Chapter Text
mi·nu·ti·ae
noun
- the small, precise, or trivial details of something
🌃
Seven days shy of his twenty-second birthday, Renjun transforms from a student crossing the street into a bloodied corpse on the pavement.
Thud. Crash. Crack.
That is all it takes.
A siren starts up somewhere in the distance. The car doesn’t even stop.
Later, police officers and doctors will console his loved ones by telling them that Renjun died instantly on impact. He wouldn’t have even felt it. He wouldn’t even have known. Life is unfair and death even more so, but look, they will imply, even in the depths of its cruelty, isn’t there mercy?
Mercy? When the best you can offer is at least it was quick?
Renjun screams.
No one hears him but himself.
🌃
Renjun wakes up gasping. Burning lungs, burning mouth, burning eyes. He feels nothing else—not the mattress beneath him nor the weight of his comforter above. He thrusts his hand into the pane of sun that has always seeped in through the crack in his blinds and watches it go straight to his sheets underneath. Renjun is cold, cold, and even though he holds his hand there for so long that it should burn like the rest of him, he stays cold.
It’s still there, of course. The glow. The heat. Some obscene distance away, the sun continues to blaze.
That pane of light? As warm as it always has been.
Just no longer for him.
🌃
They catch the man behind the wheel. Blood muddled, mind clouded.
He's sober now. He does not look up once during the entire length of the proceedings.
Eight years, Renjun hears.
That is the length of the sentence. That is what his life was worth.
Renjun burns and burns, but the courtroom walls stay un-scorched. He combusts and leaves no ashes but those carried out in a small porcelain vase with his name engraved at the bottom.
🌃
When Renjun was alive, he lived in an apartment complex two subway stops from his university. There had been several studios available at the time, all exactly identical. Narrow entryway, bathroom on the left, small kitchen on his right. The kitchen counter extending out from the wall to provide some semblance of separation. A space for his bed right beyond that.
In any other case, he would’ve picked one at random. Maybe even the room he’d been shown on the first floor. It certainly would’ve been more convenient.
But then he had seen somewhere—the sign in the lobby window, maybe, or a flier tacked to the bulletin board—that unit 323 was among those open.
Renjun remembers smiling, fingers ghosting over the printed number. A small, happy coincidence.
He fills out the rental application later that same day. Standing in the doorway with three suitcases and the mountain of obnoxiously large boxes he begged Jeno and Jaemin to lug up the stairs for him, he thinks something about it feels lucky.
The apartment was meant to be his.
🌃
His family comes a couple weeks after his funeral to clear everything out. The buttercup yellow curtains. The art prints he’d tacked on his walls. The absurdly large, knock-off Moomin plush he’d won at the local fair when he was sixteen and proceeded to drag with him across international borders, just because he could.
His one houseplant, which he’d fought everyday to keep alive for the three months they spent together, also goes. It’s long since withered away by the time his dad takes it by the pot and shoves it straight into a trash bag. Almost everything his father touches meets the same fate.
He hardly even looks at what he throws out. Moves rough and brusque. Sharp, jagged. Like he can dodge the pain if only he’s quick enough. Left hook, right hook, duck. Take Renjun’s only coffee mug, sticky and still in the sink because oh, I’ll wash it when I get home, and toss it.
Around he goes in that tiny kitchen, and around and around Renjun goes after him. Tailing him. Tearing through him. Right hook, left hook, duck—his father is too fast for Renjun to catch him, and Renjun is too much nothing be able to do anything even if he could. Renjun begs him then screams at him then goes back to begging him to stop because I’m still here and soon it will all be gone if he keeps getting rid of what little of Renjun is left.
A set of novelty chopsticks with cartoon cats printed at the top. His favorite ballpoint pen that he’d left lying on the counter. A magnet that his university had given each first-year at orientation.
Renjun screams and it burns and no one hears him but himself. He turns to his mom, about to throw himself into her arms, even though he already knows what will happen. You cannot be held when you no longer exist.
But Renjun doesn’t even make it that far. Stops before he tries.
His mom is sitting cross-legged on the floor, wedged between the foot of Renjun’s bed and his desk. There’s a pile of his old notes and sketchbooks scattered around her, all the paper he’d shoved into the bottom drawer because he’d been too busy to file it away properly. She's drowning in it.
Wordlessly, she leafs through the one in her lap. Sets it aside. Picks up the next one and starts all over again. There is not a single expression on her face until his dad materializes in front of them and rips the pages out of her grasp.
The silence breaks. A crack of lightning rends the sky and suddenly his parents are screaming at each other. His mom is sobbing in rage and his dad is red in the face in a way Renjun has never, ever seen, and then his cousin bursts in through the door, her hands flailing, eyes wet, saying auntie, please, uncle, please, as she tries to get between them. The two faceless movers they’ve hired waver on the other side of the doorway. His dad crumples in on himself, one arm braced against the sink, knuckles white against the stainless steel. Left hook, right hook, duck, and none of it matters because the next move was always going to be a one hit knock-out. His mom shakes so hard she barely acknowledges his cousin leading her away to sit down on what was once Renjun’s bed.
