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There's a crack down the middle of Wonwoo's favourite plate. When he picks it up, it splits apart in his hands. The 'fragile' sticker on the side of the cardboard box turns mocking.
He sets his most beloved plate(s) back down, sighs, then shoves the box under the coffee table. He'll deal with it later. He'll eat out of his bowls for now. They've already been unpacked, sitting pretty in one of the cabinets lining the kitchen walls.
Everything's done, for the most part. The new bed's been put together and all of his clothes have been moved into the closet. The last thing he needs to do now (other than fix his broken plates eventually) is to decorate. Asides from two framed pictures of him and his parents hung up near the entryway, the rest of the apartment is bare. There's a severe lack of stuff. Junk collected over the years. The only touch of Wonwoo in the entire place is the bookshelf he brought over, filled with well-worn, well-loved books.
He's beginning to regret throwing away his knick-knacks in the name of a new start.
It seemed obvious, at the time, to put all the little trinkets and miscellaneous objects scattered around the old apartment into recycling bags instead of cardboard boxes. Most of them weren't his anyway, and the last few weeks before the move it hurt every time he looked at the tiger figurines or the fuzzy keychain left by the nightstand. He thought Marie Kondo might be proud, to know that he managed to collect everything that made him want to cry and donate it.
If only she could've warned him that as a result, his new apartment would look soulless and empty. Like a before picture instead of an after.
Maybe he should repaint the walls. A neutral colour would be nice. Something earth toned, something cosy.
As Wonwoo's mulling it over, a chill begins to seep into the room. He goes over to shut all the windows, but it doesn't make a difference. It's odd. It shouldn't be this cold for mid September. Wonwoo shivers as he fiddles with the thermostat, increasing the temperature little by little until it gets warmer. Only, it never does. He has it set to 28 degrees, but if anything, it feels like the room's only getting colder.
The lights suddenly go out.
Wonwoo stops short on a breath.
Electrical problems, he thinks to himself, as he stands there shivering in the middle of his living room. The thermostat's broken and something's messing with the power. It's too late to call the landlord tonight, so he'll call tomorrow. For now, the best thing to do would be to just get into bed and go to sleep.
Wonwoo walks to the bedroom, using his phone flashlight to guide the way, and stops right at the threshold. He blinks. Then blinks again. The view in front of him doesn't change. His bed is on the ceiling. Actually, everything's on the ceiling. The nightstand, the lamp, the alarm clock, the bottle of water he'd left in here earlier.
Wonwoo rubs his eyes. Everything's still flipped upside down.
His phone flashlight begins to go on the fritz. Flickering on and off so quick it has Wonwoo wincing. For a brief moment—between one flash and the next—he sees a man standing in the centre of the room. He catches a glimpse of dark hair, wide eyes, a bloody shirt and a mangled leg, before the light turns off, plunging the room into darkness.
The sound of Wonwoo's heart hammering against his chest seems to echo in the room. Slowly, he reaches for the doorknob and gently closes the door. He decides to sleep on the couch for the night.
In the morning, Wonwoo peels his face off the patch of drool on his couch cushion. He fumbles around blindly for his phone, and manages to grasp it just before it vibrates off the table.
When he presses his phone to his ear, all he hears is crackling on the other end. He rasps out a, "hello?" But when no one replies, he squints down at his phone screen. Instead of a phone number, there's just a string of question marks running across the screen. He goes to hang up, but right before he presses the button, a voice breaks through. "Help!" Someone says. Then it goes quiet, and the call ends.
Wonwoo blinks the last bit of sleep from his system, staring warily at his now dark phone screen. When it lights up again, he jolts in surprise and slips off the couch, landing on the floor with a groan. This time it's Jihoon calling.
"Just woke up?" Jihoon asks.
Wonwoo gets to his feet. His bones creak like an old wooden staircase. "Yeah." He walks into the bathroom and turns the tap on. The water shoots out blisteringly hot. Wonwoo curses, yanking his fingers back, as Jihoon laughs. "You already at the office?"
"Yep." There's the sound of wheels scraping across the floor in the background, then a microwave opening and closing. "The new place is... new." Jihoon pauses for a second, fiddling with the buttons on the unfamiliar microwave. "Definitely more corporate than the basement. Feels way too professional for our team."
"I think Seungcheol would cry if he heard that." Wonwoo talks around his toothbrush, smiling a little when Jihoon snorts. "He would've made us wear business casual if Seungkwan didn't manage to talk him out of it."
