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The smell of death is something that Hyunjin fears he will never forget. It lingers in his nose, coats his throat. Putrid, yet still so sickly sweet, Every deep inhale comes with the cling of death, even when he’s far from its presence.
He tries his best to hold a dry heave at bay, focusing his efforts on lifting the sheet-covered body in front of him up and onto the morgue table. An age-spotted hand slips from beneath the sheet, not quite rigid. The hospital issue wristband displays the name and room number of the patient now resting on cold metal.
This is just part of the job, Hyunjin reminds himself. The lady from room fourteen may have regaled him with whimsical stories from her youth not twenty four hours prior, but now she has no stories left to tell— any words unsaid now lost to time and the inevitability of death.
Working the night shift in an aged care facility should have desensitised Hyunjin. He’s not working rounds in a palliative care ward, but he does wander the halls of death’s glorified waiting room— too sterile for a retirement home, too lax for a proper hospital.
A blur between states of being, the almost cruel contrast between the youth of the staff and the numbered days of those under their charge. The ever-present frantic hurry of healthcare and the stagnant, sleepy whispers of patients.
Death and life hold hands in the darkness, and they wander the hospital halls as one.
“Thanks, Hyunjin.”
One mortician works the night shift, a man so desensitized to death that Hyunjin would consider it his only friend. He moves with the same unhurried movements of the dying, punctuated by his youthful limber.
He may be desensitised, but he is far from insensitive. It can be argued that Felix shows as much care for the dead as his colleagues show for the living— Hyunjin often finds him speaking in his low, soft timbre to the recently deceased, chatting or singing to those under his care.
If any soul were to linger, Felix would surely soothe and guide those lost souls to the afterlife.
“Isn’t this hard for you?” Hyunjin asks. He readjusts the sheet, covering Room Fourteen’s hand from the cold. It’s what he’d do for her, were she still alive.
Knowing death is easy. Adjusting to it is not a habit formed quickly.
“She lived a good life,” Felix replies, lowering the sheet, essentially undoing Hyunjin’s habitual fidgeting. Room Fourteen’s eyes are open and lifeless. Hyunjin remembers how they used to sparkle, fondly reminiscing on her love for the beachside trips her family took in the summer. “It is my job to ensure she has a good death.”
Hyunjin accepts death, but he cannot cope with it. He experiences his patients during their life, and while hardly lively, there is a stark difference between someone close to death and someone who has passed it.
Felix isn’t the same. He doesn’t personally interact with the patients who cross his table. He hums his tunes and dances with death in the chill of the morgue— desensitised and normalised, going through the motions.
The mentality bleeds its way into Hyunjin, a transfusion of thought. He has the smell of death caught in his throat, reminding him with every deep inhale that everyone has their time, and that Hyunjin is no different.
He will die one day.
And he will become the decay stuck in someone else's throat, sickly sweet, nauseating.
“Take care of her,” Hyunjin says, quietly. He’s done his duty, and now others call.
Amongst all the death, life continues.
“I always do,” Felix says softly.
Hyunjin turns on his heel, and swallows the taste of death.
------
Despite holding a job at a hospital, Hyunjin is not a nurse. He has a certificate in community care, something that has taken him from facility to facility, rotated his skills through nursing homes and daytime centres before landing him in death’s waiting room.
He helps where he can— filling out paperwork and performing administrative duties, easing the workload of actual nurses who have better things to do. He can change bedsheets and bedpans, help transport patients to appointments and on walks. Hyunjin’s job is to do what he can, where he can, using his limited skillset to the best of his ability.
Thankfully, his coworkers don’t seem to think less of him. No one has compared their hard-earned degree to his certificate, nor flaunted their extended medical knowledge to spite how limited his is. They’re a team, and Hyunjin picks up the insignificant pieces that no one else has time for.
All the nurses are nice enough, but it’s the newest and youngest hire, Seungmin, who offers the most sincerity in his thanks.
Both his presence and appreciation are warming, but Hyunjin mourns that such a talented young nurse has landed in the section of healthcare where nurses come to rot.
“Animal Crossing?”
Seungmin’s ever-present thermos makes contact with the laminated wood of the reception desk, the dull thunk echoing through the silent and empty halls. The only light is the one suspended over Hyunjin’s workstation, shrouding Seungmin in half shadow.
He should look the least bit terrifying, but Hyunjin has learnt not to fear the dark, nor the surprises that come from it.
“Yeah,” Hyunjin says, flashing the screen in Seungmin’s direction. His character has just caught a whale shark, and he displays the accomplishment with a grin. “Sorry, I don’t have much to do tonight.”
“It is a quiet one,” Seungmin hums, takes a sip of the concoction in his thermos. Something full of sugar and caffeine, the steady diet of night shift workers. Hyunjin has a similar brew sitting in the Keep Cup on his desk. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”
At any other job, a quiet shift is met with relief, an opportunity to finish tasks otherwise forgotten or offer time to simply relax. It’s still the same in healthcare, but it comes with an undercurrent of dread. Are the patients simply tired, or does the silence allude to something more? Calm or calamity— no one can tell what hides in the darkness.
He’s managed to finish his work faster than usual, but the speed of Hyunjin’s typing is spurred by the kind of anxiety that only silence in a hospital can bring.
A quiet that is almost eerie, he all but jumps out of his skin when the call bell rings for the first time, nearly five hours into his shift.
Seungmin flinches, too, caught off guard. His hands fumble with the thermos in his hands, some of the liquid spilling out onto the high walls of the reception desk. He shoots Hyunjin an apologetic smile, reaching for the tissues that sit along the sign-in sheets.
“It’s not an emergency,” Hyunjin says. He pauses his game, replacing his Switch and stretching as he stands. “I’ve got this one.”
“You sure?” Seungmin asks because he’s too polite not to. Hyunjin organises the break roster for the night staff, and a quick glance at the clock reveals that Seungmin is ten minutes into his. He often visits Hyunjin after re-filling his coffee, offering company to the loneliness of Hyunjin’s nights.
