Work Text:
"Jisung..."
His eyes are on Jisung, and Jisung’s are on the sea of green leaves beneath their feet.
"Oh! Is that it? Oh no, I thought I saw one."
"Jisung."
Clouds roll over the sky like warnings, casting the hills with shadow, but Jisung doesn't seem to mind, or maybe even notice, knowing his cluelessness. He just keeps meandering through the thick carpet of clovers, eyes flicking here and there, humming occasionally to himself, not a care in the world.
"Yeah?" But he’s distracted, head in the clouds– squatting down to pick at another clover, same as the last hundred he’d peered at just today. The boy's never ever quite sunk into reality like the rest of them, his one foot always in fantasy.
"Jisung, I'm…dead."
"Yeah. I know."
That's what he says every time. Every time Chenle utters those words, is hit with his own reality again even though it's been his reality for whole years, and yet every time, Jisung reacts the same way, which is to say, no way at all. Just a simple 'I know'.
“Please listen to me. Please.”
He’s not sure why there’s suddenly a tide of urgency in his heart, why his hands clasp like a prayer and he stumbles to block Jisung’s view, but it’s overwhelming, the panic, the despair, it’s suffocating him– “I’m not here. I’m dead, gone, forever. You are talking to a ghost! Jisung, listen to me, fuck–”
“Hyung.
How is he so… like this? Like nothing’s wrong?
“Chenle, I know. You don’t need to keep telling me.”
“I just- I don’t know, I just want you to go live your life, to move on, to stop talking to me because I don’t exist anymore. Leave me, please.”
Don’t leave me. Oh god, don’t go, Jisung. Stay here with me, and count a thousand more clovers with me.
Jisung chuckles faintly. “Alright, later. But let’s finish this up first, we’ve been looking for a lucky clover for so long, let’s not give up now, hm?”
Chenle’s lips are numb, his tongue heavy, and some part of him laughs at the ridiculousness of weight in an apparition. He forces them to move: “Just because we’ve been looking, doesn’t mean we have to keep looking. Sometimes it’s okay to leave behind things like this.”
Tipping his head, Jisung stares at the sky, the billowing clouds. He thinks.
“Maybe. But I don’t really want to.” His voice is so soft, like a breeze. “I like it here, and that’s good enough for me.”
It's bound to snap at some point, the thread that's suspended in disbelief, the shock or denial or repression – whatever it is, it'll snap, it has to, and Jisung has to leave him. He's got to go back to reality and leave Chenle here on this hill where his grave is– but maybe–
– not today.
"Dang, I really thought this one looked like a four leaf clover." Jisung squints at the stem in his fingers. "We'll find one eventually."
Chenle lets himself laugh. "And then what? We'll be lucky? A lucky dead man, imagine that."
The sarcasm is lost on Jisung, but Chenle should have expected that. He matches Chenle’s laugh.
“Yeah! For sure."
One day; not today.
"Alright, then let's keep looking."
—
Jisung always leaves for most of the day, coming by a few hours after school when he can. When Chenle is alone, he keeps looking, picking through the millions and millions of stems the way only someone with an infinite amount of time can. Eventually, Jisung will appear over the crest of the hill, scan the surrounding meadow, and upon spotting Chenle, usually laying in the grass, he’ll wave his long arms and call out, then rush over to his friend.
“Chenle! You walked so far away this time!” Jisung huffs, plopping down on the grass next to him. “You looked so small I almost couldn’t find you.”
“Yeah?” Chenle laughs at the flush in Jisung’s cheeks. “Well, we have to start searching further now, we’ve looked at all the close places before.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Jisung laughs too, giggles like bubbles bursting in the warm summer air.
They sit like that for a while, side by side, watching the white clouds float by; there’s no rush to search, no urgency at all. Just an endless sky of clouds inching by, and an endless sea of clovers waiting for the touch of a human gaze for the very first time.
“How was school?” Chenle prompts, not knowing what else to ask.
“It was good,” Jisung replies, same as ever. “Same old. Oh, I got an A on my test!”
“The bio one?”
“Yeah.”
Chenle shoots him a thumbs-up. The day before the test, Jisung had been here, as usual, even though Chenle nagged and nagged about studying.
“How are you going to do anything if you don’t do well in school? Come on. Clovers won’t get you anywhere.”
“You sound like my mom, hyung. It’s okay, it’s not a hard test.”
