It was dark inside the coffin. . .

    Walls of stone and brick etched out to be far more extravagant than necessary made up the small tomb I had found myself trapped in. Of course, I couldn't exactly see the detailed carvings inside the dark mausoleum, but I could easily feel every bump when trying to pry open the cement door. 

   It was no use. The entrance was designed to stay locked inside and out. It sealed in the ancient valuables as well as myself anytime I came in to clean out the cobwebs. Anyone else would probably be freaked out after getting trapped in a tomb, but for me, this sort of thing happened from time to time. It was just one of the few perks of growing up in a cemetery. 

   I was lucky enough to be born the only child in a family of morticians. Our family-run business, located in Shiniboru, Japan, used to be pretty popular back in the day. "Rockefeller Cemetery," my parents called it, "We put the fun in funerals!"

    For a couple who made their living off of such a depressing industry, they were actually happy people. I remembered how proud they were of owning their home, even if others were a little creeped out about it being on a graveyard. Their pride was one more thing I had admired from them. Even when I grew up thinking I would never develop some supernatural ability, a Quirk, my mom and dad still encouraged me to be happy with who I was, even if who I was was no more than average. 

    Tragically though, when I was merely ten years old, my parents both fell ill after years of working around. . . well, corpses. They only had a few days after that to say their goodbyes before ending up much like their late clients. As a young kid, I took it pretty hard. I already had a rough time as a child, watching all of my classmates around me show off their crazy superpowers while I was left out. So losing my two biggest fans was a heartbreak. However, I later learned that I wasn't as alone as I thought. 

    Five years ago, right after my parents' passing, I came home to the funeral house, where we all used to live, to see a crowd of people dressed from all different eras hovering around. Their complexions were all translucent and foggy, and their feet never touched the ground as they floated across the room. I had instantly realized what I was seeing, especially when one of them said, "Ha! He looks like he just saw a ghost," and the room erupted into laughter. 

    It was revealed then that I was not Quirkless. I had my own uncanny ability, and that ability gave me the power to communicate with the dead. How fitting. 

    I called it Muted Medium, and it worked by letting me see a world others were blind to. There was just one major drawback: I was deaf and mute to the living world. That meant my only connection to people was limited to deceased people who still remained on Earth. My social life sure did thrive. I quickly became the orphan who lived in a cemetery and talked to ghosts in his free time. 

    Back to where I left off, however, I was the orphaned medium stuck inside a mausoleum. Yelling for help seemed pointless, as I would have no idea if anyone would hear me. It was still pitch dark inside, but that was a plus. I couldn't stand bright lights at all. It was another thing I found out about myself when I was around ten. On top of developing a Quirk, I also developed a diagnosis of Tourette syndrome. My nervous system impulses, my tics, were triggered mostly by harsh lighting, which usually ended in involuntary twitches now and then. But when I was inside the closed tomb, which was free of bright lights and distractions, I had a chance to keep my tics calm. 

    After a while though, it got boring. I began to wonder if anyone would be back to help me out, and while thinking about the chances of that not happening, I felt my shoulders shrug and my head jerk to the side, my Tourettes telling me I was worrying. The unsettling feeling crept up inside me while I laid with my back against the stone door. My existing paranoia on top of a sudden voice calling caused me to jump. 

    "Mordecai!" I wasn't used to hearing voices ever since I lost my hearing, but I had a pretty good idea of where this one was coming from. 

    "I'm in here," I thought, knowing if any spirit was close, they would hear the voice in my head. 

    "Oh, holy Osiris," the voice gasped from outside. "How did you get yourself locked in there? And how are we going to get you out‽" I sighed a breath, feeling no longer worried about the situation. 

    "You can move through walls, Cleo," I said. Just as I made the suggestion, a translucent person phased through the solid walls. Though the tomb was dark, the paranormal glow around the figure allowed me to see her black hair hung just over her shoulders underneath an Egyptian crown over her bangs. She smiled at me and outstretched her arms in joy. "There you are!" 