“Yeah,” Hyunjin waves him off. Even on a quiet night, Seungmin is a nurse. He works hard no matter what, well deserving of his brief reprieve. “You have fun on your break.”
“Thanks, Hyunjin, you’re a lifesaver,” Seungmin smiles, but he’s so tired that his happiness can’t quite break through the dark bags beneath his eyes.
“No,” he replies quietly. The motion sensor lights flicker to life, illuminating the halls to the rhythm of his footsteps. “That's your job, not mine.”
------
The call button indicates that he’s needed in room twenty three. It’s not urgent, but Hyunjin walks with hurried steps in the off chance that it is. While borderline useless in crisis, he can at least hit the emergency call button to summon someone more competent.
Thankfully, room twenty three’s sole occupant has called in search of water, nothing more. Hardly a task requiring a degree to perform, Hyunjin quickly agrees to help. The patient is surprisingly bright and cheerful, especially for the late hour. Hyunjin’s Fitbit illuminates at the flick of his wrist, the LED display reading just past two thirty in the morning.
Twenty Three’s request for water is rasped from a parched throat, followed by a tongue that licks at dry lips. He speaks slowly, and punctuates his request with an apology for the inconvenience.
He speaks again before Hyunjin can wave it off.
“I’ve been doing so much talking tonight,” he says. Hyunjin hasn’t had too much interaction with the patient, but knows from the reports he’s typed that his memory is failing, dementia taking hold. “I just need something to drink.”
“I’ll go get that for you,” Hyunjin assures him with his best bedside smile, the one that makes the old ladies coo. “You sit tight, okay?”
“Are you sure I can’t have whiskey?” Twenty Three manages to joke. He’s not the first patient to joke about the alcohol free policy at the facility, and he won't be the last. Hyunjin laughs at the joke like he’s never heard it before.
Speaking honestly, Hyunjin doesn’t know why the ban is in place; the hospital is where people come to die. They’ll administer any medication known to ease the journey of those in pain, but deny creature comforts to those who aren’t.
They’re old, their systems already failing. What damage could a nightcap do?
“I’ll get you some if you promise to share,” Hyunjin jokes, as he always does, when asked for something a little stronger than what the hospital has to offer. It’s routine by this point, just a bit to bring a smile to people’s faces.
“I promise,” weak, age-spotted hands come to cross over his heart, as Hyunjin’s clenches in his chest.
He offers a soft smile as he ventures off in search of water, coating his hands in sanitiser as he leaves, the dispenser groaning on the wall as he presses the button repeatedly. He hasn’t touched anything in his journey between the door and back out of it, but the constant re-application of sanitiser is a habit he can’t break, even outside of work.
The closest water cooler is located just down the hall— plastic cups and an impossibly cooled tank. The cup he fills and carries back to room twenty three is almost icy against the still drying alcohol on Hyunjin’s hands. It’s a short journey, something that should take Hyunjin five minutes in total.
But as he fills the cup, and fills the silence with the trickle of water and the buzz of the cooler he sees it— movement, just out of the corner of his eye. It could be nothing, a trick of the light or a nurse doing their rounds. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing strange to see in a hospital in the dead of night.
Hyunjin’s eyes instinctively snap in the direction of the moment, intending on scolding Seungmin for returning to his duties before his break is over, or to remind another member of staff about their upcoming schedule.
He sees nothing, not really. No nurse, no patient, and not a trick of the light.
The tail end of a black coat flicks around the corner, and Hyunjin flinches as cold water splashes down the side of the overfilled cup.
When his eyes flit back to the source of the movement, there’s nothing. Only darkness. The lights of the corridor not even reacting to whatever was there, if there was anything there at all.
He reconsiders his earlier assessment, chalking it up to tricks of light and shadow, the waning caffeine in his system.
Hyunjin thinks nothing of it, tips the excess water into the cooler’s drain, and dutifully carries the cup back into the awaiting hands of Twenty Three.
“I didn’t think you allowed visitors this late at night,” he says, refusing Hyunjin’s help and sipping at his water with shaking hands. “I don’t mind, of course, I just thought it was strange.”
Visiting hours are rather lax, a full twelve hours from nine AM until nine PM. A few people have come to see their loved ones during Hyunjin’s shift, but they have all been chased from the premises at nine, sharp. From his vantage point at the reception desk, Hyunjin is the one who logs each visitor's entry and exit from the hospital.
It has been hours since the last one left.
“That’s nice for someone to visit so late,” Hyunjin says, not wanting to alarm the patient. But internally, he’s panicking. A midnight visitor can mean one of two things: an intruder who has slipped past him, or the potential for something far more sinister. “Who stopped by?”
“Jisung.”
The flick of a black coat, movement in peripheries. Hyunjin’s heart catches in his throat.
“He’s such a kind young man,” Twenty Three continues. He drains his cup, offering the empty, crumpled plastic into Hyunjin’s waiting hands. “Said he’d be back next week. That he was going to take me someplace nice.”
“Well,” Hyunjin swallows. The cup crushes in his hold. “I hope you enjoy your trip.”
------
When life and death overlap, there comes an occasional clarity within the blur between lines. Glimpses of impossibility, written off as sleep deprivation or stress induced. Explained and excused until repetition turns into acceptance— sometimes things that shouldn’t exist just do.
Once a sceptic, Hyunjin finds himself slowly but surely shifting his mindset into one of a believer. Nurses tell him that it’s just part of the night shift— things happen that just shouldn’t, and it’s best to accept and move on, to believe and to work with it.
His current job is Hyunjin’s first foray into the world after dark. He’s been told that many places are just the same. Every hospital, every dwelling that deals with death, there is a resident that doesn’t want to leave.
A ghost, a spirit. A former patient or member of staff that can’t find the will to move on, and so wanders sterile hallways instead. Sometimes they are known and named, friendly spirits who are just there. Sometimes they are not, and occasionally they’re angry.
At Hyunjin’s current workplace, they have Jisung.
And he’s lonely.