The force of Jihoon's eye roll can almost be heard over the phone. "What's next, suits?"
Wonwoo spits, then rinses his mouth out. "That, or uniforms." He walks back out to the living room, considering for a moment whether he should attempt to make himself breakfast or if he should just get something on the way. "He just thinks it's gross whenever you wear the same shirt for the entire week."
"Well too bad for him. If he tries to force a uniform on me I'll go on strike," Jihoon scoffs. The microwave starts beeping soon after. Wonwoo hears the squeaking wheels of the desk chair again as Jihoon moves across the kitchen. A couple seconds and some plastic packaging being torn off later, Jihoon speaks again. "How's the new house?"
Wonwoo pauses, jeans half on. "It's fine." Emptier than the last place. Lonelier. "I've got a balcony now."
"Snazzy," Jihoon says, mid-chew.
A silence descends over them. Wonwoo gets the impression that Jihoon wants to ask something, but isn't sure he should. Wonwoo would like to be nice about it, but he knows what Jihoon wants to talk about and he doesn't want to discuss it. Not yet. He lets the unspoken remain unspoken and zips up his jacket.
"I'm heading out now," Wonwoo announces.
Jihoon sighs. "Alright. See you soon."
After hanging up the phone, as Wonwoo's squatting by the entryway, tying his shoelaces up, he catches something poking out from under the shoe rack. He pulls on it to reveal a scrap of paper with a face sketched onto it. He smooths out the wrinkles on the piece of paper and realises he recognises the face. It's the same one from last night. So much for hoping that was all just a dream.
The light over his head flickers.
Wonwoo stands up, shoves the paper into his pocket, and leaves the apartment without a second glance. Later, he tells himself.
At work, Wonwoo stares uncomprehendingly at a line of code.
Jihoon kicks the back of his chair. "What's wrong with you?"
The paper in Wonwoo's pocket crinkles as he straightens up. He pulls it out, frowning down at it for a moment before pushing it across to Jihoon's desk. "Do you know who that is?"
Jihoon picks up the paper, narrowing his eyes at the face drawn there. "Nope."
Seungkwan runs over from his desk, snatching the piece of paper out of Jihoon's hands. "He's cute! Who's he?"
"Nobody. Never mind." Wonwoo takes the sketch back, sighing to himself as he sits back down in front of his computer.
"Can't you just use Google reverse image search or something?" Jihoon suggests.
Seungkwan leans over the back of Jihoon's chair despite Jihoon's protests, elbows digging into his shoulders. "Would that even work on a drawing?"
"Wouldn't hurt to try," Wonwoo decides.
Both Jihoon and Seungkwan end up shuffling over to his desk, crowding over him as he takes a picture of the sketch on his phone and uses the image search function. Google doesn't help him find out who the man in the drawing is, but it does help him find a bunch of other sketches seemingly made by the same person. Wonwoo is eventually led to an Instagram page with an intimidating amount of followers.
"Pretty," Seungkwan mumbles, as Wonwoo scrolls through multiple photos of different types of art. The sketches only take up a small percentage of the feed. Mostly what Wonwoo can find are paintings.
Jihoon smacks his arm. "Wait, stop. There." He points at one post, the only one that isn't of some type of artwork.
There's a sense of foreboding in the air as Wonwoo taps on it. The first picture, in black and white, is of two men with their backs turned. When Wonwoo swipes to view the next picture, his hand starts to tremble ever so slightly at the sight of the man from the sketch, in the flesh, smiling brightly at the camera. The owner of the account has left the caption blank, but the comment section is full of 'RIP's and broken heart emojis.
Wonwoo's stomach sinks. "Shit."
"What?" Seungkwan blinks in confusion.
Jihoon takes the phone out of Wonwoo's hand, then wheels back to his own desk, before he begins to type away at his keyboard. Wonwoo's vision goes out of focus as he recalls the sight of that man in his bedroom, in his bloody and tattered clothes.
"His name's Kim Mingyu." Jihoon turns his desktop so that Wonwoo and Seungkwan can see. On the screen, there's an article pulled up, dated two years ago. There was a cheap car, a set of faulty brakes, and poor Mingyu who couldn't get out of the way in time.
The blood. The clothes. The mangled leg.
"My apartment's haunted," Wonwoo groans.
