The Hatoful Collection

Not Invisible

"The library is always so cold!"

That's what the other students were constantly saying. Nageki Fujishiro had heard that same complaint more times than he could possibly count. He watched as they shivered, watched as they donned sweaters and coats on top of their academy blazers. They laughed together about the inconvenience of it all and huddled closer to one another for warmth.

None of them ever asked Nageki how he felt about it, though. In fact, none of the other students ever so much as glanced at him. And doing so wouldn't have served any purpose— Nageki alone, it seemed, was immune to the so-called cold.

He had been alone for at least five years. He never left the library, save for the times he floated to the roof and looked at the stars. He watched as other people lived happy lives with families and friends.

He'd been alone, and he'd been accustomed to being alone, until Hiyoko Tosaka wandered in one day. For the first year of her schooling at the academy, she'd been like the other students. She hadn't been able to see Nageki. But one day, on the first day of her second year, she addressed him. She asked him what his name was. She said that she hoped they could be friends.

It was with Hiyoko's help that Nageki had finally arrived at the truth of his existence: that he wasn't actually here, and that was why most people couldn't see him. He had died a long time ago. As far as he could remember, he had taken his own life.

He was a ghost. It was he who sapped the warmth from the library.

Hiyoko had visited him in the library every day for a long while. But, suddenly, she started coming by less. She apologized for this, and said that she simply had important matters to attend to. Nageki wasn't angry with her for doing something for herself. That would be far too possessive of him. What right did he have to dictate her happiness?

...That said, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy. Hiyoko was in a number of school clubs, and there were other students that she talked about on the regular. Who was she with when she was skipping her usual library trips? Was it that aristocrat? The suave upperclassman? Her childhood friend? All three of them seemed to fight for her attention sometimes. Particularly that rock dove.

Nageki sighed and lowered his book. He couldn't concentrate on reading.

There was an all-too-real possibility that Hiyoko would stop coming to the library, or that she would, at the very least, do so even less frequently than she did now. She had a life of her own, after all. She had many normal, living and breathing friends that could travel outside of the school with her. Why should she spend all of her free time in a freezing library with a quiet, somewhat standoffish ghost?

Even if Nageki didn't resent her for it, he couldn't help but feel scared. If Hiyoko stopped coming to the library, he would be left all alone again. He would have no one to talk to. There would be no one left in the school that could see him. He would return to his previous life of doing nothing but waiting and watching from the shadows.

It was just as he frowned at this train of thought that he heard a thump. He looked up to find that several upperclassman were goofing off. One had hit another with his textbook. This got the others in the group laughing, and before Nageki knew it, it had evolved into some kind of book fight. Like a snowball fight, but with much heavier weapons.

He glared. That wasn't any way to treat the books. Their pages would become wrinkled, their covers torn, if this persisted. But what was he to do about it? If Hiyoko had been there, she could have stopped them. She was horrifyingly strong for such a cute teenage girl (living in a cave in the wilderness usually had that effect on people). But Nageki was invisible, and he hadn't been strong when he was alive anyway.