They say that Jisung appears as a young man, dressed in all black. The base of his outfit changes, depending on who has seen him. One of the older nurses claims to have seen him in sneakers, not at all unlike the ones her son owns. Another has heard the heavy thunk of his combat boots as he’s traipsed through the halls.
No matter what, there is one thing that doesn’t change— Jisung is always seen in a dark coat, and his presence is marked by the flick of its tails as he rounds the corner.
According to the tales, Jisung talks. He appears at the bedside of the loneliest of patients in the dead of night. He speaks to them, prompts stories from their ageing minds. He feels safe, or so they say. Calming, soothing, friendly.
He leaves, and makes a promise to return, says he’ll come back and offer his company in the loneliness of night.
Jisung isn’t just the resident spirit, he’s the harbinger of death. He speaks to patients, and then a week to the day, Hyunjin helps Felix carry their bodies to the morgue.
It’s difficult to believe at first. It’s easy to write off as an urban legend, an explanation for and the personification of death. But patients who could never have met, patients who are distanced by time itself, they all speak of the same thing.
The kind man and his ash blond hair, his kind voice and his humour. The darkness of his clothes, even in the shadows in which he sits. How he listens, how he promises impossible, unimaginable things.
How every soul with whom he speaks, makes their final journey a week later.
Jisung is an entity that cannot be explained: the resident ghost, the man in black, the impossible presence.
The Grim Reaper.
------
Hyunjin commits the faux pas of working in the medical industry and smoking near a pack a day.
Stress, boredom, the invincibility of youth. It’s only the financial strain that has him considering quitting, but every attempt to stop has ended in failure. He’s strong, but not strong enough; he misses the burn in his throat and lungs when it’s not around.
His fingers twitch as the nicotine stains fade from his fingers, until he succumbs to weakness and the yellowing of his fingers and the blackening of his lungs returns again.
He could have made worse choices, but he could have made better ones, too. Hyunjin thinks of it as a metaphor for his life and ignites the flame of his plastic lighter.
The hospital grounds are a smoke-free zone, even so late at night. He could stand out the front on his break, sit on the pavement by the kitchen doors and enjoy his cigarette or three, but out of respect for the rules, he makes his way to the bus stop outside.
The services don’t run during Hyunjin’s allocated break time, so he’s alone on the bench, phone in hand, the sole streetlamp illuminating the steadily growing pile of cigarette butts at his feet.
On occasion, another lost soul will wander down the empty street. Sometimes they ask to borrow a smoke or a light, and Hyunjin will offer them freely. Some ask for the time, and wrinkle their noses as Hyunjin breathes a plume of smoke on the exhale, his answer nicotine stained.
The lost and lonely will sit downwind and ask Hyunjin questions, the quiet company of people he’ll never see again, shared behind a cigarette in the dead of night.
Just lonely souls seeking solace under the streetlights.
Hyunjin used to think he was the reprieve, the gift of company sought by those who wander.
He’s since realised he’s just the same, only stagnant, and what he offers is what he receives in return.
It doesn’t surprise him when the man in the trenchcoat spots him on that bus stop bench and decides to take a seat beside him. He looks as lost and as lonely as the rest of them, youthful in appearance yet impossibly jaded.
He’s just like Hyunjin. Lost, somehow. Impossibly so. Searching for answers before dawn.
They make eye contact, and the stranger offers Hyunjin a smile. He’s boyishly handsome, bright even in the darkness. Lonely, but not anymore. Not for the moment that they share.
Hyunjin is enthralled.
Round cheeks, charming smile. Blonde hair that messily falls into a side part, dark hoodie and jeans beneath a smart coat. Hyunjin assumes he’s out late after drinks with friends, in search of casual nicotine and drunken company.
“Those things will kill you,” he says by way of greeting. He pulls his feet up onto the bench, stretching a leg to span the space between them.
“I didn’t ask,” Hyunjin replies, rolling his eyes. For every person who asks for a smoke, there’s another person who tells him to stop. It’s his life, his choice, his dance with death.
The input of strangers isn’t needed, nor appreciated.
“It would be sad,” he says, staring off into the distance, eyes reflecting the green of the nearby traffic lights. “If you were to go before your time.”
Hyunjin opens his mouth to retort, but the man is gone.
No trace, no nothing.
It’s like he was never even there.
------
“Have you ever seen Jisung?” Hyunjin asks. Seungmin chokes as he sips on his coffee. Wordlessly, Hyunjin plucks a tissue from the box and hands it to his friend.
“Why do you ask?” he looks nervous, eyes darting around the room. He’s searching for the telltale flick of a dark cloak, eyes lingering on the nearby corners.
“I think I saw him,” Hyunjin elaborates. He sighs, turning his Switch onto standby. “But it was outside? At the bus stop, not in the hospital.”
“I’ve seen him, but we’ve never spoken,” Seungmin leans against Hyunjin’s desk, leaning his head on his arms. He looks exhausted, his half-hour break time shortened to ten minutes at most. “He was in room twenty three the other night.”
“So I’ve heard,” Hyunjin hums. Seungmin hums in reply, mentally connecting the dots between Twenty Three’s admission, and the night Hyunjin was sent to fetch him a drink.
“He was….” Seungmin trails off, glancing in the direction of room twenty three. “Kinda cute? Blonde. He’s not what I expected, if I’m honest, and far shorter than I thought he’d be.”
Cute and blonde. Dark coat. Disappearing and reappearing on a whim. Hyunjin met with the reaper, and he has a week to know if he’ll live to tell the tale.
“He spoke to me,” he says quietly. “Told me that smoking is bad.”
“Which it is,” Seungmin points out. He’s been on Hyunjin’s case since he found out, offering him nicotine gum and buying him a vape for his birthday.
“I think you’re missing the point, here,” Hyunjin sighs, “I spoke to him.”
“If he didn’t mention a trip I think you’re fine,” Seungmin replies nonchalantly, before his mouth twists into a pout at the emptiness of his thermos.
“Give me a week and we’ll see.”
