Archive of Our Own ^beta

As a child, Minho’s grandmother had always told him to return home after some time away. Apparently, it was bad luck or something if you strayed too far– some family tradition that had to be upheld, according to her.

She would say to a young, curious-eyed Minho, “Minho-yah, if you don’t come home for a while, the spirits will come home instead.”

Minho, nine years old and wondering, would respond, “Halmeoni, you should take your medicine.”

Back then, Minho had always been a firm disbeliever of the supernatural, even when the girls at his school would scream at horror movies with unrealistic murder-clowns. His friends would laugh at his unmoving expression and marvel at how he could keep his calm even in the face of the terrifying unknown.

“Minho,” They’d ask, all toothy grins and too-wide eyes. “Are you not scared?”

And he would shrug, turn around and walk the other way while waving a hand in the air listlessly. “What’s there to be scared of? Nothing’s real unless it’s in front of you, jaw gaping and knives brandished.”

Minho carried that belief with him for the rest of his childhood years, until the light of the afternoon sun dimmed into teenage dusk.

Sometimes, he would wish that he’d had more time to bask in those years of the unknown. Ignorance is bliss, and most people overlook that until it’s the truth.

The day he saw a spirit for the first time had been on Minho’s thirteenth birthday. The late October skies were already bright when Minho awoke in the morning, heart racing and spirits high. He looked down at his fingers and marveled when he found that they were the same hands he’d fallen asleep with yesterday, as if suddenly becoming a teenager could change him so much overnight.

His grandmother knocked on the door, once, twice, before turning the knob and walking in. “Minho-yah, happy birthday.”

Then, Minho had screamed.

It was at that moment when the childhood bliss truly faded, and Minho understood what it meant to be a teenager in all of it’s rotted glory. 

He remembers that part less so than what came after. Minho remembers that his grandmother had been there, but also there was something else behind her. It was a man, staring directly at Minho. No, not just any man– Minho’s late grandfather, who had passed a few years ago when Minho had been seven years old.

“What’s wrong?” Minho’s grandmother had cried out, rushing over immediately. She cupped Minho’s face and looked into his eyes searchingly when Minho shook his head mutely. “Minho-yah, are you okay?”

“He’s–” Minho gasped out, fingers twitching minutely as he raised his hand to point at his grandfather. “Why is harabeoji here?”

Realization flickered in his grandmother’s eyes, as well as a deep-set look of shared sympathy that would come to haunt Minho more than any spirit of the soul ever could. She gazed back for a moment, locking eyes with the spirit of Minho’s grandfather, in some kind of silent communication, before turning back to Minho. 

“It’s okay, aegi-yah,” She’d said comfortingly, while stroking a hand down his back. “I told you about this, don’t you remember? You have a home in the world, and the spirits of people of the past do too.”

“Why don’t they find a home in a world that belongs to them, instead of ours?” Minho clutched at his bedsheets, the fabric fraying underneath small fingers.

At that, Minho’s grandfather finally stepped forward after being silent for the whole tirade.

In the movies, ghosts are always depicted as floating, unreal beings. They never do the real thing justice, Minho thinks. Spirits are more like souls than any other thing in the world, so they reflect the innermost part of a person. Sometimes, the soul will seep out from those around the spirit, especially the ones who had loved the spirit the most.

If souls and spirits are intertwined, then even more so, spirits are interconnected with memories of the soul. 

What comes out as a result is a near picture-perfect image of the person they had been when they were alive; like someone had picture-vomited (the equivalent of word-vomiting) a live, moving image of the person and shoved it into the body of a spirit. 

Minho’s grandfather looked the exact same as the day he died. Wrinkles were deep set in his face, gathered especially so around the corners of his eyes like a star map of thoughts collected over time. If Minho hadn’t been watching him so carefully, he would’ve thought that the spirit was alive.

“Minho,” His grandfather said, and Minho had to swallow past the lump in his throat at his voice. It was clear and resonated throughout the room in the same way that a human’s would, but at a closer listen, it vibrated in an odd kind of way that made his head hurt. “Minho-yah, you can see me, can’t you?”

Once, twice. Minho nodded jerkily, hesitantly. That was the final stake in the cross that was Lee Minho’s sense of normalcy, as he watched and felt the sense of finality settle over the bedroom.

After that day, Minho began living his life like it was a curse to even breathe in the same air as the spirits. Which, admittedly, had been stupid, because dead people couldn’t even breathe in the first place.

The next time his friends invited him over to watch a horror supernatural movie, Minho declined. Instead, he found himself by the ocean, splayed out on the sand like some kind of sea creature.

That was where he met Kim Seungmin for the very first time, on a sandy beach with too much sand and not enough water to make up for it. 

“Hey. What are you doing here?”

Minho, head pillowed on the sand, opened his eyes. He squinted up at the afternoon sun to see a boy looming over him in a poor attempt to be menacing. The boy narrowed his eyes and put his hands on his hips. Minho saw a flash of braces in between chapped lips, glinting in the summer sky.

Instinctively, Minho reached up through the air, towards the boy’s face. He waved his hand around, tried to clear the image in his eyes of the boy above his head. “Are you a spirit, too?” He’d mumbled incoherently. 

At that, distaste flashed across the boy’s face. “What? No. You’re crazy.”

Minho blinked. “No, I’m Lee Minho.”

“I’m Kim Seungmin,” He said. “I don’t hang out with weirdos.”

“I’m not weird.”

Seungmin wrinkled his nose as he looked down at Minho haughtily. “Sure, you aren’t. And the sea isn’t blue.”

“It actually isn’t,” Minho said. “Water is clear, did you know that? Shocker, isn’t it?” 

Seungmin kicked sand into Minho’s face.

If Minho could, he would say that it was the start of a beautiful friendship. But, as most things go with Minho, if he said that he would be lying.

Instead of something out of a novel, or worse, a movie, Seungmin became a fixture. Like some stubborn puppy that you just couldn’t get rid of, again and again and again Minho would open the door to his house in the morning just to see Seungmin sitting on his doorstep. 

How Seungmin even figured out where he lived, Minho still has no clue to this very day.

Minho groaned inwardly. “Kim Seungmin.”

Immediately, like someone blew a whistle– a puppy, Minho thinks distantly– Seungmin’s head jerked around and he gave Minho a toothy grin. His braces were on full display, shining in the early morning sun. “Hyung!”

Distaste had turned into mild interest had turned into some kind of attachment that Minho couldn’t shake off no matter what he did to try and lose the puppy tailing him at any given moment of the day. The thing Minho hated the most in the world wasn’t even Seungmin himself, it was the fact that he liked the attention Seungmin was giving him.

Sickeningly sweet, swelteringly warm. 

“What in the world are you doing here?” Minho demanded.

Seungmin stood up and stretched, turning to face Minho. His eyes sparkled in the light like some kind of star that Minho couldn’t face away from, blinding him past belief. “Waiting for you. Duh.”

Minho sputtered, outraged and flustered. “You– why would– don’t you have anything better to do?”

Seungmin shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

Minho would also be lying if he were to say that he hated Kim Seungmin after that early morning.

More than a fixture, Seungmin was a constant. A constant that Minho would wake up to every day, in the glow of the dawning sun and in the dimming light of the dusk. Minho realized that even if he was to be cursed with thousands and thousands of ghosts haunting his existence, at least he wasn’t going to be haunted alone.

The ghosts were a constant, but Seungmin was more proficient at bothering Minho than any ghost ever could be. As horrible of a comparison as it sounded, Minho believed whole-heartedly and genuinely of that fact.

Then, Minho turned fourteen.

His friends stopped coming around, stopped inviting him to movie nights. 

There was one time when Minho was in the downtown square, holding a lollipop in one hand and a paper pamphlet for a local festival in the other.

He bumped into a gaggle of schoolboys, and the pamphlet in his hand fluttered down to the ground when one of the schoolboys shoved him onto the ground. Around them, some adults eyed them warily but none of them dared to intervene.

The boy that was focusing on Minho must’ve been at least sixteen, picking on a boy years younger than him. 

“Hey,” The boy sneered, raising an eyebrow in an attempt to look intimidating. Which, to Minho, worked. At that time, his sense of ‘bravery’ hadn’t quite grown in yet. “Where’d you get the pop, kid?”

Minho blinked. “...The candy vendor?” He’d said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Obviously, wrong choice of words.

