Everything about the Donner Family Cafeteria left a bad taste in my mouth as I sat in my history class.

It wasn't just Tito's questionable food.

I had my history book open to the page Menrei-sensei told us to read. Something about the Heian period. Or maybe the Taika Reforms.

I didn't know. I wasn't really paying attention.

My actual focus was tucked neatly behind the textbook: A Complete History of Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Kobolds: Second Edition, the reference book I'd definitely not stolen from the Stevie Wonder Memorial Library.

"Unclaimed property," I whispered to myself.

Yuki looked over at me.

Look, desperate times,l I told myself, wondering if Shion thought the same thing when she took her bicycle.

I kept my head down, scanning the strange phrases like "Three-Battles-Pass" and "Grey Burden of Winter" as if they might unlock some kind of magic cheat code for dealing with Ken.

I was so caught up in the passage about bloodlines carried through scent—which was horrifying in more ways than I wanted to think about—that I almost missed Menrei-sensei changing masks.

Almost.

Menrei-sensei's classroom walls were filled with different masks from different eras depicting different expressions. It made sense, as Menrei-sensei didn't exist without the mask.

The noppera-bō didn't have a face. Instead, a blank, featureless fleshy mass existed where a face should be.

Menrei-sensei simply didn't have a face at all. Literally nothing existed there. Just a void until she put one of her masks on. And even worse, I could feel the masks on the walls watching me. Yuki told me she was certain they changed expressions when she looked away.

I tried not to think about it as I re-read Thorn-fang, the orc's crushing defeat over Grimlock and wondered how Ken ended up with such a lame name.

Menrei-sensei supposedly made Hina's veil, and I could believe it.

She had just replaced her sweet Ko-omote mask with a blank, emotionless sarugami, the monkey spirit. That meant we were getting "erratic and possibly violent" Menrei today. Great.

"History is not what happened," she intoned in a slow, breathy voice that somehow echoed even though she wasn't mic'd up or wearing a microphone. "History is what the victors record after the ones they call "liars" are dead."

My brow furrowed. Maybe because my own history felt rewritten by someone else.

It was hard to shake off.

I struggled to ignore it as I looked through the reference book.

Yuki floated at my left, arms folded, dutifully taking mental notes for both of us. She leaned closer. "Ryu," she whispered a moment later. "She's talking about spirit records—better pay attention."

Right. The last time I spaced out, she called on me to explain the Tokugawa shogunate and I panicked and said, "It's that television series, right?"

I was right, but it was the wrong answer.

Partway through taking notes I noticed something from the corner of my eye, and it wasn't one of the masks.

I glanced towards the back of the room and saw one of Menrei-sensei's ancient filing cabinets creaking open. By itself.

It didn't slide. It tugged. Jerked. Like someone, or something, was pushing from the inside.

At first, I thought it was a ghost, a glitch in reality. Maybe a residual echo of one of her old lecturers still trying to grade homework.

Then I saw it: a fly with a wire tied to its body like it was on a leash.

I swear, there was a string trailing behind it. It crawled across the dusty tile toward the classroom door like it was part of a puppet show nobody bought tickets to.

Then something else moved—skittering—clicking across the ceiling.

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One of Hina's things.

The spider-creature made of gnarled metal and twitching, crablike legs dropped down toward the floor, zeroing in on the fly like it was gonna catch dinner.

I watched, fascinated, ignoring Menrei-sensei but mesmerized by the fly. It retreated slowly. Lure-style.

Toward the open filing cabinet.

The spider followed, inching its way towards the bait.

And then something reached out of the darkness.

A rotting, wet hand—grey with mold and meat, nails black and curled—shot out from the cabinet and yanked the spider inside like a rat trap going off.

A second later I heard crunching. Wet. Squelching. Mouth sounds that made my brain want to evacuate my skull.

I gagged, and then I felt Yuki's chilling draft by my side.

"Ryu? What's wrong?" she asked.

She saw where I was looking and turned to see the hand as it reached back out, followed by another, pushing the cabinet open with a loud metallic whine.

Menrei-sensei stopped as the entire class turned to look.

Something crawled out of the filing cabinet, dragging what remained of the spider behind it like a chewed chicken wing.

It was a corpse and so much worse. A patchwork disaster of dead things—stitched together with old wire, nails, and staples. Staples, dude. Like from an office supply drawer in hell.

Someone screamed. Chairs scraped loudly against tile. Menrei-sensei's sarugami mask tilted ever so slightly, and somehow that wasn't even the worst.

His arms were uneven, one longer than the other. His head sat at a weird tilt, like the neck bones didn't agree on which direction to face. And every few steps, some part of him slipped, like a broken puppet being reassembled on the fly.