Seungmin throws a report sheet at him.
------
Hyunjin works four days per week, 9pm until 6am, watching the sunrise through the glass doors to the facility. His week since the interaction with Jisung passes during a routine bed change, something he doesn’t notice until long after the fact.
Seungmin smiles smugly at him in the break room, falling into step with Hyunjin as they make their way towards the staff car park.
Jisung isn’t seen for a while after that, or at least, reports of him aren’t expressed to the members of staff. The patient in room twenty three passes away as expected, late at night, one week after Jisung’s visit.
As per usual, Hyunjin helps relocate his body, wheeling him from his bed and down into Felix’s domain in the basement, where he sings to yet another departed soul.
“Why do you sing to them?” he asks, helping Felix lift the body from the stretcher to the table.
“It calms me,” Felix replies, hands resting lightly on the hem of the sheet. “But I think it calms their souls, too.”
“It would calm me,” Hyunjin says softly, giving Twenty Three one last, silent goodbye. “If I were on your table.”
“I hope to never see you here,” Felix pulls the sheet from around Twenty Three, pauses. “I can handle the death of strangers, but not the death of friends.”
Felix’s words surprise him. To be called a friend, the admission that death has not yet fully desensitised him.
“I don’t plan on being here anytime soon,” he assures him, a hand placed on his shoulder. “Unless it’s to help you with your work, of course.”
“You’re worth your weight in gold, Hwang Hyunjin,” Felix replies softly, before turning back to his work. “Now go, I overheard someone saying that it’s your break time.”
He has so much work to do, so many forms to fill out, nurses to help. But he’s in dire need of coffee and a cigarette, so he trudges back to his desk, waiting for someone to fill in for him. Seungmin is already there, pen to paper as he tackles Hyunjin’s jobs for him.
With a muttered thanks, he heads towards the front door.
In his periphery, a flash of black rounds the corner.
------
“I saw you earlier,” Hyunjin says, his cigarette dangling from his lips. He cups the end, allowing the lighter to ignite the stick. “In the hospital.”
“Yes,” Jisung takes a seat beside him on the bench, a little closer than the previous time. “I’m aware.”
“You wanted me to see you?” He exhales a plume of smoke, glances at Jisung out of the corner of his eye.
Now that he knows who, or rather what, Jisung is, Hyunjin can’t help his curiosity. He’s solid proof of the supernatural, though he knows that no one apart from hospital staff would ever believe him.
Jisung is Hyunjin’s little secret, his mystery.
“Yeah,” he hums, amused. “I don’t mind being seen, sometimes.”
“That sounds detrimental to your job,” Hyunjin points out, blows smoke in Jisung’s direction. He doesn’t even flinch, the plumes passing through him. Jisung raises an eyebrow, and he’s met with a smug smile.
“Who’s gonna believe you, Hyunjin?” He reclines back on the bench, staring up at the sky. For someone not quite there, his eyes do a wonderful job of catching the reflection of the street light. “Who’s gonna believe any of you?”
“You know my name,” Hyunjin whispers in awe, barely finishing his exhale as smoke curls from his lips.
“That’s not the first question I thought you’d ask,” Jisung laughs to himself. “I thought you’d want to know what I am.”
“Grim Reaper, or whatever you call yourselves,” Hyunjin stubs out the end of his cigarette, immediately reaching for another one. Jisung frowns.
“I guide lost souls,” Jisung looks like he wants to take the cigarette from his hands, but doesn’t. Hyunjin appreciates the effort. “That’s my job.”
“The patients call you Jisung.”
“They do,” he says. Before turning in Hyunjin’s direction. He smiles, and offers a hand to shake. “It is my name, after all.”
“What do you want from me?” Hyunjin turns to face him, but ignores the offered hand. He doesn’t yet know what touching a reaper does to a mortal, and he’s not at the point in his life where he’s curious enough to try. Instead, he points his cigarette in Jisung’s direction.
The ash falls straight through him onto the bench below.
“Not every lost soul is a dying one, Hyunjin,” he says, and then he’s gone.
He disappears, right before Hyunjin’s eyes.
His secret, his mystery. His reaper.
------
Hyunjin loves his job. He truly does. It’s hard, yet rewarding and his coworkers aren’t awful. The hours are killing him but it’s still better than every other job he’s had.
But it’s not forever.
Jisung is right, he’s a lost soul. He doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, listlessly drifting day to day without purpose.
He could go back to university, use his experience as a prerequisite for something like a nursing degree. Felix thinks he’d be a great paramedic, but Hyunjin thinks he’s too easily stressed and nicotine dependant for a job like that.
For the most part, other career options are the ideas of other people, and Hyunjin knows he’d feel as stagnant in another role as he does in his current one.
So he keeps going, does his job, gets paid.
It’s not like he has any other options.
------
“Where are you headed?”
Jisung appears beside Hyunjin as he traverses the halls, blankets in hand for the patients to help with the frigid cold of the hospital air conditioning.
“Jesus,” Hyunjin jumps, clutches the blankets to his chest. “You nearly killed me.”
“You can’t use that line on me,” Jisung wiggles an accusatory finger in his direction. “It’s not your time and I know it.”
“Hence the nearly,” Hyunjin rolls his eyes, continues his way towards room seventeen. Jisung falls into step beside him, humming as he goes.
“It looks like we’re going to the same place,” he says, following Hyunjin through the doorway. “It might not be your time, but it is her’s.”
Hyunjin freezes. He’s about to watch someone die. He’s experienced death, and so much of it, during his time at the facility. But seeing it happen in real time is a first, and something he’d rather stay out of.
“I’ll just go,” he says, turning about face and attempting to march back out the way he came. “It’s not my place to be here.”
“She’s lonely,” Jisung says softly. “She told me so. I think she’d appreciate the company.”
Hyunjin inhales, exhales, and steadies himself. He grips at the blankets, a cotton lifeline.
“Hey,” he says softly. Seventeen looks weak, like she’s ready for Jisung. Hyunjin covers her in one of his blankets, takes a seat next to the bed.