The boy’s expression twisted and he kicked Minho in the gut.

Minho let out a choking noise as he felt pain shoot through his abdomen and down every single limb of his body, curling over his stomach in agony.

“Shut up ,” The boy snarled.

The lollipop in Minho’s hand fell onto the ground. The boy, seeing this, grinned in a maniacal kind of way. He brought his shoe down on the ground and grinded the candy into the concrete like some kind of bug.

At the time, Minho had been half-scared that the boy would do the same to him. 

From behind the boy and his gang of giggling goons was a woman– no, Minho corrected himself as he squinted, a spirit.

The spirit was a young woman holding a basket full of flowers, and gazing on the scene in pity. All the townspeople around them had scattered at the commotion, to the edges of the square. The woman-spirit was the only one left.

“ Help me ,” Minho shouted at her. “Please, help me.”

A confused glare made its way onto the first boy’s face as he twisted his head around in rage to see who in the world would dare help Minho. “Who the fuck you talkin’ to?”

Murmurs ran through the rest of the schoolboys as they stared suspiciously at Minho. Some of the townspeople at the edges of the squares glanced over, raising eyebrows in skepticism. 

“ Please ,” Minho repeated, staring at the woman that nobody else could see.

She looked surprised momentarily, like all spirits did when they first realized that he could see them. Then, a look of resignation flashed over her face as she walked through the crowd of schoolboys and through the first boy to stand right above Minho.

“I’m sorry, boy,” She said. “I would, but what can I do?”

“Anything,” He begged. “ Anything , I don’t want to– please, please help me.”

The spirit had watched him for a while more with those sympathetic eyes before she leaned in close. “I’ll tell you something. The boy at the front is all bark, no bite. He won’t hurt you. He can’t.”

Then, she’d left, and Minho was left with nothing but disgusted shouts.

“What the fuck?” The boy bit out as he stared down at Minho. “Who the fuck were you talkin’ to?”

Minho stayed quiet. 

“Shit, he’s a lunatic,” One of the boys beside the ‘gang leader’, as Minho dubbed him, grumbled out. “He’s seein’ things or somethin’.”

The leading boy curled his lip. “Let’s go. Looking at this guy pisses me off. I want to throw up, now. Let’s go to the festival, Jeonghwan.”

He turned and walked away, leaving Minho on the street with a torn-up pamphlet, crushed lollipop, and shattered nerves to beat. 

The worst part, as Minho would find out, would never be the crumbles of candy underneath fingers that scrambled in some kind of hopeful attempt to put the lollipop back together. 

The worst part would be the people .

It started from the townspeople in the square on that day, who started whispering words of ghosts and strange boy and sees things that he shouldn’t see . The worst of them all was that one, bitter, snarled-out word–

Curse.

He’s a curse, a curse, a curse–

The crushed pieces of the lollipop were never able to come back together despite the effort that Minho put in to painstakingly line up each fragment of the candy. He would remember that more than the boys who had caused it.

Later, when Seungmin finally turned fourteen and Minho was on the cusp of fifteen, a secret was passed in-between whispered words.

“I can see spirits,” Minho said. 

Seungmin blinked. “What?”

They were sitting on a bench in the park, sharing a bag of cotton candy. The sun seeped through the wisps of the candy floss and Minho watched the way it cast rays onto the concrete underneath them. He looked up at Seungmin, who was staring at him, and swallowed hard .

“I can see spirits,” Minho repeated, anxiety roiling in his stomach despite the even-faced facade he kept up. “Like, the dead ones.”

“Oh,” Seungmin said, before bringing another tuft of pink cotton candy to his lips. “Cool. Do they float?”

That had startled a laugh out of Minho, light and genuine, both at the easy acquiesce and at Seungmin’s words. He closed his eyes briefly as he stared up at the sky, and across the park at a spirit sitting underneath a leafed oak tree. The spirit was a blond-haired woman, no later than in her thirties, staring up at the dappled sunlight in between the leaves thoughtfully.

“No,” Minho admitted, after a moment. “Well, at least, not in the way that you think. They look like you and I. They talk to me, and sometimes I talk back.”

Seungmin blinked. “I never see you talk with any invisible things.”

Minho snorted. “That’s a surprise. Haven’t you heard about it from the other townspeople?” 

“What, that you’re a cursed lunatic?” Seungmin reached into the bag of cotton candy to pull out more. “Isn’t that just you, hyung?”

“ Hey . What are you saying?”

“I mean,” Seungmin said, looking up at the sun. “It doesn’t matter what kind of weird you are, not to me. In the end, you’re going to be weird either way. I’d rather you be weird because you’re Lee Minho, than be weird because you’re anything else.”

Minho blinked rapidly. “Wow. That was… surprisingly deep.”

“I’m always deep, the hell you mean?” Seungmin rolled his eyes and bit into another wisp of candy. The parts where his lips touched the floss melted and hardened, softness into a hardened kind of sweetness. Minho watched, half-curious and half-enraptured.

“It’s still… not normal, though, isn’t it?” Minho asked, after a few minutes.

Seungmin had looked to the side, eyes puppylike and questioning in a way that would forever be engrained into Minho’s memory. “Huh?”

“Isn’t it strange that I can– I can see the ghosts of dead people?”

“Well, yeah,” Seungmin snorted. “But you’re still Lee Minho, aren’t you?”

Minho let out a breath. “Yeah.”

“Okay, then,” Seungmin nodded, crumpling up the empty plastic bag that once held candy floss. 

“Okay? That’s it?”

“What else is there to say? Why are you so hellbent on me telling you, ‘ yeah, Lee Minho, you’re a cursed freak who should leave this town!’ ?”

Minho stared at him. Seungmin stared back, defiantly.

“I don’t know,” Minho said finally. “It’s just not normal.”

“Hyung, nothing about you is normal. We’ve established that.”

“ Hey ,” Minho snapped, reaching over to pinch the back of Seungmin’s neck. “Respect your elders, brat.”

Seungmin dodged Minho’s fingers with a laugh. “Sorry, hyung. Really, though. There’s nothing wrong with being a little weird. Weird is what sets people apart from each other.”

“What, like a spectrum of weird-ness?” Minho rolled his eyes.

“Exactly.”

“Seungmin, if that existed, you’d be at the very top of it.”

Seungmin looked over at Minho, sun shining down on his hair and into his eyes in a blinding kind of way. He smiled, and Minho felt like the weight of a thousand universes was pressing up against him, more than any kind of ghost ever. “I’ll be right up there with you, then.”

Minho doesn’t remember what he said next. 

The words faded into the summer’s haze. Summer after summer passed by, with cotton candy on benches and sun lighting through the wispy strands. Then, the light turned into the reflection on the sea’s shores, and the slow realization of horrors on cold mornings. 

Lollipops and cotton candy turned to dust in Minho’s palms, like quickly fading visages of a spirit’s face that Minho couldn’t quite catch.

Because soon, Minho’s teenage dreams were gone, his grandmother was gone, and Seungmin was gone too, chased away by the spirits of the soul and of the heart. 

The dim light of childhood was gone, and the spirits of the sea faded away to the ghouls of the city. Youth disappeared in a flash, and with it left Minho too. He grew up and away with nothing in his hands but the ephemera of ghosts and the fleeting memories that they echoed in his ears. 

>

Distance doesn’t really matter when the place you’re trying to avoid is the place you end up going home to, over and over again. 

It’s true that city life kills, because Minho is twenty-five years old and tired. 

He’s tired of his stupid corporate job that he slaves away five days a week for just to make barely over minimum wage. He’s tired of his stupid coworkers that keep on bugging him. He’s tired of the stupid spirits that won’t leave him alone.

Emphasis on the latter. 

For what must be the fifth time in that day alone, Jisung slowly pokes his head through the surface of the table that Minho is furiously typing away his report on. 

“Holy shit ,” Minho jumps, then groans in exasperation. “Jisung, stop it.”

The spirit pouts and phases out of the table to sit on the edge of it instead. “Where’s the fun in that?” Jisung’s translucent body rests atop the books on Minho’s desk, unsettling nothing physical on the desk but the man.

It never fails to unnerve Minho at the way that ghosts manage to slot themselves into everyday life in a way that nobody in the world can pick up on. 

Nobody but him , unfortunately. He eyes the way that Jisung pokes at the unmoving coffee cup on the table, and the way that the spirit’s finger simply passes through it instead of displacing the drink.

