Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
– James Joyce, The Dead

On the 1^st of January, in the year 2018, at seven minutes past two in the morning, Kim Seokjin dies on the street.

He dies with a piece of rusted metal wedged into his windpipe, coughing up blood and wheezing for air. He dies lying in the snow in a grimy alleyway, alone.

He stops gasping, stops bleeding, stops breathing, stops completely.

Seokjin dies, but the world isn’t finished with him just yet.

***

When he comes to, everything feels fuzzy and slow, like he’s underwater. He blinks slowly – so he has eyes, he still has a corporeal form, he thinks – and sees a figure leaning over him, dark eyes squinting, brows furrowed, and Seokjin yells.

He doesn’t mean to, but he gets a fright and he jumps up into a sitting position, his head ramming into the other person’s.

“Ow, shit!” he says, but then freezes. There is no pain accompanying the blow. Huh. He must be drugged up on painkillers. His sight is a little blurry, his head a little dizzy, but that’s it. No searing pain like what he remembers feeling briefly before everything went dark. He wiggles his toes, taps his fingertips against his thighs – he doesn’t feel anything worrying, and he seems to be relatively intact. The emergency services must have gotten to him on time.

But this is a strange hospital.

In fact, it doesn’t seem like a hospital at all. Seokjin’s not lying on a bed, he’s lying on what appears to be a floor. Everything is just…white.

“Hey there, are you doing alright?”

Seokjin blinks, looking up at the man. “Uh, no.”

He frowns. “Does anything hurt?”

Seokjin shakes his head. Gingerly he touches his throat and resists the urge to gag. He can feel a gaping slit in his throat, the skin torn open. There’s no blood, no blade, it’s just a tear in his throat that should have killed him.

“How am I still alive?”

“Well,” the man says, “you’re not. You were stabbed in the throat.”

A moment passes, and Seokjin waits for the shock, the panic, the fear to well up. It doesn’t. He touches the ripped skin once more. “How tearrible.”

“Yes,” the man says. He doesn’t look too puzzled either. He wears the expression of a tired cashier dealing with a customer that they suspect might be difficult. “But don’t worry too much! It’s okay, don’t freak out.”

“You’re telling me that I’m dead,” he says blankly, “and not expecting me to freak out?”

The man, for all intents and purposes, looks like someone you’d meet on the street. He’s tall and slender and could be a model if Seokjin didn’t know better, glowing skin and thick lips and an artsy beret tilted on one side of his head, his hair dyed a peachy colour. So maybe not the type of guy Seokjin would see on a regular basis, but someone who wouldn’t look out of place drinking a glass of gin and reading a book in one of Seoul’s hipster cafés.

“You have a point,” he says, crouching down somewhat awkwardly beside where Seokjin is lying. “But try your best. You’re just dead, it’s not the end of the world. And uh, I’d recommend you don’t poke that wound too much. Don’t want to scare yourself out too much, right?”

Seokjin thinks he would feel sick right now, but he can’t feel anything except confused. “Is this…the afterlife?”

The man shakes his head. “No. This is just, uh…how would you describe it? It’s like a waiting room.”

He swallows. The panic and horror he keeps expecting to appear remains mysteriously absent. He does feel a bit anxious, though; Seokjin was never one for much religion. He never really put much weight into any sort of afterlife but what if he hasn’t done enough to get into the good place? “Am I going to be…judged, or whatever?”

“Nope!” The man grins at that. “Seokjin, you have a…special role. You might be pretty important to us, so we have an offer to make you. You can refuse it, of course, but right now it means that you’re not where most people go to. And this—” the man gestures to the overwhelming white around them “—this is just an illusion to prevent sensory overload.” He peers down at him. “I know you humans can get pretty anxious and panicked, and we don’t want that, so…”

“Uh…thank you?” Seokjin presses a hand against his chest, expecting his heart to be racing as he grows more worried. There’s nothing there. Oh, yeah. Dead. “Wait a second.” Who’s we? You humans, he had said. So, this man isn’t a man? “Who are you?”

“I’m Namjoon,” he says. “If you feel up for it, I can introduce you to my partner and we can help you get, well…settled in.”

“I…uh, okay.”

“Excellent.”

Namjoon claps his hands and the white fades away. “Don’t be too alarmed.” There’s a rushing in his ears and a bright light and when Seokjin blinks, a subway train is racing by. He jumps, taking a step backwards.

“Namjoonie!”

He turns to watch Namjoon raise a hand in greeting as a second man appears, grinning at Seokjin. “Ah! You must be Seokjin.” This one is dressed very differently, his bucket hat and sandals combo contrasting with Namjoon’s sleek fashion. “I’m Hoseok. I work with Joonie.”

“Uh…”

“He’s a little overwhelmed still, Hoseok-ah, maybe we should give him time to settle in,” Namjoon says, in a hushed voice. “He hasn’t gotten used to this form yet, either. Still a little detached,” he adds, a quiet whisper but Seokjin hears it nonetheless.

Hoseok purses his lips. “I agree, but we don’t have time to do this right.”

“You guys know that I can hear you, right?”

“Of course!” Namjoon gestures. “Do you know where we are?”

It’s a subway station, almost empty apart from a few commuters standing, scrolling on their phones or checking their watches. It’s a familiar place for Seokjin; he’s been here many, many times before. “Konkuk University Station?” A woman walks by, no, walks right through the three of them. Seokjin gasps but feels nothing; she walks through them without noticing.

“Right you are, my friend. You wouldn’t expect the subway stations to have such a connection to other worlds, but some of them have some really good energy going on in here. We’re back in the human world now, but don’t worry about it. Nobody can see us.”

Namjoon hops down onto the tracks. “This way.”

Seokjin stumbles after him. “What are you?”

“We’re Reapers,” Hoseok answers from behind him.

Seokjin stops. “What, like grim reapers?”

“Kind of? We’re not those creepy ones who scare people for the hell of it.”

“Like the American ones,” Namjoon adds in. “Completely unnecessary.”

“Not to mention the Irish. Why do they need to throw buckets of blood on people? Drama queens. Anyway, we are Reapers, but we don’t kill people.”

“You don’t?”

“Did you see either of us kill you? No, it was that punk on the street who wedged the knife into your throat, not one of us.”

“Hoseok,” Namjoon says, a shade of warning in his throat. Seokjin’s hand finds its way back to his neck, gently touching the wound that remains there.

“Right. Sorry. My point is that we don’t kill people, exactly. We just ferry them to the other side. When someone dies we look after their souls.”

It gets darker the further they walk. Seokjin can see very little, just Namjoon in front of him.

“And bring them to where, exactly?”

“We’ll get to that later.”

“So…you’re bringing me to the afterlife?”

“Not exactly.”

Namjoon sighs. “What you need to understand is that the afterlife isn’t what you humans expect it to be.”

A light appears in the distance. Don’t go into the light. That’s what all the movies say, at least. Seokjin feels worried, but it’s distant, he’s in a haze as he walks. He can’t bring himself to be scared right now.

They keep walking towards the light, and Seokjin doesn’t know where he is, just that he’s not in Seoul anymore. The black turns to grey, and somewhere along the way the tracks below them has turned to a cool, smooth material. It looks like some sort of rock, but not like anything Seokjin’s seen before.

The walls of the underground begin to slip away, and Seokjin blinks at the sudden view.

They’re standing on more of that grey stone, on a strip about ten metres wide. It races off into the distance in front of Namjoon, and when Seokjin looks over his shoulder he sees it stretching far behind him instead of the subway tracks, like he expected.

“Are we on a wall?”

He can’t see much apart from the grey stone and the grey sky. The sky doesn’t even look like the sky; it’s too dark, too still, slate grey stretching everywhere. The only contrast is the white mist swirling on either side of the wall.

On one side it’s light, almost like soft clouds swirling gently. On the other, it stirs about like a whirlpool.

“The gates of hell, as some of you humans call it.”

“Why don’t I feel afraid?”

Hoseok runs his eyes up and down his body. “Right now, you just have the image of your body,” he says. “It’s a physical manifestation of your soul, but it’s more like a hologram than an actual body. Your soul is used to this form, so it conjures it up for you, so your mind doesn’t get too freaked out.”