Seventeen extends her hand.
“Hello, dear,” she rasps. Hyunjin links their fingers together; her skin, thin and papery, beneath his own. “I see you’ve brought a friend.”
“This is Jisung,” he says, bringing his free hand to rest over where theirs are joined. “He’s come to take you on a little trip.”
“I know where I’m going,” she says, breathing out a sigh. “And I’ll need just a moment, if you please.”
Jisung, silent in the corner of the room, motions for her to continue.
“I just want to feel love for one last moment,” she says, tears pooling at the corner of her eyes, before they begin to fall. Hyunjin wipes them away the best he can.
“That’s why I’m here,” he says softly. Against protocol, he presses a kiss to her forehead. She smiles.
“You’re a kind boy,” Seventeen says to Hyunjin, before turning to Jisung. “You look after him, won’t you?”
“I’ll try my best,” Jisung replies solemnly, before extending his hand. “But now, if you’re ready, it’s time to go.”
“I’m ready,” she says, shaking hand reaching for Jisung’s fingertips.
They touch, and Jisung disappears.
Seventeen’s hand goes lax Hyunjin’s hold.
------
Hyunjin helps move Seventeen, processes the paperwork, overhears Felix humming in the morgue while he completes his own tasks.
No one questions why Hyunjin was in the room when she passed, chalking it up to coincidence and nothing more. Seungmin sends him a pointed look when backs are turned, mouths Jisung’s name and hands Hyunjin a coffee when he nods in affirmation.
Five hours have passed. It’s Hyunjin’s scheduled break time.
Hyunjin doesn’t expect to see Jisung while he’s out smoking, but the reaper appears with the first flicker of his lighter, sighs in tandem with Hyunjin as he breathes out his first exhale.
“I’m on my break, too, you know,” he says, fiddling with the buttons on his coat.
“And you’re spending it with me?” Hyunjin raises an eyebrow, blows smoke in Jisung’s direction.
“Of course,” he bats the smoke from his face, despite not needing to. “You’re my favourite human.”
“So, you’re not human, then?” Hyunjin learns something new about the reaper each time they meet, the mystery of Jisung unravelling with every tug at his strings.
“I was, once,” Jisung’s face scrunches up in concentration. “I think? It was a long time ago.”
“You look young,” Hyunjin’s perception of death has always been an older man, or a skeleton. Not an attractive guy Docs.
“I may have been young when I died,” Jisung shrugs, “I may not have been. I don’t remember.”
“Why are you really here?” Hyunjin puts his cigarette out, fiddles with a new one but doesn’t light it. “With me, I mean. I know why you’re at the hospital.”
“Rarely do I have the pleasure of time with those destined to live,” Jisung seems to be able to choose between non-corporeal and corporeal forms, because the fingers that touch Hyunjin’s cheek are nothing but solid. “And, my beautiful Hyunjin, you have so much life in you.”
“Beautiful?” Hyunjin croaks. He’s not a stranger to compliments, pet names, people’s interest in him. But with the hours his job demands, he doesn’t have many opportunities for love. Not to mention, he’s not entirely used to attention from the personification of death.
“Does it bother you?” Jisung’s fingers retract, but hover in the air between them.
Hyunjin thinks about it for a moment, opens his eyes and observes Jisung in his glory. He’s stunning, the kind of attractive that Hyunjin could only ever have imagined. He’s not human, not anymore, yet he’s fascinating.
“No,” he says after a moment. The fingertips on his cheeks return, drifting down towards his lips. Jisung’s hands aren’t as cold as he’s come to expect from the personification of death. In fact, they’re warm, human.
He has to wonder if dying feels the same.
“You’re something else, Hwang Hyunjin,” Jisung says.
And then he’s gone.
Hyunjin lets out a breath and lights his next cigarette with shaking hands.
------
Death takes those it seeks in only two ways: calmly and with understanding, or kicking and screaming until the last moment, clinging to life and the last shreds of it with unrelenting stubbornness.
Hyunjin has experienced both from the outside perspective, patients who go quietly and those who fight death’s clutches until the bitter end.
Death, to Hyunjin, is something natural, now. He sees it almost daily, experiences the process of passing on as part of his routine.
It has changed him, he no longer sees it as something to fear but something to welcome once the time comes.
He fears not death, but the process of ageing. The diseases that will cripple him, the inevitable sickness to end it all. He values his youth, clings to it like a lifeline.
Hyunjin doesn’t want to grow old.
But if Jisung is right, he fears he might have to.
------
The hospital feels different during the day. The sunlight filtering through the front doors is almost blinding, Hyunjin is not quite used to working during daylight hours.
His coworkers, the daytime nurses, are just as lovely, but Hyunjin finds himself missing Seungmin and his endless thermos of too strong coffee. It’s a nice, welcome change, but Hyunjin prefers the familiarity of darkness and silence.
He’s busier during the day. Signing families into the facility, showing those new faces around the hospital. Patients, too, are more lively, more prone to chatting. Hyunjin finds himself behind on his work because he’s stopped too often and for too long, occasionally being dragged into conversations with visitors and patients alike.
Praised heavily for his bedside manner, his break time comes and Hyunjin is physically and mentally exhausted.
“It’s odd, seeing you in the light,” Jisung appears next to Hyunjin, under the tree that he finds solace beneath. It’s the only place within legal smoking distance to the hospital that Hyunjin can find, his usual bus stop filled with commuters.
“You too,” Hyunjin throws back, flicks the ash off the end of his cigarette. “I didn’t think you’d show up.”
Breaks with Jisung have become something common. Every shift, four nights a week, several weeks on end. They talk about everything except their respective work, Jisung marvelling at Hyunjin’s iPhone; YouTube videos and failed selfies filling the space between words.
“It’s you,” Jisung says simply. “So I’ll always be here.”
“Are you ready to tell me about the afterlife, yet?” Hyunjin jokes. It’s a running gag, Jisung claiming he can’t and won’t spoil what death holds for him when it inevitably takes his hand.
