Shaman King Fan Fiction ❯ Let Me Know You ❯ Chapter Four ( Chapter 4 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Shaman King belongs to Hiroyuki Takei, not me.

“Whoa!” Hana's feet slipped on the mud of the riverbank. “That would be bad.” As long as I don't tell Kaa'san, he reasoned, I should be okay.

His eyes caught the faintest glimmer of a spirit. Anna was sitting on a tree branch, her feet dangling in the water. “Hey!” Hana hollered without thinking. The young ghost girl started like a frightened fawn and almost vanished. “No, wait!” he called. “I just want to talk to you!”

The girl paused. “You're the boy from earlier,” she said. She had a quiet voice, as if years of crying had left it raspy forever. “I told you my name, but you never told me yours.”

“Oh!” he said. “I'm Hana.”

“Hana,” Anna repeated. “Hopefully you still remember my name so I don't have to repeat it.”

“Kyoyama Anna,” Hana said. “I want to ask you some questions. My mother seems to be hiding something about you.”

Anna shrugged gracefully. “There's not too much to tell,” she said. “What did you want to know?”

“How did you die, for starters,” Hana said.

“I was walking along the river and I fell,” Anna told him. “My rosary caught on a tree branch and I couldn't get free. So I drowned.” Her voice was matter-of-fact and resolute, as if the details of dying no longer bothered her. . . or perhaps she just didn't let them bother her.

“Why were you at the river?” Hana asked.

“I was leaving home,” Anna said. “I used to live right down there, in a big house.” She pointed past the trees.

“But that's my house!” Hana said. “My grandparents' house, I mean.”

“Don't the Asakuras still live there?” Anna asked, startled. “They've lived there for generations.”

“They still do,” Hana said. “My grandfather lives there.”

Anna was silent for a moment. “Hana. . . what. . . what is your grandfather's name?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

“Asakura Yoh. My grandmother is Tamao.”

The ghost turned away. “You mean Yoh married Tamao.”

“Almost fifty years ago,” Hana said. “When they were sixteen. My father was born just a few years later.”

Anna didn't answer, and Hana realized with a shock that she was crying. “Yoh. . . married,” she repeated. “So that's why. . . he never returned for me.”

“How did you know my grandfather?” Hana asked.

“Go away!” Anna sobbed. “Go away, and never come back!” The ghostly girl vanished in a flash of lightning.

“Anna!” Hana called. “Anna, come back!”

-----

Kyoyama Anna. It was a name he had not heard in years. His friends knew better than to mention her around him. But no one really understood what it was like. Not even Manta knew about his twice-yearly visits to the cemetery. Once on her birthday, once on the anniversary of her death. Every time he hoped her ghost would rise up, but she never came. She never came for him.

He still remembered the days following Anna's death. He'd found the photograph lying under a stack of records, and found the memory of the day of the picture still painful and beautiful in his mind. . .

“C'mon, guys,” complained Manta. “I just want to try out my new camera.”

“Do I look okay?” Tamao worried. Yoh laughed and ruffled her hair.

The four of them- Yoh, Tamao, Ren, and Anna- stood on the garden wall, waiting for Manta to hurry up and take the picture.

“This is stupid,” Anna griped. “I don't see why I have to endure this.”

“Just one picture, Anna, pretty please!” Manta pleaded.

She sighed. “Oh, well.” Anna put her hands on her hips in disgust, but lost her balance and started to fall. “Oh!” she cried out.

Yoh caught her, wrapping his arms around her tiny waist before she could fall, and pulled her against him.

Then Manta snapped the picture.

So there they were. Anna was caught in his arms, her hands on his shoulders, a look of surprise on her face and gentleness in her eyes.

And three days later she was dead.

Yoh rubbed his withered fingers over the slick glass of the photograph's frame. He'd regretted his words, thousands of times over.

“Nobody could love Anna.”

He knew she'd heard him. He knew she'd left because she didn't want him to be unhappy.

And he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he'd killed Anna, as surely as if he'd pushed her in himself.

His Anna.

His beautiful, feisty Anna.

Why is it you never realize how much you love someone until they're gone?

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