“I’m trying to work ,” Minho grouses, running a hand through his already-mussed hair. “Go ogle at Hyunjin down in the first floor or something.”

Jisung rolls his eyes. “Hyunjin’s not going to talk to me, though,” He complains. “He can’t even see me. Isn’t that such a tragic love story?”

“Sure,” Minho deadpans. “What do you want me to do about it? Kill Hyunjin?”

Jisung props his face on his hands and makes puppy eyes at Minho. “I mean …”

Minho covers his eyes with his fingers and lets out a muted scream. “Jisung, go away.”

“Don’t be so mean. Isn’t today your last day?” Jisung says with an affronted noise. “Let me spend my time with my favorite psychic spirit-seer.”

Minho rolls his eyes and shuts his laptop, pulling it into his bag. “I’m the only psychic spirit-seer you know.”

“Well, same difference,” Jisung whines, and he slides off the table. His fingers, undersaturated and partially see-through, slip in-between the papers piled on Minho’s table. “Anyway, is it so wrong of me to want someone to talk to?”

Minho flicks off the lights in his office and steps outside, Jisung following behind. The early summer air is humid and heavy on his skin. For a second, Minho wonders if Jisung can feel it too. But, dead people are dead people, and they cease to exist in the same instant that Minho can. 

“Sorry, Jisungie,” Minho says, after a moment. He squints up into the summer sky and at the clouds covering the light of the sun. It’s a pity, because the sun in Seoul is always easier on the eyes than the sun in Gimpo. “I wish you could come with me. Really.”

Jisung slings (or tries to) his arm over Minho’s shoulder and lets out a long-winded sigh. Minho pretends like he doesn’t feel the way Jisung’s limb simply passes through his back instead, like some empty gust of wind. 

“This is so stupid,” Jisung says mournfully. “What, I get into some stupid car crash, and I’m stuck in Itaewon forever?”

Minho hums in response as he descends the stairs at the end of the hallway down to street level, where cars bustle and honk. “At least you get to stay around Hyunjin for the rest of his sad corporate life.”

Jisung lets out a huff of dismay as he soundlessly walks down the staircase beside Minho. “I know , but it’s just– it gets lonely as a spirit sometimes, you know?”

Minho reaches the street and stops. He looks to his side at Jisung and at the way the ghost’s round eyes are upturned towards the sky. Permanent mournfulness has made a home in his eyes, in a way that neither sun or rain can wash off. 

Through his years of communing with the dead, Minho’s managed to figure out one constant between all of them. Okay, two constants, because the first constant is that they’re all dead.

The second constant is in the eyes. 

Minho’s heard people say that eyes are the window to the soul, and that’s simply true. You can tell if a person is a spirit or not by their eyes, and if a lingering anguish has made a home in them yet or not. The only reason a spirit stays on earth is the lingering attachment between their soul and the living. Without the memories of the soul, a spirit would simply dissipate into whatever realm they’d come from. 

But, as long as the heart and the soul of those who loved the spirit still remain, the spirit will too. It’s a pitiful existence, Minho thinks, to be forced to watch as those around you move around the emptiness you create. 

For Jisung–

“He still talks about you, sometimes,” Minho says. A woman passing by with her kid in a stroller looks at him weirdly, like he’s a man talking to thin air. Which, admittedly, is what he is. “When Hyunjin gets drunk, he’ll start talking about you.”

Jisung makes a pained noise in the back of his throat, guttural and raw. 

For Jisung, the lingering attachment to the living ends up being more of a cruel punishment than anything else.

Minho tilts his head towards the sky and feels the first few drops of a sprinkle fall down onto his cheeks. He turns to look at Jisung and gives the ghost a half-smile. “Jisungie, I have to go now.”

“Okay,” responds Jisung softly. His translucent fingers reach up, towards the sun and the heavens above, like he’s trying to catch the rain. The droplets fall through Jisung’s fingers like a sieve, and the spirit’s face crumples. He closes his fingers into a fist and glances at Minho, who is still standing on the sidewalk. “Thanks for keeping me company for the past few years, hyung. It’s been nice.”

The bus pulls up by the sidewalk and the double doors open with a whoosh . The driver inside raises an eyebrow expectantly at Minho, who steps up into the bus. With one last glance behind at Jisung’s translucent waving hand, Minho swallows his words and lets the bus doors shut. 

“I’m going to Gimpo,” Minho tells the bus driver as he scans his card on the flashing reader.

The bus driver lets out a surprised noise. “You don’t hear that often. Transfer to the red line at Dangsan Station.”

Minho nods silently in gratitude and walks to the back of the bus, sliding into an empty seat by the window. After a minute or so, the bus starts moving. He stares out of the window at the slightly grayed-over skies of Seoul and at the trees flashing by.

He thinks about ghosts of the sea, perpetually in motion with the moon. He thinks about ghosts of the city, stuck in-between run down buildings and between the jobs of the living dead, more deceased than any ghost could ever be. 

Minho hopes that his grandmother was wrong when she warned him against staying away from the spirits of home.

It’s well past midnight when Minho arrives at his old hometown.

He steps off the bus and the last step creaks before the bus doors shut behind him. The air in Gimpo is different from that of Seoul in the way that it carries a sense of heaviness with it, like it’s waiting for someone to come home.

Minho shivers despite the lack of wind in the middle of summer. Above his head, the moon shines with the force of a thousand suns. Or, maybe, it’s just Minho’s imagination again. 

The bus stop isn’t far from his childhood home; for some reason that Minho can’t explain, he’s inexplicably drawn to the opposite direction. West, to the ocean blue and the spirits that lie in the beyond of it. 

The night sea glimmers underneath the sliver of moonlight and the stars that follow it. Minho steps out onto the sand and marvels at the way it gives underneath his feet. The stars in the city never shine as bright as the ones that he remembers. Too much light pollution blurs everything out.

Minho lets out a sigh as he stares over at the sea. The water rushes up on the beach and just barely misses his feet in the sand. Where it reaches the shore, darkening sand comes up instead of the pearl-white dry sand that Minho stands on. The dark sand fades and dries to a pale color, too, eventually. Rinse and repeat, like the ephemera of something Minho vaguely remembers.

Maybe his grandmother had been right when she told him about the spirits of the soul, though, because–

“Hyung?”

Minho freezes. He remembers glinting metal, and sunlight in-between leaves, and the sweetness of cotton candy on his tongue.

Slowly, with breaths that don’t belong to himself, Minho looks up from the glittering sea and behind him to see none other than the spirit of the soul– and of the heart– and of the world.

“Kim Seungmin,” Minho breathes, and the syllables tumble out of his lips like a whispered message from some past century. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” Seungmin counters, and oh , it’s too familiar in a way that makes Minho want to scream and dig out his eyes and maybe find a place to crawl up and die too. Seungmin takes a step closer. His feet ghost over the sand, and in the places where there should be footsteps imprinted into the ground there is nothing. 

“I’m here to see Halmeoni,” Minho says, and it’s half of the real, ugly truth. 

With a raised eyebrow, Seungmin makes a big show of turning around in a circle and looking down and around. “Is she here?” 

The waves come up again, and this time they wash over Minho’s shoes. He can feel the water seeping in and the chill numbs him to the bone. He’s already looking away, back at the ocean, when he says, “No, she’s not.”

Seungmin quiets for a second. Minho hears him suck in a breath (which, again, is stupid because ghosts can’t even breathe, but Seungmin’s always been stupid). “Why now, Minho? Why didn’t you ever visit her before?”

Minho bites down on his cheek. It stings, and then there’s iron on his tongue and on his teeth. A firm reminder that no matter what, Minho is alive and separate from the dead. “I–” He starts, then stops in fear of what he might say if he isn’t careful. “I had to work.”

He can practically feel Seungmin’s judgemental gaze on his back, boring identical burning holes into his shirt. “Uh-huh. And work means no paid leave? Not even to see your dear grandmother?”

Minho feels the guilt in his chest. There’s movement out of the corner of his eye, and in his peripheral vision Seungmin steps up to stand beside him. Minho’s eyes flick down to around Seungmin’s legs, where he should be disturbing the tides and the sand. Instead, the water flows through Seungmin.

Through and through and through.

