If you’ve ever been on a plane with Morizumi Shimada, imagine sitting next to a ghost who’s given up on humanity. That’s him. The man radiates “please don’t engage” energy so strongly that flight attendants whisper before approaching him.

Now, me? I’m the opposite. I’m the sunshine to his eclipse, the commentary track to his feature film, the dialogue DLC to his base game. I talk. A lot. It’s my best quality. Probably.

We were flying to Scotland to investigate this ancient cursed castle. According to legend, it was haunted by the ghost of a noblewoman who murdered anyone who fell asleep inside. Naturally, Morizumi was snoring halfway through the briefing.

So, I did what any good co-host does—I filled the silence. For eight hours.

I talked about:

• The top ten anime exorcisms of all time.

• The difference between Western and Eastern hauntings in pop culture.

• How our fans were shipping us under the hashtag #PsychicBros (which Morizumi still insists isn’t “a real phenomenon”).

• My theory that ghosts are just freeloaders on the Wi-Fi of life.

Somewhere over the North Sea, I realized Morizumi hadn’t responded in… four hours. I looked over. He was staring out the window, perfectly still, eyes glazed over. I poked his shoulder.

“Hey. You listening?”

He blinked once. Slowly. “I was projecting my consciousness into the astral plane for some quiet.”

“You what?”

“I left my body thirty minutes ago.”

There was this long pause where I couldn’t tell if he was joking. Then I saw a faint shimmer next to the overhead luggage compartment—Morizumi’s spirit, floating serenely in the aisle, completely ignoring the fact that a baby was crying three rows back.

“Bro,” I said, shaking his limp body, “you astral projected just to get away from me?”

When we landed, his body woke up, and he looked at me with the calm expression of a monk who’s seen eternity.

“I heard every word,” he said. “I regret returning.”

And that’s why, for the rest of the trip, the locals referred to Morizumi as the man who silenced his own soul—and me as the reason why.