The coffee table gets set aside, pushed up against the balcony door to make space in the centre of the living room.
Wonwoo sinks down to his knees, unwraps his newly bought ouija board, and lays it out on the floor. The planchette sits still in the middle of the board, waiting. Wonwoo decides to light the candles first. Just three of them, lined up on top. Seungkwan had insisted he get them, for authenticity's sake.
The last thing Wonwoo does is turn off all the lights.
He returns to the ouija board, hesitating momentarily, before placing a single finger onto the planchette.
"Kim Mingyu, are you there?" He asks into the darkness.
The candlelight swells for just a moment. The room turns cold. The planchette is pulled all the way over to 'yes'.
Something fear adjacent begins to curdle in Wonwoo's stomach. He fights off the nausea, breathes out hard through his nose, and tries to map out his next step.
"What... what do you want?" It's the only question he can think to ask. He hopes the answer isn't something like revenge or I want to possess you.
His hand trembles as the planchette moves across the board, jerking between the letters clumsily. H - E - L - P. So it's unfinished business. Makes sense. Ghost 101. Maybe this isn't some B grade horror flick, but instead one of those melodramas about life and death and moving on. Or maybe this is a buddy cop film, and now he gets to have a ghost sidekick to help him solve crimes.
The last one sounds almost pleasant. Why didn't he go into law enforcement?
One of the candles goes out, pulling Wonwoo's attention back to where it should be. He gets the sense that the connection between him, the board, and Mingyu, might be a little shaky.
"What do you need help with?"
M - I - N - G - H - A - O.
Wonwoo furrows his eyebrows. Minghao. It's a name. He turns it over in his head for a while until he remembers. The Instagram account he'd found this morning. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, opens up his Instagram and goes to check all the accounts he'd searched for. The username, minghao8, sits up at the top. Another candle extinguishes. He gives the account a quick follow before setting his phone back down and moving his hand back over to the planchette.
"Do you want me to give him something? Leave him a message?"
The planchette doesn't move. Wonwoo can feel Mingyu's hesitation and uncertainty like a physical thing. Wonwoo considers what he'd do if their positions were reversed, if there's even a person he'd want to contact desperately enough to haunt someone for. A certain name pops into mind almost immediately, but he pushes it back just as quick as it appears. No. Absolutely not. He is not going there.
Mingyu seems to have made up his mind. Wonwoo's hand jerks back into motion.
T - E - L - L - H - I - M -
The final candle goes out before Mingyu can finish, cuts the tension off at the knees. Wonwoo sags forward, suddenly exhausted. He shifts over to the side and drops onto his back, staring up at nothing.
So. He's living with an actual fucking ghost.
"You think the walls are too... plain?"
Everyone is staring. Seungcheol looks absolutely gobsmacked. Wonwoo thinks their reactions are too exaggerated, but he'll admit that it is odd for this to be coming from him of all people. He hasn't even gotten around to re-painting the walls of his own apartment yet.
"I think we could do a mural." He gestures to the blank wall outside the conference room, opposite the windows. "It might give the office a bit more personality."
"Personality..." Seungcheol's eyebrows are raised so high they're practically at his hairline.
Jihoon turns to look at the wall. "It's not a bad idea, actually."
Seungkwan claps his hands together. "We could put the characters from Dreamwalker on there!" Then he gasps, dramatically. "Oh my god, wait. We could like, keep adding characters from our new games to the wall until we fill it up completely."
Seungcheol actually seems convinced now, getting taken in by Seungkwan's vision. Even Jihoon looks impressed, and he usually tries so hard to keep that emotion locked in. (For fear of inflating their egos, he said once, though Wonwoo's pretty sure it has more to do with Jihoon's allergy to doling out sincere praise than anything else).
"Alright then. I'll sort out the budget for a mural."
Wonwoo coughs. "I know a guy who could do it."
All three heads snap towards him again. "You know a guy?" Seungcheol's look of disbelief is honestly kind of funny.
"Yeah." It's not technically a lie. Wonwoo does know him. Knows of him at least. Never mind that he hasn't spoken to him or seen him in real life. "I can handle it."
"Okay." Seungcheol blinks. "Uh... let me know when you've talked to your... guy... and then we can figure out the details."
The meeting ends there. Wonwoo shuffles out, ignoring Jihoon's probing gaze, and leaves the building entirely instead of sitting back down at his desk. Seungcheol won't mind, and Seungkwan's doing story revisions anyway, so other than minor bug fixes, Wonwoo doesn't have much to do.