Funny how the only real constant in Minho’s life was the thing that washed away what was supposed to be constant. Irony, like Minho’s hopes slipping away from in between sandy fingers. 

“Sorry,” Minho mumbles. He ducks his head, stares down at his own feet in the water; he stares at the way the ocean flows around his shoes, like he’s just a barrier meant to be eroded. The living part of the dead. “How has she been?”

“Fine,” Seungmin snorts. “Better if her one and only grandson would come and visit her, like she used to chastise you about.” The irony is not lost on Minho. 

Minho rolls his eyes, scuffs at the sand beneath his foot with the tip of his shoe. The water washes away the groove he makes. “What about you?”

“What?”

“ What? ” Minho mimics instinctively, before he can help himself. “Don’t ask stupid questions, Kim Seungmin.”

That startles a laugh out of Seungmin. “Wow, hyung. I haven’t heard that one in a while.”

Minho huffs despite himself. “How have you been?” He repeats. As soon as the words leave his mouth, he wants to take them back, pretend like they never left his lips in the first place. Regret fills his lungs until there’s not even enough space for air to fill them. 

“Dunno. Bored? I only talk to your grandparents and those spirits by the park,” Seungmin says thoughtfully, before turning to Minho with an irritated look in his eye. “And nobody else, because someone never visited.”

“Sorry,” Minho says again, like a broken record stuck on repeat. At least, that’s what he feels like– that’s what he’s been feeling like, ever since he left for Seoul all those years ago. “I didn’t know– I thought you would’ve left a long time ago.”

Seungmin wrinkles his nose. “Me?”

Minho lets out a vague noise of agreement that gets lost amongst the waves of the sea. 

“Why?”

Minho shuffles his feet and watches the way water splashes around his ankles. His socks are thoroughly soaked through, and he realizes how much of an idiot he probably looks like– talking to thin air and standing in the ocean at ass-o-clock in the night?

Minho’s always been some kind of an idiot, anyways. It’s nothing new. 

“I mean, there’s nothing keeping you here anymore, Seungmin,” Minho finally says, when the water churns white and pale underneath the moonlight. “Why don’t you just go home?’

“You can’t be serious, hyung.”

Minho turns his head, and all the air in his chest leaves him in one long breath. Seungmin’s head is tilted, in that same child-like, puppyish way. His eyes are wide yet judging as he looks at Minho, and strands of years-old dyed hair fall into his eyes as he blinks. 

Something about the way the moonlight shines down through Seungmin makes the spirit practically glow . Incandescent and ethereal, yet temporary all at the same time. Minho’s hand twitches by his side, and it takes all of his willpower to stop it from reaching up and over to Seungmin.

It’s a slap to the face. Inability, paired with an unreachableness. 

Kim Seungmin is gone , Minho’s mind whispers. All that is left is the soul, the spirit, the heart. Where does he belong in the world now?

“What’s keeping me here?” Seungmin deadpans, eyes narrowing in the dead of night. “I’m almost insulted.”

“I don’t–”

“I didn’t know you were so stupid,” interrupts Seungmin with raised brows and a disgruntled look in his eye. “Maybe you should find out , then, hyung.”

Minho swallows around the words rising in his throat.

What’s keeping you here, Kim Seungmin?

>

On Minho’s seventeenth birthday, Seungmin surprised him. 

That wasn’t to say Seungmin didn’t surprise Minho every single day, because he was weird enough that he did, but on that day it was more so than the rest. 

Minho opened the door in the morning, fully expecting to see some kind of prank box sitting on the ground. He was pleasantly surprised to see Seungmin sitting there instead, facing away on the top step like he always did.

The early morning sunlight streamed in through the trees by Minho’s porch and dappled golden rays fell onto Seungmin’s hair, in a way that made it look like the younger boy was nearly glowing golden. Seungmin’s hair was still brown from when they dyed it a few months ago, though the dark roots of his hair were already starting to grow in from the top.

“Kim Seungmin,” Minho said. The name wrapped around his tongue like a vice that he couldn’t get rid of, which was more than partially true.

Immediately, Seungmin looked over his shoulder and grinned when he saw Minho standing there. “Hi, hyung. Happy birthday. You’re one year closer to being free from your stupid spirits.”

Minho wrinkled his nose in distaste as Seungmin stood up. “I don’t like how you’re still taller than me, Kim Seungmin. You should shrink for my birthday. Is that my present? Say yes.”

Seungmin rolled his eyes. “You’re just mad that you’re short.”

“Kim Seungmin, watch it,” Minho warned mirthfully. He raised his hand threateningly, as if to slap Seungmin, but the younger boy just danced out of the way while laughing.

“Sorry, hyung,” Seungmin chuckled. “Just kidding. Happy birthday, for real this time! Guess what I got you.”

“Please say a new lease on life. Or, a new pair of eyes so that those ghosts can stop bothering me all the time.”

“Hey, think about how Chan would feel if he heard you say that,” Seungmin chastised with a finger pointing at Minho accusingly.

Minho shrugged. “He’s not here. What are you gonna do, anyway? Tell on me to him? Oh, wait, you can’t!”

Seungmin glared at Minho and crossed his arms across his chest. “I’ll make your grandmother do it. Hey, Halmeoni–”

Minho slapped a hand over Seungmin’s mouth. “Kim Seungmin, don’t you dare wake her up.”

From behind them, Minho’s grandfather passed through the wall and eyed the two of them suspiciously. Minho mumbled out a word of apology before grabbing Seungmin’s hand and dragging him down the steps towards the beach.

Seungmin laughed all the way in an infectious kind of sound. “Hyung, slow down.”

Minho ignored him and ran faster, relishing in the way Seungmin let out a yelp of alarm from behind him. It was entertaining, but less so than the way Seungmin’s palm was warm in his own.

When they reached the beach, both of them were panting and sweaty.

Minho kicked off his shoes and toes of his socks before running straight into the sand. He could hear Seungmin shouting something vague, but all he cared about was the feeling of the warm sand underneath his feet and the rush of water in his peripheral.

“Hyung,” Seungmin shouted. Minho looked back to see Seungmin kicking off his sneakers before barrelling towards the water with a laugh.

Sunlight glimmered off the sea, off the air, off golden-brown hair.

Seungmin ran directly in Minho’s direction. Minho let out an oomph when the younger boy rammed into his chest and laughed when he fell backwards into the shallow sea. The wind was knocked out of Minho’s chest for a few seconds, and not just because of the fall.

Water splashed around Minho, clear and reflecting the blue sky. Seungmin’s head popped up above into Minho’s vision. His hair dripped water and drops of the ocean rolled down his cheek, mimicking the crescents of his smile.

“Hyung,” Seungmin said, before nearly choking on a wave that passed over them. “Eugh– happy birthday, hyung. You’re one year closer to freedom.”

Minho snorted and pulled Seungmin down under into the water just as another wave washed over. “If I’m going to die, I’m bringing you with me, brat.”

Seungmin came up with water dripping off of every strand of his hair– like some puppy on the beach, Minho thought absentmindedly– but with a large grin spread across his expression. “Aww, hyung, that’s so sweet.”

“What are you talking about?” Minho snapped with little genuine force behind his words. “It’s my life mission to make you suffer as much as you can before you die.”

Seungmin rolled his eyes. He shook his head violently so that water sprayed out of his hair– and into Minho’s eyes, like what Seungmin probably intended to do. It was annoying. It was endearing. Minho hated Seungmin, hated his stupid smile, hated every fiber of his sparkling soul.

“When I die,” Seungmin started, and Minho already hated where this was going. “I promise you that I’m going to be the most annoying spirit you’ve ever had the fortune of meeting.”

“Fortune?” Minho snorted. “More like poor-ass luck.”

“Just say you love me already, hyung,” Seungmin said cheerfully. “I’m the best person you’ve ever met. Stop lying.”

“Slander. Blasphemy.”

Seungmin let out a huff and splashed water directly into Minho’s face. He laughed and watched in no small amounts of mirth as Minho sputtered and choked on the droplets. “Whatever you say, hyung.”

Minho wanted to bite back, he really did. But, Seungmin was playing a foul game.

The sunlight reflecting off of the dampness on Seungmin’s face did nothing to soothe the relentless churning in Minho’s stomach and the strange tight feeling in his chest that kept growing and growing and growing.

