaky, desperate handwriting — Come back. I stopped. Do you hate me?

Sasuke Uchiha is old enough to listen to people. He is no longer that child who sits on the left side of the train coming into town for the sake of breaking the rules and getting in trouble. Kakashi’s warning and his mother’s words — were it any other circumstance, he would follow along with them. He would go to school and study and eat his meals and clean the dishes afterwards. It would be so artfully plain, and that would be alright.

But this is Abeross.

Nothing is plain in Abeross, and Sasuke can no longer ignore the hunger in his chest, heavy with curiosity.

***

Chapter 2 | Hinata: Facing the Sun |

***

When he sees his brother’s name between paragraphs of Chem notes, Sasuke is slightly shocked, at first.

Itachi, I don’t understand this.

Next to the note is an arrow pointing to his notes on ionic bonds.

He stares at that sharp I, how it is nearly twice the size of the letters following it. It seems familiar — not the name itself, because of course that is familiar — but the way it is written. They way it sits on the paper. The way it just captures your attention, and despite it being in the middle of the page, your eyes go there first, and that is where you start to read.

And then Sasuke understands.

Right. Of course.

It is because this ghost has read his stories, including the ones where the main protagonist happened to be named after his courageous, perfect brother. Stories where Itachi is written in the exact same fashion, demanding attention in the exact same way. Embarrassment flares against the thin skin beneath his eyes, and he bows his head, pretending to rub at his neck, hoping the ghost does not see the kind of mood he gets in whenever his stories are brought up. He does not know this ghost, despite spending the past fifteen summers with it; he does not know if this ghost is like Naruto, where it will find a clue on how to get a reaction out of him and never stop pestering him.

At first, he thinks to ignore it.

Then, he reads the words again, and looks at his notes. If Itachi were here, seeing these words appear out of thin air by the works of a ghost who needed help understanding Chemistry, Sasuke imagined he would sit down and help it. He would pull out his blue pen that he only ever uses for important occasions and writing, and he would sit in this room, at this desk, and help the ghost.

And it is not so much that Sasuke wants to be like his brother — that dream vanished long ago — but rather that — again, if Itachi were here — he’d want him to help. To sit and explain. Because that is what a good person would do, and all Itachi ever asked of him was to be exactly that.

So Sasuke huffs, clicks his normal, black pen, and begins to write.

Think of it as an attraction between opposite charges. Metals have a positive charge. Nonmetals have a negative charge. Think about NaCl. Na has a charge of +1 and Cl has a charge of -1, so when they bond, they cancel each other out. That’s an ionic bond.

He waits a moment, thinks about how he told himself to ignore the Itachi thing, thinks about how stupid of an idea that was, and writes — Itachi?

Nothing comes from the notebook pages.

The ghost probably took what it wanted and left. Figures. The one time he puts in an effort to be kind, he gets ignored. Sasuke huffs again and leaves his room to grab a glass of water, for his mouth feels dry, as if he’s been talking for the entire day.

...

He returns to the sound of scratching paper and finds lead forming words along the side of his notes.

He sits and makes sure to place his glass on the coaster far away from his notebook before he reads what the ghost has written.

I don’t know your name.

I remembered some of your stories had ‘Itachi’ in it.

You write like an Itachi. When I read your stories, I think they are Itachi stories.

All of the sudden, perhaps it is better to have the water close. He thinks about spilling it all over the pages, watching the ink bleed into the soggy paper.

Instead, he grabs his pen again.

Why do you need to know chemistry?

There is a momentary pause.

So I can graduate.

Sasuke tries to remember the few things Kakashi has told him about ghosts. He never did say many things, as Kakashi seemed to think it was best if he knew as little about them as possible, despite him being exposed to them so often. But if he ever said anything about them, it was to correct misconceptions. They didn’t make the room colder. They cannot be seen by animals, though they could perhaps be sensed, depending on the creature. They didn’t drain energy.

Sasuke tried to remember if ghosts being stuck in the past was a misconception or not. Perhaps this one died before they could graduate. Perhaps it could not pass to the other side until it was satisfied by the need to graduate, or it came to terms with the fact it would never be able to. He doesn’t know what would be easier; honestly, he isn’t in the mood to think about it right now.

The words continue to flow onto the paper.

