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staring out at the ocean spread before him, changbin feels a sense of dread. it must be past midnight at this point, and he is alone on the beach. despite the nausea and fear mixing in his stomach, he cannot bring himself to look away from the gently rolling waves.
his body feels numb. logically, he knows he must be sitting on the sand, yet he cannot feel it under his hands. when he moves his feet, he doesn’t hear the shifting grains; rather, it is as if they had never been disturbed to begin with. he can hear the water; he is sitting just a couple feet from where it is lapping at the shore. and yet, he feels far removed from the sound. he is at once there and not there.
while he’s pondering all of this, a new thought pops into his mind: how did i get here? he thinks back, trying to make sense of why he’d be on the beach so late at night, but his mind is blank.
he thinks he has a headache, but he can’t really tell.
it’s almost as if he is shut off from his mind; when he tries to remember anything he’d done recently, he is just brought back to the sound of the ocean. as much as he wants to, he decides he can’t dwell on this too much.
the moon shines down on him, his only companion on this lifeless beach. he sees its reflection in the water, and, somehow, it calms him.
he tries to stand, but finds that his limbs seem to be working against him, too. he can only barely move his arms and legs, and he isn’t confident enough to try to do much more at this point.
by now, changbin figures he must be dreaming, stuck in some sort of lucid nightmare. he can only hope he’ll wake soon.
he lets his mind wander, though it’s not like he has much of a choice. his body seems to be protesting against him, both from the inside and out. he’s brought back to one of his happiest memories, of a time long gone. back before his mother had passed, and he was still a child who knew only happiness and love. he remembers sitting on her lap, humming along as his mother sang to him. she had the loveliest voice, and he finds himself tearing up, wishing he could hear it again.
the scene shifts, and he’s taken to the woods near his childhood home. he sees his ex-best friend, wooyoung, and his little sister climbing up into the treehouse wooyoung’s dad had set up for them. changbin is waiting at the bottom of the ladder, ready to catch his sister if she were to fall. he smiles to himself when she makes it up without too much fumbling. he knows what comes next without even having to relive it: they’ll play together for a few hours, pretending to be knights and monsters and royals, until it gets dark enough that they aren’t sure how to get back home. after a lot of a debate (and a lot of crying on all parts, especially from changbin, who has always been afraid of the dark), wooyoung makes the executive decision that they should stay in the treehouse for the night. of course, they are retrieved less than an hour later by two frantic sets of parents, and from then on they aren’t allowed to go into the woods without adult supervision. changbin smiles at the memory; even if it was terrifying at the time, he looks back on the experience fondly.
the next memory is of his mother’s funeral. he was only fourteen years old when he lost her, only fourteen years old when he life changed forever. changbin’s body moves on autopilot throughout the funeral; he finds himself humming his mother’s song, desperately trying to keep her alive. his father looks him square in the eye, but doesn’t really see him. his sister is sitting in the back of the room, alone, crying her eyes out. changbin wants to go comfort her; he knows how bad things get after this. but that’s not what he did at the time, and that’s not what he’ll do now. instead, he’ll go up to the casket one last time, say his final goodbye, and leave the funeral home. he’ll go sit on the curb outside, his one nice suit getting covered in concrete dust and pollen. changbin wishes he could cry now, but the tears don’t fall. he can’t cry for his past self, and he can’t cry for his present self for having to relive these things.
he finds himself in the dark. he thinks the barrage of memories must be done now, but then a sliver of light hits his face. he doesn’t know where he’s at, and if this is a memory he can’t place it. his body moves on its own once again. he flicks the lights on, and is surprised to see his room in his old apartment. he figures it has to be another memory, but it isn’t until he picks up the note that he can place which one it is. his mind goes staticy seeing the piece of paper in his hand. there it is, the note jisung left him. sorry, phone’s dead. going to lix’s house be back by 5! at the time, he didn’t know that jisung would never make it to felix’s. he didn’t know that his best friend would end up nothing more than a statistic, lost to the hands of a drunk driver. now, though, he feels the heat rising in his stomach. he feels the pain and hurt and anger as if it had just happened yesterday. he knows he’s going to lose his best friend, yet all memory-changbin does is smile at the note and throw it away. changbin knows he’ll dig it out of the trash later, knows he’ll hide it away in the same box he stores his mother’s pictures in. he can’t scream, but he desperately wishes he could.
and then, just as fast as the memories came, they fade. changbin is once again staring out at the inky darkness of the night reflected by the water. somehow, he feels more present now. he tries once again to move, and is surprised when he is able to lift himself off the ground. in the distance, he can see a faint white light. he’s been alone with his thoughts for too long, so he starts to head towards the light even though he can’t really make out what it is. he hopes if it’s a person, maybe they know how he got here.