Renjun watches it all for a moment, then simply lets it rip him apart. They say when you die, there will be a great white light that beckons you.
Renjun now knows that is a lie. He dissipates back into the darkness that is offered.
At some point, he pulls back together into what remains: a poor, hazy, imitation of the person he used to be. When his eyes flutter open and his vision returns, his family is gone.
The apartment is completely empty.
It looks like the day he moved in.
It looks a bit like he was never there at all.
🌃
There are a lot of ways to keep people out of your business, but a few that come special to being a ghost. These come in handy when, about a year after his death, the landlord begins showing his apartment again to potential renters.
Here are the rules to the game:
- He’s usually not corporeal enough to touch things, but if he rushes by fast enough, he can create a bit of ominous wind. It’s just enough to make cabinets rattle and clothes rustle and people turn around uneasily wondering what was that?
- Renjun is cold, always cold, and as long as he hovers threateningly nearby and radiates his bitchiest get out of my apartment energy, he can make it everyone else’s problem too. Crossed arms, a shock of goosebumps down the skin, raised hair at the back of the neck. If someone’s really not getting the message, sticking his hand through their chest will typically to do the trick.
- He and electricity don’t mesh well. All it takes is passing through the lights and TV when someone turns them on to make them flash, pop, and flicker.
- Most people can’t see or hear him at all, but occasionally, he’ll get someone who can make out his presence. These ones are the easiest. A bit of moving about in their peripheral vision or whispering in their ear and it’ll be did you see that? Did you hear that? And then, the magic words: let’s get out of here.
He’s pretty much got it down to a science. Even the most desperate of college students, lured in by a promise of reduced rent, don’t last longer than ten minutes.
And besides, the local rumor mill does most of the work from there—everyone’s heard of the haunted unit 323. The last showing must’ve been at least a few months ago.
(Renjun’s door opens to two freshmen and the landlord, who shows them in before stepping back out to take a call.
The first of the pair is tall and jumpy and a textbook example of rule number four. He doesn’t even get two steps past the threshold before he spots Renjun hanging out in the corner and goes completely still. The second saunters in unfazed, one hand cocked on his hip, the other reaching out to pick at a piece of paint flaking off from where the wall meets the countertop.
The tall one gets death grip around his friend’s arm, forcibly reeling him back towards the door. “Chenle,” he hisses, eyes wide. Renjun’s ears perk up at the Chinese name. “Do you…do you see that?”
“Nope,” Chenle says, not even bothering to look. He rubs his fingers to get the paint off of them, scattering the crumbs onto Renjun’s floor. The little brat.
“Chenle, I’m serious, just—there, in the corner!” His friend wrenches Chenle around towards Renjun. “Right in front of us!”
Renjun waves languidly at them.
“Oh god,” the tall one whimpers, the color draining completely from his face, folding in on himself like he’s trying to disappear behind Chenle. “I think it just—it just waved at us—I fucking told you this place was haunted we need to get out of here—“
“Oh grow up , Jisung,” Chenle says exasperatedly. He slugs Jisung on the shoulder and drags them both into the bedroom area. Despite the height advantage and the way he backpedals as hard as he can, Jisung somehow loses the tug-of-war. Nothing wins against sheer stubbornness, apparently.
Chenle continues inspecting the room with a mildly disapproving look on his face while Jisung appears to be trying his hardest not to puke. Renjun almost feels bad. He’d reach out and give Jisung a couple of comforting pats on the shoulder, but he thinks that might actually kill him, and then they’d both be stuck here.
It’s a shame though. Jisung is kind of growing on him—endearing in, like, a pathetic, trembling sort of way. His cheeks look like they’d be fun to pinch.
Chenle, on the other hand—
“Man, no wonder it’s so cheap,” he mutters, shuddering a little as Renjun whirls lazily around him, eyeing the flickering overhead light when Renjun floats up to mess with it. “This place is kind of a dump.”
Jisung glances around frantically. “Don’t say that! You’re going to make it ang—”
“Jesus, would you relax? You act like he died in here. Literally the scariest thing about this place is how much they’re skimping on the maintenance.” He rubs his hands together in the chill. “Do they even have heat in this building? It’s drafty as fuck in here.”
Renjun rolls his eyes and the light pops with it, a nice, sharp sound. Jisung yelps. Chenle gives it another disdainful glance and says, “Issues with the electrical too.”
“Yes. Got it. This place sucks, so can we please get out of here—”
Chenle taps at his face contemplatively, turning abruptly away from Jisung, who languishes behind him. “But with how steep the discount is, even if we had to hire people ourselves to come and fix it…”
Alright, Renjun thinks. That’s enough of that.
Playtime’s over.
Renjun rushes downwards. In his wake, the cabinets clatter. The hinges squeak. There’s a distant, empty, mournful sound—wind through an empty tunnel—and the heavy clack of wood on wood—the echoing footsteps a lone traveler walking down it.
Jisung jolts like every muscle in his body contracts at once. Even Chenle jumps a little, taking an aborted half-step back. “What was that?” he mutters, more to himself than to Jisung. “Earthquake?”
