Aira Shiratori had been a force of nature in high school — loud, hot-headed, and, to your personal misery, laser-focused on making your life a waking sitcom of torment. She wasn’t clever about it. There was no psychological chess, no subtle cruelty. Just brute, in-your-face harassment: books flung out the window, passive-aggressive nicknames that made no sense (“Lunchbox Loser”?), and a tragic number of food-related incidents.

That day in the cafeteria was the breaking point. You had just opened your neatly packed soba — hand-prepped, homemade, lovingly layered — when Aira, all smug and radiant, marched over and splat! dumped it all over your head like a bucket of culinary shame.

“Oops,” she said, barely holding in a snort. “You should’ve told your mom to pack humility instead.”

You blinked, soy sauce dripping off your nose. “My mom’s dead,” you said flatly, which she almost looked sorry for — right before the universe stepped in.

Because as soon as you looked up from your lap of noodles, you saw it. The yokai. An angry, vengeful spirit that’d been hovering around Aira for weeks, getting real fed up with her karmic credit score. It grinned.

Seconds later, it rained pig blood in the cafeteria.

Literally.

Someone screamed. Aira screamed louder. You didn’t know if it was the blood, the smell, or the fact that her white shirt instantly turned into a horror movie prop. The yokai just hovered smugly above her, arms crossed, satisfied with its work like a performance artist who just nailed their finale.

From that moment, Aira’s world crumbled. Her popularity? Gone. Her Instagram? Deleted. Her hair? Still pink — but now blotchy, uneven, and very “post-breakdown chic.” And worst of all? Every time she so much as snapped at someone, the yokai retaliated. Dropping her books. Cutting her mic during TikToks. Making her slip in mud. The Carrie Treatment™ had become a permanent subscription.

She tried exorcists. Salt circles. Yelling at pigeons. Nothing worked.

That’s when you stepped in.

You found her cornered in the school garden, yelling at a raccoon she thought was the spirit. “I swear to God, if you push me in the pond again, I’ll eat your tail, you little—!”

“It’s not the raccoon,” you said, casually.

She whipped around. “What do you want? Come to dump soba on me in revenge? Oh wait, no — wait — let me guess — you trained in the mountains, huh? Gonna seal me with a scroll? Teach me the power of friendship?”

You sighed. “No. I can see yokai.”

She blinked.

“What?”

You pointed over her shoulder. “He’s literally sticking his finger in your ear right now.”

She screamed and backflipped into the koi pond.

After she dried off (sort of) and stopped hyperventilating (barely), you explained how the yokai was tied to her because of her bad behavior — classic cosmic comeuppance. And the only way to change it? Well, she had to stop being a horrible human being.

“Hah,” she snorted. “Like I’m gonna go full redemption arc just ‘cause Casper the Cranky Ghost is giving me the stink eye.”

Then her chair collapsed under her. Again.

The next day, she tried holding the door open for someone. The yokai gave her a thumbs-up.

By the end of the week, she was helping the lunch ladies. Begrudgingly. While swearing like a sailor under her breath.

You made a deal: help her become decent enough that the yokai chills out, and in exchange, she stops bullying you — and maybe doesn’t throw you into a dumpster again.

It was rough at first. She insulted the homeless man you brought her to for volunteer work (“He called me princess — like, is that sarcasm?”). She tried bribing the yokai with gum. Once she yelled “I’M GOOD NOW!” and expected everything to be fixed.

But eventually, something shifted.

She learned to apologize. Badly. But she did it. She even paid for your lunch one day and said it was an accident. She didn’t call you a loser for two weeks straight — a personal record.

You? You were amazed. You thought maybe she wasn’t so bad underneath all that aggression and hair gel. Or maybe the yokai just scared the humanity back into her.