He sticks his hands in his pockets walks down the path Google maps had plotted out for him. For fifteen minutes, he lets his thoughts unravel. He knows what he wants out of this, but the end goal is still unclear. Mingyu never got to finish saying what he wanted to say, Wonwoo's working off of a barely formed idea. Still, he has a name, and for now that's more than enough.
Wonwoo comes to a stop at an open door next to a photography studio. Inside, a R&B song is playing. He takes a breath and steps through.
There are canvases lining the walls, ranging in size. The only other people in the gallery are a small group lingering by the corner. They're talking in hushed tones, bending their heads towards each other whenever someone speaks. Wonwoo doesn't really understand the need for secrecy, when no one's close enough to catch what they're saying. Outside of their group, there's only Wonwoo and one other person here.
Wonwoo approaches the man standing by one of the larger paintings.
He turns when Wonwoo gets close, one of his dangling earrings swaying along with the movement of his head. "Hello," he says.
"Hi," Wonwoo responds. You look different from the pictures, he almost blurts. He hadn't discovered much during his late night snooping of Minghao's Instagram account. Barely anything of Minghao himself. In one of the pictures his hair was a strange mix of purple and blue. In another it was a bright, flaming red.
He's not expecting to see the soft, warm brown.
"What do you think?" Minghao turns back to look at the painting.
Wonwoo steps up beside him and looks too. On the canvas, there are two shapes intertwined. One yellow, one pink. It almost looks like two bodies, but the shapes are too indistinct to fully identify it as anything. It's like they've melted into each other and are in the process of turning into something else entirely. The plaque underneath the painting says it's called 'intimacy'.
It makes his stomach turn. "It's good," he says.
Minghao looks at him. "Makes you think of someone, doesn't it?"
Wonwoo meets Minghao's eyes. Despite the softness of him, the white zip up cardigan, the casual posture, there's something sharp about his eyes. Minghao pins him down with his gaze, dares him to lie.
"I heard that you do murals." Wonwoo changes the subject. Minghao smiles knowingly.
"I do."
"I want to hire you to do one for the office I work in."
"Office?" Minghao sounds surprised. "Don't think I've ever been asked to do a mural for an office before. What kind of work do you do?"
"Game development," Wonwoo replies. "We're a pretty small team."
He tells Minghao about the first game they made, how it became more popular than any of them could've ever predicted, and how they've spent the last couple months starting work on their second one. It's too much, officially, when he realises he's been explaining the complications of having multiple different endings for the past two minutes. He cuts himself off mid-sentence before he can get any further.
"Okay, I'll do it," Minghao says with half a laugh. "On one condition."
The office is empty. Jihoon's left a coffee stain in the shape of a ring on his desk. Minghao lingers on it briefly as he walks by.
Wonwoo resists the urge to follow Minghao with his eyes and goes over to his desk to boot up his desktop. By the time he's entered his password and he's clicked Dreamwalker open, Minghao's made it over to him. He steals Seungkwan's desk chair and sits by Wonwoo's left side.
A pretty melody trills between them. The screen fades in to the start up menu. In the centre of the screen, the protagonist of the game floats on a cloud, eyes closed and asleep. The background is a deep, almost blue kind of purple. Bright yellow stars dot the screen surrounding the protagonist, in a vague pattern. Within the stars, the name of the game, 'Dreamwalker,' is written.
"Oh," Minghao exhales softly. Wonwoo thinks that look on his face means he likes it.
Wonwoo clicks 'new game'.
He's seen this opening a million times already. He ends up watching Minghao's face in the reflection of the screen. The protagonist falls asleep, the world beginning to shift around them. Minghao looks focused, invested. The protagonist wakes up in a dream, in a world made of blues and purples and pinks. Before they can marvel at their surroundings, a shadow slinks by, leaving behind a trail of grey.
Minghao catches Wonwoo's eye in the dark part of the screen where the shadow creature stands. Wonwoo's pulse jumps. "I'm pretty sure this is the part where you run," Minghao reminds him.
Wonwoo's fingers twitch. He looks back at where the protagonist is standing, prone, and presses the right arrow key. The protagonist runs, with the shadow creature on its heels. Wonwoo jumps over obstacles, squeezes past small spaces, until finally reaching an open field. The grass is tall and pink, swaying gently in the wind. Somewhere to the other end of the screen, there's something shining hidden amongst the grass.