“It’s beautiful,” he sighs, the only hint freely given. “And I’m there, so that’s a bonus.”
Jisung’s grin is cocky, a thumb pointed to his chest. Hyunjin would be happy anywhere with Jisung, and the thought takes him by surprise.
“You exist on both planes?” He says, instead. It’s news to Hyunjin, fresh information about the world beyond. “You’ve never mentioned that to me.”
“Where do you think I go when I’m not around?” Jisung looks at him, perplexed, like it should have been obvious. “I even visit my favourite souls, once every so often.”
“Will you visit me when I die?” Hyunjin exhales, plumes of white smoke curling into the air.
“If you’ll have me, then I will.”
Hyunjin’s death is still a lifetime away, but he’s overwhelmed by the idea of Jisung in his own personal version of forever.
“Of course,” he says softly, “we’re friends, aren’t we?”
The words taste like ash, a different burn on his tongue than that caused by the cigarette he smokes. Friends isn’t the right word, it’s never been the right word.
“Yes,” Jisung rasps, “friends.”
And then he’s gone.
Rays of sunlight filter through the canopy, illuminating the spot where Jisung once sat.
He’s only just left, but Hyunjin misses him.
He wants Jisung to return.
----
He’s intrigued by and attracted to Jisung, that is a fact. Hyunjin finds himself longing for his company as soon as it’s missing, something that only happens when Hyunjin has somewhat of a crush.
He has feelings for Death, longs for it in ways that humans should not. He sits alone in the darkness of his room, mind filled with thoughts of a reaper. He imagines that hands that take souls may hold his, instead.
And sometimes, he sees the swish of a black cloak in the corner of his room. A figment of the imagination, a ghostly voyeur.
Jisung has mentioned protocol; rules that he breaks to spend time with Hyunjin. His interactions with the living should be kind, yet impersonal. Customer service of the afterlife, not meant to form bonds with those who haven’t yet fulfilled their time.
Despite Jisung’s intangibility, there is something so present between them. A flicker, a spark, igniting something far more dangerous than the tip of Hyunjin’s cigarettes. It swirls thickly between them, has taken place in Hyunjin’s throat and lungs, taking the place of smoke and the taste of death.
Or maybe it’s still death he swallows around, the unknown flavour on his palette. It’s still death, but now he knows it’s Jisung, and there’s something far less sickly and nauseating about the thickness that coats his tongue.
It’s something especially prominent after his scheduled breaks, something that sticks to him for the rest of his shift. He curls himself around Jisung, seated on their bench, illuminated by the streetlight of their own little world.
His pack of cigarettes abandoned and forgotten on the seat next to him, Hyunjin buries his face in Jisung’s neck and breathes in the smell of death. He takes the hand of a reaper, and is drawn not into the afterlife, but into feeling more alive than he ever has.
Jisung presses a kiss into his hair, tightens his hold on Hyunjin’s hand.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he whispers, but he makes no effort to distance himself from Hyunjin.
“And yet, here we are,” Hyunjin says. He straightens himself, takes his free hand and uses it to cup Jisung’s cheek.
His eyelids flutter, his breath stuttering on the exhale.
“What would happen if I kissed you, Jisung?” Hyunjin asks the question that sits on the tip of his tongue. His curiosity about the afterlife long since fading away, the space it left immediately filled with an unnamed emotion.
A sense of longing, of desire, something encapsulated by a word he shouldn’t speak aloud.
“I would fall in love with you,” Jisung replies, breathlessly. His lips part, Hyunjin edges ever closer.
“You don’t want to?” he asks. “You haven’t already?”
Jisung opens his eyes. They glitter under the streetlight. “Of course I have,” his smile is weak. “I’d just have to admit it out loud.”
“I think you just did,” Hyunjin replies.
He closes the distance between their lips, and lives through the kiss of death.
------
In the early hours of the morning, Hyunjin can’t sleep.
It’s his day off.
He slides his shirt from his shoulders, intent on traipsing through the emptiness of his apartment in search of a shower. Maybe the hot water will lull him into fatigue, maybe it will do the opposite. He won’t know until he tries, and in the meantime, it’s at least something to fill the time between awake and asleep.
The flicker of black within his peripheral vision makes its customary appearance. Hyunjin reaches for his discarded shirt, pulling it back on.
“I know you’re here,” he says, cotton obscuring his vision. “Pervert.”
His head appears through the neck hole of his shirt, revealing the sight of Jisung seated at the end of his rumpled bed.
“I’m always here,” he says, hands gripping the blanket. He looks tired. Hyunjin wonders if reapers even sleep.
“You think I don’t see you?”
“You think I’m hiding?” Jisung retorts, brings a free hand to his hair to push it away from his face.
“Why don’t you ever say anything?” Hyunjin, positions himself behind Jisung. Carefully, he wraps his arms around his neck, pressing his lips against the skin. Jisung stiffens, relaxes, leans into the touch. “Why don’t you join me?”
“There are rules,” he hasn’t touched Hyunjin since their kiss, but he lets Hyunjin touch him, allowing his hands and lips to wander. “I’m breaking them by even being here.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are there rules,” Hyunjin nips at Jisung’s earlobe, whispers in his ear. “Why are you here?”
“Because you’re human, I’m not,” he tilts his head to the side, breathes through his nose as Hyunjin trails kisses along his clothed shoulder and exposed neck. “And because, Hyunjin, there’s something about you that I can’t stay away from.”
“You’re about to leave, aren’t you?” Hyunjin has come to know Jisung, can pick up on the signs he gives. Jisung runs away when he has to, when his feelings grow too much to bear.
“Think of me,” he says, turning his head, kissing Hyunjin softly. “Think of me when I’m gone.”
And then he is.
Hyunjin sighs, collapses back into his blanket.
“That’s all I know how to do.”
------
Seungmin slams a pamphlet down on Hyunjin’s desk.
“Here,” he says, “think about it.”