Chenle had sighed, made him lay out his study guides on the grass, and while Jisung picked at the ground, Chenle read each vocabulary word out loud for him. That day, he discovered Jisung is a lying bum because he barely knew half of the terms – no matter, Chenle drilled him until the light grew too weak to read, and then Jisung bid him goodbye.
Not like he didn’t know Jisung lies. He’s known Jisung his whole… life.
Everyday, the same. Jisung comes, they talk about the same thing, do the same thing for a while, and then he leaves.
But it’s not the same. Chenle is, but Jisung isn’t. Jisung changes, and he’s not quite sure why Jisung pretends he doesn’t, but his phone case changes and his hair and his clothing, the slang words he uses, the pop culture he references, the flashcards that Chenle reads to him, his height – oh god, when did Jisung get so tall –
Everything about him is changing all the time, every day. He comes back and something is always a little different, and it never goes back to the way it was, back when– Chenle was still alive.
“What?” Chenle had sized Jisung up, staring at his shoes then back at his head. “What is this?”
He had raised a hand up, flat, from the top of his head to… Jisung’s eyebrows?
“Since when did you get taller than me? Huh?”
“Just barely, hyung. Don’t get whiny about it,” Jisung said, but his eyes twinkled with mischievousness.
“Too late, I’m already mad.” Chenle had pouted, exaggerated and sulky, but his insides dropped like a stone.
From that day on, every single day, Chenle had silently compared their heights; sometimes it makes him chuckle because it’s silly, but sometimes it crushes him inside like an empty soda can because Jisung slouches and is still half a head taller. Because he’s not the way he was before and there’s no way to shrink him back down ever again.
Beside him, Jisung lets out a little laugh.
“What?”
His lips purse together, trying to bite back the laugh, and failing terribly. “It’s just… your pout is so funny when you’re zoning out, hyung. You literally look so scary.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah,” Jisung’s fingers twitch almost imperceptibly, as if itching to pinch his cheek; Chenle pretends not to notice.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Does it matter?” Chenle asks.
“Does it matter if it matters? Can’t you just tell me for the sake of telling me?”
Chenle lets out an exasperated sigh – they’d had this argument before.
“I don’t exist so my thoughts are pointless.”
Jisung taps his temple in rebuttal. “But I exist, and as long as I hear your thoughts, they do exist, hyung.”
There are a few paths they usually go from here.
“So what are you trying to do?”
“Don’t overthink it. I just like to talk to you.”
Chenle doesn’t want to go down that route today. Jisung never budges.
“My thoughts are the same as they’ve always been.”
“Maybe I want to hear them again.”
Not that one either – too depressing.
“We’ve talked about this before. We’ve talked about everything before.”
“You say that it's a bad thing.”
“Since when have you called me hyung?” Chenle finally asks.
Jisung’s eyebrows raise in surprise.
“I don’t remember. Haven’t I always?”
“No, you were such a little shit.”
“Still am.”
—
“Jisung, what are the odds of finding a four leaf clover?”
“I don’t know. I’ll go ask my dad later.”
—
Jisung just got a bad idea; Chenle can feel it. Suspiciously, he shifts his eyes to watch the figure a few feet away through his periphery. Sure enough, he’s smirking like an idiot, oversized flannel shirt flapping gently as he pinches a few clover stems, and marching over to Chenle’s side, squats down and stuffs the stems in his mouth.
“What are you doing?”
Jisung actually begins to chew.
“I heard clovers are edible,” he says around the round leaves in his mouth. “My teacher saw a few in my pencil case and told me so.”
"You look like a sheep!”
Muffled giggles rumble in Jisung’s throat, and his eyes squint as he smiles, but he doesn’t give it up, continuing to chew. Laughing, Chenle reaches over, but his fingers can’t pinch at his friend’s cheeks, so he gestures for Jisung to do it himself by proxy.
“Does it taste good?”
“Delicious. Like a salad, but better.”
Chenle arches an eyebrow. “Well, I’m not looking away until you swallow so, if they are really as delicious as you say…”
Jisung doesn’t miss the challenge in his words. Taking a breath, he stuffs the rest of the greens into his mouth, chews furiously for a second, and swallows with a pained look on his face.
“See? Delicious! Now if you’ll excuse me, where’s my backpack, I need some water…”
“You know what I just realized?” Chenle hums as Jisung swallows a generous amount of water. “It’s possible you just ate a part of my body.”