“Oh god,” Jisung says again, hands clamped tight over his head, sinking down to the floor in a brace position. “Oh my god. We’re actually going to die here.”
“We’re not,” Chenle says, almost scathing in his conviction. “It’s just—shit—”
That’s what you get, Renjun thinks as he passes through Chenle, whose shoulders crunch inwards. He crosses his arms over his chest and grits out, “Why is it so cold? I think I’m coming down with something.”
The question goes unanswered. Jisung is basically unresponsive at this point. And Renjun is well, dead.
“Anyways,” Chenle huffs, straightening out. His eyes, though, are warier than they were when he first arrived. Renjun would be impressed at his determination if he weren’t so busy being irritated. “I was saying, even if had to fix things up ourselves, this would still be way cheaper than anywhere else. And we could probably use the whole ‘this place is haunted’ thing as leverage to negotiate the rent down even more.”
He walks over to Jisung, nudging him with his foot. “Come on. Let’s go talk to the landlord.”
Jisung shakes his head.
Chenle groans. “Seriously? Get yourself together. You know I’m right.”
Jisung shakes his head again. When he speaks, his voice is comes out muffled from where he’s buried his face between his knees. “I am serious. I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Why? Because some guy who used to live here died? That’s—” Chenle drags a hand down his face. “Okay. Okay. But so what? I guarantee you that everywhere you’ve been, someone who’s also been there is now dead. People die all the time! Are we all just supposed to stop going places? Stop doing things? You didn’t even know him.”
Chenle starts trying to pull Jisung onto his feet. “The world moves on, Jisung. That’s just how it works.”
Jisung suddenly unfurls to his full height. Stands up and jerks himself out of Chenle’s grip, staring him down as he does.
Chenle blinks. “Jisung?”
In perfect, unaccented Mandarin, he points to the open door and says:
“Get. Out.”)
Ah, Renjun thinks sullenly as his mind wanders through the memory. Secret rule number five.
It’s not like he likes possessing people. Doing it is like putting on someone else’s unwashed clothes—gross and awkward and it never fits right and he always leaves feeling like he’s got some sort of residue stuck to him. It’s a lot of work too. He got lucky that Jisung was so freaked out that his mental defenses were already down, but it’s usually a lot harder.
So possession remains secret rule number five—only to be used in case of (loosely-defined) emergency.
Still, Renjun wonders if he might’ve overdone it. No one’s come by for a long time now. Maybe his landlord’s given up on trying to rent 323 out entirely.
Good, Renjun thinks, turning abruptly away from the window. This is what he wanted.
He drifts through his kitchen, just to hear the cupboards jiggle. It’s not like he has anything better to do.
🌃
Renjun is awoken by a distinctive jingle and the click of a lock turning. His eyes are still bleary, his lower body still amorphous, when the door swings open.
Someone’s here, he realizes with a start, shooting up into the ceiling. It’s only after his unannounced visitors walk in that he remembers that he doesn’t need to hide. They can’t see him anyways.
Renjun carefully floats back down and nestles himself in the far upper corner of the room.
There are now two men standing in his entryway.
The first he recognizes. His landlord gives the usual spiel: rent, amenities, the lease agreement.
The second, he doesn’t. Renjun can’t see his face well from this angle—head tipped forward as he jots a few notes in his phone—but he must be some sort of office worker. Dress shirt, dress pants, dress shoes. He’s even got a tie on. His head bobs continuously, nodding at everything the landlord says.
Renjun creeps lower. Suspicion curls in his chest. There’s no way someone this corporately, sterilely nice and neat doesn’t make enough to live somewhere better.
He’s about to walk over so he can see what this guy’s deal is and maybe make him uncomfortably cold until he leaves when the man raises his head and looks Renjun in the eyes.
The world stops turning.
Then the man returns to his phone, making an affirmative sound when the landlord mentions something else.
Renjun flies back into the ceiling. He no longer has a pulse or blood or organs, but his heart pounds so hard his entire body vibrates.
There’s no way, Renjun tells himself, teeth grit. No way he saw anything and had zero reaction to it.
The two men chat some more, but Renjun can’t bring himself to pay attention to a word of it. He simply stays there, sandwiched in that narrow space above his apartment and below the floorboards of his upstairs neighbor, until they leave.
🌃
Renjun turns circles around where his bed used to be.
He barely even remembers what Mr. Salaryman had looked like, it had happened so fast, but he can’t stop thinking about that moment he looked at Renjun like he was still alive.
🌃
There’s a man standing outside of Renjun’s apartment with his life packed into a suitcase and several, modestly sized cardboard boxes. His hair is black. His slacks are gray. The dress-shirt rolled up around his forearms, white. He’s got eyes that are big and round and gooey in the way brown sugar boba and half-melted chocolate chips are, even though the rest of his face is pensive. His tongue pokes out of his mouth as he fishes for a set of keys in his front pocket. It’s kind of cute.
Renjun glares daggers at him through the peephole. He hates that it’s kind of cute. Hates him as a whole, actually. Because in case anyone’s forgotten, this is supposed to be Renjun’s apartment, and Renjun’s apartment alone.
