"Hey, Jennhan — I need you to find someone for me." Yahya pushed into the police station, scanning for his friend. Jennhan surfaced from behind his bureau, caught his eye, and waved him through.
"What is it this time, man? Another breakup?" Jennhan leaned back with the ease of someone who had made this joke before. Yahya settled into the chair across from him, unmoved. "Be straight, Jen."
He gathered himself. "I need you to help me locate a woman. She hasn't come by in two days." Jennhan studied him with the particular expression of someone recalibrating what they thought they knew about a person.
"You — looking for a woman?" Yahya ignored the implication. "Jen, please."
"Alright. Have you been to her house?" "I don't know where she lives." "Do you have a photograph?" "I never took one." Jennhan stared at him. Deeply. "Do you at least know her name?" Yahya gave a sheepish smile and nodded. "Saki Kallistratos."
Jennhan picked up his pen, began writing — then stopped. Brow arched. "I'm sorry, say that again." Yahya repeated it. Jennhan set the pen down. He studied his friend for a long, careful moment. "You're telling me you were in regular contact with this woman, and now you can't locate her?"
"Exactly."
Jennhan's discomfort was visible. He rose, retrieved a file from the cabinet, and slid it across the desk. "Read it yourself."
Yahya took it. Before he could open it, an article slipped from between the pages. He caught it and read the headline.
*"The honorable officer Saki Kallistratos died in a fatal accident."*
The name repeated in his skull. Back and forth. He couldn't move past those words to anything that followed them.
"Now you understand why I looked at you the way I did." Jennhan said quietly. "She's been gone for a year, Yahya. You remember the day you left this department — that was the same day she left this world."
Yahya heard nothing after that. The room kept going, but he wasn't in it. Every strange thing that had accumulated over the past several days — the stares of strangers, the instinctive way people stepped back from a space he knew she occupied, the way she appeared places without warning or reason — it all arranged itself into a shape that finally made sense.
A terrible, irreversible kind of sense.
---
He walked home, the article still in his hand. His steps had been quick leaving the station and came slower with every block he covered, slowing further still when a figure appeared at his entrance.
Saki.
She looked at him. He looked at her. She didn't rush toward him. Just stood, and smiled.
He crossed the remaining distance and gathered her into his arms. She blinked, startled — hands hovering in the air, not quite knowing where to land. He held her close anyway, grip firm at her waist, pulling her in until she could feel his heartbeat climbing.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I ignored you without understanding how lonely it is, having no one to speak to."
She smiled into the space beneath his chin and let her hands settle against him. "You're the only one I can talk to, man."
"Then we'll talk as long as you need."
A pause. Then — "Wait. Are you actually Yahya right now?"
***
"Yahya! Wake up!" Saki dropped herself onto him. He launched upright, hair chaotic, expression that of someone who had just made contact with a live wire. He stared at her, blinked twice, and began pointing.
"Saki! Stop screaming!" He shoved her off the bed — she floated, naturally, smirking. He stormed out of the room, fully outraged and only partially conscious, thundering downstairs.
"You know what, the neighbor's dog smiled at me." She said this from directly over his shoulder while he attempted to cook breakfast. He lifted the knife to chop the vegetables and her head appeared between his hands. "Saki! Sit somewhere quietly for one moment!"
She retreated, briefly, in the manner of someone who had technically heard the request. Because Saki Kallistratos, who had never once been successfully redirected by her own biological mother, was clearly about to be brought to heel by a detective with a knife and scrambled eggs. Naturally.
She hopped back onto his back — weightless to everyone else, but to him, the most persistent presence he had ever encountered and the one he found least capable of removing.
"The neighbors' cat also gave me some of its chocolate." She rubbed her cheek against his. He gave her a sideways look. "There's no breakfast for you."
She smiled, enormous and unbothered. "I'm not human, remember?" He stared at the counter in quiet defeat. She continued talking — whispers and laughter over his shoulder — while he arranged the plates without comment, nodding at intervals that confirmed he was present if not entirely winning.
"Alright. Chair." He said finally. She went. He poured orange juice while he ate scrambled eggs, and when he glanced across at her he noticed a smear of ketchup at the very corner of her lips. His hand moved toward it on instinct —
She ran her tongue in one clean sweep from one edge of her mouth to the other.
He immediately dropped his head into his own regret.
"Oh — did you want something, Yahya?"
"Pass me the mayonnaise, please."
He took it and set it directly next to his plate, untouched. Obviously. They both happened to look at each other at the same moment.
"Alright." He straightened. "Let's have an honest conversation. A real one." She nodded, sipping her juice. "If anything feels too sensitive, just tell me and I'll stop. Alright?" She nodded again, more slowly, and waited.
"You understand that you're dead?" He watched every shade of expression that crossed her face. She inclined her head. "Yes. And genuinely thrilled to have found someone to talk to about it." She smiled. He did too, briefly. "Then — do you know why I can see you, when no one around you can? Not even the people closest to you?"