That’s why I write the song titles. They help me remember.

“The hell are you talking about?” he sighs into the air, head tipping back and eyes closing. Of course, the ghost cannot hear him. But perhaps this was more so Sasuke talking to himself, for he is just now realizing that he has spent the last eleven minutes sitting at this desk, writing to a ghost and reading what the ghost writes back, as if they were penpals. But they are not. They are in his room, and he is talking to some random, dead person.

Is this what the rest of his freshman year of college is going to be like?

In the middle of classes, he’s just going to look down and be bothered by another —

Wait.

His eyes open. The ceiling is still bright from the afternoon sun.

Mnemonic . . . Song titles . . . .

The ghost’s first scratch of existence on his desk dances along his irises.

Helium — Capture the Sun.

Song title?

You write music?

His pen dots the question mark before he even realizes what he has just done.

Heat crawls along his face in a totally different fashion from before. This is a frustrated heat with only a touch of embarrassment because, apparently, he can’t seem to stick to his guns and end this conversation with this ghost here and now.

The words that follow are quick, and if Sasuke is to guess, excited.

I’m not very good, but I try!

Those things from before — they’re made-up song titles. I make songs for the elements so I can remember them.

One day, I might make an album with them.

118 songs.

The ghost pauses and gives Sasuke just enough time to understand that not only does this ghost want to graduate, but write music, as well.

Is that silly?

He doesn’t want to answer that.

It doesn’t feel like his place.

...

What is Helium about?

Five hours later, he starts up the conversation again. He meant to just leave it at that, but in the middle of Kakashi boiling water for ramen, Sasuke stepped by the table at just the right angle for the sun to blind him before it sunk under the roofs of the homes across the street, and that made him remember everything. The entire time they ate, he thought about what a song about capturing the sun could possibly be about. What instruments would be used? Would it be indie rock or indie folk?

But there is no point to wonder!

It is a made-up song conjured up by a ghost who is too stuck in this world to pass along to whatever was on the other side. So Sasuke tried to busy himself with cleaning the dishes and putting away his plastic, toddler chopsticks. When that didn’t help, he grabbed a book from his shelf and plugged his ears with his own music that was definitely real, definitely existed, and read in the corner of the living room sofa, every so often drawling out a word or two when Kakashi said something about his show that he was watching.

That didn’t work, either, because halfway through The Pillow’s Hybrid Rainbow, he heard them screaming CAPTURE THE SUN! in the chorus, vibrating against the electric bass, and it made him — it made him want to! He wanted to hop on a plane to California and snatch the sun right out of that cloudless sky.

So now, he is back in his room, in that wooden chair in front of his desk. The only light now lighting up the ceiling is the one from his lamp, and he pulls his Chemistry notebook out from his backpack and opens it up and writes What is Helium about?

...

There is a neighbor by the name Naruto Uzumaki.

It’s nearly 10:30 at night when the reply comes, and Sasuke perks up at the familiar name. He supposes it makes sense that the ghost knows of Naruto. He would come over all the time when they were younger and not so very busy with college and other such things.

He has hair that is as bright as the sun. I wrote a song about capturing that sunlight and putting it in jars to light up the room.

Sasuke sighs and rests his hand against the crease of the notebook. It didn’t fulfill his curiosity completely, this answer, but it was enough.

Itachi.

If the song was real, I’d give you half of the light.

That way, you can write your stories, even if it’s night.

He’s irked, now, because that part of him that is unsatisfied flares up, and he wants to push all his frustration on the ghost. He wants to tell it that it’s a stupid song, that it hardly told him anyyhing important about the song. He wants to tell it to stop bringing up his stories, that those were long ago, that he’s not about to start again just because some dead person likes them.

His pen is shaking in his fist, and while his head is spelling out every insult he knows, his shaky hand releases two, simple sentences on the page.

Stop calling me that. Itachi is my brother’s name.

His words are big and sloppy and take up most of the free space left on the page.

The ghost has to write small on the very bottom to ask its question.

Then what is your name?

...

The question stops him.

As if, for a second, he forgets himself.

Then he turns the page, and in his plain, blank pen, he writes:

Sasuke.

...