The lower half of his body disperses and re-condenses agitatedly. He can’t believe Mr. Salaryman actually did it, and that he has the nerve to be kind of cute while he does. Renjun’s going to make him regret this. He’s going to reach right into those stupid business slacks and freeze his balls—
Click. The lock turns, the door opens, and Renjun bolts upwards once more.
This is unbelievable. Renjun spins circles in the darkness, fuming. He’s acting like a criminal in his own home because—because what? Because this guy looked at him once?
Renjun cautiously pushes his head back down through his ceiling, like he’s submerging himself underwater.
Mr. Salaryman isn’t doing anything particularly interesting. He putters around quietly, opening boxes, taking his belongings out, and putting them away again. His phone sits on the kitchen counter, playing a collection of western songs that Renjun doesn’t recognize.
In the bedroom area, he rolls out a simple floor mattress and places a single blanket on top. There’s a modestly sized flat screen TV and gaming console sitting in front of it (also on the floor) and a clothing rack in the corner to hang a couple suit jackets and exactly four other variations of the same dress shirt he’s wearing now. He folds out a few of those collapsible storage bins for his other clothes—more slacks and some neutral-looking casual-wear. The kitchen is practically empty. Renjun’s pretty sure he puts like, one plate, into the cabinet next to the stove.
It doesn’t take him long to finish. He stands for a moment next to his bed, hands on his hips, inspecting his work. Renjun frowns, drifting over so he can get the same vantage point. He doesn’t even know what there is to inspect. The whole place is still so barren.
Renjun jumps again, disappearing into the wall when Mr. Salaryman suddenly perks up like he’s remembered something. He moves aside empty boxes until he gets to a big, black carrying case. With it, in a drawstring bag, is some sort of stand that he unfolds and places next to the TV.
Oh. Renjun unconsciously draws closer when the man opens the case to an acoustic guitar, glossy and warm. He takes it out gingerly and puts it on the stand, then gets up and scampers all the way back towards the door. Ridiculous, Renjun thinks as he follows, looping up and out into the hallway so he can phase back in behind him. The man assumes his inspecting his work position once more before nodding, seemingly satisfied.
Renjun is not nearly as impressed. The guitar makes things marginally better, sure, but it’s still objectively awful. This feels like desecrating his grave—turning his once lively, colorful, cozy apartment into a soulless bachelor pad.
Renjun can’t help it this time—he jabs his hand right through the man’s chest before darting away into the drywall. He hears the man go whoa and suck a breath in through his teeth, which makes Renjun very smug.
But then he just shakes it off, gathers a change of clothes, and walks into the bathroom without another thought. The water turns on a moment later, the faucet squeaking as it does. Mr. Salaryman starts humming.
That’s unacceptable. That’s not how the game is played. No one gets such intense, inexplicable chills and thinks nothing is wrong.
Renjun will show him. He tears through his clothing rack hard enough to knock the shirt on the end to the floor, hanger and all. He races past his mattress enough times to twist the blanket into a pile, crooked and off-center. The neat pile of flattened cardboard he’d collected goes flying.
Renjun melts into his hiding spot once more. Waits hungrily, vindictively, for Mr. Salaryman to step out of the shower and into his little trap.
Mr. Salaryman does indeed get out of the shower a few minutes later, towel slung around his neck. Renjun is slightly taken aback at how much younger he looks, out of his workwear and into a t-shirt and shorts, his hair down over his forehead and dripping water onto the floor. It wasn’t that he was old to begin with—maybe twenty-five, six, at most—but like this, he could probably pass for a high-school student.
He’s scrubbing the towel over his head when he notices, stopping short of the mess. His hand falls slowly back to his side.
Renjun edges closer in excitement, creeping up over the man’s shoulder. He must be terrified. Unnerved, at the very least.
“Huh,” the man says, looking around. Renjun is careful to stay just out of his line of sight as they both turn in a tight circle.
He glances up at the ceiling for a moment, contemplative, before going to re-hang his shirt, re-make his bed, and re-fold his pile of cardboard. There’s not a single trace of fear—or really anything—on his face as goes about it. His movements are loose and lax. He’s like the big physical embodiment of a shrug. The man flops over onto his bed after he’s done and lays an arm over his eyes.
Renjun glares at him again, this time poking up from the dingy, carpeted floor. Where’s the sense of self-preservation? The urgency? Even if he didn’t think it was the vengeful ghost of his apartment’s past owner, it should still be a cause for concern! What if someone had broken in?
Mr. Salaryman’s phone rings loudly. Renjun yelps and retracts at the same time the man jolts upright.
Did he really fall asleep that quickly? Renjun thinks as he resurfaces. The man groans, listless, before finally dragging himself onto his feet and stumbling over to the kitchen counter.
Renjun swoops past him and peeks at the screen.
Lee Donghyuck, the caller ID proclaims.
The man sighs when he sees it. He jabs the answer button.
“What,” he says flatly. Renjun inches closer. It’s probably bad form to be eavesdropping like this, but Renjun’s always been kind of nosy.
