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Stephen wakes up alone in his bedroom. As per usual. There's a faint smell of the ocean and a creaking sound when he stirs, so he looks to the chair he kept in the corner of his room for a certain someone. Yeah, he's there. The figure stops fidgeting in the chair when he notices him awakening with a stretch, "Good morning," the figure says cheerily, his accent prominent.
This figure is a ghost named Hosuh Lee, a 23 year old Korean man with rather long black hair, and for the three months he's known him since he moved into this apartment, he's learned that he died in 1952 from drowning, and that he's ecstatic that someone can actually see him. Apparently when he first died he flew around continuously out of confusion, and eventually finding out he had traveled north long enough to get to Canada.
Stephen's always been able to see people that weren't really there. His family thought him weird when he didn't outgrow talking about the man that cried in the backyard or the black cat that stood on the porch. Finding out that they were dead people and animals scared him quite a bit, but as he got older he stopped worrying about that fact. He's tried talking to a lot of the ghosts, some don't respond, some are aggressive, but he had never met one like Hosuh.
Hosuh likes to talk now that someone cares to hear him, and he likes to help him out with the little power he has. He'll help him cook by getting ingredients, he'll turn off lights if he passes out on the couch, he opens the door for him when he forgets his keys... It's nice. It makes his heart flutter at the little things he does. It's a shame he fell in love with someone he can't touch.
Well, he can, but it's very cold, and if he were to pass through him it'd feel like really cold liquid-y jelly. Hosuh was the only ghost that he felt comfortable asking and that would actually respond to wanting to try touching. It was a really weird high-five. But his giggle was so endearing to him.
Through Hosuh he's learnt a lot about ghosts. Ghosts don't have to sleep, but they can. Ghosts can turn into orbs to move faster. Ghosts can emit smells, normally of something they smelled a lot before death or of what they smelled when they died. In Hosuh's case, it's the ocean.
Stephen sits up after grumbling out as a response to his friend that was waiting for him to wake up. "You don't work today, right?" he says, his broken English showing more each sentence. "No, not today. Did you want to watch a movie or something?" Stephen tussles his purple hair in hopes to fix it, assuming he has horrendous bed-head from how deep of a sleep he was just in. "I want to watch those... Korean deurama your Twitter talks about," Ah, he probably saw what was trending in Korea.
Stephen groans as he takes a long shirt out of his dresser for the lazy day he's about to have, and quickly pulls it over himself, "It's not my Twitter technically, and I don't even know Korean!" Stephen turns to look at the figure that was standing now, "English, ah... buje!" Hosuh tries to mimic writing in a straight line after realizing he doesn't know the word, and Stephen notices he's talking about subtitles, "Yeah, well, K-Dramas sound boring!" "How do you know?" Stephen contemplates and lets the sentence sink it. "...Okay, fine!"
The figure jumps in place with excitement before running and phasing out his bedroom door. Stephen decides he should make himself more ready for whatever he's about to be dragged on the second he finishes making food. So he leaves his room and goes to the bathroom to do his business, which includes making his mohawk look less of a mess.
It's about 6PM now and most of the binging he'd been forced to do was just him saying what could've been different and being shushed by a ghost. Hosuh does eventually get bored of it once he finished another season, "Many new words," Stephen hums in curiosity even though he'd resorted to paying attention to his phone. "Like kamera, we used to call... sajin gigye? It's been a long time, I don't remember," Stephen mumbles an 'mhm' when the ghost hovers behind him, phasing through the couch, to look at his phone. Then presses the home button. "Hey!" the ghost ignores his outburst and goes on Twitter. He just sets his phone on the coffee table for him to play around with it.
Hosuh has a fun time learning about all the new technology. He's seen TVs, and phones, but never got to or knew how to interact with them. It's interesting that to Hosuh everything around him looked a lot different compared to now. Stephen couldn't even think to live without anything keeping him up on what's happening internationally, but Hosuh probably relied on whatever the people around him talked about when he was alive.