“That’s awfully nice of it.”

“Because you don’t have your physical body, a lot of your reactions are muted,” Namjoon explains. He looks like he wants to help Seokjin, but he says these words with the calm, practiced ease of an air hostess demonstrating the safety features of a Boeing. “Right now, you don’t have a brain. No nasty chemicals causing you to get stressed. Your heart isn’t racing because right now, it’s on some table top in a Seoul hospital. You can’t start sweating or hyperventilating or panicking because your body can’t create a physical reaction.”

“Oh.” So that explains why he’s not feeling very much. It feels like only a few minutes ago that he could feel the stifling panic, the desperation, the blood—

“Because you’re not used to a form like this all of your emotions are a little bit…” Namjoon searches for a word. “Numbed. Unfortunately, these nice effects don’t last too long. A little while in a non-physical body will bring you up to feeling all sorts of emotions again, just without the physical effects. Before you do get scared, we’d like to explain a few things.”

“Uh…” Seokjin says, intelligently. A part of him believes that this is all still a dream. He’ll wake up in a hospital or ambulance at any moment now, and when he recovers he’ll deflect worried questions with a wacky anecdote about the afterlife. Better yet, he’ll wake up in his bed at home, and have dreamt up the whole scenario. For now, he probably should humour Dream Ghost One and Two. “Okay? I guess?”

Hoseok chuckles. “Ah, humans. Always think they’re being asked when they’re being told.”

Namjoon gestures at the wall. “This is the Boundary.”

“A boundary?”

“The Boundary. It’s both a physical place in the Underworld, and a sort of…magical area. It is the border between the worlds of the living and the dead. As Reapers, we take souls here when they die. Follow me so far?”

“I think so.”

“So, we take souls to the Boundary. There are another group of people called the Guardians that let them through the Boundary.”

“Think of it this way,” Hoseok says. “We’re like chauffeurs. We drive people up to the club and get them most of the way. The Guardians are the bouncers that check their ids and let them get inside.”

Seokjin didn’t know that grim reapers knew so much about clubs. Clubs. Jinx Nightclub. New Years Eve. Cigarette break, what do you think you’re doing, a flash of metal, the snow, the—

Somewhere in the blank calm that has settled over him, Seokjin feels a swirl of discomfort.

“So…” he forces himself to think. “Is it like, heaven—”

“That’s irrelevant right now,” Namjoon says. “We’ll explain about that later. Paradise, punishment – all that shit happens when you’re in the club.”

“And you just bring us to the club.”

“Yeah. And the Guardians of the Boundary – they make sure the souls get in. But they also make sure they don’t get back out again. They open and close the gates and regulate who comes in and out. But like all systems, some fall through the cracks.”

Another puff of discomfort. This one feels like suspicion. “What do you mean?”

“Not even magic is infallible. Sometimes human souls don’t make it all the way here, or sometimes they squeeze back through the cracks and make it back to the human world.”

He frowns. “Like…like a ghost?”

Oh no. He’s beginning to see where this is going, and he doesn’t like it.

“Yes, like a ghost! Sometimes they’re malevolent, sometimes they’re not. Either way, when this happens it causes a lot of trouble and these souls need to be brought back to the Guardians as soon as possible. This happens occasionally, and it’s normal, and we’re used to it, but…”

Hoseok picks up where Namjoon hesitates. “To be honest with you, Seokjin…” his cheery attitude sobers up. “Something is going on that isn’t normal. And it’s causing too many cases of…spiritual leftovers for us to clean up.”

“It’s happened once or twice before, when it happens a little too much to be comfortable,” Namjoon adds. “We can’t do all of it ourselves,”

“And when that happens,” Hoseok says, turning to Seokjin with a grin on his face, “we enlist a little bit of help.”

“Me?”

“We pick a soul who we think deserves another shot at life,” he says, “so congratulations, I guess.”

It’s hard to process the fact that he’s dead.

“You work for us. You’ll be like an undead human, given a fresh start in a rejuvenated body, and you get to go about your life whatever way you want. But in return, you help us deal with the stray souls on the streets. We’ll train you up, don’t worry, and you’ll pretty much be immortal, so I think it’s a win-win situation. You’ll be like a little immortal ghost cop! What do you think?”

Seokjin stares blankly at Hoseok, and wonders if it’s possible to black out if you’re dead.

The answer, as he finds out approximately three seconds later, is yes.

***

He’s given a trial period.

Namjoon insists that he needs time to think the proposal over. He needs to know exactly what he’s getting into, and so he suggests that they will give him both time to think alone, and demonstrations of what he’ll be doing. Unfortunately, this time to think alone means that he’s wandering without a physical body. Nobody is able to see him, talk to him, touch him.

The comfortable numbness that had washed over him previously is beginning to wear off, meaning that he is acutely aware that his worst fear is becoming a reality, and he feels appropriately awful.

If he had eyes, maybe he would cry. Right now, all that he wants is to go home. Play with his pets, joke with his brother, hug his parents. When he was a child, if he had a nightmare he would creep into his parents’ room. His mother always was a light sleeper and would hear him enter, and she would always let him scarper into the bed with them. Regardless of what he had dreamt, he always felt safe between the two of them, her familiar hand in his hair, urging him back to sleep.

He wants nothing more than to do that right now. He can’t, so he does the best he can.

He goes home.

It’s a dreadful mistake.

He comes home on the day of his funeral. It’s horrible. He can’t remember seeing his dad cry so much before, and it tears Seokjin up inside. His brother has never looked so blank. The worst part is the coffin; big and dark and laid with flowers. His body is in there.

As an official ghost, Seokjin can walk through solid material. If he wanted to, he could dip his face beneath the lid of the coffin, have a good look at his own dead face. His beautiful face. He wonders if he’s begun to rot yet, and he’s increasingly glad that his body will be cremated. He could never stand the thought of his beauty decaying.

Even though his form is a projection of his soul that nobody here can see, Seokjin shakes. Funny the little habits you keep as a human.

Lots of people turn up for the funeral. He sees all his friends. Jaehwan looks more like a ghost than he does, looks like he’s going to be sick any second. He doesn’t stop crying. Heeyeon is grim faced. To the untrained eye she looks indifferent, maybe just a little bit pissed off. The only thing that would say otherwise is the way she has a white-knuckle grip on Byulyi (who looks like she’s about to collapse, and not from Heeyeon’s tight grip). Seungjun looks stoic at first, but it’s not long before he stoops to bury his face in Inseong’s embrace.

So many people turn up to pay their respects. People from college, people from work – he sees his boss bow lowly to his parents, apologising – people from his childhood. Some people he barely knew. He knows he should feel flattered, but he’s not. He wanders through them. People like Jo Sungwon, who never liked him and made it obvious. What’s he doing here? Or Jang Yoojung, who snapped at him a month ago and told him to drop dead. Guess you got what you wanted, Yoojung-ah. Even Hyosang has the guts to show up – not only that, but he brings Hunchul with him. Seokjin decides that if he was ever going to haunt someone, he’d be a good option.

He can’t bring himself to watch…it, so he loiters back in his house. His childhood home. His bedroom door is closed, and when he tries to open it his hand sinks through the handle. It’s disconcerting, and Seokjin mentally feels a lurch that he knows would be nausea if he could actually feel sick.

Instead, he lets himself sink through the door. His bedroom is just how he left it, the last time he was home. Blue walls, shelves of Mario figurines, his first acoustic guitar propped up against the corner, a Girls’ Generation poster that’s been tacked onto his wall since 2009. Books that he hasn’t read in years, Nintendo DS game boxes, DVDs, anime boxsets, magazines. A few photos of him and his school friends, showing a Seokjin that was smaller, lankier, without flawless skin and with thick glasses, but a Seokjin that grins at the camera surrounded by friends. He had spotted a few of them earlier. He’s alone in his room, now.

Time spent away from home has led to a fine layer of dust spread on many of his things. His mother tends to use her sons’ rooms as a storage space for the clutter that spreads upstairs; folded laundry rests on the bed, and a few stacks of old magazines and the like are lying haphazardly on the floor.