    Meet the ghost of the one and only Cleopatra. Since I got the hang of my power, I started to recognize some of the famous deceased ones that haunted my family's cemetery. Cleo explained when we first met that she had spent the majority of her afterlife traveling the world, and she recently came to Japan as her next visit. After finding me, the only living person to have a connection to their world, she decided to hang around. You know, history painted Cleopatra to be this perfect ruler of Egypt, but after meeting her. . . I realized she's not the brightest by far. 

    "Guys, I found him– Ow," Cleo yelled out, then accidentally hit her head when forgetting to phase through the wall again. She soon disappeared through the stone, but phased back, bringing behind her some of the other ghosts of the area. 

    "Discovery is upon us! My my, we were quite worrisome about you, young Rockefeller," another spirit announced as he floated into the tomb. That would be the ghost of the famous inventor, Thomas Edison. He still looked exactly as history described him, in twentieth-century threads with short, snow white hair. 

    While Cleo came into the picture when I was a preteen, Edison was there right when I discovered my Quirk. He was the one to help me take in the enormity of it all, and throughout my life, he's been a stable role model. I owed him that much. 

    The inventor straightened his jacket as he proclaimed, "I'll admit, Mordecai, trying to find you was a hassle. But of course, it was no match for the greatest mind in history." Another thing about him: he's a lot vainer than history portrayed him. "Marie," Edison called. "Get in here already!" 

    In floated yet another spirit through the closed door, this one being an older woman with frizzy auburn hair and tired features. "You've been looking for hours," she said. "It's about time one of you found him." That would be the ghost of French physicist Maria Salomea Skłodowska Curie, or just Marie. After radiation poisoned her in 1934, she's been looking into all the famous science labs around the globe to occupy herself. During my life, Marie has been almost like a mother figure. She kept an eye out for me and enjoyed teaching me advanced sciences since I was ten. 

    "Thanks for finding me," I told them. I stood up and kept my hands in the pockets of my hoodie. It was starting to get cold inside the mausoleum, and I hoped one of them would have a plan to get me out soon. 

    "It was no trouble at all," Edison replied. "Oh, but I should probably alert the others that we found you." He moved over near the door and cupped his intangible hands over his mouth while yelling, "Call off the search! We found the boy!" As he announced the news, one more ghost flew into the tomb to see for himself. 

    A dead man with choppy black hair and old, beaten-up clothes phased through the wall holding a dagger pointed out. "What's all the yelling about? Who died?" He took a look around at the rest of us and skeptically lowered his knife. Finally, we have someone with quite a reputation back in nineteenth-century London, Jack the Ripper. Why does an ancient serial killer hang around us, knowing he can't murder anyone here? I ask myself that every time I see him. 

    With Jack now making himself comfortable in the room, I could finally get a good look at everyone at once. This was my family, my weird, dysfunctional, undead family. I had to have been the luckiest orphan alive. 

    Marie floated forward and spoke up first, "Now that everyone's here, we might as well get moving." 

    Cleo gasped with her hands over her head, her gold bracelets and rings silently clicking together. "How are we gonna get out‽" 

    "Are you that dumb?" Jack asked a little harshly, but she had it coming. He dove through the solid ground and disappeared. We all waited a few seconds until hearing the movement of the stone door come open. Jack floated next to the door and motioned towards the outside. "You're welcome." 

    When finally making it to the outside, I was met with the brightest sunset I've ever seen. My eyes twitched in an instant along with the other tics that made me shrug my shoulders and flex my hand involuntarily. It was annoying, but I guess it was worth getting out. 

    I left the mausoleum with my family following close behind as we walked through the cemetery. We hadn't provided another funeral since my mom and dad's, so the place was a little run down. Through the field of tombstones and up the hill sat a house large enough to hold indoor services downstairs, with an apartment upstairs. Much like the graveyard, the funeral home was never used in the last five years, but the ghosts living with me helped me take care of the place. 

    When I walked in, my Quirk quickly allowed me to see all the undead spirits floating around. While Marie, Cleo, Jack, and Edison decided a long time ago to stay with me, other ghosts like them tend to move in and out quite often. I greeted each of them by thought with the aid of my Quirk that let's them hear me. It's convenient for a while, but I knew it was nothing like actually getting to speak to someone. 