"Is this really helping?" Wonwoo can't help but ask.
The protagonist picks up the shining object on the ground. It's a fallen star. The protagonist puts it in their pocket. The game inventory opens, with one new addition inside.
"Knowing a character's motivation always helps with the art," Minghao says, though it comes out sounding more like a justification than an actual reason. "And I've always been curious about this game. One of my friends is a really big fan, said it changed his life."
Compliments Wonwoo can do, but he never knows what to say to life-changing. "You could've played it yourself."
"Yeah, I could've." Minghao doesn't say any more.
In the game, the protagonist picks up another object, a slingshot. As they journey further, they eventually venture into a town. It's empty, and devoid of any colour. Everything's been washed out into grey, and there's not a single soul to be seen. Suddenly, a shadow jumps into frame. It's smaller than the shadow creature from earlier, and this one's in the shape of a dog. It opens its mouth and bares its sharp teeth. Wonwoo equips the slingshot, and shoots the star at the dog. As soon as it hits, the dog glows briefly. When the light fades, the dog is no longer made of shadows, instead full of colourful fur and a wagging tail. Minghao smiles when Wonwoo has the protagonist go and pet the dog.
When the clock strikes midnight, the protagonist finally sees another person, another dreamer. The music transitions into something sweeter, the gentle tinkling of piano keys dancing in the background as the two characters meet in a sea of flowers. Whenever Wonwoo hears this song, he always thinks of that three day stretch Jihoon spent without sleeping, all because he was trying to compose just the right piece to fit during this scene. The entire team had been walking on eggshells around him until he finally figured it out. He slept for eighteen straight hours afterwards, then finally returned to his usual cranky instead of his sleep deprived cranky (which was about three times worse than normal) the next day.
"It's a love story," Minghao exclaims, sounding both surprised and delighted.
Wonwoo smiles a little. "Most of them are."
Their eyes meet again in the reflection of the screen. Minghao looks away first.
The dreamer starts following the protagonist on their journey. Together, they collect stars, defeat the shadows and solve puzzles. This lasts until the shadow creature catches up to them. Stars are useless against this creature, its light getting swallowed up by the darkness. The dreamer sacrifices themself to save the protagonist. The shadow creature touches the dreamer with one dark, spindly arm, and the dreamer falls to the ground, turning grey and lifeless. Minghao makes this sad, sympathetic little noise from beside Wonwoo.
When the shadow creature absconds with the dreamer's body, it doesn't notice that it's left behind a dead, hollowed out star. When the protagonist touches it, it bursts to life again. Now the protagonist is the one chasing, not the one being chased. They follow a trail of dead stars left behind by the shadow creature, bringing each one back to life until they wind up at a section of the world that's entirely black and white.
There's a small, dilapidated house sitting in the middle of dry, barren land. The door has been cracked open. The protagonist enters. Inside, there's no furniture except for a bed pushed up against a wall. Laid out on top is the dreamer, looking as if they're merely asleep. The shadow creature emerges from under the bed, towering over the protagonist.
The protagonist pulls out every single star they've collected thus far. Together, as one, they form a bright enough light to harm the shadow, but not enough to kill it. Then, just as it seems as if the protagonist might lose, what's left of the dreamer's soul touches the light, and it grows brighter and brighter until it overtakes the screen. When the light fades away, the shadow creature has been rendered to dust, and colour slowly begins to seep in from the edges of the screen. Outside, the sounds of birds chirping and deer trotting around in the woods can be heard.
On the bed, where the dreamer once laid, there is now a glowing pink star. The protagonist opens up a window, and watches as the star shoots off into the night sky.
The protagonist smiles. The screen fades to black. The credits roll.
Wonwoo turns to find Minghao looking teary-eyed.
"You know, I helped make this game and I had the exact same reaction the first time I played it through," Wonwoo says.
Minghao lets out a wet laugh. "It's a beautiful game, and a beautiful story."
"Did it give you any ideas?"
"Maybe a couple."
Minghao smiles, soft and sweet. Wonwoo's heart goes thump-th-thump-thump.
Wonwoo wakes up shivering. He cracks an eye open, and notices that his breath is coming out in white puffs.
Someone clears their throat at the end of his bed.