Courses. Not university but things to supplement his certificates. It’s not that Hyunjin isn’t capable of bigger things, it’s that he just doesn’t want the gruelling hours of study that come along with it.
He looks through the options, reads over what other courses have to offer. He’s interested, he’ll admit, spurred on by Seungmin and Felix’s encouragement.
Hyunjin feels stagnant in his current job, but other certificates mean he can do something more, it opens up employment options outside his current paygrade.
“Disability support worker?” Seungmin says, looking at the course Hyunjin has circled. It’s the one that sparks the most interest within him, allows him to make the biggest difference. “I think you’d be good at that.”
“I’m going to be a zombie if I take this on,” Hyunjin admits. It’s his one hang up on further education, the fact that he can’t afford to lose any of the hours he has already. “Study during the day, here at night.”
“You can do your coursework instead of playing Animal Crossing,” Seungmin says, and Hyunjin smiles sheepishly.
“I’ll think about it,” he replies.
“That’s all we can ask of you,” Seungmin places a hand over Hyunjin’s, conveying his well wishes and affection. “But don’t feel too pressured, okay?”
------
Jisung stops appearing to Hyunjin.
He doesn’t stop working, the telltale flash of his coat apparent now, more than ever. Hyunjin doesn’t know if he’s looking for it more than he used to, or if Jisung isn’t hiding as well as he thinks.
Either way, Hyunjin trudges through his day to day life, haunted by whisps of fabric and phantom appearances.
Jisung is everywhere, in places that he shouldn’t be. He’s in the grocery store during Hyunjin’s fortnightly shop, the back of Hyunjin’s classroom as he starts his course. He’s crossing the street when Hyunjin is on break, disappearing as soon as Hyunjin makes his presence known.
It should be creepy, it should be unnerving. Hyunjin is alive, though sometimes he barely feels it. He’s alive and haunted by the constant of death— both in his job and by the personification of it that has stolen his heart.
It should be terrifying, but instead, Hyunjin is lonely. He’s longing.
He craves the touch of death, not as a concept, but as a man.
“I love you,” Hyunjin whispers to the movement in the darkness, in its usual corner of Hyunjin’s room. “I miss you.”
“I love you too.”
------
Hyunjin lies in the space between sleep and consciousness, roused by the sound of footsteps and the sinking of his bed. Half awake and filled with the sluggish confusion of being roused from sleep, he rasps a noise of confusion as an arm comes to wind around his midsection.
The smell of death, the stuttered exhale against the back of his neck.
Jisung.
Warm, tangible, with him, finally after months spent apart.
“I couldn’t do it,” he chokes out. “I couldn’t stay away from you.”
“I never asked you to leave in the first place,” Hyunjin whispers. Jisung presses a kiss to the back of his neck.
“I know,” he says, lazily mouthing at the skin he finds. “But you should.”
Hyunjin relaxes in his hold, basks in it. He doesn’t know when he’ll have this again— Jisung, with him, pretending that they’re not blurring lines that shouldn’t be crossed.
It’s not that Hyunjin doesn’t know or understand, it’s that Hyunjin is young and in love. He’s selfish, he doesn’t know enough to care about consequences. He’s desperate to see the person he wants to spend life and death with, even though Jisung isn’t a person at all.
"I hear about myself a lot. They say that death is time and that the grim reaper hides in clocks,” Jisung whispers. His mouth ceases his kisses in order to speak, but his hands trace as much of Hyunjin’s skin as they can find. “But time and I are friends, separate entities. His name is Jeongin, in case you were wondering."
“Is he nice?” Hyunjin wonders aloud.
“He’s a brat,” Jisung’s laughter comes as puffs of air against his neck. “But he’s alright.”
“What is death, then?” Hyunjin asks. Jisung stiffens, then relaxes again with a sigh.
“Depends on who you ask,” he says, cryptic as always.
“I’m asking you.”
“I’m death,” Jisung says after a moment. “Is it upsetting, to know how death loves you?”
“No,” Hyunjin replies. “But only because it’s you.”
Jisung presses a kiss to the corner of Hyunjin’s mouth, and then he’s gone.
Hyunjin supposes he’s broken enough rules for the night.
------
Jisung continues avoiding Hyunjin at work, but has made his presence known more often in Hyunjin’s home.
“Less prying eyes around here,” he says. But Jisung’s eyes linger on darkened corners in the same way Hyunjin’s do.
Jisung comes and goes as duty calls. With a kiss and whispered affections, he fades into the night.
Hyunjin has heard of dates with death, but he’s only just learnt to think of them in the romantic sense.
“You know I love you, right?” Jisung says one night. He’s cuddled up with Hyunjin on the couch, claiming that he’s organised for their nights off to align.
Jisung still hasn’t explained how shifts work for reapers, and if he needs to rest at all. He never seems to stick around after Hyunjin has fallen asleep, even if he was there when Hyunjin slipped away.
“Of course,” Hyunjin replies. He presses a gentle kiss to Jisung’s mouth. “We’re not entirely…” he trails off, gestures between them. “Conventional. But we’re real. You don’t have to assure me.”
“I know,” Jisung replies. “It’s just… worrying.” He holds Hyunjin tighter, like he’s afraid of what will happen when he lets go. “You will die, but I am death.”
“You should know by now, Jisung, that I’ll gladly take your hand, no matter where it leads me.”
“I love you, and I‘m scared that I always will,” Jisung presses a desperate kiss to Hyunjin’s mouth, then another. “Through your life and your death, I feel like it’s always going to be you.”
“You think I don’t feel the same?” Hyunjin questions against his mouth.
“I know you do,” Jisung says. He sounds pained, almost desperate. “And I think that’s what scares me the most.”
As per usual, Jisung kisses him.
This time he doesn’t leave after he’s drawn away.
------
In hindsight, Hyunjin should have seen the signs. How out of character Jisung was. How Jisung stood at Hyunjin’s kitchen table as he woke up, sweetly kissing him in the early hours of the morning, before disappearing again.
Jisung was saying his own, cryptic version of a goodbye.