Seokjin is overcome with the urge to get into his bed.

He knows he can’t, so he leaves the bedroom and goes downstairs.

What is this feeling? Ah, melancholy.

The house is empty – for now – and feels sterile, everything cleaned before the onslaught of visitors that have descended upon the family since the news broke, like vultures over carrion. He thought coming home, to this childhood sanctuary would help clear things up in his mind, but Seokjin feels more lost than ever.

The silence is interrupted by a loud bark. Jjangu. Seokjin follows the noise.

He moves downstairs, a ghost in his own home. Animals are incredible, he thinks, watching as Jjangu yaps, scratches at the floor like he wants Seokjin to take him for a walk. He seems to be looking right at him, and Seokjin kneels in front of him. He tries to pet him, but his hand won’t make solid contact with the white fur. Jjangu whines, distressed. He moves up, to try lick or snap at his hand he can’t tell, but his nose sinks through Seokjin’s hand – or at least, the illusion of it.

Seokjin wishes he could cry.

***

The snow has a quieting effect. It sinks down upon the country, a thick blanket that doesn’t discriminate. Roof tiles, motorways, the tops of cars and umbrellas all get a fine dusting of it. Cemeteries and schools are not spared, neither is the countryside. The snow that night was no storm, nor was it a blizzard, but it was determined, falling through the night to form a thick layer.

There’s something that is seemingly cleansing about snow. It’s bright and clean and cold and starkly beautiful when it falls in its swirling flakes. Give it a few hours and it will turn to sludge, grimy and treacherous, cold enough that even the dead’s ashes must be able to feel it.

The snow swirled softly outside the window as Seokjin’s mother sits on his bed in her nightdress, hands cupped to hold Eomuk and Odengie. She’s crying. There are no gut wrenching sobs, just sniffles and quiet gasps as the tears run down her cheeks and she gently holds his pets. Seokjin sits beside her. He’s already tried reaching out to her. It’s useless. If he had a heart, it would be broken.

“I’m sorry,” Namjoon says from behind him. “For you and for her.”

Seokjin tries to give him a bitter smile. It’s more of a grimace. “Death is apologising to me, huh?”

“It’s not our fault you died.”

“I know.”

“You remember it?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Seokjin reaches up to touch the raw wound in his neck. “You only die once.”

“I’m not too sure about that.” Namjoon moves to stand in front of him. “There’s a storm coming, Seokjin. A bad one.”

“You can stop with the ominous phrases,” Seokjin says, finally dragging his eyes away from his mother. He’s tired. She continues to cry, scratching Eomuk between the ears, oblivious to the conversation happening next to her. “I know you want me to work for you.”

Namjoon’s grin is suspicious. “You’re smart.”

“Isn’t that why you picked me?”

“We weren’t the ones who picked you,” he says, “not exactly. But that’s irrelevant. Are you coming?” He outstretches his hand, palm facing the ceiling.

Seokjin is unsure, but he nods, taking it.

When he next gathers his thoughts, Seokjin is somewhere different entirely. Hoseok stands in the snow in front of him. Namjoon nods. “We’re here,” he says, “to give you a fair demonstration of what this job will be like.”

Hoseok turns to them. “This is the place,” he says.

His feet don’t leave footprints in the snow.

They’re standing outside a low bungalow. Seokjin’s not sure where they are, but it’s nowhere familiar to him.

He feels what might me a twinge of fear when Hoseok draws a sword; an ancient looking thing, from a decorative sheath strapped to his back. Namjoon closes his eyes for a moment. “Straight ahead,” he says. “I can…feel it. Her name is Im Jihyo.” He walks towards the bungalow, and Seokjin feels as afraid as he can be.

Hoseok follows, moving like a panther. When they come to the outer wall of the house they walk straight through it. Seokjin gulps, shuts his eyes and runs after them. He sinks through the concrete like a knife cutting through butter. Namjoon’s steel grey eyes look even more disconcerting in the low light, and he walks without blinking through another wall.

“This way,” Hoseok says.

Seokjin follows them into a kitchen where Im Jihyo lies in a heap on the floor. She’s dead. Seokjin physically jumps back. She’s not very old. Middle aged, dressed in her night wear, a shattered glass on the floor and blood seeping from where here face is pressed down.

“She came down for a glass of water,” Namjoon says. “She fell and hit her head off the counter top.”

Hoseok is the one that moves forward, kneeling where she lies. Seokjin is half-expecting him to swing that great sword of his but he doesn’t. He lays the flat of the blade gently over her back, the point touching the space above her heart. He puts pressure on it, ever so gently.

“It’s okay, Ms. Jihyo,” he says, his voice sweet, comforting. “You’re safe with us. We’ve got you.”

He presses the palm of his hand over the point of the blade and suddenly, there’s a light. It’s a shimmering sort of blue, like someone shining a flashlight through a blue screen, dappled like it’s shining through water. Then, the light climbs out of Im Jihyo’s back, onto the tip of Hoseok’s sword. He stands up gently, the light balancing on the blade.

“This is a soul, Seokjin.”

“What? That’s it?” He peers at it. It’s no bigger than a ping-pong ball. It doesn’t have a distinct shape; it’s very spherical but it shifts, constantly moving, spilling that strange off-blue light over the room.

“Can’t you just put it back into her body?”

“No. The body has cut all ties with the soul now. It won’t survive in that physical form.”

Namjoon digs out a cylinder from his bag, made from a translucent material Seokjin doesn’t recognise. Hoseok dips the soul into it and he screws it shut, nestling the cylinder securely in a strap on the inside of his jacket. When he makes this move, Seokjin sees several other cylinders strapped in, all emitting faint light.

“When someone dies,” Namjoon says, drawing Seokjin’s gaze to meet his own, “it’s already too late for them. The kindest thing to do is to escort their souls to the Underworld safely.”

“But that won’t be what I’m doing.”

“No.” Namjoon shakes his head. “But we’ll show you that another time. We’re tracking a…renegade. We’ll show you what we do with them, soon.”

Seokjin’s eyes drift to Hoseok, holding the sword in his hand. “I think I can guess.”

***

Really, what point is there to life?

Passion, some people might say.

What are Seokjin’s passions?

Does he have any? He’s not sure. He tried his best to get good grades at school, and he did excellently – his parents told him he was doing so well, so he kept studying. They suggested extra curriculars and he engaged enthusiastically. His teachers loved him. His coaches loved him.

His classmates loved him. It’s important to make lots of friends at school! He tried his best to get on with everyone. To be polite, and to be cool, and handsome, and smart, and good at sports. He wanted to be the perfect son.

He had lots of friends.

Did any of them know him?

The real pressures were hidden under complaints told in a joking manner, his anxieties covered by either a cool façade or a comic one, depending on who he was with. He smiles brightly in the family photos, in the yearbook photos, in the selfies for social media.

He’s not unhappy. But he’s uncertain.

He thinks it would be cool to grow up like his father, to make his family proud, so he enters a business degree at college. He has no interest in business.

What does he have an interest in?

Film. He thinks it would be great to act. A hidden dream that he’s never had the courage to pursue. Dramas, films, anything. Even being off-set; the occasions when he walks through the streets and sees a TV crew filming he can’t help but become transfixed. He imagines what it would be like behind the camera; to write a script, to produce a film, to craft the lighting of a scene, to be the director of his own masterpiece.

It’s a foolish dream.

Music. He’s always held a love for different genres. He’s painstakingly taught himself how to play the guitar, from his first stumbling chords from a book loaned from the library, to his first decent cover, to the first time he put something together himself. He doesn’t have a bad voice either, and he begins to scrap together lyrics of his own. An entertainment company scouts him on the street, and for a moment he considers it; he has a good voice, he has a good face, he has plenty of determination. He could become an idol.

He runs away from the scout without giving an answer.

Food. Not just eating, no matter what his friends say. Food is an art of its own, taking different ingredients and mixing them together with enough skill to enhance it as one final product. Of course, he’s only an amateur, it’s only a hobby, but he could learn. Steeped in nostalgic memories of his mother teaching him how to cook, of meals shared with his friends, of his brother’s girlfriend telling him how he would be such a catch and would surely marry a nice girl his parents would love.