And besides, he thinks to himself. It’s not his fault this guy decided to move into a clearly occupied apartment. If Renjun’s going to have to put up with a new roommate, he deserves to know more about him.
“Ma-keu-hyung,” someone, supposedly Donghyuck, whines over the speaker, dragging every vowel out. “ Hyung, where are you? Why didn’t you come drinking with us? We’re having such”—he hiccups, then gags, then manages to swallow it back—”such a good time.”
Gross, Renjun thinks, wrinkling his nose. But more important than Lee Donghyuck on the verge of puking his guts out, is that Mr. Salaryman now has a name, and an interesting one at that.
Ma-keu. Mark. Renjun tilts his head. Did he grow up abroad?
“Mark,” he says curiously, just to feel the shape of it. He doesn’t know if he’s ever met anyone named that.
Mark turns.
“Hello? Hyung? Hyung. Hyung!” Donghyuck complains over the phone. “Are you ignoring me?”
Mark turns back. “Sorry,” he says. “What was that?”
Shit, Renjun thinks in the darkness of a kitchen cabinet, chest heaving. Shit.
That was close. That was too close. Renjun shakes his head roughly, trying to get some of the jitteriness out of him. His form won’t settle, flickering like he’s being played through an old projector. His mind races.
Could Mark have heard him? Could it have been a coincidence?
What would it mean if it weren’t?
(There is a man wearing a dress shirt and slacks with big brown eyes who looks at him like he’s alive and hears him like he’s still a person. But Renjun is not alive and he will never be a person again so this is false hope and this is false hope and this is false hope—)
Renjun can’t go there right now. Doesn’t know where he will end up he does.
He comes, instead, to a singular conclusion, burning white hot in his throat: he needs to get rid of Mark as soon as possible.
Donghyuck’s voice comes in muffled through the cabinet door. “I said where are you? The whole department’s here tonight! Except you!”
“I already told you I was moving into my new apartment tonight.”
“Lame,” Donghyuck responds. “Laaaaame.”
“Real mature, Hyuck. Listen to me though, I moved. Don’t show up at my door thinking you can crash there.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Hey, I forgot, did I tell you yet that you’re lame? Like lame as fuck.”
Deserved, Renjun thinks bitterly. He curls up tighter, right next to Mark’s one plate—and oh, he has a bowl too, actually.
Mark is silent for a moment. “Is Taeyong-hyung there?”
“Yup. Why, you wanna talk to him?”
“Yeah, put him on—”
“Taeyong-hyung!” Donghyuck yells. “It’s Mark! Mark Lee!”
There’s the sound of some shuffling and then a new voice, calmer, comes on over the phone. “Hello?”
“Hi, hyung,” Mark says. “I’m sorry to ask this of you but could you look after Donghyuck tonight? He just called me and he already sounds pretty far gone.”
Taeyong hums affirmatively. “No worries. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Thank you so much. We owe you one.”
“Don’t mention it. Get some rest, Mark.”
“You too, hyung.”
The call ends. Renjun hears the beeping disconnect tone.
Marks sighs again. The light seeping in through the cupboard goes dark. There’s another noise that must be Mark getting into bed—sheets rustling, weight shifting.
Renjun waits a couple minutes before he carefully slips back out. Mark is already snoring lightly, awash in the squares of yellow street-light coming in through the window. He forgot to close the blinds.
Renjun floats over to Mark now, closer than he would dare if Mark were awake. It’s hard to get a good look at him when Renjun has to hide every time Mark so much as glances in his general direction. He’s got a slight bump in his nose. A mole off to the side of it. Curved eyebrows.
Renjun’s original plan was to keep knocking over his clothes or pulling off his blanket or hovering ominously near him, but the more he watches, the less he thinks he’s going to go through with it. It’s strange how much more tired Mark looks when he’s asleep.
I’ll start tomorrow, Renjun thinks. Starting tomorrow, he’ll do everything he can to get rid of Mark Lee.
🌃
Mark wakes up early and as result, that means Renjun has to too.
What the fuck, Renjun thinks, solidifying back to consciousness, a dull throbbing already in his head. It doesn’t really hurt, not like it would’ve when he was alive, but it’s just enough to get the point across that even dead, Mark’s stupid default alarm is traumatizing.
Renjun sighs into the cobwebs around him. He would’ve never thought that this is what his afterlife would come to.
He pokes his head back down. Mark is already off in the bathroom, so Renjun takes the opportunity to mess with more of his stuff. Another few fly-bys and he gets that same dress shirt to fall, the hanger clattering dully onto the floor. He tries fiddling with the blanket again, but it was already so twisted up from the night that he thinks he might’ve accidentally made it better instead of worse.
You’re welcome, Renjun thinks sourly at the now half-made bed. Whatever. There are other ways to do this. He positions himself preemptively by the cabinets.
Mark stumbles out of the bathroom a few minutes later. Renjun rushes by fast. The doors rattle sinisterly in his wake. He also can’t help swatting at Mark’s head as he darts past him and back into the wall.
