Work Text:
Evidence of a Ghost: A Comprehensive List of Supernatural Happenings In the Yoon-Boo Household, by Yoon Jeonghan and Boo Seungwan
-
The windows have opened and closed without explanation multiple times. Both Jeonghan and Seungwan deny adjusting them.
-
Sometimes Jeonghan comes home and the radio is on. Jeonghan doesn’t listen to the radio and Seungwan insists that she would never turn on an American alt-rock station, anyway.
-
A cup broke and neither Jeonghan or Seungwan will take responsibility for it.
-
Jeonghan swears she saw someone on the couch once before Seungwan was home, but when she blinked, they were gone (Seungwan does not believe her).
-
Seungwan came home yesterday and everything in the apartment was moved about five centimetres to the right. Jeonghan says it was not her (Seungwan does not believe her).
-
The light was flickering a few days ago (it stopped once we changed the lightbulb, though).
-
Jeonghan has been having odd dreams about death. Subject unknown.
“This means literally nothing,” Wonwoo says flatly, frowning down at the piece of paper which Jeonghan and Seungwan have presented to her. It’s Sunday brunch, and Minghao and Junhui are hosting this week, which means that the food isn’t ready yet because the food is never ready when they get there if Minghao and Junhui are hosting. They always make too much of it, and Junhui is always trying some new recipe she didn’t plan enough time for. The rest of them have learned to anticipate it.
Jeonghan insisted that they come to Wonwoo first, because Wonwoo is smart, and if anyone knows about supernatural happenings, it’s her. Or, well — it might be Minghao. They definitely either know all about it, or think it’s ridiculous. It’s hard to tell with them sometimes.
Seungwan huffs, her arms crossed defensively. “What other explanation is there?!”
Wonwoo shrugs, handing back the paper. “Weak locks on the windows, Seungwan did it, Jeonghan did it, hallucination, Jeonghan did it, that was just a broken lightbulb, and honestly, unnie, I think you’re just getting old. It’s about time you had an existential crisis.”
Jeonghan huffs, then realizes a moment later that she’s unconsciously mimicked Seungwan’s posture. She makes a face and points aggressively at Wonwoo instead. “I am not. And I’ve had plenty of existential crises, thank you very much!”
“No you haven’t,” Seungcheol says tiredly, leaning over Jeonghan’s shoulder. Jeonghan glares at him. “I think you’ve been putting off all your difficult feelings for, like, the past twenty years. Wonwoo’s right, this is probably just, like, the last stage of your brain’s development.” Jeonghan continues glaring, so Seungcheol clarifies, “You know, ‘cause your frontal lobe finishes in your late twenties.”
“Stop pretending to be smart,” Jisoo intones wisely, uninterested in the conversation at large but always interested in ribbing on Seungcheol. “It’s twenty-one.”
“It is not.”
“Yes, it is,” she says serenely.
“I thought it was twenty-three?” Seokmin asks, confused, sabotaging Jisoo’s attempts to gaslight Seungcheol. Jisoo attempts to glare at him, but it doesn’t really work. It’s hard to be mad at Seokmin.
“It depends on the person, but it’s usually between twenty-one and twenty-four,” says Minghao, appearing in the doorway to intercede. They’re the expert, with their psychology degree, so that puts an end to the conversation. “Food’s ready, everyone.”
Jeonghan sits next to Minghao for brunch, sliding into the chair next to them before Mingyu can snag it instead. Junhui, of course, is on their other side, and Sooyoung cuddles up to Jeonghan as well, ignoring Wonwoo’s put-out sounds of complaint from across the table. Wonwoo gets Sooyoung cuddles whenever she wants; Jeonghan thinks she could stand to be a little less greedy.
“What do you think about ghosts?”
Minghao squints at her. “Why are you asking?”
Jeonghan perks up. “I’m so glad you asked!” She passes the folded sheet of paper to Minghao under the table. “There’s a ghost in my apartment.”
“A ghost?” Junhui, at least, seems interested in this information, even if Minghao looks like they’re about to roll their eyes. “That’s so cool, I love ghosts.”
“Wonwoo doesn’t believe in them,” Sooyoung inputs, about to devour a pot-sticker dumpling. “But I’m trying to convince her. She says she needs to ‘see it to believe it.’”
“I hate ghosts,” Minghao mutters, which is intriguing, because it does imply that they believe in ghosts. Most people don’t hate things they don’t believe exist. Minghao doesn’t usually hate things in general.
“I don’t think I hate this one,” Jeonghan contemplates. “They seem pretty normal.”
Minghao frowns at Jeonghan like she’s made a grave error. “I’ll come over tonight,” they say eventually, handing the paper back to Jeonghan. “I’m bringing Jeongguk.” They sound rather unenthused by the idea, but it’s not a complete rejection like she got from Wonwoo, so Jeonghan cheers, nuzzling her head on Minghao’s shoulder. This causes Sooyoung to lean over at an uncomfortable-looking angle to rest her head on Jeonghan’s shoulder, making a certifiable puppy pile (or, cat pile, really). Minghao sighs heavily but doesn’t swat her away, letting her cuddle up to them until Sooyoung starts feeding her baozi instead.
❝ 0. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Minghao shows up at the door with Jeon Jeongguk, amateur ghost hunter, around eight. Jeonghan had been starting to worry that they wouldn’t come.
“Hi, Jeonghan-noona! Myunghwa said you have a ghost?”
Jeonghan sighs, ushering them inside so they can sit at the table together. “Yes. We have a list.” She hands him the same list from earlier, and Minghao rolls their eyes with intention. Jeongguk, however, considers it with genuine investment. Jeonghan mentally moves him up several spots on her ‘favoured dongsaengs’ list.
“This is so cool,” Jeongguk whispers, staring down at the list with a little furrow in his brow. “I love ghosts.”
Jeonghan blinks. “I thought you were a ghost hunter.”
“Hunter?!” Jeongguk looks back up at her with disconcertingly wide eyes.
“Yes?”
“I’m a ghost enthusiast,” he corrects, a whine creeping into his voice. “A ghost connoisseur. A ghost lover. A ghost friend, even!”
“How many ghosts are you friends with?” Jeonghan inquires. It’s a genuine question, but Jeongguk seems even more put out when she asks it. Minghao sighs heavily, hell-bent on showing their disdain at every possible opportunity.
“None,” he mutters, avoiding eye contact. “But I want to be friends with them! And I’ve done a lot of research! I’m really super serious about this, noona, I promise.”
Frankly, it wouldn’t matter that much to Jeonghan if Jeongguk wasn’t serious about it, because this entire situation is quite unserious to begin with. She would like to figure out this ghost problem, sure, but she’s also not very pressed about it. It’s sort of a fun mystery, if she’s honest.
“I believe you, Jeonggukkie,” she says instead of any of that, because it seems like the reassurance Jeongguk needs. Sure enough, his eyes light up again, smile blooming.
“Okay! So, to start, I’ll need to get a feel of the apartment.” He ruffles through the tote bag he came armed with, procuring a UV flashlight a moment later. In his other hand he holds his phone, the camera set outward and on its thermographic setting, which he quickly sets to record, audio included. “Lead the way, noona!”
Bemused, she escorts Jeongguk through the apartment. He hesitates at every doorway, eyes darting around as if he’s going to spot the ghost any second now, then tentatively steps over the thresholds, occasionally stopping to squint at a wall or examine a piece of furniture. Jeonghan makes eye contact with Minghao behind his back and they shrug, apparently as confused as she is.
“Okay!” Jeongguk announces when they’ve regrouped in the kitchen, having gone through the whole apartment. “I’m getting some strong readings from your room, noona, and also the hall closet for some reason?”
“My room?” Jeonghan has no idea why the ghost would be haunting her, specifically. Maybe it just thinks her bed is comfy, or likes the ambiance. Her mattress is admittedly very nice.
“Yes. But don’t worry! I wasn’t getting any bad vibes or anything, so I think they’re probably friendly. Although they might be drinking your wine.”
“Huh?”
Jeongguk displays his phone on the table, scrolling through the footage he just took to find where he focuses on Jeonghan’s bed. There’s a sort of splatter of small dark spots throughout the room, and when Jeongguk focused his flashlight on them, their saturation fluctuated, going from bright blue to deep red and then back again before landing, albeit uncertainly, somewhere yellowish — very neutral.
“Okay,” Jeonghan says, “I’m seeing why you’d think the ghost hangs out in my room, but where are you getting the wine part from?”
“There’s a bit of a smell,” he intones, and Jeonghan is almost offended, but she actually has no idea why her room would smell like wine for any reason. It’s too random to have to do with her hygiene, which is why Jeongguk must have drawn that conclusion.
Jeonghan glances at Minghao, who does appear somewhat fascinated by what Jeongguk caught on camera, rewinding it with a furrowed brow. “Myunghwa? Did you get that, too?”
“The smell?” They look up and shake their head. “I wasn’t paying attention to that, though. Do you want me to check?”
Minghao and Jisoo are the wine experts, so Jeonghan agrees. They traipse back to her room and Jeonghan tries her best not to laugh at Minghao sort of just… sniffing the air, trying to scent out any loose wine. It’s kind of ridiculous. At one point they sort of sniff over the bed, where those weird spots on Jeongguk’s camera were, and Jeonghan loses it, breaking into a fit of giggles despite her best attempts.
“Unnie,” Minghao says disapprovingly, giving her a very flat stare. Jeonghan thinks they need to loosen up a bit. Even Jeongguk is laughing at this point.
“I am getting whiffs of something,” Minghao finally determines, hands on their hips, “but it’s hard to tell if it’s just placebo.”
Jeonghan tries her hand at sniffing the air (much more subtly than Minghao, if she does say so herself) and comes up with nothing. Not a single hint of grapes.
“Well,” she says, shrugging, “at least the ghost didn’t spill anywhere. Wine stains would be a bitch to get out of that blanket.”
With their ghost excavation completed, Jeongguk offers her a little gadget from his bag for further supernatural monitoring, if she so desires. “It’s a camera, like the one on my phone. You can set it up and see if it picks up anything, or if mine was just a fluke,” he explains, but Jeonghan politely declines. Seungwan would hate having a camera on them in any of their communal spaces, and Jeonghan isn’t exactly fond of the idea of it watching her sleep, either. Something about it is just unsettling, even if she put it there herself and is doing nothing of consequence.
“If the ghost shows up, you have to tell me,” Jeongguk implores on the way out, looking at her with those disconcertingly round eyes again. “I want to meet it! They can be my first ghost friend, and answer questions about all my ghost hypotheses. Please, Jeonghan-noona?”
“Of course, Jeonggukie. You’ll be the first person I call,” Jeonghan promises, entirely facetiously, because the first person she calls would definitely be either Seungwan (if she wasn’t present) or Jisoo (if Seungwan was there, so they could properly freak out). What Jeongguk doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
“Bye, unnie,” Minghao sighs, as if this brief expedition has taken several years off their lifespan. Jeonghan pats their head slightly more aggressively than usual for their cheek, then sends them off.
So: they’re haunted by a ghost who likes closets and Jeonghan’s room and who supposedly drinks her wine on the bed. As far as ghosts go, this one seems fairly decent, or at the least not harmful. If it spills on the bed, though, Jeonghan will be finding and killing them all over again.
❝ 1. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
On Wednesday, Jeonghan comes home from work, toeing off her shoes and groaning like she always does when there’s no one around to hear it. She rounds the corner wondering what’s in the fridge and —
There is an unknown person sitting at her kitchen counter.
She blinks twice, just to make sure she’s not hallucinating it. Then: “Hello. Are you a ghost?”
The person visibly startles. “Hello?” they say, a question, and Jeonghan frowns, waves a hand in front of their face to get their attention.
“Yes, hi, are you the ghost that’s been hanging around here lately?”
“You can see me? And hear me?” They sound deeply confused and somewhat awestruck by this revelation. Jeonghan takes this to mean that they are the ghost.
“No,” she answers flatly, shooting the ghost her most menacing glare. “I’m holding this conversation with myself. Yes, I can see and hear you.”
“Oh.” The ghost nods slowly, as if acclimating to this information. “Okay, shit. Cool.”
Jeonghan sighs. Of course the ghost in her apartment would also be the least communicative person in the world. “Okay,” she says decisively, sliding into the chair across the counter from them and letting her bag fall to the floor with a dull thunk. “Do you need a few more minutes to process that I can perceive you, or can we have an actual conversation?”
The ghost tilts their head, actually considering it. Jeonghan wants to bang her head on the counter. “I’m good,” they decide.
“Cool,” she echoes, trying not to lose her shit on this unalive individual. Who knows what ghosts are capable of? This one seems extremely harmless, and honestly pretty oblivious, but it’s the principle of the thing. “Who are you?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” the ghost says, as if they had meant to introduce themself to Jeonghan during one of the intervals wherein they weren’t sure if she could actually hear them but forgot. She’s beginning to think this ghost is a little bit of an idiot. “I’m Chwe Hansol.” He sticks out his hand for a shake and Jeonghan eyes it warily before trying — her hand falls right through. Hansol may look as solid as any other person does, but clearly, he’s not.
“Yoon Jeonghan,” Jeonghan provides, just so they’re on even footing. Hansol nods with a guilty little twinge to surprisingly earnest brown eyes.
“Yeah, I know,” he confesses, like it’s something he should be sorry about. Jeonghan raises an eyebrow, a wordless prompt to continue. “I kinda went through your mail. Just, like, to see who I was rooming with, you know?”
Right. “About that,” Jeonghan says, because she frankly could not care less about the ghost going through her mail — honestly, she’s sort of proud, in a roundabout way, given how little Hansol has managed to impress her so far. “Why are you in my apartment?”
Hansol straightens, like he’d been waiting for this question. “I don’t know,” he says, leaning forward. “I woke up here last week and freaked the fuck out, ‘cause I thought I was still alive and got, like, kidnapped or something, but then I accidentally walked through the wall when I was trying to get my bearings and, you know, alive people don’t do that.”
They certainly do not. Jeonghan ignores the strangely endearing image of a sleepy-brained Hansol stumbling around and running into a wall, even though it sounds hilarious. “So then I tried to leave, ‘cause I also, like, remembered I was dead, but if I stay away from here for more than twenty-four hours, I pass out and end up here again. It’s crazy — I’ve tried knocking myself out in, like, every other way, but it’s literally impossible. But I tried to get on a plane to go see my parents on the first day, then blacked out and woke up here before the flight was over. It’s like I teleported. Which, by the way, I cannot do, and trust me, I’ve tried. So I’ve just been crashing here. I try to stay out when either of you are home though. And if you are I usually hide in the closet until I can sneak out again. Which is kinda dumb ‘cause you can’t see me anyway, but I guess you can, actually? I dunno. It feels wrong though. Like I’m invading your personal space, because I guess I am. But, uh, yeah. I’ve been trying not to bother you.”
His unnecessary and rambling explanation notwithstanding, Jeonghan has no doubt that Hansol has, in fact, tried to teleport, along with a myriad of other things (including moving all of their stuff five centimetres to the right). Being a ghost sounds like a supremely boring existence. “So your non-corporeal form is for some reason bound to this apartment, you can’t teleport, you can’t sleep, you can walk through walls, and you somehow have enough of a grip on the material world to rifle through my mail, move everything in this apartment, break a cup, and sit on that chair,” Jeonghan sums up. Honestly, it sounds pretty standard for a ghost, with the exception of the apartment stuff. That is weird.
“Yeah. Sorry about the cup thing, by the way. And the prank. I was, like, really bored.” Jeonghan waves it off. He cleaned it up, so they cared more about the mystery than the cup anyway. “And people can’t see or hear me.” He frowns. “Except for you, I guess.”
That bit is interesting too, but frankly, Jeonghan is too busy worrying about the apartment-binding part of it to care much about that. Maybe she’s just special, and the universe super extra loves her, so it gave her the supernatural ability to communicate with ghosts. Hansol would be the first one she ever recalls meeting, but then again, maybe Hyejin from accounting and the ahjussi at the bus stop have been ghosts this whole time and she’s only realizing it now.
“Right,” Jeonghan says slowly, before getting to her feet. “Let’s test that.”
Hansol blinks. “But I’ve already tested it.”
“Yes, but I don’t trust your research methods,” Jeonghan says matter-of-factly. Hansol, for his part, at least doesn’t seem offended by this, still wearing that bland faced, milquetoast expression of his. “Now come on, get up. We’re testing your ghostly abilities.”
The first thing Jeonghan does is dig her phone out of her bag and call Seungwan.
“Hello?” she snaps. Jeonghan pays the attitude no mind, knowing that Seungwan’s work must be getting to her.
“Seungwanie, I need you to come home as soon as possible,” she says serenely, keeping her eye on Hansol as he stands like an NPC in the kitchen, seemingly lost without Jeonghan’s direction. “I have accosted the ghost.”
Hansol’s head whips up, his nose scrunched in apparent disapproval, at the same time as Seungwan makes a deeply incredulous noise on the other end. “Unnie, what the fuck are you talking about?”
Jeonghan frowns, tapping her foot on the floor impatiently. “The ghost, Seungwanie. The one in our apartment? I am holding it hostage in our kitchen.”
“I’m not being held hostage,” Hansol complains. Jeonghan ignores him.
There’s a beat of silence from Seungwan. “Unnie, I really don’t have time for your games right now,” she says, genuine tiredness seeping into her voice, and Jeonghan’s heart pangs with sympathy. She knows all too well what it’s like to deal with egotistical men all day, and in the entertainment industry it might be even worse than in law.
“I’m not joking, baby,” she says softly, trying to console Seungwan through the phone. “The ghost is in our kitchen. His name is Chwe Hansol. Honestly, he’s kind of boring, not at all what I’d expect from a supernatural being.”
“Hey,” comes Hansol’s voice. Jeonghan once again ignores him.
“Come home when you can and unnie will order you food, okay? We can even kick the ghost out if you want.”
Seungwan sighs, long and heavy. Jeonghan’s still not sure if she believes her, but she agrees anyway, and promises to text Jeonghan when she’s driving home.
With that settled, Jeonghan turns back to Hansol, eyeing him skeptically. “Okay! Test one: walk through the table for me.”
Hansol groans like he finds this whole thing a bit laborious, but he does as Jeonghan asks, stepping through the table with ease. His lower body disappears as he passes through it, though his head and shoulders remain visible, floating through the air just like they would if he were walking normally. Jeonghan squints. “Interesting. What does it feel like?”
Hansol shrugs, now at the other side of the table, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. “I can’t really feel stuff the same way as before. Sometimes I get, like, impressions of things, and especially when I try to interact with the physical world, but for the most part it’s kinda numb. I think my nerve endings are shot.”
That’s kind of sad, actually. Jeonghan refuses to feel any type of way about it and instead focuses on her scientific observations. She did a physics minor for her undergrad, she’s definitely qualified for stuff like this.
“On that note,” she instructs, “try picking up my bag for me.”
Again, Hansol does as he’s instructed, and ends up holding Jeonghan’s purse like any other person. “Great. Put it in my room for me, will you?”
“I’m not your lapdog, you know,” Hansol comments with a deep frown, even as he trudges down the hall to Jeonghan’s room regardless. “Just ‘cause I’m dead doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want.”
“Oh, Hansol-ah,” Jeonghan laughs, sitting at the table again with her legs crossed, “I always do what I want.”
Hansol returns, still pouting, without the bag. “What now?”
“Have you tried taking off your clothes?”
❝ 2. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
By the time Seungwan comes home, Jeonghan and Hansol have gone through everything on Jeonghan’s mental list, with conclusive answers about each of his prospective abilities. It turns out that Hansol has tried taking off his clothes, and discovered that he can get naked. Once he does, his clothes disappear into thin air — but when he wants them back, he only has to concentrate for them to reappear again. They’re the only objects that appear to have some metaphysical connection to Hansol’s self. It’s quite inexplicable and extremely random, but Jeonghan’s not complaining — it would be rather awkward for Hansol to be perpetually naked on top of everything else.
Other than that, they confirm that he can’t eat or drink anything (so Jeongguk and Minghao’s hypothesis about him drinking Jeonghan’s wine was unequivocally wrong, thanks a lot,) and can’t wear or summon any accessories, like watches or earrings. He can’t cause himself bodily harm, and natural forces like fire and water don’t seem to affect him — Jeonghan has him hold his head underwater and put his hand in a flame for those, while Hansol complains all the while. The water one comes as a bit of a surprise to her: “You can breathe underwater?!”
Hansol stares blankly, head still in the sink, hair wafting around in the water. “I mean, I’m not really breathing.”
Right. She’d forgotten — no breathing, no heartbeat. It’s like his vocal box, brain, and spinal cord are working independent of his heart and lungs, sustained by some other lifeblood. He can hold a knife, but as soon as he tries to use it on himself, it passes right through — no blood, no pain. (He can use it on other things, though. Jeonghan has him cut an apple in half and his eyes get all wide and spooked when it works, slicing through the fruit cleanly. He rinses off the knife before placing it back in the chopping block and says, delicately, “Maybe let’s stay away from weapons from now on.” Jeonghan doesn’t know if that means he has secret violent impulses she should be concerned about, but at least her ghost has manners.)
From there, they try for various supernatural powers — he’s a ghost, after all, so what’s a little bit of telekinesis to top it all off? Hansol shows a disappointing lack of further magical abilities, though, and Jeonghan is sure to make her displeasure known.
“You can’t even fly?! Being a ghost is so lame.”
“Sorry, can you walk through walls?”
They’re chilling on the couch, taking a break from it all, when Seungwan comes home, her keys rattling on their chain as she calls out, “Unnie, I’m back! You better not have been kidding about buying me food, because I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”
Hansol laughs and Jeonghan ignores him, beaming at Seungwan. “Seungwanie! Say hi to Hansol, he’s our ghost.”
Hansol waves. “Hi.”
Seungwan stares blankly at Jeonghan before looking around the apartment like she’s going to find Hansol hiding in the cupboards. “What?”
Jeonghan frowns and gestures next to her, where Hansol is. Her hand passes through his arm a bit as she gesticulates, and she can’t tell if it really feels like a warm gust of wind, or if it’s placebo. Probably placebo. “He’s right here, baby.”
“Unnie, I really don’t have the energy for this right now.” The look on Seungwan’s face says she is not playing, and Jeonghan pauses, studying her face for a moment before turning to Hansol, who looks equally puzzled. His confused face is really funny, like a cartoon more than a real emotion. It’s cute.
“Huh,” he says. “It really is just you, then?”
“Apparently,” Jeonghan muses, and Seungwan does a double take from where she’s padding across the hall, giving Jeonghan an odd look. It must seem like she’s talking to herself, but Jeonghan ignores all the ways she could be called crazy for this and continues conversing with Hansol anyway. It’s not like he’s actually in her head. “You’ve never encountered anyone else who’s been able to see you?”
Hansol shakes his head. “And you’ve been a ghost for how long, again?”
“A week.”
Jeonghan frowns, leaning back on the couch. A week is a long time, especially when you have almost nothing to do and no one to interact with. As little as she may trust Hansol’s research methods, he hasn’t lied to her yet, and she has no reason to believe that he is now. “Seungwanie,” she calls out as Seungwan returns, undoing her hair from its neat bun with one hand, her makeup scrubbed off, “you really can’t see anyone?”
“Just you,” Seungwan mutters, only half paying attention.
“Hansolie, go pick up something.”
Hansol stands to do just that, but Seungwan turns on Jeonghan with a pissed off expression before he can get to it. “Who the fuck is Hansol?”
“The ghost,” Jeonghan says.
Seungwan groans, collapsing into her seat at the dining table and burying her head in her hands. “Can we please do this,” she grumbles, “after the food arrives?”
Right. Jeonghan orders samgyeopsal and banchan and sits across from Seungwan. Hansol hovers awkwardly until Jeonghan tells him to just sit with them, and then she looks at Seungwan expectantly as he pulls out a chair for himself. Unfortunately, Seungwan is steadfastly ignoring her, punching something into her phone.
Jeonghan is bored.
“So,” she says to Hansol, trying to keep her voice down so as not to bother Seungwan, “where do your parents live?”
Hansol looks at her in surprise. Jeonghan clarifies, “Because you tried to fly to them?”
“Oh, right.” His expression clears and he drums his fingers on the tabletop, a three-four rhythm. “They’re in New York. I was born there, but we moved back here when I was still really young.”
New York. Jeonghan’s never been — Jisoo took her and Seungcheol to L.A. two summers ago, but that’s the only part of the USA Jeonghan’s stepped foot in. Her English is abysmal. “Do you speak English?”
Hansol nods. “Yeah, my mom doesn’t really know Korean, so…”
He must be fluent, then. Impressive. “I speak Japanese,” she says uselessly. Jisoo says she has a complex about it.
“Oh, that’s cool.”
“Yes.” It is cool. She’s glad Hansol noticed. “Are y—”
“Unnie, you are freaking me out.” Seungwan slams her phone down, interrupting apropos of nothing. Jeonghan had honestly thought they were being pretty quiet, but apparently not — she casts a grimace towards Hansol and a guilty look at Seungwan.
“Sorry, baby. Not until the food arrives.”
Seungwan looks about ready to give her a piece of her mind regardless, but she agrees to the stipulation, too tired to bother. Jeonghan mouths her apology at Hansol, who just shrugs and returns to staring into space, just like he was when Jeonghan walked in on him a few hours ago. Dissociation is a talent, and Hansol appears to have gone pro.
Thankfully, their food arrives not long after that, and Jeonghan collects from the door with a thank you to the delivery boy. Once they have their food in front of them and have begun to eat, Seungwan finally broaches the topic.
“Is there really a ghost?” She sounds hesitant, which is probably fair. They may have both been conspiring about it earlier, but it’s a whole other thing to actually have one in their apartment. It’s a whole other thing for Jeonghan to see it, and for Seungwan not to.
“Yes.”
“No bullshit?”
“No bullshit.”
Seungwan groans, rubbing her palms over her eyes. “Is it… I dunno, is it nice?”
“He has been very respectable so far.” Hansol scoffs next to her but doesn’t attempt to intervene. “His name is Chwe Hansol. Hansol, say hi to Seungwanie.”
Both Seungwan and Hansol look at Jeonghan like she’s certifiably insane, but Hansol still obediently says, “Hi, Seungwan-ssi,” because he’s polite like that.
“He said hi,” Jeonghan informs her happily.
“Well… hello, then,” Seungwan greets awkwardly. “Ugh, this is so weird. Are you sure you’re not hallucinating?”
Jeonghan glares and holds out her chopsticks for Hansol to take. He stares at her blankly, and she waves them around as emphasis. “Take the fucking chopsticks,” she hisses when he fails to take the hint yet again. His expression clears immediately.
“Ohhhh.”
Hansol takes the chopsticks. Although she’d been watching the whole exchange, Seungwan very nearly jumps out of her fucking skin.
“What the fuck,” she gasps, clutching her chest with wide eyes.
Jeonghan rolls her eyes and takes her chopsticks back from Hansol. “I told you there was a ghost.”
“Yeah,” she says faintly, hand still to her heart like the drama queen that she is.
“Anyway, Hansolie can’t leave the apartment for more than twenty-four hours for some reason,” she informs her, reaching for some more samgyeopsal with her returned chopsticks. “Other than that he seems like a normal ghost, I think.”
“You said I was boring,” Hansol points out, and Jeonghan tilts her head, conceding.
“Although he is boring.”
“I — okay. Sure! Why not. There’s a ghost in our apartment and only Jeonghanie-unnie can see or hear him, sure, that’s fine! This is just life now, I guess!” Seungwan rambles to herself, apparently still freaked out.
“He’s really very harmless,” Jeonghan says in an attempt to assuage her worries, even though she’s still not actually sure about the knife thing. Hansol is probably harmless, though, which is close enough for the time being. If he turns out to be a psychopath Jeonghan will just find a way to kill him again. “Couldn’t hurt a fly.”
“I actually could,” Hansol inputs, because apparently this is important information which needs correcting. “Just, like, factually. I have definitely hurt flies before.”
Jeonghan, for the nth time, ignores him.
“Okay,” Seungwan says, breathing managed and face no longer quite as flushed as before, returning to face Jeonghan with a steely expression. “How old is he?”
Good question. Jeonghan turns to Hansol. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-six,” Hansol says. Jeonghan turns back to Seungwan.
“Twenty-six.”
“You didn’t think to ask him that before?!”
“No, we were mostly testing his ghostly abilities,” she explains. Really, she barely knows anything about Hansol as a person at all, other than that he was born in New York and, apparently, is twenty-six. “He can’t even float, by the way — isn’t that such a scam?”
“How old are you?” Hansol asks, head tilted curiously.
“I’m twenty-eight,” Jeonghan says, before pointing at Seungwan with her chopsticks. “She’s the same age as you.”
“Oh. Can I call you noona?”
Jeonghan shrugs. “Sure.”
“What just happened?” Seungwan asks, her eyes darting between Jeonghan and the seat Hansol is sitting in, which she looks right through.
“We established that he can call me noona.”
“He’s a guy?” Seungwan sounds particularly horrified by this revelation, which is also fair, Jeonghan thinks. She turns once again to Hansol.
“Are you a guy?”
Seungwan gapes in the background, but Jeonghan’s focus is on Hansol as he shrugs again, scratching behind his ear. She’s pretty sure he can’t get itchy, so it must be a mindless habit, something to do with his hands. “Nah. I don’t really, like, fuck with gender like that.”
Jeonghan nods and turns back to Seungwan. She’s beginning to feel a bit like a parrot, and she doesn’t think she likes it. “He doesn’t fuck with gender like that. So no.”
“This is so fucking weird,” Seungwan breathes, brow pinched. “Okay. Fine. There’s a twenty-six year old non-binary ghost in our apartment.” She pauses, returning to her food before speaking again. “What does he look like?”
Jeonghan blinks in surprise. Honestly, she’d kind of forgotten about that part. “Well, he’s not disfigured or anything, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“No, I figured that much. I mean — what does he look like?”
This seems like a somewhat inappropriate conversation to have with Hansol sitting right there with them, but this is a weird enough situation for all of them that she doesn’t comment on it. Instead, she just turns to study Hansol, taking a good look at him for the first time. He’s already looking back, an open, curious expression on his face, like he really wants to know — what she thinks of him, maybe, but more likely if anything about his appearance has changed since he died, if she’ll describe his eyes as hazel and he’ll be shocked because they used to be brown. They forgot to test whether he can see himself in the mirror.
Jeonghan swallows and faces Seungwan again. “Around my height, maybe a little taller. Lanky. Hazel eyes. His hair’s pretty fluffy, it looks soft. Not ugly, overall.”
Hansol laughs while Seungwan gasps in shock at her audacity. “Unnie.”
“What?! It’s the truth!”
“I know I look like death, but I think I’m a little better than not ugly,” Hansol jokes. Jeonghan hides her smile in a bite of kimchi rice.
“Fine,” she acquiesces, even though Seungwan can’t hear him. “Reasonably attractive. Sort of your type, honestly, Seungwanie.” (It’s not strictly true, but it’s not not true, either. Mostly Jeonghan says it to tease.)
Seungwan turns beet red and hastens to find something to throw at Jeonghan. It ends up being a balled-up napkin, which Jeonghan catches, cackling to herself all the while. “Shut up.” Again, her eyes dart over to where Hansol is sitting, looking a little sheepish himself. “It’s so weird that only you can see him.”
It is weird, and Jeonghan doesn’t really know what to make of it, but she’s trying to go with the flow. There’s no point in being combative about something that’s already happening.
“I guess the universe just likes me,” she boasts. Seungwan laughs again before diving into a long-winded rant about two of her coworkers. Jeonghan listens carefully; Hansol sits there, silent, watching.
❝ 3. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
“Are you and Seungwan dating?”
It’s the first thing that Hansol asks when they’re alone, Seungwan having disappeared to take a shower and get ready for bed. Jeonghan still has to do her nighttime routine herself, but she let Seungwan have first dibs, so now she’s sitting on the couch reading the book Minghao last gave her, a poetry collection translated from Mandarin. Apparently it was pretty hard to get.