The ghost, with its lead pencil, traces the lines of his name. The slopes. It is only when Sasuke watches this does he realize his name is full of curves and slopes, with the k being the only sharp, stood, tall letter. It was no I in Itachi. It did not demand attention like his brother’s name did.

But with lead over his ink, it shines against the lamp’s light, and somehow, that means something.

...

Hinata, the ghost puts next to his name, and Sasuke sort of sits and stares for a moment.

Because, somehow, when he forms the syllables on his tongue, it seems so awfully feminine.

And that makes Sasuke tense, though he hates to admit it.

Because before, it was only a ghost. A spirit. A dead person.

But now . . . she is a girl ghost, a female spirit — a dead woman.

...

It is one in the morning, and Sasuke cannot sleep.

It is harder to sleep when you know the name of the ghost sleeping above you.

It presses onto your lungs. It crumples in your sheets. It pokes into your eyes.

He groans and sits up and rubs at his face. His feet kick the sheets away from him, and he shuffles into his dark blue house slippers and plucks his phone from his nightstand. He scrolls around and watches a few things, but the taste of that name still lingers in his mouth. He’s brushed his teeth four times and has washed his mouth twice that amount.

Hinata.

It tastes like eraser bits, so Sasuke plops down onto his chair and types it into the search bar, just to see if it brings up something, anything. A famous voice actress with the same name. A town in southern Japan. A type of turtle found in swamps.

Instead, he gets something else, and it changes things.

He doesn’t know how, but it does.

The lamp clicks on.

The notebook opens.

Inside, he scribbles, Your name means “sunny place'' or “towards the sun”. He almost leaves it there, but then decides to add, You won’t have to capture light from Naruto.

Hopefully, that will be enough to get his mind to slow down and sleep.

His hand touches the switch of his lamp just as pencil scratches into the paper, and he is surprised. He thought the ghost would be asleep. What was . . . she doing up?

Would you capture me, Sasuke?

What?

Quite frankly, he’s stunned.

What’s he supposed to say to that?

The point of his pen hovers over the lines of the page, heavy with the want to say something, but unsure with what to write. What would cause a ghost to ask such a thing? He doesn’t understand.

I can’t catch ghosts.

A bit ago, he thought it would be cruel to point out the obvious.

Still, he thought it was cruel, but a sudden flood of exhaustion made him forget that worry, and he turns off the lamp and kicks off his slippers and pulls his sheets all the way up until he is completely covered, buried, beneath them.

...

Sasuke dreams he is in a glowing field.

The river is bright, springing with sunlight, and the willow trees look like their leaves are made of crystals.

He is running because there is a bug net in his hands and a stream of Hinatas drifting through the air, and he swipes them out of the sky and brings them over to his collection of jars at the foot of one of the willows, pouring the Hinatas into them, watching the letters melt together, golden, like honey.

She is sitting there, tracing the nail of her index finger along the words Sasuke had written in his perfect, black ink.

He will bring them home, he thinks. He will light up the entire street with Hinata.

_____

Ghost?

It is a strange word, especially because a ghost is accusing her of being one.

It is strange, because she is here, and she is alive, and nothing about her even hints at being ghostly.

It is strange, because if a ghost can capture anything, it would be another ghost.

So Hinata is sitting there, nails scraping against the paper, unsure what to think.

Her hand scribbles something, and she clicks off the light and climbs up to the top bunk, where she lies and stares at the ceiling and wonders.

-----

End

It starts with the words on his desk.

Helium - Capture the Sun

Thin, gray graphite on the beige desktop, lined with the dark ages of the wood. They sit at the bottom-right corner, next to the wing of his heavy Chemistry textbook. Dr. Umino is babbling on about the periodic table and the difference between Alkali and Alkaline earth metals. A scribbling noise filters through the classroom, but Sasuke’s hand is still as he watches each and every letter leave its imprint on his desk.

He should be paying attention.

To be honest, he isn’t completely aware as to how he has gone from watching his professor writing notes on the whiteboard to staring down at that small, insignificant corner of his desk. It just happens. A lapse in his usual, unaltered attention; his head turns, his gaze bows, and he catches the beginning of a curse.

Those words, written by an unseen entity with an unseen pencil; those words, that now hold all his attention, pull all his focus from the lecture; those words that read, simply: Helium - Capture the Sun —

They are the start.