Business is more secure, business is more admirable, business is more respectable by his peers and his family. Business it is.

The problem with life, Seokjin thinks, as he enters university, is that everything has already been done. Art, science, they’ve all had countless peaks in the past. What can Seokjin do, what can he achieve to make his life worthwhile, to show how well adjusted he is, to make everyone proud?

He can make money. He can be well-liked.

His undergraduate years are like watching a firework burn through the night sky. Magnificent at first, before burning out with a weak fizzle. He’s no pushover, of course. But he gets on well with everyone by principle. Being well liked is the most important thing. He has so many friends, but still sometimes feels lonely. Even with his best friend, they never speak of how they really feel without the aid of alcohol, without the excuse to forget about it the next day. Appearance is key. Reality is subjective.

He feels lonely. He feels lonely. He feels so lonely. And lost. And unsure. And he hates business but is dedicating his life to it. And he’s not sure who he is, but he knows that the image he’s projecting of himself is more important.

And Seokjin, inevitably, fizzles out.

It happened after graduation. A cumulation of stress and anxiety battles with his feelings of confusion and an overlying sense of numbness to form a cocktail for disaster. One that ends in tears at a family party, one that ends with his parent’s ushering him out of the room and his cousins staring with their mouths open, one that ends with one of his aunts clicking her tongue and shaking her head. The handsome ones are always the crazy ones.

It ends with Seokjin throwing his degree in the trash, it ends with him crying with his parents, it ends with him abandoning his masters to take a course in something that he enjoys. We want you to be happy, his parents say. They mean it, but they’re worried when he decides to take classes on film.

The damage is already done.

Money is tight. He feels guilty and takes up a second part time job working in Jinx Nightclub. His friends know that something’s wrong and he tries (and fails) to talk to them about it. Jaehwan is worrying, and Seokjin hates being a burden. He hates his family walking on eggshells around him. He isn’t weak. He’s not. He’s strong, and he wants to show everyone how much he can do.

But what can he do?

What can Seokjin do that’s worthwhile?

Maybe he can’t do anything.

Maybe if he knew how fast his death was approaching he wouldn’t have cared so much. Maybe he would have realised that it doesn’t matter what others think of you so long as you’re happy in your own skin. Maybe he would have done what was best for him, to make himself happy, instead of trying to be perfect. But Seokjin has always been a fool, who even now, believes in a silly thing called perfection.

He doesn’t go home over winter break. He’s too ashamed. He talks with his mother on New Year’s Eve, a stunted conversation because Seokjin adores her, and she adores him, but he still feels embarrassed, uncomfortable in his own body. He wants to work on it.

What’s his New Year’s resolution?

To be myself.

He’s working the bar on New Year’s Eve. It’s not fun, packed to the brim and so claustrophobic that he can barely breathe, trying to decipher the shouts for drinks over the pumping of the music.

At two o’clock, the bar is beginning to wind down, so he’s able to slip out for his cigarette break (smoking was something he picked up in college because it was the cool thing to do; he doesn’t smoke much himself but uses it as an excuse for a brief escape from the heat of the club – appearance is key, even now). He steps outside the side door into the dingy alleyway at the side of the nightclub. There’s nothing here but rats and trashcans and the entrance that only the employees use.

Go back inside, Seokjin.

It’s cold outside, snow falling slowly.

Go back inside.

He hears a shout. He looks to his left; there’s a woman, and a man. The woman is clearly a patron of the club, dressed for a New Year’s Eve celebration. There’s a man, bigger than her, older than her, tugging at her purse, a hand alarmingly high on her throat. There’s nobody else around.

Go inside and get help, call the police.

If there’s one thing about appearances, Seokjin knows that they can scare people. Making his presence known should be enough to send the guy running. He’s not going to leave someone defenceless like this, is he?

Your fatal flaw.

“Hey!” he shouts, dropping the lighter he wasn’t even intending on using. “What do you think you’re doing?” The man snarls something along the lines of fuck off so Seokjin draws up to his full height, moves down the alleyway. He’s not an excellent fighter but he’s taller and broader than this man and he should be able to scare him off with a punch or two, so he grabs his shoulder—

Appearances can be misleading.

Seokjin is correct in a few things. This is an amateur mugging. He doesn’t know this now, but will later find out that the man just wanted the money, and the unseen rusty knife he’d held in his hand, visible to the woman but obscured from Seokjin, was supposed to be just an empty threat.

Seokjin is also correct when he presumed his arrival would scare the man.

He doesn’t expect him to fight back.

There’s a scuffle, the man trying to push past him and Seokjin tries to tighten his hold with one hand and land a punch in the other, and his heartbeat begins to race with the adrenaline that comes with a brawl and then—

The man, terrified, panics. It’s not premeditated, he didn’t come out to injure someone, he just wanted some fucking money, but he panics and the next thing Seokjin knows, there’s a knife piercing his throat.

He gasps, and blood comes up in a hacking cough. The woman screams, falling back against the wall of the alleyway. The man looks horrified, and scampers off, purse forgotten in the snow.

Time slows down for Seokjin. At least, he thinks it does, because dying seems to take a very long time but in reality, there’s only a limited amount of time someone can survive when their trachea has been punctured and they’re bleeding quite a lot. It all gets a bit blurry from here. His heartrate had accelerated from the previous scuffle, and a lot of the snow is now getting stained red. Possibly more concerning is the fact that he can’t breathe, and he lies on the ground gasping for breath.

He’s terrified. The woman runs for help.

He’s alone.

The snow is cold on his back.

In those final seconds his life flashes before his eyes, and he realises there’s very little too it.

Is this all that Kim Seokjin amounted to?

He gasps, like a fish out of water, trying to breath. He’s in so much pain, he’s so scared, he wants his mother, he wants to see his parents and hear their voices and hold his brother’s hand and he doesn’t want to die, no, help, please, somebody save him he’s too young for this he was going to change he was going to try his best to be happy he hasn’t lived yet this is so unfair this can’t be happening help it’s so sore he can’t breathe he’s so scared scared please help scared scared scared—

On the 1^st of January, in the year 2018, at seven minutes past two in the morning, Kim Seokjin dies on the street.

He dies with a piece of rusted metal wedged into his windpipe, coughing up blood and wheezing for air. He dies lying in the snow, in a grimy alleyway, alone.

He stops gasping, stops bleeding, stops breathing, stops completely.

At eight minutes past two, the Reapers who take on the identities of Kim Namjoon and Jung Hoseok arrive on the scene, shake their heads sadly, and collect his soul.

At eleven minutes past two the woman finds help; she finds her friends, but they think she’s drunk or on a bad trip, so they take her home.

At nineteen minutes past two, Youngmin, the bar manager, goes to look for Seokjin who is dallying on his smoke break. They need him back at the bar. At twenty-one minutes past two he enters the alleyway and finds Seokjin’s body.

The emergency services don’t arrive until seven minutes to three, at which point the club is cleared out, the body is pronounced dead, and all the distressed staff agree to give their statements. An official murder investigation will be launched.

At two minutes to five in the morning the police arrive at the Kim family home.

By the next evening the story has ripped through the city, leaving a trail of devastated friends and classmates and regret behind. By nightfall there are flowers, stuffed toys and candles outside the nightclub. The alleyway is still sealed off for investigation.

At nine minutes past eight on the evening of January 2^nd in human time, the Guardian Taehyung contacts Namjoon and Hoseok to say; “I’ve found one who will be perfect.”

***

Namjoon and Hoseok bring him to his second reaping. One of the streetlights on this path is flickering badly. “I’ve been thinking,” he says, hesitantly. The air feels heavier tonight.

“Yes?”

“Well. I’ve been thinking back to when I was, you know.”

“Alive?”

Seokjin feels awkward. “I think I wasted it.”

Namjoon turns. “Do you want another chance?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I think I do.”

“Wait until tonight,” Hoseok says. “You don’t have to make the final decision until a week after your death. I would suggest waiting until the end of the week and using that time to think. This isn’t a decision you can take back.”

Namjoon holds up a hand abruptly. “Be quiet. It’s coming.”