She’s not really sure what to do with the ghost, with Hansol, in the room — he feels sort of like a guest, but not one that anyone invited, and not one who can do most things that a guest would. Jeonghan has no idea how to entertain him, and she’s not sure how interested she is in the prospect anyway.
Jeonghan looks up with her eyebrows raised. “Why? Are you homophobic?” It seems highly unlikely, given the not fucking with gender thing, but she sort of wants to see the look on Hansol’s face.
Sure enough, he sputters, features screwing up comically. “No. I just — was wondering. ‘Cause you live together, and you call her ‘baby,’ and everything.”
Jeonghan hums and returns her attention to her book. “No. Seungwan and I are just friends. I call a lot of my dongsaengs ‘baby,’ including men. It’s not a romantic thing.”
“Oh.” A beat, and then, “So you’re a lesbian?”
Jeonghan looks up again. “Is that a problem?”
“No! No, definitely not. Sorry. My social abilities are kinda shot from, like, a week being dead. Sorry. That was rude to ask.”
Jeonghan laughs, because Hansol’s sincerity is kind of endearing, and it’s not like she was offended anyway. “It’s okay. Did you have any other questions?”
Hansol lights up at the opportunity, sitting up straighter on instinct. He’d been waiting, apparently — Jeonghan hates that she finds this cute. She interrupts before he can ask the first one with a palm in the air, stopping him. “Hold on. If you have questions, then I do too, okay? We go one for one.”
“Sure,” he agrees easily, and then barges ahead immediately. “You’re a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
Jeonghan clicks her tongue against the top of her mouth. “That’s another question, Hansolie, you’ll have to wait.” Hansol pouts, and Jeonghan takes her sweet time deciding on a question, just to make him sit in it. “You said you were born in New York. Do you have an English name?”
“Oh, yeah — Vernon.”
“Vernon,” Jeonghan repeats, testing it out on her tongue. It’s not an easy one, in terms of pronunciation — Jeonghan had been expecting something like Harry or Howard to go with the H in Hansol, but she supposes that if your parents pick the name for you it’s probably different than an elementary school English teacher assigning you one from a top one hundred list. “Vernon. Am I saying it right?”
“That’s another question, Jeonghan-noona,” Hansol teases, and Jeonghan smiles before she can stop it. “What kind of law?”
“Corporate.” Hansol makes a disgusted face and Jeonghan laughs again. It’s the sleazy choice, she knows, but it pays well, and she’s good at it. “Now, Vernon, am I pronouncing it right?”
He grins, toothy and wide. “Yup. So, if you work in corporate law, why do you have a roommate?”
The question startles a full laugh out of Jeonghan. “I don’t like living alone,” she answers honestly. “Do you have any siblings?”
Hansol’s smile shutters, and Jeonghan almost feels bad for asking. It can’t be easy to think about, because no matter how alive he might seem, he’s not. It’s a strange fucking existence — it freaks Jeonghan out just to think about, actually. She forces her mind away before she can spiral about it. “Yeah. My younger sister, Sofia.”
Jeonghan makes a little noise of acknowledgment and lets Hansol move on. “What about you? You seem like an only child.”
“No, actually — I have a younger sister as well. Her name is Jiwoo.”
“Huh,” Hansol says, a small expression of shock. “Well — how do you feel about cats?”
“I like them. Seungwanie and I considered getting a kitten a year or so ago, but we decided we wouldn’t have time to take care of it.” Hansol nods like she’s just passed a test and Jeonghan again feels herself press down a smile. “If you could be a rock, what kind would you be?”
Hansol looks at her with a furrowed brow. “What?”
That’s another question, but Jeonghan will let it slide. She tells him as much and relishes in the huff of laughter it gets her in response, the upturned tick of his mouth. “You heard me. If you could be a rock, what kind would you be?”
To his credit, Hansol actually puts thought into his answer instead of taking a cop-out and answering with the first one he thinks of, or some basic shit like a pebble (which is what Jisoo always responds with, just to be annoying). “Obsidian,” he finally responds, with finality. “I just think it’s cool. But why the rock question?”
“I have a pet rock.”
“You have a pet rock,” Hansol repeats, brow furrowed as he takes in this information.
“His name is Doljjong,” Jeonghan provides unnecessarily. “He is currently wearing a cowboy hat.” Jisoo made him one when she went through her sewing phase, along with a few other hats and accessories. He’s a very dapper rock, all things considered. “What do you do at night since you can’t sleep anymore?”
Hansol frowns, stretching his arms over his head. When he leans back against the couch it doesn’t shift to accommodate his weight, and it’s so strange, every little reminder that Hansol isn’t alive anymore. She wonders if he still classifies as human, or if being a ghost is a whole different species. She doubts there’s any research on it. “Usually I go to clubs. They’re not, like, my favourite scene, especially if I’m alone, but it’s harder to listen to music in the daytime. On my, like, second day, I tried to bring your radio out with me and realized that people could see me carrying stuff when this woman screamed at, like, a floating radio, I guess. Anyway, it’s too much hassle. People aren’t paying as much attention at night.”
Jeonghan knew it couldn’t have been Seungwan listening to American rock. He must have left it on a few times when he went to hide in the closet.
“What music do you like, Jeonghan-noona?”
“I mostly listen to ballads. Seungwanie calls it ‘old people music.’”
“You’re not that much older than us,” he points out.
“I know, Seungwan’s just a brat.” Jeonghan crosses her legs, adjusting herself as the water finally shuts off in the bathroom. “What were you doing before you died? Were you a student, or…?”
Hansol makes a face. “Nah. I’m a producer — or, I was, I guess. Mostly for K-pop.”
Jeonghan’s eyebrows raise. “And you made a living that way?”
“Yeah,” he says simply, like it’s not a big deal, even though Jeonghan knows how hard it is to get a break in that industry. Seungwan has heard stories, knows all sorts of people, and Sooyoung has enough trouble already as a choreographer, so Jeonghan can’t imagine it’s much easier for producers.
“Interesting.” She makes a mental note to look up some of his music later, then almost immediately discards the idea, because searching Chwe Hansol’s name right now will almost certainly lead to his obituary, possibly articles about his death — inappropriate, she thinks, for her to read on her own.
“What does Seungwan do?” Hansol asks, changing the subject.
“Speak of the devil,” Jeonghan mutters as Seungwan trudges out of the bathroom, looking half asleep already. “She’s a producer for Channel Fullmoon’s variety shows.”
“Youngsuk-oppa wishes he were me,” Seungwan mumbles, clearly only half paying attention and only able to pick up half of the conversation anyway, but it draws a laugh from Hansol all the same. “Unnie, I’m going to bed. Please don’t be loud talking with your ghost.”
Jeonghan frowns. Normally she’d wish Seungwan goodnight, but there are more pressing matters to deal with right now. “He’s not my ghost.”
Seungwan waves a hand limply in the air, finishing her glass of water and starting down the hall towards her room. “You’re the only one who can see him, so he’s your ghost.”
She still disagrees, but Seungwan’s clearly tired, so instead of arguing further she lets Seungwan shut the door behind her. Turning back to Hansol, she says sternly, “You are not my ghost.”
“I didn’t think I was,” he remarks placidly, and Jeonghan nods, satisfied. “It is weird that only you can see me, though. Like, I don’t even know you. It could be anyone — my family, Chan, Jihoon — but I get stuck with a random stranger and her apartment? This sucks, man.”
At first, Jeonghan considered being annoyed by the disrespect, but by the end of his small rant, she mostly just feels bad. “Who are Chan and Jihoon?”
Hansol’s expression softens immediately, though the tense line to his shoulders remains the same. “They’re my best friends. I’ve known Chan since we were little kids, and we met Jihoon in college. He and I work together, now, too — it’s sick.” The smile that had been growing on his face, gummy and bright, fades faster than it came. “Or, I guess, we used to work together. Before I died.”
Jeonghan’s face must be doing something exceptionally off-putting, because when his eyes land on her again, he bursts out laughing despite the heavy atmosphere. “Noona, are you okay?”
“That’s sad,” she says honestly, genuinely upset on Hansol’s behalf. It is fucked up that he’s here, that she can see him instead of any of the people that he loves, that he can’t visit his family because the travel takes too long.
“It’s not sad,” he laughs, like an absolute fucking freak, “it’s happy. I got to do what I loved with my best friend until I died. That’s, like, the dream.”
“No, it’s still sad. That’s — oh, what the fuck, Hansol,” she gripes, wiping the back of her hand over her eyes, blinking back tears. “Why would you say that?!”
“I didn’t say anything.” He’s still smiling, the remnants of laughter visible in his eyes, but it’s tempered down to something more mellow now.
Jeonghan huffs. “I don’t care. I’m going to shower and go to bed and I hope you disappear and never show up again because the universe sends you to go haunt your friends instead,” she threatens, even though Hansol keeps smiling at her. “Fuck off, what the hell.”
In the shower, under the warm spray of water, Jeonghan’s pissy facade crumbles. It’s sad — it’s devastating, actually, that Hansol, someone so young and full of life, got stripped of it so early, that he’s stuck with Jeonghan now. Now that she thinks of it, it’s almost a unique kind of torture: being denied the absolution of the afterlife, stuck in limbo, forced to walk on Earth without being allowed to live in it. She thought ghosts were pretty cool before, but she might have to reconsider. Now ghosts just seem sad.
Salty tears mix with warm water and stumble together down the drain, and Jeonghan wonders why she’s crying for a stranger, why she cares so much at all. It’s just — it seems cruel, is all. To force two people like them together. To give Jeonghan someone so lonely, and to give Hansol someone so terrible at being alone.
It’s fine — it doesn’t matter, she tells herself, not in the grand scheme of things. She and Hansol don’t have to be friends, they don’t even have to interact. Jeonghan can help him move on, to the afterlife or the void or the next life, wherever it is he’s meant to be going, and that can be that. Nothing more, nothing less: she can help him without hurting herself.
Eyes dried, exhausted of her tears, she exits the shower and gets ready for bed. Hansol is nowhere to be seen, so Jeonghan goes to bed without a goodbye. She considers texting Jisoo, but — no, she’s too tired for that now. She’ll tell her everything at work tomorrow. For now, she’ll be alone.
❝ 4. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Jisoo wants to know how Hansol died.
“I don’t know,” Jeonghan tells her, absently typing file details into a comprehensive document for easier access later. “I didn’t ask.”
Jisoo tilts her head. “Why not?”
“It’s rude, isn’t it?”
“I mean, he’s already dead,” she points out, shrugging. “So I don’t think so.”
“I don’t know either way,” Jeonghan says firmly, trying to put the topic to rest. “You can look it up if you want.”
Jisoo does just that, clicking away on her laptop with her brow furrowed, muttering “Chwe Hansol” under her breath. Her face betrays nothing when she clicks enter, though her eyebrows do raise a few clicks later. “He’s handsome,” she observes, sounding surprised. “Like a movie star, or something.”
Jeonghan presses the space bar more aggressively than usual. “He looks nothing like Gong Yoo. Or Park Bogum.”
“No, not like them — like a classic American star, or something. James Dean.”
Jeonghan looks up James Dean to prove Jisoo wrong, but she can actually see a bit of a resemblance. She lies and tells Jisoo otherwise anyway. “His face shape is completely different!”
“His cheekbones are different,” Jisoo relents. “Still, though.”
“No,” Jeonghan dismisses, “I don’t think so.”
Jisoo looks at her skeptically, but lets it go without further argument. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“Try to set him free or whatever, I guess,” Jeonghan says, rolling her eyes at the dramatic phrasing even as she says it. “There’s no way he’s just doomed to haunt our apartment forever.”
Jisoo nods. “I’ll help. I’m sure there are ghost subreddits out there.”
Jeonghan squints at her, her hands paused over the keyboard. “You just want to meet him, don’t you.”
“Aigoo, you know me so well.”
Jeonghan agrees anyway, because she’ll take all the help she can get. It seems like a massive undertaking, trying to release a ghost’s soul, so she’s not quite hubristic enough to think she can do it all on her own. Besides, Jisoo wouldn’t take no for an answer anyway — she never puts up with Jeonghan’s bullshit like that.
They agree that Jisoo can come over later, and that she can bring Seungcheol along, because Seungcheol follows her around like a lost puppy anyway. Honestly, Jeonghan’s surprised he didn’t get a job at their firm just to be around her more, but then again, Jisoo might have given him a hard no on that front. She always says she believes in healthy time away from her husband, which Jeonghan knows is bullshit because Jisoo would be perfectly happy on an island alone with Seungcheol forever, but Jisoo insists anyway because apparently she thinks Seungcheol’s clinginess is unhealthy. Jeonghan just thinks it’s sort of pathetic, in a sweet kind of way, but neither of them have ever asked her, so she keeps that opinion to herself.
Something they didn’t account for, she realizes when she drops her keys in the basket, is the fact that Hansol might not actually be there for Jisoo to meet. He’s not on any sort of schedule, and Jeonghan obviously has no way to reach him if he’s not physically (metaphysically?) in the apartment.
“Hansol?” she tries, calling out his name as she hangs up her blazer. “Are you there?”
Hansol sticks his head through the living room wall, grinning stupidly. “You called?”
Jeonghan startles at the movement, but it quickly fades into a laugh when she actually registers it. “You’re really milking the walking through walls thing, huh?”
“Duh.” Hansol’s still grinning, and he emerges from the wall to stand in front of Jeonghan, hands shoved in his pockets. “It’s my only superpower, I’ve gotta make the most of it.”
“Actually, we haven’t tried a few other things yet,” she interjects, already prepared with another mental list of Hansol/Ghost Experiments she’s been thinking of on and off throughout the day. “Like, what happens if you try to walk off the balcony?”
Hansol stares at her. Jeonghan bustles past him, careful not to let their bodies brush. She doesn’t know what the ghost-touching etiquette is — it probably differs from person to person (ghost to ghost?) even though it can’t really be considered touching. Either way, Jeonghan’s not eager to walk right through Hansol’s soul any time soon.
“Are you serious?” Hansol asks belatedly. His people skills are still catching up to him, Jeonghan thinks.
“Of course.” She opens the fridge and fishes out an orange from the crisper, then fills herself a glass of water. “It’s not like you’d get hurt.”
Hansol is looking at her like she’s crazy, having followed her to the kitchen with footsteps that make no sound. “You want me to walk off a balcony. You do realize that I still have, like, a brain, right? And reflexes and stuff? You can’t blame me for not being excited about it.”
It’s not a no, Jeonghan notes, pleased with herself. “No, but it’s for science. Don’t you believe in science, Hansol-ah?”
“I’ve always been more of a humanities person,” he grumbles, but it’s an empty protest. “When are we doing this?”
“Later,” she says dismissively, gathering her orange peels into a little mound on the countertop to dispose of later. “My best friend’s coming over tonight, by the way. She wants to meet you.”
“You told your best friend about me?” Hansol sounds surprised, but Jeonghan doesn’t know why he would be.
“Obviously. Am I supposed to just not tell anyone about the ghost in my apartment?”
It’s a rhetorical question, but Hansol scrunches up his face like he’s genuinely considering the answer. Jeonghan barges onward before he can. “Anyway, I have an experiment for this weekend as well. At midnight on Saturday you’ll leave the apartment, and stay out as long as you can. I’ll be here all day, and we’ll test the apartment-tying thing. Hypothetically you should be transported here at midnight on Sunday, but I’ll be around to record it if you show up before or after then.”
“You’re gonna pull an all-nighter?” Hansol looks concerned, and Jeonghan is almost offended by his lack of faith in her.
“I will have you know that I pulled them all the time in uni,” she snips, popping an orange slice into her mouth.
Hansol seems doubtful, but he doesn’t question it further. “Okay. I’ll try to see my parents again. Maybe I’ll make it all the way to New York this time.”
Jeonghan tries to do the math in her head. It was eleven hours to fly from Seoul to L.A., so it must be a few more than that to New York — fourteen, maybe. Hansol can’t very well hail a taxi, so he’d have to take the bus to the airport, which means another hour or so in transit time. Then there’s finding the flight, and potentially an additional wait depending on when it departs. He’ll have to get to his parents’ when he’s there, too, and Jeonghan has only ever heard bad things about the New York public transportation system. It’s rough, though certainly helped by Hansol not having to go through security or follow any other airfare protocol.
“I wonder what would happen if you walked out of the plane mid-flight,” she muses instead of saying any of that out loud, because she’s sure Hansol’s already done the math himself. She wonders how he knew when the flights were, or if he just went to the airport and waited for as long as it took.
Hansol pulls an absolutely distraught face. “I am not doing that.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” she says, even though she was definitely thinking about it, just a little bit. That would be a hell of an experiment, but she gets why it would be too much to ask of him. Hansol’s not just a ghost, he’s also — well, he’s a person. Or, he used to be, anyway. “Now, I’m going to freshen up and inform Seungwanie of our plans. Jisoo will be here at eight!”
❝ 5. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Jisoo brings Seungcheol to dinner, and Seungwan gets in just past eight, looking a little disheveled. Late nights are customary in the entertainment industry, and Jeonghan’s actually surprised she was able to make it at all. They sit around the table with Thai food between them, because Jeonghan has to use her lawyer money on something, and that something will be takeout so neither she nor Seungwan have to learn how to cook. Jeonghan waits very theatrically for everyone else to be seated before telling Hansol to take his seat, and watches three pairs of eyes zone in on the chair seemingly moving of its own accord with immense satisfaction.
“So,” she announces, clapping her hands together. “Everyone, meet Chwe Hansol, the ghost. Hansol, this is Jisoo, my best friend, and her husband, Seungcheol. You already know Seungwanie.”
“I thought we were best friends,” Seungcheol complains, pouting. Everyone ignores him. Secretly, Jeonghan knows that he’s more than happy to be referred to as Jisoo’s husband, because he’s down absolutely horrendous for her. It’s embarrassing. At least Jisoo pretends not to be obsessed with him.
“Hello,” Jisoo says, looking through Hansol and at the chair with laser eyes. “I looked you up. You kinda look like James Dean — Jeonghan agrees.”
“Really?” Seungwan asks, intrigued.
Jeonghan frowns at Jisoo, and then at Seungwan, just to make her objection clear. “I do not.”
“Oh.” Hansol shuffles in his seat, glancing at Jeonghan questioningly. “Thank you?”
“He said thank you,” Jeonghan relays belatedly, busy putting fried chicken and coconut curry on her plate.
Jisoo frowns. “This is much more annoying than I imagined.”
Jeonghan snorts. “What did you imagine?”
“I don’t know, but it was definitely more dramatic than this. We can’t even hear him.”
“I already told you you wouldn’t be able to,” Jeonghan points out.
“Ugh.” Jisoo pulls out her phone and slides it across to Hansol, open to the notes app. “Can you try typing something there?”
He does, but the touch screen apparently does not register ghost fingers. He shrugs and slides it back. “Sorry.”
“Well, fuck.” Jisoo frowns, put out by the obstacle, and Seungcheol pats her back reassuringly.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he says awkwardly, eyes darting between Hansol’s chair and Jeonghan like she’s going to suddenly announce this was all one very elaborate prank. Jeonghan is smart, but not smart enough to pull off independently moving objects. Besides, she wouldn’t capitalize on a real person’s death just to trick her friends. “I, uh, also looked you up. You’re, like, kinda famous?” His voice pitches up at the end, like it’s a question and not a statement, eyes wide.
Hansol brightens, straightening in his chair. Jeonghan set out a plate and cutlery for him, but he can’t actually eat. It was an attempt to make him more comfortable, but she wonders suddenly if it’s doing the opposite, reminding him of how he’s different from them. They should play a board game, instead of dinner, next time. Watch a movie or something. “Not really. But yeah, I was sort of well-known in, like, certain circles. I just really like music.”
Jeonghan translates, “He says that yes, he is kind of famous.” Hansol kicks her beneath the table, and somehow she can feel it — not like she would if it were Seungwan, but without even looking down, she knows Hansol’s just tried to touch her, a strange, newfound warmth running up her spine. It makes her shiver.
“Sick.” Seungcheol nods a few times. “I wonder if you have any mutual friends with Seungwanie?”
“Probably,” Seungwan speaks up, rejuvenated slightly from the food. “I know a lot of people in the industry. What did you do, again?”
“Music,” Hansol says. Jeonghan repeats it, adding that he was a producer, not an idol.
Seungwan nods, swallowing a bite of chicken. “I only really know a few. Mostly friends of friends.”
“Seungwan has the contact info for everyone in the industry, though,” Jisoo brags. “I’m kinda surprised she didn’t have yours.”
Seungwan pauses with her chopsticks halfway to her mouth. “Hold on,” she says, brow furrowed, and then proceeds to open her contact list with the utmost seriousness. A few seconds later, she displays a KaTalk ID labeled “PD Chwe Hansol (Vernon)” with a crow of triumph.
“Woah,” whispers Seungcheol, looking vaguely spooked.
Hansol’s eyes bug out. “Yo, that’s crazy.” Forgetting himself, he reaches across the table to take the phone from Seungwan, and for the second time in as many days, she nearly jumps out of her skin. “Uh, sorry.”
“He said that’s crazy. And also that he’s sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Seungwan replies faintly.
“It’s the right number and everything,” he notices. “How the hell did you get this?”
He hands the phone back and when Seungwan takes it, her hand passes through his wrist, gone transparent beneath her skin.
“How’d you get that?” Jeonghan asks. The messenger game is getting real tired, but she doesn’t have much of a choice.
“I don’t know,” she answers honestly, trying to recall. “It must have been an industry event or something.” She glances at the chair, at Hansol, and asks, “Do you remember, Hansol-ssi?”
He shakes his head. “Honestly, I have a lot of numbers too. Or, had, I guess. But I didn’t really keep track of it all.”
Jeonghan relays the information and Seungwan nods, pocketing her phone again. “Well, I never used it, so it would be a stretch to say we knew each other anyway. But I, um. I didn’t know you died, I guess. Honestly, I barely recognized your name.”
“He died in a —”
“Don’t.” Jeonghan interrupts Jisoo harshly, communicating as much distaste as she can with just her eyes. She sighs and mumbles an apology to Hansol, who looks a little shell-shocked, sitting perfectly still in his chair.
“You looked me up?” He asks it quietly, his tone low enough that Jeonghan knows the question is for her specifically.
“No. Jisoo did, she was curious, but I — didn’t.” She cuts the sentence short. She, what — felt bad? Empathized? Wanted it to come from him? Wasn’t curious? None of those things would be totally true, and they sound stupid, anyway. Best not to justify it, to let Hansol draw his own conclusions.
“Thanks.” He mutters it quietly, almost an afterthought. “You… I mean, you could, if you wanted.”
It’s about as reluctant as permission can get, but Jeonghan wasn’t particularly interested anyway. “I’m good,” she says simply before turning back to the rest of them, badly pretending not to be listening in on the one-sided conversation. “Should we play a game when we’re finished eating? Oh, maybe we can break out the Ouija board!”
They break out the Ouija board, mostly because Hansol thinks it’s hilarious. He’s also surprised that Jeonghan has one, but it was a gag gift from Sooyoung from years ago that she just never got rid of. It comes in handy now, she supposes.
“So, like, how does it feel?” Jisoo’s questions are in English, since the Ouija board is, too. Jeonghan is only half-sure of what’s happening at any given moment.
Like nothing, Hansol writes through the board. His tongue is peeking out of his mouth a bit as he concentrates on making sure everything gets across properly, and it’s disconcertingly cute. Jeonghan almost takes out her phone to get a picture of the blep before remembering that nothing will show up on camera.
Hansol writes something else through the board that Jeonghan completely misses, and in lieu of continuing to try and keep up with their conversation, she leans over to Seungcheol, who is watching MuBank encores on his phone. “What’s this?” Jeonghan asks, far too close for comfort just to make Seungcheol yelp when he realizes. It works, and Jeonghan’s responding cackle is enough to distract Hansol, making unexpected eye contact with a little twinkle in his eye.
“Hansol produced this song,” Seungcheol explains, and Jeonghan’s eyebrows raise, her interest piqued.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I went to his NamuWiki page and there’s, like, at least ten hits on there. This one’s from last year, it won this group Song of the Year at the MMAs.”
“Shit.” Jeonghan doesn’t keep up much with the music industry, as a fan or otherwise, but even she knows that’s a big deal.
“Honestly, I’m kinda surprised he didn’t know Seungwanie at all. He was really big, and he has collaborations with Woozi — you know, that producer she has a crush on?”
“Huh?” Hansol’s voice draws Jeonghan’s attention, and he finds him staring at her, fully ignoring Jisoo, who’s prattling off another question.
“Woozi? Do you know him?” Jeonghan asks, curious.
“I — yeah, of course. That’s Jihoon,” he says, like it’s obvious, and Jeonghan’s mind flashes back to their conversation from yesterday.
“Oh,” she says, surprised, and then, “oh. Well, fuck. Seungwan has a crush on him about the size of Mars, so that would have been good to know.”
“What?” Seungwan, lounging on the couch but typing furiously on her phone, looks up with nothing short of malice. “I do not.”
“She listens to all his stuff,” Jeonghan further explains, ignoring Jisoo huffing for attention and Seungcheol staring at her with big, confused puppy eyes. They’re both much more annoying than Hansol. “Including his interviews. I think once she saw him at a party and almost died.”
“I almost died because I tripped and I was wearing heels, thank you very much,” Seungwan snips, frowning at Jeonghan aggressively. “Who are you even talking about, anyway?”
Jeonghan gives her the most angelic look she can muster. “Three guesses.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“See?” Jeonghan turns back to Hansol with her palms spread, case closed. “Obsessed with him.”
Hansol laughs, clearly a little incredulous. “I didn’t know hyung had fans like that.”
If Seungwan could hear, she would almost certainly be snapping he doesn’t — but Seungwan can’t hear, and Jeonghan is nothing if not a tease. “I think she goes to that fancy gym in Gangnam just on the off chance she’ll see him there.”
“Unnie! I do not,” Seungwan protests, her phone at this point set aside to defend her dignity to a person she cannot see.
“Maybe I’m talking about Park Jihyo,” Jeonghan throws back at her. “Ever thought of that? Or are you too preoccupied with someone else to think about it? You had three guesses, baby, you could use them, you know.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“Love you too. I’m just trying to get you some dick!”
“I mean,” Hansol says diplomatically, “I can’t do anything. I’m dead.”
“A shame.” Jeonghan sighs, shaking her head. Really, if it weren’t for that unfortunate fact, Seungwan might have a girlfriend by now. The results of tragedy are truly extensive and unexpected. The butterfly effect is one evil motherfucker.
“Are you done monopolizing his time yet?” Jisoo complains, waving a hand around to try and get Hansol’s attention, apparently. “I had more questions!”
Jeonghan rolls her eyes and gets to her feet, finding a legal pad and pen in the drawer where they keep their board games, for the sake of scorekeeping. Jeonghan plops them both in Hansol’s lap and they fall through to the floor before he picks them up with his hands. “This will be faster.” It’s no notes app, but it’s better than the Ouija board.
“Sick,” Jisoo whispers in English upon seeing the seemingly-hovering legal pad. “This is sick. I can’t believe you have a ghost.”
“I don’t have a ghost.”
On the pad, Hansol writes with a flourish, I am no one’s ghost.
“Yeah, my bad. I guess that’s, like, dismissive of your autonomy. But isn’t it weird that only Jeonghan can see you?”
Yes.
“What do you miss the most?” Jeonghan feels like these questions are a little impersonal, spectative and not reciprocal, but Hansol’s not her ghost. He can handle himself.
My friends and family.
Seungwan makes a sympathetic noise, something akin to a coo. “Maybe we can get them over here. Unnie, do you think we could do that?”
Jeonghan startles — honestly, she hadn’t thought of it, and she immediately feels bad for not coming up with the idea herself. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t we have to explain the ghost situation first?”
Seems complicated, Hansol writes, frowning with a hard set to his brow. I don’t want to bother them. They should be able to grieve in peace.
And that’s sad again, making Jeonghan blink back unexpected emotion. “What about you?”
A slight pause. I’ll be fine. I mean, it’s this or I die for real.
“Oh, yeah. Are you, like, here forever?” Seungcheol wonders.
I don’t know. Jeonghan-noona said she’d help me get out or whatever, but we don’t really know if it’s possible.
“Reddit has to have something,” Jisoo insists.
“Stop bringing up Reddit,” Jeonghan says flatly. The website scares her. Their little mascot looks sort of like a demon, and there’s far too much English.
“Do you have any ideas?” Seungcheol follows up the line of thought.
Hansol makes a cute, long-suffering noise, and Jeonghan has to cover a laugh. That gets her weird looks from the rest of them, but Hansol looks up with a little twinkle in his eye, clearly happy with the reaction. I mean, not really. Most of them are from movies, and I doubt they’re very reliable.
“Well, it’s not like ghosts being real is very scientific,” Jeonghan argues. “We might as well give it a try.”
True, he concedes.
“What ghost movies even are there?” Seungwan’s brow is furrowed as she tries to think. “The Ghostbusters?”
Yeah, Hansol writes, but also stuff like Beetlejuice, The Conjuring, Poltergeist. There are a lot of ghost movies.
“Movie night?” Seungcheol suggests. “We can marathon ghost films.”
Awesome, Hansol writes, nodding to himself like he approves. I like movies.
“It’s decided, then,” Jisoo chirps, clapping her hands together. “Movie night, here… next week?” She pulls a face, clearly trying to envision her schedule.
“Should we invite the others?”
“Oh, yeah — are you going to tell them about the ghost thing?”
Everyone turns to Jeonghan, including Hansol. She doesn’t know why they’re acting like she’s the authority when the ghost in question is literally right there.
“I don’t know. It’s up to Hansol.” She pauses, considering. “Although I did promise to introduce him to Jeongguk.”
Hansol, on the verge of saying something, changes course last minute. “Who’s Jeongguk?”
Jeonghan waves a hand meanderingly. She can explain the ghost not-hunting thing later. “A friend.”
“Cool. Well, uh, if the rest of your friends are, like, chill with it…” He trails off, avoiding eye contact. He’s fidgeting with hands too, clearly a bit bashful. “It’s been… better than I expected explaining it so far.”
Jeonghan shrugs. “Okay. We’ll bring you to brunch on Sunday.”
“Nice,” Hansol breathes, wide-eyed and enthusiastic.
“Is it weird that we keep eating around you?” Seungwan asks. “I feel like all our gatherings are centred around food.”
Hansol starts to reply, then remembers no one but Jeonghan can hear him. He laughs softly at himself as he jots down his answer, as always taking things in stride. Jeonghan doesn’t know how he does it. In his place, she would certainly be a fucking mess.
I guess a little? But I don’t mind that much. I’m not a foodie or anything.
“Have you tried eating something?”
“Yes,” Jeonghan answers for him. “He can’t. His teeth pass right through it.”
Seungcheol looks slightly baffled by this revelation. “What if you try to, like, put something in your mouth? Does it just fall through?”
“Yup.”
“That’s so fucking weird. I wish I could see it. I don’t really get the whole ghost thing.”
“Neither do I,” Hansol quips before once again remembering his impermanence. “Case in point,” he grumbles self-deprecatingly, making Jeonghan laugh out loud. He flashes a smile at her, apparently pleased even with an audience of one.
“This is so weird,” Jisoo says, eyes darting between Jeonghan and Hansol, as indicated by his legal pad. “Seungwanie, how are you so unbothered by Jeonghan, like, talking to herself all the time?”
“It’s not all the time,” Jeonghan protests. Everyone ignores her.
“Unnie is always crazy,” Seungwan says calmly, not even looking up. “You learn to tune it out after a while.”
“I’m her best friend!”
“Yeah, but try living with her.” Seungwan finally looks up just to make a face of pure judgment, and Hansol bursts out laughing. Jeonghan turns to him with a gasp, betrayed.
“See?! Weird,” Jisoo opines, clutching to Seungcheol for comfort. Jeonghan flips her off and feels unduly pleased with herself hearing Hansol laugh about it.
