Never Alone

I've always known there was something different about me. No, I don't mean the freaking fluorescent orange hair, although that is pretty unique in itself. But even that pales in comparison to what I really mean. What I'm talking about gets me into more trouble than my crazy hair.

People would look at me funny sometimes when I was talking with someone.

"Mommy, look! That boy's talking to himself!" a little boy once said when I was four.

His mother caught me staring and quickly hushed her child. "Don't stare, sweetie."

I looked at the boy being led away by his mother, to the elderly man I was talking to, and back at the boy who had already stopped looking at me. Himself? But I wasn't talking to myself. The elderly man smiled morosely at me, in a "I know something you don't" way that I had never liked.

"Dad!"

"Yes, my favorite son?" he said as he raised me up to rest on his shoulders.

"I'm your only son!" I said as we started heading home.

He laughed heartily and swung me around in a circle. "And that's why you're my favorite!"

I giggled until he stopped swinging me. "Hey, Dad?"

"Yes, favorite son of mine?"

I rolled my eyes. "Why couldn't that little boy see the old man?"

"What old man?" he said, swinging our hands clasped together as we walked.

"That one! The one standing at the corner!" If we turned around, we could definitely still see him.

"Oh, silly, there's no one there."

I turned around, and there he was. He was even waving goodbye to us! I pouted. Why couldn't anyone else see him? He was standing right there.

Until I was six years old, I never truly understood what it was that created that unbreakable wall between myself and everyone around me.

I remember, far too vividly than I want to, how I found out what I could do. It was a rainy Wednesday afternoon and I was walking home with my mother after karate lessons. I was gushing on about how I was finally able to get a punch in on the dark-haired girl, that would later become my best friend. My mother, my beautiful and wonderful mother, smiled at me as though I was revealing the eighth wonder of the world and not bragging about finally not going down as badly in a fight with a girl.

That was when I noticed the girl.

She was dressed in white, looked around my age, and was intently looking down at the river. There was something so remarkably sad about the way her head was bowed and how the rain fell down upon her shoulders. It was as though her melancholy had a gravitational pull, luring me in like bait on a fishing line. She took one step forward, then another, slowly making her way into the river, gradually rising with the increased water from the rain. I trailed off, the first moment of silence since my mom picked me up from the dojo, as I watched the girl make her descent into the water. When she was about waist deep into the river, she looked at me.

Her eyes were black. Pitch black and sorrowful. If eyes really are the windows to the soul, then her eyes revealed the bitterness she must have lived with. We looked at each other and I realized what she was doing.

My mother's voice, asking me where I was going and what I was running to, fell on deaf ears as I ran down to the river. Faster, faster! I thought as my short legs picked up the pace, hurrying to stop the girl.

The river soaked into my skin, permeating even my raincoat and rainboots, as I waded through the murky water. It felt like ice and I couldn't feel my toes or fingers. I reached out for the girl, ignoring my mother's desperate cries to return to her and to get out of the river, hands coming back empty as my fingers passed right through her body.

I must have looked as confused as I was because the girl just smiled at me and shook her head before disappearing. I stayed in the river, cold torrents of rain sloshing around me, waiting to see if maybe sense of what just happened would magically hit me.

A desperate cry broke me out of my daze and I turned to see my mother running to me. My arms reached out for her and then everything went black.

When I came to, I was lying on the wet grass of the riverside with my mother's arms wrapped tight around me.

"Mom?"

There was no answer.

I shifted a bit, trying unsuccessfully to wriggle out of my mother's arms which felt unnaturally cold. It was a little hard to breathe with my mom draped all over me. My arms were immobile, trapped under her weight, and I blinked through her long auburn hair which was plastered over both our faces.

"Mom?"

I turned enough to see her face. Those warm brown eyes which I was used to seeing turned up in a smile were wide open and unblinking. It was eerie, the way they were so focused even though there was absolutely nothing that she could be looking at. Her mouth was also open, like someone froze her right as she was about to scream.

"Mom?"

She didn't reply. She didn't do anything. She never would again.

I clutched her dress in my tiny hands and buried my face in her hair as I fell asleep in my mother's embrace for the last time.

When I woke up, my mother was gone and I was alone in a stark white room. My eyelids felt heavy but when I lifted my hand to rub them, I found long, transparent tubes were attached to my veins. A steady beeping came from a monitor beside me.

I sat there for a few minutes, just taking in the unfamiliar setting, before a nurse walked in. "Oh, lovely! You're awake," she beamed brightly at me and I just looked blankly back at her. She was too happy and it was annoying. What could possibly be lovely about having sandpaper replace your throat and your brain trying to burst out of your head? I opened my mouth to speak but she said, "I'll go get your father, sweetie" and left before I got to ask my question.

