Work Text:
Loud music blared from every direction, neon lights flashing and faux-enthusiastic robot voices promising prizes one could spend a fortune trying to get, only to fail. The arcade was certainly not Soobin’s first choice regarding places to spend Christmas Eve. Yeonjun was sure he would have much preferred going to a quiet little bookstore in some corner of Seoul, maybe, or a day-trip to Jeju.
Or maybe he was wrong and Soobin wanted to come here for some obscure reason—like his boyfriend, who loved playing on those silly Dance Dance Revolution consoles, having died in a horrific train accident a week ago.
Yeonjun still remembered what Soobin had said in a broken snarl that day, punctuated with sobs and hiccups, to no one in particular at the funeral. It was held in a discreet corner of the park near his lover’s house, black swaths of cloth hanging from makeshift poles arranged in a rough cuboid. Only the deceased’s immediate family and very close friends were invited—in this case Soobin himself and two others, a Choi Beomgyu and Kang Taehyun.
“Why, when the universe was letting me enjoy my life for once,” Soobin had spat, “must they stick another knife in?” He thought his life a mere drama for whatever higher-ups commanded the ways of the world from up above, thought that they jerked around his puppet-body at their whims and fancies, thought that he saw those invisible lines of inevitability attached to him, stripping him of decision and free will.
A more apt analogy could not be used. Just a few months earlier, Soobin had walked in on his lover unconscious, bright red mouths gaping on his wrists, spewing endless thick, dark liquid that stained the innocent wooden floor, the pure white carpet and the stark pale walls with what almost looked like rounds of blood-coated bullets shot by a madman sprayed all over. Three crimson-edged kitchen knives that Soobin knew all too well from days spent cooking meals for both of them lay demurely by the limp body’s side.
Something thick rose in Soobin’s throat as he retched, clutching his stomach as strings of bile and saliva emptied out of his mouth onto the floor, mingling with the blood to form a disgusting mixture of suffering. To the what might be perceived as staying idiotically still and not helping Soobin’s credit, he threw open the kitchen drawers in a bid to find the first-aid kit as he bit his lip, trying his best not to inhale the sick rusty scent that permeated the studio apartment.
He was surprisingly adept at bandaging the other’s glaring wounds, hiding the angry gashes beneath thick folds of white gauze. Once he picked up his phone, meaning to call an ambulance, yet the memory of his lover’s head hung low as he regaled the waves of panic that would nearly knock him to his knees whenever he so much as went by a hospital stopped him. Countless days spent essentially living in a clinically detached white ward gripping his comatose mother’s hand so tightly as her life bled away took a toll on him. His physical body had long recovered, but his soul was another thing.
The times following this were trying and harsh for Soobin. Not many days would go by before he came back from work once more to find his boyfriend crouched under the sink, or in the bathroom, or pressed against a door, tears glistening like shattered glass in his eyes as he smiled so heartbreakingly, laughed so chillingly and dropped the bloodstained knives. Before they lay together in bed, the other’s hand twined around Soobin’s own while he whispered brokenly. “I can’t help it, I can’t, otherwise— otherwise they come back. Eomma comes back, and I miss her so much but not like this, not like this, not like this.” He would repeat those three words till he fell into a fitful sleep with Soobin curled tightly around him.
He would sit glumly at the table on mornings after bad nights, watching Soobin fry some pancakes and probably burn the edges or send a few quick texts to his friends. Then he might retreat into a shell of isolation and spend the day ‘on call’ (working for an emergency department certainly had its benefits—for one, you could perpetually work from home). Or he might collapse onto Soobin, sobbing and whimpering, clutching his wrist in a frenzy.
“Binnie, Binnie, she came back, she’s gonna come for me today, in the sunlight, she told me, she told me—” he would start, “I left her, Binnie, and she’s gonna find me, she’s gonna send me to hell ‘cause I, I left her but— but I don’t want to go to hell-! Oh, but she looked so horrible with all that blood on her face and the make-up all messed up and her hair, her hair , it looked like these horrible tentacles, and they— they were alive , Binnie, they tried to drag me down me-! You have to believe me, she’s going to find me, she’s going to—” before dissolving into strangled wails and weeping.