Minho had half a thought to dig out his own heart and hold it up to the sunlight, to inspect the inner workings of himself and all that made Lee Minho’s emotions flicker. The answer, he knew, would be ingrained within every vein and every fiber of his being– 

The answer, Minho knew, had always been Kim Seungmin.

And Seungmin seemed to know, too, because something flickered in his eyes as he opened his mouth to speak. “Hyung–”

Minho surged forward, with riddance to the waves, and kissed Seungmin.

Underneath his lips, Seungmin let out a surprised noise that was swallowed by Minho. For a second, Minho worried. He worried and worried and worried that maybe he had been the one in the wrong this entire time, and Seungmin didn’t want this like how Minho’s heart screamed for it.

But then, Seungmin’s arms came up and around to wrap around Minho’s shoulders and to press on the back of his head, and then, Minho realized, Seungmin kissed back.

Seungmin’s lips were damp and warm, from the ocean and from the sunlight high above. It was like kissing sunlight itself, but instead of the sun, it was Kim Seungmin. If there even was a difference.

And Minho– 

Minho felt like he was floating, in the ocean and in the great blue sky. Amongst the pigeons and all the other birds that were in the air that couldn’t touch the sea, but still felt that nonsensical urge to.

All Minho could do was pull Seungmin in harder and feel the way the soaked-through material of Seungmin’s shirt gave way underneath his fingertips. They broke apart for a moment to take breathless gasps before Seungmin leaned in again, and again, and again and again–

“Seungmin,” Minho said, breath ghosting over Seungmin’s lip. He cupped one hand around Seungmin’s cheek and felt dizzy at the way Seungmin’s eyes were locked with his own. “Kim Seungmin, listen–”

“Mn, hyung,” Seungmin murmured, and leaned into Minho’s touch. Shit, Minho was going to remember this forever. “What is it?”

Seungmin had stolen all the air out of Minho’s lungs, and Minho was desperately trying to steal it back.

“Listen,” Minho repeated, and knocked their foreheads together as a smaller wave washed over, barely lapping at the collars of their shirts. He breathed in– sunlight, ocean salt, Seungmin– and breathed out.

“You better not die, okay? If you– you can’t die, because I still need to bother the living daylights out of you until you can even consider it.”

Seungmin let out an exasperated breath that was so incredibly fond that it made Minho sick to the gut in the best kind of way. “Hyung, you can just say I love you.”

“Shut up,” Minho said. “If you die, I’ll never let you hear the end of it.”

Seungmin pressed another fleeting kiss to Minho’s lips, featherlight and cotton-candy sweet. The spinning colors of the rainbow, all condensed into one fluffy roll of candy and sun. “Okay, hyung. I’ll keep you to that, you hear me?”

>

As it turns out, Seungmin is no less persistent as a spirit than he had been when alive. 

When Minho gets home later that night, ankles soaked and painfully damp from the freezing ocean water, the first thing he sees is his grandmother at the front door.

Minho blinks, clutches his backpack a little closer to his chest. “Halmeoni?”

The spirit of his grandmother puts her hands on her hips. “Minho-yah,” She says sternly, and Minho can feel a prickle of stress tickle at the back of his neck at the tone of her voice.

“Hi,” He says weakly and shuffles his feet a little closer to the door. “Long time no see.”

“What did I say,” She starts, narrowing her eyes. “About not visiting?”

Minho shrugs half-heartedly. “To not do it?”

“Brat,” His grandmother snorts. “Get in the house. It’s cold.”

A smile breaks across Minho’s face. “I’ve missed you, Halmeoni.”

“I’ve missed you too, aegi-yah,” She murmurs as he stumbles past her in the darkness. “Next time, don’t make me wait this long again. Your grandfather’s in the living room, by the way. Don’t be startled”

“Okay,” Minho says mid-yawn. “Can I sleep, first?”

“You’re not hungry?” She questions.

Minho turns to her and raises an eyebrow. “Halmeoni, is there even food in the house?”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re still the same brat you’ve always been. I thought city life would mellow you out a little, but I guess not.”

Minho snorts. “I’m your grandson, through and through.”

“Hey. Watch it.”

Minho laughs as he kicks off his shoes and walks into the house. He makes a beeline for the bathroom. His socks are soaked through and his bones feel like they’ve been shoved in a freezer for twenty-four hours. 

Minho blinks as he notes that nobody came into the house to fix anything in the years that he’d been gone. Everything, up to the blinds on the windows, is still the same, just with five years’ worth of dust on them.

Minho nearly hacks a lung when he opens the shower curtain. It’s then when he makes the executive decision that he would rather sleep in his travel clothes than try and take a shower with pipes that haven’t seen the light of day since the first Girls Generation album.

He turns on the sink faucet and is pleasantly surprised to find that it still works.

Minho’s just about to start brushing his teeth with the toothbrush he packed in his backpack when he sees something move out of the corner of his eye. For a second, he thinks that it might be a hallucination, but then Seungmin’s head is popping out of the wall and into existence next to Minho.  

“Holy shit,” Minho breathes, toothbrush lifted halfway to his mouth. “Kim Seungmin, are you haunting me?”

“Duh?” He says, head still half-way phased through the wall. A skeptical expression flits across his face for a moment. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know about this, either.”

Minho blinks rapidly before resolutely setting down his toothbrush and resting his palms on the edge of the sink ledge. He leans forward and his head drops forward so that he’s staring directly down into the sink.

Seungmin lets out a huff. His body in the wall disappears for a moment before he reappears halfway through the mirror in front of the sink instead, mere inches away from Minho’s face.

“Boo,” He deadpans.

Minho almost loses it.

“What the hell ,” He hisses. “You’re going to give me nightmares.”

“That’s kind of the point, hyung,” Seungmin snarks. 

Minho purposefully omits the fact that even without Seungmin doing anything himself, the nightmares would come regardless.

“What’s next?” Minho grouses. “You’re gonna watch me sleep?”

Seungmin pauses. He seems to actually think about it for a minute. “Wow, hyung. I didn’t know you were into that kind of stuff.”

Minho wants to scream, again.

Later, when Minho shakes out his old blanket and replaces the old sheets with the new ones he brought along, he finds out that Seungmin really wasn’t joking.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Minho hisses into the darkness of his room, drawing his blanket closer to his chest. “Why are you still here?”

For a second, Seungmin doesn’t reply, and Minho has rising hopes that the spirit’s left already. Then, there’s quiet laughter in the room– childish, bright, unforgiving in the night. 

“Sorry, hyung. I just thought it was funny. If you want me to go, I’ll leave.”

Minho considers it. He knows that Seungmin would leave if he asked– knows that Seungmin would do anything he possibly could if Minho asked him to, but how could Minho bring himself to do that?

“No,” He says instead. “I don’t– Seungmin, stay.”

There’s silence– a surprised, filling kind, not the empty type that comes after awkward pauses and cicada chirps in kids’ cartoons. 

“Oh,” Seungmin says, from somewhere in the darkness of the room. Minho can imagine it in his mind’s eye– Seungmin sitting on the ground in a corner of Minho’s childhood bedroom, staring up at the window’s reflection of the moon from his spot on the floor. “Okay, then.”

There’s a stretch of quietness in which only the sounds of rustling leaves and the faint roar of the ocean can be heard from outside Minho’s window. Then, Seungmin is speaking again. 

“Why did you think I would be gone, Minho?”

“...If I was gone, maybe you’d forget me.”

“Like I ever could?”

Minho lets out a breath and it comes out like a whoosh of air. He stares at the ceiling, counts the number of pockmarked holes in the wall from past posters. 

“Wow, Kim Seungmin,” Minho murmurs.

He sits up, props a pillow behind his back and leans back against his headboard. Seungmin hesitates in the corner of the room before standing up to move closer to Minho, moving up to sit at the opposite end of the bed as Minho. 

“I don’t get it,” Seungmin says quietly. “You know I would have rathered you stay.”

“Not if you knew why I left,” Minho replies instantly.

“Then tell me ,” Seungmin says, begs, pleads. “Hyung, I won’t know if you don’t tell me.”

Minho wants to pull his hair out.

“It’s my fault you’re a spirit in the first place,” He says.

Seungmin stares at him like he’s grown a second head. “What the hell are you talking about, hyung?”

Minho shrugs weakly, looks to the side and at the rays of moonlight that are casted on the floor of his room through the blinds of the window. “Told you that you’d be mad.”