They hang out for a while longer before Jisoo and Seungcheol take their leave, after which Seungwan also retreats to her room, apologizing for her tiredness. Jeonghan fusses over her a bit before letting her go, making sure she’s eaten enough.
Then it’s just Jeonghan and Hansol, sitting in the living room with an Ouija board between them.
“This thing is so dumb,” Jeonghan mumbles, packing it back into its box to stow away. “We don’t even speak English.”
Hansol smiles. “It’s definitely gimmicky. Who did you say gave it to you again?”
“Sooyoung. She’s my favourite dongsaeng,” Jeonghan professes shamelessly. Seungwan has been whining about playing second fiddle for years now, and she mostly keeps saying it because it makes Sooyoung preen and Seungwan pout. They’re both adorable.
“Why don’t you live with her, then?”
“She’s in a committed relationship.” Jeonghan rolls her eyes, perhaps too zealously for someone who actually thinks that Soonyoung and Wonwoo are perfect for each other. “She lives with her girlfriend. You’ll meet both of them at brunch on Sunday, I’m sure.”
“And that Jeongguk person?”
“Oh, no. He’s not as close of a friend, but he helped… identify you? I guess? Seungwanie and I thought there might be a ghost here so he came over to investigate. I promised him that if there actually was a ghost I’d introduce you.”
“Huh.” Hansol looks contemplative. “I thought Koreans were more scared of ghosts than that.”
Jeonghan shrugs and rises from the floor, stretching her back as she goes. “You’re not very scary, Hansol-ah.”
He smiles, then, a shy thing taking over his face slowly. “Okay,” he agrees, apparently pleased with this evaluation of his character. She has to repress her own smile itching to grow. Something about Hansol is just endlessly endearing to her. He’s like a cat: weird, chill, honest, and a bit awkward.
“I’m going to get ready for bed. Call if you need me.” She doesn’t know why he would, but she says it anyway. When she comes out of the shower, Hansol is nowhere to be found, likely out of the apartment and off doing whatever it is he does — going to clubs, or visiting his friends, maybe. A part of Jeonghan wants to worry after him, but that’s silly. He can take care of himself — and he’s a ghost. There’s not much for him to take care of. Honestly, though, she thinks that might be part of what makes her feel almost anxious at the thought of him out on his own. She can’t imagine trying to experience any part of the world so wholly, completely alone.
She dismisses the thought before it can go any further, curling up in bed with the blankets up to her chin. Hansol has enough people grieving for him already.
❝ 6. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
On Saturday, they commence with Jeonghan’s plan to test Hansol’s apartment-binding. She sees him off at midnight with a bright smile and a wave, ushering him out the (closed) door almost like he’s any other guest. Then she collapses on the couch, determined to get some work done if she’s going to be staying up for twenty-four hours. She has her things already set out, her laptop and notebook, and she gets to work with only some reluctance. All things considered, this week hasn’t been nearly as draining as it could have been, so while she’s not pleased at having to wait up for Hansol, she’s not mad about it, either.
Everything since discovering Hansol in their apartment has been surprisingly normal. He does his best not to stick around during the nighttime, but has taken to hanging out when Jeonghan gets back from work. He’s pretty eager about it, which at first surprised Jeonghan since their dispositions seem at least slightly incompatible (Jeonghan is too pushy and Hansol is too compliant; Hansol is straightforward where Jeonghan is slippery), but she supposes it makes sense. It’s some of the only human interaction he gets — she’d be eager for it too, if she were in his place.
The rest of his human interaction comes from Seungwan, who has taken to leaving notes around the apartment talking with him in the day-to-day. Hansol replies with his own messages, written on colourful sticky notes and placed next to Seungwan’s, and on at least two occasions Jeonghan has stumbled upon Seungwan and Hansol sitting across from each other at the table or on the couch, the legal pad between them. They get along well.
It’s — nice, really, and surprisingly normal, having another person hanging around. It sort of feels like it’s been weeks, when really it’s only been a few days, and she and Hansol still haven’t talked further about how Jeonghan is going to help him, or what their… relationship even is. She’s sure he’s thought about it, what with the endless time on his hands, but she’s been busy. She’s also been, if she’s honest, procrastinating.
The thing is, as much as she genuinely wants to help Hansol, she has no idea how to actually go about doing that. Moreover, the idea almost scares her, makes her feel a whole plethora of things she doesn’t know how to parse. Because — what comes next, after this? For Hansol, or for anyone? Staying alone on earth without anyone to share it with, potentially forever, is a miserable existence, but Jeonghan would be hard pressed to say it’s worse than nonexistence. She thinks of it, of walking in to her apartment one day only for Hansol to be gone and never return, and it fills her with a kind of anxiety that’s not remotely warranted when she’s only known him for a handful of days.
Her dreams as of late have been riddled with death. Sometimes it’s her own, and they stop when her head hits the pavement, the heart monitor in a hospital blinks out, her lungs run out of air underwater. They always stop as soon as it’s over, as soon as she’s gone. Those nightmares are heart-racing, sweat-inducing: she wakes from them and she’s grateful for every one of those reflexes that keeps her alive in her sleep, the perpetual beating of her heart.
Sometimes someone else dies in her dreams. In these, she stays asleep far past the deed itself. It doesn’t matter who it is — her closest friends, her family, a stranger on the street — she is always left with the aftermath. When she wakes from these, her heart beats slow and there are tear stains on her cheeks. She never feels very grateful for anything after those.
All of it hurts either way. She tries not to think about it, but it’s nearly impossible when Hansol comes around in her dreams or otherwise, a constant reminder of death looming like a spectre in the doorframe. His visits are the only ones that don’t leave her shaking, and yet she avoids them like they do. She dreads them like they all hurt the same.
Jeonghan is good at improvising. It’s part of what makes her a good lawyer — she’s convincing and she’s quick and she’s smart. She’s sure she’ll figure it out when she’s put in the spot, but for the life of her, she cannot put herself there.
It’s fine. It’ll be fine. She’s always done what needs to be done, and this will be no different.
For now, though, she puts Hansol out of her mind and gets to work.
❝ 6.5. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
“Noona,” Hansol says, voice pitched up louder than Jeonghan’s ever heard it, “wake up.”
Jeonghan peels her eyes open to find Hansol hovering over her where she must have fallen asleep on the couch trying to read Minghao’s poetry book. His hand is extended, resting with a few centimetres between it and her shoulder, like he wanted to shake her awake before realizing it was futile.
“You fell asleep,” Hansol tells her, as if Jeonghan hadn’t realized that by now. She groans, sitting up to stretch her back and shoulders — this will be hell for her joints the next few days, she’s sure. She glances down and the book is sitting face-down on the floor, having fallen some time after she fell asleep.
“Well,” she mumbles around the sleep still clouding her mouth, “at least we know for sure now.”
Hansol huffs. “We already knew. I told you I can’t leave for over twenty-four hours.” His arms are crossed and he’s frowning, as always a bit testy about Jeonghan not believing him.
“No, I mean that I can’t pull all-nighters,” Jeonghan corrects, just to be a nuisance. She stretches her arms behind her back and then relaxes with a long sigh when her muscles pop satisfactorily. She glances over at Hansol, who is staring at her midriff.
She snaps her fingers to get his attention, and if he could blush, Jeonghan bets that he would be. “I’m going to bed now,” she tells him, speaking over his stammered apology. “Thanks for entertaining my experiment.”
Hansol’s shoulders relax, and though Jeonghan has no idea why, he smiles at her like she’s the one who did him a favor. “Thanks for waiting up for me, Jeonghan-noona.”
Jeonghan waves him off with a yawn, too tired to bother pointing out that she didn’t, actually. She’s not sure what the pedantic clarification would do, anyway — Hansol knows that, he’s not dumb. Being snarky and smart-assed loses some of its fun around him; he’s maybe as smart as Jeonghan but all the more transparent about it. It pisses her off.
It doesn’t matter. She leaves Hansol in the living room and doesn’t spare another glance.
❝ 7. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Brunch is a disaster from the moment Jeonghan arrives, a doubtful Seungwan and hesitant Hansol in tow. Not in the sense that things actually go badly, but — she could have planned this better.
“We could have planned this better,” Hansol observes, speaking directly to Jeonghan as the room dissolves into chaos. It had been pretty straightforward in her head: she walked in, introduced Hansol as the ghost from her and Seungwan’s apartment, and then promptly directed him, “Hansol, pick up that chair.”
Hansol picked up the chair. What Jeonghan failed to take into account is that her friends are positively unhinged.
To be fair to them, a levitating chair is a pretty good reason to freak out. To be fair to Jeonghan, she’s still tired from her experiment with Hansol yesterday.
Sooyoung and Seokmin are clutching to each other and screaming. Wonwoo is hovering behind Sooyoung, wide-eyed and pale. Junhui is clinging onto Minghao and is also screaming, and Minghao, while initially a bit surprised, is now mostly just trying to calm their girlfriend. Jisoo is laughing at all of them, Seungcheol is loudly greeting Hansol through the chaos, Seungwan looks upon all of them with judgment, and Mingyu dropped the pan he was holding, so now he’s cleaning scrambled eggs from the wooden floor.
“Sorry,” she says specifically to Mingyu, taking some paper towels to help him clean up the mess. Hansol gestures for some too, clearly feeling at least a little guilty, but Jeonghan shakes her head, whispering to him, “I think that would make it worse right now.” Mingyu would probably just drop his eggs again.
Hansol laughs softly and resigns himself to standing in the corner, out of anyone’s way. Technically it wouldn’t matter if someone did walk through him, but Jeonghan’s noticed over the past few days that he seems to have an aversion to physical touch. She’s not going to press the issue.
“So, his name is Hansol,” Jeonghan says again once everyone has calmed down a bit. “Please be nice to him.”
“You’re talking about me like I’m a dog,” Hansol huffs, but he doesn’t sound mad about it, just amused.
“Can he talk?” Sooyoung has stopped screaming and is now poking around the area of the chair, as if she’s going to run into Hansol’s non-corporeal form any minute now. Really, he’s already stepped away and is nowhere in the near vicinity of the chair, but it’s funny, so Jeonghan doesn’t tell her that.
“Yes. But only I can see or hear him.”
“What?” Sooyoung looks up at this, intrigued enough to stop investigating the chair.
“Only you?” Wonwoo pipes up, her brow furrowed. “That’s really odd.”
“It’s a ghost,” Minghao says flatly. “All of this is odd.”
“And I will be expecting you to put aside your anti-ghost prejudice,” Jeonghan warns them, recalling their previous conversations. “Hansol is very sweet. Kind of boring, but sweet. Now! Introductions.” She beckons Hansol forward and introduces him to each individual person, barring the three (or four, counting her) that she already knows. “You can talk to him via legal pad.” Jeonghan pulls the notepad and a pen from her purse and hands them to Hansol. Seokmin lets out another little shriek, Mingyu squeaks minutely at the seemingly hovering objects, and Sooyoung is gaping a little bit. “I will only play messenger if absolutely necessary.”
“This is so fucking weird.” Wonwoo takes her glasses off and scrubs a hand down her face, rubbing at her eyes like it’s going to make Hansol appear or disappear entirely.
“How old are you?” Seokmin asks, overly loud, like he’s not sure if Hansol will hear him. Hansol writes 26 and Seokmin screams again.
“His ears work normally, you know. You don’t have to shout.”
“Sorry!” he yelps. “It’s just — like — woah.”
“Can I hug him? I wanna hug him.” Junhui, being physically held back by Minghao, is nearly vibrating with excitement.
“How would that work? You can’t see him.”
“That’s why I wanna do it!”
No hugging, please, Hansol writes on the pad. It wouldn’t work, anyway. You’d fall right through me.
“That’s so cool.” Junhui looks entirely undeterred by this new information, and Minghao sighs heavily at her side.
“Mingyu, do you need any help in the kitchen?” they ask, clearly tired of this already.
“Nope! Almost done now!” Sure enough, Mingyu emerges from the kitchen to start setting dishes on the table a few moments later.
“Can you eat?” Mingyu asks Hansol, eyes focused a bit above where Hansol’s head actually is. He’s clearly trying to make an effort to include him, asking directly instead of through Jeonghan and trying his best to make eye contact despite, well, not being able to see Hansol’s eyes. Or his anything else, really.
It’s cute. Hansol picks up on it too, if the way he turns to grin at Jeonghan is any indication, like they’re in on something together. That’s cute, too.
He writes the answer on his legal pad, but Mingyu, carrying two large plates of eggs cooked in different styles, struggles to see it.
“He can’t,” Jeonghan answers for him. She glances over to make sure she’s not offending, stepping on his metaphorical toes, but Hansol is just smiling, nodding along happily.
“That’s so sad,” Jun laments. “I think if I couldn’t eat I’d just die.”
I mean, I’m already dead. He murmurs it at the same time as he writes it, turning the legal pad so everyone can see the words more clearly.
Jeonghan cackles, but she’s the only one who seems to get the message in time for its comedic moment. Instead, they’re all looking at her weirdly for some reason.
“What?” She gestures to the legal pad and their eyes follow, and Sooyoung does laugh, albeit belatedly.
“He’s funny!” she cheers, like this is what she was worried about with a ghost being introduced to their friend group. “Is he gay?”
“Oh my god.” Jisoo falls to the side laughing, curling up against Seungcheol like a lifeline, but he’s laughing just as hard.
Yes~, Hansol writes, and again, only Jeonghan seems to see it. She tears her eyes away and everyone’s getting up to sit around the table. She gets up to join them, Hansol trailing behind her.
“I only have ten chairs,” Mingyu frets.
“It’s okay, I can stand,” Hansol volunteers easily.
“He said he can stand,” Jeonghan informs them, taking her own seat beside Jisoo and Wonwoo. “Why do you only have ten chairs?”
“Ten chairs is actually a lot,” Hansol points out. Jeonghan is for once grateful that no one else can hear him, because it means she gets to neg on Mingyu a little longer.
“Ten chairs is a lot,” Wonwoo says, and Jeonghan glares at her and then at Hansol, just for good measure. “If we had any more people we’d have to sit on the floor.”
“Should I get another chair?” Mingyu wonders out loud, apparently genuinely concerned about this.
“I really don’t mind standing,” Hansol interjects, looking a little flustered with the attention.
“This is why we don’t have brunch at our place,” Jeonghan intones wisely, ignoring all of them. “Not enough chairs.”
“You and Seungwanie also don’t know how to cook,” Seungcheol points out, causing Jeonghan to frown at him.
“As if you’re any better.”
“Jisoo can cook!”
“Shifting the responsibility onto your wife,” Jeonghan says disapprovingly. “Classic man.”
“I didn’t —”
“Stop arguing about Cheol-oppa being part of the patriarchy,” Seungwan complains. “There’s a ghost in my home. I just want things to be simple for once.”
“I am not part of the patriarchy!”
Jisoo kicks Seungcheol under the table to get him to shut up. “We will talk about this later,” she promises serenely, “but for the record, you’re a man, so you are.”
“We live in a society!”
“Babe, you have got to stop saying that. It doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
“I miss the era of memes,” Mingyu says wistfully. Seokmin and Sooyoung are bickering again, Junhui is eyeing the Korean pancakes like they’re her last meal, and Hansol is watching it all with wide-eyed astonishment.
“I think you guys are crazy,” he says to no one in particular, which is to say, to Jeonghan. It’s hard to say how much of it is them and how much of it is that Hansol hasn’t hung out with people since he died, but either way, Jeonghan agrees.
“Definitely. Definitely crazy,” she mumbles, taking a big bite of eggs. “Cursed fucking group. I’m surprised we haven’t broken one of the chairs.”
“Don’t say that, you’ll manifest it!” Mingyu, apparently listening to their conversation, whines.
“Since when do you believe in stuff like that?” Seungwan asks, her attention officially stolen from her food.
“Since there’s a ghost living in your apartment,” he mopes, which Jeonghan actually thinks is pretty reasonable.
“He’s not like the ghosts from the stories, though,” Jeonghan points out. “He’s kind of a loser.”
“Unnie, stop calling the ghost a fucking loser.”
“Hey, I never said fucking. You added the fucking.” Jeonghan is glad, at least, to see Minghao not entirely hostile to Hansol, even if it comes with a few barbs of their own. Hansol is laughing, so she figures he probably doesn’t mind being called a loser.
“Jeonghan-unnie likes losers,” Wonwoo adds, entirely unnecessarily, in Jeonghan’s opinion. “She thinks they’re cute.”
“Their deeply pathetic nature moves me,” Jeonghan defends, a little miffed to be put on the spot like that. Hansol, still in the corner, is now on his knees laughing. He sounds like a goose. It’s highly infectious.
“Yah! What are you laughing so hard at?” Jeonghan demands, fighting a smile of her own. Like she said — infectious.
“Just, like.” Hansol makes a vague movement with his hands that clears up absolutely nothing. “Do you know the moronsexual meme?”
“The what?” Jeonghan has never heard those words before in her life.
Hansol is still wheezing a bit, but he at least gets off the floor. It’s progress. “It’s like — ‘I think I’m moronsexual. A guy asked me what the Spanish word for tortilla is and now I dream of kissing him under the moonlight.’”
Jeonghan blinks. “What is the Spanish word for tortilla?” That gets Hansol laughing again, and Jisoo to whip her head over so fast Jeonghan’s momentarily worried it’ll snap right off her neck.
“Don’t tell me you’re serious.”
“What is it?”
“It’s tortilla, dumbass,” she says, looking genuinely horrified. Jeonghan throws her hands up.
“How was I supposed to know that?! We’re Korean.”
“Are you gonna ask what animal the Pink Panther is next?” Hansol cackles.
Jeonghan frowns. She’s never heard of the Pink Panther, but, “That’s obviously a panther. Why would I ask you that?”
For some reason, this answer only seem to amuse Hansol further. “Ah, noona,” he gasps out, catching his breath. “You’re really funny.”
She is, actually, but not necessarily in this case. She actually has no idea what Hansol found so entertaining about her confusion. It certainly wasn’t intended to be funny. “What the fuck are you even talking about?”
This sets Hansol off again, though not nearly as badly as before, just chuckling to himself quietly. The goose-like squawks have dissipated, but Jeonghan’s sort of eager to hear them again. She’s never heard someone laugh like that. It’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s wonderful.
“So… what just happened?” Seungwan inquires once Jeonghan has returned to her food.
“Hansol said I’m something called a moronsexual —” at this, Jisoo snorts, apparently in agreement, “— and I learned that tortilla is the word for tortilla in Spanish.”
“Honestly, noona, if there wasn’t a floating notepad in the corner right now, I’d think you’ve gone crazy,” Seokmin says, not unkindly.
“I still think she’s crazy,” Seungcheol mutters under his breath.
Jeonghan sighs, reaching for some kimchi with her chopsticks. “Me the fuck too, Seokmin-ah. Me the fuck too.”
Two ghostly pranks (Jeonghan has discovered that Hansol is quite a willing accomplice when it comes to harmless fun), one bout of hiccups (Jeonghan’s diaphragm is weak in the face of her laughter), and one broken chair (Mingyu pouts at her until she agrees to pay for its replacement, even though Sooyoung was the one who broke it) later, and Jeonghan finally returns home. Hansol sits in the backseat of her car and Jeonghan tries not to laugh about the absurdity of it all with marginal success.
“What?” he asks when she can’t quite hold back a laugh.
“Did you just try to put on the seatbelt?”
“It’s muscle memory!”
“Well, at least we know you didn’t die in a car crash,” Seungwan mumbles, only to then pause. “Unless you did? I don’t know. I’ve been trying to avoid it.”
With Seungwan in the passenger’s seat and Hansol in the back, he can’t exactly answer her with the legal pad. Instead, he says out loud, “It’s okay. You can look if you want to.”
A beat passes before Jeonghan remembers to relay the message, and Seungwan nods slowly. “I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to avoid? Your– um. Your funeral is this week. I know a lot of people who are going.”
“Oh.” Hansol sounds as surprised by this as Jeonghan is — what with him being so present in her own life, she’d almost forgotten that the rest of the world is still mourning. That to them, Hansol is well and truly gone. “Huh.” Then he falls silent, contemplative but quiet in the car. Jeonghan wonders if, if she went fast enough, he would fall right through, disappear into thin air, then gets pissed at herself for wondering. She shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t be so affected by the thought of the funeral of a person she never even knew.
Jeonghan merges left and focuses on getting them home.
“Hey,” Hansol says, catching her attention as she’s putting her shoes away. He’d been loitering, so Jeonghan figured it was only a matter of time before they talked. “Do you have a second?”
Not as many as you do, she thinks nonsensically, then feels bad for the mischaracterization. Hansol doesn’t have time — Jeonghan has time, in the way of being able to spend it however she chooses, with the people she loves. Hansol might be able to exist forever, or maybe not — but in this form, he doesn’t have much of anything, and least of all time.
“Sure.” She leads them out onto the balcony, where the cold fall breeze is beginning to rush through the city, and grabs a box of cigarettes and a lighter from the counter on her way out.
Jeonghan lights the cigarette without fanfare, taking a long, slow drag of nicotine. She doesn’t check Hansol’s reaction — she hears enough from Seungwan about her flirting with death.
“You smoke?”
“Only when I’m stressed.” She breathes in the smoke, holds it for a few moments before exhaling in a puff of grey. At Hansol’s questioning look, she adds, “I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” He sounds genuinely apologetic about it, too, which is just laughable, really.
“Don’t be.” The cigarette is dwindling already, only a bit more than the bud of it left. Jisoo always said that Jeonghan smoked too hard and too fast, even though she was the one who introduced Jeonghan to the vice in the first place. “What did you want to talk about?”
Hansol watches her for a second longer, but Jeonghan keeps her gaze resolutely forward, towards the bleak city skyline. Through the corner of her eye, she can see Hansol’s furrowed brow, his slight frown, and she can feel his gaze on her. She snuffs the cigarette out on the railing of the balcony and tosses it over.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Hansol says, and Jeonghan rolls her eyes at him, already lighting another.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” A drag, and then, through a cloud of smoke: “You didn’t come here to talk about my bad habits.”
She watches Hansol shake off his reservations in real time, dismissing whatever he’s wanting to say to Jeonghan in lieu of what he needs to. It’s pretty plain to see that she’s not in the mood to be scolded.
“I wanted to ask how you felt about me — staying. Here.”
Jeonghan squints at him. Even though he can’t smell it, he still flinches away from the smoke when she breathes in his face. It makes for a pretty picture. “What do you mean, how I feel about it? You’re, like, metaphysically tied to this apartment.”
“No, I know, but — I could just… come back for five minutes every twenty-four hours, you know? I don’t need to be hanging around all the time.”
“You don’t hang around all the time.”
“Noona, you know what I’m asking you.”
Jeonghan turns back to him, blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth. She’s savoring this one — her cap is three cigarettes a day, but she tries not to reach it often. Four, if it’s been an exceptionally awful day. “Yeah. I meant it when I said I’d help you. So yes, you can stay.”
“It’s not me that’s making you smoke, is it?”
Another long drag, the last one from this smoke. “No. I told you I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Okay. Be safe, Jeonghan-noona. Those things can kill.”
Jeonghan looks at him then, a little amused and a little offended, but Hansol only appears genuine. The smallest of smiles tugging at his lips is her only indication that he might find some humor in it, too.
She lights her third and once again faces the skyline. A neighbour is taking out their trash in flannel pajamas, and a harried looking dog walker attempts to wrangle three small puppies as they cross the street.
She holds the pack of Marlboros out on an outstretched palm. “Take these back in, will you? And get out of here. I’m about a minute away from pushing you off this balcony to see if you float.” (She’s not. It’s almost disconcerting, how strangely okay she is with Hansol’s presence. Something about his bluntness is refreshing.)
Hansol takes the pack of cigarettes and holds it like she’s just handed him a gun. She wonders belatedly if he’s going to throw them away instead. “Okay, noona. I hope you sleep well tonight.”
He walks through the sliding door, Jeonghan is sure, but she doesn’t look to see it. She feels rather than sees him leave and nearly brings the wrong end of the cigarette to her lips.
“Fuck.” In her haste to not burn herself, she’s dropped it, still burning on the concrete balcony. Jeonghan sighs and stamps it out with her boot before kicking the residue through the gaps in the railing.
Smoking kills, but so do a lot of things. Death comes to whomsoever it wants and ends things at its will — unless it doesn’t. Unless it makes them wait.
She thinks of Hansol again, stuck in limbo, and scoffs. Death, she decides, is cruel and strange and full of shit.
❝ 8. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
In her free time, Jeonghan has taken to reading through public forums about ghosts, as research for getting Hansol… out, or away, or whatever it is they’re trying to do. Her sleep is still marred with dreams about death and grieving, and she can’t tell if the influx of ghost mythology is making it better or worse. Maybe it’s not doing anything at all.
It’s been two weeks now since Jeonghan first discovered Hansol at her kitchen counter. They’ve fallen into a bit of a routine: they don’t see each other until the evenings, when Jeonghan comes home from work, at which point Hansol will be waiting for her, sometimes doing something, sometimes just staring into space. They hang out, sometimes with Seungwan, if she’s home. Sometimes another one of Jeonghan’s friends will show up, and Jeonghan will leave Hansol to bond with someone other than her. She introduced him to Jeongguk, as promised, and he acted like he was in the presence of an actual celebrity (which only got worse when he realized who Hansol was — Jeonghan often forgets that he’s famous in his own right). When it’s just the two of them, though, they mostly just talk, about everything and nothing at all.
Jeonghan learns that Hansol was born in America to a white mom and a Korean dad, and that as a kid, he was bullied for not fitting in — for being tomboyish and quiet as well as for being mixed. He talks about his sister, whom he clearly misses a lot, and how he met Chan as a kid, then how Jihoon joined them later on. “He was the first butch person I’d ever met in real life,” he confesses, smiling shyly. “I was, like, obsessed with him for three months, and then I saw him chug five Coke Zeros in a row after staying up for forty-eight hours straight to finish our final project, and I was like, Hansol, you’ve gotta stop. I’m not built for that shit, for real.”
Strangely enough, Jeonghan finds herself sharing things too, letting Hansol in piecemeal. At first, she thought their hang outs, or yap sessions, or whatever else Seungwan and Jisoo wanted to call them, would be mostly for Hansol’s benefit. Regardless of her feelings about the matter or about him, she’s the only person he can really talk to, face to face. She’s the only person who can see him. Denying him that companionship would just be cruel.
Hansol is blunt and easygoing and earnest. Hansol is perceptive and intelligent, and he always seems to see straight through her performances and her schemes. Hansol is infuriating and confusing, so completely opposite to Jeonghan in terms of disposition despite their similar personalities that she has no idea what to make of him. Hansol is sweet and sort of awkward, and Hansol is dead, and Jeonghan likes him anyway.
It’s awful. It’s terrifying, actually, and Jeonghan has no fucking clue what she’s doing. She’s never made friends with a ghost before.
She comes home on Friday and Hansol is making dinner. It probably shouldn’t bother her as much as it does.
“What are you doing?”
Hansol grins, like it’s not a big deal that he’s using Jeonghan’s cutting boards (that she never uses herself, to be fair, but it’s the principle of the thing). “I got bored. Thought I’d make you dinner.”
Jeonghan stares and attempts to set him on fire with her mind. No dice, and Hansol is beginning to look a little curious at her reaction. Not even confused, or even remotely guilty — just curious.
“Don’t do that,” she finally replies, voice flat. “Why would you even do that?”
“Uh, ‘cause I have nothing else to do?” Hansol takes ramyun off the burner — instant ramyun, in a pot, which Jeonghan could have easily made for herself. He’s not even really cooking, and that only makes it worse. “It’s super easy. And I feel like you don’t eat enough.”
He’s cut up green onions and some other vegetables to garnish the dish, and even portioned out the kimchi already. It is, admittedly, slightly more high-effort than Jeonghan what would likely make for herself after a long day of work, but it’s hardly a home-cooked meal. Jeonghan stares, and then keeps staring, trying to figure out what about this is pissing her off so much. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Hansol in the kitchen, or that she thinks he’s overstepped. It’s not that she’s offended by the sentiment that she doesn’t eat enough, or that she can’t take care of herself, both of which are, to an extent, true. She would be remiss not to take the help that she’s given.
It’s just that Hansol is making her dinner after waiting for her to come home from work, and he said it’s because he has nothing else to do. He’s wearing the same fucking thing he always does, because this singular outfit is somehow metaphysically tied to his non-corporeal being because he’s a ghost, and he can’t do much of anything all fucking day, and yet he’s never taken it out on Jeonghan, even when she’s being combative; even when she cheated her way through Jeopardy despite knowing he would hate it — and he did, looking at her with perfect calmness once they were done and saying, “Noona, it’s no fun if you lie to me.”
It’s just that Hansol made her dinner, and now he’s waiting for her to sit with a bemused little smile on his face, like he doesn’t mind her being a weird freak because of instant ramyun and he doesn’t mind her entire mental system stuttering to a stop in front of him.
It’s just that —
“Jeonghan-noona? Are you going to eat?”
Fuck you. “No,” she snaps, already starting to turn on her heel, dramatic and petty and stupid.
“Dude,” Hansol says sadly, a little disappointed, and Jeonghan turns back, glaring at him. It’s humiliating, that he doesn’t get mad but he doesn’t just let her go. She takes the dish and the chopsticks and goes to her room without another word.
Jeonghan 😇:
SOS
SAVE MY FUCKING SHIP JISOO
BITCH
Hunched over her desk like a gremlin, tapping as fast as she can, eating ramyun with one hand, Jeonghan actually feels like she might be in university again. Fuck her, this is so fucking embarrassing.
Jisoo 👹:
?
what’s up
Jeonghan 😇:
Hansol
She pauses, thumbs hovering over the screen. What is she supposed to say — Hansol is ruining my life with his dumb ghost face?
Jisoo 👹:
was there a follow up to that, or…?
Jeonghan 😇:
He’s hot
Jeonghan squeezes her eyes shut and hits send. She’s going to have to kill Jisoo after this, isn’t she?
Jisoo 👹:
THAT’S the emergency????
Fucking obviously. He’s a loser butch and he looks like james dean. Of course you’re into him.
Jeonghan 😇:
SHUT THE FUCK UP
I CAN’T BE INTO A GHOST
Jisoo 👹:
I mean, like, you can
Jeonghan 😇:
I cannot.
Jisoo 👹:
have freaky ghost sex and then tell me about it
Jeonghan 😇:
Jisoo. He’s dead.
Jisoo calls her instead of texting back, which Jeonghan probably should have expected. Jisoo hates texts, she never answers them unless Jeonghan stipulates that it’s an emergency.
“Okay so I was going to advocate for you having freaky ghost sex with your freaky ghost now that you’ve finally realized he’s hot, but I’m gonna have to take that back if you actually like him. Jeonghan. Do you like him?”
Jeonghan slurps her ramyun despondently. It’s better than what she would have made for herself, with the extra vegetables in it. She’s going to have to apologize to Hansol after this, and it’s going to be so fucking embarrassing.
“I didn’t think you would. Like, he’s nice, you know?” Jisoo continues. “And only you can see him, which makes your relationship just, like, inherently weird. And you have attachment issues.”
“The fuck do you mean, he’s nice? What does that have to do with anything?” Jeonghan has no delusions about her own personality, but she’s friends with plenty of nice people. Mingyu is nice, Seokmin is nice, Junhui and Minghao are nice. It’s not like she’s allergic to kindness.
“Well, he’s smart, too. You talk about him like he’s an anthropology experiment. You wouldn’t do that if you actually understood him, or if you didn’t care what he thinks. You care because you want to find out, and you have to find out because for once you don’t know everything already. But he’s smart, too, so I feel like he’s probably going to figure out what your deal is at some point, and then not call you on it even though it makes you act like a bitch, and then you’ll get really mad. But all of that would be fine if you didn’t like him, if you only cared about him as an anthropology experiment. And I guess that’s not true anymore. If it ever was in the first place.”
