“Okay,” Yanyu whispered, clutching her backpack like a shield, “I know that ghost.”
“You what?” Shen floated beside her, nearly transparent in the morning sun.
“I mean—not personally! But I’ve seen her before. She haunts the second-floor girl’s bathroom. Classic creepy child. She giggles. Sometimes she locks stalls.”
Shen arched an eyebrow. “You kept using that restroom?”
“It’s the only one with proper ventilation!”
The ghost child stood perfectly still in front of the basement door. Her long braids fluttered despite the windless air. Her eyes were empty and dark, the kind of unsettling void that made Yanyu’s feet suddenly feel very cold.
She looked down.
The child wasn’t standing on the ground.
She was floating.
“Oh heck no,” Yanyu muttered. “Nope. Not today.”
Before she could reverse course, the door to the Exorcism Club creaked open, and Zhao Ruru’s glittery head popped out.
“YANYU!” Ruru shouted, oblivious to the ghost child two feet from her. “You finally showed up! Did your latest exorcism attempt end in another rice cooker disaster?”
Yanyu gave a tight smile and stepped around the child ghost, who simply vanished in a puff of blue mist.
“I’m good,” Yanyu lied. “No appliances were harmed this week.”
“Yet,” Shen muttered.
---
Inside the Exorcism Club’s meeting room—a dusty old storage basement with “bad decisions” written all over it—Yanyu sat down at the table and tried to act normal. Which was hard with a ghost hovering silently above her, reading a handout upside-down with an expression of immense judgment.
Ruru flopped into a beanbag and adjusted her pink sunglasses. “Okay, people! Time for today’s agenda: Spirit selfies, Ouija fails, and possibly summoning the ghost of Confucius!”
“I would advise against that,” Shen said, only Yanyu hearing.
“Shhh!” Yanyu hissed.
Ruru blinked. “Did you just shush me?”
“No! I—I sneezed. In reverse.”
“Uh-huh.”
The club proceeded as it always did—half dramatic readings of internet ghost stories, half snack-fueled chaos. But Yanyu couldn’t focus. Not with the ghost child still flickering in and out of the corner of her eye.
Finally, she whispered, “Shen, can you see her?”
“She’s… watching. But not hostile. Not yet.”
“Not yet?!”
“Relax,” Shen said dryly. “If she meant you harm, your chair would’ve flipped by now.”
“Comforting.”
The ghost child flickered again—this time behind Ruru, who was holding up her phone trying to capture “spirit energy” near the moldy vending machine.
Yanyu stood up, heart pounding. “Bathroom,” she blurted, grabbing her bag.
She stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind her. Shen followed.
The air shifted again.
“She’s back,” Shen said.
And there the ghost girl was—standing alone in the hallway, her pale face inches from Yanyu’s. Her mouth opened.
But no sound came out.
Suddenly, Shen moved faster than she’d ever seen. His figure solidified with a burst of glowing blue energy, slamming between Yanyu and the child ghost.
A wind howled through the corridor.
The lights overhead popped and fizzed.
And then—silence.
When Yanyu peeked around Shen’s shoulder, the girl was gone.
Gone.
---
“You… protected me,” Yanyu said softly, heart still racing.
Shen didn’t look at her. “It is… part of the bond.”
“Uh-huh.”
They stood there in awkward silence. Chairman Meow padded out from under a cabinet, gave them both a side-eye, and meowed judgmentally.
“So…” Yanyu tried again, “do we… always do this now? Scare ghosts, cause property damage, emotionally bond?”
Shen finally turned to her. “You talk too much.”
“But you didn’t say no,” she whispered.
And that silence said more than either of them wanted to admit.
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