The results, though, are disappointing. Renjun doesn’t know how he’s already in such a rush ten minutes after waking up, but he is, and so much so that he hardly notices all of Renjun’s efforts. The sideswipe gets Renjun nothing but a distracted shake of the head. He doesn’t even seem to notice the cabinets are moving by themselves. The blanket he yanks flat but leaves sort of crooked anyways. The dress shirt, he picks up, looks appraisingly at for a moment, before taking it off the hanger to start putting it on.
Renjun can’t believe it. He’s never in all his life and death encountered someone who was this fucking dense.
Renjun’s going to strangle him. Or at the very least make his windpipe very chilly. He’s already marching over to do just that when Mark starts stripping and damn his ass is huge—
Renjun shoves himself into the ceiling. Self-inflicted time-out. He can’t—absolutely can not—be ogling at the enemy. Even if the enemy does have a big ass. And a lean waist. And nice shoulders. And—
Enough, Renjun tells himself, dragging a hand down his face. He turns over agitatedly, sort of rotisserie chicken style. He’s done. He’s over it. He’s so over it.
With one eye shut, he carefully drops his head through the drywall. Mark is thankfully fully dressed now, back in his salaryman uniform, and hurriedly packing his work bag. Renjun notices he tosses in a set of gym clothes too.
Ah, Renjun thinks, following him over to the entryway where he pulls on his shoes. So that’s why. He must do a lot of squats or something.
Mark opens the door to leave.
Then he pauses.
Turns back.
He looks out into his—Renjun’s—apartment. Taking it all in.
He raises a hand up halfway, brings it down, and shuts the door behind him.
Renjun watches him walk all the way down the hallway until he pushes in that big metal door and is swallowed up by the stairwell.
Once Renjun is sure he’s gone, he lowers himself into the same spot Mark had been: half-in, half-out of that threshold. He raises a hand, his arm, in the same way Mark had done.
It feels like…a wave. A goodbye. But not a big one. Not a forever one.
See you later.
Renjun lowers it.
🌃
The sun goes down. Outside, the city lights turn on like a storm; trickling in when the shadows begin to grow longer, then all at once once darkness sets.
Mark still isn’t home. It’s already past eight. Renjun knows this not because Mark owns a clock, but because their neighbor in 325 does. Renjun phases back in through the front door after his third time going over to check in the last hour. He paces around the perimeter of the room, restless.
It took Renjun at least a hundred passes through that clothing rack to incrementally inch the rest of the shirts and jackets off the edge. He’s messed up the blanket again. Learned he can make a spooky sound if he flies through the hole of his guitar at the right speed. Went into the bathroom, knocked over a near-empty bottle of conditioner, and intensely judged his dismal lineup of products. Renjun is almost certain Mark buys his body wash from the discount shelf at the drugstore, but at least he moisturizes.
All of this to say, Renjun put in effort today. If it weren’t for this whole Mark situation, he probably wouldn’t have even woken up. He’d be off sleeping or not existing or whatever happens to ghosts when they’re unconscious. The least Mark could do is come back so Renjun can get rid of him properly.
Renjun sinks into the corner next to the guitar and scowls at the door until he hears that tell-tale click.
Mark walks in, slower than in the morning rush. His face is neutral-tired, the way people get when their day was neither good nor bad—just long. Renjun wonders briefly if he’s eaten. He must’ve, right? It’s already so late.
Mark steps out of his shoes and sets his work bag on the kitchen counter with a perfectly average amount of force. He walks over to his bed area and where Renjun has strewn all of his dress shirts across the floor. Without pause, he simply re-hangs each of them, like this is a completely ordinary occurrence and Renjun was oh-so-foolish to assume his clothes don’t regularly launch themselves off the rack. It doesn’t even need to be said that the blanket also goes completely unnoticed.
Renjun is stunned. He watches Mark pick up the same bundle of clothes he’d changed out of this morning and plod off to the bathroom. The shower turns on once again. Apparently, all this man does is use the bathroom and be oblivious.
He comes out a while later, skin damp, face freshly shaven. On top of it, he wears the exact same life-as-usual expression.
And Renjun already knows, but he takes the opportunity to steal into the bathroom anyways. He just needs to check.
The conditioner bottle’s been righted. Set back into its proper place.
Great. It’s just Renjun, a totally normal, orderly bathroom, and the wetness of lingering humidity.
By the time he resignedly returns to the main room, Mark’s already got a pair of airpods plugged into his ears. He’s curled up on his side, scrolling mindlessly through a feed of videos on his phone.
Renjun flies through the guitar anyways. Renjun has to at least try. The body and wood of it resonates with a hollow, mournful note.
But Mark is gone. As dead to the world as Renjun is.
He rips through the guitar again in frustration, the sound uglier this time around. Past the clothing rack, the sleeves swinging in the shallow wind. Right against the cabinets so the doors open and fall shut again. Old tricks by now, which means the same old results. Mark doesn’t even blink.
Blink, Renjun thinks suddenly. He races upwards. Rule three.
Electricity. The lights.
He gets next to it, partway into the ceiling, and sticks his hand right in. It doesn’t feel like anything to him, but the electricity jumps regardless. There’s that telltale pop. The light starts blinking on-off, on-off, flickering the way it does in all those horror movies he used to watch with Jeno. The room jolts between light and darkness.