And Sasuke Uchiha has absolutely no idea.

***

Chapter 1 | Abeross: Ghost Town |

***

His mother told him to go to Abeross, and like a good momma’s boy, he did.

He hardly packed anything. Abeross is only a two-hour train ride south, and it isn’t like he doesn’t already have plenty of clothes there. It takes him less than an hour and two suitcases before Sasuke Uchiha is ready to leave home — The Nest, his mother liked to call it — and start that horrid first step into adulthood.

College.

His laptop is cushioned between two layers of clothes, he packed his toothbrush in a separate section from his hairbrush so as to not create some monstrous disaster, and only brought a few of his books with him, leaving the rest on his room’s desk, waiting for his next arrival.

His mother kisses his cheeks like he is leaving her forever. Sasuke lets her. When she is done, she quotes the very list she’s been going over since the summer started: “Don’t be a mess. Make sure you greet the Uzumakis when you get there. Don’t forget that The Store closes at midnight — remember how you and Kakashi went there at two in the morning once? Let’s avoid that, shall we?”

“Sure, Mom.” Sasuke fits his tennis shoes on his feet and leans against the front door.

“He changed his phone number, so remember to get it — oh, and send it to me and your father. Text me when you get there. Check the back door every night before you go to bed. That thing doesn’t lock all the time.”

“I know,” he says, hand already on the doorknob.

“Don’t feed the cats in the alley. Always bring an umbrella with you when you go to classes. Study hard —”

“Sasuke.” 

His father’s voice kills the light in his mother’s tone. Sasuke opens the door, steps out onto the concrete sidewalk, pulls both of his suitcases with him, then waits. His father is looming behind his mother, staring at her, a bit disappointed that she wouldn’t say what needs to be said. If you ask Sasuke, it didn’t really need to be said. He knew. He knew well. But his father is a stubborn man, so he sighs, folds his arms, and says it anyway.

“Don’t mess with the ghosts.”

...

Kakashi Hatake is a name no one utters outside of Abeross — mostly because the man doesn’t have enough of a presence to make himself memorable outside of that small college town near the river. He is an old man, despite only being in his mid-thirties; Sasuke’s definition of old probably doesn’t fit what everyone else believes it to be, but it makes sense to him, and that is all that mattered, really.

He always asks what side of the train you rode on when coming into town. If you rode on the right side, he’d ask you if the willow trees by the river bank had been trimmed. If you rode on the left, he’d squint at you and not talk to you for ten minutes. It wasn’t a good thing to sit on the left side. That’s why Kakashi is an old man. Weird things like that matter to him.

Sasuke sits on the right side. When he was younger, he’d sit on the left side just for the thrill of seeing Kakashi’s face turn dour. It was funny back then, even if he didn’t really understand why.

He still doesn’t understand why it is no good to sit over there. At one point, he had thought it was the view — that it wasn’t as good on the left side of the train as it was on the right. He never paid attention to stuff like that when he was a kid. Itachi would always distract him with card games or 20 Questions. And now that Sasuke is older, he sees no point in irking the old man; especially now, when he will be living with him until the next summer comes around.

The right side has a good view. City turns to farmlands turns to lands untouched by man. The river begins as a silver line in the distance, but after a little more than an hour passes, it crawls closer.

Twenty minutes from Abeross, Sasuke spots the willow trees by the glowing river banks. Their trimmed bobs wave in the wind. Puppet’s Fuji Rock blasts from his earbuds as Sasuke grabs a sharpie from the pocket of his backpack that snoozes like a grandpa between his ankles.

The willows pass.

The bass in his ears roars.

The sharpie finds his left forearm and writes a reminder for an old man.

...

Willows Trimmed — Looked Like Mom in College

...

Kakashi Hatake is a name barely uttered — unless you live in Abeross.

In which case, it is the kind of name whispered in the stead of the boogeyman. Everyone knows it, everyone speaks it. Sasuke has heard stories like how the Sarutobis’ youngest daughter Mirai was only 11 months old when she said her first word: Ka-Ka-Shi. 

He doesn’t even live close to the Sarutobis. 

They are on the other side of town.

In some ways, those willow trees are the guardians to a new world. There is an invisible bridge between Abeross and the rest of the world; at least, that’s how Itachi described it, and Sasuke isn’t afraid to steal the ideas of his older brother.