Jeonghan glares at her near-empty ramyun bowl and pretends it’s Jisoo’s face. How the fuck does she know all that, anyway?!
“Fuck you, Jisoo, what do you mean he’ll figure out what my deal is?”
“Jeonghan.” Jisoo’s tone tells her to cut the bullshit, and if she could see her face, she’s sure it would be similar. “Come on.”
Okay, so, maybe Jeonghan has a few complexes. Doesn’t everyone? “I just don’t get what all that has to do with Hansol.”
“He’s like your worst fear come to life,” Jisoo says, the duh going unspoken. Then she pauses, questioning, “Or come to death? Whatever. He’s pretty much your kryptonite.”
“Then why the fuck were you advocating for me to fuck him?!”
“Well, I thought you hated him! And I want to know what ghost sex is like!”
“You’re awful,” Jeonghan decides. “You’re an awful best friend.”
“I don’t know, Hanie. Do you still want to help him?”
“Of course.”
“Then you’ll just have to get over it. He’s hot, so what? It’s not the end of the world.”
All Jeonghan can think to say is, “You’ve failed to take into account that he’s also pretty.” Since when is Jisoo, of all people, reasonable about things? Now Jeonghan feels embarrassed and like an idiot — two of her least favourite feelings.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Stop judging me! I have kept your short-lived fling with Park Jaebum in college a secret for years. I have ammunition, Jisoo. Don’t test me.”
Jisoo makes a noise bordering on a squawk. “I– you– that’s unfair and you know it. I didn’t even do anything!”
“You made me feel stupid!”
“You are stupid!”
“Wow, fuck you,” Jeonghan fumes, already plotting her revenge. She can’t actually spill the beans about Jisoo hooking up with Jay Park in college, or share the one (very incriminating) photo she has of them together, because it’s her greatest item of blackmail material to date. She mostly keeps it as an intimidation tactic, but someday, she will use it. It’s too good a piece of gossip to let die entirely.
“I will hang up,” Jisoo threatens, and then doesn’t. She’s so full of shit. “Literally all you have to do is be friends with him. It can’t be that hard.”
Jeonghan thinks of Hansol’s stupid gummy smile and his goose-like laugh and thinks, isn’t it? She’d been trying not to think about it — the becoming friends with a ghost thing. But now she is, and it’s all come crashing down on her thanks to her rather unwarranted realization that Hansol is handsome, and she can’t even jump ship because she would feel bad. Hansol’s not just a guy, he’s a ghost, so Jeonghan needs to help him. But Hansol’s not just a guy, he’s a ghost, so Jeonghan can’t get attached. (She already is attached. It’s just a matter of detaching herself without breaking things off entirely or fucking everything up irreparably, and unfortunately, Jeonghan has never been good at either of those things. She self-destructs: burns hard and fast and then bursts inward, makeshifts a gaping black hole between herself and her feelings, her relationships. It’s a miracle she’s kept even Jisoo around this long. She’s good at committing to things. She’s terrible at committing to people.)
“Yeah,” she answers belatedly. “I should go apologize to him.”
“Apologize? What did you do?” Ah, fuck. She didn’t even tell Jisoo about the ramyun incident.
“Nothing. I’m hanging up now.”
“Jeonghan —”
She hangs up, because unlike Jisoo, Jeonghan is honest and brave. As such, she does the honest and brave thing and ventures out of her room to see if Hansol’s still there, and when he isn’t, she breathes a sigh of relief so heavy it would be embarrassing if anyone was around to see it.
And then she nearly falls and hits her head (lightly) on the lamp, because Hansol sticks his head out of the closet, grinning already and saying, “Hi.”
“What the fuck,” she groans, staggering onto the couch and rubbing at her head. Hansol doesn’t even look remotely sorry, which is actually kind of impressive. She’s discovering new depths of his today.
“That was payback for you being an asshole earlier,” he explains, sitting on the couch next to her and meeting her glare head-on. “Please don’t make me do it again, I feel really bad.” Sure enough, his brow is creased now and his hand is hovering some distance away from Jeonghan’s head, like he would reach out and touch if he could to assess the damage. Jeonghan snorts, closing her eyes. Of course he does. At the end of the day, Hansol is always a sweetheart.
“Sorry,” she grumbles, and then hears a little voice that sounds like Jisoo yelling in her head, so she clears her throat and repeats, “I’m sorry. I was being a bitch. Just — had a long day at work and took it out on you, I guess. Thank you for cooking. It was delicious.”
Hansol smiles at her. It’s not gummy, but his eyes still crinkle up at the corners. “I barely did anything, but I’m glad. I started making it that way ‘cause my mom was worried I wasn’t eating enough vegetables in uni. Jihoon hates it like that, but I think it’s pretty good.”
“It is good,” she agrees quietly. She’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop — that can’t be it. No way that’s it.
“If you want time alone, I can go,” Hansol offers. “Or if you want me to stay, I can do that, too. We don’t even have to talk — we can watch a drama or something, if that would help you feel better.”
Jeonghan feels shitty waiting, and she feels shitty lying. “Why aren’t you mad at me?”
Surprise flashes in Hansol’s eyes, and he tilts his head at her, frowning slightly. “Well, it’s not like you yelled at me. You were really restrained, actually, and you were clearly thinking about a lot, so I’m not taking it personally. Besides, you ate the ramyun, so.” He shrugs. When Jeonghan continues looking at him with what must be an odd face, he clarifies, “I hate food waste.”
He’s so fucking stupid. He’s too fucking nice for her.
“I think you should go.” She tries to keep her voice level, but it cracks halfway through. Hansol is kind enough not to comment on it, and she wishes he weren’t.
“Okay. Hope you feel better soon, Jeonghanie-noona. Get some rest.” Just like that, without so much as a pout, without any lingering resentment, Hansol walks through the wall, out the door.
Jeonghan lays down flat on the couch and stares at the ceiling, overcome with the sudden urge to cry.
❝ 9. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Jeonghan has done something stupid.
She knows that the minute she clicks on the site, a shitty Dispatch tabloid, but it’s too late to take it back now. When she does something, she commits to it — even if it’s a terrible idea.
Chwe Hansol, better known by the moniker ‘Vernon,’ was killed yesterday in a car accident in Itaewon. According to the local police force, the producer was on a late-night walk when, as he crossed the street, an unnamed individual hit him with a car. As a result of blunt force trauma, Vernon was killed on impact. The driver was intoxicated but immediately located authorities, and medical personnel were dispatched to the site. Charges against him are currently pending.
Individuals close to the subject declined to comment.
The article goes on, detailing Hansol’s various achievements — awards he won, hit songs he produced, a brief foray into the little they know about his personal life — but Jeonghan doesn’t bother reading that. She got what she came for.
The thing is, it’s been long enough now that Hansol’s name doesn’t result in a headline splashed across the top of her screen detailing his death or even his obituary as soon as the site loads. The thing is, it’s been long enough that everyone but her knows; she’s certain that they do. The few of them that didn’t see it in the news or know about it already thanks to their connections in the industry have almost certainly looked it up by now. Seungwan found out a week ago and cried for an hour when she got home.
The thing is, Hansol said she could if he wanted, and the implication was that he wouldn’t mind. But Jeonghan thinks that he lied.
He’s been remarkably well-adjusted this entire time, for someone who’s dead, who’s never going to see his family again. He said himself that he didn’t want to burden them with his ghostly existence. Jeonghan’s thought about reaching out herself, but she doesn’t want to overstep. She doesn’t want to make it worse when she’s supposed to be helping. This, though, just might make the other shoe drop.
Which — which is what she wanted. She’d rather cause herself a little premature pain than experience an agonizing wait. So she has no reason to be frustrated or to be guilty, and yet she is. Immediately, she’s pissed at both Hansol and herself. She slams her laptop shut and ignores Jisoo startling because of it.
“I’m leaving early,” she announces.
“Uh… okay?” Jisoo looks confused, but whatever determination she sees on Jeonghan’s face is enough for her not to push it. It’s been three days, and Jeonghan still feels like shit.
She packs up her things and leaves without saying bye to anyone else in the office, ignoring the few odd looks that get cast her way. Jeonghan is usually a diligent worker. Not a pushover, but not blithe about her work, either. She always leaves right on time, and she doesn’t take days off unless she has to. Extenuating circumstances, she always writes when someone asks, to avoid having to divulge personal details. She supposes ghost problems fall under that category as well as a cold does.
When she gets home, she isn’t expecting Hansol to be there yet. He is, though: sitting on the couch, writing in the notebook Jeonghan bought him the other day since he ran out of paper on the legal pad.
“Shit,” she says unthinkingly, drawing his attention. She hadn’t been particularly quiet coming in, but Hansol gets in a zone sometimes and drowns out the rest of the world remarkably well. She guesses that this was one of those times.
“Jeonghan-noona? Is everything okay?” His brow creases, and he glances towards the oven clock to confirm that, yes, it is three hours before Jeonghan was due to come home. “Are you sick?”
Extenuating circumstances, she almost says, but instead she blurts, “I looked up how you died.”
Emotions flash through Hansol’s eyes, and Jeonghan picks up every one. Shock, sadness, confusion, and anger. He’s so terribly transparent even when his expression itself barely changes that Jeonghan almost feels like a coward in comparison, with her bald-faced provocations.
“Oh.” The anger lingers, but he still doesn’t raise his voice. Then he falls silent, like he’s waiting for Jeonghan to say more, or maybe to figure out what to say, himself.
“Car accident, right? Blunt force, killed on contact. A drunk driver, some fucking dumbass on the road intoxicated at night. A fluke accident. Gone too soon, I’m sure all the tributes say. I mean, they always say that — but it’s true, this time. Twenty-six. Far too young to die.”
She’s rambling, she knows she is, but she can’t get herself to stop. Her mouth is moving of its own accord now, and yet Hansol still stays silent, his face hardened into blunt impassiveness as he takes the barrage of words head-on. “It was a shitty Dispatch article. But I guess that’s good, right? You got famous enough while you were alive to be worth writing clickbait about. Your family must be proud.”
It’s the mention of his family that does it. Hansol snaps, and even that is too soft for Jeonghan, all the quiet intensity of his anger.
“Jeonghan, shut the fuck up.”
His hands are clenched and his jaw is tensed, and it’s the angriest Jeonghan has ever seen him. It’s not enough, it’s not enough, it’s not enough.
“Why? You said I could look if I wanted — and it’s not like it’s anything you don’t already know. You’re dead. You died in a car accident. You were famous, and now you’re not. They’re just facts, Hansol, you don’t have to be so sensitive.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I mean, I don’t think it would be a very funny joke, do you?” She smiles, all fake humor, forced nonchalance. She’s sweating under her suit jacket — she forgot to take it off when she saw Hansol on the couch. “It’s sad, actually. There was still so much you could have done, and now all these people have to mourn you even though you’re right here, because you’re too selfish to give them closure, even though you’re right here.”
“Jeonghan, stop.”
“You’re in a stranger’s living room, Hansol, have you ever thought of that? You could be anywhere, but you’re in my fucking living room, working on nothing of fucking consequence, because you’re dead, and nothing you ever do again will see the light of day. Is it funny? To be so fucking alone?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Hansol shouts loudly enough that Jeonghan shuts up out of pure surprise. She hadn’t been sure if it was even possible to make him break, after all of that. “I don’t know what the hell happened that made you want to piss me off today, but congratulations, I guess it’s working. Does it feel good? Is me fucking yelling at you what you wanted?” His arms are crossed and he’s standing now, staring Jeonghan down. “You want to talk about how we’re strangers? Fine, then. Let’s talk about how you’re scared of me. I don’t know how you get so much done when you’re never fucking honest with yourself. You treat me like your little science experiment when you want to help, like a thing or a problem to fix, and then when you start to like me, you avoid it like the plague. You want me to be your ghost or your friend, and you can’t handle me being both, because it scares you too fucking bad to imagine loving something that doesn’t last. You can’t wrap your head around liking me and letting me go.
“And you don’t even know me, noona. You didn’t know who I was before I fucking showed up here! And yet the cognitive dissonance is fucking killing you, huh? Makes it hard to sleep at night?” He’s mocking her now, fully sardonic, and past the numb Jeonghan can feel frost spreading across her bones, freezing over her heart. It hurts. “Imagine how it would feel for someone who did know me. What the fuck do you even know about closure? You hurt people and call it healing. You’re trying to get a rise out of me because you can’t fucking deal with your own emotions, and you want to talk like you’re an expert on everyone else’s?”
Hansol laughs, breathless and worn-out. Somewhere in the midst of his tirade, his voice leveled out again, and he’s not yelling anymore. In fact, his voice borders on more of a whisper than a shout, all his anger distilled into blunt force, not shrapnel. That shit kills — Hansol, of all people, would know. “What are you more scared of, Jeonghan? That if I walk through you right now, you won’t fucking feel it? Or that you will?”
He isn’t shouting, but Jeonghan’s ears are ringing all the same.
“Fuck off,” he spits when Jeonghan fails to respond to any of it, all her facilities frozen in place. “Don’t talk to me until you’re ready to act like a fucking adult again. You’re not special, Jeonghan,” he calls, walking through the fucking wall to get away from her. “You’re going to die too, at the end of all this.”
His notebook is left open on the couch in his wake. Jeonghan’s already established that she’s an asshole, so she creeps closer, takes a look at the page it was left on, just to see.
Lyrics. Don’t be fooled by the city lights / Time is running out and you’re a lucky strike. Further down: Swim through the crowd / If your feet can’t touch the ground, then fly. The whole page is littered with words and notes, some of them incomprehensible to Jeonghan, some fully legible, underlined with a black pen. Jeonghan shuts the book before her tears can fall on its smooth white pages. She shoves it between the couch cushions and cries.
❝ 10. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
“Aren’t you doing, like, the exact thing he asked you not to do?”
Lee Chan, aged twenty-five, is sitting across from Jeonghan at a Japanese noodle bar, munching on shiitake ramyun and looking at Jeonghan like she just drop-kicked a child. She supposes that’s fair. It’s a lot to take in.
“Of course not. Hansolie is avoiding you guys because he thinks it’ll make your life harder if he’s still in it. I’m just asking you if that’s true.”
Chan snorts. “Hypothetically, right?”
“Hypothetically.”
All things considered, Chan has taken the news about his best friend being a ghost living in Jeonghan’s apartment extremely well. Jeonghan was prepared to present him with a lot more evidence to convince him she wasn’t just clinically insane (or pulling an extremely cruel prank), but Chan had accepted her words nearly at face value. When Jeonghan asked why, he had simply shrugged: “I’d do anything to have Solie-hyung back. I’d deal with a hundred crazy people if it meant one of them could bring him back to me.”
“Well,” Chan says now, shoveling more noodles into his mouth, “you already told me, so I’m still gonna do it. But you can’t get Jihoon-hyung like this, he’s never gonna believe you even if I’m here.”
“I have evidence.” Jeonghan pulls out her phone and goes to her photo album, where the pictures she took of some of Hansol’s sticky notes for Seungwan are, clearly displaying his handwriting. It’s a bit of a long shot, but she guesses that if anyone knows his handwriting, it’s his best friends — one of whom worked with him professionally, no less. She slides the phone across the table to Chan. “I also know way too much about him for someone who never met him when he was… well, alive. I’m a veritable Chwe Hansol fact machine now.”
Chan laughs in her face. “Sure you are,” he giggles, still looking through the photos.
Jeonghan frowns. She is, for some reason, offended by this, even though she supposes it’s fair coming from someone who’s known him almost his entire life. Still: “I am! For example, I know that he was scared he’d psych himself out and drop Sofia when she was a baby, so he started calling her ‘sweet potato,’ and then when his mom got concerned that he was dehumanizing her, he changed it to ‘baby sweet potato.’”
Surprise paints Chan’s strong features, his eyebrows raising immediately. “Huh.” He squints at Jeonghan, then, like he’s reevaluating her in a different light — maybe taking her claims that much more seriously, now, even though he was ready to believe her anyway. He hands her phone back and nods. “Still won’t be enough for Jihoonie, though. He literally won’t believe it until he sees it.”
“Well, I’m not going to kidnap him,” Jeonghan says sarcastically, to which Chan nods enthusiastically.
“Exactly. I am!”
“Wait, what?”
“I’ll tell him we’re going to meet a new friend I met through work and bring him to your apartment. Do you know how to dance?”
Jeonghan briefly imagines both reintroducing an unaware Hansol to his friends and proving to one of them that he is, in fact, real at the same time and already feels the beginnings of a migraine. “Why would I know how to dance?”
Chan shrugs. “I work at a dance studio.”
“I know, that’s how I found you. But isn’t Jihoon going to figure out you were lying pretty quickly?”
“We,” Chan corrects, pointing at her with his chopsticks. His bowl is nearly empty by now, which is good, because Jeonghan has to be back at her desk in fifteen minutes. She gets a generous lunch break, but maybe not enough for something as complicated as this. “We are lying to him. Don’t put the blame for this on me.”
Jeonghan swallows and nods. “Okay. If you really think it’s the only way to get him there, then we’ll do that. It would definitely be easier to inform him before the fact, though.”
Again, Chan laughs at her, a loud ha-ha-ha that has a few strangers looking their way. It’s endearing, though not as much as Hansol’s goose laugh. “No, it wouldn’t. Trust me, noona. If you told hyung any of what you just told me, he’d punch you in the face.”
That startles Jeonghan, causing her to lean back and reassess her entire mental perception of Woozi. “Really? But he seems so…”
“Small? Trust me, he has a lot of rage packed into those 166 centimetres. You really shouldn’t try him, especially about Hansol.”
“I was actually going to say quiet and polite. That’s what Seungwan always says, anyway.”
“Seungwan? Who’s Seungwan?”
“My roommate. She, uh, works in the industry.” Jeonghan (very gracefully, she thinks) doesn’t mention the part about Seungwan’s massive crush on Jihoon. She doesn’t need to stir the pot any more than she already has.
“Oh. She knows hyung?”
“They’ve met a few times.” Checking her watch, Jeonghan realizes that she should be getting back soon, and gives Chan an apologetic look. “I really need to get back to work. But — give me your KaTalk? We can talk more there.”
Chan agrees and they exchange KaKaoTalk IDs before parting ways outside the restaurant. When she returns to her cubicle, Jisoo is already there, leaning over the wall barely separating their areas with anticipation. “How was it?”
“Surprisingly good.” She collapses into her chair and sighs, rubbing at her forehead. “He’s really nice, and he believed me right away. Said he’d deal with a hundred crazy people if one of them could bring back his hyung.” Jeonghan’s eyes slip shut, but she still hears Jisoo’s small cooing noise, a sad little aw. “Yeah. We exchanged KaTalk IDs. Hopefully we can make this happen before the end of the week.”
Jisoo makes a little humming noise, finally sticking her head back down into her own cubicle. “You could just apologize the normal way, you know.”
“No, I’ve already started this, he won’t let me take it back now.”
“I meant before that, dumbass. It’s not like you have to do it all at once.”
It’s not, but it feels like she does. A simple apology wouldn’t be enough, and Jeonghan is terrible at groveling. It debases her, and she’s just bad at it. She can never commit to the bit well enough for it to work — at best, it makes her look so pathetic that the person she’s offended forgives her anyway out of sheer pity. Jeonghan doesn’t want Hansol’s pity. It’s better to go all out on one occasion than try a thousand little remedies.
“I’m sticking to the plan. I think he would appreciate it more.”
Jisoo scoffs. “Right. Well, let me know when you two are cool again — he keeps coming over to hang out with Cheol all day and moping.”
“He does that?” It’s news to Jeonghan, who hasn’t had any idea where Hansol’s been over the past few days. Every time she gets home from work, he’s there, but he only stays for a few minutes, waiting in silence to see if she’ll break it first, before leaving again.
“Yeah. Scared the shit out of him the first time, too, but they’re friends now, I think. And he watches movies with Myunghwa now. Goes on hikes with Mingyu and shit. Actually, he’s been doing a lot of bonding without you monopolizing his time anymore. Maybe this was a good thing!”
Jeonghan grits her teeth and glares at her laptop screen. “Jisoo, shut up.”
“Aren’t you happy Myunghwa and your ghost are getting along now?”
“Yes,” she says haltingly, because she is. “I just don’t need to hear about it.”
“You’re one of the biggest gossips I know.”
“I don’t need to hear about it from you,” she corrects. She’s the one who pokes her head over the wall this time, specifically to glare down at Jisoo’s round head. “Overstepping is what got me into this mess in the first place. It should come from him or I shouldn’t hear about it at all.” It’s all fake righteousness, of course — as noble as it would probably be, Jeonghan is not that good of a person. Jisoo knows this.
“So you don’t want to hear about the time someone told him his music was better than sex and he said —”
“Hong Jisoo. Shut the fuck up.”
Lee Chan 🦦:
Noona, why does your default nickname have an angel emoji next to it?
Yoon Jeonghan 😇:
Because I’m an angel 😇
LEE CHAN has changed YOON JEONGHAN’s nickname to: Jeonghan-noona (boring lawyer)
Lee Chan 🦦:
Also why am I an otter
Jeonghan-noona (boring lawyer):
You reminded me of one.
They’re very cute!!!
[otter.gif]
[animated_otter.gif]
[otterly_adorable.gif]
Lee Chan 🦦:
Yeah Jihoon-hyung is gonna hate you
❝ 11. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Lee Jihoon hates Jeonghan. She can see it in his eyes, and she is, despite her best efforts, intimidated.
“You’ll be fine,” Chan had tried to reassure her earlier. “I’ll hold him back if he tries to punch you.” Jeonghan was not, to say the least, reassured.
“Who the hell are you?” he asks, immediately suspicious when he and Chan show up at her doorstep. Jeonghan takes it that Chan is not a very good liar.
“Yoon Jeonghan. Nice to meet you.” She extends her hand for a handshake and Jihoon complies, albeit hesitantly, like he thinks she’s about to pull out a knife or something as well. “Come in, please.”
Seungwan is out, having opted to avoid the drama until Jeonghan texted her the go-ahead that everything’s okay, which is more than fair on her part. Jeonghan anticipates at least some screaming. It leaves the apartment empty save for them, though Hansol should be there soon, since Jisoo said he would be leaving for the apartment in about five minutes. She made up some excuse about Seungwan wanting to see him, and, none the wiser, sweet, innocent Hansol should arrive within twenty minutes. Jeonghan’s palms are sweating.
“Is he here?” Chan whispers to Jeonghan as they file in. Her eyes dart to Jihoon, who’s watching them with his arms crossed. He looks built. He definitely goes to that gym in Gangnam.
She shakes her head as subtly as she can and tries to motion with her hands to indicate, soon. Chan only looks confused, so she doesn’t think he got it.
“You two are acting weird. Where did you meet again?”
“Jeonghan-noona took one of my salsa courses.”
“Right.” Jihoon sounds wholly unconvinced. “So why am I here? Chan was really cryptic about this whole thing.”
Chan is a horrible partner in crime. Since he’s only looking at her with wide puppy dog eyes, like he expects her to dispel Jihoon’s trepidation completely, she decides to just go for it.
“Let’s take a seat,” she says, directing them to the kitchen table. “Jihoon-ssi, I want you to know that I’m aware this sounds completely insane, and that I understand you have no reason to believe me or take my words at face value. But I want to ask that you reserve the worst of your judgment for when I’m done, and that we can have a civilized discussion.”
Jihoon, who was at first vaguely skeptical and largely unimpressed, has progressed to displaying clear confusion, bordering on disdain, the longer Jeonghan speaks. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Jeonghan takes a deep breath. “Right. I understand that you are very close friends with Chwe Hansol?”
Jihoon’s eyes darken, but he nods, albeit hesitantly. “I’m very sorry for your loss. Hansol is wonderful, and speaks of you very fondly.”
“You knew Hansol?” Jihoon seems to be evaluating her in a different light, now, and Jeonghan takes a deep breath. Here goes nothing.
“Not while he was alive, no. But, Jihoon-ssi — Hansol has been living in this apartment as a ghost since his passing. I’m the only person who can see or hear him, and he appears to have some kind of metaphysical connection to this apartment, because he can’t leave it for more than twenty-four hours at a time, but he is otherwise… normal. For a ghost, I mean. He communicates with my friends through handwritten notes. I can show you —”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” As Jeonghan has continued explaining, Jihoon’s expression has slowly morphed from disbelief to unabashed anger, when he realized that she’s serious. Chan sucks in a breath next to Jihoon, eyes darting between the two of them nervously.
“Hyung, if you just listen —”
“No. No, you can’t be serious.” Jihoon stands, his chair scraping against the floor with a grating sound when he pushes it back. “This is some sick fucking prank. I don’t know what kind of shit you had going on with Hansol before he died, or if you’re just fucking insane, but this is just cruel. What the fuck is wrong with you? Was the dick that good, you went crazy without it?”
Jeonghan’s eyes widen at the same time Chan’s do. “Jihoon-ssi —”
“Fuck off.” He slams a hand on the table, glaring at Jeonghan with so much raw anger that she knows he can only be deeply hurt. “Fuck off, you fucking asshole. What kind of fucking complex do you have to have to get Chan involved in this shit? What the hell did he ever do? And to try and bring me into it, too? You’re an awful fucking person.”
“Jihoon-ssi, I know it sounds unbelievable, but I swear I’m not lying.”
“Then you’re crazy.” He says it immediately, completely matter-of-fact: Jeonghan is evil or she’s insane. It’s not a dichotomy she hasn’t heard before. “Which I guess I should get you help for, but I’m feeling pretty fucking inhospitable right now. Talk to me or Chan again and I’m calling the fucking police.”
“Hyung —”
“Jihoon-ssi, please. If you look here, I have notes Hansol has written that —”
If Jihoon was mad before, upon glancing at the pile of sticky notes, he looks downright murderous. “Oh, so you’re not crazy, you’re just sick. Sick and evil and desperate. Tell you what — you can take your fucking notes and go straight to h—”
Jihoon’s grabbed Hansol’s thick notebook, the one Jeonghan got for him, and looks as if he’s about to chuck it at her face when, suddenly, Hansol inserts himself between them and grabs it right out of his hand. “What the fuck is going on?” he asks, whirling around to face Jeonghan, at the same time that Jihoon screams.
“Holy shit,” Chan whispers, pale as a sheet. “Holy fucking shit. Hyung? Hansolie-hyung? Is that you?”
“Chan,” Hansol says weakly. Shell-shocked, Jihoon has stumbled back a few paces to stand with his back pressed against the wall. Jeonghan blinks down to where his eyes have locked and sees that Hansol is still holding the notebook.
“Okay,” she says, forcing her voice not to wobble. “Let’s all sit down again, shall we? And then we can talk.”
Hansol sighs loudly and pulls out a chair to slump into without hesitation, dropping the notebook on the table and his head in his hands. Chan actually squeaks a little. Jihoon, meanwhile, approaches the table like a wounded animal, filled with apprehension and fright.
“As I was saying,” Jeonghan starts, her voice a little scratchy, “Hansol’s ghost is in this apartment. Currently, he’s sitting in that chair.” She gestures, takes a moment to clear her throat. “And while your hesitation is justified, you have to understand that there is no way for me to fake what just happened.”
Silence. Weakly, Hansol asks her, “Jeonghan, what did you do?”
She swallows roughly and doesn’t answer. “Like I told you, normally he communicates with — well, with everyone who isn’t me through notes. I, um, kind of sprang this on him. Hansol-ah?”
Hansol raises his head. Jeonghan is often struck by how odd his physicality is as a ghost, but it’s never hit her harder than it has now. If he could cry, she’s sure, he would be. She was half expecting his eyes to be red-rimmed and strained anyway, but of course, they’re not. All of his emotions are trapped inside, with no way out.
“Jeonghan,” he says hoarsely, voice no louder than a whisper. “Why?”
Jeonghan could cry, frankly, at the raw devastation in his voice. But she doesn’t have the right, so she holds the tears at bay and answers him.
“I’m sorry. And they really, really miss you.”
Again, Hansol’s head falls between his arms, hidden away from anyone seeing. Jihoon and Chan are still watching in stunned silence, watching Jeonghan talk to the thin air that they have reason to believe is their best friend.
Finally, Jihoon breaks the silence. Quietly, he asks the air, so hopeful Jeonghan’s heart breaks for him, “Hansol?”
“Fuck.” All of Hansol’s walls crumble down in that split second. Jeonghan looks away when she sees him opening his notebook, taking out the pen that’s stuffed between the pages. This isn’t for her to witness.
“I’ll give you guys some space.” None of them acknowledge her, eyes fixed on Hansol’s pen, on whatever he writes on that blank page. It’s a good thing, honestly — it means none of them see the tears spill down her cheeks before she locks herself in her bedroom.
❝ 11.5. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Three hours later, Jeonghan thinks everyone in the apartment has cried themselves hoarse. She certainly has, and though she’s tried her best not to listen, she’s heard both Chan and Jihoon crying too, and Hansol screaming at the sky, voice rubbed raw, where no one else can hear him. Because no one else can hear him. It’s the most he’s ever raised his voice, and it’s not even in anger — just a deep, profound sadness.
Jeonghan withers away on her bed and ignores Jisoo and Seungwan blowing up her phone. She doesn’t even care anymore that she’s in her outside clothes — she’ll just change the sheets later. Or she won’t. What does it matter, anyway?
She needs a cigarette. She’s debating the merits of sneaking out to grab her Marlboros when there’s a soft knocking at her door.
To her surprise, it’s not Hansol in front of her, but Jihoon. His face is blank and he’s avoiding eye contact, but he greets her all the same: “Hi. Can I come in?”
Jeonghan waves him in and collapses once more onto her bed. Who even gives a shit?
“I, uh… I need to apologize to you.”
God, she needs that cigarette. “No, you don’t.”
“I do.” He looks up, twiddling with his thumbs, and grimaces much too guiltily. “I said some really awful things to you, and clearly they weren’t justified. I jumped to conclusions, and they weren’t fair to you. I was needlessly cruel and I almost hurt you physically. I am deeply sorry for my actions.”
To Jeonghan’s immense horror, he drops into a ninety-degree bow, and she nearly launches herself out of bed trying to get him to stop. “No– fuck– stand up, Jihoon, fuck.”
Jihoon does, but he looks a little confused about it. Jeonghan huffs, pressing fingers to her temple, where she’s been aching since she started to cry. “It’s fine. You didn’t say anything that I didn’t deserve.”
Jihoon blinks once, slowly. “I said things that were factually untrue.”
Jeonghan shrugs, burrowing herself back under the covers. “Yeah, well, I still deserved them. And even if I didn’t, it’s a fucked up enough situation that you’d be justified anyway.”
Jihoon shakes his head minutely, but the strong set of his shoulders tells Jeonghan that he’s certain in what he’s saying. “No, I wouldn’t. Just because I was sensitive doesn’t mean I had the right to take it out on you, much less in the way I did. I– I said some very mean things.” He grimaces, no doubt thinking of the comment about Hansol’s dick. Jeonghan’s been trying not to think about it. “And you shouldn’t be okay with that, either. So I’m sorry, and I hope I can make it up to you.”
“Jesus.” Jeonghan swears in English, like she always does when she’s stressed beyond words, a habit she picked up from Jisoo. “Fucking — does Hansol collect saints as friends, or something? You love him and you don’t want people taking advantage of that or of him. That’s a good thing, Jihoon-ah.”
He shakes his head once again. “Not if it means I treat people like that.”
Jeonghan stares at him, and Jihoon lets her, meeting her gaze. Finally, she flops back onto the bed, covers her face with a pillow. Thank fuck she had the foresight not to wear makeup today.
“Jesus, fuck,” she says again, tired. She removes the pillow to make sure Jihoon can hear her when she says, “Fine. I forgive you then, I guess.”
Jihoon’s expression softens, like that’s what he’d been waiting for. “Thank you, noona.”
She waves a hand in the air probably too aggressively, but she can’t bring herself to care. All her emotions are drained, and her patience is absolutely shot. “Whatever. Does he still hate me?”
“Huh?”