Fear flickers in Seokjin’s mind. Hoseok draws his sword.

He can’t see anything at first. And then he hears footsteps.

A man walks towards him. He looks like a marionette; his limbs jerk awkwardly, his right arm is twisted in an unnatural position, his facial features are slack, but his eyes look crazed. There’s blood on his shirt.

If Seokjin had his physical body, he guesses he would be frozen in terror. He’s not, so he screams.

“What is that?”

To his horror, the man hears him, his head jerking to the side to look at the three of them.

“It can hear us?”

It takes a step towards them.

Seokjin moves back.

Namjoon’s face looks grim. “It’s a lost spirit,” he says. “A ghost. Can you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“The malintent,” Hoseok says. “It’s broadcasting a desire that’s strong as hell.”

Seokjin is terrified, but he forces himself to focus. At first, he can feel nothing but his own fear as the ghost takes disjointed steps towards them, getting closer. If it can see him, can it hurt him? Can he be hurt in this form?

There’s an awful feeling in the air, a sense of dread that heightens the fear in his soul. There’s something so sinister about the figure, wafting a murderous rage. This is no Casper the friendly ghost. This ghost wants to kill.

“I can feel it,” he whispers. “It wants to hurt something. It wants to hurt us.”

“Not all ghosts are like this,” Namjoon says, taking a step backwards. “Some are just lost. Some want revenge. Some, are just angry.”

“About what?”

“Anything. It doesn’t matter how they die. If they have enough ill feeling in them without a distinct goal to root it down, it turns into…this.”

“And if their presence is strong enough,” Hoseok says, falling into a low stance, “it can possess a body.”

“That’s…”

“A ghost has possessed a live human. And from the looks of things, has been using it to cause trouble already. We have to extract the ghost and destroy or capture its soul without doing harm to the poor fucker it’s inhabiting.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

Hoseok grins. “None of us have a physical form right now. The human body can’t touch us. If the ghost wants to fight, it will have to rise up of its own accord.”

“And can the ghost harm us?”

Namjoon hesitates. The human stumbles closer now, and even though it isn’t able to touch him, Seokjin jumps back. “It can’t harm myself or Hoseok, because our souls don’t work the same way as yours do.”

“But it could harm my soul?”

“I’d stand back if I were you.”

Figures. Even when you’re dead, you can’t catch a break.

The ghost lunges at Hoseok, but the human body sinks right through him and stumbles past. Hoseok turns around, lashing with a sword and nicking the human’s ankle. To Seokjin’s surprise, the sword makes contact with the human body, and it stumbles to the ground.

“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” he says to it, the dark steel of his sword glinting in the flickering light. “We know that you’re in there. If you come along quietly, you won’t be harmed. If not…we’ll destroy you and the body you’re inhabiting.”

The body grabs at Hoseok but it’s fingers slip straight through once more. It snarls, features finally showing emotion.

“Why don’t you come out of that shell of yours,” Namjoon says, “if you really want to hurt us.”

The human body begins to crawl away.

“That’s not going to work, I’m afraid.” Hoseok hefts the sword in his hand. “Can I just stab it already?”

“Hoseok!”

“Sorry, I know, I know, I just don’t want to scare Seokjin too bad.”

That’s when it happens. It’s like watching another body rise from the human body. This one is also male, but much older, with a dark expression. He looks like a human, and it’s only when Seokjin stares hard that he can notice the slight translucency of its form. The human body lies flat, unmoving.

The ghost has finally come out to play.

“Hello, ghostie,” Hoseok says, grinning. “Ready for some fun?”

The ghost howls, a noise that makes Seokjin’s mind feel like it is about to break. Then it lunges.

It makes contact with Hoseok this time, crashing into him, but Hoseok’s sword is quick to shear at its side. The ghost howls again, this time in pain, before veering off to the side. It goes for Namjoon this time, maw gaping and hands reaching, but he’s ready. Namjoon opens his arms to it, an arm wrapping around its neck like he’s pulling it into a headlock. Seokjin blinks, stepping back further. So, when they’re all in a ghost form, they can touch each other like normal beings? He squeezes his eyes shut. His brain feels like it’s going to break (he remembers belatedly that his brain is nothing but ash, now).

Namjoon pulls the ghost to the ground. “Now, Hoseokie,” he grits out.

Hoseok runs, slides the blade of the sword straight through the ghost, striking where the ribs should be. The blade sinks through with a pained cry, pinning it to the ground.

“Now,” Namjoon says, pressing his hand onto its chest. “You’re ours.”

“Come closer, Seokjin, see how it’s done.”

He edges nearer, timidly. Just like the previous night, a light shines up. This one is much darker through, a murky brown that slowly slides up. Once it leaves the ghost’s body, the ghost disappears, leaving just the murky brown light flopping on the street.

“And that’s that,” Namjoon says, pulling out one of his cylindrical containers.

The soul isn’t done yet, however.

Seokjin’s not quite sure what happens, but he sees the brown mass move towards him and to his horror, it sticks to his chest. There’s another light shining now, a muddy red flicker and then—

Its form begins to reappear, half-formed it lunges towards the pavement. Seokjin doesn’t think, apart from we can’t let it escape. He lunges for it, looking at the red light still visible, reaches out and grabs it, pulling it towards himself to keep it secure and then—

Pain.

It’s unlike anything he’s experienced before, it’s unnatural – he didn’t think he could feel pain in this form, but this feelings like his soul is being torn apart, eroded at the edges, and he tries to scream—

And then Hoseok is there, sword flashing, and the ghost’s soul is torn from Seokjin. It hits the ground once more, and he can see the ghostly form beginning to re-emerge around it, but Hoseok doesn’t let it. He pierces the soul directly with his blade, there’s a hissing sound like a cry of pain, and the soul contorts awfully and then—

It’s gone.

Seokjin is crying. Not with tears of course, but he’s shouting, screaming, clawing at the hand Namjoon puts on his shoulder. “What the hell was that?”

“Some of them are cleverer than we expect,” he says. “I’m sorry that happened. We were too lazy. The ghost recognised that you weren’t like us and tried to attack your own soul.”

“It’s gone now,” Hoseok says, sheathing his sword, face grim.

“Gone where?” Seokjin looks around wildly. “It’s not in one of those cylinders.”

“I destroyed it,” Hoseok turns to face Seokjin. He looks more serious than Seokjin has ever seen him. “We’re supposed to bring souls make to the Underworld. If we have to, we destroy them.”

“A fate worse than death,” Namjoon says. “More painful, too. But that soul is gone now, eradicated. It can’t hurt you anymore. We’re sorry it happened—”

“You’re sorry? A ghost nearly sucked out my soul, and you think this is going to make me want to pick up this job?”

Seokjin feels nothing but his own terror. He was a fool, to think he could do anything like this. A misguided fool who still clung to the hope that he could make a difference in this world.

But just like in life, in death Seokjin is incapable.

***

January 6^th. The Feast of the Epiphany.

Seokjin passes through the day like a leaf on the wind, with no autonomy or self-will. He just is.

There’s a deep uneasiness rising in him, the feeling that everything he’s ever known is falling apart. If Hoseok and Namjoon hadn’t found that ghost, would it have killed someone? Hurt someone? They said that this is happening more frequently. How many people in the country are victims to something like it?

They need help to protect the human world from those creatures.

And Seokjin has the chance to help. The chance to protect his city, his friends, his family, to do more in death than he ever did in life, and to get a second chance to do the things he wanted to do, to be who he wanted to be.

And he’s too cowardly to take it.

He recognises the street he’s drifting through. There’s a bar on the corner, one he used to frequent with his friends. Only half thinking, he dips in through the walls. His soul aches with a cold shock. You look like you’ve seen a ghost!

The bar is the same as it’s always been, aesthetically pleasing red lighting and comfy vintage armchairs in the corners. Along the smooth bar counter, a maze of empty shot glasses in front of him, sits Jaehwan. Junghwan is beside him, and they talk lowly to each other.