    I shut the back door behind myself before my family could phase through the door like normal. I walked through the main floor downstairs as ghosts around me talked about their own lives like they ended yesterday. I made it up the stairs just as Cleopatra and Jack followed behind me. 

    "There are a lot more people around here than I remember," Cleo said, phasing through the stairs to keep up with my walking. 

    Jack nodded as he looked over the people below us before following up. "Too many if you ask me. Can't even get through the door without Mother Teresa giving me dirty looks." He narrowed his eyes down towards the end of the stares then flew up with Cleo.

    I made it to a closed-door with a street sign reading 'Do not enter' over it. While I allowed the spirits to roam free over the property, I made sure I at least had my bedroom to myself. I left the door open a bit, letting Cleo and Jack know they can follow me in. I then took a seat at my desk and began cleaning off the top of old notes and textbooks. 

    "Aww, is that all your old school stuff," Cleo cooed from behind me. "You haven't used some of that since last year. Where does the time go?" She picked up one of my old notebooks and held it open while looking through it. Even though I never went to public classes all through grade school and middle school, the spirits in my house make it their responsibility to still teach me.

    I've learned science from Marie Curie as she retested some of her experiments:

▫️▫️▫️

    "Now, Mordecai, remember that science can be incredibly dangerous, believe me, I know. So safety is always the most important part of experiments. . . Dear, I forget, but have humans developed a cure for radiation poisoning yet?"

    "No, not at all."

    "Oh, well then, you might consider running right about now."

▫️▫️▫️

    I've learned history from Thomas Edison, which only consisted of him giving his autobiography:

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    "So my first inventions would be in 1874 when I marvelously crafted the quadruplex telegraph, which was only two years prior to my next move: inventing the carbon resistance telephone. Then there was 1883, and that was a big year for me; you better write this one down."

    "Thomas, I just want to know the time."

    "Yes, yes, there's time to cover everything. But back to 1883—"

▫️▫️▫️

    Cleopatra didn't exactly know much to teach me other than hieroglyphics, but I wasn't sure that would be much use in the future. She did however give me lessons in Home Economics, which also consisted of a few lessons in mummification:

▫️▫️▫️

    "Even though only the most important of us are immortalized as mummies, I think it's still a great skill for everyone to know."

    "I'd strongly disagree, but I'll learn."

    "Yay! Ok, so pick up the arm and start wrapping the corpse."

    "Can't you do it?"

    "Ew, no! I don't want to touch a dead body."

▫️▫️▫️

    That left Jack the Ripper. To be honest, unless prison self-defense counted as an elective, I wasn't sure what he taught me. All in all, I think I learned a lot, but it wasn't the normal high school experience by a long shot. 

    "I think I want to try something different this year," I told Cleo. "I don't think the standards you guys are going over are working for me anymore."

    "What's this I hear‽" I looked up from my desk as Edison floated up through the shag carpet followed by Marie with crossed arms. I turned my desk chair around to face the two of them as Edison continued to defend his teaching abilities. "Why would you ever want to leave our class? Do you have any idea how many people would love to be taught by history's greatest mind. . . and them three," he said, waving his hand near Marie, Cleo, and Jack. 

    I rolled my eyes at his undead ego. He had a point, but there came a time where they couldn't teach me much more. "I like talking to you guys, but I need to take the next step. I want to start actual high school." The spirits in front of me leaned back while gasping in unison as if they never expected this day to come. But there's a point when a kid has to stop relying on his ghost family for support. I had made up my mind, but there was just one thing holding me back. 

    I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my neck, feeling the nervous tics cause me to slightly jerk my head. "I just don't want other people to think I'm weird." 

    "Aww, now why would they think you're weird?" Cleo smiled encouragingly before taking a glance around her. "Oh, right."

    Marie pushed up her glasses and added on, "He has a point. School isn't a place for the— abnormal." She paused while trying hard to carefully choose her words. An unnecessary task when you're addressing this family. 

    Cleo huffed and argued her point. "I'm just saying that he should go out there and meet new living people. Having friends is important after all. I should know; I was the most popular person in Egypt."

