Chapter Text
“Do not fucking come back until you find her ex’s name, Kai, I’m so serious,” Taehyun threatens under his breath as soon as the customer leaves the room. He wisely timed it so that Kai really has no option but to do as he’s told. Not like he wanted to stay here for the usual ‘preliminary’ talks anyway.
He resists the urge to stick out his tongue as he walks toward the entrance. He didn’t pay much attention to his surroundings when they first got here, but the woman’s purse should be somewhere near the closet, right? That’s where people put down their belongings in these modern small apartments.
He smiles to himself as he finds a well-loved, leather handbag hanging above the shoes. He focuses his energy flow near his fingertips, waits for the world around him to be tangible, and, carefully, so as not to make any loud sounds, starts going through the handbag. The red leather creaks under his touch, zipper audible despite Kai’s slow movements, but he perseveres. The woman wanted a reading on her romantic life, as though any of the heart matters could be as simple as having a reading done on it. So Kai guesses anybody with a request like that is a sentimental person. She’ll have some kind of clues about her life inside her purse.
Lee Youngji, 28. No license. He doesn’t remember much from his own life, much less whether he had a license or not, but he does know that it’s not really usual not to have your driver’s license at that age. Maybe she’s afraid of cars? Kai doubts it’s monetary reasons if she’s so willing to pay the pain in Kai’s ass's hourly wage. Though what does he know anyway? He’s just a ghost trying to make a living.
He smiles in triumph when he finds a pocket notebook in one of the inner pockets. He slips out the pen that holds the pages together, and with the same hurry from before—that is to say, none—he starts reading through them. It’s partly a bullet journal, and partly a diary; it basically has everything Kai needs to get to know this Lee Youngji person.
She’s a borderline workaholic, given how much time and effort she spends planning meetings and writing down the number of people with important titles. Definitely white collar, no doubt about it; at least that solves the mystery of her being able to afford Taehyun’s 'powers.' She also has a list of pros and cons for a considerable number of local pubs, each of her dislikes and likes, from chair types to the staff members. Kai admires the diligence, though it offers him so little. A few more pages later, he strikes gold. A crossed-out name, with the words ‘leave me alone’ written under it. Kai may not remember much from his own life, but even he knows that’s something Taehyun would want to know.
Thankfully, the name is still just readable enough. Kai can make out the first and the last syllable. Yeah, that’s a Ha.
The only possible name Kai can come up with is Haeun, the only one that makes sense. That’s not her ex’s name, however, because Kai knows for a fact that Youngji is straight. He wonders what that name means to her as he continues to read through the pages. Some more work stuff, some places she wants to visit, and movies and series she's watched recently. Kai’s just about to move to try his luck in her bedroom for some more personal history when he notices the pages glued together.
Bingo.
It wasn’t like the glue was the most trusted thing ever, right? The pages could have come undone by themselves. She would never suspect that a ghost companion of her medium had separated them manually with her own keys.
Good thing that she glued only the edges together, otherwise Kai wouldn’t have been able to read the thing at all. And read it, Kai does. He starts feeling guilty immediately because, for all things holy and beautiful, this woman has been through enough without Kai invading her privacy. A stalker? No wonder she sounded nervous as fuck over the phone while making an appointment.
Kai seriously doubts it is within Taehyun’s powers to do something about this specific problem, given how unreliable the guy’s abilities are—Kai witnessed him moaning about not being able to sense anything just because he was out of cigarettes too many times—but if she sought out a spiritual guide, in the least literal sense, she must be running out of options pretty quickly.
Whatever, not like it’s his place to worry about it. He only has to relay what he knows to Taehyun. That’s all he has to do.
After making sure that everything is in its original place, like he was never there, he makes his way to the living room, where the other two are in a deep discussion about Youngji’s life story. Kai’s only able to hear the last part of it, a sweet little story about how Youngji wanted to be an artist ever since she was little, painting on the walls or sidewalks, making realistic sculptures out of paper-mache as gifts. As sweet as it is, Kai is left wondering what his hobbies were as he was growing up. Did he have a lifelong dream like hers? Did he die before achieving it?
Taehyun catches his eye as he hovers over to his left. This is one of those times that he’s somewhat grateful that people other than his forced partner-in-crime cannot sense him at all. He starts talking simultaneously with Youngji, knowing that Taehyun is capable of keeping up with both of them.
“Someone’s been stalking her for the last six months. It’s her ex’s girlfriend.” Kai pauses here to appreciate how much effort Taehyun puts into hiding the shock on his face because Youngji isn’t telling anything to warrant that reaction.
