Chuuya Nakahara had a bad feeling the moment he stepped over the threshold of the new house. It wasn’t the creaky floors or the air that smelled like mothballs and memory—it was something deeper. Something in his bones. The whole place felt… off. Too still, too quiet, like the walls were holding their breath.

His parents were thrilled, of course. Big house, big yard, finally out of that cramped city apartment. But Chuuya? He couldn’t sleep. He kept waking up to cold drafts despite all the windows being shut, and the closet door always swung open on its own. He swore he saw shadows in the corners of his vision. And once, just once, he heard a voice whispering his name. A voice that didn't belong to anyone in the house.

When he told his parents, they waved it off like it was nothing. "Hormones," they said. "Adjustment issues. Teenage imagination." Chuuya’s short temper didn’t help—he snapped, shouted, stormed off enough that they booked him a therapy session faster than they unpacked the boxes. The therapist listened, scribbled things down, and smiled like Chuuya was just another textbook case. But Chuuya knew what he felt. And he sure as hell knew what he saw.

It got worse when he found the journal. It was hidden behind the bookshelf in his new room—dusty leather cover, pages yellowed and fragile. It belonged to a boy named Dazai Osamu. The entries were weird. They were like time capsules from decades ago, written in sharp, clever handwriting. Dazai wrote about the house. About its creaking bones and dusty breath. He wrote about his parents, cold and distant, and the housekeepers that tiptoed around him like he was glass. He wrote about loneliness and boredom and about something darker that lived in the attic.

And then one night, Dazai spoke to Chuuya.

At first, Chuuya thought he was dreaming. But the air turned freezing. The walls pulsed like they were listening. And standing by the mirror, with hair hanging around his pale face and eyes too tired for a fifteen-year-old, was the boy from the journal.

“Finally,” Dazai had said, like he’d been waiting.

He was annoying. Smug. Always materializing just to lean against Chuuya’s desk or float above his bed like some bored aristocrat. He made jokes Chuuya didn’t get and asked questions no ghost should ask, like what smartphones were or if therapists could see ghosts too.

But most of all, Dazai wouldn’t leave him alone.

Chuuya tried ignoring him. Tried yelling. But Dazai just smirked and said things like “This was my room, you know. You’re just borrowing it.” And then he made Chuuya promise—don’t change anything. Keep the curtains. Keep the books. Keep the furniture in place.

So Chuuya listened. Because somewhere between the mockery and the chill Dazai left behind whenever he touched something, there was something sad in the way the ghost looked out the window. Like he was still waiting for someone to come home.

Chuuya’s parents were worried. They said he was isolating, clinging to old furniture and talking to no one. He stopped inviting people over. He said it was because they wouldn’t get it—but really, it was because Dazai didn’t want them there.

Now, Chuuya lay awake most nights, staring at the ceiling. Sometimes Dazai was up there too, floating lazily with his arms behind his head. And Chuuya didn’t know what was worse—the fact that he could see a ghost, or the fact that he might’ve started to like having someone to talk to, even if that someone was cold and dusty and dead.

He didn’t believe in ghosts before.

Now he was haunted by one that wouldn’t shut up.