“Hansol. Does he still hate me? He didn’t want you guys to know, but I thought… fuck, I don’t know.” Her headache is getting stronger now, pounding against her skull. She wonders if you can die from something like this — if a blood vessel in her skull could burst, and then it would all be over.
“He doesn’t hate you,” Jihoon says confidently. “I doubt that he’s ever hated you. First thing he said to me was ‘not to treat Jeonghan-noona that way.’” He snorts, clearly slightly amused. “He likes you. I think you’re in your head about it.”
Jeonghan laughs weakly and pretends to agree. “Right. Thank you, Jihoon.”
“Thank you,” he corrects, and Jeonghan opens her mouth to protest, but he cuts her off before she can. “For taking care of him. Our Hansol-ah… he has a lot of love. It’s not good for him if there’s nowhere for it to go.”
She shrugs. “It’s the least I can do.”
Jihoon opens his mouth, hesitating before saying something else, but another knock at the door interrupts them. “Noona?” calls a watery voice. “Hyung?”
Jeonghan opens the door and there’s Chan with his eyes still shiny, and Hansol standing behind him. Hansol’s hand is hovering above Chan’s shoulder, as close as he can get to touching.
“Noona,” Chan says again, all choked up with emotion, and Jeonghan hesitates only a split second before opening her arms. Chan falls into them like he was just waiting for the invitation.
“Aigoo.” Jeonghan pets her hand through his hair, holding him close as he cries into her shoulder. “Aigoo, Chanie, baby. It’s okay, let it all out.”
Jihoon shuffles over to put a soothing hand on Chan’s shoulder, but what really surprises her is Hansol. For the first time, she sees him lean in close enough for his hands to go blurry at the edges, for his face to smudge partially out of view when he rests it against Chan’s head, his arms around the both of them.
Hansol-ah, Jeonghan thinks, blinking back tears, my Hansolie. His eyes are shut, the smallest pinch between his brows, and yet he’s completely still. There’s no rise or fall to his chest to show that he’s breathing, no movement of their bodies to accommodate his, no body heat emanating from him. If it weren’t for her vision, Jeonghan would have no reason to believe he was there at all. The faint sense of warmth she feels around her could easily be a hallucination.
Hansol’s eyelashes flutter and, before she can look away, he’s looking into her own eyes, steady and warm. His eyes are pretty, she realizes — expressive, even when the rest of him isn’t. “Thank you, Jeonghanie-noona,” he says softly, and something cracks open and raw in her chest.
She shakes her head, tries to convey it with her eyes: I’m sorry.
“I forgive you.”
Jeonghan forces her attention on Chan instead, his sobs tapering off now, rubs soothing circles against the small of his back. Jihoon harshly wipes a sleeve over his own face, frowning deeply, trying his best not to show it.
Oh, these boys. Jeonghan loves them already.
“Thank you, noona,” Chan finally says when he extracts himself slightly from her hold. He’s holding Jihoon’s hand, too, looking up at her with deeply earnest eyes. He reminds her of Hansol for a second — far too honest, far too sweet. She sighs and clicks her tongue against the top of her mouth, petting through his hair again.
“Of course, baby. You’re welcome here any time you want, okay? Both of you.” She looks behind him to Jihoon, mouth pressed down into a straight line, refusing to make eye contact. He nods, though, and she thinks the message has been received. “Do you need dinner? Do you want to stay? Noona can order something, whatever you want.”
“Can we?” Chan’s hopeful again, glancing from Jeonghan to Jihoon to where he must think Hansol is. “I’d really like that.”
Jeonghan nods, breaking their hug with one last pat to Chan’s fluffy hair. “Decide what you want, okay? I’m going to —” She gestures vaguely, but none of them seem to care about her lack of an excuse. None of them but Hansol, that is, who follows her to the living room where she grabs her cigarettes and then out to the balcony, where autumn is making itself known outside with gusts of wind that sweep to the bone.
She lights the cigarette and takes a long, deep drag, letting smoke fill her lungs before she speaks.
“I’m really sorry, Hansol-ah.”
“It’s okay,” he responds, and she shoots him as withering a glare as she can manage, because it isn’t. “Or, it’s not, but I’m okay.”
“You’re not mad?”
He shakes his head, stuffing his hands in his pockets again. “Nah. Tried for a bit, but I couldn’t be. I love them too much to be mad at you for telling them.”
“Good,” she says, stumbling slightly over the word. Her hand that holds her cigarette is shaking, so she breathes in more menthol until the tremor goes away. “That’s good.”
“Sorry about what Jihoon said.”
“I — fuck, don’t fucking apologize.” Jeonghan sighs, grinding the cigarette bud against the railing and immediately lighting another one. “Just don’t. How long were you standing there, anyway?”
“Not long. Hyung told me what he said, though.”
Jeonghan groans and breathes smoke out over the edge of the balcony. “Fuck’s sake, he shouldn’t have. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does, though.”
Jeonghan glares at him, more sharply this time. The nicotine has helped her come back to herself, a little bit. She’s not shaking anymore, at least. “No, it doesn’t. What are you guys, saints? He cares about you, he lost you, and he thought I was taking advantage of that. I’m not mad. I’m more mad that you two keep fucking apologizing for it, actually.”
“But he said —”
“It doesn’t matter what he said. It wasn’t true, was it?” Staring him down, Hansol has no choice but to shake his head. “Exactly. So it doesn’t matter. Drop it.”
Hansol huffs lightly, pouts a little, but eventually lets it go. He leans his back against the railing Jeonghan is smoking against, two chiral images. “How’d you get Chan in on it?”
“He’s easy to track down. Found his email on the studio’s website, bought him food. Explained it to him. He’s really sweet.”
“He is,” Hansol agrees, smiling slightly. Jeonghan throws her second cigarette stub over the balcony and toys her fingers at the end of another, dangling out of the pack. “He likes you a lot. Jihoon’s warming up to you, too.”
Jeonghan laughs, and it’s caustic even to her own ears. She flinches and takes the cigarette out of the box. “Chan said he’d hate me,” she confides around the cigarette she lights in her mouth.
“Chan is dramatic. Besides, Jihoon pretends to hate a lot of people, but there’s not many he actually does. He’s a big softie inside.”
“Hm.” She taps ash off the end and breathes in again. “They’re nice. I can see why they’re your best friends.”
Hansol breaks into a big, goofy smile, one that shows all his gums, and Jeonghan huffs out a laugh on her exhale. “Yeah. I really, really love them.” He scuffs the toe of his shoe against the concrete, still smiling wildly, and it’s so human a gesture Jeonghan has the urge all of a sudden to reach out and hug him.
She smokes the rest of her cigarette faster instead, gives her mouth something to do. “Alright. Go back in, I’m sure they’re missing you already. I’ll be done in a minute.”
Hansol hesitates, and Jeonghan’s about to ask why, when he holds his palm out, waiting for something. Jeonghan watches him with her head tilted, cigarette dangling from her lips, when she realizes what he’s asking for.
She scoffs, turning away. It’s a four cigarettes day if ever she saw one, but Hansol’s looking at her like he cares, and he never did throw out her Marlboros. Jeonghan is so, so weak.
She slaps the pack into his hand and her fingers graze through nothing, through air, through Hansol’s own hand when she does. She shivers, shakes her head and turns around again. “Now leave me alone.”
There’s not much left of her cigarette now, so she pulls it from her lips and waits, prolonging the pleasure. She needs a moment more out here, with the sky darkening, the sun gone from her view, blocked entirely from her vision by her apartment complex. Her balcony faces east nearly dead-on — it’s a shame. She likes sunsets far more than any sunrise.
Five or so minutes later, she snuffs out the cigarette bud and heads back inside. What she finds makes her laugh: Chan, Jihoon, and Hansol are huddled together on the couch with Hansol in the middle, and Chan and Jihoon’s heads are tilted inward, sitting right in the middle of Hansol’s shoulders. Hansol’s grinning, clearly not bothered by their infringement upon his non-corporeal being, and they’re all giggling over something like bright-eyed schoolboys.
God, her chest aches. She wishes she’d taken another cigarette.
“You guys decided yet?”
Chan looks over first. “Noona!” Then he frowns, eyes focused on her shoulder. “Oh, no, noona, I ruined your shirt!”
Jeonghan looks down, confused, and finds that her sweater has indeed been soiled by a mess of Chan’s snot and tears. She hadn’t even noticed, in the midst of everything. She laughs, can’t help how it spills out of her.
“Don’t worry, Chan-ah. Nothing the dry cleaner won’t fix.”
Jeonghan takes their orders of fried chicken and retreats to her room to place the order and change her shirt. She texts Seungwan, too: All good. You can come home now. Thanks for waiting, baby ❤️.
The chicken and Seungwan arrive at around the same time, Seungwan just a few minutes later. Her keys turn in the door as they’re pulling food out of the bags, and she’s calling into the room, “Unnie? How’d it go?” when she steps out of the hall and stops short, eyes wide as saucers.
“Oh,” she says, turning an alarming shade of red alarmingly fast. “I– um. Hello.” She drops into a bow, furiously tucking hair behind her ears. There’s no need to bother, really — Seungwan looks adorable, as she always does, and since she was out, she’s taken care of her appearance enough to not look the mess that Jeonghan, at least, certainly is by now. “Unnie didn’t tell me you’d still be here. I’m Seungwan– Boo Seungwan, Jeonghan-unnie’s roommate.”
“She works for Channel Fullmoon,” Jeonghan provides, beckoning Seungwan closer so she can have some dinner, too. She ordered enough for all of them. “You’ve met a few times, Jihoon-ah.”
“Huh.” Jihoon’s brow creases, like he’s trying to remember, and Seungwan creeps over to the table like she doesn’t live here. “You do look a little familiar. Well, it’s nice to meet you, Seungwan-ssi.”
“Oh! Just Seungwan is fine. You’re– um, you’re older than me.”
He smiles. “You can call me oppa, then, if you’d like.” Seungwan burns scarlet.
“Okay. Thank you, oppa.”
“And this is Chan,” Jeonghan interrupts, just so Seungwan doesn’t embarrass herself too terribly already. “He’s our new maknae, so be nice to him.”
Seungwan turns to Chan with a frown, already on edge thanks to Jeonghan’s description. “What year were you born?” she demands.
“1999.”
She frowns deeper. “You’re a year younger than me,” she observes, like she’s mad about it. “Well.” She huffs a little, then makes a big show of relenting. “You can call me noona because Jeonghan-unnie likes you, and you’re Hansolie’s best friend, so you can’t be that bad.”
“Hey!”
Snickering into her hand, Jeonghan almost doesn’t notice Hansol scooching his chair closer to her until he’s tapping her on the shoulder. She can’t feel it, really, but the movement catches the corner of her eye and she turns anyway. “How long d’you think it’ll take?” he asks, smirking slightly.
“What?”
“For Jihoon and Seungwanie to get together.” Jeonghan follows his eyes and sees Jihoon listening intently as Seungwan describes her job — they’ve both worked with idols, and soon they’re sharing stories and experiences of who was the best (and the worst) to work with. She’s still blushing slightly, but Seungwan has never been timid around people no matter how she feels about them, and Jeonghan can see Jihoon warming up to her immediately.
“You think?” She glances his way again, biting the inside of her cheek. They are cute, she has to admit. “He likes her?”
Hansol scoffs. “Oh, yeah. She’s, like, hyung’s exact type. I’d give it a month, tops.”
“Aigoo,” Jeonghan whispers, smiling down at her hands. “Cute. I’ll bet you…” She pauses, realizing that she has no idea what a ghost would be interested in betting for. “Well, for whatever you want that they’ll be sort of dating in two weeks, then really dating by the end of the month.”
Hansol, for some reason, looks positively delighted by this analysis. “Bet,” he agrees, nodding solemnly. “Noona, are you a romantic?”
“What?” she laughs, caught off guard by the sudden question.
“You said they were cute,” he points out, giddily explaining his conclusion. “And that one time Sooyoung-noona told you to get laid, you hit her over the head with a pillow.”
Jeonghan laughs again, startled that Hansol remembered such a specific incident. Indeed, at their last brunch, Sooyoung had started lamenting Jeonghan’s singleness and loudly declared that she had to hook up with someone in the next month or so or she’d probably die. Jeonghan had barraged her with pillows and promptly ignored her diagnosis. Sooyoung is not a doctor for a reason.
“I don’t —”
“See?” Seungwan speaks loudly, loudly enough that it draws both Hansol and Jeonghan’s attention, frowning at them with faux aggression, arms crossed. “They always do that. Talking in their own little world, like the rest of us aren’t even here. It’s rude, honestly.”
“Sorry, Seungwanie,” Jeonghan appeases, thinking that will be the end of it. It’s not a complaint she hasn’t heard before, but honestly, she doesn’t think it can really be avoided. When she’s the only one who can actually hear Hansol, of course they’ll take more between themselves if he has something to say.
“And yet unnie complains every time we call Hansolie her ghost. You know she said he looked like James Dean at first?”
Jeonghan frowns, pointing at her. “That is a falsehood and you know it.”
“Jisoo-unnie said —”
“Jisoo is a liar.”
Hansol is squawking with laughter in the background, and despite the circumstances, Jeonghan is having trouble keeping the corners of her own mouth down, too. “Well, yeah, but you did say he was reasonably attractive.”
“What does that have to do with anything?!”
“Hey, didn’t you say I was Seungwanie’s type?” Hansol asks between peals of laughter, apparently remembering that first dinner table conversation as well. Jeonghan snorts, unable to contain her amusement any longer, then unthinkingly tries to kick him in the ankle. This only makes Hansol laugh harder.
“Yah,” she complains, still trying not to laugh. “Behave, Hansol-ah.”
“Huh,” says Chan.
“Or what?” He pokes his finger in her face, just because she can. If he were alive, she would bite it. Unfortunately, this is not an option lest Jeonghan looks like she’s completely lost it, biting at thin air, and she still has just enough social awareness left in her to know that this is not a good idea. “Come on, noona. It was funny, you have to admit. The first thing you said is that I wasn’t horribly disfigured.”
“Because you’re not!” Jeonghan personally thinks this was a very reasonable description. He is dead, after all.
“Okay, cut it out, you two,” Seungwan interjects before Hansol can rebut her. “This is so rude. We have guests!”
“It’s okay, Hansolie’s always been a little shit,” Jihoon says calmly. “And I feel like it’s hard to include everyone in ghost conversation.”
“I refuse to translate unless it’s necessary,” Jeonghan agrees.
“Can you tell hyung that he can kiss my ass?”
“I am not saying that.”
❝ 12. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Things progress after that not to how they were before, but to a new normal. Jihoon and Chan come to brunch now, and have been summarily adopted by the entire friend group, no take-backsies (as Junhui excitedly put it, squishing a disgruntled Jihoon’s cheeks). They come over to Jeonghan and Seungwan’s on occasion, but from what Jeonghan gathers, more often Hansol goes to them. She caught him humming to himself when she came home one day and, when she asked him what it was, he responded that it was a song he’s been working on with Jihoon. Jeonghan is glad that he has, with Jihoon’s help, regained that creative outlet.
Between Hansol and Jeonghan things have changed too. In part, Hansol is less careful with his touches now. It extends at least marginally to everyone, but mostly to Jeonghan — she is, after all, the only one who can see it. Even when she’s entirely conscious of his hand on her shoulder, though, she’s still not convinced the slight warmth she feels isn’t all in her head. After all, there are no other indicators: not a gust of wind, or a tingling sensation, or the weight of flesh against her own. Physically, Hansol continues to have no ability to interact with things that are living, including plants and animals. While Hansol had already known he can’t touch animals (he tried on more than one occasion with stray cats by the Han in that first week, apparently), the realization that even living plants fall right through his fingers takes a toll on him. Jeonghan can’t help but think once again of how cruel it is, to allow him this interaction with the living world only to constantly antagonize with the fact that he can’t truly be a part of it.
There are other changes between them, too. Hansol is less reserved with his feelings, more comfortable being silly or crass or moody with Jeonghan, and in return she tries to not hide away the parts of her that aren’t calculated, tries to be a little more honest. It’s difficult, an ongoing struggle that she does not always succeed with, but Hansol seems to appreciate her trying. He gets it, anyway — why she’s so hesitant to become attached to a ghost.
She’s realizing, though, as time goes on, that it’s a futile effort. No matter how much of herself she attempts to obscure, Hansol is genuine enough that he gains her affection anyway. She can push away her true thoughts and refuse to indulge him with most of her feelings as much as she wants, but it won’t change the fact that he’s already a part of them. She keeps the crevices of her heart locked away from view, but it doesn’t matter if he sees it or not: he’s already there regardless.
The business trip, then, comes as a stark relief amidst this onslaught of new people and feelings. It’s a two day, two night excursion to Kyoto, where she’s meeting with company investors to discuss the renewal of their contract. The company’s sending her because of her fluency in Japanese, and she honestly expects the business negotiations to only take up a fourth of her time, if that — they’re sending her in person as a courtesy more than anything else, and she doubts the contract will even change very much. As far as she’s concerned, it’s an all-expenses-paid vacation to Japan, and she is greatly looking forward to it. She even packs her bags early.
“Ah, unnie, why are you so eager to get away from us?” Seungwan pouts on the Sunday before her trip. They’re at Junhui and Minghao’s again for brunch, and even though it’s only two days, Seungwan is clinging terribly. Jeonghan is doing a piss poor job at pretending she’s annoyed about it.
“You’re all so loud,” she chides, no heat to it at all. “When am I supposed to get any peace around here, huh?! I work nine to five and come home to a roommate and a ghost both yapping in my ear, and all of you bothering me, too. Let your beloved unnie have a break!”
Seungwan hugs her tighter, and Sooyoung, perhaps just wanting to hug, joins in. “I can’t believe they’re sending you instead of me,” Jisoo complains, sipping her iced tea (which Minghao thinks is an abomination, but agreed to make for her so she wouldn’t come with a canned version instead) like it’s a cocktail. “I’m much more likeable.”
“That is fundamentally untrue, and you don’t speak Japanese. You’re unsuited for the job.”
“I think Jisoo-yah would do really well at any job,” Seungcheol says. Jisoo kisses his cheek, but Jeonghan is immediately waving his comment away, undeterred.
“You two are married, so that doesn’t count.”
“What?! Why not?!”
“Partners’ input doesn’t count. They’re too biased.”
Seungcheol frowns, leaning back against the couch with his arms crossed. “I was going to say that I’m sure you’ll do well, too, but I don’t think I will anymore.”
That’s really not the insult he thinks it is, considering that he still shared the compliment, but Jeonghan reacts like it is to make him feel a bit better. “It’s the truth! Myunghwa, back me up.” (Wonwoo and Sooyoung are too enamoured with each other to be honest about something like that — they both genuinely think the other person is the best, or at least the most earnest, at every single thing they touch. It’s infuriating. They truly are meant for each other.)
Minghao hums, turning their hand over Junhui’s to lace their fingers together. “I don’t know, unnie. I think it depends. A good partner can tell you when you’re wrong, but they can also do it without disparaging you. And I don’t think that just because praise comes from someone you’re in love with, that means that praise is void of truth or meaning. But in a lot of cases, someone’s judgment can be clouded by their feelings. So I think it depends.”
Jeonghan deflates considerably, leaning back into Seungwan, who is still cuddling with her relentlessly. “I just wanted you to call Seungcheol an idiot, not write me a dissertation,” she grumbles. Minghao laughs.
“Seungcheol, you’re an idiot,” they dutifully recite. Seungcheol pouts, but it gets Jisoo to kiss his cheek again, so Jeonghan’s sure he’s perfectly pleased.
“Well, you have to bring me back a souvenir,” Jisoo insists.
“And me!” Sooyoung adds, enthused by the prospect. “Get me something tiger-themed. Or maybe a Smiski!”
“I want a Smiski,” Hansol whines, and Jeonghan laughs, suddenly endeared at the image. Hansol bears a bit of a resemblance to one, actually. She’s pretty sure they’re supposed to be ghosts, too.
“I will get each of you a Smiski,” she promises, to raucous cheers across the room.
“Jeonghan-noona, you’re the best,” Chan exclaims.
“Can you get me one from the Sunday collection?” Hansol asks excitedly. “There’s one with a little cat sleeping on Smiski’s tummy.”
“No Smiski requests,” Jeonghan stipulates, even as she makes a mental note to get at least one blind box from the Sunday collection. “I refuse to be blamed for your guys’ shitty luck.”
“I actually have really good luck,” Seokmin muses, apparently very proud of this fact. The conversation moves on, but Hansol is still sticking his head over Jeonghan’s shoulder a few seconds later, grinning cheesily.
“You’ll get me the Sunday collection one though, right?”
Jeonghan sighs and, before she can think better of it, elbows Hansol in the side. He oofs and stumbles to the side, laughing, like he could actually feel it, playing into the slapstick comedy as he falls onto the floor. “Noona!”
“Yes, fine,” she grumbles. Hansol’s puppy dog eyes are dangerous.
He cheers, rising from the floor with a little shimmy. “Chanie’s right — you’re the best.”
Jeonghan’s flight is the next evening, and she leaves for the airport at seven in the evening, straight after finishing work. Seungwan is still out when she rushes home to eat, change, and put her suitcase in the trunk of her car, but Hansol sees her off with a wave. From there, it’s a two hour wait at the airport and non-stop travel for two more hours before she lands in Kyoto, where she’ll have some time to herself before crashing at the hotel. The nighttime flight isn’t ideal, but the company wanted her well-rested for negotiations the next day, which meant a full night of sleep between travel and business meetings. She’s certainly not complaining.
All things considered, it’s a comfortable schedule. She’s not rushed for time, the hotel the company’s paying for has an all-inclusive breakfast spread in the mornings, and she’ll have plenty of time the following two days for her own personal interests outside of work. It’ll be good for her, she thinks, to have some time away and clear her head.
Sure enough, when she wakes in Kyoto at eight in the morning, she’s feeling fully rejuvenated. Breakfast closes at ten and she’s meeting the investors at noon, so she only bothers to make herself presentable, not fully dressed for work, before heading down to eat. Then it’s back upstairs, where she changes into her suit and does her makeup and hair. At 12:00 on the dot, she walks through the doors of the traditional Japanese restaurant the investors have chosen to meet at after a refreshing few hours wandering around Kyoto.
“Hello,” she greets with her most pleasant smile, bowing deeply and then extending her hand for a handshake, Western-style, after the waitress leads her to the table. There are three men there: two investors and one lawyer. “My name is Yoon Jeonghan. I’m very pleased to meet you, and hope that we can work cooperatively together for the benefit of both our companies. Thank you for having me here.”
One man tsks loudly, a strong hissing sound against the top of his teeth. “Her Japanese is good!” he says to one of his companions, as if Jeonghan isn’t even there. Her smile turns brittle, but it’s nothing she hasn’t seen before or expected coming into this. Law and business attract egotistical men like a moth to a flame. Then again, the same seems to be true for almost any profession, so maybe men just attract inflated egos themselves.
“I studied well in school,” she responds, interjecting herself easily back into the conversation. The three men look at her like they’re surprised she’s still present, and she resists the urge to roll her eyes. “If you could introduce yourselves, perhaps we can get started?”
❝ 13. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
The negotiations go well. The food is delicious; the men are at least professional, if condescending; and they end lunch on a high note, where Jeonghan is fairly certain they’ll sign the contract and close off the negotiation early into tomorrow. Then she goes back to her hotel, sheds her suit in exchange for a cozy pink sweater and jeans, and returns outside to the streets of Kyoto for as long as she can before she gets too tired to continue.
Around five, Jeonghan retires to her room for the night, resolving herself to some simple stretches and ordering two yakitori as a light dinner from room service. She’s getting out of the shower, towel wrapped around her chest as she rummages through her suitcase for pajamas, when she hears an all too familiar voice.
“Oh, shit.”
For a moment, Jeonghan thinks she must be hearing things. She’s immediately disgusted with herself — she has absolutely no reason to be so attached to Chwe Hansol that she starts imagining his voice when he’s not around. That’s just ridiculous, and she’s in the middle of berating herself for it when she turns around and sees Chwe Hansol in the middle of her bed.
She stares.
“Uh. Hi, noona.”
Incredulous, all Jeonghan can think to ask is, “What the fuck are you doing here?! How did you even find my hotel room?”
Hansol frowns, rubbing the back of his neck absently. “I kind of… didn’t? I, like — woke up here. You know, how I did in your apartment, usually. Or, like, always, until now. I’m, like, kind of spooked. I dunno what’s going on. I was just jamming with Jihoon-hyung in his studio and then, poof, I’m waking up here. Also, can you put on some clothes?” Hansol’s demeanor has gotten progressively more askance as he goes on, and he’s now quite fidgety. “Not ‘cause, like — I mean. There’s nothing wrong with, uh, that. And clearly you just got out of the shower, and weren’t expecting me, and — it’s just kind of weird. And this situation is already weird, you know? So I kind of —”
“Hansol, shut the fuck up.” Jeonghan storms back into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her this time, clothes in hand. All she does once she’s inside, though, is stare at her reflection in the mirror, at her own pink cheeks and damp hair and dark eyes, her whole body flushed with surprise and the vaguest tinges of something else.
“Fuck,” she mutters, angrily dropping the towel, swearing up a storm as she changes into her pajamas. “Fucking shit. Jesus fucking fuck. What the fuck is going on?” She checks herself in the mirror again once she’s dressed. Picks up the towel and aggressively dries her hair again, not bothering to fix it when it makes her hair slightly staticky and reinforces the look of wet cat she’s currently embodying. “Fuck my fucking life,” she hisses, then steps out of the bathroom again. Hansol is sitting up now, Jeonghan’s nice hotel duvet clutched to his chest like he can actually feel the warmth. If she had to guess, she’d say he just needed something to do with his hands.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know!” Hansol’s voice rises a few octaves. He clears it and it goes back down again. “I honestly don’t know, noona. I swear, I was just hanging out with Jihoonie and then suddenly I was here.”
Jeonghan stalks over to the little comfy chair in the room, conveniently placed by the small table so that she can rest her head in her hands, pushing her pointer fingers against her temples like it’ll make Hansol disappear when she opens her eyes again. It doesn’t. He’s still sitting there, confused and a little listless, looking confused and worried and ridiculously handsome. Jeonghan hates him, she truly does.
“Well.” She breathes in harshly through her nose. The hotel has a strict no-smoking policy, which is a shame, because she could really go for a cigarette right about now. “I guess the question is why, then.”
Hansol opens his mouth a little hesitantly, like he’s not sure if he wants to say whatever’s coming out of his mouth next, but Jeonghan’s phone rings before he can get a word out. She glances down, flipping the screen over to see who’s calling — Jihoon. She sighs and picks up the call.
“Noona?” Jihoon’s voice sounds a bit breathy, slightly panicked. He’s calling about Hansol, she’s sure. “I’m sorry to bother you, I know you’re in Kyoto right now, but– um– Hansolie was here just now, and he hasn’t been responding to me for ten minutes or so, so I’m pretty sure that he’s not anymore, and —”
“He’s here.” The words fall off her tongue like lead, chalky, heavy dead weight. “He showed up here.”
Jihoon pauses. Then: “What?”
She sighs for what must be the tenth time this hour, leaning back in her chair. “Your guess is as good as mine. But he blacked out and did his teleportation thing, you know how he does when he’s away from the apartment, and now he’s here. In my room.”
Silence. Finally, in English, “Shit.”
Jeonghan laughs wryly, without a bit of humour. “Yeah.”
“That’s… fuck.”
“I concur.”
“So he’s… he’s bound to you, then? Not to the apartment?” Jihoon asks, more like he’s looking for confirmation than anything, but Jeonghan swears she stops breathing for a second.
“What?”
Jihoon must sense the panic in her voice, because he’s a bit apologetic when he continues, “Well, it would make sense, right? Didn’t you leave for the airport around seven?” Jeonghan glances at the glowing blue numbers on the clock by her bedside and, sure enough, they read 7:19. “So it’s been about twenty-four hours since he last was… around you, I guess. Right?”
Jeonghan swallows what feels like bile in her throat. “Right.” She can’t bring herself to say anything more.
“I’ll, uh… let you two deal with that, then,” Jihoon says awkwardly after a lengthy pause between them. “Good luck, noona.” He sounds like he means it — like he’s sending her off to war, all grim and determined. It makes Jeonghan laugh, even though she can’t say she really feels any differently.
“Thanks, Jihoon-ah. Sleep well tonight, okay? Go to bed at a reasonable time for once.”
Jihoon sighs, some clicking from his end implying that he’s doing something on his computer again. “Fine.” Jeonghan doesn’t know if she believes him, but she lets it go anyway. “Night, noona.”
“Love you.”
They hang up and Jeonghan looks up again. Hansol is staring at her — maybe he has been this entire time. She’s been trying her best not to pretend he isn’t here.
“Did you hear him?”
“Yes.”
Jeonghan nods, swallows with a click of her throat. What is there even to say?
“I’m sorry,” Hansol blurts suddenly.
“For what?” If he apologizes for something stupid, Jeonghan might kill him again for real. It can’t be too hard to strangle a ghost. Maybe she can finally push him off the balcony.
He frowns. “I dunno. For dying? For liking you so much my soul’s apparently tied to you? For making this all your problem when you didn’t even know me?”
Jeonghan’s head hurts. She feels, inexplicably, like she might start to cry. “You didn’t know me, either. None of this is your fault, Hansol.”
Quietly, so much so that she knows he means it: “I could’ve tried harder not to fall in love with you.”
Fuck.
She’d been hoping, all this time, in some solemn, unspoken part of her, that everything could be avoided if Hansol just didn’t love her back. Jeonghan is good at ignoring feelings she doesn’t want to feel and disregarding things she doesn’t want to think about. She’s good at repressing things until they all crumble around her, but she figured that she could at least postpone that kind of breakdown until Hansol was gone for good. Then, it wouldn’t even matter anymore.
She’s done enough to hope that Hansol might just hate her instead. At least, she thought she did. She thought that, at the very least, she could keep him from loving her.
Jeonghan takes her pack of cigarettes from the table and steps outside without a word. Fuck the hotel’s restrictions, they can fine her the goddamn cleaning fee for all she cares right now.
And Hansol follows her, out into the nighttime cold, because he’s sweet and earnest and he loves her, for whatever godforsaken reason. A full-body chill runs through Jeonghan as soon as she leaves the warmth of her room, and she ignores it to light her cigarette. For once, breathing in smoke seems to do nothing to expel all the tension building inside of her.
“Jeonghan-noona,” Hansol pleads, and when she looks over at him with heavy-lidded eyes she’s surprised to see something akin to desperation on his face. “Say something, please.”
She breathes smoke into his face and he doesn’t even flinch anymore. The cigarette isn’t fucking working, so she stubs it out on her own shirt and throws it off the balcony. Who even fucking cares anymore?
“Noona,” Hansol begs, broken. “Jeonghan, please.”
The cold wakes her up, at least. It zings through her body and makes the ache in her head thrum that much harder — it reminds her that this is real. That, even though when she reaches out to touch and her hand falls right through Hansol’s chest, her eyes don’t deceive her.
She almost wishes that they would. She shivers again and Hansol steps closer, like he’s trying to shield her from the cold.
“Don’t fucking say that,” is what she finally says, her voice hoarse and harsh. She turns on her heel and walks back inside, hoping that maybe she’ll throw Hansol off her trail somewhere, that he’ll see how caustic and mean she truly is, even against the full force of his love, and leave. It would be best for all of them if he would just fucking leave.
But Hansol doesn’t, of course. He follows her again, even as she shoots to kill. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not true.” Maybe if she words it strongly enough, he’ll believe it. Maybe they both will, and things can go back to how they were before. “You aren’t in love with me, Hansol, don’t be ridiculous. You’re attached, because I’m the only person who can see you or hear you, and you have to get that affection from me or you can’t get it from anyone. You’re not really in love with me.”