It hits home for Hyunjin, as the coat that flickers around the hospital corners are no longer black, they’re grey.
Hyunjin sees them clearly, and it’s like a warning, or a message.
Whoever flits through the corridors of the hospital, it’s not the man he loves.
But, in reaper tradition, he does appear to Hyunjin on his break.
“You here to tell me to stop smoking?” Hyunjin asks. The figure in the grey coat is a beautiful man with sharp features. He snorts at Hyunjin’s question.
“They don’t kill you, so by all means,” he gestures to the lighter in Hyunjin’s hand. “Go ahead.”
“Didn’t know that,” Hyunjin mumbles, accepting the burn and the drag of smoke into his lungs.
“Jisung didn’t tell you?” the reaper’s eyebrows lift almost comically. He mutters a small huh into the night, and reclines against the bench. “Turns out there was some sort of protocol he stuck to.”
“Why are you here?”
“With you, or in general?” he asks. “My name’s Minho, by the way, just in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You should be,” Minho says, features twisted into a scowl. “Considering how much we’ll be seeing each other.”
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Hyunjin questions, but he already knows the answer. Jisung broke the rules, and he knew it. They both knew the dangers, but someone caught on.
The dead dance with the living, but they never love.
It was doomed from the start.
“Yeah,” Minho says. He sounds sorry, almost mournful. “I broke a few rules, too, you know?”
“You let him say goodbye.”
“Jisung is my friend,” Minho continues without acknowledging what Hyunjin has said. “My best friend, even. If people like us are afforded such attachments.”
“Is he okay?” Hyunjin asks. Minho regards him with a bitter smile.
“Heartbroken,” he reveals.
Hyunjin has been numb since the realisation, but Minho’s admission breaks the dams of his emotions. The bubble through him, consuming him, choking him. His chest aches as he drops his cigarette, collapsing forward into his hands.
He cries, though Hyunjin would hardly consider it a normal falling of tears. He wails, he sobs, he chokes on breaths he can’t draw into his lungs. Minho’s hands smooth cautious, soothing circles onto his back as he shakes.
“He’ll always be there, but he can’t be with you,” Minho says, “I’m somewhat of a manager up there, so I can pull as many strings as I can.”
“You can’t pull the one that lets us be together,” Hyunjin looks up at Minho, illuminated by the streetlight.
His lips press into a thin line. “No,” he says after a moment. “That’s the one string I cannot pull.”
“Will I see him again?”
Minho stares off into the distance.
“Maybe one day,” he says, quietly.
His hands rub absentmindedly trace circles onto Hyunjin’s back.
------
Hwang Hyunjin is told in his youth that he is destined to live.
And so he does.
It’s hardly a remarkable life. But he helps people, he makes people smile. And at the end of the day, he thinks that’s enough.
He works in disability support— in centres when he’s young, in workplace support as he ages. He makes a difference, a small one. Nothing world changing, nothing memorable to the history of the world.
But to the people he meets, he changes their life.
Hyunjin has this odd habit— he is often seen staring into corners when the sun goes down, and occasionally, he’ll smile.
The people around him will blink, a trick of the light. Something moving in the darkness. Just an eccentricity of Hyunjin’s, like his bright laugh and the softness of his reply when someone mentions that his smoking habit will be the death of him.
“No it won’t,” he says. There’s a fond twinkle to his eye when he says it.
Hwang Hyunjin lives.
------
“I’m already dying, one cigarette won’t kill me,” Hyunjin says to his nurse. He’s old. Weak. Happy.
A flash of black in the corner of his room. Hyunjin smiles.
“You’re not dying,” the nurse scolds him. “And no smoking.”
She mutters something about stubborn old men, and her disbelief that Hyunjin’s lungs have remained cancer free for such a long time. Her bedside manner could be seen as rude, but she’s bright and friendly between the jabs, and Hyunjin has learnt to give as good as he gets.
“Minho was right,” he says to himself. Just the mindless mutterings of an old man. “And you are wrong.”
Hyunjin often wondered if he knew when his time would come. During his time at the hospital, all those years ago, he often spoke with patients who just seemed to know.
He used to chalk it up to the presence of Jisung, then Minho, who filled his place almost seamlessly.
But now, old and dying. He knows and he understands.
The nurse rolls her eyes, before softly smiling, bidding him good night.
The door barely closes, before there’s a flash of black.
“Ah,” Hyunjin rasps. “Are you here to take me on a trip?”
Jisung laughs, almost in disbelief. “Has it been so long that you’ve forgotten?” he whispers. “You’ve got a week, my love.”
“I couldn’t forget you,” Hyunjin takes his first proper look at Jisung after so many decades. He doesn’t realise he’s crying until they’re brushed from his age-spotted cheeks. “I could never forget you, Jisung.”
“I could never forget you, either,” he replies softly, before clearing his throat. “So, old man, you got any stories to tell?”
“So many,” Hyunjin smiles, and Jisung mirrors it. “But I don’t think it’s any good telling them, considering how often you were there.”
Jisung looks a little sheepish at Hyunjin’s admission, then guilty. “I wondered if you’d have gotten over me, had I disappeared completely.”
Hyunjin shakes his head to the best of his abilities, the movement dizzying in his weakened state. “In my life and my death, Jisung,” he rasps, reaching for the reaper's hand. “I’ve always been yours.”
“Tell me a story, Hyunjin,” Jisung asks softly. “I want to know what I’ve missed.”
Hyunjin takes a deep breath, and begins to speak.
------
Jisung breaks protocol again, visiting every night for a week.
Hyunjin doesn’t so much as fall back in love, but rather remembers why he fell in the first place. Jisung tells him stories too, of life and death and of the world beyond, of the friends and familiar faces waiting for him on the other side.
“Will you be there?” Hyunjin asks, one week to the day since his reunion with Jisung. Almost to the hour, to the minute.
His vision is blurred around the edges, the light of his room suddenly too bright.
“Take my hand,” Jisung says, “And maybe you’ll find out.”