    "Yeah, you've mentioned it," Jack added. 

    Marie held her chin in her hand and thought about my decision before speaking up again. "It's obvious that Mordecai doesn't have friends because he doesn't want them. What's so wrong with being a little antisocial as a kid?"

    "I was antisocial as a kid," came another one of Jack's comments. 

    Marie's now startled expression stared up at the ceiling. "Ohh, merciful God, no."

    "I think you all are overreacting," Edison chimed in. I agreed. Sure, I wasn't the most extroverted kid, but I thought I was doing better than Jack at least. Edison continued, "I think what we have going now works just fine. The boy is still a very smart and creative child." 

    Jack slowly nodded. "You know, I was very smart and creative—"

    "Don't say it," Marie interjected. "For all logic that keeps up from letting Mordecai end up like that one, we have got to get him into school." As she put her foot down on the matter, Cleo cheered and Jack looked only offended. 

   "Does this mean I can go?" I watched as Marie and Edison silently debated about this. Cleo waited behind me with her hands clasped together as if she was begging the two of them to let me do this. After what I could assume was careful consideration, they both finally agreed. 

    "If this is something you want, then let's give it a shot," Marie told me. I could already feel Cleo shaking the back of my chair in excitement while Jack grabbed my laptop. 

    I started browsing through the internet as Edison gave some of his unsolicited advice. "If you're going to try to replace the education we've given you here, then you better shoot for the stars, kid!" 

    I had to disagree with him there. "I'm only looking for a small, normal school. Something like this." I turned the laptop screen to face them after pulling up the website to an average-looking school in the district called Taikutsuna Academy. 

    "But you could do so much better than that!" Edison looked closer at the screen and scoffed when reading it. "These people look to be nothing more than glorified babysitters. It's not the place for someone as smart as you." I thought he had too high of expectations for me. I had already learned rocket science, so of course, everything else would be too easy. 

    "I think the school looks just fine," Marie said just before Cleo yawned an exaggerated "Boring." Marie scrolled through the website with me and visited some of the pictures of the school I had picked. It was smaller than any other school I had seen in Japan, but that was a perk to me. The classes shown were the bare minimum, which didn't make Edison feel any better about it. 

    "I just think that there's no way to challenge him at that place," he argued. "There are so many prestigious academies out there that he could get into without a doubt. What about Shiketsu or UA?" 

    While Jack laughed at the idea, I turned away from my laptop to look at him, even feeling my hand twitch at the outrageous suggestion. "Those are hero schools, and that is the opposite of what I'm looking for." Heros were the people in our society that used their Quirks to fight against evil and protect their cities. It sounded like a lot of work to me. 

    Before Edison could praise hero schools anymore, Marie began to read over some of the requirements of the school. "Taikutsuna Academy says that most transferring students must complete an exam for the department of their choice. Although, if they choose to follow the Math-Science Course, sending in an invention with a letter of recommendation is an option." Taking an exam in a room full of fifty of my peers, plus a million ghosts I couldn't ignore if I wanted to, sounded stressful. My best bet would be to send in an invention by mail. 

    "Would you help me out with it?" I looked over to Marie, and she smiled down at me. 

    "I'd be honored to." If I didn't have any hope of getting into this school, then I knew I could trust her to make it happen.

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    The rest of my night and the following morning were both spent with Marie. She kept her promise and worked with me for as long as it took in our workshop. Our "lab" was really just the basement of the funeral home where any science equipment we could find or buy was moved into. Back when the funeral business was active, the room was a crematorium for a short time. But my parents' slogan of "You kill 'em, we grill 'em" didn't have the marketing appeal they hoped for. 

    When I showed up to the lab, Marie was already there, setting everything up for us. The long metal table was neatly organized of pressure sensors, servo motors, microprocessors, and  any tools we would be using. The first step of our project would be figuring out what it was that we wanted to build. While Marie shined in areas like chemistry and physics, I took after Edison in the sense that I loved to invent. Even as a kid, I would draw up any idea I had no matter how far-fetched it seemed. I had one idea for an invention that would fall under the support category, and Marie insisted we give it a shot. 