Kai’s story, on the other hand, is juicy. “Yeah, apparently she was the other woman, unknowingly.” Despite the tasteless happenings of the story, he finds himself smirking. “They were together for a whole three months before all went apeshit because the girlfriend number one busted them here. She beat the shit out of the guy, also threatening our girl here until the neighbors called the cops.”
While he shows nothing on the outside, Kai knows Taehyun enough by now to see the cogs turning in his head. He’s proven right when Taehyun, at the first opportunity, says, “We’re going to need leaves for the next part. How about you make us some tea? I brought my own mix, don’t worry.”
Youngji contentedly accepts the small bag of loose leaves Kai knows Taehyun bought from a local grocery store, cutting a random mix of tea bags to make his own blend. Someone should report the guy for swindling.
As soon as they’re alone, Taehyun turns to Kai with a low smile on his lips. “And the guy’s name?”
Kai shrugs. “I have no idea. She only referred to him as a mistake.”
“Kai…”
“What? I’m not all-seeing like you, oh great master. You’ll have to excuse me,” Kai mocks. “I know the stalker’s name, though. Something Haeun. It should be enough to convince her that you’re legit.”
Scoffing, Taehyun reaches for something in his bag. “You know damn well that’s not why I always ask you to find the related names,” he says, somehow complaining despite Kai’s stellar work, if you ask him. While scribbling something on the notebook he gets out of his bag, Taehyun continues, “My clients are usually chained down by something in their pasts, and names are more powerful than you give them credit for. Names are what make you, you. If I have them, I can provide a much better service.”
Rolling his eyes, Kai leans in to read what he’s written. He’s not all that surprised to find that it’s in a language that he doesn’t speak; he doesn’t even know which languages he speaks. “Why not just ask your clients about them then?”
At that, Taehyun beams up at him with a shit-eating grin. “And break the illusion? The mystery is half my brand.” He even winks, which does not affect Kai, as he should be aware of it by now.
Kai’s just about to retort something about how the biggest mystery is the fact that he has any kind of brand in the first place, but Youngji walks in with a tray she carefully holds and puts it on the table with a kind smile on her face. Kai really hopes whatever bullshit Taehyun tries will help her.
“Thank you, Youngji,” Taehyun says in the politest voice ever. It makes Kai suppress a chuckle because normally, the man is anything but polite. Taehyun ignores him, of course; they have an audience this time. “Now, you said that you want to feel safe above all, and that’s a much more common goal than you’d guess, so you can be assured that I know what I’m doing.”
“Oh, that’s good to hear,” is Youngji’s answer. “I’m not usually the one for the spiritual stuff, my family is strictly catholic.” She looks at something far away for a second, and Kai follows her gaze and finds the cross on the wall. “But I’m out of options. If I can’t change the situation I’m in, I at least want to know how to cope with it.”
Taehyun nods, attentively listening to her. “Of course, that’s only natural. We are the sole things we control after all.” Also, the perception of our clients, Kai thinks bitterly. “Now, the next thing we’ll do is for me to see what weighs you down. Make sure to think about what you want for your future as you drink it, okay? That’s the most important part.”
“Okay,” she confirms with a firm nod, already reaching for her own cup.
Taehyun gets the other one, the steam rising from it fogging up his glasses. As they sip their tea with a chitchat of nothing as far as he can tell, Kai keeps his focus on their environments. It’s spring out, with a nice little breeze in the air and the air full of pollen that causes Taehyun to have a sneeze attack at least once each day. He looks out the window to see the laundry Youngji has out swaying back and forth, missing the gentle wind he can’t sense. His involuntary sigh gets cut off by the painful sound Taehyun lets out.
Even burning his tongue, like Taehyun. Kai misses it all, despite not remembering how they felt.
“Oh! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Taehyun-ah, you sure you’re okay? It would be a shame if your motor mouth melted off,” Kai says right after Youngji’s worry.
Taehyun doesn’t really need words when he has those fierce eyes to tell Kai to shut up. Then, ever the humblest, he gives Youngji a warm smile to put away her worries. The difference is uncanny, Kai wishes he weren’t the only one seeing the other side of the medium.
“Now, Youngji, I want you to leave just a few sips of tea inside and carefully turn the mug down. Remember what I told you about your future,” Taehyun instructs, also showing what to do with his own mug. Kai remembers a client from a few weeks before messing up this step. This show and tell is a new addition to his routine because of that.
So far, Kai has been present for about five tea readings, or as Taehyun would like to correct, tasseography, with this being the fifth one, and he isn’t sure what to feel about them. On the one hand, his knee-jerk reaction is to distrust Taehyun about basically everything, simply because, but on the other, he’s also annoyingly good at what he does. And Kai knows he at least has some sort of supernatural abilities because he was able to repel Kai from entering his bedroom with an invisible barrier. There is also the fact that he’s able to see him even though nobody else can, and his once again, annoyingly vast knowledge of the spiritual world.