For a moment, Seokjin thinks what he would do if he was still alive. He would run in, apologise for being late and take the empty seat to Jaehwan’s right. He would nag Seokjin, while Junghwan would buy a round with a soft grin. They would complain about their studies, gossip about their classmates, bemoan Junghwan’s latest romance failure. As the night goes on, they would try sweettalking the bartender for a free shot, they would bicker, might chat with some strangers. If Seokjin was feeling particularly adventurous, he would move over three barstools to the right, where an attractive blond stranger sits alone, nursing a beer. If he was interested, he would use his best pick-up lines, if not Jaehwan and Junghwan would tease him relentlessly. Either way the night would end with a grin on his face, and for a while he’d be able to forget the bubbling uncertainty within him.

But Seokjin is dead.

He walks up to them slowly, but neither of them can see him.

“When’s your other friend coming?” one of the bartenders asks, nodding at the empty stool next to Jaehwan. “He’s late, tonight.”

Jaehwan’s hand freezes, halfway to tipping another class of amber liquor down his throat. “He’s not coming,” he says, sullen.

“Did you three fight or something?”

“Now isn’t a good time,” Junghwan says, firmly.

Jaehwan puts the glass down with more force than is necessary. “I can’t stop thinking about him,” he says, quiet.

Junghwan looks at him silently. “He wouldn’t want that, you know,” he says. “He wouldn’t want you to keep thinking of him sadly. He would want you to remember him happily. And he’d want us to be happy, too.”

But Seokjin doesn’t. He doesn’t want to be forgotten by them. If he goes to the Underworld, if he moves on from this world, he wants to be remembered by the people who love him. If he only brings them sadness, is he worth remembering?

Seokjin deserves to be selfish, after all of this time.

Life goes on for the living while the dead stay dead. Junghwan and Jaehwan begin to speak about something different, and he realises that he will always be a shadow to both of them now. They will think of him as the best friend who died tragically, and they will go about their lives. In ten years’ time, he will be long forgotten. His parents will die, his brother will get over it, his friends will all move on and in twenty years there will be nobody who thinks of Kim Seokjin, not even the man who murdered him, not even the woman who saw him die.

Seokjin is nothing more than a ripple in a pond, the falling of the leaves in autumn, ephemeral, invisible.

He’s nothing.

He looks up from Jaehwan and Junghwan to see dark eyes staring at him. It’s the blond stranger, unmissably human, but he looks at him. Not through him, but at him. He sees him, he’s sure of it. The moment breaks as soon as it came, and the stranger looks away. But Seokjin is sure of it; he saw him. Even when nobody else can, not his mother, not his best friends.

A strange feeling begins to swallow him up. Determination.

Even if not many people can feel it, he’s still here. He can still be seen.

He’s still Seokjin.

He exists. And that has to count for something, right?

Seokjin leaves the building, walks out into the busy street outside. Life continues, vibrant, people passing through him. “Namjoon!” he shouts. He’s not sure how else to find him.

“Hoseok!”

He marches through the crowd with purpose, although he has no idea where he’s supposed to be going. “Namjoon!”

“You called?”

He turns around to find the two of them standing side by side. People walk straight through the three of them. Seokjin is surrounded by life, although he himself has none.

“I’ve made up my mind.”

***

Taehyung is the first Guardian that he meets. He too, has a human appearance, like Namjoon and Hoseok. Taehyung has ashy hair that falls into his startlingly bright eyes – they’re grey, like the Reapers, but brighter. He smiles warmth, and there’s a youth to his face that would lead Seokjin to think him younger, if it weren’t for the fact that he knows he’s a timeless being that as probably lived for thousands of years.

That doesn’t stop Taehyung from greeting him warmly. “Seokjin-ah! I’m so glad you decided to join us. When I saw your soul, I knew that you’d be perfect for the job! You have a splendid soul.”

“It matches my face,” he says, trying to inject some of his humour back into the situation.

Taehyung laughs loudly. They stand upon the steps of a massive temple. This place doesn’t seem like the Underworld. Here, in fact, is pretty quiet; a gorgeous building surrounded by serene gardens. It’s where Taehyung and some of the other Guardians live.

Taehyung leads him away from the temple, where Namjoon and Hoseok converse on the steps. “So, what do you think of this place?”

“The Underworld?” Seokjin is honest. “I didn’t think it would be this nice. I thought it would be…smaller. More fiery pits.”

Taehyung nods. “A lot of people think that. However, this world is bigger even than your world. It’s a vast place. You might think it’s nice now, but some parts…well. They don’t matter. You’ll never be there.”

There’s a crashing noise in the difference. Taehyung rolls his eyes. “King Yan and Pluto are fighting again,” he says, with a sigh. “Millenia of co-existence and these Elders still can’t get their act together.”

Seokjin’s not sure how to process this information, so he just nods.

“Anyway, right now I’m here to explain to you the details of your job. Namjoon and Hoseok will be showing you the ropes in the human world of course, but when it comes to the Underworld you’ll mostly be dealing with me.” 

“So, you’re like my boss.”

“Exactly!”

The gardens here are stunningly beautiful, rich blooms and flowers unlike anything Seokjin has ever seen before. They walk in silence for a few moments, and Seokjin takes everything in. If this is the Underworld, maybe eternity here wouldn’t be so bad.

But, he reminds himself, this is where the Underworld officials live. Imagine what they aren’t showing you.

“This job is an unusual one,” Taehyung begins. “At the moment, we don’t know how bad the cracks in the Boundary are, nor do we know much about their nature. However, there have been more disturbances of late especially along the points that cross over with South Korea, specifically in Seoul. I can’t tell you how many you’ll have to deal with. It might be one a month. It might be twice daily.”

Seokjin thinks of the horrible spirit against him, and he shudders.

“There are three types of souls you may come in contact with.” They start down a path of pale stones through. Beside them, a stream flows, the water dark. “Class A, well, they’re easy. Mostly they’re harmless. These are the souls that get attached to their home world. Maybe they want to protect a loved one. Maybe they have some sort of goal they need to fulfil before they can peacefully move on. For the most part, these guys are harmless. Unless they’re actively causing you trouble, you don’t need to worry too much about them.”

“Do they…haunt people?”

“Sometimes? But mostly just because they have nothing better to do. Being a ghost is boring.”

Yeah. Seokjin can relate.

“Class B…Namjoonie told me you encountered one of these the other night.”

Seokjin swallows. “It was…pretty awful.”

“These souls are human spirits. A little like Class A, but they’re filled with the desire to harm, or cause suffering. Maybe they had shitty lives and want revenge on society. Sometimes they’re bitter for no apparent reason. Depending on how much of their soul remains, they can appear like the one you fought, and possess people. Sometimes they’re little more than poltergeists.”

The soul they destroyed has filled Seokjin with a blank terror. If that’s only Class B, he doesn’t want to know what Class C is…

“The final type…hopefully you won’t ever have to deal with it,” Taehyung says, voice tapering into a sober tone. “First of all, there’s something you need to know about the universe.”

“And what’s that?”

“The Underworld isn’t just the afterlife for humans.”

“So like…animals?”

Taehyung looks a little exasperated. “Well, yes. But my point is that the human world isn’t the only one out there, and creatures from other worlds all come to the Underworld when they die.”

The fear grows. “But if there’s cracks between the Underworld and the human world…”

“Yeah. Some of those creatures can get through.”

Shit. “Define what you mean by creatures.”

“Oh, you know. Demons are a common one. Different types of vampires, shapeshifters. The monsters from all of those myths that you thought were just legends.”

“Oh. Excellent. Good to know. And I’ll have to deal with them? Me?” He’s beginning to freak out. Kim Seokjin is not known for his bravery. Fighting vengeful human souls is bad enough – but demons? Suddenly he thinks back to every fairy tale and story he learned as a kid, to the monsters he feared under his bed. Then he thinks about all of the terrors he doesn’t know about. Self-doubt is beginning to creep in again.

“Which is why you need a weapon,” Taehyung says, taking Seokjin’s arm and leading him off of the path. He brings him through the trees, taller and thicker than any Seokjin has ever seen before. The lush garden seems to sprawl forever, but then a hill rises up. At the top of the hill is another building. This temple makes Taehyung’s look like a dog’s kennel.

“What is this place?”