while he’s walking, his vision shifts. his surroundings start to go blurry, and changbin is again thrust into a dreamscape. but this time, it’s not one he recognizes.
he’s out with chan and hyunjin. it’s been a while since chan visited from australia, and they weren’t gonna pass up the opportunity to hang out. it’s the dead of summer, and it’s sweltering. chan had suggested they hit up the beach, so that’s where changbin finds himself currently. changbin’s never been a great swimmer, but he can certainly hold his own in these tiny waves. but, he gets a little too confident in his abilities. he swims a bit too far out, and hyunjin, sitting on the beach under a giant umbrella, is little more than a blob to him. and everything happens so fast. a wave, much bigger than the ones he’d paddled through closer to shore, slams down on top of him as his back is turned. he only has a few milliseconds to take a breath before he is under. he opens his eyes and is met with what seems to be a bottomless pit. it’s dark here, and changbin is afraid of the dark, and he can’t tell which way is up, and he is panicking. he knows that’s the exact opposite of what he should be doing, but it’s too late, logic has already been thrown out the window. he flails, and his lungs burn until he can’t take it anymore. he releases his breath and makes one final attempt at reaching the surface of the water, but he’s been falling deeper and deeper this whole time and his effort is in vain. his vision goes dark as the water fills his lungs.
when changbin snaps out of it, he’s breathing heavily and disoriented. he tries to gather his bearings and look around, but he can’t really see much. the light in front of him is blinding.
“hello,” chirps a voice from his right. changbin jumps and turns towards the source of the voice, wondering how he didn’t notice him earlier. in front of him is a boy who looks to be roughly his age and a little bit taller than him. changbin thinks he’s pretty, but the most striking thing about him is the pair of white wings sprouting from his back. changbin’s jaw drops.
“um, hello? what… what? ” changbin splutters eloquently. he’s surprised he was able to speak at all, honestly.
the boy chuckles a bit, somberly. he looks changbin over, then says, “i’m sorry. would you like an explanation?”
he knows his mind is pretty overworked right now, but changbin thinks that’s a pretty vague question. an explanation of what? the fact that he just had to relive his most important memories? the fact that barely feels attached to his body? this boy’s whole existence? yeah, changbin would definitely like an explanation. so, he says as much.
the boy, for his part, looks a bit apologetic at least. “sorry,” he starts, “i’m still new to this.”
new to what? changbin wonders, but decides not to interrupt him.
“my name is seungmin, and i’m sorry to say that i am an angel. seo changbin, you died today, and what you just experienced was a look back at all of the most impactful events in your life.” the boy—seungmin—says this all so… casually. sure, he looks a bit sad, but he’s just dropped this all on changbin like it was the most normal thing in the world.
changbin, for his part, is surprised. but, when he thinks about it, what seungmin had just told him feels right. he doesn’t know how he knows, but he can tell that seungmin isn’t lying to him. “you’re serious,” he says, after a moment of pause. it isn’t a question.
seungmin nods in reply. “unfortunately.”
changbin knows he should feel sad, yet he mostly feels nothing. his life has been pretty shitty since his mother died, and even worse since jisung, so he can’t really say he’s too attached to this life. he supposes he’ll miss his few remaining friends, but it’s not like there’s much he can do about that now. he doesn’t think kicking and screaming would help him, anyways.
so he settles with, “alright.”
seungmin looks a bit surprised before he composes himself once again. “well, usually this is the part where i’d explain how important it is to move on or something but… you seem pretty well prepared already. so then seo changbin, shall we?” he hold out an hand for changbin to take.
as changbin does so, he can’t help but ask, “if you’re really an angel, do you know if i’ll see my mom and jisung again? wait, do you even know who they are?” changbin realizes he really doesn’t know seungmin, or much about angels at all. he’s never been the religious type.
seungmin chuckles again, this time a bit more upbeat. “of course i know them. i don’t mean this is a creepy way, but i know everything about you, changbin.” changbin recoils a bit at that, to which seungmin quickly clarifies, “it’s part of the job! when we’re sent to retrieve a soul, we receive all of their memories. it’s supposed to make things more seamless, or something?” seungmin sounds like he isn’t really sure himself, and somehow that comforts changbin. “as for the other part, you’ll just have to find that out yourself,” he finishes with a wink.
so they walk, hand in hand, and changbin can swear he hears his mother humming softly as jisung whispers “good to see you again, binnie.”