Wonwoo stills, squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, then looks down. There, at the foot of his bed, is Mingyu. He's sitting cross-legged on his blanket. There's a pool of blood gathering underneath where he's sitting. There's a metallic smell in the air, tangy and sharp. He looks too real, sitting there patiently with his head resting on his palm.
Wonwoo shifts up until he's sitting, resting against the headboard. He rubs some of the sleep out of his eyes.
"Did you meet him?" Mingyu asks.
No 'hello'. No 'nice to meet you'. No 'sorry for haunting your apartment'.
"Yeah."
Mingyu straightens up. There's something in his expression, some type of longing, a grief so strong it makes Wonwoo want to flinch with the rawness of it. "How was he? Did he seem happy?"
That's not a question Wonwoo can answer. He hugs his arms, attempting to keep some warmth, and tries his best anyway. "His hair's brown," he starts with. Mingyu's eyes widen slightly, then he laughs. "He seemed... lonely." Wonwoo recalls seeing Minghao for the first time, standing by himself in front of that painting, eyes faraway like he was looking at something beyond the canvas. "But he was okay. He looked at home with it."
Mingyu sighs sadly, as if he expected that answer. "Can you make sure he's eating well? He never eats until he's full. I worry he'll get so skinny he'll just disappear." He shakes his head, remembering something from before. For some reason, Wonwoo can't take his eyes off the splatter of blood across Mingyu's neck. He wonders about the injuries hidden by Mingyu's shirt. He wonders how much it would've hurt. "Have you seen his paintings? They're not all dark and angsty now, are they?"
"I've seen some." Wonwoo hadn't lingered long in the gallery, but he'd remember if a good chunk of them had been dark and depressing. "They weren't sad exactly, but they weren't happy either. Just... filled with love, I think." A lot them made Wonwoo ache for someone he doesn't want to ache for anymore.
"Oh." Tears begin to gather at the corners of Mingyu's eyes. He wipes them away with his left hand before they can fall. Wonwoo can't help but stare at the pinky finger dangling dangerously from his hand, nearly severed but not quite. It's grotesque. Wonwoo couldn't look away if he tried.
"What was it you wanted me to tell him before?" Wonwoo ends up asking. He's been thinking about it the whole time, wondering how that sentence would've ended.
Mingyu blinks, then smiles sheepishly. Despite the blood, the mess, the bones, the flesh, in this moment Mingyu is a little charming, kind of cute. Wonwoo imagines an alive Mingyu being the friendly type, the kind of person that draws other people to them like a magnet. Someone the total opposite of him.
"I wanted to tell him that I love him," Mingyu reveals. "It's not like I didn't tell him enough when I was alive, I just wanted him to know that it was still true, even now when I'm dead." Wonwoo nods like he understands, even though he doesn't fully. "But then I thought maybe it would be unfair. I want him to know, but I also don't want to hold him back. I thought about it again and... it would be better if he didn't know I was still hanging around like this."
There's a selflessness to Mingyu that shocks Wonwoo a little. Wonwoo can see that there are lots of things Mingyu wants to say, lots he might want to hear. He keeps all of it locked up just for Minghao. He didn't deserve to die like that, so young, so early, so painfully. Wonwoo blinks away the sudden urge to cry about it.
Wonwoo coughs out the hoarseness in his throat. "Do you want to see him? I could bring him here."
Mingyu pauses, like he hadn't considered that. "I... yes. Yes, please."
"Okay, it's a promise."
Mingyu opens his mouth, maybe to say thank you, but before he can get a word out, he disappears with a gust of wind. Wonwoo blinks, and suddenly the chill is gone, as well as the blood staining his mattress, like Mingyu was never there to begin with.
He sits there, in the silence, just realising for the first time that he might be getting tangled up in something he won't be able to pull himself out of.
It's after hours. Wonwoo and Minghao are alone in the office again.
Mostly it happens by accident. Minghao had officially been hired through Seungcheol to paint the mural, and promised to get it done before everyone got in for work on Monday morning. He'd requested to have the office to himself for the entire weekend so that he could get everything finished on time. Wonwoo remembered, until he didn't, resulting in him showing up at the office on Sunday night.
The floor's covered with a plastic tarp, and Minghao sits on top of it, legs stretched out in front of him. He's staring up at the painted section of the wall, tilting his head this way and that every once in a while, as if looking at it from a different angle will show him something new.
Wonwoo hesitates by the door, before he eventually sets his bag down at his desk and joins Minghao on the floor.