“I’m not mad,” Seungmin argues. “Okay, maybe I’m mad– but I’m angry because– did you really think that, all these years?”

That surprises Minho enough that he looks back. 

“Well,” He starts. Stops. Starts again. “It’s true.”

Seungmin lets out a groan of frustration. “Hyung, if I really held anything against you or blamed you for anything in the world, don’t you think I would’ve dissipated by now? Why do you think I’m still here?”

Minho blinks. Light, reflecting, refracting the emotions of his soul and the depths of his heart until both are the same and identical. “Well, first, there’s Halmeoni and Harabeoji.”

“Those are your grandparents, hyung, not mine.”

“And that baker’s boy down on Main Street–”

Seungmin screeches, stares at Minho like he’s absolutely lost his shit. “You think I’m staying in limbo as a spirit for Jeongin?! ”

“He’s a nice kid.”

Seungmin looks like he wants to tear every single strand of hair out of his head. Or Minho’s head. One of those. Either way, someone’s agenda is being fulfilled. 

“Hyung, listen to me,” Seungmin says, and his eyes mean it. He leans forward a little, so that he’s close enough that Minho would be able to see his reflection in Seungmin’s eyes if Seungmin weren’t a spirit. “If there’s one thing in the entire world that I’m certain of, I wouldn’t stay in this shitty limbo for anybody else except for you.”

“Oh,” Minho says dumbly.

Seungmin’s hands come up, as if to cup Minho’s face. Seungmin hesitates a little when his fingertips phase right through Minho’s cheeks, but sets his expression and holds as much of the little amount of Minho that he can. It’s horrible because of how much it reminds Minho of something else, of another moment so eerily similar; a vignette captured in time, on a sandy beach in January when everything had gone to shit. 

“Ask me again, hyung,” Seungmin presses desperately, eyes searching in Minho’s for an answer to the question he’d never voiced aloud. “Ask me why I’m staying.”

Minho doesn’t know if he says anything, because the words in his throat that are begging so desperately to come up are swallowed. Swallowed away by him or by the spirits of the sea that forcibly prevent him from screaming out three, familiar syllables, Minho doesn’t know.

That night, Minho dreams. 

>

No matter how beautiful it is, the ocean is often unforgiving. 

Minho had learned this truth three months after his twentieth birthday, four months after Seungmin’s eighteenth.

When he woke up in the morning, the sky was gray and overcast. Early January weather in Gimpo was usually unfavorable, but especially so on that day.

He stumbled out of his bedroom, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. “Halmeoni,” He greeted his grandmother on the rocking chair. “How are you doing?”

She gave him a sidelong stare. It’s past ten in the morning, her eyes told him without speaking. The judgment came across clear as day, however. “I’m fine, aegi-yah. Stop worrying so much. You’re going to get more wrinkles than your grandfather.”

Minho shrugged helplessly and pulled on a scarf by the front door. “Sorry, Halmeoni. I just worry.”

She snorted and turned back to the fire roaring in the mantle.

It had been a few months ago when his grandmother came down with a horrible case of pneumonia during the colder months of winter, and inevitably passed away while trying to fight it. 

That had been the first time Minho’d seen a spirit awaken before his very eyes.

He remembers tears and a horrible chill through his bones and not much else before there was a spectral hand cupping his chin and his grandmother was looking down at him like she hadn’t just died in front of him.

It was terrifying, but Minho had gotten through it nonetheless. Minho got used to seeing his grandmother as a spirit after a few weeks of mini heart-attacks when he walked out of his room.

“Oh– Minho-yah,” His grandmother started, rocking back and forth slowly in her chair as she stared into the fire. The crackles filled the atmosphere of the room with a kind of homely coziness that would come to be drowned out by the pure dullness of what would follow. 

Minho stopped from where he was putting on his sneakers, ready to go out. He twisted his cap on and looked backwards with an eyebrow raised. “Yes?”

His grandmother glanced over her shoulder. “Be careful, today.”

Her gaze was solemn, a warning in itself. Maybe that was when Minho had started feeling the dread creeping up his gut. He swallowed and nodded once, twice, jerkily. “...Okay, Halmeoni. What happened?”

She turned back to the fire.

Rock, rock, rock . Forwards, backwards, until the motion was imprinted into Minho’s mind’s eye.

“The spirits of the sea are loud today,” She said, voice barely above a hum. “Be wary of what that means.”

Minho felt a prickle at the back of his neck. Something ugly and vicious crept up Minho’s throat. 

He bolted out of the front door. Behind him, the hinges rattled in his wake when he had slammed the door. Warnings, warnings. The sea, the spirits, all warnings.

Minho reached the downtown square in record time. The townspeople held their children closer as he dodged and weaved through the crowds. Whispers and suspicious eyes flew at him from all directions, each one of them sharper than the previous.

Finally, Minho reached the town center.

He skidded to a stop and put his hands on his knees, panting violently. 

“Woah, there,” Bang Chan, the spirit of the former mayor, laughed. “You good, mate?”

“Chan-hyung,” Minho breathed, gulping for air. He lunged forward as if to grasp Chan’s shirt desperately, forgetting that Chan was simply a ghost. His fingers fell through Chan’s chest helplessly as the spirit looked on. 

“Wow,” Chan said concernedly. “You look like you need some tea.”

“I don’t need tea, I need help,” Minho griped, each breath coming faster and shallower. “Chan, please.”

“Oh– yeah, don’t worry about it,” Chan furrowed his brows and wrung his fingers around Minho’s shoulders in a futile attempt to mimic patting his back. “What’d you need?”

“Kim Seungmin,” He said, voice tense and sharp as he straightened his back. “You– you remember him, right?”

“Yeah, man,” The spirit nodded understandingly. “The boy you’re always with! I love Seungmin. You need me to find him for you?”

“I– I don’t know, is he near?” Minho asked. “ Can you find him?”

Chan let out a relieved breath. “Well, ‘course. I know the town like the back of my hand, just give me a second while I–”

Chan stopped.

Minho’s heart skipped a beat as he stared at the spirit. “...Chan-hyung?”

“Oh,” Chan said. “Oh, that makes sense.”

“Chan,” Minho repeated, voice tight, lips tense, heart pounding. “Chan, what are you talking about?”

Chan blinked. He reached out to Minho as if to take the man’s hand in his own, but his fingers simply passed right through Minho’s palm. “He’s– well, I guess you could say Seungmin’s at the beach. It would be a lie to say anything else, though.”

And–

And Minho can’t move. His feet, the legs that had been running so fast in his terror earlier, were frozen in the face of the terror that had manifested itself into a real, palpable thing.

His mouth had dried. His tongue rested heavily against his teeth, like dead weight. Minho swallowed. Pain spiked in his throat as he gulped around nothing but empty air.

Chan was saying something that Minho couldn’t hear– couldn’t hear anything but the rushing of blood in his ears that sounded horrifyingly like the ocean. 

The ocean.

The ocean.

The ocean.

The spirits of the sea are loud today, his grandmother said, eyes upturned towards the skies like she knew something that Minho didn’t.

Legs that don’t feel like Minho’s own were moving and before he knew it, he was running. Chan shouted something behind him that faded into the hazy memory of that day. All Minho remembers now is the beat-skip-beat of his heart and the throbbing headache in his head that would persist for years and years afterwards. 

The sun was high in the air by the time Minho reached the shore.

Water lapped at the edges of the beach in both directions, as far as he could see. White foam brushed against the tan skin of the sand, like a hauntingly familiar friend. The sea water was turquoise, a perfectly green shade of the blue. The same view that Minho would see again and again and again in his dreams, later.

He half-slipped half-scrambled down the rocky slope down towards the beach. His palms scraped against the rough rock to reveal tender skin underneath, but Minho couldn’t even feel the sting in the face of the roaring in his ears that only got louder.

His knees gave out before his mind could.

As soon as his feet hit the sandy shore, his knees were buckling. He collapsed into the damp sand. Wet sand gave way underneath his knees, making deep imprints into the soft ground. Ocean water swept it away, along with what remained of Minho’s lungs.

Minho sucked in a deep breath, to the rhythm of the waves. 

In, out . In, out. 

The water washed over his palms. The scratches on his palms reddened and stung horribly from the saltiness of the water. Pain pricked through the areas where sand had embedded into the wounds, like miniscule needles stabbing at him from all over.

“ Hyung .”