That gets Mark’s attention. He finally looks up from his phone, brow furrowed. Renjun has to strategically tuck himself into the drywall so that he’s not visible while also still being able to see how Mark reacts.
Mark does nothing for the next couple moments. He just kind of stares at it, like he’s hoping it’ll stop if he waits long enough.
As if. Renjun redoubles his efforts, starts grabbing and twisting at the wires. His fingers, of course, go right through, and he honestly can’t tell if it’s helping, but it’s the principle of the matter. Mark is going to pay attention. Renjun is going to make sure of that.
When the flickering doesn’t stop, Mark stands up. Tilts his head to either side, trying to see if there’s anything visibly wrong with it. It’s too high to reach, though Mark makes a valiant attempt at tiptoeing. He’d need at least a step stool to get a real look. Renjun rolls his eyes. The man doesn’t even have kitchen chairs.
Mark rocks back onto flat feet with a small huff. His eyes are doing that thing again, the one that Renjun doesn’t like, where they get all big and brown and gooey. It’s even worse somehow, at this angle, with that blinking yellow brightness reflected off it, highlights against the relative dark.
Renjun almost falters. And just like yesterday, he thinks, unwillingly, it’s kind of cute .
Renjun punches his hand through the bulb and turns violently away. He hates that it’s kind of cute.
This is also probably why he doesn’t notice that Mark steps quietly out from under the light. He makes his way over to a panel on the wall and flick —
The switch gets flipped. The room goes black.
There’s some more shuffling. Mark has gotten back into bed. He doesn’t even bother going back to his phone, besides reaching over to plug it in. He just turns over and closes his eyes.
Renjun watches in disbelief, coming down from the ceiling and alighting on the edge of the bed. That’s it?
From the way Mark’s breathing evens out, the answer is apparently yes.
Renjun doesn’t like that answer. He sticks both his arms through Mark’s torso, in through his back, out right below his sternum. Waves them around aggressively.
It takes a while to get a real reaction out of Mark, longer than most people Renjun’s done this to. He curls up tighter first. Bundles up more of his blanket against him. A fine shiver runs down the length of his spine.
Good, Renjun thinks. Mark can ignore fallen clothes and knocked-over bottles and flickering lights, but he can’t ignore this.
A few minutes later, Mark sits up blearily, eyes half-open. Renjun can see how the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end—Mark rubs absentmindedly at the chill there, then stands up. Renjun has to reposition quickly, but he keeps his arms where they are. He follows close behind, wary.
Mark doesn’t really go anywhere though, simply crouches down and fumbles through one of his storage boxes. Renjun watches over his shoulder as his hands close clumsily around a wad of thick fabric. He pulls out a hoodie, shrugs it on, and flops back into bed.
Renjun is still there, imparting as much as much of his ghostly chill on him as he possibly can, but it’s no use. Mark is out again within a minute.
Renjun stays like this all night, phased in and out of Mark’s body. And Renjun’s not a quitter—he tries waving his arms more, waving his arms less, passing through Mark, sitting halfway on top of him—but when the sun rises and Mark is still sound asleep, he has to face the truth.
Apparently, there is a limit to even this. What little capacity Renjun thought he had to impact the world shrinks even more.
The room floods with the early morning: big, rich swaths of pink and gold.
Renjun returns to the ceiling. The day will not find him there.
🌃
Renjun tries. Renjun really does.
Everyday, he makes as massive of a mess in Mark’s apartment as he feasibly can. The moment Mark does his little half-wave to the emptiness and steps out the door, Renjun throws himself into everything that is not bolted down.
Every night when Mark comes back, Renjun tries to make his life a living hell. He follows Mark around and sticks his arms through his stomach and gives him middle fingers to his spleen. He swipes anything that is light enough to go flying, does his best to knock over whatever Mark is reaching for.
The night he comes home early enough to make himself instant ramen for dinner, it takes him five minutes to catch the wrapper and three attempts to pick up the seasoning packet from the floor. He eats out of his pot and over the sink and with a symphony of cabinets clattering around his head. If he attempts to watch TV, Renjun is there too, one hand dipping through the screen like he’s skimming the surface of a pond, the image on the other side noisy and distorted. If he doesn’t, then the lights above him flash like they’re about to explode.
(A couple days later, Renjun finds out they actually can explode. Not completely—there’s no flying glass or anything—but the internals short out in a big burst. It takes almost two hours of him repeatedly punching his hand through it, but the way Mark jumps the next time he flips the switch and it pops like a firecracker is worth it.
The next day after that, though, Mark brings back a step stool and several gigantic packages of lightbulbs, the kind you get from one of those big-box stores. Each one’s got a big 100 Count! emblazoned on the side of it.
Renjun does the calculations in head. He’d be better off waiting for Mark to die of old age at this point.)