“Who the fuck are you to decide that for me?” He sounds a little pissed off now, brow still furrowed, but he’s still mild with her, not nearly as angry as he could be. Jeonghan is pacing, she realizes, stalking the length of her hotel room back and forth, a hand to her brow to try and lessen the dull pounding. “I’m a grown woman. I know my feelings and I know myself. You’re not the only one who can overthink shit, you know? I’ve thought it over a million times already, and it always ends the same. I love you. I want you. It doesn’t fucking matter if you’re the only one who can see me or not.”
“Well, it matters to me,” she snaps, even though it doesn’t, not really. She could never see or hear Hansol again and she’d still love him. It’s a corrosive, incorrigible thing to realize. She’d save herself the pain, if she could.
“Okay, so you don’t love me back,” Hansol says, throwing his hands in the air. “That’s not what we’re talking about. You don’t just get to deny my feelings because you’re so opposed to them.”
“I’m not —” Jeonghan squeezes her eyes shut, slides down until she’s sitting with her back to the foot of the bed, her palms pressed to her eyes. Silence extends between them while Jeonghan tries to control her breathing. Eventually, head still bowed, she speaks again.
“I feel like I’m going crazy sometimes,” she whispers, confesses into thin air — which is to say, confesses to Hansol, standing like a spectre across the room. Her very own ghost. Hers, whether she wanted it or not. “I can’t touch you. I can’t photograph you, I can’t record your voice, I can’t see you in the fucking mirror. No one else sees you or hears you. You’re all over my fucking life and I barely have any evidence of it. You’re attached to me, for some stupid fucking reason, and I can’t even touch you, Hansol. My hand falls right through you.
“Half of my day is spent either with you or thinking about you and I’ve never even held your hand. I don’t — don’t be fucking stupid, of course I fucking love you back. I feel insane with it, Hansol-ah, I feel like I’m losing my goddamn mind.”
Her eyes are dry but her head hurts like hell, and her breaths are coming fast. She’s scared if she opens her eyes Hansol won’t be there. She’s scared that he will be, and she still won’t be allowed to touch.
“Jeonghan-ah,” comes Hansol’s soft voice. “Look at me? Please?”
She opens her eyes and sees only herself in the mirror. She turns her head and sees Hansol, crouched beside her, eyes wide but gentle. He’s looking at her like he loves her. He’s looking at her like he wants her, and forgives her, and believes her, like he’d hold her if he could.
“I love you,” he says again, and Jeonghan scoffs, tries to turn away, but his hand on her chin nudges her back in place. Doesn’t do anything, really, doesn’t even activate the nerve endings in her skin, but Jeonghan goes anyway, her skin tingling. She lets Hansol move her. “I love you. You’re not insane. And if you were, I’d still love you anyway.”
“Fuck,” Jeonghan sobs, wiping at her eyes aggressively. “I can’t — Hansol.”
“I know,” he soothes gently. He gets to his feet and, for once, Jeonghan is the one who follows, climbing after him into bed. His hand brushes past her collarbone and she shivers, her skin raising into goosebumps, just from the mere implication of sensation. “I know, baby.” Something in Jeonghan’s chest sinks deeper, some blood-red part of her heart vesting itself inextricably in the weight of Hansol’s words, the depth of his eyes, cementing her love even further. “I want to– I want to show you. That it’s real. Please, Jeonghan, can I show you? Do you have anything?”
It’s an awful idea. It’s a terrible, horrible idea, but Jeonghan is already in too deep, and she doesn’t care about work, about the time, about anything but Hansol, in front of her because his body has mandated it, looking at her like he wants her, like he’d choose this regardless. “Yes. There’s– I have stuff in the suitcase.”
Hansol doesn’t have to dig long before he finds Jeonghan’s dildo and vibrator, which she packed on a whim, thinking it would be nice to get some self-pleasuring time in while she was well and truly alone.
“Noona,” he says, crawling over her while holding both objects, “I need you to tell me if you don’t want this. Just — let me know, okay? Any time. Say the word and I stop.”
Jeonghan tries to touch him again, hands on his chest, and the frustrated noise that escapes her when it doesn’t work is truly pathetic, something out of her nightmares to be heard by anyone else. Hansol is looking at her with infinitely dark eyes, though, and Jeonghan is damp against her underwear, and she just doesn’t care. She doesn’t care at all. “Yes, yeah, I get it, Hansol-ah. Now take your shirt off.”
Hansol huffs out a laugh but does as she asks, setting the toys aside momentarily to shuck off his stupid white tee without complaint. He’s entirely naked underneath, with scars on his chest from where he got surgery and small, dark nipples. Jeonghan’s breath catches in her throat, and she has to curl her hands into the sheets to keep herself from touching, from trying and failing again to feel him.
“You too,” he instructs, breaking her from her daze. “Please?”
He needs to stop saying that. Jeonghan likes it far, far too much.
She takes off her shirt anyway, starting to toss it across the room because she doesn’t give a shit before Hansol takes it from her instead, folds it in quarters and sets it on the nightstand. She hates him. She hates how much she likes him.
“Noona,” Hansol says, his voice breaking through five different decibels of devastation. “Jeonghan. Fuck, you’re so fucking beautiful. I wish I could —” He reaches out, fingers brushing against her peaked nipples, and she pushes out her chest for him, wants nothing more than his touch on her body. As always, though, it doesn’t come, and Jeonghan nearly sobs out of frustration.
“I know, I’m sorry,” he rasps. “I’m sorry, baby. Can you– can you take the rest off for me? I’ll touch you as well as I can, I promise, but I need you to —”
Jeonghan doesn’t even wait for him to finish speaking before she’s pushing her pajama bottoms off too, then sliding her underwear down her legs. She holds them out to Hansol with purpose this time, and he takes them with wide eyes, his thumb passing over the little wet spot she’s left there, and Jeonghan whimpers. He sticks the pad of his finger in his mouth and tastes, Jeonghan knows, nothing.
Still, he sets her clothes aside like he’s not disappointed by it, puts his hands on her thighs with her watching and spreads them. Jeonghan lets him spread them, moving like it really is his touch influencing her body, and his fingers dig into her skin, the tips of them disappearing from view. “Fuck, Jeonghan-noona, you’re so —” His eyes zero in on her pussy, unshaved and glistening with her own arousal. “Fuck. I’d do anything to taste you, I swear.”
“Hansol,” she complains, bucking her hips up to his touch, urging him to do something, anything. She’s never been more needy in her life, and he’s just sitting there, watching, talking in his awful, smooth voice, making the pit in her core grow ever larger. “Come on, do something already.”
“Fuck, okay, okay,” he agrees, scrambling to grab the vibrator where he put it before. “Can you touch your nipples for me? If I could, I’d– I’d kiss them and suck on them, I’d go until they were all puffy and abused, get you all worked up just from that before touching you here. Feeling how wet you are.” Jeonghan’s eyes fall shut as she follows his directions, pulling and pressing at her nipples with her head resting against the pillow. She hears, at some point, Hansol switch on the vibrator, but he doesn’t immediately apply it to her pussy, instead pressing it against her inner thigh, letting her hips work as she tries to find the pressure, always moving it away. “I want you needy for me, noona,” he admits, tone low. “I’m so selfish, I know it’s not reasonable, but I’d want you wetter for me than you ever have been for anyone else.”
Jeonghan sobs, her fingers stuttering on her breasts, and she peeks her eyes open just to glare at Hansol, pressing her tongue against the inside of her cheek. “I already am, you asshole, fucking do something!”
Hansol presses the vibrator right against her core and Jeonghan’s complaints melt into a moan, her back arching against the touch. “Fuck, fuck.”
“Beautiful,” Hansol breathes. He moves the vibrator up, pressing it against her clit, and Jeonghan nearly screams. “God, you’re so fucking beautiful, Jeonghan-ah, you’re so —”
Jeonghan lets out a choked-out whimper, clenching around nothing, and feels her pussy pulse to mind-bending waves of pleasure as Hansol presses the toy harder against her clit.
“Fuck,” he says, sounding like he’s the one who just had an orgasm. “Did you just come? Noona, did you —”
“Fucking obviously,” she bemoans, slapping her hand on the mattress since she can’t swat him across the chest. “Don’t fucking stop now, you —”
Hansol ups the vibrations and Jeonghan collapses onto her back again, her core muscles dangerously weak against the onslaught of pleasure. “Shit,” she gasps, the head of the egg-shaped toy dragging up her folds to collect wetness before resting once more atop her clit. “Hansol, I —”
“Gotta make you wet and ready for it, Jeonghan-noona, I– I can’t finger you. Fuck, you look so good, bet you taste like fucking heaven, just — tell me if it’s too much, okay?”
Jeonghan sighs, relaxing back into the sheets. She hadn’t thought about that, about how Hansol doesn’t have anything to open her up with, but the idea of being wet enough to take the dildo regardless is almost hotter than the alternative.
“Yeah? Gonna get me ready for your cock, Hansol-ah?” Hansol makes a strangled noise and Jeonghan smiles. “Make me wet enough to take you raw? You’re — ah — so good to me, aren’t you? Taking care of me so well.”
Pleased, Jeonghan watches as Hansol doubles down on his efforts to make her come, clearly affected by her words. She’s somewhat proud of herself for nailing him like that, but if she’s honest, the praise kink was obvious. It’s Hansol. His eyes always give him away.
She wasn’t lying, though, when she said that he did it well. He’s careful with the vibrations, changing the settings every so often when it starts to get too much or, conversely, when Jeonghan starts to get a bit too needy, pushing her hips up and wordlessly pleading with him for more. When she comes for the second time, it’s with Hansol’s name on her lips after he’s elongated her pleasure to its breaking point. What was effectively edging has left her dripping wet and positively aching for something inside her.
“Hansol,” she gasps, coming down from it. “Hansol, come on, fuck me already.”
“Yeah,” he whispers, eyes wide and blown out just from watching her. Jeonghan doesn’t think ghosts can get aroused, but fuck if she isn’t determined to try. “Yeah, fuck, okay. Okay. I’ll —” He switches off the vibrator and sets it aside, picking up the dildo instead and leaning over to rummage through the hotel nightstand, where he finds lube to slick up the length of it with. Jeonghan occupies herself just with watching him, eyes on his hands, his chest, his face while her own fingers slide absently through her pussy lips, wetting the tips of them before pressing slow circles around her clit.
“Fuck.” Hansol turns back to her and presses the toy against her entrance. On instinct, Jeonghan’s hips press upwards, but then she sees the look on Hansol’s face when they do and moves them intentionally, trying to catch the tip against her hole and push it in. “Jeonghan-noona. You’ve gotta — fuck, oh my god — you have to tell me if it hurts, okay? Or if you want me to stop. It’s a lot, so —”
“Hansol. I know my boundaries, you do not have to give me a speech every time you do something new.” Vaguely pissed, Jeonghan hits him with her nastiest side eye, but rather than being ashamed or embarrassed, Hansol’s eyes only darken further. Interesting. Very fucking interesting. “Now be a good boy and fuck me.”
Hansol pushes in, and the broken sound he makes could almost convince Jeonghan that he can feel it. “Fuck, fuck, noona, you’re so — you’re perfect, your pussy is perfect, you’re doing so well for me, taking it so well —”
“Yeah? Your cock fits so nicely inside me, doesn’t it?” Jeonghan smiles at him, one hand returning to absently fondle her breasts, and Hansol genuinely whimpers. He’s adorable. “Good boy, filling me up so well… don’t you want to fuck me, Hansol-ah? See how wet and needy I can get?”
Again, Hansol moans like he’s the one getting fucked before beginning to thrust the toy in and out, working up a speed and pressure as he watches Jeonghan carefully for her responses. Brow furrowed, he does something with his wrist that slams the toy right against her g-spot, and Jeonghan lets out a strangled gasp, all her noises getting stuck somewhere in her throat as she breathes through the pleasure.
“So pretty, Jeonghan-noona, so wet for me. It’s all for me, right?” There’s a kind of desperation in his voice, like he really needs the confirmation, so Jeonghan gives it to him, falling fully back onto the mattress as Hansol continues to thrust against her sweet spot.
“All– all for you, Hansol, my Hansol, Solie —”
“Fuck.” The thrusts pick up pace, but Jeonghan hears the vibrator turn on again as well and sobs just in anticipation of the sensations. “Doing so well for me, you’re so perfect. Wish I could touch you, wish I could kiss you, please — noona —”
Jeonghan cries out when the vibrator presses against her clit, clenching hard enough around the toy that Hansol swears, feels the drag when he next pulls it out. She’s sweating, her hands clenching the hotel sheets every other minute as she longs to run them through Hansol’s hair instead, her eyes squeezed shut so she can imagine him thrusting into her, his hips against hers, his breath against her cheek. She whines aloud and doesn’t know if it’s from the pain or the pleasure.
“Jeonghanie, baby, can you look at me?” Hansol’s decreased the vibrations down to their lowest setting, and he only grinds the toy inside her, waiting for her to comply.
“You’re so beautiful,” is the first thing Hansol says when she blinks open her blurry eyes to focus on his face, and Jeonghan’s laugh comes out watery.
“You are, too. So– so fucking beautiful, Hansolie.”
Hansol’s expression shutters around something like longing before opening up again, warm and handsome and in love. “Hanie, when you– when you brought these toys, you thought you’d use them on yourself, right?”
Jeonghan nods, struggling slightly to keep herself propped up on her elbows when Hansol starts to slowly move the dildo again. “What do you think about? How can I make it good for you?”
It’s already good, it’s already perfect, all I want is for you to kiss me. The only thing that would make it better would be your hands touching me. I always think about it, every time I come, I’m always thinking about —
“You,” she gasps out, head falling back momentarily as she tries to get her bearings. It’s just too much, with Hansol looking so handsome while he fucks her so well, and she can feel herself once again rapidly approaching orgasm. “I think about you, always think about you — fucking me, coming for me, saying my name —”
“Jeonghan,” he says, hoarse, and Jeonghan’s mouth opens in a breathless moan, just from the sound.
“Just want it– want you, want it to be real, want to touch you and kiss you and —”
“Noona, Jeonghan-noona, are you close?” He hasn’t increased the pace, but pleasure is building steadily enough for Jeonghan that she knows, if he keeps it up like this for a while longer, she will. She nods, and his eyes go the darkest she’s seen them so far, the iris nearly swallowed entirely by his pupil. “Noona — look in the mirror.”
So Jeonghan does, and she sees herself, with her legs spread and her face splotchy red, shaking from pleasure, dripping onto the sheets around a dildo that fucks into her seemingly of its own accord. She sobs, hips bucking up, and can only manage a small cry of “Hansol” before her words cut off into moans.
“Who’s fucking you, baby? Is it you?”
“No, no, it’s — fuck, Hansol, it’s you, Hansolie, Sol-ah, Hansol —”
“That’s right,” he says, voice low enough to send shivers down her spine. He’s fucking her in earnest now, and she can feel herself splintering, her pleasure fracturing into pieces, soon to burst. “Look in the mirror again, baby.” Jeonghan does, but it’s still impossible to miss Hansol ducking his face to her abdomen to press kisses there she can’t feel, visible in her eyes but not in the mirror, heat blazing through her whole body and collecting at her core. “Is that real enough for you? Real enough for you to come for me?”
And Jeonghan does, long and hard, around Hansol’s cock and under his direction, because it’s just that good. Through the haze, as she comes down, she registers that Jihoon might have had a point. Anyone could go crazy if they’re fucked that well. She’s still breathing heavily a few minutes later, the last tingles subsiding at the tips of her fingers.
“Hansolie,” she whines, and immediately his head pops into view, eyes wide like a puppy, caught in the bathroom where he’s wetting a hand towel. He’s so fucking sweet, Jeonghan’s gonna get a toothache. “Come here.”
Hansol pads over her, a little shy even after everything, lets Jeonghan get him into bed, scooching over to one side so they can lay down facing each other. She reaches up, trailing his fingers down the handsome slope of his jaw, up into his hair, and his eyes close slowly, long, pretty eyelashes all fanned out on his cheekbones, like he can feel the adoration in her touch. “Beautiful,” she breathes, quiet. Hansol can’t sleep, but she still doesn’t want to disturb him. “You’re so good for me, Hansolie, my sweet, sweet boy. I adore you, you know?” She huffs out a laugh, too well-fucked and too fucking tired to even bother pretending anymore. “I tried so hard not to, but I do.”
Hansol’s eyes flutter open again and he’s smiling at her, bright and beloved. “I love you.”
“Mm.” Jeonghan rolls over, making herself comfortable and slipping under the covers.
“Noona, no — I have to clean you up,” he laughs, clearly endeared by how sleepy she’s gotten after the fact. Jeonghan sighs, overly dramatic, and moves the sheets off of herself once again, letting Hansol use his wet towel to wipe her down.
“Was it good for you?” she asks, even as her eyes fall shut again, soothed by the fabric on her skin, by Hansol’s ministrations.
“Are you kidding me? That was the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced. You’re, like — it’s insane, how fucking sexy you are, Jeonghan.”
Jeonghan laughs, just a little puff of air. Hansol finishes wiping her down and softly tells her to wait before getting back under the covers, that she should get dressed still. “You can’t get wet, right?”
“No.” Hansol returns with clean underwear and her pajamas from earlier, which he hands to her so she can lazily pull them on herself. “I think that’s why I was — um. I’m not usually so… in control, I guess. I’m actually kind of pathetic in bed, normally.”
A smirk builds on Jeonghan’s face at the admission. She can imagine it easily: Hansol, overwhelmed and turned on, trying so hard to be good for her, or giving in completely, letting Jeonghan play with him until he was crying before fucking him into the mattress. “Yeah?” She peeks one eye open to see the look on his face and is not let down. “You’d let noona fuck you until she’s satisfied?”
Hansol whines, burying his face in the sheets. “Baby, don’t tease.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Fully dressed now, Jeonghan ushers him closer, returning to their position face-to-face, with her beneath the covers and Hansol on top of them this time. “I’m not teasing. I’d just — really like that. I’d love to make a mess of you, if you let me.”
“You know that I would,” he promises. Jeonghan reaches a hand out, does her best to run it down his chest before miming pulling him in by the belt loops on his jeans, and he complies, shuffles in even closer.
“Go to sleep, Han-ah,” Hansol whispers, his hand sliding through her hair. She can’t feel it, but the action somehow soothes regardless. “I’ll clean up all this later. Sleep, you have a big day tomorrow.”
So Jeonghan does, lets Hansol switch all the lights off and lull her into sleep with his low, calming voice, lets herself rest in it until the morning, while she’s too tired to do anything else. Before she wakes up and has to face reality again.
“Love you, baby,” Hansol confesses just as she’s drifting off. She tries to say it back, but her lips don’t quite move, her tongue leaden in her mouth. It’s okay — she thinks Hansol knows anyway.
❝ 13.5. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
In Jeonghan’s dream, Hansol is alive again. He fits into her life like he was always there; at brunch with their friends, sharing with her the passcode to his studio and sleeping with his arms around her body, holding her until she doesn’t feel fragile. She kisses him on the cheek and holds his hand, big and solid and warm, and he always brushes his hand under the short hair around her chin, caressing her jaw and the back of her head, when he kisses her.
It’s perfect. It’s happy and beautiful and bursting with love, a kind that radiates out of Jeonghan’s chest, that makes it hard for her to keep in, to hide away, even when she wants to.
Hansol doesn’t die in her dream tonight. No, he keeps smiling at her with his gums showing and his eyes all crinkled up, laughing his stupid laugh, and Jeonghan keeps waiting for something bad to happen, but it never does. She has a life with him, and it’s the closest she has ever felt to wholeness, to safety, to not pretending about anything anymore. She smokes cigarettes on the balcony and Hansol lets her breathe smoke into his mouth when she kisses him, and he always takes the pack back inside when she’s finished. She’s happy, but her apartment faces west in Seoul and she never has to see the sunrise.
Jeonghan wakes up.
❝ 14. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Jeonghan’s body comes back to her in increments, the sort of awakening that happens after a truly deep sleep. By the time her fingers are moving properly, her brain is fully online, too, and she blinks her eyes open to Hansol sitting in the room’s cushy chair, watching her. Jeonghan turns off her alarm and asks, quite boorishly, “Were you watching me sleep?”
Hansol laughs and holds up the notepad in front of him, which was a freebie from the hotel. “No. I was working on some lyrics.”
Jeonghan hums and nods, stretching out her arms and cracking her back to pull herself out of bed. “I have a meeting in three hours, so I need to get ready.” Rifling through her suitcase, she finds that Hansol really had done a good job of cleaning up last night, with all of her things washed and back in their place. She pulls out her pants and button-up shirt, deciding to get dressed but forgo her blazer until the meeting itself. She might be stalling, she thinks, as she starts on her hair and makeup, but — a lot happened last night. She’s feeling sort of jittery about it.
“Noona?” Jeonghan hums in acknowledgment, and he continues, “Are you… how are you feeling?”
Jeonghan rolls her eyes and turns her attention back to her makeup. “I haven’t changed my mind, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Hansol smiles sheepishly, shrugging with his hands in his pockets. “Could you blame me if I was?”
“No.”
“Well, um — do you —”
“Just spit it out, Hansol-ah.” Jeonghan swipes eyeliner over her lid with sharp, practiced precision.
“Sorry. I’ve never, like — you know you’re way out of my league, right?”
That startles a laugh out of Jeonghan, who has to look back at him just to make sure he’s being serious. “Hansol. You’re literally famous.”
“Yeah, but I’m a nerd.”
“I’m a lawyer. That’s like where nerds go to die.”
“No, but — noona. Come on, you know what I mean.”
Jeonghan shakes her head, laughing softly under her breath. She can see what Hansol is trying to say, she supposes — she’s older, her job is more traditional, and the way she presents herself is probably more palatable for the average person than Hansol’s decidedly androgynous look. Seungwan has tried multiple times to make her an instagram presence, insisting that she could “kill” as a model, but Jeonghan staunchly refuses. Personally, though, she doesn’t think she’s out of Hansol’s league — if anything, it’s the other way around. If anything, she should be the one begging for the attention of someone so steadfast in his devotion.
“I know,” she agrees, “but I disagree.”
Hansol gives her this specific look, a variation of his typical deadpan face, just marginally more incredulous than usual. It’s cute — he’s so fucking cute, and Jeonghan has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “Fine. Then — are we, like… dating now?”
Jeonghan pauses in the middle of uncapping her lipstick. Are they?
She’d like to say yes. Her mind flashes back to her dream, the bliss she felt less than an hour ago, and she longs to say yes, like it’s simple, like it’s easy.
But Hansol is dead. Hansol is dead, and he may be real, but Jeonghan still can’t touch him.
“You don’t have to say yes,” Hansol adds when Jeonghan fails to respond in a timely manner. “I get it. Like, I’m a ghost, so.”
“How very mercurial.” Jeonghan finishes her makeup to stall for some more time. “I don’t think,” she says carefully, “I can date a ghost.” Despite his reassurance to the contrary, Hansol does wilt a little bit, his impassivity shuttering with something akin to disappointment before he can cover it completely. “But I’m certainly not dating anyone else. I’m– I’m in love with you,” she adds, only stuttering slightly over the phrase. Just saying it makes her cringe, but unfortunately, it is entirely true. “Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” Hansol agrees, that nonchalance fading away into contentment. “Yeah, it does.”
Jeonghan exhales deeply and packs away her cosmetics. “Wonderful. I’m going down for breakfast — don’t wait up.”
❝ 15. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
They finish negotiations and sign the contract that morning, after which Jeonghan is invited to a celebratory dinner that night which she politely turns down, citing her flight time. Her flight is actually a good while after the dinner, nine p.m. to five, but they don’t need to know that. Instead, she returns to her hotel room (where Hansol has waited up), prepared to change and head out for the day. She still has to get everyone’s Smiskis.
“Noona! It went well?”
Jeonghan hums, shrugging off her blazer and hanging it in the closet. “Yes. I’m done for the day.” Unthinkingly, she starts to unbutton her blouse, then pauses when she sees Hansol’s eyes following the motion. The ends of her mouth quirk up into a smirk before she can stop them, and it’s not the time, but —
“You look really good in a suit, you know.”
Jeonghan raises an eyebrow and continues undressing. “Do I?”
“Yeah. You’re — really sexy.” The clench to his jaw implies he’s holding something back, and even though it’s not the time, Jeonghan really can’t help but tease.
“Yeah? You’d let noona boss you around like this?”
Hansol whimpers, then clenches his jaw harder, clearly embarrassed by the noise. “You know I would.”
“Want me to step on you with my heels? Get you naked in my bed while I’m still done up like this?” she teases, but she doesn’t anticipate Hansol’s eyes darkening quite the way they do.
“It’s just… hot. The way you’re so professional, and, like, in control of everything, and I’m — you know. Not. Sort of makes me feel like you’re in control of me, too.” He’s sheepish admitting it, but Jeonghan’s blood rushes hot and she has to suck in a breath, tossing her button-up into her laundry bag.
“Hansol-ah, I have things to do today.” It’s a warning more than a condemnation. She’s not mad — she’s into it. She’d be into a lot of things with Hansol.
“Noona,” he whines, stepping closer to ghost his hands over her shoulders, into her hair. “Baby. Come on. It’s not even one yet, and you haven’t had lunch. We can, you know, and then go out afterwards. Shouldn’t we be taking advantage of the hotel room?”
Jeonghan tilts her head, watching him watch her wait, chewing absently at her lip. It’s irresponsible, but certainly no more than them fucking last night was, and she wants him, god help her.
“Fine,” she decides, stepping back. “Get the dildo and get on the bed. Naked, please, or as close to it as you’re comfortable with.”
Hansol’s tongue pushes against the inside of his cheek, and he isn’t quite able to contain his smile. “Yes, ma’am,” he says, walking backwards to the bed. Jeonghan rolls her eyes at him at the silly title, then continues stripping off her pants, putting them in the laundry bag like with her shirt. She leaves her bra and underwear on, though: they’re a simple black set, more utilitarian than anything, but she thinks that might make it better for him. Then, with only a slight grimace, she slips back into her heels and turns to Hansol with a determined look.
He’s sort of awkwardly perched on the bed, watching her with wide, dark eyes. He’s naked save for his boxers, and when Jeonghan’s eyes flicker down to them, he explains, “It’s kinda weird to show you, like, my ghost pussy. It can’t even get wet.”
That startles a laugh out of Jeonghan before she presses her lips together again. “You don’t have to explain yourself. Whatever you’re comfortable with, okay?” Approaching the bed, Jeonghan coaxes Hansol forward so he’s sitting with his legs dangling over the edge. Holding the dildo in hand, instead of taking it from him entirely, she guides it with his hand still at the base to rest right where his crotch is, his legs spreading unthinkingly as she brings it lower.
“Noona,” Hansol breathes, seeming to get an idea of what she’s doing. She smiles at him and tucks her hair behind her ears.
“Keep it there for me, hm?” she orders, then drops to her knees.
Hansol swears out loud. His hand is tense around the base, so much so that it shakes when she kisses the tip of the dildo. She tuts and pulls back. “Hold it steady for me, Hansol-ah. Relax your wrist, there you go.” Then she goes back in, wetting her lips and kissing the shaft of it. She makes her way down like that until there are deep red lipstick marks in multiple spots, then pulls away to survey her work. “Good,” she decides, and then takes half the thing in her mouth in one go.
“Jeonghan– baby– holy shit, fuck, you’re so hot.” Hansol groans like he can actually feel it, so Jeonghan bobs her head, hands curled into fists on her thighs, and sucks harder. She stops when she thinks the dildo is sufficiently wet, pulling off with a strand of saliva connecting the silicone to her lips. She breaks it with a smirk, making eye contact, and Hansol swears again.
“Move over.” Hansol does and Jeonghan kicks off her heels and climbs into bed, situating herself so she’s resting with her back against the pillows, propped up to look at Hansol, still in her underwear. “I want you to fuck me with that until I tell you to stop. Okay?”
“Y– yeah, fuck, yes.”
“Good boy.” Hansol goes to take off her underwear and she clicks her tongue against the top of her mouth, stopping him entirely.
“I didn’t tell you to do that.”
“Fuck,” Hansol whispers, and, correctly discerning her intentions, pushes aside her panties instead.
It’s a strange feeling, the fabric moving with no force to guide it. Jeonghan shivers and involuntarily angles her hips up, seeking more. “You — prep?” Hansol asks, glancing between the toy and her cunt.
“Ugh.” Annoyed not with Hansol but with the situation, Jeonghan reaches down to finger herself, hard and fast. Hansol gapes the whole time, like he’s never seen a woman pleasure herself before, and it’s almost cute.
She stretches herself out around two fingers, as quick and utilitarian as she can, then wipes her hand on the sheet below her. “Get more lube for the dildo, my spit’s probably dried by now,” she sulks. Hansol laughs and does just that, slicking it up again with a generous pour.
“It was still hot, though.” He presses the tip against Jeonghan’s entrance and she glares at him until he pushes in fully, slowly filling her with the toy.
“Fuck,” she mumbles, resting her head back. “Harder, you can do better than that.”
So he does, fucking her more with the toy until she has to unclasp her bra to get a hand over her tits, extending the pleasure. Hansol looks up from her pussy, where he’s been staring at it taking his cock for a while, and finds her with red, bitten lips, her fingers tweaking at her nipples. She smirks. “Like what you see?”
“Fuck, you know I do. I wish I could fuck you for real, noona, you’re so —”
“You are fucking me, Hansol, filling me up so nicely with your cock. Are you going to make me come?”
“Please,” he begs, and it does Jeonghan in, snaps something deep inside her.
“Fuck. Off, off. Fuck, don’t make me regret this,” she grumbles. Hansol pulled the toy out as soon as she said the word, and now he’s watching again as she turns over, takes a deep breath before presenting her pussy, on her hands and knees, for him. Summoning up her most commanding look, she turns over her shoulder and locks eyes with him. “Fuck me like this until I come. Be a good boy, Hansol-ah.”
“Holy shit.” The dildo enters her again, deeper this time, pressing incessantly at her g-spot, and she moans before dropping her head down to the pillow, already breathing heavy. He fucks her harder and she sees stars, not bothering to stop the way she rocks back to meet his thrusts halfway.
Jeonghan moans something unintelligible when she comes, a hand on her clit, arms wobbling precariously through her attempts to remain upright before she rolls onto her back again, breathing heavily.
“Shit, you’re fucking good at that.”
“I just did what you asked me to,” Hansol points out. “You’re good at that. Like, really good at that. Like, holy shit, Jeonghan-noona, I can’t even get turned on and I still could have passed out from how sexy you are.”
Jeonghan laughs and scrubs a hand down her face, only to remember that she hadn’t taken her makeup off before all of this. Sure enough, she glances down and finds stains from her foundation and concealer all over the pillow. Grimacing, she vows to leave an extra large tip for room service. She was already planning on leaving a large one because of the sex, but this is even worse.
“Okay, enough of that. I need to shower and pack up. We’ve wasted enough time here already.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t call it a waste…”
Jeonghan gives him the flattest look she can muster and hobbles out of bed to the shower. “Don’t be cute with me, Solie. I’m quite fucking mad I couldn’t touch you, actually.”
“I wish you could touch me, too.”
“Perv.”
“Not like that — or, like, yes, like that, but also —”
He’s so dumb. “Hansol?”
“Yeah?”
Jeonghan smiles into the stream of water, where he can’t even see her, a bit sad. “Love you.”
Something clatters to the ground outside, and Hansol immediately starts cursing in between apologies before replying, almost as an afterthought, love you, too.
Pressing her forehead to the cold tile wall, Jeonghan tries to justify these two things that live inside of her: the near-unbearable fondness, the unmitigated adoration that pumps blood through her heart; and the ever-present fear, the incorrigible anxiety that makes it go faster.
She feels insane. She feels stupid, and ridiculous, and uncomfortable; and dangerously, foolishly, hopelessly in love.
