the haunting of josuke higashikata's lover [josuke x ghost!reader x rohan]

eidolon

A/N: I got excited seeing so many wonderful comments on this story that I decided to update. I had originally written about a page or so a few weeks ago, but I finished it and polished it up a bit so that  it's [hopefully] readable! More notes at the end.

"Josuke, you're outside right? Looking at the stars?"

"Yeah, yeah. Of course I am. I'm sitting on the front steps to my house."

"Yay! Do you know what that means? Even though I'm in Tokyo right now, and you're in Morioh, we're looking at the same sky. Pretty romantic, right?"

"I just wish you were here."

Josuke's feverish dreams always involved you. It was because you were all he could think about given your recent death. That's what he chalked it up to, when he'd lay a towel down over his sweat-soaked sheets and try to fall asleep again. You'd just come back in a different way, more heart-wrenching than the previous, to wake him up before the red numbers blinked seven on his alarm clock. It was a subtle reminder that he could not turn back time in this world, even if the instruction manual to his digital clock said he could do it with the press of a few buttons. Life just wasn't that simple.

---

"Josuke... It's time to get up now." His mother couldn't help but treat her son tenderly. Tomoko worried. She worried that he was a glass doll that could be shattered instantly— but she also couldn't help but acknowledge that he was a warrior all the while, despite the odds he'd faced throughout this past year. It was a struggle to parent him through this. Everything seems to fall apart when a young person dies. Especially when her son would've given his life for hers in a second.

"I don't want to."

"It's summer break, but you can't laze around all day. It's not healthy and you know it," She questioned if she'd been too harsh just then, but it was always in her nature. It was a loving harshness that certainly Josuke had been used to after all these years. "I'll make you an omelet for breakfast, okay? I'll even draw a picture with ketchup like you used to want when you were a kid. What was it now... A dinosaur, or a dog? Something that started with a D."

The sleep-deprived teen shoved his face into his pillow. "Okay." That was all he could muster for his mother, after a long night of tossing and turning and trying to avoid dreaming of you.

Josuke's mind drifted back to the last time you'd spoken with him. Two weeks ago. The world had now gone an entire six weeks without you, and for the life of him he couldn't fathom how. His world was obliterated. He tried to feel sympathy for your parents, but he couldn't muster a drop. He felt selfish for it, but there was a love between you that was nothing like family. It was probably soulmates, if he'd believed in that junk. For some reason, that made it even harder to swallow.

Maybe that was what kept you here. Your ghostly form couldn't leave because he was still among the living. The red string of fate kept you bound to earth for as long as he remained here. Josuke rolled out of bed suddenly and threw on street clothes rather than his uniform. It was summer break, after all. He'd get scolded for lounging around in his school uniform all day.

The Higashikata kitchen didn't smell as delicious as it typically did on Saturday mornings. Though the cooked eggs had lost their touch on Josuke, as many things did. Life had lost its vibrancy. Even the cute little dog his mother had scrawled onto his omelet with ketchup was dull and the result of his mother trying too hard to make him happy.

"What are you going to do today?" Tomoko sat across from him. She had only a coffee mug in front of her. No breakfast.

"...Going out," The teen didn't know what to say. He couldn't say he was going to talk to the ghost of you. He couldn't lie about going to hang out with Koichi or Okuyasu or Mikitaka because he couldn't possibly have an alibi if she called for him at one of his friends' houses.