The Late Bird's Tale: A Tale of the Floating World

Part 1 || 11 | Momo | An Empty School, A Full House

Written on 5/20/22. Spring Season, May 2022 edition (1st scene).
Written on 2/9/22. Winter Season, February 2022 edition (2nd scene).
Momo Yume (picture reference).

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Part 1 || 11 | Momo

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A Tale of an Empty School

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In Renwald High School, the door of an empty toilet stall opened inside the women's restroom, from which three muse officers exited and went to the sink faucets to wash their hands. Then Momo manifested a blank omamori charm, placed it on the door, and said, "Search," and she snapped her fingers. The hiragana flashed on the charm and spread its neon light over the walls and floors and ceilings of the restroom and out beneath the threshold of the door, expanding into hallways and classrooms. It would then reach the library and the cafeteria and quad area and expand outward towards the gym building and its pool and the basketball and volleyball and tennis courts and the long field of grass skirting the perimeter fence around the school encompassing the football and soccer and baseball fields with the track and field in the middle.

As they waited for the spell to encompass the school grounds, Sakura looked back at the stalls and said, "Are there ghosts here?"

"Maybe," Momo said. "Why do you ask?"

"Well," Sakura said, looking at Momo and then back at the stalls, "I've heard of this ghost girl who haunts the women's restrooms at school."

"Wait," Momo said, thinking of the elementary schooler in a white shirt and a red skirt with bobbed hair, "are you talking about Hanako-san?"

"Yeah," she said. "Is she here with us?"

"Nope," Ryder said. "She wouldn't be at this school."

"How do you know?" Sakura said.

"Because she's in Japan, and we're in the U.S.," Momo said. "Also, she only lives in the women's bathrooms on the third floor of Japanese schools."

"And this school only has one floor," Ryder said.

"Are you a fan of hers?" Momo added.

"Mayyyybe," Sakura said.

When the neon hologram encompassed the entire school grounds, Momo's eyes flashed a neon green, and she said, "Our target's not here either."

"Where could she be then?" Ryder said.

"Maybe out shopping, I don't know," Momo said. "At least this school isn't completely empty. There's a ghost we could talk to while we're here."

"A friendly one?" Sakura said.

"Eh, we'll see," Momo said, manifesting another omamori charm and placing it over the first one and closing her eyes. And in her mind, she saw the shadowy impression of a ghost walking from the gym building towards the quad area. "Come on."

So Momo opened the door, led Sakura and Ryder through the halls and into the cafeteria, and opened the heavy double doors into the quad area, where they spotted the ghost of a boy loitering in a corner by the entrance of the gym building. But once the trio approached, the ghost looked their way and ran through the closed double doors in the direction of the blacktop area encompassing the basketball and volleyball and tennis courts.

"Wait, we just wanna talk!" Momo yelled.

But the ghost didn't wait, much less talk. So the trio of muse officers brandished their sidearms and gave chase, Momo sprinting ahead of Sakura and Ryder and passing right through the double doors and out onto the blacktop of the basketball courts, but there was no sign of the miscreant ghost in the area. Or maybe there was, but with the sun glaring down on the blacktop in the shimmering heat haze of a late-August morning, obscuring the ghost's outline from view, Momo couldn't tell where the runaway was.