Echo

"I swear to fucking god, if they cancelled the class and forgot to tell us about it again-"

Anne does not swear, but she certainly echoes her classmate's sentiment. The clock on the wall mock them with its proud display of 9:12. The class was meant to start at 9 AM. Why, why, why is it always the morning classes that get cancelled with no reason, why must they all wake up only to find out they could have slept in, what have the bio majors ever done to offend god?

Yes, she's being dramatic. Anne is not a morning person.

"If no one is here by 9:30, I'm out." Another of her classmates grumble. A mood, honestly. A mood.

Still, that means twenty-minutes ish of having to pass the time. Anne has already scrolled and rescrolled through twitter five times in the past ten minutes. She didn't exactly come to class with a full book to read.

Evidently, her classmates are falling into the same boring daze, because one of them suddenly asks "do you guys believe in ghosts?"

A handful replies yes. Another replies no.

Anne squints. "Define ghost." It's a bit hazy, a footnote in her memories of Amphibia, but she does remember these ghost-like fish she's seen below Marcy's room. She doubts her world has anything similar, though.

"Well, you know," the girl elaborates, "spirits of the dead. Things that once were living people, but refused to move on due to unfinished business."

... Huh.

Her classmates start chatting some more on the definition of a ghost. Anne stares at the window. The Sun is too bright to see the Moon. Still, Anne wonders.

Was the Core a ghost? They certainly used to be living people. They certainly refused to move on. Is that enough, to make a ghost? This absolute desperation to keep living, living, living, living?

"A ghost implies a haunting." One of her classmates argue. "A person or a place. It's about symbolism. It's about seeing echoes of a person everywhere because you cannot let go, that place cannot let go, because something happened that was so horrible that the world keeps replaying it to try to understand."

"I'm not talking symbolically. I'm talking spiritually."

"It can be both, if you're not a coward."

Ghost or no ghost, the Core Haunted, for sure. Haunted Marcy, crammed inside her head her ribcage her hands. Haunted king Andrias, a thousand eyes whispering to his ears. Haunted Amphibia, the very world, in the remnants of this civilization long gone that littered the plains with iron and circuits.

Yes. Put this way, Anne absolutely believes in ghost. In other worlds, if not this one- though the need to keep things unchanged forever that birthed the Core in the first place is definitely not exclusive to Amphbia.

Her philosophizing gets violently interrupted when the door suddenly swings open.

"Sorry!" Ah- false alarm, it's just another student. "Sorry, I'm so late!"

"It's fiiine." Someone makes a vague gesture at the man. "Teach's still isn't here."

"Hey, Kouichi!" One of the girls call, "do you believe in ghosts?"

The guy (Kouichi, apparently? He's a quiet bloke, Anne never got to speak to him before) blinks. "Yeah, sure. There's one in the room right now."

"Oh, really?"

Ah, here is what Anne loves with college. Everyone here is a weirdo. In her first week alone, she met two people who claimed to be a witch, one guy who claimed to see auras, and one girl who told her in length about reality shifting. No one cares about some five years-old footage of her punching a mecha in the face here. Is it a hoax, some attempt at gathering clout, a genuine belief? Every college student tacitly agrees to be casual and not think too much about any wild claim that comes their way.

"Mh-mh." Kouichi nods. "Some kid. She looks about twelve or thirteen. She shows up around rather often."

"Ooh, a child? A classic." One of the girls nod. "What did she die of? The plague?"

"I have no idea." Kouichi shrugs, moving to grab his seat. "Her skin is crackled everywhere like white porcelain. It's weird." And Anne's blood runs cold.

"That kid," it's a physical struggle, for her to keep her voice even. She hides her hands under her desk. They've started to tremble. "What does she look like?"

Kouichi looks at her. He does not emote. His eyes do not widen. His shoulders do not tense. His mouth does not gape.

But

oh so briefly

he glances

next to her.

"Oh, you know." He says with a shrug, looking away. A wonderful turn of phrase. Anne's classmates are chatting again. They take it as an end to the conversation.

Oh, you know. They discuss what a ghost typically looks like. What they think it would look like.

Oh, you know, Kouichi said, and not a single person in the room picks up that he meant oh, you, Anne, of all people, would know.