Abeross is not the home of Kakashi Hatake.

It is his prison.

And the second Sasuke pulls his luggage off the train and steps onto the platform, he hears that name.

Kakashi this and Kakashi that.

He is the living legend, the existing myth.

Kakashi Hatake: The Ghost Accommodator. The gateway between Abeross and the Other Side. He Who Speaks Phantom Tongue.

Sasuke Uchiha is going to live with him for the next year. He makes sure to turn up the volume of his music as he walks, seeing lips form his name as he passes them, but not bothering to care as he drowns them out.

...

The house isn’t a strange place to him. Most of his summers were spent in this home, on this street, in this town. Instead of typical vacations to tropical islands or thundering mountains, the Uchiha always came to this town. It wasn’t like they had any history here. His mother wasn’t born here. His father didn’t get his first job here. The only connection between the Uchiha and Abeross is Kakashi Hatake himself.

It isn’t anything spectacular. Just a typical house. A concrete wall surrounding the small front with a simple, metal gate. Sasuke doesn’t even have to look up from his phone when he punches in the code. The gate clicks, and he pushes his knee into it, opening it. As he pulls out his earbuds, Sasuke glances over at the house to the left. The Uzumakis’ home. He’d have to see them tomorrow. He feels too tired to see them now.

Abeross does that to him.

And it isn’t that it was out of the possibility of him being haunted by some energy-sucking demon, but Sasuke just doesn’t really believe that is the reason.

He has to pick up his suitcases when he walks up the stairs to the front door. Kakashi is already there, leaning on the frame, just barely moving to the side to let him in.

“You’re here earlier than I thought you’d be.”

“I guess the train was faster today.”

Inside, he notices that Kakashi had already pulled out a pair of house slippers for him. The dark blue kind. The ones for guests are beige and unspectacular, but the dark blue ones are specifically for the ones who would be staying for a while. Sasuke slips them on, steps up onto the wood platform, and breathes in the familiar, cold air of the home.

It looks the same as it always has.

Another old-man habit of Kakashi's: he never changed anything.

“I was just about to run to The Store.” Kakashi wags his keys to emphasize his words. “The usual?”

Sasuke is already halfway up the metal, spiraling staircase, but he pauses at the question, as if he really has to stop and think about it. “Yeah,” he says, “okay.” A glimpse of black ink catches his eye, and he pulls back his sleeve to show his note to Kakashi. “Oh, and I sat on the right side.”

Kakashi’s eyes lift in a sort of weird, metaphorical sense. That’s how Itachi would have explained it. Sasuke doesn’t really know what that means, but in this situation, it fits.

“Keh,” Kakashi snorts, lips turning in a smile, “I forgot your mom had a bob in college.”

...

His bedroom is on the second floor in the back. It used to be on the first floor because his mom was scared he’d fall through the railing of the loft by the staircase that looked over the living room, but ever since he got big enough for that to not be a hazard, they had moved him to share a room with Itachi.

The bunk bed is still in there. It is the kind where the bottom bed was practically a queen size while the top was just a twin. The ladder is on the right while a bookshelf makes up the left.

Sasuke spent the majority of those nights on the bottom bed, sharing it with Itachi. It made it easier.

He wouldn’t have to climb anything if he had to get up for a drink.

If he had a nightmare, Itachi would be right there to wake him up.

And, well, with them both on the bottom bunk, that left the top for the ghost.

...

“Let’s set this straight.”

After yanking all his luggage inside, Sasuke closes the door and plops himself on the lower bunk, glaring at the empty air around him.

“I still get the big bed,” he says. “I’m not sharing, got that?”

...

Abeross is a ghost town because Kakashi Hatake is there.

Or, well, so the stories say.

He lives with ghosts.

He shares a home with them.

Where he goes, they go. That’s how the rumors went, at least.

But Kakashi Hatake isn’t the only one haunted.

Sasuke Uchiha is very aware of the invisible presences surrounding him in that damn town. He cannot remember when it started, but it is a constant part of his life when he is here.

When he had been six, the mirrors in the bathroom had fogged up despite the shower not running and the room being cold.

