There was this one girl everyone found strange in class. Everyday, instead of wearing her blazer over her school clothes, she wore a white lab coat and there were always goggles above her head.
She was cute and strange, everyone treated her nicely because she was the class mascot but she didn't really have friends that are actually her own friends.
One day, a transfer student came to their class and his name was Ikiba Ayoitsu. He sat near the white haired mascot, Hariya Yuri.
"You know, wearing a lab coat to school is actually kinda cool." Ikiba said as he tried to make a conversation with Hariya.
Hariya blinked and turned to him, tilting her head cutely. "Hello? You must be the new student." She asked curiously.
"Yeah, I'm Ikiba. Nice to meet you." He smiled, gesturing at her coat. "So what's with the scientist look? Are you doing some kind of experiment?"
Hariya's eyes lit up behind her glasses, a spark of genuine excitement replacing her usual distant expression. "People may not believe me but it is to stop the beings of other dimensions to notice me."
Other dimensions...Ikiba frowned, he wondered if she actually knew of the other world, did he really have to change schools because of them again?.
"What are these beings from other dimensions?." Ikiba said, feigning ignorance.
"Alternate of course?! The worst parts of our Human natures who have broken into the physical world to hunt us down." Hariya spoke enthusiastically, finally excited that someone was listening to her.
Ikiba tilted his head, it seems he was thinking of something different. "Oh so they're not spirits or undead creatures that crawl up from hell?."
"Pffft—Ahem no, Spirits and the undead do not exist, such things are only Viable in fiction...but I'm not wrong about the Alternates, I swear?!!." She covered her laugh and defended as herself.
Ikiba felt his eye twitch slightly. Not wrong about the Alternates but thinks Spirits dont exist? He'd literally fought off three just last week at his previous school. But he kept his expression neutral, even friendly.
"So these Alternates," he continued, genuinely curious now despite himself, "what makes them hunt people? And why would a lab coat stop them from noticing you?"
Hariya leaned in closer, her voice dropping to an excited whisper. "They're drawn to psychological weakness—fear, self-doubt, identity crisis and Not accepting your opposite side, after they find you, they will kill you, I have an Alternate going around town looking like me and acting like me so I'm trying to hide from her until I figure out how to get rid of her."
Ikiba's expression shifted slightly. An entity that looked exactly like you, hunting you down? That was... uncomfortably specific. And different from the spirits he usually dealt with.
"So the lab coat..." he prompted.
"It disrupts visual recognition patterns!" Hariya explained, pushing her goggles up excitedly. "If my Alternate is searching for 'Hariya Yuri in a school uniform,' but sees 'girl in lab coat,' there's a cognitive disconnect. It's not foolproof, but it buys me time." She paused, then added more quietly, "Plus, I've been documenting everything. Behavioral patterns, sighting locations, temporal anomalies..."
"You've actually seen your Alternate?" Ikiba asked, his casual tone masking genuine concern.
Hariya nodded, her enthusiasm dimming slightly. "Three times. The first time, I thought I was looking in a mirror in the wrong place. The second time..." she touched her neck unconsciously, "she spoke to me. Her voice was exactly like mine, but wrong somehow. Like a recording played backward then forward again."
Ikiba studied her carefully. She didn't seem delusional—her eyes were clear, focused. And he of all people knew that impossible things existed. Just because he'd never encountered an "Alternate" didn't mean they weren't real.
"What did she say to you?"
Hariya met his eyes directly for the first time, and he saw something in them that made him certain—whatever she'd experienced, she believed it completely.
"She said, 'You can't keep running from yourself, Hariya. We're supposed to be one.'" Hariya's voice was steady, but her fingers gripped the edge of her desk. "Then she smiled—my smile, but stretched too wide—and walked away. Just... walked away like a normal person. That's what made it worse somehow."
Ikiba felt a chill run down his spine. That was different from spirits. Spirits were angry, hungry, or lost. They didn't talk about becoming "one" with their victims. They didn't psychologically hunt.
"And the third time?" he pressed.
Hariya pulled a small notebook from her lab coat pocket, flipping it open to a page filled with timestamps and locations marked on a hand-drawn map. "Last week. She was standing outside my bedroom window. Third floor." She tapped the entry. "She shouldn't have been able to stand there—there's nothing but air—but she did. She just... stood there, watching me for seventeen minutes. I timed it."
"Did she do anything?"
"She held up a sign." Hariya's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "It said 'Soon.'"
Ikiba leaned back in his chair, processing. This was either an elaborate delusion, or Hariya Yuri had stumbled onto something genuinely dangerous—something that existed in a different category than the supernatural threats he knew.
"Why haven't you told anyone else? Your parents? Teachers?"
Hariya let out a bitter laugh. "I did. My parents think I'm going through a phase. The school counselor recommended 'reducing screen time and getting more sleep.' Everyone thinks I'm just the weird girl playing pretend." She looked at him searchingly. "But you... you didn't laugh. You didn't dismiss me. Why?"
Ikiba hesitated. He could feel the weight of his own secrets pressing against his chest—the curse mark hidden under his uniform, the spirit-sensing ability that had upended his life, the real reason he kept transferring schools.
"Let's just say," he said carefully, "I've learned that the world is stranger than most people want to admit. And I think you're right to be careful."
Hariya's eyes widened slightly, then she smiled—a real, genuine smile that transformed her entire face. "You believe me."