And this is the problem. Renjun tries, but Mark is immovable. Unshakeable. Every morning, Mark picks up whatever Renjun has tossed on the floor to serve as his outfit for the day and silently says, to nothing, to nobody, see you later. Every night, he comes back and stands in the entryway for a second, eyes flickering around like he is looking for something, someone, to tell hello, I’m back. He slips his shoes off and calmly picks up whatever damage Renjun has done with nothing more than the occasional sigh. Sometimes, Renjun even thinks he finds it kind of funny. He’ll catch one side of Mark’s mouth quirked up into a half-smile as he chases that scrap of ramen packaging flying around his kitchen, or when he finds his shampoo wedged into his toilet seat, just barely saved from a watery grave.
As for everything else? Mark just shrugs and gives up. He turns off the TV when it becomes unwatchable and the lights when they become seizure-inducing and makes sure to toss on an extra layer or two before going to bed, because that’s apparently just the way things are now.
Renjun seethes. The fact that Mark won’t leave is one thing, but he can’t understand why anyone subject themselves to this. Doesn’t he care? About himself? About anything? Mark is alive, in a way Renjun will never be again, but he doesn’t act like it.
It only gets worse from there. Mark starts to accumulate more stuff. He finally gets a couple of barstools to put at the kitchen counter. A small laptop desk. His fridge starts to have real food in it—mostly the pre-packed stuff or leftovers, but it’s actual food nonetheless. He even gets one of those coffee machines with the little pods, and an actual mug to go with. The mug, of course, is awful. Renjun has never hated an inanimate object more in his life: size 96 impact font D-E-E-Z N-U-T-S followed by one of those horrifically ugly meme faces. Definitely some kind of gag gift that most people would’ve left to collect dust on the back shelf.
Not Mark. Now when he inevitably rushes out the door and leaves it still half-full next to the sink, Renjun has to stare at it all day. It’s a complete abomination. A blight on his apartment. A reminder that it isn’t his apartment anymore. Not really.
Mark still doesn’t own much, relatively speaking, but this is not how someone who intends to move out anytime soon acts. Renjun loses more ground with every passing day.
It’s a lazy Sunday evening, when Mark has half-dozed off to his Netflix show, that Renjun pulls out his last resort: secret rule number five. He’s been putting it off because there is a finality to it. If this doesn’t work, nothing else will.
If this doesn’t work, it’s over.
He charges in a dead-rush at Mark, towards his head. He knows how this should go, he just has to focus—
Renjun hits. Ricochets right off, thrown into a tailspin. His own head rings, and rings hard, reverberating as if someone’s struck it like a gong. It has been a while since he has felt pain this tangible.
How—how is this possible? How is any of this fucking possible? All Renjun wanted was to have something left in this world that’s his. The rage that floods him is suffocating. Tears build behind his eyes, hot and furious. Why won’t any of it work? Why can’t he do anything?
Below him, Mark comes to, rubbing his eyes, then curiously at the side of his head.
Renjun can’t take it anymore. He needs Mark Lee gone.
Renjun rushes down to him. Gale force wind, lashing rain. He needs Mark Lee to know.
“Why?” Renjun shouts. “Why won’t you—”
“Oh wow,” Mark says incredulously, staring back at him with those big, stupid eyes. “Hi there.”
All of the anger vanishes out of him, so quickly it feels like whiplash. Renjun suddenly can’t think. Renjun can’t think of anything but the way he can see himself, a reflection in the dark of Mark’s irises.
“What are you talking about?” he spits, eyes flickering across Mark’s face, trying to search for anything that could mean this was a coincidence. A mistake. He finds nothing—
(One day, a man walks into his apartment. He looks over on accident—on purpose—and meets Renjun’s gaze like he is still a person—)
“What do you mean hi there? You—you—” Panic rises. “You can see me?”
Mark suddenly looks a bit sheepish, though he doesn’t break away. Renjun is drowning. “Well, um, yeah. I guess. Yeah.”
He tilts his head a little bit to the left so he can see Renjun better. “Dang,” he says quietly. Genuine. Completely matter of fact. “You’re really cute.”
Renjun jerks himself back, farther away, his voice rising against his will. It breaks white and harsh, the crest of a tidal wave. “What? Don’t say—why would you—”
“Whoa, hey, hey, it’s okay,” Mark says, voice soft like he’s trying to calm him. “I’m sorry, you’re right, that was uncalled for. I just—are you alright? ”
The room spins around him. Mark can see him. Mark could see him this whole time. Mark knew.
Mark reaches a gentle, hesitant hand out to where Renjun trembles through every muscle in his non-existent body. “Hey, I’m sorry if I startled you. I promise I’m not going to hurt you—”
Renjun’s skin buzzes alight, all of it, from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes. Renjun feels it. Renjun feels it, where the back of Mark’s index finger brushes against his elbow.
That can’t be possible. None of this is fucking possible. Renjun is dead! Renjun can’t touch anything anymore! Least of all—
Mark holds Renjun’s fingers delicately, just the ends. It’s all he can reach. “You’re okay, yeah? Can you take a deep breath for me?”
Renjun can’t. Renjun’s head is going to shatter into a million pieces. He stares one more time at those warm, gooey brown eyes and shoots straight upwards. Through his ceiling and then the ceiling above that and the ceiling above that until he is panting, fighting for air underneath the open sky.
It is raining.
Renjun does not get wet.