When he was eleven, he had watched all the Lord of the Rings movies with something weighing down the couch cushion next to him.

When he was seventeen, two footprints followed him as he walked the muddy banks of the river after a heavy storm.

A day didn’t pass in that town where he didn’t feel that presence, the pressure of a thing, a creature, an entity.

...

Kakashi always tells him to not try to make contact with the ghosts.

He didn’t explain why. That was just how old men were, Sasuke figured. They didn’t explain why it wasn’t a good idea to talk to ghosts or sit on the left side of the train.

But Sasuke is pretty sure they couldn’t hear him, anyhow.

“You stay on the top bunk, and don’t wake me up.”

So it is more like he is just talking to himself than anything else.

...

“The usual” when it came to food from The Store is as follows:

Kimchi ramen

Crab meat sticks

Eggs.

Mix it all together, and you have a meal.

According to them, at least.

“When do your classes start?”

“Wednesday.” Sasuke quickly does the math in his head. “In four days.”

They sit at the table next to the half-wall that divides the kitchen from a small, open space with a big window that looks over the neighborhood street. Kakashi has one of those kinds that normally sits two, but if you lift up the wings on the side, it could fit at least four people. He likes small things. It left more room to walk around the house. When Sasuke was a kid, he thought it was for the ghosts; now, he realizes what a stupid thought that was.

Kakashi stirs his ramen with his metal chopsticks before plopping one of the crab bits into his mouth. Sasuke is trying to keep his scowl at bay, remembering his mother’s constant reminders to stay kind and to not cause needless trouble; but, really, the old man is practically asking for it. He’d known for a whole year what the plan was after Sasuke graduated from high school. A whole year, and yet he still only had one pair of chopsticks in the drawer. In a state of mild panic, the guy had grabbed a plastic, cheap pair at The Store, and it was only when he had dumped all the contents on the kitchen counter did he realize he had, in fact, grabbed the kind that was connected at the end to help toddlers practice with holding them.

Sasuke has to use them.

Has to.

His mother would be furious if he refused and just ate from the bowl.

“That’s coming up.”

“Guess so.”

They slurp, they chew, and they stir.

“Are you going to see them?” Kakashi gestures a shoulder to the left wall, where somewhere beyond it, the Uzumakis in their similar-looking house are found.

A headache already biting at the nerves behind his eyes, Sasuke says, “Tomorrow.”

“Good,” Kakashi says, and leaves it at that without explanation.

Sasuke tips his bowl to his mouth to drink the broth, finishes, and carries it and the kid chopsticks to the sink. He almost goes back upstairs, but remembers one of the many things his mother told him to do and pulls out his phone.

“I need your new number.”

Kakashi looks up from his bowl, scratches the whiskers that dotted his jaw, then drops from his tall stool. He travels over to his refrigerator, covered almost completely in odd and out-of-place magnets that keep torn paper and notes stuck to the metal. He hums and clicks his tongue in a thoughtful tune as he searches and searches, and then he taps a finger on a yellow piece of paper and squints at the numbers, reading them outl oud for Sasuke to punch into his contact info.

He really just wants to tell the guy that he doesn’t have to write his own number on a paper — his phone is the same model as Sasuke’s — it could remember his number for him.

But there is no point in forcing the guy out of his old man habits.

Sasuke sends the number to his mom, goes upstairs, and collapses on his bed with a belly full of spicy ramen and crab.

...

Naruto Uzumaki is the kind of kid who still rides his green bike around town at five in the morning to deliver the daily paper. It is an era where the latest and hottest hotline could be searched with just a few swipes on the phone. Abeross is definitely not short of its rowdy teens and hip grannies who are always up-to-date on the latest and greatest breakthroughs in technology. People had smartphones. People used wireless earbuds all the time. There are internet cafes and coffee shops with free Wifi, and even the local library rents out laptops and ipads.

But there is something about paper that smelled like dew that got the people ignoring the paradise in their hands for the news in the paper.

So, for as long as Sasuke’s known him, Naruto would wake up at four to get ready and ride his bike through the town to deliver the paper. He knows the preferences of every person; knows where they liked him to put it, if they wanted a knock on the door or not.

That morning, when Naruto pulls his bike out from the gated front of the house and onto the street, Sasuke is sitting out on the sidewalk, in the exact spot where Kakashi liked his paper to be delivered.