Minho didn’t turn around in fear of what he might see. 

“Hyung. Minho . If it turns out that you lied and you really can’t see dead people, I might just kill you–”

The water rushed in and with it, what was left of Minho’s resolve broke.

He turned his head, and Seungmin was there, except it wasn’t Seungmin .

The spirit faltered, mouth opening and closing in a horribly similar impression of Seungmin. “Oh. Hi, hyung.”

Something wet rolled down the side of Minho’s cheek as he tried his best to take in another breath, just like his grandmother had taught him to. It’s raining in the middle of January , he thought blindly.

“ Shit , hyung–” Seungmin sputtered, closing the distance between them in a matter of a few steps before kneeling down next to Minho. “Hey. Lee Minho, why are you crying?”

Crying? Minho blinked rapidly, and feels more wetness drip down his cheeks. No. I don’t cry. 

He reached up to scrub at his face, harsh stinging sending waves of prickling pain up his arms from his palms. 

“Hey, hey, hey– ”

Then, there were those ghostly hands again, that Minho kept seeing everywhere . Halmeoni, Chan, and now Kim Seungmin.

Minho pressed his eyes shut firmly. His head was buried in his fingers. 

“Hyung,” Seungmin said. “Hyung, just look at me.”

And, when it came to Seungmin, despite everything, Minho still just couldn’t say no.

Minho cracked an eye open, peeked through the openings that his fingers made, and all the breath he’d taken was gone again. 

Barely-translucent hands were covering his own, hovering over the spaces where they connected. Alive or dead, the border blurred. Was Minho dead, too, or was it another illusion that he faintly saw?

“Hi, hyung,” Seungmin cracked a weak smile as his eyes met Minho’s. “Please don’t cry.”

Seungmin’s hands went up in a futile attempt to wipe away the tears on Minho’s face. His face fell when the realization flashed across him that it would be impossible now, with the endless distance in between them.

“... Seungmin ,” Minho said. His voice cracked embarrassingly in between the syllables of the name whispered in-between chapped and pained lips, and it was a pleading beg for something, or anything, or nothing at all , all in itself.

“Guess you weren’t lying about seeing spirits, huh?”

Minho flinched violently, shrinking backwards from Seungmin’s barely-there hold. He shook his head frantically and scrambled in the wet sand to get away from the ghost of the one person in the world Minho hoped he would never have to see in this way.

Before he knew it, he was running. Away from the sea– the fucking sea and the foam– and away from whatever spirits were haunting the shores.

Minho bolted up the hill away from the beach and up the path to his house. Past the window where he knew his grandmother was watching him with those knowing eyes, past the park filled with cotton-candy spun memories.

Then, there was a finger being jabbed in his chest and a screaming voice in his ears.

“Lee Minho,” Kim Seungha screamed, as tears streamed down her face. “What did you do to my son?! ”

Only the desperation of a mother would have caused a tone to warp like that. It’s that voice that will later come to haunt the edges of Minho’s nightmares, the voice that will come to shape every fiber of the guilt Minho carries with him into the city of Seoul and past the sandy beaches of the ocean. 

“I don’t– I can’t–” Minho sucked in a breath, took a step back.

Seungmin’s mother followed him, eyes crazed; glazed over with both grief and fury, of a loss of a son and of a world. “It was you, wasn’t it? It’s always you– you cursed him, you cursed my Seungmin just like how you cursed your grandmother.”

Something rose up in his chest. Guilt, more and more of it until it was all he could feel and it was drowning him, drowning him past belief–

Was this how Seungmin felt?

Guilt, overflowing in Minho’s lungs. 

“You monster ,” She spat, voice breaking with every word. “I hope you never forget what you did to my Seungmin-ah. My baby– oh, Seungmin .”

And Minho–

Minho couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do anything, still can’t do anything but run until the ghosts that are chasing him and dragging him down are gone. In the distance, away from view and off his mind.

“Lee Minho,” Seungmin’s mother screamed. “I hope you never forget how you cursed my son .”

Years later, her words would become the real curse upon Minho’s existence. The irony, again, wasn’t lost on Minho.

There were arms wrapping around his body, non-solid arms that fell through Minho’s limbs and into equally empty air. “Hyung,” Seungmin said, despite the fact that his voice was breaking with every syllable. “Don’t– don’t listen to Eomma. She’s just mad, please– it’s not your fault, hyung –”

“How can you say that?” Minho screamed, and everything broke. He curled up on the concrete ground– when had he gotten there? – and felt his hands coming up to pull at his hair until his scalp was stinging red and numb. “Don’t you know? Don’t you know that it doesn’t even matter, because it’s always going to be because of me that people– that people die, and that people can’t even move on from it because they’re stuck in this fucking world that they can’t get out of?”

Seungmin opened and closed his mouth, wordless in the face of Minho’s rotting soul.

“You don’t even know ,” Minho swallowed. “That’s it, isn’t it? You can’t even remember why you died.”

“How did you know, hyung?” Seungmin asked distantly, voice miles away already.

Minho laughed wetly. “No. No, no, I can’t do this. I–”

Guilt is something that overflows.

Maybe it’s true that grief is the real factor that makes people crumble under pressure, but guilt is the real killer.

Because in the end, it’s the guilt that drives him away. 

It’s the guilt that drives Minho to move his legs, to stand up and walk away. It’s the guilt that makes him buy the train ticket out of Gimpo, an impulse one-way to Seoul. It’s the guilt, the drowning guilt that ironically only increases when Minho gets on the train. 

It’s the guilt that follows Minho from the shores of the ocean all the way to the smokestacks of the city, and the guilt that manifests itself in the shape of Kim Seungmin, running after his hyung who will never be able to make it up to him.

It’s the guilt that sends him back all those years later. 

>

Minho has spent more of his life mourning Seungmin than he has loving him. 

The realization comes on a slow, Sunday morning, when Minho’s sitting in the grass overlooking the sea.

A soft breeze ruffles through his hair as he stares over at the glittering expanse of blue, so serene and so unlike the roiling riptides that had taken away the love of his life to somewhere so close yet so far.

The skin of his palm is smooth, unmarred. When he skims the tips of his fingers over the grass stalks, he feels each ghost over his skin like some kind of greeting. It’s better than the rough sand of the beach that hides millions and millions of secrets, waiting to be uncovered to bite you in the ass. 

There’s a spirit on the sand, though. He’s standing alone, staring in the same direction that Minho’s looking in. Away from land, towards the expanse of the sea and whatever lies beyond it.

If a spirit could be moved by the world, the wind would be whispering words through translucent hair. But, spirits are separate from the world. They only exist in the dreams of those who know enough to reach over into the dreams and move the hearts of the spirits.

The spirit on the shore turns and looks directly at Minho, eyes squinting against the harsh sunlight.

Minho lifts his fingers and flicks them one by one in a sarcastic kind of small wave.

A smile, if you could call it that, spreads across the spirit’s face. Before Minho knows it, the spirit flickers out on the beach and then pops up by Minho’s side without warning.

“Holy shit , Kim Seungmin,” Minho grouses. “Stop doing that.”

“What, your old heart can’t take it?” Seungmin rolls his eyes. “Imagine the headlines. Lee Minho, twenty-five, scared to death. Literally. Did curiosity kill the cat, hyung?” 

“Would still be better than your headlines,” Minho grumbles, sinking down into the grass. Head facing the sky, breaths up towards the air. His hair pillows against the soft grass and Minho resists the urge to sneeze when one of the leafy strands tickles against his nose. “Imagine still being labeled as a freak even in death.”

“Freak accident ,” Seungmin corrects. “They’re different.”

“No, it’s still calling you freaky.”

“You think I’m freaky?”

“Shut up, Kim Seungmin. You don’t know what you’re saying,” Minho sputters, the tips of his ears bright red.

Seungmin shrugs lightly. “I dunno about that one. I’ve been keeping up with the slang from eavesdropping in the bar.”

“Never say that ever again. It’s going to make me vomit.”

“Whatever you say,” Seungmin says cheerfully.

Minho watches, head on his arms, as Seungmin stretches in the light of the midday sun. Light streams through him and hits the ground. In the place where a shadow should be, there is nothing but the light rustling of the grass. 