Jisung spits out his water. It drips down his chin as he turns to stare at Chenle, mouth open. Chenle cackles; that was an even better reaction than he had wanted.
“Huh?!”
“I just mean that— oh jeez that was too good—” he wipes at his teary eyes. “I just mean, since my ashes were scattered here, it’s possible you just ate some. The ash is probably in the dirt now, the plants eat it up, grow, and bam! You’re eating my remains, technically.”
“Dang it, that’s like, nothing. Miniscule. You made it sound like I’d just swallowed a finger or something.”
“Would you, if I told you to?”
“Please. Shut. Up.”
The thought still wiggled in his head though, wandering down that path when the conversation lulled. The idea that maybe a few atoms that were once part of him, are now a part of Jisung… kind of weird.
“Did you say something?” Jisung looks up from where he’s walking, several paces away.
“Hmm? Oh, um… you should eat more clovers!”
Jisung stares uphill at him, hand shading his eyes, then he shrugs, snaps one from the ground, and holds the stalk in his teeth. He turns back to where he left off; Chenle doesn’t, just watches him for a little longer.
—
Swinging his arm like a baseball pitcher, Chenle mimes throwing a rock at Jisung, giggling at the way he flinches.
A few moments later, he yelps as a real rock sails towards his face, before it passes right through him.
“We’re even now!”
—
In the spring, the wild clover blooms, the sea of green changing with little specks of white and purple, the little clusters of tiny, tiny petals rising from in between the flat leaves. Not the prettiest flower ever, and not the most fun either, as they attract pesky insects like honey, which don’t bother Chenle, but do indeed bother Jisung very much. After an endless amount of scared yelps and excessive patting at the ghosts of bugs up and down his arms, they’d resigned themselves to pace the grassy areas of the meadow, sometimes resting under the shade of a lonely tree, other times pacing the length of a small creek cutting through the land.
"What's on your face?"
"Where?"
Because of this, they’re sitting in the pasture right now, reclining on the grass talking; Jisung swears he’d gotten over his visceral fear of bees, but mercifully Chenle had suggested taking a break after a few nervous shuffles from his friend. Free from their mission, Chenle sits face-to-face with Jisung, able to watch his face.
"There. Looks red."
"Oh."
There's a smudge on Jisung's face, a light coral color, and he wipes at it with his sleeve.
"A girl kissed me on the cheek, but it's not a big deal."
"What?!" Chenle does a double take, voice an octave higher. "Who?? Why?"
"This girl, you don't know her, she's new... She's friends with xxx though," Jisung waves dismissively.
Briefly, Chenle is distracted, taken aback by the name. It feels like forever ago he'd last seen her, he had met her the same year he'd met Jisung, and yet... Chenle is quiet for a second, trying to picture her face again in his head. Her voice is still clear, the crystal clear sweet voice-- she wanted to be a singer, or, at least that's what he can remember.
That girl’s name... it had been a while. Chenle gives his head a shake.
"Okay but why did she kiss you? Out of the blue?"
"She asked me to the formal dance, and when I agreed to go with her, she just... kissed me and left." Jisung picks at the ground, poor little grasses uprooted by his long fingers.
"But- but Jisung," Chenle gestures wildly, "you're— you know. Not into girls! Do you actually want to go with her!?"
Jisung wrinkles his nose, inner conflict apparent as day. His hands pick faster, and his voice rises, not quite matching Chenle's but loud for him.
"She brought me flowers! And a poster! And when I said yes she looked so happy. It's okay, I'm okay with going with her, I want her to be happy at the dance."
"But what about you? God, you pushover --"
"I'm not a pushover, I'm just-- I don't know, easygoing, flexible. I don't mind doing this for someone."
"No." Chenle takes a deep breath, pushes it out, but he's still far too angry than he probably should be. "You need to tell her you don't want to go with her. I don't care if you lie or if you tell her you're gay, but you need to do this."
Jisung's hands fly up, matching Chenle's aggressive motions. "But why?"
"Because. Because you should enjoy yourself, just yourself for once. You should go ask some boy you like and go to the dance with him and have fun."
A wave of sadness hits Chenle, and for some reason, he really, really wants to cry right now. His face burns, he itches with frustration, and the tears queued inside of him are hot and angry.
"You need to just not worry about her happiness and worry about your happiness, Jisung. Leave her behind."