"I'm considering it seriously," Ikiba corrected, but he returned her smile. "So, scientist—what's your hypothesis about how to deal with an Alternate?"
Hariya's expression shifted back to intense focus. She flipped to another page in her notebook, this one covered in diagrams and equations that made Ikiba's head hurt.
"That's the problem. I have seventeen theories but no way to test them safely. The lab coat is defensive—buying time. But to actually eliminate an Alternate..." She bit her lip. "I think I need to confront the part of myself she represents. Accept it, integrate it, or somehow prove I'm more 'real' than she is. But I don't know how to do that without getting close enough for her to—"
"To kill you," Ikiba finished.
"Exactly."
The bell rang for lunch, and the classroom erupted into noise and movement around them. But Ikiba and Hariya remained seated, locked in their own strange conversation.
"Oh i haven't introduced myself to you yet Ikiba San." Hariya suddenly straightened, a faint blush coloring her cheeks as she realized her oversight. "I'm Hariya Yuri. Though I suppose you already knew that from roll call." She adjusted her goggles nervously. "Sorry, I got carried away. Nobody usually wants to hear about my research."
Ikiba waved off the apology. "Don't worry about it. It's refreshing, actually." He glanced around the classroom, where their classmates were forming their usual lunch groups, pointedly excluding the space around Hariya's desk. "Do you usually eat lunch alone?"
Hariya nodded matter-of-factly, pulling a bento box from her bag—also white, he noticed, like her coat. "The rooftop, usually. Better vantage point to watch for anomalies. Plus, fewer people means less chance of accidental exposure if my Alternate shows up."
"Mind if I join you?" Ikiba asked. "I'm new, don't know anyone yet, and honestly..." he lowered his voice, "I want to hear more about these Alternates. Maybe I can help."
Hariya's eyes widened behind her glasses. "You... you actually want to help? You're not just being polite?"
"I'm serious." Ikiba stood up, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "Besides, I might have some experience with things that shouldn't exist. Different things, maybe, but still."
"Different things?" Hariya perked up immediately, her scientific curiosity overriding her caution. She grabbed her notebook and bento, nearly knocking over her pencil case in her excitement. "What kind of different things? Are they dimensional entities too? Or temporal? Psychological manifestations?"
Ikiba smiled slightly as they headed toward the door. "You could say they're more... spiritual in nature."
Hariya opened her mouth to argue that spirits don't exist, then paused, tilting her head thoughtfully. "Hmm. Interesting. If I'm asking you to believe in Alternates, I suppose I should at least hear your evidence for spirits. That's only fair scientifically speaking."
"Exactly," Ikiba said, feeling a strange warmth in his chest. When was the last time someone had actually wanted to hear about his problems instead of calling him crazy?
They climbed the stairs to the rooftop, and Hariya pushed open the door with practiced ease, clearly familiar with this route. The afternoon sun was bright, and a cool breeze ruffled their hair as they stepped out.
Hariya immediately walked to the far corner, where she'd clearly set up a makeshift observation post—a small folding stool, some binoculars, and what looked like a hand-drawn map of the school grounds with various points marked in different colored pens.
"Wow, you really are serious about this," Ikiba said, genuinely impressed.
"Of course. If you're going to survive something trying to kill you, you need data." Hariya sat down on the stool and patted the ground next to her. "Sit. Now tell me about these spirits while I eat, and then I'll show you my tracking system."
Ikiba settled down beside her, pulling out his own lunch. "Alright, but fair warning—you're probably going to think I'm as crazy as everyone thinks you are."
Hariya smiled, a bit mischievously this time. "Ikiba-san, I wear a lab coat to school every day to hide from my evil doppelganger. I'm not exactly in a position to judge."
For the first time in months, Ikiba laughed—a real, genuine laugh. "Fair point, Hariya-san. Fair point."
As they began to eat, neither of them noticed the figure standing in the stairwell below, just out of sight. A girl with white hair, wearing a perfect school uniform, her head tilted at an unnatural angle as she listened to their conversation.
Her lips curved into a smile—Hariya's smile, but not quite.
"A new friend," she whispered to herself, her voice exactly like Hariya's but with an odd reverb, as if two people were speaking in perfect sync. "How interesting. I wonder if he has an Alternate too?"
She turned and walked down the stairs, her footsteps making no sound at all.
Back in the lab, Ikiba began to speak. "I began to notice the existence of spirits a year ago and in that year I have gotten to learn that I have a very high affinity of them.
First I should explain what spirits are."
Hariya immediately pulled out a fresh page in her notebook, pen poised and ready. "Yes, please. Detailed explanation. I want to understand the taxonomy, behavioral patterns, and fundamental nature of these entities you're describing."
Ikiba couldn't help but smile at her academic enthusiasm. "Spirits are categorised into two forms. Spirits, creatures invisible to some certain human eyes and formed from the accumulating of natural,negative, positive or Artifical means, there are beings with many different forms and abilities...which I have only experienced one, a curse. I'll talk about that later. The other classifications of spirits are Undead."
Ikiba continued with a pause and also a complicated expression. "The undead aren't what you think they are, unlike reanimated corpses of the dead, they are humans who refused to die after they are killed or befall a horrible accident, their souls falling back into their bodies as negative spiritual energy fills them, Undead have high healing factors and superhuman stats, each undead also have varying abilities. The only way to battle them is to fight them using spirit energy or spirit contracts."
"I have a curse which is a type of spirit I contracted and it manifests....as a gun and sometimes a sword if it feels like it."