Speaking of, Hosuh was really relieved and happy to hear about what's been happening to his homeland ever since, having found him Korean websites for him to look at. He also tends to change the trending tab on Twitter to Korea and forgets to change it back often. He was also really confused when he found out about K-Pop that way.
Stephen just can't help but get warm feelings when he sees his transparent friend get so gleeful. They can just barely understand each other through vocal communication, but through a lot of mimicking and some Google translate, they understand each other a lot better. I mean, this is the first ghost he's befriended, he might as well put his all into it.
It was realizing that he was in love with him that he realized he maybe put a little too much into it. It's not like they could date, provide physical affection, or be a normal couple really. But he still fell quite a bit for him. Was homosexuality even a thing in Korean in the 1950s? Hell if he knows. Stephen wants to tell him, because he'll either feel the same, which he doubts, or he'd fly away and never come back.
A voice interrupts his thoughts, "Stephen," he almost laughs at how Hosuh's accent obscures his name, "I want my own Twitter," Stephen stretches before reaching the phone to go to the sign up page, ready to use one of his back-up emails for this. "What do you want your username to be?" Hosuh looks confused for a second but figures out what he's talking about, and takes the phone to type in 'Hosuh'. The username is already taken. "But that's my name!" he adds on his last name. Still taken. "What?!"
Stephen sighs, "There's seven billion people on Earth, there's a lot of people with your name. Just come up with something creative." Hosuh nods and proceeds to type 'Hosuh' with a bunch of h's at the end until it doesn't let him anymore. It's also taken. "Mwoya!" Stephen laughs at him, Hosuh just looks at him, clearly bothered that he can't have a username he wants.
"You're... You are..." He quickly turns back to the phone and goes to Google translate. He taps the microphone symbol, "Seong-gasin!" Stephen stifles his laugh since the phone can't hear him and instead repeats Hosuh's words more calmly, hoping he pronounces it right. "Seong-gasin," When it processes, it translates to 'Annoying'. Stephen just laughs harder.
Hosuh looks at the translation, mumbling what he thinks it sounds like for future reference. Stephen catches his breath, "Okay, love you too, Hosuh," the mentioned looks confused at that word, and tries to type what he heard into the translation box. Stephen waits for him to figure out, and he does quickly.
Seeing a ghost blush wasn't something he ever planned to see, but he did. "It's sarcasm, Hosuh, it's a joke," Hosuh doesn't seem too convinced. Before Stephen could explain to him what sarcasm is, he felt an icy cold hit the right side of his face as Hosuh leant in to press a kiss to his cheek. Stephen didn't think he'd get this far. The heat rising to his face combats the cold that was just there. Hosuh presses a hand to his face to feel the warmth and smiles at him.
Stephen decides he might as well just give in, "So maybe I love you a bit," Hosuh just laughs at how he's going around it, and presses a kiss to his lips this time. Stephen stutters when the cold leaves his face, "How do I kiss a ghost?!" Hosuh just keeps laughing at his behavior, and floats over to hover himself in Stephen's lap, putting an arm over one of his shoulders and looks back to the phone, "I need a username," Stephen nearly laughs at how quick he got over what just happened.
Hosuh proceeds to type in various usernames until he comes up with one he actually likes. He clicks the button to make a tweet and goes ham on pressing letters. Stephen laughs loudly at the nonsense, "What the hell are you trying to say?" Hosuh giggles and sends the tweet. "How many... people will see my Twitter?" After a pause to search for the right word, he points to the nonsensical tweet he made. "I don't know if anyone is going to see it, but good job?" Hosuh just smiles brightly and presses another kiss to his cheek. Hosuh looks at the time on the phone and Stephen follows his eyes, nearly 7PM. Hosuh floats up and goes to the kitchen, "Food? Dinner?" Stephen stands to follow him over.
Stephen wouldn't particularly mind having a ghost for a boyfriend.