They stare at each other. Jisung's face scrunches, and Chenle wonders if he's about to cry too, but what comes out instead is soft laughter.
"Oh, alright, Chenle. I'll go tell her. I'm pretty sure xxx took matters into her own hands anyway when she found out." Jisung lets out another laugh. "A boy I like, huh? Will you come to the dance with me then?"
He's ridiculous. Chenle is about to cry and Jisung is treating this like a joke.
"You’re laughing now but you’re going to be a virgin forever, Ji.”
This only elicits more laughter from the boy, until he’s nearly kissing the grass.
“Thank you for being concerned about my love life,” Jisung wheezes. “But I’m not that worried about getting laid.”
“You say that but I grow less and less certain.”
"I was just kidding, I'll just stay here with you then, we can stargaze or something."
"That's not what I want either!"
Sometimes, Chenle wonders why he can still feel emotion. He can't feel heat or cold, pain or touch, so many sensations stripped away from him, everything that gave him weight and tethered him to the Earth. And yet here he is, sitting in presumably damp grass, breathing in apparently cold air, this storm of emotion welling up inside of him like a flame -- it's there and it hurts him but there's no shadow, no mass, just -- a ghost.
"Chenle hyung..."
The wick. The only thing still keeping him alive is this boy next to him, shifting like he wants to comfort him but knowing he can't, slowly wasting away his days for something that won't even exist in a mere blink of an eye.
"Chenle?" Jisung's voice is so quiet now.
"Why are we still here?" Chenle doesn't turn around. He can't.
He hears a sigh behind him.
—
"Why are you here?"
"Uhhhh..." Chenle floats in front of him, his translucent form light but sharp and clear. "I... don't know? Why are you here?"
It's the same meadow as always, green and covered in clovers. The sun looks bright and warm on Jisung's bare arms and legs, his big shirt billowing in the wind, but he can't feel either.
"I guess I came to visit you. Your ashes are here, after all."
"Oh yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for visiting, buddy." He pouts, crossing his arms. Experimentally, he floats to the ground, but his feet can't feel it, so he mimes walking and Jisung giggles. "Although, I will say I would've preferred a grave in the ground. Not that any of you guys asked!"
Jisung laughs, holding his stomach.
"We can make one for you then. There are some rocks here and there, and I have some chalk."
"Chalk will wash right off, dummy!"
"Fine... We can write words with it first and then I'll get my sister's paint later."
"Okay!"
Turns out, Chenle can't hold anything, so he just follows Jisung around as he collects rocks, commanding him with all the authority of the rightful owner to the gravestone.
"Okay, now write on there, 'Here lies Zhong Chenle, 2001 dash 2015', uhhh..." he trails off. "I don't know what goes next."
"I think you can just say whatever you want here."
"Oh really? How about the President then? Oh, even better, the King of the World!"
Jisung laughs so hard he drops the stick of chalk.
"I wonder if other people can also see and hear you," Jisung muses, after they'd laid the stones in a circle and now basked in the sunlight. "But for some reason, I have a feeling it's only me."
"Me too. And I don't think you should tell them."
"Why not?"
"Well, everyone would just get so sad... And I don't really want that to happen. You know?"
They stare up at the white clouds floating slowly across the sky. The wind had bated a little, and the grass swished less like waves and more like ripples all around them.
"That makes sense."
"Hey... speaking of, you don't seem too sad that I'm..." Chenle hesitates. "You don't seem too sad over me. What's up with that?"
Jisung braces his arms defensively. "Can you blame me? You're right here in front of me! I'm happy to see you!"
"Good answer." Chenle grins, and Jisung grins back.
—
"Jisung... why are we still here?"
"I-I--"
Chenle can hear the soft pop as Jisung's lips pressed together and open again, wordlessly.
"Because I-- care about you."
"Hyung, I think I love you."
You can't love something that doesn't exist, not that way. Love like that deserves a flesh and blood recipient, so that it can be reciprocated, as fully as possible.
“My hand goes right through you! That’s so cool,” Jisung stares in wonder at his hand, waving it back and forth in Chenle’s face. “You really are a ghost, huh.”
“Yup!” Chenle mirrors the motion, waving his hand through Jisung’s face, and he flinches, always the scaredy-cat. “I could probably float into you and possess you!”
“Chenle, I really care for you. And even though-” Jisung chokes up. His lips press together again, making a tight line, a grounding touch to try and stop incoming rambling. “I just- like being here with you, and I’m not in denial or anything, I’ve accepted it, we both have.”