But it’s so easy to discredit him because Taehyun doesn’t try to be trustworthy. His only goal is to make it work, somehow, someway.
Kai looks down at the tea leaves with Taehyun, leaning over his shoulder. If he forces it, maybe he can admit seeing a heart-shaped piece in the mug. Maybe.
Taehyun’s vision is much better than Kai’s. “Oh! Just like I thought, look at this,” he says, tipping the mug toward Youngji so she can get a look too. “See that pooling around the edges? It looks like a botched heart.”
“I guess,” Youngji says, unsure. Kai laughs.
Ignoring him, Taehyun continues. “That relates to your personal life, so something is going to change about it. Pretty soon, too, from the looks of it, because I can also see a bond breaking. See that?” He points to the other side of the mug with his pinky finger. “The link between the heart and the other matters separates, indicating a goodbye. And goodbyes are good, they set you free.”
Youngji’s eyebrows pinch slightly, attempting to speak but giving up at the last second. Taehyun notices it, prompting her to go on.
“Please, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts. We’re here for you.”
She looks pleased to hear that, if not a little embarrassed. “Goodbyes are hard for me. My mom used to say I was attached to her at the hip growing up, which might have something to do with it. I struggle with letting things go.”
Taehyun hums, looks down at the mug once again. “You struggle with control.”
“How did you know?” Youngji looks genuinely surprised, her mouth left hanging.
“It’s kind of what I do,” Taehyun says with a good-natured smirk. “You feel bad about something that happened in your past; most likely, this is something that happened recently. Am I right?”
Youngji nods and says, “You could say that.”
“You feel guilty about this thing. See that leaf sinking, that means something is weighing you down.”
He lets out a whistle. Damn, if Kai didn’t know better, he would’ve believed Taehyun. It gets ignored, of course, but that’s okay; it wasn’t meant for anyone but himself anyway.
Youngji looks unsure again, a true skeptic if Kai has ever seen one. He bites the urge to grin and waits for Taehyun’s inevitably over-the-top assurance that will follow, because Kang Taehyun is going to be Kang Taehyun. No doubt about it.
Taehyun puts the mug down, instead bringing forth the notebook from before. He doesn’t exactly show the writings on the page to her, but he’s not trying to hide them either, just doing his own thing under the attention Youngji gives him. After a few seconds of silence, Kai finally realizes what he’s doing.
Sly dog, he knows how to put up a show.
“It’s a past romantic relationship, one that ended badly,” Taehyun says without looking up from the page. He writes some more. “Catastrophically even. Is there some kind of cheating involved? The heart of your partner looks split here.”
Youngji’s eyes get wider, rendered speechless for a minute, and Kai wants nothing more than to scream, ‘He’s scamming you! He only knows all this because I looked through your journal!’ But that’s a futile effort. So he satisfies himself with a job well done, he worked hard to invade her privacy as quietly as possible, and buckles in for what’s to come.
“Your heart is split on this matter, too. You still love him, don’t you?” Taehyun says with sympathy, his voice almost a whisper as he finally looks up at Youngji.
“I—No, I don’t. He was a scumbag who lied about his whole life. He tricked me into—He—I don’t love him,” she settles on. It’s to convince herself more than anything, that’s for sure.
Taehyun shakes his head. “You can’t control how you feel. Your feelings are there for a reason; trust them. It’s okay to feel conflicted about this.” He takes his time looking over her, almost as though he’s seeing something around her. Kai follows his gaze reflexively, trying to see what he sees. “There were good times and bad times. Accept both.”
“No!”
“Youngji,” Taehyun says, reaching his hand over the table to hold her hand. “It’s okay. I’m here to help you.”
Youngji’s eyes are on their hands as she talks. “Even if I forgive him, she can’t forgive him, or me. What’s the point? I ruined their relationship.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I—There were signs! I probably just ignored them for my own sake. I should’ve known.”
“You can’t change the past. You can only control how you proceed from here on out. Same for her,” Taehyun takes a pause, sighing and letting her hand go. “Her name is Haeun, right? Her name should guide her, lead her to grace in time. She will heal and so will you.”
“I didn’t tell you her name,” Youngji says, on guard all of a sudden. And, yeah, Kai is inclined to agree, it’s creepy.
Taehyun, though, doesn’t seem to think so as he lets out the smallest chuckle and smiles. “You didn’t have to. You have her presence all over you; she’s been following you everywhere.”