“That’s Elder Yeomra’s residence,” Taehyung says, still guiding him. “There’s something I want to show you.”

“Yeomra?” Seokjin blinks. “Yeomra-Daewang?”

“Exactly. The fifth king of the Underworld in your mythology. Here, he’s an Elder. But that’s not relevant.”

Taehyung leads him to a well. “The water from this well runs through this hill,” he says. “It’s filled with Yeomra’s power. Of course, one of the thing Elder Yeomra was known for was his ability to bring the dead back to life. Tools created and bathed with this water gives them special abilities.”

Seokjin thinks back to Hoseok’s sword, the one that was able to pierce both human flesh and the spirit of the ghost. “It can harm the living and the dead.”

“Exactly.”

Taehyung touches the bucket at the well. “The smiths create these weapons, but the well chooses the bearer. It is something that has to be earned.” The bucket has water already in it, dark as the night.

“Drink.”

In the Underworld, Seokjin has a physical presence like he used to. He drinks for the first time in days, cupping his hands and lowering it into the water, bringing it up to his mouth. Some of it splashes on his face, and it’s the first physical sensation he’s felt in what feels like forever. The water is sweet, but freezing cold.

“Lower the bucket.”

He fixes the bucket back over the well and lowers it gently. The well is deep and dark, and he cannot see anything below. It’s like a tunnel to hell, he thinks, except he’s already here. It’s a long time before he hears the faint splash of the bucket reaching the water.

“And pull.”

He begins to pull it back up, but there’s resistance. Seokjin frowns, adjusting his stance on the ground and putting more force into his movements. The water can’t be that heavy. It’s as if the bucket has been filled with stones and not liquid.

He grunts as he moves the pulley with fiercer movements. Slowly, the bucket begins to rise out of the water, up through the tunnel. “Why is it so much harder?” Taehyung doesn’t answer.

Eventually, the bucket comes back into view and he grabs at it, hauling it safely over the side of the well. There is very little water in the bucket, to his amazement, and there is no indication of any weapon; he half expected a sword like Hoseok’s. Instead, there is a little cylinder of metal. It’s a dark metal, almost black, only about four inches long.

“Ah,” Taehyung says, with a mischievous grin. “It will serve you well.”

“This is it?” Seokjin asks, picking it up. He expects there to be a frisson, a moment where he feels it’s power surging through him, but it doesn’t happen. “This is what I’m supposed to use to destroy demons?”

“Looks can be deceiving,” is all that Taehyung says. The weight of the job Seokjin has taken on feels more insurmountable than ever.

***

As darkness creeps into the Underworld, Hoseok presents him with a medallion on the steps of the Guardian Temple.

“During my time in the human world, I have learnt many crafts,” he says. “Which I have used in my life here. Medallions are traditionally given by Reapers to those who help them. I crafted this with gold mined from Paradise and bathed it in water from Yeomra’s Well.” He smiles, his mouth heart-shaped and kind. “I made it almost four hundred human years ago, but it will never be complete until it contains a soul.”

The medallion is a beautiful piece of metalwork. It’s spherical, intricate gold designs crossing over a hollow centre, hanging on a fine chain.

“On your return, you will be in a new human body,” Taehyung explains. “You will look as you used to, feel as you used to. But your soul will inhabit a separate medallion. If your body is harmed, it doesn’t matter. You will be healed. But protect your medallion. If this is destroyed…”

Seokjin thinks back to Hoseok stabbing the spirit. “I understand.”

Hoseok reaches out gently, touches two fingers against Seokjin’s heart. The light from his soul filters out, a rich orange in colour. Hoseok holds it gently in his hands before unlocking the medallion. The light shines from within its gold cage.

“See you soon, Seokjin!” Taehyung says cheerily. Hoseok gives an encouraging nod, his soul resting in his hands, and Seokjin closes his eyes.

There’s a sensation, like dizziness, extreme vertigo, the sway that comes when you look down from a height. Then Seokjin feels.

He feels himself breathe. He feels himself pressed against a surface. He feels the cold ground, frost-stained blades of grass against his skin, he feels the snow dampen his clothes. He feels the fresh air against his body, he feels the heart in his chest beat.

Seokjin feels alive.

He opens his eyes.

“Welcome back,” Namjoon says, offering him a hand up.

***

“A few house rules,” Namjoon says, unlocking the door to the apartment. “On how to take care of your new body.” The key doesn’t fit, and he sighs, fiddling with the keyring.

“Do you have a new body too?” Seokjin asks, noting his newfound physicality.

“Nah. We can choose a form as we please. You’re somewhere in between now; you have a human body, but spirits will be able to touch you too.”

“Great. So I’m in all kinds of danger.”

“Exactly. But you’ve nothing to worry about.” Namjoon nods at the medallion that hangs around his neck. “That medallion has magical powers,” he says. “Don’t roll your eyes! As long as it’s safe, you will be too. Even if you’re torn limb from limb, if your medallion is safe, it will heal you when it touches your remains.”

“Wow, that’s comforting,” Seokjin says blankly. “So I can’t feel pain. Great.”

“I never said that.” Namjoon says. “Oh, you can feel pain. And the healing process is even more painful. But you won’t be destroyed. Ah! I got it.” He pushes open the door. Not for the first time, Seokjin begins to doubt his decision.

Namjoon leads him into the apartment. It’s a fairly nice building, an alright area. The apartment is small but suitable; Seokjin won’t be here permanently, after all. There’s a living space with a couch and a kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom. Everything that he needs for his solitary existence.

“How can I even pay for this?”

“The Underworld has vast resources when it comes to precious metals,” Namjoon says. On the countertop there are several documents. “Your new identity.”

Seokjin reads the name. “Jeon Seokjin.”

“We kept most of your information the same, so you would remember it. These are just precautionary, but we do need a paper trail of your existence. Kim Seokjin is still dead.”

He doesn’t need reminding. Sometimes he fools himself to thinking that he’s alive. In reality, he’s little more than a zombie. A dead man walking with the purpose of killing ghosts. His literal soul hanging around his neck is reminder enough.

“Most of your bodily functions continue as normal,” Namjoon says, “so you can eat and drink and breathe, but even if you don’t your body will be fine. Like I said, magic. But I’d recommend you try acting like a normal human being. It would be awkward to explain to someone why you’re able to stop breathing, am I right?”

“You certainly are efficient,” Seokjin says, wandering through the impersonal, cold room.

“Myself and Hoseok will be around a lot,” he says, looking through the cupboards of the kitchen. “But we’ll be pretty busy. We’ll try to be around for your first go, though. In fact, Hoseok thinks there’s a lost spirit hanging around Hongdae that will be a gentle first time.”

Seokjin tunes him out as he wanders into the bathroom. There’s a large mirror there, and for the first time since the New Year he looks at himself. He looks just as handsome as ever. He’s the same person; wide shoulders, plump lips, dark eyes, dark hair, smooth skin.

He’s looking at a dead man.

“Namjoon?” He watches the dead man move his mouth. “What happens if I see them?”

“See who?”

“My family.” Parents, big brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, teachers, classmates, colleagues, exes, one-night-stands, his murderer. “Will they know me?”

Namjoon takes a moment to answer. “No.”

“I see.”

“Their memories of you will still be intact. They’ll still know you as their son who died. But if they saw you in the street…they wouldn’t recognise you.”

It’s selfish, but he thinks that the only thing worse than seeing his mother cry will be to see her and for her not to recognise him. The sorrow he feels is much more palpable now that he has a heart to ache in his chest.

“I know it’s hard, but this entire operation runs under wraps. The more humans find out, the more troublesome they get.” Namjoon scrunches his nose. “I’ve always been fond of humans, but there are some risks we can’t take. None of the people from your life will ever know you still exist.”

Does Seokjin still exist if nobody knows him?

Of course he does, he tells himself; he’s standing here today. Looking at his reflection in the mirror. His body is immaculate and functioning perfectly, nothing but the shadow of a jagged line on his throat to suggest otherwise. Yet somehow it still feels as if he’s being slowly washed away, like the erosion of cliffs along the sea. Where will he be in a week, a month, a year?

He hasn’t even started his job yet and he feels like he’s crumbling.

