Chapter Text
Dani was born ------ , but that name never felt like home. As he grew up, he used his second name, Dan, then Dani. Coming out as a trans boy in his teens wasn’t easy—especially with old-fashioned parents. They weren’t cruel, just... you know. Their love came with rules and expectations that never really fit. Still, he loved them, sometimes cursing under his breath that he wished they died, but that what normal teenagers do!!
In his early 20s, Dani became a military doctor, well, he was working as a resident but was recruited to work humanitarian missions in conflict-affected areas of Mindanao from 2008 to 2010. It wasn’t wartime, but it wasn’t peace either. He stitched up wounds in jungle clinics, treated fever-stricken children in evacuation camps, and dragged his tired body from cot to cot each night, still in his muddy uniform. The pay was small, the risk high, but he felt useful. Needed. Even if sometimes he joked too much, said the wrong thing, or shut people out. He was still trying to be a better person.
He didn’t have many close relationships.. really just one boyfriend when he was still young and dressing more femininely. Since then, it had been long nights on the internet, you know facebook, late calls, guitar riffs, and sexual jokes tossed around like lifelines. Dani wasn’t perfect, but he was a good friend. The kind who'd show up at 3 a.m. if you needed him.
When his mother passed away, he didn't cry. When his father died six months later, he didn’t even go home. He just kept working. Until one night, in a cheap hotel room near a military outpost, he took a few too many pills with cheap liquor. Not out of anguish—but out of exhaustion. The kind of tired that sleep couldn’t fix.
He died in 2010, a pathetic death, twenty-seven years old, he was still in uniform, converse on his feet, phone and pills in his pocket.
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May 27, 2020 – The Hotel Lobby
The hotel lobby was quiet. The world outside had gone silent too, locked in the chaos of a global pandemic. Everyone was either stuck at home or too afraid to go anywhere. Dani didn’t mind it much, though. He’d gotten used to the silence of the hotel after ten years of haunting the place.
He sat alone on the worn white couch, surrounded by a few ghosts who were just as bored as him. They gossiped about the living, about the world, about anything that could get their minds off the unchanging monotony. Dani kept to himself, fiddling with the iPhone 4 in his hands. It was a beauty—the one thing he’d been saving up for before he died. The latest tech, something that would have been so useful if only... if only he had the chance to use it for more than ghostly distractions.
The phone, the distractions, everything. Dani stared at the screen, the faint reflection of his translucent face staring back. And then, without warning, something started to happen.
It was like his body was losing its shape, its form. Little by little, pieces of him were... disintegrating. It wasn’t painful, but it was strange.. almost like he was being torn apart in slow motion. The other ghosts noticed, but didn’t really care. They muttered behind him, whispering jokes about how he was “finally fading away” or “just too dramatic.”
"WHAT THE HELL?!???... TANGINA NINYO PUMUNTA KAYO SA IMPYERNO!!!" (Fuck you all!! I hope all of you go to hell!)
He was shouting stuff at the ghosts uncontrollably, his suppressed anger was now opened at his last moments. Really they did some bad stuff.. but we wouldn't get deep into it! Dani’s vision started to go black. First, it was a blur. Then, the whole world seemed to shift, disorienting and dizzying. His breath—if he could still call it that—caught in his throat. What the hell is happening?
Then, bam!!!!
The world around him snapped. The next thing he knew, he was plummeting, falling through space. His mind couldn’t grasp what was happening as he dropped from the sky, plummeting without control. His chest tightened.
He landed flat on his back, hitting the grass with a soft thud that left him breathless. His phone flew from his hand, landing a few feet away on the lawn but teleported back to him. Dani's heart raced—if it even still beat—and his vision went blurry for a moment. He barely registered the fact that he was now laying on someone’s lawn, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night.
His body, once a shade of beige and translucent, was now fully solid. The moon above lit up the large patch of grass, casting eerie shadows. Dani tried to move, but his limbs felt heavy, uncoordinated. He tried to call out, but no sound came from his mouth.
What... what was happening?
Back in the hotel, the ghosts were startled by the sudden disappearance of Dani. A couple of them whispered about it, but it wasn’t anything more than gossip. “Did he disappear? Maybe he finally moved on,” one said, but most of them were too busy talking about something else to care.
Dani, meanwhile, lay there in the cool grass, slowly realizing something big had just started.
The world of the living was now his to explore. And it was about to get very interesting.