“Holy shit.”

“You cannot really be that surprised. I told you I’d take classes here.”

Naruto pulls his bike with him, shaking his head and grinning.

“You got here yesterday? Ma said she could hear Kakashi talkin’ different. Y’know, he only talks a certain way when it's with alive people. Ma says he sounds more human.”

Sasuke holds out his hand for the paper, and Naruto snorts, pulls one from his basket, and drops it into his palm.

“When will you come over?” he asks, hopping onto his bike. “Ma will want to hear your stories. She’s been talkin’ about them recently.”

Sasuke punches in the code for the gate, and it clicks. “It’s just me this time.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Itachi does it better.”

“There he goes again,” Naruto sighs to himself. Or maybe he is talking to the crickets that keep the dark street of the neighborhood lively. “Ma says you have a way about you. How did she explain it — you don’t take the easy way. Your stories are meant to be weird.”

“Thanks for that.”

“She said it better. You’ll have to ask her. I deliver papers, y’know; not entire speeches!”

With that, Naruto kicks off, and Sasuke listens to the familiar sound of wheels sliding over pavement as he walks up the stairs and returns inside the house.

...

The Abeross Community College is the type where all the buildings are in one place. There is no second campus. It takes less than fifteen minutes to get around. Rooms aren’t all that massive. They aren’t meant to seat more than twenty or so students.

Sasuke knows how to get around. He and Naruto and Itachi used to walk around. Sometimes, they’d take laps around the track; other times, they’d set up hammocks and laze in the park at the front of campus.

Sasuke likes being on campus.

It has lots of places not many people know about.

It is up-to-date, yet still holds that country town charm.

But more importantly, he’s never had a ghost experience here.

Not once.

...

Until —

Until Helium - Capture the Sun is tattooed by an invisible pencil on the corner of his desk. It is hardly into the third day of classes. He isn’t even allowed one week of normal, college life before it is ripped away from him within four, simple words.

They don’t even make sense!

Helium - Capture the Sun? What is that even supposed to mean!?

Kakashi has told him time and time again to not mess with the things he could not understand, and even today, Sasuke follows along with that warning.

Because he understands this situation well — quite well.

A ghost who wants to bug him.

So with that, Sasuke does not hesitate to rotate his pencil around, move his arm across the desk, and dig the eraser into that thin graphite until it is nothing but an ash field of gray eraser tears and a clean, wordless desk corner. He wipes off the eraser bits, huffs into his palm, and returns his attention to the lecture.

...

No more words come.

He checks every now and then, just in case. No more words on his desk.

The ghost must have gotten the memo.

Or so Sasuke thought.

But come the end of class, when everyone is packing up, just as Sasuke is about to close his textbook to stuff it into his backpack, he sees it.

Helium - Capture the Sun; and next to it, an arrow accompanied by —

I need this.

Sasuke Uchiha is furious.

The bubble in his chest fills with hot, hot fire rumbled, ready to burst. He doesn’t know exactly why it is there, but he isn’t about to ignore it. So, again, Sasuke quickly pulls out his mechanical pencil, erases the words, and then decides to write his own message.

Don’t write in textbooks.

He stares at his own, small handwriting, looking it over, pausing on that first word.

Just then, he realizes what he has just done, and Sasuke curses under his breath and begins to erase once again, only this time, it is his own words. The professor is getting ready to lock up the classroom, so Sasuke has to stop halfway through, yank his backpack over his shoulder, and slip past his instructor before he causes too much trouble. He walks down the hallway until he finds a bench, sits, opens up the textbook to a page detailing the characteristics of noble gasses, and looks at the smudges and words that littered the space at the top.

His words, half-erased, reads: Don’t write

And right as he flips to the page, he sees a graphite circle around his words, and next to it: But you love to write.

Rocks sink into the depths of his gut.

How did —

A small arrow points to the side of the page. Under it is the word Next.

He shouldn’t have looked.

He should have just packed up and left.

Because now he doesn't understand. He doesn’t understand how a ghost knows what he likes to do in his spare time. He doesn’t understand why it makes such an effort to let him know that it knew. This is where he should have heeded Kakashi’s warning and stopped.

But he doesn’t.

...

