For a second, Akeru thought her soul had left her body, and her breath hitched in her throat as she wrapped her hands around her midsection as if to keep it inside her. The spectral form moved right through them of course. It took a second for Akeru to realize that if her soul had left her body, she would be her soul and not in her body, so she would see the body and not the soul, but what if she was different and when her soul left her consciousness stayed in the body—
The ghost-that-wasn’t-actually-a-ghost spoke, and Akeru came to the rather embarrassed conclusion that it was the girl from the entrance exam. “Oh,” she said when the knowledge surfaced in her mind. “Um, h-hello again. Yu, right?”
Ryo’s sudden appearance and surprise hug made a tired smile crack her face when he came barreling out of nowhere, and she awkwardly patted his arm, the only part of him she could reach in the position of being hugged backwards. She frowned at his words. “Wait, you got up when I sent that? That was like… three am…. I, uh, sorry, heh… Oh! Um, Ryo, this is Yu, I met her at the exam. Yu, this is my, bro— um, best friend Ryo.” She stumbled over her words, replacing “brother” with “best friend” at the last minute. They had known each other so long that she thought of them as siblings, but in her tired state choosing words was not her strongest point.