On the wall, the protagonist stands up on a cloud, holding a telescope to his face and looking out into the distance for one particular star. The background is a blend of blues and purples, just like the dream world in the game. There's something nice about seeing the art from the game painted in Minghao's style, with a bit of his personal flare. Wonwoo looks at the rest of the wall, at the blank, unpainted section, and imagines it filling up as the years go by. Will Minghao come back for each one? Will he ask Wonwoo to play a game for him again?
"What do you think?" Minghao asks.
Wonwoo thinks back to their first meeting at the art gallery. "It's good," he says again. He thinks Minghao asking to see the whole game played through might not have been an excuse after all. The expression on the protagonist's face is just the right amount of wistful and hopeful, reminds Wonwoo of how he felt when he reached the end of the game.
"I ended up playing the game myself." Minghao kicks one leg over the other, and turns to grin at Wonwoo. "I died a lot at first, kept getting caught by the little shadow critters too many times. Halfway through the game, when I found the dreamer, I kept thinking to myself it would be great if there could be an alternate ending, one where the two lovers could end up together, happy and alive."
"Seungkwan said the same thing. He'd written Dreamwalker with two endings in mind initially." One bittersweet, and one just sweet. "I convinced him to change it to just one. The true ending, the ending we used eventually, that one just stuck with me a lot more than the happier, sweeter one. It left a deeper impression, and I wanted the players to feel that too. I wanted them to remember it."
Minghao nods, his grin shifting into something softer. "I get that."
"And, you know, their love still exists. Even though they're separated, the proof that they loved each other exists in the stars, the colours, the world itself." Wonwoo thinks of the paintings in Minghao's gallery. The sketch of Mingyu's face. All the evidence that something happened, that someone was loved, that something changed as a result of it. He thinks about being here, now, as a result of that love, holding on despite everything. "Death couldn't erase all that."
Minghao holds his gaze for a couple seconds, then turns to face the wall again. Wonwoo wonders if he's thinking about Mingyu. "What's your next game going to be about?" Minghao ends up asking.
Technically, Wonwoo shouldn't be telling anybody about this, but he barely spares it a thought before opening his mouth. "Tuesdays," he says. "Only Tuesdays. Never ending Tuesdays." Minghao whips his head around to look at him again, and then bursts into giggles. It's high pitched and adorable. "There's this evil boss who has turned every day into Tuesday to make sure everybody keeps working and nobody gets a day off. The employees aren't even treated like people. At work, they don't get to go by their names, and have to go by numbers instead. Nobody notices anything's wrong, until Number 17."
While Dreamwalker was an idea that came from Seungkwan, Tuesday was an idea that came from Wonwoo. He'd worked a proper office job once, and the monotony of it had forced him to fantasise, sometimes, about there being a larger, more interesting story out there—and how the world was just waiting for Wonwoo to break free and realise it.
Number 17 is Wonwoo in a lot of ways. Trapped in the cycle of a never ending workday, when suddenly, as if a switch has been flipped, he realises there could be more. Should be more. Number 17 starts with the elevator, going down floor after floor and realising that it's all the same. The same cubicles, the same faces. At some point, his manager starts to hunt him down, trying to force him to go back to work. But Number 17, who has finally seen the light, refuses to go without a fight.
Slowly, as Number 17 regains more of his autonomy, he begins to remember that he has a lover. One he hasn't seen in weeks or months or maybe even years. He can't be sure if they'll even still be waiting for him, but he tries his best to leave the building to reach them anyway.
The last section of the game is still being workshopped. Seungkwan's always been better at tying up a story, so Wonwoo's left it to him to figure out how best to bring the ending around. All he knows is that Number 17's lover never actually shows up, but all the same the hope to see them again is there.
"It's another love story," Wonwoo concludes.
A smile unfurls on Minghao's face. "I think they're all love stories," he says, voice quiet, like it's a secret. "You just have to look hard enough."
Oh.
Wonwoo looks at Minghao, really looks. The light from one of the signs outside the building shines in through the windows, highlighting Minghao's side profile an odd neon blue. His mouth hangs in a crescent, casual and relaxed. There's a bit of paint smudged at the end of his chin, a smear of pink. The longer Wonwoo looks, the longer Minghao looks back, the more the air begins to swell, like a balloon about to burst.
Oh.
This might be a love story too.
The doorbell rings on a Tuesday evening.