Youngji opens her mouth, closes it again. “Not really,” she answers. She sounds powerless, weak. She doesn’t lift her head once, all the while she talks. “She’s heartbroken like me. I probably don’t even have to tell you all this, but she came here to catch us. We were celebrating my birthday. That’s the worst way to find out you’ve been getting cheated on.”
Taehyun agrees with a hum, so does Kai. “She’s harmless, and I get where she’s coming from, but she keeps stalking my social media accounts and messaging me from time to time to swear at me. They’ve been together for two years.” She exhales with force, as though it pains her to do so. “We’ve only been seeing each other for three months. I was the other woman. I can’t blame her for that.”
“Maybe not, but you can’t blame yourself either. You didn’t know,” Taehyun says after it becomes clear that Youngji will not continue.
They spend a good amount of time talking about the same thing back and forth. Youngji’s guilt is sticky, old with resentment, both for herself and this mystery mistake guy, but Taehyun is also insistent, trying every way to get through to her. At one point, Taehyun suggests doing some meditation to look inward, which is a load of bullshit because Kai watches as Youngji follows his every instruction with her eyes closed while Taehyun simultaneously doodles some trees in his notebook. It seems to work, though. Youngji looks at least more alive than she was before, her smile more genuine and wider.
As they reach the end of their agreed-upon time, Kai grows bored and leaves the house first. Not fully, just hovering over the entrance, hoping Taehyun catches his drift and moves to get up.
“Thank you, today really helped,” Youngji says as they walk over the entrance. As Taehyun puts on his shoes, she reaches for her bag. Kai, metaphorically, holds his breath. “Lemme give you the rest of your money.”
Taehyun waits by the door with a smile, hands linked together in front of his abdomen. This is always the weirdest part for Kai, awkward at every step. It feels cheap to get paid for scamming people, and Kai hopes he never gets used to the feeling.
“I’m glad I was able to help,” Taehyun says. “You can do that exercise by yourself, too, if you ever feel the need. The important thing is to refocus your energy on your body. Don’t let life drain you.”
“I’ll try,” she says and hands him the cash.
As soon as they’re outside and away from their client’s vision, Taehyun turns to him with a stare that screams death. “Stalker, where? She was just a heartbroken ex,” he reprimands.
“What? I did my best with what I was given,” is Kai’s smart response.
“Be better next time. We would’ve been found out had I given her any specifics—”
They reach the end of the sidewalk, entering the public road, so there are some people walking around. Kai relishes the way Taehyun is forced into a corner so as not to look like a crazy person talking to himself.
Having people around doesn’t stop Kai from talking.
“You didn’t see her diary, it was all emotional and messy. She made it sound like it was a legit stalker situation, so if you have any problems, maybe teach her how to journal efficiently next time instead of teaching her generic breathing techniques."
A middle-aged woman walking her dog passes them in hurried steps, no doubt rushing the pedestrian light. Taehyun, on the other hand, is in no hurry despite the light turning red halfway across. It’s not like Kai can get any more dead, so he matches his pace to Taehyun’s. Their next destination is the bus stop across from the one they got off earlier in the day.
As far as Kai is aware, they are done with work for the day. Which means it’s now time for their after-work activities that can be anything from reading books in the name of doing research to hacking into the morgue records nearby them to look for a name resembling Kai’s. Literally, it can be anything. They basically know nothing about Kai, and Kai has the faraway thought that Taehyun might know more than he lets on about him. So, in a depressing conclusion, Kai is the only one who knows nothing about himself.
“So, what’s the plan for today?” Kai asks as they get on the bus. It’s not overly crowded; Kai doesn’t have to float himself higher to follow Taehyun to his seat. He doesn’t like going through stuff; it feels weird.
Taehyun waits for the girl sitting next to him to get off before he answers Kai. “Nothing yet. I need to eat first.”
Impatiently, Kai says, “Then what?”
“I'll tell you later.”
“Taehyun.”
“Kai.” Taehyun pulls out his earphones from his pocket, looking right at Kai before putting one in. “It’s not like we’re running out of time or something like that, okay? Relax. You'll find out either way. It's good, I promise.”
In response, Kai counts to three in his head and focuses on the stray dog barking at the bus from the outside. As the bus continues on its way, Kai chooses peace this time.
Before Taehyun can start enjoying his music, Kai adds, “Then you’re buying flowers for me. I need fuel too.”
Rolling his eyes, Taehyun lets out a quiet ‘okay.’
Kai spends the rest of the road wondering what Taehyun is listening to that gets him so sleepy and whether the songs would have the same effect on him or not.