The duck family.

The boy who turns blue because his grandfather is from the sky.

The lion with a mane like a tumbleweed.

Someone named Itachi who made toothpick art and was featured in museums across the world.

He can’t believe it.

These are all his stories. He wrote them ages ago! More than a decade ago! When he was a kid! Seven or eight, maybe. When did a ghost ever get a hold of these stories?

The boy who had fingernails made of chalk. It was a mess, but he made the world beautiful.

There was the story about the flood that lasted 40 days. You never finished that one.

It keeps going. Down the page. Under graphs. In between paragraphs.

“Stop,” Sasuke hisses.

The family who could travel back in time. This one was my favorite.

“STOP!”

He slams the book shut and pushes it deep into his backpack, glaring around the empty hallway.

“It’s rude to snoop without permission,” he says. He knows the ghost cannot hear him, but still, he feels like he needs to say it. “Stop reading my things.”

He waits for something. A push. A presence. A sign that something is there.

Nothing comes.

He leaves, hoping to leave the creature, the entity, the spirit (whatever it is!) there, away from him, his room, his notebooks full of stories that are only meant for him and Itachi to read.

...

When he gets home, he can’t hide his mood, and Kakashi notices immediately.

“Classes?”

Sasuke plays along, not wanting to admit that he has crossed the line Kakashi had told him to never cross. “Yeah,” he mutters as he stormed up the spiral staircase. “One of my textbooks is full of shit.”

...

He waits until it is late, because even ghosts have to sleep.

He waits until it is one in the morning, and then he clicks on the lamp at his desk, pulls the textbook out from his backpack, and flips to the pages with a pink eraser in hand.

But when he gets to the noble gas page —

All the words are gone.

Completely gone. He sees a small collection of eraser bits that aren’t his own stuck in the spine. In the upper-right corner, small, barely seen, he sees only a few words:

I’m sorry.

Come back.

I stopped.

And though Sasuke doesn’t know why, he feels bad.

He clicks off the lamp, goes to his bed, and hopes that whoever or whatever was sleeping above him doesn’t take it to heart.

...

That morning, the first thing he does before getting ready for classes is look at the textbook.

Four new words.

Do you hate me?

The first two words look more worn and smudged, like the ghost had written them first and waited a while before writing the last two.

His stomach shrinks.

He doubts he’ll be hungry for the rest of the morning.

...

When he is back in Chemistry class, he barely pays attention to the lecture. He switches between staring at his desk and flipping between pages of the textbook, searching for a word, a line of pencil lead that he hasn’t put there. A sign.

Something.

And then — forty minutes into class —

Silicon - Lava Lamps

Again, right on the edge of the wing of his book. Again, Sasuke watches every letter get etched into the wood. Again, he doesn’t know what it can possibly mean.

But unlike last time, instead of erasing the marks on his desk, he decides to add someone of his own.

Underneath the unknown handwriting, he writes: Helium- Capture the Sun. He draws a line between the two, and next to that, starts the beginning of something he wouldn’t have ever expected would come from his first year of college:

Explain. _____

Hinata Hyuuga knows it is silly.

Really. She does.

And if anything, she knows she ought to be terrified. Talking with ghosts isn’t supposed to be normal. It is supposed to be a bad omen. The start of a life of pain and torture. That’s how Hanabi explained it, at least.

She is supposed to avoid the supernatural. To ignore the strange and freaky.

But how can she in Abeross?

How can she when, for three months a year for the past nineteen years, this has been her life: the paranormal, the weird, the unexplained?

How can she when she sees her words — Helium - Capture the Sun — written in a way that isn’t hers, by a person that isn’t her, existing in a way that is beyond her understanding?

She ought to be scared. That is what Hanabi would've told her.

But instead of being terrified, of being anxious, Hinata feels absolutely thrilled.

“You’re back.”

“Yes, Miss Hinata?” Dr. Umino calls from the front of her class. His whiteboard marker is halfway from finishing the formula for silicon dioxide. “Can I help you with something?”

Realizing she had spoken aloud, Hinata bends over her desk, folding her arms around the secret messages written by a ghost on her desk in case anyone peeks over when she is addressed.

“No. I’m sorry,” she says, smiling. “I just — sorry, I just found something I lost.”

___