Soobin would wordlessly sit beside him and hold him, carding his fingers through his uncombed hair as he took fistfuls of Soobin’s shirt in his hands, crying into him. He would whisper sweet nothings into his ear, assurances that he was there and would protect him while he inwardly despaired at how weak he was against these terrors visible to his lover and his lover only. The breakfast would sit uneaten as Soobin comforted him and prayed to whatever higher powers there were to heal his love of these terrors that plagued him.
And it was working, so Soobin thought. The sunrises that passed between each tragedy rose and rose, with nights where his lover would wake up with a cry the next morning, trembling, shivering, eyes blank and filled at the same time with invisible horrors incomprehensible to Soobin becoming more and more infrequent.
Then Soobin was bidding him farewell at a train station as he leaned out a window to yell a last “You better miss me!”, ignoring a panicked attendant yelling at him to get back in. Then he was staring at the headlines of the next day’s newspaper, then he was digging through his apartment’s trash again to find the train ticket stub, then he was rocking back and forth to the rhythm of that cute wooden clock with a rabbit that ran as the hours did, ran as the hours must have run out unbeknownst to either of the couple on his lover.
To Soobin, the days to come were like waiting for that glimpse of sunlight through furious stormclouds, trekking barefoot in the wildest winter looking for a peek of smoke or fire through the endless white, just barely floating above a tumultuous sea pummelled by torrential rain searching for a single piece of sodden driftwood to cling on to. His lover was that sunlight, that fire, that driftwood that Soobin scoured the depths of his mind to find, taking blissful memories of them together and piecing them together to form a distorted excuse for his lost love.
He was still doing that today, Yeonjun noted. He had that look in his eyes when he was seeking those fragments of memory that he could use to complete his lover’s broken picture, that misty sheen over his eyes, that rapid blinking, all of which had been omnipresent since his lover’s demise. All while trying his very best to snag a toy from a claw machine—what appeared to be a little red fox.
“You’re not gonna win that way, see, you gotta check the sides too, make sure everything’s aligned,” he muttered, leaning down to whisper in Soobin’s ear. Though his focus was not to be broken, Soobin did heed Yeonjun’s advice, peeking around the box to glare into the fox’s shiny black bead eyes, as if he could by sheer force of willpower make the fox levitate and float over to the chute. Yeonjun resisted the urge to scream about how cute that was and settled for flopping onto Soobin, letting his arms hang loosely from his shoulders. The younger was unfazed by the sudden weight.
Lips pursed, he gave the button a hesitant push, seeming almost worried that the button would, what, reject him or something. It flashed bright and the previously unmoving claw jerked into action, spreading its knifelike claws and starting a staggering descent. Metallic talons closed in around the little plush creature, ensnaring it in its artificially strong grasp. Soobin cringed a little at how roughly the fox was swung upwards, slipping and slipping as the machine’s fingers raked little scratches through its dark red fluff. Yet it held as the claw retracted, held as the claw jolted in a ragged line back to the gaping hole that promised freedom, held until it didn’t hold anymore and dropped the toy unceremoniously amidst heaps of other small plushes. Soobin cursed under his breath, barely heard by Yeonjun, now leaning on the machine’s metal frame, over the clashing loud music.
“No one wins their first time, Binnie, you can try again if you want. Or we could go play those racing games that you like?” Soobin wrinkled his nose and inserted another token into the machine, growing increasingly agitated as the fox was released nearer and nearer the yawning hole and pushing the joystick with such force that Yeonjun feared its thin metal stick would break. “Hey, c’mon, you’ve been at this thing for so long. Let’s go play something—”
Yeonjun’s impatient suggestion was cut short by a whoop of delight from Soobin as he retrieved the fox that had taunted him for so long through the glass. His eyes peered at it, scrutinising its flaws and noting its details (delicately stitched whiskers; tiny pink paws) with an appraiser’s eye, almost as if deciding if it was worthy for some grand purpose.
