Shade, the Necromelodist

No one knows when the Ghost Café first appeared.

Some nights, it’s simply there, tucked away in an alley you’d never noticed before, its golden light seeping through the mist like a whispered invitation.

I keep the books. But the true keeper of this place is Shade.

Shade is not a cat.
He’s a presence, a concentration of silence and lunar dust, with two tails that brush away shadows and eyes that hold the dimmed light of extinguished stars.
His name isn’t written anywhere; it comes to you the moment you see him, like a memory you’ve always known.
Shade. The shadow.
The one who listens to what has been left behind.

His origin is the café’s first mystery. The waitress before me said she found him asleep on the old phonograph one foggy morning. He hadn’t been there the night before. He was simply there, as if he had always belonged, waiting for the world to remember him.

Shade is a necromelodist, a weaver of lost melodies.
He doesn’t hunt mice; he hunts echoes of emotion. When a sad customer sits down, Shade curls around their feet. And suddenly, a forgotten tune—a song they loved as a child—returns to them, bringing strange, quiet comfort.

When the night is still, his purr is not a sound but a vibration. It makes the cups tremble ever so slightly, awakening the memories asleep in the porcelain.

One evening, a violinist entered, her fingers twisted by age, her heart broken by music she could no longer play. Shade leapt onto the table beside her, pressed his forehead to her trembling hand, and closed his amber eyes.

Then the entire café heard a note. Pure, clear, celestial. The sound of a violin that wasn’t there.

The woman closed her eyes, and a tear slid down her cheek, not of sadness, but of gratitude. Shade had returned the sound of her own music to her, if only for a moment.

By morning, she was gone. But on the table where Shade had sat, a single dried maple leaf remained, its veins forming the faint lines of a musical score.

Shade watches all this from his perch, detached yet deeply aware. His name is a riddle, his past a secret. But his purpose is clear: the Ghost Café is a sanctuary, and he is its silent guardian.

He does not protect a place, but an idea:
that no feeling, beautiful or broken, should ever be lost forever.

And as long as a shadow bears the name Shade, the music of forgotten hearts will continue to echo through the night.

© Tenatsu from Ghost Café 2025. All rights reserved.