Wonwoo opens the door to Minghao, standing stiffly with a cactus in his hands. There's something heavy lining the expression on Minghao's face, something careful about the steps he takes when he walks into the apartment.
"Cactus?" Wonwoo asks.
Minghao hands it over, eyebrows still drawn together, tense. "House warming gift. You said you just moved in here, right?"
"Yeah, about a week and a half ago." Wonwoo goes to place the cactus by the windowsill, adjusting it until it looks at home.
When he turns back around, Minghao is standing in the living room, staring at an empty spot on the wall right beside the TV. He looks lost. Wonwoo wonders what used to hang up there, when Mingyu used to live here. If maybe it was something Minghao got for the both of them, if he still has it now, hung up in his own place, or if he's put it away into a box, left to rot in the back of his closet.
"Hungry?"
It takes Minghao a second to respond. He stares at Wonwoo, like he can't quite wrap his head around the words, before eventually nodding.
Wonwoo retreats to the kitchen, gives Minghao some time. He doesn't actually attempt to cook anything, he likes Minghao too much to subject him to that. He clicks around on his food delivery app instead, and goes with a safe choice, pizza and some fried chicken.
Outside, he wonders if Mingyu can see Minghao, if Mingyu is committing this version of Minghao to memory. Wonwoo isn't sure how this is supposed to end, or if there even is an end to reach. Maybe this is just how it's going to from now on, a ghost in his house, hovering around whatever is going to become of him and Minghao. All things considered, it doesn't actually sound all that terrible.
Minghao walks in a few minutes later, looking slightly more settled. He rests a hip against the kitchen counter and taps a finger against the granite countertop.
"Tea?" Wonwoo offers.
"Sure."
Neither of them talk while Wonwoo puts the kettle on. He opens his cabinet and holds up different kinds of tea until Minghao finally nods at one he deems acceptable. The kitchen remains silent, until the kettle goes off.
Minghao stays where he's leaned up against the counter, close to the door. Wonwoo stands by the stove, drinks his tea, waits for Minghao to speak first.
"My ex-boyfriend used to live here, before he died," Minghao says, around the rim of his mug.
Wonwoo's eyes widen slightly, not because the information is new, but just because he wasn't expecting it to be laid out so plainly like that, so suddenly. "Uh." He doesn't know what the appropriate response to that is. Yes, I know. He's handsome, even post car wreck. He doesn't think that one will be received very well.
"Just thought I'd warn you." Minghao waves a hand in the air, goes for a nonchalance that he clearly doesn't actually feel. "I have baggage. Dead ex baggage specifically. So you know what you're getting into."
Wonwoo takes a sip of his tea. "I'm okay with baggage." Mingyu is technically partly his baggage too, now. He has a different kind of presence in Wonwoo's life, but it's there all the same. "I have an ex-boyfriend that I'm not fully over yet," he confesses. It's the first time he's ever said it out loud. He's been staunchly avoiding the subject ever since the breakup. To say it here, now, seems oddly kind of fitting.
"What's the name of your baggage?"
After keeping it buried for so long, here Wonwoo tosses it out quick and careless. "Kwon Soonyoung."
"Kim Mingyu," Minghao says in response, like it's an exchange. "How long were you together?"
Wonwoo wants to know what the typical answer would be, what the average is for a love that feels as painful and overgrown as this one does. "Four years," he answers.
"Three for me." Minghao smiles. It feels like Wonwoo wins this round, or racks up a single point—as if this is some kind of morbid competition to determine who's worse off, who's mourning harder. "Why did the relationship end?"
"I realised there was something he was always going to love more than me." It burns, to admit this now. It feels like losing, because he'd known it the whole time. Dancing was Soonyoung's first and most true love. Wonwoo was... Wonwoo was there, somewhere, and he told himself it didn't matter. Then he got greedy. He wanted more. Soonyoung said he was being unfair for asking, because they both knew what they were walking into. "I think he thought I was too much of a romantic. Eventually I just got tired of seeing that as a flaw."
"It's not," Minghao assures him. He says it so quick it catches them both by surprise. "It's not."
"Okay," Wonwoo concedes with a laugh.
They've been drifting closer towards each other inch by inch, since the start of the conversation. Now they meet in the middle, toe to toe. Minghao places a hand on the countertop. Wonwoo slides his closer. He hooks their pinky fingers together.
They're a little broken, the pair of them. They have a ghost in common and little else.
Still—greater love stories have started worse.