    My goal was to create a metallic glove that would assist and enhance the strength and movement of a person's palm. I pitched Marie my idea for a prototype support glove, and we quickly got to work. 

    I wanted to do this mostly on my own with Marie watching over me. I didn't consider having her there cheating as most of her studies were outdated, to begin with, but I also wanted to make sure I was getting in on my skill alone. And I didn't have much doubt about it. Engineering was one of my special skills. Within an hour or so, I had constructed an exoskeleton with the potential to help someone lift five times their weight. Of course, it was only a prototype. Although it didn't move, the user could wear it like a glove that fit up to their wrist with straps wrapping around their forearm and bicep. Pressure plates on the palm would pick up the kinetic stimulus of the user which would then be amplified by the aid of the servo motors. 

    "It's remarkable, Mordecai," Marie told me while I finished up attaching the last pressure sensor. I gave her my thanks in my head, and I lifted my work goggles to be once again assaulted by the one lightbulb in the room. I decided to leave my goggles on top of my head just in case the light grew too much to handle. 

    "I hope they like it," I thought. While I was impressed I even imagined something this complicated, I was a little worried about the people looking over the fact that it was only a prototype. 

    "I'm quite certain they will," Marie assured me, putting her hand on my back. "You're growing up a lot faster than any of us anticipated, Mordecai. But we couldn't be more proud of you." Although her hands were ice cold, her words gave me the same comfort I always needed whenever I doubted myself. It was in times like that when I appreciated her and the other spirits who stepped up to take care of me. Even if I argued that I could take care of myself at 15, they still had their ways of sticking by me. 

    "Thanks for helping me out," I told Marie. She nodded and moved her hand up to pat my head. 

    "I'm happy to," she said. "And I can't wait to hear back from the school."

■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■

    The two weeks of waiting to get the acceptance email from Taikutsuna Academy were the longest and most stressful days of my life. I was sitting at my desk with my laptop open and my family around me, and I had stayed there since that morning, waiting and refreshing my inbox. My Tourettes tics hadn't stopped for a second while we waited. I manifested to see that congratulations email while my head twitched to the side every couple of minutes. I even had to pull my right hand away from the mouse out of fear that my hand spazzes would cause me to close the page. 

    From behind my chair, I could hear Jack get impatient. "It's been four hours. I get it: the afterlife is endless, but this is ridiculous." I looked over to see him finally shut up thanks to Marie flicking him on the forehead. When turning my head back to stare at my inbox, I was greeted with the long-awaited notification across the screen. 

    After snapping my fingers to get my family's attention, I clicked open the email and bounced my leg up and down while it buffered. The tiny sphere on the screen spun and turned for an eternity while I sat on the edge of my seat. My hand twitched with anticipation, and the ghosts behind me had leaned in to stare at the screen with me. 

    Cleo broke the silence with a groan and an outburst of, "JUST LOAD ALREADY!" A second later, the rotating sphere stopped and the page refreshed with the online letter I was waiting for. I was too nervous to do anything but skim until I found key phrases like 'we apologize', 'better luck next time', or 'thanks for trying'. However, I didn't see any of those before my eyes locked onto a sentence towards the bottom of the page. 

    "We are happy to accept you into this next year's class!" The paragraph went on, but I had seen all I needed to. 

    "You did it," Marie said, releasing a held breath of relief. 

    "I did it," I repeated with disbelief. 

    "He did it!" Cleo continued to cheer me on as I read through the email. I broke my usual straight face to show a small smile at every congratulatory phrase through the letter. I scanned it all down until reaching the name at the bottom where the school principal signed his name. My expression froze as I read it ten times in my head. 

    I stopped my family's celebration and put up my hand to get their attention while I read it to them. "We hope to see you soon, Principal Nezu of UA High." 

    Every single voice in the room fell dead silent. I thought I could almost hear my own tics twitching while I let the words sink in. I turned back to look at the ghosts behind me, almost all of them with equally shocked expressions. Edison was the exception as he floated forward with his hands out and a big smile. 

    "Surprise!"