Chenle buries his head into his arms. This is what he asked for, but he couldn’t even take it.
“Can we just stay like this a little longer?”
A man brushes a dummy hand in the video, and the participant flinches, even though it’s not a real touch. The scientist explains monotonously the phantom hand effect, but the two boys aren’t listening anymore.
“Okay, so you remember what touch feels like, right?” Jisung asks.
Chenle does. It feels like warmth above anything else, like… well, it’s kind of hard to describe a sensation without that sensation. But Chenle does, and when Jisung holds out his hand, palm facing up, and Chenle places his own against it, stilling in air as much as possible — Chenle breathes, curls his fingers in time with Jisung’s grasp, and there it is.
He feels Jisung’s hand. The touch, the warmth, the comfort, he suddenly feels it again and it’s so wonderful and—
Their fingers fall out of sync and the illusion is gone again.
The grass sighs as Jisung moves, crawling over to Chenle’s side. They’re so close now.
“Come here, let me hold you,” Jisung says, holding out his arms.
Chenle lifts his head from his own arms, places it in the empty space by Jisung’s chest, over his heart. He curls his arms inwards, like a baby, and JIsung wraps his arms around him. Chenle’s head feels heavy, it’s hard to hold it so still in this position, and he’s sure Jisung’s arms will ache soon from holding them up, but this is- nice, and if he just tries hard enough—
He lets go of the tension, lets his body fall through the other boy’s. As he lays on the grass, Jisung stares at his empty arms, then swivels to look at him in confusion.
“There’s no point. I can’t remember what you feel like anymore.”
—
“How many clovers have we looked at by now?”
“I think, like, a million for sure!”
—
Chenle is alone right now. Time passes faster than one would think, when he’s there and Jisung isn’t; it’s hard to explain, like floating in and out of a groggy state of unconsciousness, where you’re not quite present. He waits, stomach on the grass, kicking his feet in the air, glancing at the overcast sky.
It will rain soon– maybe Jisung won’t come today, he doesn’t like the mud that much.
He lets his eyelids sink, drifting back towards that sleepy state, when his eyes land on something and snap him awake again.
"...Whoa, no way..." He gasps.
There. Right in front of him.
Chenle stares at the tiny thing; 4 leaves, alright. After so much time, finally they'd found it... Automatically, he reaches for the clover, forgetting that his fingers pass right through the stem – instead, he makes an 'O' with his fingers and keeps it there, marking its spot. Cheek pressed on the ground, arm outstretched towards the prize, he waits.
—
One hour, two. Maybe ten now?
The sun rises and sets, and then the moon does too. The adrenaline is still rushing through him though, more than he’d felt in a while, and he feels alive, they’d been searching for years, after all.
"Jisung, come on... where are you... we finally found one and you're late." Chenle huffs.
His voice rings through the air; it’s windy, and occasionally the leaves on the clover will shake scarily. Chenle cups his hands around it, knowing it doesn’t do anything to protect the precious thing, but at least it makes him feel better than doing nothing.
“Jisung-yah!” He shouts like a child throwing a tantrum. “Jiiiiiisuuuunngg!”
The clouds above him churn, billowing heavy and dark, the promise of rain and threat of lightning looming over hills of green, painting them a deep shade of emerald green – the gusts of wind cry like heralds, and off in the distance, thunder rumbles, like an approaching chariot.
He doesn’t care. Chenle clicks his tongue impatiently. Now that he’s fully in the present, excited, ecstatic, he’s aware of how slow time seems to creep along, so annoying! He wants it to be over so Jisung can come see what he's found.
Another shout, for no one to hear.
"Jisung! How are you going to claim your luck if you never-"
He stops suddenly. The clover waits, swaying in the breeze.
"-if you never- come back–"
The clouds above him break, and rain, finally, begins to fall. It falls, smacks against the little leaves all around him, fat drops dripping off each to find the ground. It falls, and like white noise, the sound of millions of collisions blends into the swirl of too many emotions inside Chenle.
He slowly removes his hand, lets the clover disappear again back into the masses of stems.
Chenle closes his eyes.
“What a lucky day…”
He smiles.
—
“I’ll stay here with you forever, and you will live forever too!”
“Okay!”
—
When Jisung comes back, a day late, shyly hand-in-hand with a sweet boy in tow –
Chenle is gone.