He smelled like a landfill made of spoiled milk and sewer ghosts.

Menrei-sensei, still wearing the monkey mask, paused mid-rant, crossed her arms, and sighed.

"Oh, good," she said brightly. "Skuzz has decided to join us."

Like this was normal.

The other students slowly got back to their seats.

"Oh gods, please don't let him sit near me," I heard someone mutter.

Skuzz lumbered forward, dragging something that might have been a liver, or a baseball mitt, behind him. He scanned the room, found the empty seat right next to me, and plopped into it like a sack of damp meat.

I wanted to scream. Even Yuki drifted away, her face twisted in polite but unmistakable ghostly disgust.

He turned to me.

"Hey," he said in a voice like cigarette smoke filtered through a blender. "Is this seat taken?"

I turned green. "I wish it were. Before you sat in it."

He laughed. Then burped. Then accidentally unhinged part of his cheek. He stapled it back on without flinching.

"Yeah, I get that a lot," he said, patting his gut. "You must be the American, Ryu-san, right? Word is you want your ghost girl to start comin' to school."

Yuki narrowed her eyes immediately. "How do you know that?"

I glanced at Yuki, and for a split second, I could see the panic in her eyes—like someone had just tugged the sheet off her hiding place.

Skuzz grinned. His left eye floated freely, rolling in its socket before he fixed it with a yellow finger.

"I hear things. Bits. Whispers. Rattles. I'm dead, y'know? I live in the walls. Crawl through vents. Clean out Menrei's cabinets sometimes. Got ears in a lotta places. And sometimes I hear things. Can't forget when I hear somethin' interesting."

I gagged again. Skuzz leaned in.

"I wanna help," he said. "I got this idea. You wanna help her, right? Well… I want to start a school. Night classes. For the undead."

I blinked. "Like… tutoring zombies?"

He tried to cross his arms defensively. His left shoulder popped out of the socket, but he crossed his arms anyway like it was a minor inconvenience.

"Hey, listen, don't be like that, pal," he smiled. I could see the black stains on his teeth where he'd just chewed on one of Hina's spiders.

He pointed at Yuki with a yellow finger.

"You want her goin' here or not? Well, I've got an in. Or, at least, a way she could get in if you're willing to be smart, kid."

I started to hate being called 'kid'.

He didn't blink. I could tell he was considering me, what to share and what to bargain with.

"We don't all gotta rot in closets and vents, y'know? Even corpses wanna learn somethin'. Even ghosts like her," he gestured towards Yuki.

Yuki floated beside me, silent, but I caught the way her hand reached instinctively for mine. She wanted this. Maybe more than I realized.

"Yeah, you noticed her. Not many people are willing to let a ghost anchor onto them, and that tells me something."

He shifted his weight, and I heard his intestines sloosh like a bag of wet garbage.

"So, you wanna keep hoping someone else'll notice her too, or are you ready to talk business?"

Oh yeah. Skuzz, business genius alright.

Not in a million years. Not unless his business was manure.

But Yuki's hand hovered near mine.

That mattered more than comfort.

And his black grin widened.

"Unaccredited," he said proudly.

"And that's the genius of it all. Cause it's not for any credits or anything, so there's no bureaucracy or commissions you're bumpin' against. No one's gonna look twice at a night school that's not givin' credits. You're just giving the bored dead somethin' to do."

He nodded, like he was on an infomercial in his imagination.

"No red tape. No rules. Ghosts like Yuki can attend. Ghouls. Shades. Maybe even a yokai or two who flunked outta regular classes. Hell, Yuki could teach, if she wanted."

Yuki floated an inch back, lips tight. "This is ridiculous. We should wait for Hina. She's been working on something official."

Skuzz shrugged, and part of his ear fell off. "Sure. Hina's cool. Love her work. Big fan. But sometimes official takes forever. And ghosts?" He leaned toward Yuki. "They don't get forever. Just a long time to feel like they missed it."

He turned back to me.

"Think about it. I'll be around."

Then he smiled again. Or tried to. The left side of his jaw cracked and slid sideways.

I swallowed back bile.

Menrei-sensei turned her back to the class and slid on a new mask—a solemn white one with half-lidded eyes.

"Pop quiz," she said, her voice deeper. "What do we call the world between forgetting and being forgotten?"

Nobody answered.

But I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Skuzz sat beside me, pieces dripping on the floor.

He hummed to himself and had a smug look on his face.

And Yuki just kept staring at him, silently, like she'd just found mold growing on the last page of her favorite book.

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