“Yeonjun-hyung,” Soobin whispered, voice painted with something more delicate and pure than Yeonjun thought this wretched abyss of waste deserved. “Yeonjun-hyung, are you here?” The older scoffed. “Of course I’m here! Can’t you see me?” He strode in front of Soobin, waving his arms a few times before setting them on his shoulders, gazing up at Soobin. “Can’t you see me?”
Soobin’s only response was to sag a little and place the fox on the console.
“Can’t you see me?” Yeonjun’s voice cracked. “Believe me, I’m here, I’m always here, can’t you feel my hands on your shoulders?” He shook Soobin back and forth, but he might as well have been shaking a stone for the reaction Soobin’s body gave. “I’m here, Soobinnie! Remember that time you were so panicked about losing your glasses and you were looking everywhere for it and- and then you interrupted my work meeting and yelled ‘Where the fuck are my glasses?!’ when my mic was on? And they were on your face all along? Remember? Remember?” He shook Soobin more, grip slowly growing white-knuckled.
“I’m more important than your glasses, right? I’m so much better, right? You could never forget about me- you could never not see me, right?” Yeonjun’s voice grew desperate. “I can see you, so- so why can’t you see me?” The lilts and cadences of his words melted together into a terrible mess, a single tear ripping free of his eye and sprinting down and making a dark splotch on Soobin’s shirt, just like it used to do in those days.
Yeonjun moved his hands up Soobin’s neck, lightly tracing the skin, and settled them just below his eyes to cup his face. They fit together so perfectly, Yeonjun and Soobin, like two arrows in a blue sky flying in perfect parallel, like two birds in a forest dancing in graceful chase, like a ship and a sailor in a rolling sea in perfect peace knowing that they were both safe with each other, that they were the only ones there and the only one the other had.
But what happens when an arrow grows tired? What happens when the bird’s wings beat their last? What happens when thunderous waves smash gaping holes in the ship’s hull?
What happens when the other arrow cuts through the air while the first succumbs to gravity’s pull, when the other bird continues its marvellous flight while the first flutters like a dead leaf to the ground, when the sailor hops onto another vessel while the abandoned ship fights against evil currents seeking to sink it?
“This is for you, hyung.” Soobin looked skyward. All Yeonjun saw was an ugly black ceiling, a maze of pipes and several judgmental lizards. But Soobin seemed to see something more. Did he see a better version of himself, free from the grief and suffering of loss? Did he see his dead lover’s face, stretched and worm-eaten, with the pallid complexion of a wax model, of a corpse? Or did he see something else entirely, something Yeonjun could scarcely imagine?
“What do you see, Soobin,” Yeonjun cried softly, “tell me! No, don’t tell me, just look at me, please, please Binnie, I’m right here.” He collapsed against Soobin’s chest with a dull thump, eyes leaking and heart breaking. “Please, Binnie.” He hooked his arms around Soobin’s neck and pulled it down, hard, rising on his feet to press their faces impossibly close, forehead against forehead, nose against nose, mouths a whisper away.
Yeonjun could feel Soobin’s every breath hit his lower lip, could feel the dull pounding of his heart, could feel him slipping away from reality and into the safe space of his memories. “Come back, Binnie, come back to me. I’m right here.” He clung onto Soobin, his own safe space, clutching a sack of tears that he refused to let spill and closed the gap between them.
It was all that Yeonjun had missed and hungered for and so much more. His lips ghosted Soobin’s hesitantly, then stronger and more forceful until that spectre of a kiss was brought into spectacular being. If Yeonjun was falling earlier, he was flying now, flying from the life that Soobin revived in him.
Yet it was not flying so much as floating—flying needed two things; one, to overcome the forsaken planet we exist on’s pull, two, to have the strength to rise up and above it. By pressing himself against Soobin’s cold lips, Yeonjun was imbued with the energy and spirit of intimacy and tenderness. But by Soobin standing oblivious to Yeonjun’s pain and mere existence, this effervescent spark of being could not give Yeonjun the power to triumph over his unreciprocated love and adoration.