He thinks about dappled leaves turned to mist by cold, spattering rain. He thinks about Hyunjin, miles and miles away in Seoul, waiting for a spirit who can never come home. He thinks about Kim Seungmin right next to him, waiting for years, for a man who can come home but is too cowardly to. 

Minho feels the words and the feelings rise up in his throat again. This time, for the first time in his twenty-five-godforsaken years of living, Minho doesn’t swallow them back down. He lets them out, bares his soul and his heart to the spirits of the world.

“You were in my dream last night,” He starts. 

“Hyung—“

“I mean, you always are,” Minho corrects himself. “But–”

“What kind of a shitty love confession is this?” Seungmin demands.

Minho sighs, exasperated and helplessly endeared. “It’s not a love confession if it’s been one, dumbass. Get your facts straight.”

Seungmin laughs, a bright sound in the clear air. It makes up for the dulled, dimmed gaze that is a perpetual resident of his eyes now.

“As I was saying ,” Minho grumbles, ears reddened beyond saving now and burning hot. For once, he’s glad that Seungmin can’t touch them himself and feel how warm they are– thankful that his beating heart spelling out the syllables of Seungmin’s name can’t be heard. “Usually, the dreams with you in them are– are about something else, you know, but last night it– last night you were a kid again. It was when we were on the park bench, y’know?”

Seungmin lets out a hum of understanding. “You were a very ugly child, hyung.”

“Shut up ,” Minho snaps with no real heat behind his words. “Anyway– I don’t know if you remember, but that was when I told you that I could see spirits. I thought you would run, or throw the cotton candy in my face, or go crying home to your mom and tell her I was some kind of monster. Instead–”

“I asked you if the spirits floated,” Seungmin finishes with a thoughtful aftertone. “I remember, hyung. My memory’s always been better than you, dumbass.”

“No,” Minho says. “No, because if it was, you would’ve remembered why you died.”

Seungmin blinks rapidly, fingers stalling from where he’s been trying to pull up the roots of grass stalks. “What?”

Minho can’t look him in the eye, so he stares out at the sea instead.

“It was–” Minho’s words stop in his throat. He forces them out, squeezes his eyes shut. “It was around a week after New Year’s. You said that you had to move to Seoul to live with your sister, and I said– I said that if you wanted to go so badly you should just leave .”

“Oh,” Seungmin says. 

“And then you texted me later that day,” Minho continues. Now, the words tumble out of him, unbidden and free. “You were apologizing, saying that you canceled the train ticket. Told me that you were going to wait for me by the beach to apologize in person.”

He looks up, and Seungmin is staring straight at him with those eyes . 

A familiar kind of guilt rises up in Minho’s chest and it takes all of his willpower to tamp it down. Minho’s gaze darts to the side, unable to hold Seungmin’s gaze out of the fear that if he keeps looking he’ll find something rotten amongst the sea of Seungmin’s devotion.

“Oh,” Seungmin says, again, like it’s the only thing he knows how to say.

Minho lets out a bitter laugh. “I guess it’s safe to say I never ghosted any of my friends ever again after that. Your mom found out about it, too, afterwards when she went through your phone.”

“I remember that,” Seungmin speaks up, finally. “I was there for that.”

Minho lets out a breath. “It was during that when I realized that if everyone around you has already figured out that I’m the reason for everything, then maybe I should go. Because, if I left, maybe with that absence, you’d figure it out too and also leave.”

“You’re stupid to think that it would’ve worked.”

“You died because of me , Seungmin.”

“No, I didn’t,” Seungmin snaps, a furrow between his brows. “You didn’t know. You were angry, I was angry– we were both petty barely-adults, hyung. You couldn’t have known that there would be a riptide on the shore that night.”

“But If I had gone , maybe you would still be here.”

“I am still here, Minho-hyung.”

Minho sits up straight and looks Seungmin in the eye. “Would you rather be here like this or as Kim Seungmin , the one who can feel the water on his skin and the one who can feel the breeze through his hair?”

“Is Lee Minho still Lee Minho if Kim Seungmin is a spirit?” Seungmin asks back instead of answering. 

Minho frowns. “Well, yes, I suppose. I don’t see how that matters, though.”

“My answer,” Seungmin says, slowly, surely. “Is that I would rather be in whichever world Lee Minho is in. Is that good enough for you?”

“Why?” Minho bites, too exhausted to care about putting energy behind his words. “Why are you holding on to someone who’s halfway to death, Seungmin?”

“Coming from someone who’s already been there and back, it’s pretty easy to do just that.”

A smile twitches on Minho’s face despite the tremendous amount of effort he puts in to prevent it. “I don’t get you, Kim Seungmin. I really don’t.”

“That makes two of us, hyung.”

Seungmin leans towards Minho. He yelps as Seungmin falls forward, instinctively jerking backwards despite the fact that he knows Seungmin is a spirit who can’t physically touch him. The result is a messy scuffle that results in Minho laying on the grass again, Seungmin’s arms land next to his head, and his face close enough to Minho that their noses almost touch.

“Kim Seungmin,” Minho breathes.

“Lee Minho,” Seungmin returns.

“Lee Minho- hyung ,” Minho corrects. “Dying doesn’t save you from respecting your elders. Don’t try and play that card with me.”

“Lee Minho-hyung, then,” Seungmin says, with a roll of his eyes. “Are you going to leave, again?”

Minho sighs. He feels the breath exhale through his nose and he feels the way the air responds in turn. The breeze rustles against the grass and against his hair in an all-too-familiar caress.

“You would figure out a way to haul your ass over to Seoul and drag me back,” Minho snarks. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened.”

Seungmin snorts. “Good that you know. The real question is, would you resign yourself to a lifetime of abstinence?”

“What’s a dead man doing, talking about lifetimes?” Minho snorts. 

“I thought we were done with that stuff,” Seungmin murmurs. Minho imagines that he can feel Seungmin’s breath ghosting on the top of his lip, imagines that he can hear the very-real-and-alive beat of Seungmin’s heart through the thin fabric of Seungmin’s shirt. 

“We are,” Minho replies, reaching a hand out towards Seungmin’s face. His expression twitches momentarily when his fingers phase through instead of brushing against skin and bone. “But I also told you that a lifetime means nothing to me.”

“Really?”

“Dumbass,” Minho says, with all the fondness that a world can hold. “I spent nine years screaming at you, three years screaming at you a little less, and another five years screaming at you the most I ever have. For what? This treatment?”

“How is it any different than how I usually treat you?” Seungmin shoots back.

Minho breathes in, breathes out. The sea fills his lungs, as do the spirits of the heart. “Kim Seungmin,” He starts.

“Oh no,” Seungmin says, feigning annoyance. “Not another monologue about how amazing I am and how much you love me.”

Minho wishes more than anything in the world that he could smack Seungmin right now.

“Shut your mouth, Kim Seungmin,” Minho hisses. A flush travels up his neck. 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Seungmin says, making a face. “I know. It’s fine, hyung, you don’t have to say it.”

Minho makes a sound of acknowledgement, closes his eyes and lets the sunlight stream through his eyelids as he brands the image of Seungmin into his eyes so that he’ll never forget. Past, present, future, all together. Only if someone were to dig into the depths of his soul and snatch his heart right out of his chest would they be able to take Kim Seungmin from him.

“Don’t apologize, either,” Seungmin continues. “If you really want to make it up to me, just stay. Stay here, with me, until you get old enough that even Halmeoni’s yelling at you to catch a cold and get it over with, until you get old enough that everyone’s forgotten the name Kim Seungmin.”

“So I’m the only one who knows you?”

“So you’re the only one who knows me.”

Minho opens his eyes, cracks a smile. “Is this your way of confessing your love to me?”

Seungmin laughs. “It’s not a love confession if it’s been one, hyung.”

And if someone was to walk by on the beach below, on the rough sands and the turquoise seas, they would hear a man talking to himself. They would look up and see a man laying on the grass high above, alone, laughing at nobody. They would walk away, in fear of that man.

They’d go home, tell their family.

There was a man by the sea, they would say. He was talking to someone– no, he was talking to nobody.

But at the end of the day, nobody could mean anything. 

Nobody could mean yourself, the stars, the sun, the sea, ghosts and spirits. 

Spirits of the soul are always easily swayed to forget, to leave, to run. Spirits of the heart, not so much so. 

To a man who can see the world, nobody might simply mean the spirits of the heart that you keep closest to your chest, the ones you never let escape into the memory of the soul.