"I never thought about it." She said, tilting her head slightly. He rested his chin on his palm, watching her. She smiled, quiet. "I was so overwhelmed at finding someone who could actually see me and hear me — the question of why it was specifically you never came up."
He turned away, covering the lower half of his face with his hand, hiding a smile. He reached over and pinched her nose. "That is remarkably juvenile." She let out a short, delighted sound and swatted him with the spoon.
"There must be a reason, though." His voice came down. "Maybe — through me — you can find out what's keeping you here. What hasn't been resolved. What still needs to happen before you can go." He said it carefully, his voice dropping further on the last word.
Something moved through his expression when those words reached him back. The fact that resolving it meant she left. He understood that without examining it too closely, and he smiled anyway — bittersweet, practiced — and reached for the juice.
"Enough serious conversation. Let's eat."
***
"What are you working on?" Saki leaned over his shoulder from behind, resting her chin against it. Yahya was at his laptop, deep in a project he'd been assigned, and he pulled his glasses off to look at her. "Work. Could you pour me some coffee?"
She moved to the kitchen, poured it, and brought it back. She settled beside him. "Why are you doing this job, Yahya? This doesn't suit you." He paused mid-sip. "What do you mean?"
"Why did you leave the department?" He went still. He turned to look in her direction. His tongue moved across his lips, stalling. "We should probably leave that one alone." She reached forward and lifted his chin to meet her eyes. "I knew of you before we met in the rain. A detective who couldn't save his own friend."
He recoiled. His heart lurched. "Stop." His voice cracked open. "He isn't dead. Don't treat that as something to discuss lightly, Saki." She flinched. He caught her hands in his, steadying himself, steadying the conversation. "Please. Don't bring it up again." She nodded, slowly.
---
"Are you still avoiding me? Saki, I'm sorry — I shouldn't have raised my voice." He watched her from across the room as she kept her arms folded tightly over her own chest and her eyes deliberately elsewhere. "Come on, I'll buy you cotton candy. Do you want some?"
"I don't want anything." Flat. Eyes still elsewhere. He pressed his lips together and moved to her — sat down, drew her in front of him, locking her gently between his knees, hands resting at her sides. "Saki." He lowered his head to rest against her stomach. "I'm sorry. Please stop avoiding me."
She looked down at him. "Only if you buy me lavender."
He looked up immediately, already nodding. "Done. Let's go." He pulled on his long coat, wound a scarf around his neck, and took her hand as she smiled. They walked out into the streets, toward the place that shimmered with food stalls and the warm light of a festival in full swing.
The park glowed — strung with lights, alive with candles and noise. Children ran with candy apples, shrieking and laughing with the complete abandonment of people who had nowhere they needed to be. Couples moved slowly with their hands threaded together, love evident in the unhurried way they occupied space beside each other. Saki glanced at Yahya. He wasn't looking at her — but he reached over and tucked her hand into his coat pocket as the evening breeze moved through them.
She let the smile come. *Is he forgetting I'm a ghost?* she thought, and said nothing.
"Do you want to try a candy apple?" She nodded. He stepped up to the stall. "Two candy apples, please." The vendor looked around him with a puzzled expression. "But you seem to be alone, sir. Why two?" He turned back to her with narrowed eyes, then returned to the vendor. "Because I intend to eat two. Is that your concern?" The vendor scrutinized him quietly and began packing the order. He collected it and walked away, exchanging a final look with her that communicated his complete contempt for the interaction.
Saki laughed. "You could have just said it was for someone else."
"It wasn't for 'someone.' And she was considerably more interested in my personal arrangements than in completing the transaction." He muttered. "Ridiculous."
"Let's forget about her." Saki said. He agreed, and they walked further into the park, away from the clusters of people, away from the lights and the noise, into the quieter edge of it where the sky opened up and the view was unobstructed. They settled at the rim, side by side, sharing candy apples.
"Why did you bring me so deep in?" Saki asked, looking around. "Because I can't stand in a crowd and laugh freely with someone no one else can see." He said, matter of fact. "Out here there's no one watching, and we can catch the fireworks from a better angle, and I can talk to you without calculating every expression I make." She said nothing for a moment.
She watched him the way she watched something she was still learning the dimensions of — something that kept being more than it appeared. She swallowed and looked back at the darkening sky. He noticed the silence. Wondered if he'd said too much.
She wrapped both hands around his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. "For a whole year I stood in that cemetery, wondering why I was still here. No answers. No one to speak to. Only my mother and my siblings visiting with flowers and sweets, not knowing I was right there beside them." She looked up at him. "I'm glad I walked into you that rainy day, Yahya."
He smiled — genuinely, unhurried. "I'm glad too." He rested his head gently against hers.
The fireworks broke open above them. They watched as color scattered across the dark, each burst illuminating the other's face in brief, vivid flashes. Something in the light drew Yahya's gaze to her — the way her eyes traced the arcs overhead, the stillness in her smile, the soft warmth along her cheeks. He exhaled slowly, reining something in, and looked again. She turned to him at the same moment. His heart surged with the particular force of something trying to make itself known.
She tilted her head and smiled.
*OMG! That's the end!*