So all too soon, the delicately woven spell of immobilisation Yeonjun had wrought upon Soobin was broken, and he sighed against Yeonjun’s desperately moving lips, gently moving away to stuff his prize into his bag. “No,” Yeonjun breathed. “No, stay with me, you can’t leave me- you promised- you promised you’d be with me forever! Come back! You promised!” His voice rose to nothing short of a frantic screech as he uttered those last damning words, himself rising to give chase. “You promised!”
“Yeonjun-hyung.” A figure obscured with smoky tendrils and a black robe stepped out from the shadows. Yeonjun turned to face them, eyes glistening and chest heaving from the brief vitality that the resurrection of his lost love gave him and so cruelly ripped out of him. “I can’t keep doing this forever, you know.” Huening Kai used a pale arm to prop himself up against the wall, strategically blocking Yeonjun’s escape. “The other demons are gonna get suspicious.”
Yeonjun smiled despite himself at Kai. Demons were supposed to be terrifying and evil, Kai knew, and tried so hard to act the part. Yet Yeonjun knew that it was all a ploy, that the young boy was truly quite kind, that he would rather help than hurt.
(“Nice? Me? A demon? Ha. Very funny,” Huening scoffed. “I’m only helping you ‘cause you’ll be a pain to deal with if you’re moping around all the time.”)
“Anyway, it’s not just me who's in danger. If you stay too long in the living realm, you might get stuck between it and the afterlife. You can’t talk to any of the other souls in either world, only the demons,” Kai tried a different vein of reasoning. Yeonjun flopped onto a rickety stool and hugged his knees to his chest.
“Well, if you’re not going to do it for yourself, do it for Soobin.” The demon’s eyes softened a little. Yeonjun rested his head on his knees and gazed at him with glazed eyes. “The barrier between the world of the living and dead is not as solid as it may seem,” Kai continued, walking back and forth slowly as he launched into what could pass off as a decent professor’s lecture, “Your very presence here proves that.
“So if you linger around him too much, he’s gonna start feeling weird. And that’s ‘cause all your dead vibes are gonna get to him, so as to speak. He’ll start having throbbing headaches more often, then he’ll get nauseous, then one day he’s gonna pass out. Everything just goes down from there, you know what I mean?” Kai paused. “Come on,” he said, softer this time. “The afterlife isn’t that bad of a place. Just come with me.”
Taking Kai’s outstretched hand was all that stood between more heartbreak and sheer relief. The choice was obvious. Yeonjun slowly unfolded himself and stood up, back unusually straight. “It’s fine, Hyuka, I’ve already made my choice.” Some warmth in his eyes flaring to life, Kai let out a thin stream of air through his mouth and leaned forward to grab Yeonjun’s hand.
Yeonjun danced out of the way, backing deeper into the arcade. “You didn’t ask what it was.”
“You’re coming with me?” The demon looked confused, though he tried to retain an arrogant air of certainty as he spoke. His statement came out more like a question than a declaration, though.
The ghost grinned cheerily at Kai. “No thanks, I’ll stay.”
.
It was Christmas Day. Little snowflakes blanketed the bustling city of Seoul in a crisp layer of white. Most people were having joyful reunions with family members, or celebratory nights with loved ones, or snagging the once-a-year Christmas bargains. Weaving his way through a river of people along a street was a pale figure, dressed in nothing but shorts and a t-shirt.
Snow fell on and passed through him as he darted forward, footsteps leaving no prints in the fresh frost. He strode forward with intent, in pursuit of another elusive, but more substantial, figure that came here to shop every Christmas, that the phantom knew, because he’d been with him on the last two Christmases.
When he finally found his target, a tall not-yet-man swathed in a thick winter coat, scarf and beanie, here the wraith lingered a distance away from the bench he was sitting on. The apparition watched him peacefully munch on a cold sandwich, some indescribable longing and hope in his eyes.
The day was cold, but a dead soul would feel none of it.