Dad walked in, more haggard and sleepless than I ever remembered seeing him. His eyes, ringed by black bags and strained by red cataracts, brightened up when he saw I was awake. He hugged me, careful of the IV tubes, and his stubbly chin rubbed against mine. "Oh, thank God. How do you feel?"

I tried to speak but only a hoarse squeak came out. Clearing my throat, I asked again with a hoarse voice that wasn't familiar to me, "Dad, where's Mom?"

He didn't say anything and just hugged me tighter. The smell of his doctor's antiseptic soap and the faint trace of cigarettes wafted over me. That was weird. Dad didn't smoke often, certainly not often enough for me to be able to smell it on him.

"Dad?" I shook him as best as I could. "Dad, where's Mom?"

A shaky breath was inhaled as he quietly spoke into my ear.

"She's in a better place now."

I had caught pneumonia from being out in the rain for so long. I had to stay in the hospital for the next few days for evaluation as well. Dozens of people walked in and out of my room, even those that I had clearly seen pass away mere hours ago.

Finally, finally I knew what was different about me.

By that age, I seen enough horror movies (secretly, of course) to know what ghosts were bad. Evil. They could kill. I had already seen it happen.

I was afraid to go to sleep, because night is always when the ghosts come to get you. I would crawl into my dad or sisters' beds, guiltily grateful for the fact that I could use my age and recent trauma as an excuse. I would wrap my arms around them because I needed to know that they were still there. Dad was too big and he wasn't as flowery or soft as Mom was. Yuzu and Karin were small so I hugged one with each arm but they didn't brush the hair out of my face and kiss me goodnight like Mom did.

In the mornings, I was afraid to be alone but I was too guilty to latch onto my family anymore than I already did. I took Mom away. I deserved to suffer.

In retrospect, it actually wasn't completely irrational for me to be so afraid.

When I was ten, I woke up to the spirit of a woman hovering over me. She had been brutally raped and murdered in an alley near the park just a few days before she had appeared in front of me.

She had long, dark hair matted with blood. It hung around a screaming face and the ends of them tickled my face and neck. It felt like spiders were crawling over me.

Her eyes had been gouged out by her attacker and her entrails were hanging out of the gashes on her chest. I could feel her intestines hanging over my legs. Bony and bloody fingers wrapped around my shoulders desperately, and sharp nails dug into my skin as she shook me. She tried to speak but there was a gaping hole in her larynx, in addition to the space where her tongue used to be before the murderer ripped it out. She could only make these raspy, gargling sounds.

I realized that that must have been what she sounded like as she was dying. She didn't even get any dying words.

She was relentless. She was everywhere. Sometimes, I would see her in reflections. I would turn around and she was there, the gouges of her eyes boring into mine. At night, she would watch me. She wanted something from me but I didn't know what and even if I did know, I didn't know how I could give it to her.

I thought I was going to go crazy.

I thought I was going to die.

A few weeks after she first appeared, she woke me up with wet gargles and scraping nails. She kept pulling me and pulling me until I got out of bed on my shaky legs and followed her out of the house. She led me around town and she held a thick chain in her scratched up arms, before stopping at the same alley that she had died in.

There was a man there and a girl. The man pressed the girl up against the wall. She was squirming futilely against the ropes and bleeding from various gashes.

A painful pricking on my shoulders made me look up and I looked at the ghost. She had one hand squeezing my shoulder and the other pointing at the man. The hand on my shoulder slowly went to my face and it rested against my cheek. Her fingers were cold and the bones were protruding from the tears in her skin, but she touched me so gently it almost felt tender. She tilted my chin towards the man, and pointed again.

"You killed her."

The man and girl hadn't noticed me before but I certainly had their attention now. The girl let out muffled screams from behind a gag and the man stared at me. His eyes went wide and then he let out a nervous chuckle. "Well, well, well. Look what we have here." I stared blankly at him.

"Hey, kiddo. It's pretty late out. Shouldn't you be at home sleeping? Won't Mommy and Daddy be worried when they don't see you in bed?"

"You killed her."

The man smiled through grit teeth. "How 'bout this, kiddo? You go home and don't tell anyone about this, and I won't tell Mommy and Daddy that you snuck out, alright?"

You know what the worst part was? He didn't seem like a bad guy. He had a nice, soothing voice and slightly pudgy cheeks that symbolized the universal harmless guy. I looked at the ghost woman, who pointed at the girl and then at herself. She shook her head, matted tendrils of hair swaying side to side. She held my hand tightly.

"You killed her. The lady from three weeks ago. And now you want to kill this lady too."

His smiles were gone now. He walked away from his victim, who slumped to the ground in her ropes, and started towards me. "Look, kid. If you want to stay alive, you'd best get going. Forget about tonight and forget you ever saw me." He kneeled down on the ground so that we were eye level and then he softly brushed the blunt side of a knife against my cheek. He looked me in the eye and we were so close that I could see my own reflection in them. I looked every bit as scared as I felt.

