"Aaaaah!" She screams when she feels a hand on her shoulder. "I am sorry for disturbing your night. If you let me go, I will never ever do this again. I won't ever step inside the cemetery unless I am dead. No, I won't even do it then. I will ask my family to burn my body and spread my ashes somewhere far away. Please don't hurt me."
A deep chuckle.
She breaks into tears. She shouldn't have come here. What's wrong with her? Why did she put her life on the line for someone else who doesn't even believe her?
"There are worse things than ghosts in the cemetery." The voice is smooth as silk. "And, there are many ways to be brave than seeking death here."
Shaking vigorously, she opens her eyes slightly. A pair of leather boots appear in her sight. Do ghosts wear boots? She looks up slowly. The man is tall and lean. She can't see his face because of the dark, but she can sense that he's smiling. He is strangely calming.
"Wakana!"
She looks to her left and sees her sisters running toward her. When she turns her head, the man is gone. She stands up abruptly and looks around. She can't see the man anywhere. Even if he's an Olympic runner, he can't just disappear in the cemetery suddenly. There are only graves surrounding her.
"Wakana, are you okay?" Natsumi asks with a voice laced with distress. "Did you see something bad?"
"That man... did you see a man here just now?" Wakana points at the spot where the man was standing less than a minute ago.
"What man?" Sayuri asks in shock. "We only saw you squatting on the ground. There was no man."
"But." Cold sweat breaks on to her back. Was it a ghost? "There was someone here."
Not just a man. There were many more.
"You should have whistled if you saw something." Natsumi scolds her. "You shouldn't be this stubborn."
Wakana's eyes are still searching for the man. She has a feeling that she was saved by him. Where did he go? Even if he's a ghost, she wants to thank him.
Sayuri wraps her arms around Wakana. "This place is giving me goosebumps."
Even Natsumi is getting the same feeling "Let's go home."
Wakana's eyes keep looking for the man as she walks back with her sisters. By the time she reaches the wall, she's sure that the man was a ghost.
What kind of human disappears in a blink? Her sisters should have seen him when they were running toward her. Also, who will walk the cemetery at night? The man looked like he wasn't from the village.
So, there are good ghosts too. There are bad people. There are good people. Perhaps, it's the same with the ghosts.