❝ 16. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
“So, like, villainy is associated with queerness, which is obviously bad, but at the same time, it’s been in a lot of ways reshaped to accurately befit the queer experience. Because a lot of the time, villains in traditional media are more sympathetic than the heroes for anyone who maligns the status quo, and on top of that there’s kinda an aesthetic alignment there that’s just cooler than the alternative. Like, obviously all art has political implications, but that doesn’t mean that everything is one-to-one with the real world, you know? Silence of the Lambs is ‘problematic,’ but fuck if it isn’t good. And then a lot of the queer representation that’s considered, like, negative is actually only thought of that way because the queer person in question is introduced as a villain in a traditional narrative and they’re not, like, a one-dimensional caricature. Jennifer’s Body is a good example of that one. And it’s like, queer people need to stop boxing ourselves in because of our desperation to be accepted or whatever. Because real acceptance for anyone is never going to be achieved if it relies upon performative goodness, you feel me? No queer person is ever going to be perfect. They’re actually probably gonna be kinda fucked up, because most people are kinda fucked up in some way or another. Which reminds me of Sleepaway Camp, which is —”
Hansol is prattling on about queer horror films, the majority of which Jeonghan has never seen, sticking close to her side as they wander through the Aeon Mall in search of Smiskis. Jeonghan asked him one question about his favourite movies, and it somehow spiralled into this. She’s not mad about it, though: it’s interesting, what Hansol is saying, even if she can’t quite conceptualize it the same way he clearly can without familiarity with the source texts. Besides, it’s nice seeing him so passionate about something, a veritable twinkle in his eye as he rambles about some apparently shitty American movie she’s never even heard of before.
“— and Hiltzik clearly had no fucking clue what he was talking about, but it actually ends up being this kinda crazy exploration of what forcing someone to exist in an identity that isn’t true to themselves looks like, taken to a logical extreme —”
Jeonghan hates not knowing things. So much so that usually, when her friends start to discuss something she isn’t aware of, she tries to zone out, change the subject, do anything to avoid confronting her own ignorance. It’s dumb, because most of those things are ones that don’t really matter at all, and she ends up seeming far more uninvested in her friends’ lives than she actually is. It’s why she’s a lawyer, and why she can’t stand trying to learn English, why she far too often lives in extremes: everything, or nothing at all.
“— which is why Judy’s character is so interesting, and her death scene and how it mirrors Artie’s is especially interesting, and honestly super fucked up, but —”
There is such a depth of knowledge between her and Hansol, and Jeonghan feels it acutely now. She’s always seen things like that as a barrier, a canyon to be crossed. With Hansol, it feels more like a cavern, and in it, there’s no imperative for Jeonghan: there is no necessary action to be taken. She could spend hours looking at a single gemstone and never get tired. She could listen to him talk about anything and pick up none of it and it wouldn’t be a waste.
“— although on a, like, pedantic note, there’s literally no way for Angela to have done all those murders on the last night because she would’ve had to be in two places at once, so Ricky has to have been involved somehow —”
It’s so ridiculously stupid. Jeonghan doesn’t know if Hansol has somehow broken a barrier and unleashed some more tolerant thing inside her, or if with him, it’s just different. Both ideas are frankly humiliating. He’s somehow weaseled his way into her heart and her mind enough to change her. Awful, fanciful, obnoxious beyond belief. Who even allowed this?
“— and all of this falls apart completely when you look at the sequels, but the sequels are shit and don’t exist to me because they were definitely cash grabs —”
(She allowed it. She let Hansol in, however tentatively, to be her friend; and no matter how she tried to contain it, all of this has spiralled out of her control. He is so good. He is so easy to love.)
“— so Hiltzik can suck my dick, the decrepit motherfucker —”
“Hansol?”
“Huh?” He stops short with wide eyes, like he hadn’t realized just how invested in his own tangent he’d gotten until Jeonghan put a stop to it. Jeonghan’s heart aches. Everything, or nothing at all: Hansol has never hated her, no matter how hard she tried to make him. There was nothing left. There was never any other choice for her.
“I love you.”
He melts, curious expression melting into one of pure joy, his goofy smile lighting up his entire face, all of Jeonghan’s heart, her body, the whole fucking room. He laces his pinky around hers, however briefly, and she swears she can feel it. “I love you too.”
Jeonghan looks away before her face can do something stupid and soft in the middle of this public shopping centre. That’s three times she’s said it today, she realizes belatedly, and she doesn’t even regret it. It feels easier every time, and it always feels true.
Awful, repulsive, heartrending. She piles twelve Smiski blind boxes into a shopping basket and can’t even make herself be mad about it. He is just too easy to love.
❝ 16.5. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
“Are you going to tell the others?” Hansol asks, or, really, whispers to Jeonghan. It’s close enough to a red-eye that no one is paying attention to them, and even less so since Jeonghan was lucky enough to score a seat in business class with no one else beside her. Hansol, of course, has occupied the empty seat. Still, when he speaks to her it’s in a hushed tone. It doesn’t make Jeonghan feel like they’re keeping a secret, though — more like they’re the only people in the world. More like it doesn’t matter if they’re loud, because they can hear each other anyway. “About, like — us, I guess?”
“Well, they’ll have to know that you’re… tied to me, I guess,” Jeonghan replies, matching the quiet lull of his voice. “I want to try the experiment again, just to make sure. I’ll stay at Jisoo’s, and — what? Why are you laughing?”
“You’re so cute, noona,” Hansol giggles. His hand is on top of hers on the armrest and there’s the lightest pressure on her fingers when he squeezes. “You and all your experiments. Are you gonna write a paper on it when you’re done?”
She sniffs, just to keep up appearances. “Maybe I will! But no, I’m not the type to announce things like that. So much fanfare. They can draw their own conclusions.”
“Cool. ‘Cause Jihoon and Myunghwa have a betting pool going on when we’d get together, and I kinda want to see how long it takes for them to figure it out.”
That’s news to Jeonghan, but she supposes that she can’t really fault them when they were ultimately right about the trajectory of her and Hansol’s relationship. She’s actually kind of proud. Usually Minghao is one of the first to rebuff all of Jeonghan’s little moneymaking schemes, citing “unnecessary drama in the friend group.” Jeonghan is of the opinion that said drama is what keeps things interesting.
“We can’t fuck when she’s home though,” Jeonghan adds. This is the one pitfall of having a roommate at their age: hookups become increasingly difficult. It’s simply uncouth to sexile someone in your late twenties. Their only saving grace has been that Seungwan insists she’s too busy for a long-term relationship, and Jeonghan has been largely uninterested — unless Seungwan has some elaborate system Jeonghan has not yet caught onto, their sexual needs are typically met in solitude.
“Right,” Hansol agrees, though the way he fidgets makes Jeonghan grin — it’s probably not the same taboo for him as it is for her. He, after all, is a famous producer, and from what Jeonghan has heard, that’s usually cause for some slightly strange complications in terms of sexual relationships. Example: fucking in the studio, which is by all accounts a semi-public space. Example: attending parties where dumb famous people do dumb famous things like hooking up in bathrooms and making out in highly public spaces. Besides, he’s younger than her, enough so that the wild days of university aren’t so far off. It’s perhaps a silly thing to think about such a profane topic, but Jeonghan finds it cute, how hard he’s trying for her.
“Aigoo,” she coos. “Now shush. We have just enough time for you to pick a film to watch the rest of the flight.”
Hansol perks up immediately, scrolling through the airline’s catalogue with sudden urgency, already rambling about how he’s excited to watch something with her. “There’s so much I have to introduce you to,” he says gravely, picking out some American movie with Zendaya in it. “You’ll like this one, her character kinda reminds me of you.”
Jeonghan hits play on Challengers with one earbud in, so she can hear all of Hansol’s commentary, too. She doesn’t say it, but it hardly matters to her at all whether she’ll like the movie, so long as Hansol does, so long as he shares that with her. She wants to know what he likes about it more than she even wants to view the film herself.
Embarrassing. It’s a good thing they aren’t telling anyone, because they would never let her hear the end of it.
❝ 17. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Jeonghan explains everything (barring the parts about her and Hansol) to Jisoo at work the next day, over a crisp garden salad for lunch. Jisoo refuses to believe her. Or, rather —
“No way that’s all that happened. He teleported to your room because he’s soul-bound to you and nothing fucking happened?! Jeonghan. Babe. Don’t lie to me right now.”
Honestly, Jeonghan should have known better than to think that Jisoo would just go along with her story. “I’m not lying,” she lies, frowning at Jisoo meaningfully. Jisoo squints at her, like she’s going to see the truth in Jeonghan’s pores.
“No, you’re definitely lying,” she decides. “Did you fuck? If you had freaky ghost sex you have to tell me about it. You promised.”
Jeonghan does not recall ever promising such a thing, and if she did, she frankly shouldn’t be held to it. “Of course not. How would that even work?”
“Oh, you actually fucked. What the fuck?! Tell me everything, you whore!”
“Where are you even getting this from?!”
“Your face, Jeonghan, your face. You can’t hide anything from me. I’m attuned to all your bullshit.”
Jeonghan glares at her. Her face is normally quite impervious, thank you very much, but unfortunately Jisoo appears to be correct — she simply knows her too well.
“Okay, fine. What do you want me to say?! It was good.”
Jisoo gasps even though she was already convinced. “He can’t, like… get wet, can he?”
“No.”
“But it was good anyway?”
Jeonghan is trying her best not to think about it, actually, lest she get turned on in the middle of this café. She nods anyway, and of course, Jisoo immediately has more questions.
“So how many times did he make you come?”
“Jisoo!”
“What?! It’s a normal question!”
“You’re horrible.” Still, Jeonghan only waffles for a bit before answering — she feels sort of like a teenager again, giddy to share all the details with her best friend. “Three, the first time. Then once.”
“You freaks.” Jisoo is feigning affront, but Jeonghan can see on her face that she’s plainly delighted. “Are you going to do it again?”
Right. Jeonghan frowns, stabbing a piece of lettuce with her fork, and decides to just tell the truth. Jisoo would probably get it out of her in the end regardless. “Yeah. We’re kind of, um.” And, like a good best friend, Jisoo immediately catches on to what she means, her eyes widening in real shock for the first time since this conversation started.
“No. You’re dating him?!”
“I’m not dating him, we’re just…” in love.
“Doing whatever the equivalent to dating is when one of you is a ghost?”
“Sure. That.”
“Aigoo,” Jisoo sighs. “Aigoo, it’s like you’re all grown up. In your first serious relationship at twenty-eight —”
“Shut up, I am literally older than you —”
“— and it’s with a dead person. It’s very you, Jeonghanie. You took your goth phase much more seriously than the rest of us.”
“What does that have to do with anything?!”
“I’m gonna show him your high school pictures.” Filled with what could only be described as malicious glee, Jisoo has already pulled out her phone, presumably to find the mass of photos she carries of teenage Yoon Jeonghan. Fortunately for Jisoo, Jeonghan doesn’t actually think they’re very embarrassing, and even if they were, that’s sort of what being a teenager is for.
“In exchange for my benevolence, by which I mean letting you do that as much as you want, will you let me do the experiment?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I was going to let you do that anyway. I got distracted by your freaky ghost sex. It’s like a sleepover!” Jisoo claps her hands together and smiles cutely.
“Cheol will be there, though.”
“I’ll exile him to the second bedroom when he’s not getting us snacks, don’t worry. But when Hansol shows up, he has to go fuck off doing ghost things or stay with Seungcheol. No boyfriends or husbands allowed. And absolutely no freaky ghost sex in my house.”
Jeonghan has an issue with none of this, except, “Hansol is not my boyfriend.”
Jisoo gives her a look that could only be described as pitying. “Sure, Han-ah. Sure he’s not.”
Jeonghan sighs, making sure that it sounds as long-suffering as possible. “Whatever. How long do you think is long enough to stay in New York? I refuse to spend more time on the plane than in the city. The flight is horrifically long. How is transpacific travel even legal?”
❝ 18. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Jeonghan gives everyone their Smiskis during brunch on Sunday, and Hansol’s exuberant yeah! when he gets the one he’d been wanting — the little guy with a cat, which Jeonghan admits is very cute and places in a spot of honor next to Doljjongie on her bookshelf — is only trumped by Jihoon and Seungwan admitting to have fucked while Jeonghan was in Japan. She cackles like a maniac when Sooyoung weasels it out of them and resolutely ignores Jisoo, the sole person in the room aside from Jeonghan and Hansol themselves who knows that she also got laid on that trip, giving her unimpressed looks in her periphery.
From there, it’s a veritable clown show, with enough attention diverted to Jihoon and Seungwan that she and Hansol escape the whole thing unscathed. Jeonghan winks at Hansol as Seokmin and Mingyu rib on them and he grins. She’d been worried, albeit briefly, that Hansol had wanted to tell everyone about their relationship, but he seems just as pleased to be in on something between the two of them as Jeonghan is. Or, the two of them and Jisoo, but she doesn’t count — Jisoo is like a very pesky fly hellbent on buzzing around Jeonghan’s head at every available opportunity, but she isn’t a serious nuisance.
On Friday, Seungwan leaves sheepishly after work for Jihoon’s apartment, and Jeonghan pretends for all of thirty minutes to sleazily make fun of her before jumping Hansol as soon as the door locks. Or, doing what she considers to be the equivalent of jumping him when she can’t actually touch him, which is crooking two fingers in his direction, come hither, and pulling her shirt over her head on her way to the bedroom. Jeonghan has no ass to speak of, but Hansol rushes after her like he’s entranced by the view anyway.
Their freaky ghost sex results in Jeonghan coming twice by her own hand while they whisper back and forth the things they’d do with each other — how Jeonghan would take Hansol apart, piece by piece, until he was so overwhelmed with pleasure he couldn’t think; how Hansol would worship her body for as long as she’d let him, until she told him to stop. Jeonghan has always enjoyed sex, but something about Hansol makes her insatiable in a way she hasn’t been for years. Part of it is probably that this is the only way she can experience physical intimacy with Hansol at all — part of it is just that it’s good. They’re compatible, and Hansol is wonderful and attentive, and Jeonghan loves him. She loves him, and that makes all the difference.
It’s horrible. She never believed Jisoo when she said it’s different with someone you really love before, but she thinks now that she must be right. There’s no other explanation for how good it feels when she can’t even touch him.
Not being able to touch him, though, she’s still mad about. It’s a constant struggle. Hansol thinks it’s cute when she gets all pouty about it, cuddling closer under the covers so Jeonghan can pretend, at least, to feel his warmth. Sometimes she swears that she does. She doesn’t know if she’s going crazy or not. She gets so annoyed at it all on her birthday, overwhelmed and a little pissy, that she rolls over, right on top of Hansol’s non-corporeal body, an indent in his chest where she lies. He’s bigger than her, so she can still see his stark edges and the places where his body bleeds into nothingness around Jeonghan’s head.
“Oh,” Hansol says softly, his hands fluttering for a second before tentatively resting in her hair.
“Okay?” Jeonghan checks, even though if it weren’t, he would have moved away by now.
“Yeah,” Hansol breathes, running his fingers through dark strands of hair. “Yeah. It’s — nice. Feels warm, almost.”
“Hm.” And Jeonghan knows that Hansol can’t feel anything, not physically, but she snuggles deeper in her burrow of pillows and blankets and Hansol and she thinks she knows what he means.
If she’s going crazy, then, at least Hansol is right there with her, swearing he can feel it too.
❝ 19. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
The experiment they do at Jisoo and Seungcheol’s place the next weekend proves their hypothesis correct, with Hansol flickering into sight, prostrate on the floor, right before their eyes. It’s the first time Jeonghan’s ever seen it happen, and she’s surprised to find that when it happens, a feeling floods her chest that can only be described as fear.
It’s just — Hansol is laying there, blinking in and out of sight before he settles, and for a split second he’s silent, eyes closed, mouth shut, not breathing. It’s just that, for as long as he’s comatose, Hansol looks dead, and Jeonghan feels terror grip her mind and body immediately, her whole body going rigid.
“Yo,” Hansol mumbles, opening his eyes squintily, “we have got to stop doing that. It feels so fucking weird.”
The alarm leaves her body in one harsh exhale. “Sorry. That should be the last time.”
“I take it he’s here, then,” Jisoo comments wryly, having watched Jeonghan’s reaction without seeing what she saw, without really knowing why her best friend suddenly froze entirely. She squeezes Jeonghan’s hand, silent reassurance. They’ll talk about it later.
With this new confirmation, Jeonghan books the ticket to New York City that she and Jisoo picked out, a weekend trip the following week, and tells Hansol about it on Monday.
“So, we’re going to New York,” she informs him after they finish watching The Fablemans. It seems as good a time as any.
“Huh?” Always astute, Hansol just looks at her with his earnest, honest eyes, and Jeonghan has to laugh a little, all the fondness bubbling up out of her lungs with nowhere else to go.
“This weekend, we’re going to New York. I booked a flight on Friday evening, a red eye. I thought maybe you’d like to see your family.”
Hansol stares at her in silence for long enough that Jeonghan starts to worry this wasn’t the right move, even though she was quite certain about it before. Then, with quiet determination, he says, “I love you.”
It’s Jeonghan’s turn to be surprised, her hands twitching with a little, “Eh?”
“I love you, Jeonghan.”
“Oh.” Jeonghan stares at her open palms, curls them into fists because she can’t fucking touch. “I love you, too.”
“I fucking knew it,” Seungwan suddenly hisses, popping her head around the corner and startling both of them. She’s pointing an accusatory finger, wagging it in their faces as she frowns very impressively at Jeonghan. “I knew you two were ghost-dating. You’ve both been acting weird.”
Hansol has started laughing at her side, which is doing terrible things to Jeonghan’s poker face. Still, she manages to level out impassively, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, baby.”
“Don’t baby me right now,” Seungwan huffs, stomping her foot with her arms crossed. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! Either of you!”
She’s so earnestly upset about it that Jeonghan can’t lie anymore, so instead she opens her arms and soon has Seungwan tumbling into them, curling up against her side on the couch. “Sorry, Seungwanie. Unnie didn’t know you’d care so much.”
“Of course I care!” This close to Jeonghan’s face, Seungwan’s voice is loud enough that she flinches a little, and Seungwan shoots her an apologetic look before adjusting her tone. “You’re my friend — you’re both my friends. And, I mean, we all knew that you loved Hansolie a lot —”
“Yah, what do you mean by that?!”
“— but we didn’t know if you’d do anything about it, because — well, you know — but I’m so happy for you, unnie. And you too, Vernonie.”
“Aigoo,” Jeonghan whispers, petting Seungwan as aggressively as she can get away with and even sneaking a hand down to squish at her cheeks. “My Seungwanie…”
“Unnie,” she complains, extracting herself from Jeonghan’s grip with an overexaggerated pout, though she’s clearly pleased with the affection. “I just — I’m really happy for you. But you,” she says, changing gears all of a sudden, pointing at where she must think Hansol is (she’s off by a few centimetres) with all the aggression of earlier. “You better treat Jeonghan-unnie well. I know that she’s smart and clever and cool, but she’s so full of love, Hansolie, she deserves everything. I don’t care that you’re dead, if you hurt her, I’ll kill you again.”
The finger wagging increases its pace and Jeonghan laughs, a little amused, a little embarrassed. Before she can intervene, though, Hansol says simply, with the gravity of someone who would like to be heard, “I know.”
Jeonghan swallows and changes course. “I’ll give you two a moment,” she hedges, patting Seungwan on the cheek one last time before she escapes to the kitchen for a glass of water and then to her room. She turns on some music, an indie artist Hansol got her into, and drowns out all her thoughts, all her fears, with the melodies.
❝ 20. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
The flight to New York is long and awkward. Hansol doesn’t exactly have a seat on the plane, but Jeonghan scored the aisle, so he hovers in the small walkway the whole time with a slight grimace, stepping over and through Jeonghan’s legs when someone tries to pass through. He’s still adverse to people walking through him, though he’s more open to touch these days, letting Jihoon and Chan especially brush past him without contorting his body away. And he lets Jeonghan, of course, lets her roll over on top of him until she feels warm.
They watch the Dune series and Jeonghan sleeps for the remainder of the flight, with Hansol disappearing to a more spacious part of the plane. They touch down at JFK and it’s nearly the same time they took off in Seoul, a whole fourteen hours disappeared. Jeonghan hails a cab to the hotel and repeats the phrases Hansol parrots at her until the taxi driver nods and takes off. From there it’s simple, and they arrive at the hotel just past midnight.
“You can go, if you want,” Jeonghan says through a yawn when she sets her suitcase down in the hotel room. “I’m going to sleep, you won’t be missing anything.”
“Are you sure?” Hansol asks, like she’s actually going to be offended by him using this time to find his family, to walk around, to do whatever he wants to in this city he once called home. It’s honestly doubtful his family would be doing much at this time either, but Hansol has been jittery with excitement since they got off the plane, and she wouldn’t want to keep him. She gives him a bemused look and shakes her head.
“Come back in the morning. Or don’t, even; I’m not important here.”
Hansol frowns. “You’re always important,” he insists, and Jeonghan laughs tiredly, shedding her dirty clothes and heading for the shower. “They won’t wake up until after ten anyway, unless something’s changed, I guess. Your alarm’s still for seven-thirty?”
“Mm-hm.”
“I’ll be back then. I’ll see you, noona.”
“Mm-hm,” she says again, a little absently, lathering her body with soap. Hansol’s face suddenly pops through the glass, grinning cheesily, and Jeonghan laughs, startled but endeared.
“Love you,” he says. Unthinkingly, Jeonghan runs a soapy hand down the side of his face. The suds fall away immediately, but Hansol tilts his head, leans into the touch and she swears she can feel it.
“Love you,” she returns, and he smiles, turning his head to kiss the inside of her wrist before he disappears again. Everything in Jeonghan aches, and aches, and aches, but she waits until Hansol calls out his last goodbye to cry on the floor of the shower, head in her hands like a little kid.
❝ 21. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
When Jeonghan wakes, Hansol is there, sitting cross-legged on his side of the bed. Jeonghan is smiling before she knows it, lit up already by the brightness in his eyes, so handsome in the morning sunlight.
“Hi,” she rasps out, then reaches for the water bottle at the bedside and turns off her alarm.
“Hey, baby.” Jeonghan never thought herself much of a poet, but Hansol’s smile could be aptly compared to the sunrise. “How’re you feeling?”
She barks out a laugh, surprised by the question. “I’m fine. Slept well. How are you? Did you find them?”
“Yeah.” Hansol’s smile bursts to its fullest form, and Jeonghan has to close her eyes for a minute to adjust. All the brightness in the world, she thinks, got transferred to his smile. “Yeah, I did. I just, like, stared at my parents sleeping for a while. It was actually super creepy.”
“It’s sweet,” Jeonghan corrects, though she’s convinced the two aren’t mutually exclusive. “And Sofia?”
“Her, too. She was studying, actually, in the library with some friends. I was glad that… that I didn’t derail her life or anything. That she’s doing okay.”
“Good,” Jeonghan breathes. “That’s good. And you’re sure you don’t want —”
Hansol is shaking his head before she even finishes the question. They talked about it on Monday night, before Jeonghan drifted off to sleep: whether or not he wanted his family to know about him being a ghost. Jeonghan tried her best to convince him, not because she thinks one option is necessarily better than the other, but because she’s a lawyer — that’s what she does. She presented the facts, laid out all the arguments as to why he should, and Hansol never wavered. He doesn’t want them to know. It’s too much, he says, for them to carry.
“I’m sure.”
“Okay.” The thing about Hansol is that, even though he’s younger, even though their perspectives and decisions are often different, she trusts him entirely. She made strong arguments to her case: his family deserved to know, for as long and as well as they could, that he was still around to love them. They deserved to know how much he loved them. And Hansol didn’t refute a single one. Instead, he laid out his own case: his family didn’t deserve to have him taken away from them to begin with, but it’s happened already; and he refuses to ever do it again. Two parallel stories, both equally true. There’s no right answer, and Hansol proved that he knows this, that he’s choosing one anyway.
Jeonghan has been told she’s a control freak, that she can be condescending and self-important and rude. And she knows that she is, sometimes, but she honestly thinks that, to an extent, she’s earned it. She hasn’t worked hard and learned a lot and exercised all her mental facilities to the extent that she does to pretend her conclusions are on par with someone with half her experience. Hansol, on the other hand, has proven himself her intellectual equal in every capacity. She trusts him as much as she trusts herself.
Hansol takes her to a hole-in-the-wall bagel place for breakfast, and wrote down the name and extensive directions to the spot he insists she go to for lunch while they were still in her room. The bagel sandwich is delicious, so she concedes that Hansol’s overzealous insistence on an “authentic taco place” for lunch is probably also warranted. To avoid looking like a madman, mumbling to herself in a foreign language, Jeonghan puts her airpods in and pretends to be talking to someone on the phone as they converse.
“I have to go to the art museum,” she informs him once they’re sitting on a park bench, sandwich ingested. Minghao made her promise. “Is that, I don’t know, close?”
Hansol shrugs. “It’s not super far from where we are now, but it’s also closer to lunch than here. You’ll have to take the metro, though.”
Jeonghan pulls a face. She’s heard things about the New York City metro, and she’s not eager to have her own horror story — but it simply must be done, unless she wants to walk halfway across Manhattan instead.
“I’ll go with you,” Hansol reassures her. “You can walk from the MET to lunch, and then you can go back to the MET or walk, like, thirty minutes to the MOMA. Or take transit, but I assume you’d rather walk. And then I can meet you there and we’ll take the metro back.”
This is, as far as Jeonghan is concerned, a reasonable plan to avoid having to use English as much as possible, so she agrees and they start on their way to the metro station. It’s as busy and smelly as Jeonghan was led to believe, but no one seems bothered by the cramped space or the brisk pace of things. Jeonghan’s just glad she wore a mask.
Hansol rides with her to the MET, then hovers around with her in line until she insists that he should go spend time with his family. When he finally gives in, he takes off with a spring in his step, and Jeonghan can’t help muttering “Cute” under her breath.
Hours later, Jeonghan smokes a cigarette near the MOMA while waiting for Hansol to come and get her, gaze cast towards the sky.
She knew they would take this trip as soon as she understood that Hansol was tied to her, not her apartment. She knew that she loved him once she realized that his being dead was an obstacle and not a reason. She knew she was fucked when Hansol said he loved her, too, when he made her believe it was real.
She said, back when they first met months ago now, at the very beginnings of autumn, that she would help him. Now it’s mid-October with an irrepressible chill in the air, cold even through her three layers of clothing, and they haven’t talked about it in weeks. Jeonghan is twenty-nine now — too young to be scared of living without someone, too old to only feel at ease when Hansol is around.
Jeonghan thinks that she must be borrowing grief from the future. But she thinks, at the same time, that it would be impossible not to. Not when Hansol is here but she can’t touch him. Not when she loves him, but she knows he is going to leave.
Mourning is justified, she thinks. But she sees Hansol approaching from the distance and stubs out her cigarette, throws it away and knows that it’s hard to be afraid when he is around. She catches a glimpse of him and it’s like a weight disappears off her chest, like a soothing balm on a burning wound.
The wound is still there, though. When Hansol leaves, the weight is still hers to carry. So what happens, then, when he’s gone for good? When there’s no more respite in his smile, because she’ll never see it again?
“Noona,” Hansol calls out, incandescent. Jeonghan can see his edges wavering and glistening in the sunlight, so beautiful that if she didn’t know any better she’d think he was a mirage. “How was it?”
Fine. A bit boring. Good, but lonely. I don’t think I like New York — it’s too loud, and too crowded, and everyone speaks English, which I knew going in but it’s still annoying. But the art was beautiful, and I got this souvenir for Minghao, see? I think Jackson Pollock is overrated. Everyone was clamouring to see what I thought were just a few splatters of paint on a very big canvas. It’s fine, but I think there are artists who are legions better. Everything is better, so much better, now that you’re here.
“Good. How was your family?”
❝ 21.5. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Hansol brings her to a Korean restaurant for dinner, one owned by Korean immigrants who speak delightedly with her when they learn she’s visiting from Seoul and give her too much food for far too little. He offers to take her to Soho tomorrow, but Jeonghan declines, deciding that she’ll go back to the MET instead. It wasn’t her favourite, but she’s on a mission now to see all of it. It’s a point of pride for no reason except for that she’d like to say she’s done it.
“Sure,” Hansol agrees indulgently, finding no issue with this whatsoever, no qualms with her pride. “There’s a ton of good stuff in there.” His hands are clasped underneath the table, the booth Jeonghan the server let her sit in even though it’s just her, so he doesn’t accidentally move something. Jeonghan thinks that it’s about time, but she doesn’t want to ruin it yet. They can’t talk in public like this, anyway.
“Let’s go back,” she offers, and longs to hold Hansol’s hand the whole way home.
❝ 22. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
The next day passes slowly, like it’s dripped in molasses, something cruder than honey. Jeonghan hates it. She goes to the MET and hates half the artwork, hates how busy it is, hates the constant chatter in English blurring in the background. Minghao would be disappointed, but she can’t help it. It’s all so much, and Jeonghan has only ever wanted very little. Hansol isn’t there with her and her head hurts.
She’s on edge the whole day, which makes it an awful time to talk to Hansol, but she’s been on edge all day, which means it’s about time she has to.
“Hansol,” she says softly once they’ve returned to the hotel room, where they’ll sleep for the night before their morning flight. She’s showered, and is sitting at the edge of the bed with her knees tucked under her chin. “We should talk about — about what you’re going to do.”
Hansol’s expression shutters, just slightly, but at least he doesn’t play dumb. “I’m staying here,” he declares, defiant, and Jeonghan’s heart sinks in her chest. She’d really been hoping he wouldn’t say that. She’d been hoping she wouldn’t have to argue the alternative.
“Hansol,” she pleads, and even though she hasn’t articulated her anxieties yet, she wishes he knew what she meant. She wishes he could read her mind. He doesn’t relent, though, so she sighs, folds her hands on the table. “Okay. Okay, tell me why.”
“I love you,” he starts, and Jeonghan doesn’t do a good job of masking her involuntary wince. Hansol pauses briefly, but he doesn’t comment or stop. “And I love our friends, and I’m okay with living like this. It’s kinda fun, walking through walls and stuff. I don’t see why I should have to give that up.”
It’s almost sweet, how that’s the end of it: I’m happy. Isn’t that enough?
Jeonghan wishes it was.
“You love me, but what happens if that changes?”
“Jeonghan —”
“No, hear me out. What happens if that changes? When I grow old and you don’t? What if I– what if I met someone, someone I could touch? I’m mean, Hansol, you know this; I don’t commit to people well. It could– it could happen.” (It wouldn’t, she knows. So long as she could see Hansol, see the whole world light up when he walks into a room, her eyes would never wander. Still, though — still.) Hansol’s expression shifts into something complicated, something carefully blank but nonetheless slightly pained. Jeonghan hates it, hates speaking to him like this, but she knows that she has to. “And when I get old, you won’t. Don’t you find that strange? I know I would. I can’t — I’m not going to be making love to you when I’m sixty, Hansol, not when you look how you do, not without you aging with me.”
“That doesn’t matter,” he insists fiercely. “We could never have sex again and I’d still love you and want to be with you.”
“And if that changes? You’re stuck with me, Hansol, even if ten months from now we hated each other.”
“I couldn’t hate you,” Hansol promises, and Jeonghan hates it, hates that she believes him even in this. “And if I did, then we’d face that when it happened, and we could reevaluate. Right now, I’m staying.”
Jeonghan hugs her knees tighter. It doesn’t make her feel comforted, just strangled. “What happens if it’s good forever, and then I die? Would you be wandering the Earth forever?”
Hansol frowns, contemplating. “Well, presumably when you die I’ll go with you, since I’m, you know, bound to you.”
“But we don’t know that. You could be stuck here forever, Hansol.” She drapes her legs off the side of the bed instead, gives herself a greater range of movement and kicks her foot against the bed.
“Then before you die, we’d figure it out and I’d leave then.”