"I'm sure a good boy like you wouldn't want your parents to find out what you've been up doing at night. So just walk away now, okay?"

In his eyes, I could see myself trembling. Bony fingers wrapped around mine tightly.

I clenched my loose hand and using what I could still remember from karate lessons with Tatsuki, I punched him in the nose.

By no means was it a hard punch, or even a good one, but it was enough to surprise him for the few seconds I needed. I kicked him where it hurt after that and, again, it wasn't a hard kick but hey, any guy would feel something when kicked down there. He bent over and I grabbed his knife.

The girl was still alive and breathing. I cut the gag and the ropes on her limbs as fast as I could but it wasn't enough.

The man was up again and punched me across the face. He shoved me to the ground and kicked again. "You little shit. I guess you don't want to go home, then? Well, you can say goodbye to Mommy and Daddy now, brat!"

Suddenly he stopped and looked down. I looked out of my black eye and saw a silver point sticking out of his chest. The girl drove the knife in deeper and twisted it in his wound. He fell to his knees and began convulsing. The girl slumped down next to me and the ghost woman held my hand.

Together, we watched the man die.

When he was without a doubt dead, the girl called the police and the ambulance. My dad came rushing towards me and hugged me so tight I couldn't breathe. He was so angry but so relieved he was crying. He was yelling at me, calling me an idiot, how dare I do something so irresponsible and reckless, and did I know how worried he was? Whispering so softly that I probably wasn't supposed to hear it, he asked me how I could I leave him when he's already lost so much?

"I'm sorry, Daddy."

That was the second time I saw my dad cry.

Eventually, the police pulled us apart for some questions. I answered to the best of my ability, but honestly, the word of a ten-year-old kid didn't count for much. I doubt that they used any of what I told them about the ghost woman, and how she led me to the attacker, and how she held my hand, in their reports.

The ambulance took the girl away so they could stitch her up. She would have scars, how could she not from all those gashes, but she would be fine. They would be battle scars. Trophy scars. Before she left, she hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. "You're a real hero," she said as she sobbed. "Thank you."

A bony hand slipped into mine and I looked up. The ghost woman put one hand on my heart and raised my hand to where her heart was. She smiled and kissed me on the opposite cheek with her bloody lips.

And then she was gone.

That was the first time I was a hero. The first time I helped a ghost. The first time I lived up to my namesake: one true protector.

I don't know how many times I'll be able to succeed in that again. I hope I can succeed every time but I'm not so naiive to really believe that can happen. Sometimes I can't help them and they just disappear, leaving the smell of fear and a splash of blood.

I don't know what happens to them.

It's not easy to just walk away from the leftover bloodstain without knowing what happened to them. It's not easy to help ghosts when no one else can even see them. It's not easy when people start to avoid you because you're the weird kid that not only has orange hair but also thinks he can talk to ghosts.

Sometimes even I thought I was batshit crazy. That maybe I had gone insane a long time ago and I really was just seeing things that weren't there. That something had gone wrong and I was just another problem kid, acting up to get attention. So imagine my surprise when Karin told me that she could see them too. She says she's still in denial but she owns up to it sometimes because she knows I'll think I'm crazy otherwise. Karin doesn't want to help them, or at least not all of them, but that's okay because she doesn't have to.

I'm not so egotistical to believe that I can save everyone, but at the very least, I want to make my mom's sacrifice meaningful.

So screw what people think and say about me talking to myself and leaving flowers around in strange places. Screw what they say about me making shit up to get attention and being mentally disturbed.

I know what I can do, and what I can see. They can see me too and even if they all disappear eventually, they're always there.

They show up during pop quizzes and whisper me answers, or tell me jokes when class gets boring.

They tell me when my old man's been lying about overworking again and he's falling asleep standing.

They let me know when Karin gets into a fight at school or when Yuzu is getting bullied. Usually though, Karin gets into fights with Yuzu's bullies.

They're there to talk when it gets too quiet.

I'm not really sure what I'm doing, I'm just some kid with weird hair, and who ever said life was simple was lying, but...

At the very least, I'm never alone.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Thank you for reading (and reviewing, please?). Just an idea I had about what might life have been like before the Shinigamis and how it must feel like to have ghosts be such a big part of your life (which, wow, really puts a new perspective on the emotional impact of when Ichigo lost his powers). The first line I came up with was the last line, "At the very least, I'm never alone" and I actually built this entire story around that one line. I know I don't usually write stories that aren't happy/funny/fluffy but I have a whole arsenal of tragedy stories waiting to be written in addition to all my cheerful, comedic ones. This is a oneshot, in case that wasn't clear.

I have no excuses for not updating "Random Acts", "Picture Perfect", and "Wings" sooner other than my usual: education, laziness, lack of motivation. Busy times are ahead but I'll try my best to be faster, even if I can't guarantee anything as of yet.