“And what if I die suddenly? Unexpectedly?” Like you did, is the unspoken subtitle, but Jeonghan swallows down the words. She doesn’t need to add insult to injury. Hansol already knows. “Besides, this isn’t — this isn’t living, and you know it. You can’t talk to people. No one can see you. You can’t eat, you aren’t breathing, you’re awake twenty-four hours every day. You can’t even pet a fucking dog on the street. We have friends, yes, but not everyone is going to be okay with a ghost hanging around. You’re going to get bored with nothing to do — you already are bored in the nighttime.”
“You see me,” Hansol points out, so plainly Jeonghan almost wants to cry. “I can talk to you.”
“Yes, me and only me. You’re going to get tired of me, Hansol, and even if you didn’t, that’s hardly enough for a person to live on.”
“It’s not like you’re the only person I interact with, though,” he argues.
“That’s not the point, Solie.”
“Then what is the point?”
“The point is that this isn’t living. That you want a life here, with everyone else, with– with me, and it’s not possible. You’re dead, Hansol-ah. I can’t touch you, I can’t feel you, I can’t kiss you or hold you or– or do anything. We’ll never own a home together, or have a cat, or meet my parents and my sister. Even if it could last, this isn’t real.”
“It is real.” Hansol is frowning now, a bit angry, but still not letting it affect him. Never letting it affect him, affect her, how he speaks to her or what he says. He’s too good, far too good for her. “Jeonghan, it is real.”
“I feel,” she says, so very selfishly, “crazy. I feel like I’m going insane. Sometimes I think I can feel you when you touch me. You know what that is? That’s hallucination. I’m making shit up in my mind because I like you too much. I can’t live like this, Hansol, I know it’s not about me but you need to know that I can’t. I’m going to lose my mind if we keep this up for– for months, for years, forever. I’m so fucking scared that I’m going to wake up one day and it’ll all have been a dream, that they’ll admit me to an institution and I’ll have been seeing things that aren’t real this whole time, that I’ll want you so badly and for so long that even though you are real, you’re real and here in front of me, I’ll still go crazy anyway.”
“Jeonghan,” he says, some strange mix of sad and angry. Jeonghan barges on before he can respond.
“And you– you won’t even tell your family, Hansol, you spent the whole day with them and they never even saw you. You didn’t even want to tell Jihoon and Chan at first. So, what? It’s me and the eleven people who know forever? For a lifetime you won’t be living?”
“It almost sounds like you want me to go,” Hansol observes wryly, bitterness seeping into his tone. Jeonghan could scream.
“I don’t want you to go. I want you to be here, Hansol, but you aren’t. You aren’t and you never will be.”
“I am here, Jeonghan.”
She shakes her head, throat dry. “You aren’t, not in the way that I mean. You know that, Hansol, don’t play dumb with me.”
He shrugs, purposefully obtuse. “Fine. I just don’t see why that matters so much.”
Jeonghan scoffs now, fully disbelieving. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.” He raises his chin defiantly, eyes narrowed and hardened against her. “I’m here, and that’s what matters to me.”
“Right,” she snarks, throwing up her hands. “So I could try to kiss you right now and you’d be okay with not feeling a thing. So I could find a stranger on the street, any single person who passes by, and hold their hand and it would be warmer and realer and stronger than yours and you’re okay with that? You’re okay with never feeling a thing? Not even the sunlight on your skin? That’s not how it’s supposed to be, you know that.”
Hansol’s jaw clenched when she mentioned touching someone else, and now it barely loosens, still tense, to respond. “But it’s how it is, and now we have to deal with that.”
“Maybe we’re not meant to! We’re not supposed to grieve for people we can see in front of us, Hansol, but every time you’re not around it’s all I can do. All I can do is wish that you were living and know that you aren’t.”
“So, what? I’m supposed to cross over to an unknowable abyss just because you feel uncomfortable with me being here?”
“No, but I don’t understand why you’re so comfortable with existing without any life in you.”
“I’m comfortable with it because it’s all I’ll ever have.” Hansol’s voice breaks halfway through the statement, tired and angry. “It’s this or it’s nothing, and I’m not ready to have nothing yet. Not when I just fucking found you.”
And Jeonghan hates the words that come out of her next, hates the ugly, rotten truth of them. “We’re not supposed to choose, Hansol. There isn’t supposed to be an in between.”
“But there is, and now whatever I do, it’s a choice. I choose to stay or I choose to go. I’m God here, Jeonghan.” He laughs, but it’s humourless, an awful, disquieting sound from someone normally so sincere.
“Aren’t you tired?” Fight makes way for sadness, for insurmountable grief. “Being a god all alone?”
Silence stretches between them, long and heavy. Finally, Hansol says, “Yes. But not enough to stop.”
“What’s the breaking point?” The question isn’t meant to be accusatory, but Hansol raises his hackles once again, and Jeonghan charges on. “If not now, when? When you hate me but your body won’t let you stay away? When you want to be alone and you can’t, but when you need to be with someone who isn’t me, you can’t do that either? When your friends or family die, when I meet someone? When everyone else is gone?
“You didn’t want anyone to know. You still won’t tell your parents, because you want them to be able to grieve properly, because you know existing like this isn’t the same as being alive. Don’t try to tell me that knowing you like this isn’t just another kind of mourning. Don’t try to tell me it’s easier mourning an untouchable god than a man.”
If they were both alive, this is probably the part where he would kiss her, just to make her shut up, bleeding crimson and maroon into Jeonghan’s mouth, his heat against her own, his tongue in her mouth. If they were both alive, Jeonghan would give in easily, far too easily, because she loves him, because she doesn’t want him to go.
If they were both alive, they wouldn’t be here to begin with. If they were both alive, they might never have met.
“You’re the one who reached out to Jihoon and Chan,” Hansol points out instead of kissing her, because he can’t, because love is not enough. “That was you, Jeonghan.”
“I know,” she whispers, heart breaking. “I know. Isn’t it awful that I almost regret it?” Isn’t it awful that I almost regret meeting you?
Hansol can’t kiss her, so instead he stalks forward, kneels at the side of the bed and looks up with some sort of simmering rage brewing in his irises.
“Jeonghan,” he says, low and heavy. “Tell me if you love me.”
“I love you,” she responds honestly, quiet and splintered. “I love you, Hansol, I do.”
Hansol’s eyes press closed and a moment or two passes. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
He doesn’t say it back. Instead he puts his fingers in her mouth, watches her eyes roll back at the feeling and the taste of salt, watches her lose her mind loving him until his irises are all swallowed up.
After, they lay together on the bed, facing each other quietly. Jeonghan is sweaty and tired, and she should probably shower again. She can’t bring herself to move.
Her hand has drifted down over his chest, against his ribcage, where she should be able to feel his heartbeat. It’s so strange. It’s so strange, loving someone without a heart.
“Nothing in my chest,” Hansol observes, and Jeonghan’s eyes snap up to meet his, his sad smile and gentle gaze. His voice is raspy. If he could cry, she thinks that he might be doing it now. Gently, he reaches down and squeezes her hand, presses it further in his chest, deep inside. “Guess I gave it all to you.”
❝ 22.5. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
Hansol dies in Jeonghan’s dream that night. It’s vivid enough that she wakes up crying, and Hansol is there with a furrowed brow, offering her water and holding her close.
“Hey. Hey, it’s okay,” he soothes. A freak accident. Head on concrete, blood on the asphalt. “It was just a dream.” Blunt force trauma, died on impact. He was only twenty-six.
“It wasn’t,” she sobs, too broken to bother trying to stop it. “It wasn’t. That’s the worst part.”
❝ 23. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
The reason that ghosts linger on Earth, according to all the myths and stupid fucking Reddit forums Jeonghan has visited since they agreed to send him back, is because they have unfinished business. A reason to stay, a reason to hold on. Once they complete that, they’ll be gone.
“I don’t know,” Hansol says honestly, tossing his Smiski up and down, lying on the living room floor. “I didn’t have any, like, huge dreams. Mostly I just took each day as it came.”
Jeonghan asks Jihoon and Chan, then, because if Hansol doesn’t know, then they surely would.
“Number one on Billboard, maybe?” Chan suggests, but even he doesn’t sound convinced. Jihoon shrugs.
“I mean, yeah, what producer wouldn’t want that? But I don’t think he cared enough for it to be the reason he’s, like, tethered to the Earth. I’d say seeing his family again, but I guess you guys just proved that one wrong.” (And how awful is that, the idea that they could finish his business without even realizing it. That they wouldn’t even get the chance to say goodbye — though Jeonghan supposes that’s how it is, with death like this. It doesn’t come with a warning.)
“You’re smart,” Chan concludes, looking at her with so much faith in his big, shiny eyes. He’s taken it surprisingly well — both him and Jihoon. Jeonghan supposes it’s easier now knowing that it’s Hansol’s choice, having at least a little bit of closure. “You’ll figure it out, noona. I believe in you.”
“Well, it’s probably something related to you, isn’t it?” Minghao asserts when Jeonghan shows up at their doorstep on a Tuesday evening, too restless to go home immediately.
“Why would you say that?” Jeonghan inquires through the growing pit in her stomach, even though she already knows.
Minghao is kind enough not to call her on it. “He’s tied to you. I can’t imagine that’s a coincidence.”
Junhui creeps forward, hesitantly leaning towards Jeonghan like she’s unsure whether she’ll reject the physical comfort. Jeonghan would take any kind of consolation nowadays.
“Are you sure this is the best idea?” Her tone of voice implies she’s asking not because she doubts Jeonghan and Hansol’s conclusion, but because she thinks that Jeonghan won’t be able to take it. She’d be offended if it weren’t for the fact that she’s not so sure either. “We’re all really going to miss him.”
“It’s his decision.” And it is, even if Jeonghan might have influenced it, because she argued that he should stay the day they came back with as much passion as she had before and Hansol still knew his answer. You were right, he said sadly, still with the softest smile. It’s not living. You — you all — deserve more than that. He paused, just briefly, and then, even quieter: I do, too.
He does. He deserves everything; he deserves the sun.
“We’ll be here for you,” Junhui promises, hugging her so tight it could hurt. “Don’t hide away from us, please.”
“I won’t.” They seal it with a pinkie promise.
Sooyoung and Wonwoo end up with Jeonghan next, because she can’t seem to sit still these days, even when she’s with Hansol. There’s a constant humming against her bones, making them vibrate, scratching against each other in irrepressible almost-pain. Everyone knows that sooner rather than later, he’ll be leaving, and everyone knows, if nothing else, that Jeonghan loves Hansol. She’s sure they’ve figured out the extent of it by now. She and Hansol never did ask after that bet, but Jisoo and Seungwan are blabbermouths. No one is ever surprised when she shows up at the door.
“We’re having a sleepover,” Sooyoung decides, clinging onto Jeonghan like a koala, still in the doorway. “No, no protests! I haven’t seen you in so long. And, no offense, but you look like death. You need to spend healing time with your favourite dongsaeng.”
“And me,” Wonwoo adds, hovering in the background.
“And Wonwoo,” she amends, finally extracting her body from Jeonghan’s to boop her girlfriend on the nose. “Have you had dinner yet? We were gonna order Chinese. Wonwoo was about to put the order in. Should we get jjamppong for you or just extra egg rolls?”
Jeonghan confides everything over jjamppong with rice and kimchi (because kimchi, according to an exuberant Sooyoung, goes with everything). She hadn’t realized how much it hurt to keep things in until she let herself pour it all out, point blank, no innuendos or shortcuts. No secrets.
Sooyoung is sniffling by the time Jeonghan explains how Hansol came to his decision, clutching onto Wonwoo’s T-shirt hard enough Jeonghan’s pretty sure it’s going to get stretched out and wrinkled. “Noo,” she pouts, eyes red-rimmed and puffy. “No, he should stay forever. We need to tell him that he should stay forever. Wonwoo-yah, where’s your phone?”
Wonwoo dutifully procures her phone, but it hardly matters. “You can tell him if you want,” she laughs, surprised at her own ability to keep it together, “but I don’t think it’ll change his mind.”
Sooyoung pouts harder. “Fine. Then we’ll just tell him that we wish he would stay forever, and we love him a lot, and we hope in the afterlife or heaven or in his next life he’s super happy and never ever sad and gets to pet all the cats he wants and that Jeonghan-unnie will be with him there, too.”
“Yah, are you saying I should die?!” Jeonghan asks, just to avoid her own tears threatening to spill over.
“No!” Sooyoung insists, seeming to realize her mistake. “No, Jeonghan-unnie, you can’t die, then I’ll be even more sad!”
They don’t end up calling Seungwan, Chan, or Jihoon (who would likely be with Hansol around this time), but Jeonghan promises to relay the message, though she’s sure Sooyoung will also say it herself as soon as she sees Hansol next. Jeonghan does stay over, sharing the large king bed between the three of them. She’s in the middle, with Sooyoung all curled up around her on her right side and Wonwoo giving her a bit more space on the left.
Sooyoung is the first to fall asleep, snoring quietly against Jeonghan’s cheek.
“Unnie?” asks Wonwoo, voice quiet. “You awake?”
“Mm-hm.” Jeonghan rolls over as much as she can with Sooyoung glued to her to look at Wonwoo.
“I, um — I think I might have an idea about what Hansol needs to cross over. But I don’t really want to say it yet. I’m still… I want to talk to him first. Say goodbye, I guess. Is that okay?”
It’s a great kindness, Jeonghan thinks, to give her the choice. Even if Wonwoo is framing it under her own hesitance, Jeonghan is sure she’s the one who benefits from it the most.
“Yeah, Wonwoo-yah, that’s okay. Take all the time you need.”
“Unnie?”
Jeonghan turns again. “Yes?”
“It’s probably not appropriate given the circumstances, but… I’m really happy for you. That you got to be in love. I think you and Hansol are really good together, for whatever it’s worth.”
Jeonghan stares, unblinking, at Wonwoo for a long moment before scooching over to hug her, too, effectively spooning both Sooyoung and Wonwoo at once. She almost doesn’t even need the blankets.
“Meh? Unnie?” Sooyoung mumbles, mouth full of sleep, blinking her eyes open and squinting at the sudden motion, enough to shake her awake. When she sees Jeonghan squeezing Wonwoo, though, she immediately relaxes, sinking back into the mattress. “Oh. Love you, unnie. Love you, Wonwoo.” Then she promptly falls back asleep, snoring again almost immediately.
“Aigoo,” Jeonghan whispers, “cute.” She pinches Wonwoo’s cheek and then relaxes, giving them both some more breathing space. “You lucked out, Wonwoo-yah.”
She smiles shyly. “So did you.”
Mingyu stress bakes a dozen blueberry muffins with Jeonghan on his couch a week later, and the next day he and Seokmin show up at their doorstep for a change, just to hang out with Hansol. Jeonghan gives them privacy and then chain smokes four cigarettes on the balcony before they come and get her, insisting that she should join them, too. Apparently they’re doing the second half of the movie marathon Seungcheol mentioned months ago that they never got around to finishing. It’s a Friday, at least, so Jeonghan shrugs and queues up Beetlejuice. It’s one of Hansol’s favourites. She should have him write a list, so she can watch them when he’s gone.
“Noona,” Mingyu says anxiously, in a low tone, as he and Seokmin are heading out the next day. “You know, right? What the thing is?”
Jeonghan shakes her head. That’s two of them, then, the smartest in the group. “I don’t want to know yet,” she admits. “Just — give me some time.”
Mingyu doesn’t answer, just crushes her in a bear hug (which Seokmin enthusiastically joins seconds later) and tells her to call if she needs anything, anything at all. He’s cute. They’re all so cute, and Hansol is so loved.
“You are too,” he says when she relays it to him over coffee. “They love you the most, Jeonghan-noona.”
Two and a half weeks in, Seungcheol calls, concerned because Jeonghan has been avoiding him. Jisoo is a tattletale and the worst best friend in the world, but then Seungcheol says it was Hansol who told him he was worried about her, and Jeonghan can’t even bring herself to pretend.
“You’re taking care of him, right?” she asks, all too aware of her own absence, the space she’s selfishly taken and Hansol has selflessly let her. “All of you?”
“Of course,” Seungcheol replies, perplexed. “But, I mean, he can take care of himself.”
Right. “Of course,” she echoes, and Seungcheol’s laugh could be mocking, but it falls flat.
“It’s okay. You like taking care of people, we all know that. But yeah, he’s fine. Worried about you, but fine. As good as he can be, I think.”
“Good,” she says faintly. She means it, truly, but she still feels queasy saying it, ill at ease knowing that Hansol can’t truly be happy right now. “That’s good. I’ll talk to him soon.”
“We all just want you to be okay, you know? It’s not easy, what you’re doing, but you’re still trying to take care of everyone. Let us take care of you.”
“I’ll try,” she croaks out, exhausted.
“That’s all we need.”
Jeonghan puts off talking to Hansol for a while longer, though, because she is terribly weak. She doesn’t want to face him without an answer and she doesn’t want to face him with one, either. She wants to face him always but knows that soon, she’ll never see him again. She sees him most often in her dreams as of late, and in them, he’s always dying.
“Unnie?”
Seungwan is the last to approach her, slipping out onto the balcony during one of Jeonghan’s smoke breaks, which is how she knows it’s serious. Seungwan hates the smell, hates the habit, and clearly hates the cold, stuffing her hands further in the pockets of her puffy coat. She put it on just to come out and talk to Jeonghan, otherwise clad in pajama pants and slippers. It’s cute.
Jeonghan blows smoke out the side of her mouth, away from Seungwan, and snuffs out the light. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
Is she?
“No,” she breathes out, almost laughing. “No, I don’t think I am, baby.”
Seungwan shuffles forward and wraps her arms around her, hands all covered up by the sleeves of her jacket, head nestled against Jeonghan’s shoulder. “That’s okay,” she says softly. “You don’t have to be. You’ve been very strong, Jeonghan-unnie, it’s okay to be sad and hurting right now. We all are, a little bit, but it must be so much worse for you and Hansolie, you’re both being so brave.”
Jeonghan breathes out, warm breath and frigid air. She doesn’t want to talk about it. “What did you mean when you said everyone knew I was in love with Hansol?”
“Huh? Oh,” Seungwan says, remembering the incident after a moment, separating them to smile and start combing through Jeonghan’s hair, messy and unbrushed. She’s in her work clothes still, disheveled and dirty. “Well, I don’t think anyone thought that at first. You were really nice to him, but you’d be nice to almost anyone if they were a ghost, so I didn’t think much of it. And it’s not like you were obvious or anything. But — you know, you have a way of caring about people where you mold yourself to them. You’re always doting with Sooyoungie, and supportive with Seokminie, and quiet with Myunghwa, and you’re sort of evil with Seungcheol and Jisoo, stuff like that. But with Hansol — it was like you were caring and you didn’t have to change a thing. I don’t know if it’s because you were trying not to care, or because Hansolie’s so weird that he just matches with you that well, but you’re wholly yourself with him, and it never feels like a performance, like you’re trying to prove anything. You can be a bit distant, unnie.” Seungwan laughs, but it’s kind, no heat behind it: a simple observation.
“But with Hansol you were always just… you, I guess. Genuine. Sweet and kinda evil and silly. And, I don’t know, I guess coming from you, something like that seems an awful lot like love.”
“Seungwan,” Jeonghan says, her name heavy on her tongue. What she says next is a confession, to Seungwan as much as to herself: “I love him so much. I don’t think — I didn’t know it was possible to love someone so much. I don’t know– I didn’t– how am I supposed to just let go? How am I supposed to live after that?”
And it’s not that Jeonghan wants to kill herself so much as it’s that she dreams about death and it’s a relief instead of a burden. That death isn’t something she wants at all, but Hansol is, and soon Hansol will be gone.
“Well. You live well and you love a lot, like you always have. It’s not easy, unnie, but I promise that it’s simple. There’s so much left for this world to give you.”
There’s so much left for me to give. Jeonghan smiles, a little watery, and turns her back on the sunless sky. “Let’s go back in,” she says, ushering Seungwan in ahead of her. “It’s cold out.”
Hansol is waiting inside, like he and Seungwan planned it. They might have, or it might be a coincidence, but Jeonghan doesn’t care much either way. She’d be loathe to reject a little friendly meddling in her life at this point.
“Hi,” she greets quietly, stuffing her hands in her pockets. It’s a habit, she realizes belatedly, she must have picked up from Hansol.
“Hi, noona. Can we talk?”
Jeonghan makes herself a cup of tea and they sit on the couch.
“I figured it out, I think,” Hansol begins, a little trepidatious, like he doesn’t want to steal Jeonghan’s thunder. She swallows, shakes her head and gestures for him to continue. “Seungwan helped, actually. She was talking to be about Jihoon, you know, how she really likes him but sometimes she can’t figure him out, just asking for advice. And Jihoon-hyung — I mean, we’re pretty different, but at the end of the day we want a lot of the same things, right? Love that you can write songs about. That kind of cheesy shit.” He shrugs, rubs the back of his neck. “And it’s really dumb, actually, but right before I died, I was working on this song for a boy group, right? It was kind of generic, but the lyrics were about wanting to kiss someone who you really, really loved for the first time, and I remember thinking, like — yeah. It’s stupid, but it’s real, because who doesn’t want that? I thought, and it’s so fucking ironic, but I thought at the time, who wouldn’t be able to die happy if they had that?”
He laughs, a little nervous, a tad self-deprecating. “I would, anyway.”
“I have to kiss you.” Jeonghan could have hypothesized it herself, but it’s all too easy to surmise from Hansol’s description.
“Yeah.” Hansol grimaces. “I think so. It’s a shitty ending, huh?”
Shitty, beautiful, evil, poetic — it’s something, alright.
“It is what it is,” Jeonghan says instead of any of that. “Okay. I can do that.” She’d be happy to, really. Under any other circumstance she’d be happy to.
Hansol nods gravely. “Okay.” He claps his hands together and they make no sound. “Let’s talk logistics.”
❝ 24. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
They choose a Friday so that Jeonghan doesn’t have to take off work, but she’s pretty sure she’ll end up despondent for a week anyway. She doesn’t tell Hansol that, though, and simply agrees to the date.
Everyone wanted to be there for it at first, to say bye, but Hansol declined, instead choosing to have just him and Jeonghan in the apartment. Instead, they do a last farewell that Sunday, everyone gathered at Mingyu’s house like the first time they met him to say their goodbyes. Every single person cries, which at least makes Jeonghan feel better about the amount of tears she’s shed over the past month.
They make love for the last time in Jeonghan’s bed, with Seungwan out god knows where doing god knows what — she’s been giving them space this week, although she still stops by to spend time with Hansol, too. Jeonghan rests with her head straight through Hansol’s chest and feels happy, lets herself bask in it for as long as it lasts. Hansol kisses her wrist and she imagines kissing his lips and the hurt is distant but her love for him is present, beating through her as strongly as anything. They’ll be okay.
She tells him everything, then, every single thought in her head, keeping her eyes open for as long as she can. I love you. I see you in my dreams all the time, see you everywhere I go, in the strays by the office building and the radio. I say so much shit and I mean so little of it, but I mean it when I say I love you, I love you, I don’t want you to go. I never wanted you to go. I wish we could live forever, that we’d never die. I wish I’d known you before, when you were still alive. It annoys me that I don’t know everything about you, and it annoys me that I never got to touch you. The things I would do to touch you would land me in a federal prison, Hansol, I mean it. I love you. I’m so scared, but I’m trying really hard to be brave for you, to let you go.
I love you. I hope we meet again someday. I hope in another life we were never apart.
Jihoon and Chan spend the whole day with Hansol on Thursday and Seungwan joins them on Friday as well, only leaving when Jeonghan walks through the door, back home from work. They’ve all clearly been crying, but they don’t put up any arguments as they leave. Seungwan slips out quietly, confirming with Jeonghan that she’ll check back in an hour if she doesn’t hear anything, and Jihoon and Chan only give Jeonghan a last, lingering hug.
“Fighting, noona!” Chan sniffles, still trying his best to be optimistic.
Jihoon clings on a bit longer, then whispers to her, “I’m really sorry you have to do this.”
Jeonghan’s heart aches. “It’s okay, baby. I’ll be okay.”
Jihoon squeezes one last time and then lets go. “Thank you for loving him.” And then he’s gone.
“Yo,” Hansol greets when she turns around, rubbing at her dry eyes. It earns him a laugh, the slightest shake of her head.
“Really? You’re about to get kissed by the love of your life and the only thing you have to say about it is yo?”
Hansol grins, apparently deeply satisfied with this for some reason, and beckons Jeonghan closer. They walk to her room hand in hand, and he opens the door for her, like a gentleman. Jeonghan rests her back against it when it closes, exhaling and trying to calm the rapid beating of her heart.
Maybe it won’t work. Maybe this will all be for nothing, and we’ll be so embarrassed because we were sure about it, but it’ll all be fine and Hansol will be here for a little longer, and I’ll get to kiss him all the time.
“Last chance to back out,” she says, squaring her shoulders and garnering up the last of her courage.
Hansol shakes his head, smiling so softly. “You know I have to go.”
“I know.” Jeonghan joins him on the bed, sitting with her knees brushing his ever so slightly. “Ready?”
“There’s actually some things I wanted to say,” he interjects, and Jeonghan inhales sharply, already cautious.
“Hansol…”
“I know, I know, we said no last goodbyes. But I just — have to say this, okay?” And Jeonghan nods, because she could never deny him anything.
“I love you,” he starts, and Jeonghan shakes her head, already at a breaking point, but he shushes her and continues. “I love you so much. You’re so fucking weird, Jeonghan, you’re like if a salamander had the brain of a lawyer and the body of a model and the face of an angel and a heart of gold.”
“Wouldn’t that just make me a human?” Jeonghan laughs, trying her best to be strong.
“No, the salamander part is important,” Hansol says with surety, clearly having thought this through. “You’re, like, super creature-ish. It’s really endearing.” He grins at her and clears his throat. “I’m really gonna try to keep this short, so — first, I want you to have this,” he says, pressing the stupid cat Smiski they got in Kyoto into her hand. “Please take care of him, he’s trying his best.
“And second, I really need you to know that in another timeline, some other universe, I would have really, really loved to share a life with you.”
“Hansol,” Jeonghan warns, just barely holding back her tears. She has to be strong for him. She has to, but fuck, it’s so hard.
“I know, I’m sorry, I’m almost done. The last thing is that I want, more than anything, for you to be happy, and to live a really long time, and to do all the things you want to do. So while I hope you’ll think of me, if– when you find someone else, please know that I’m rooting for you.”
“Hansol, no,” she says, shaking her head, regretting everything she ever said about falling for someone else. She couldn’t. She can’t. She won’t even consider it.
“Jeonghan, I’m serious. I’ve thought about it a lot, okay? Just — at least pretend to agree for now. At least promise to think about it.”
She does, because she’d do anything he asked, even if it’s hard.
“Okay,” he says, shimmying his shoulders back and nodding once, gathering himself. “I’m ready.”
Jeonghan isn’t. She never will be, she doesn’t think.
“I love you,” she chokes out through tears falling down her throat.
Hansol smiles and it’s so sweet, a ray of sunshine on her freezing cold skin. “I know.”
Jeonghan is careful when she kisses him, because she wants it to be good. She wants him to know, praying that he can feel it, if not on his lips then in his soul, that she loves him, that she’s thought of this, that she’s dreamed of this for months now, that if she could, she’d never let him go.
She pulls back and Hansol gasps, the softest little “Oh,” like he’s been punched in the chest instead of kissed on the lips, like he’s seeing God and not Jeonghan in front of him.
He smiles, then, flickering in and out of view. A single tear drips down his cheek, and then —
That’s it.
Hansol is gone.
❝ 25. ❞ ✧ೃ༄
After Seungwan finds her sobbing on the bed an hour later, hand indented by the edges of the stupid fucking trinket she holds tight like it’ll bring Hansol back, Jihoon is the first one to visit her. He comes on Sunday, while Jeonghan eyes are still crusted with drying tears, and looks sufficiently awkward at her devastation.
“I just wanted to give you this,” he says, handing a CD case to her with what is unmistakably Hansol’s handwriting on the clear cover. “He said I should give it to you after. The last song is — uh, it was his, but since he couldn’t record it I did it instead. But it’s… he wrote it for you. To sing to you, really.”
That sets Jeonghan off again, thanking Jihoon and giving him a few pats on the head before escaping as quickly as she can to her room, where she gets to cry without decorum. The CD case reads For Jeonghan and there’s a note inside, carefully folded up into quarters.
Dear Jeonghan,
It’s Thursday, and I’m writing this with Chan and Jihoon trying to give me space in the corner, ‘cause I kept putting it off for so long and now I kind of have to commit or else this note won’t say anything. And I considered that too, because I think the music should speak for itself, but I guess I wanted to say some stuff anyway.
I love you. That’s kind of the start and the end of all these things, so I thought I’d put it here first. Set the record straight.
You know, Chanie said that you’ve changed me. Made me more mellow, apparently, which is kinda funny because I was always pretty chill, but I guess I’m even more chill now. He said all my restless energy has somewhere to go. Like, I’m able to be myself more completely now ‘cause I don’t have to carry anything alone.
The more I think about it, I think kinda get what he meant. Because you’re cautious where I’m lackadaisical, and you’re logical when I’m trying to go with my feelings, and you’re still not mean or aggressive about any of those things (I know you say you’re mean, but you’re not. Not sure you could be if you tried). All the thoughts I have that make me question myself are reflected in the choices you make, and I think it’s the same for you. So we always get each other, even when we don’t choose the same things. We always go together — parallel lines, or some shit, ‘cause we were never able to touch. Get it?
I wish I didn’t have to leave you. You were the best part of my afterlife, no contest. Bet you would’ve been the best part of my life, too, if we’d had the chance.
I love you, Jeonghan. I’ll be looking for you in the next life, and if that doesn’t come, I’ll wait for you in this one.
Love,
Hansol
P.S. The song’s for you. I know Jihoon’s a better singer than me, but I kinda think his version is worse. Not his fault, but still. I hope you like it anyway.
The letter is tear-stained by the time Jeonghan finishes with it, despite her best attempts to preserve the paper and not let the ink run. There’s only so much she can do, and really she doesn’t think she should be blamed.
The door shuts outside, Jihoon and maybe Seungwan leaving. Jeonghan barely cares anymore. She wanders out, pulls the old CD player from the game cabinet and sets herself up in bed with the blankets to her chin and a box of Kleenex on the nightstand, Doljjong in one hand and the Smiski in another, and stays like that the whole way through. Thirteen songs — Mitski croons about giving her lover the moon and then Hansol is singing to her through Jihoon, the same lyrics she found in his notebook months ago, the same melody she caught him humming: Over the power lines, over the rooftops / Leave yesterday’s flickering you behind / Into the sunlight, the moonrise you waited for / Even when morning comes, don’t ever melt.
Jisoo finds her next, smoking her third cigarette of the day on the balcony. Seungwan must have sent her to make sure Jeonghan was okay.
“It’s fucking cold out,” Jisoo gripes, shuffling out with a thoroughly disgruntled look on her face. She stops when she sees Jeonghan, though, breathing out smoke, her gaze directed somewhere higher. “Hey. Are you okay?”
“No.” She smiles as best as she can, though, turns away from the moon to look at her friend. “But I think I will be.”
“Good. That’s good.” Jisoo shuffles her feet, puffing out her cheeks and wincing. At the end of the day, she is from California. “Can we go back inside? It’s kind of hard for me to think out here. It’s literally freezing, I dunno how you’re standing it.”
Jeonghan laughs, waving her cigarette in Jisoo’s face. “Give me a second to finish this. You can go back in, I’ll just be a minute.”
Jisoo squints at her, then decides she’s telling the truth, or maybe just that she can’t stand being in the cold like this for much longer, hopping back inside with a visible shiver. Jeonghan turns back to the moon, breathing in the last from her cigarette — one, two, three, four drags, and it’s gone.
She stubs it out and throwing it over the railing. Hansol would be disappointed in her for that, but what can she say? She’s a work in progress.
It’s a four-cigarettes kind of day, but she doesn’t want to make Jisoo worry. Jeonghan breathes out clean air, long and heavy, and carries her own pack of Marlboros back inside.