***

The first reaping is heartbreakingly easy.

It comes four days after his return to life, four days of dragging seconds and loneliness as Seokjin struggles to adapt, struggles to find the motivation to begin engaging with people again. When your life has been so drastically shattered, how do you even begin to go about picking up the pieces?

He’s outside one morning, just as dawn begins to discolour the sky, smoking a cigarette and listening to the sounds of the early morning city. His cigarette intake has gone up exponentially; it’s not like he has to worry about damaging his body anymore, and it gives him something to do. That’s when he feels it.

It’s a tugging in his gut. He feels a disturbance. He can’t put his finger on what it is, but he can make an educated guess.

Like a magnet, he’s being drawn somewhere. He stubs the butt of his cigarette in his ashtray and leaves the apartment, making sure he has his useless stick that Taehyung gave him, and Namjoon’s cylinders.

Seokjin is quite a bit terrified. It’s sharper now that he has a physical form again. He can feel the sweat beading on his forehead as he walks slowly through the streets, to the pull of this energy. His heart thuds, snakes dance in his stomach.

“Are you ready for this?”

He’s only half surprised when Hoseok is at the corner of the street.

“No,” he says, honestly. Hoseok’s smile is a little tight, a little grim, but encouraging. “I didn’t want you to be alone the first time.” His sword hangs heavy in his hand. “If anything happens…”

Seokjin’s tongue feels heavy in his mouth. He doesn’t speak but he nods and feels a rush of warmth for Hoseok (there’s something very human about him, and Seokjin thinks that maybe they could be friends).

The pull is stronger here, but it isn’t as dreadful as the last reaping he witnessed. He turns the corner, and that’s when he sees him.

The ghost looks forlorn, lost and lonely as it sits in the middle of the sidewalk. It looks like a man, early twenties; younger than Seokjin himself, sitting in outdated clothes and a hairstyle like he walked out of the nineties.

There’s no aggression radiating off the ghost, he realises.

Seokjin takes a deep breath.

“Hello.”

The ghost looks up. “You can see me?”

Seokjin moves closer. Hoseok trails behind. “Yeah. I’m like you.”

“Lost?”

“I guess you could say that.”

The boy cranes his neck to look up at the skyline. “It’s been a long time since I was here. I don’t like it. It’s changed too much.”

“What happened?”

The ghost looks back at Seokjin. “I’m not sure. I was…elsewhere. And now I’m back in Seoul. Again. I was dragged back.”

Dragged back. That doesn’t sound too good. What’s dragging souls back to the human world?

“I can help you get back, if you want.” Seokjin is less terrified. Don’t get him wrong – he still feels like he’s going to shit himself with fear, but it’s a little more manageable. He wanted to become an actor, for crying out loud; at least he can force his voice to remain even, he can pretend to be calm even when he isn’t.

He sits down beside him.

“What’s your name? I’m Seokjin.”

There’s a pause. “Sanghyuk, I think.”

“Do you want me to send you home?”

Neither Seokjin or Sanghyuk have a home, but he can send him where he belongs.

Sanghyuk is quiet for another moment. Out of his peripheral vision, he can see Hoseok shifting.

“I wanted to come home,” Sanghyuk says, “but this isn’t my home.” He meets Seokjin’s eye, pale, slightly translucent. Seokjin nods. He glances him at Hoseok.

“You’ve seen what we do,” he says quietly. “It will feel right.”

Seokjin carefully pops open one of the cylinders. “It’ll be alright, Sanghyuk,” he says, placing his hand gently on Sanghyuk’s chest, only mildly surprised when it makes contact. The pull he’s been feeling is even stronger how, like it has been coming from Sanghyuk’s soul the entire time. This time, Seokjin focuses on pulling it. Magnetism goes both ways, right? He finds the pull, and instead of giving in to it he wills it to come towards him—

Sanghyuk’s soul is a warm green that creeps out of his chest, shines in Seokjin’s palms.

“You’re in good hands,” he says, quirking a smile. “I promise.”

Sanghyuk smiles in return, softly, before his form begins to retreat back into the soul. The soul feels strange this close – it doesn’t feel like a real physical thing, more like a buzz of energy. Seokjin tips it gently into a cylinder, and the warm green tones of Sanghyuk’s soul become muted.

“And that’s that,” Hoseok says. “Easy.”

Yes, he feels relieved that it was easy. But Seokjin doesn’t feel totally reassured. He gets the feeling not all the souls will be like poor Sanghyuk.

***

It's almost two weeks before Seokjin feels the pull again. He spends the days watching anime and dramas, reading Wikipedia pages on demons, and chain smoking when he can't fall asleep. It's increasingly hard to adapt to life as a dead man. He's almost relieved when he feels the pull; the calm before the storm is a nerve wrecking one.

The pull is different this time. It leaves a different feeling in his gut; something more ominous, but subtle, something that would have been hard to miss if it weren't for the fact that he is anticipating it. It leads him through the Seoul streets, until he walks further away from the city centre. He eventually reaches a mostly residential area, high rise apartments on one side of the street, an empty playground on the other. One of the swings rattles as Seokjin walks by.

To his growing dismay, Hoseok doesn't appear.

The tower on the corner is like a radio station broadcasting distressing signals. Somebody walks ahead of him through the doors, and Seokjin follows, nodding when they hold the door open for him. He looks vaguely familiar, but Seokjin doesn't follow the train of thought. They won't recognize him from when he was...alive. He focuses on appearing nonchalant, as if he belongs here, and isn't following mysterious ghost signals to a random apartment.

In fact, Seokjin thinks, as they enter the elevator together, he has no idea what he's going to do about the ghost. It's not like he can just march into an apartment in the middle of the evening screaming about a ghost. They would think he was crazy, dangerous, demented. What people think of him still matters, even now. If he looks suspicious the police will be called, and now that he's in a physical body again Seokjin doubts that he can just slip through handcuffs.

He decides, as the elevator begins to rise, that he will try to scout the area, find out where the ghost is, and come back at night.

He pushes the button for the top floor. When the man beside him gets out he'll stop at every floor until the pull is stronger. It turns out that he doesn't have to wait for very long; the man gets out on the third floor, and as soon as the doors pull open he feels it.

The man gives him a suspicious raised eyebrow as they get out together. Seokjin can feel his ears grow red. He lowers his head and marches off quickly down the corridor, hoping that the man enters his apartment before he meets Seokjin skulking around again.

A door opens and a woman steps out, a deep frown set on her face. Seokjin has a brief moment where he wonders if she could be— but no, she marches off down the hall.

However, when Seokjin passes by her door, he feels...

Evil.

"Stay away from my daughter," he hears a voice from behind him, and he startles. He slips back quietly, peeking around the corner. He spots the woman he spotted earlier, standing up to the man with a finger poking his chest.

The man is on the defensive, palms raised, eyes frustrated. "I haven't gone near her."

"Liar," the woman spits. "Whatever you've done to her - reverse it. Stay away, Min Yoongi. Or I'll call the police."

"Do you think they'll believe you?"

"You can argue with them from behind bars. This is your last warning!"

The woman turns on her heel and the man (Min Yoongi?) rolls his eyes, unlocking the door to his apartment. Could he be the cause of the disturbance?

He stops the woman as she passes. “Excuse me!”

She turns to him. She looks tired, worn, but not unkind.

“I couldn’t help but overhearing,” he begins, sheepishly. “Is that man causing you trouble? I might be able to help.”

***

The woman’s name is Sunye, and when Seokjin introduces himself as a new neighbour she invites him in for a cup of coffee. That’s how he gleans several important pieces of information;

• Min Yoongi is the blond man living down the hall. He seems quiet and unassuming, if not a little cold. He claims to be a psychic, and Sunye tells him that all sorts of people come traipsing up their hallway looking for him to contact the dead.

“It’s not natural,” she says, looking concerned as she glares at the dregs of her mug. “He does things in there. I don’t know what. Sometimes I wonder if he could be a demon. But they don’t exist, right? Maybe he’s in a cult. Some of the neighbours are afraid of him, and he threatened me and my daughter and now she’s acting strange.”

• Sunye is a single mother with a full-time publishing job and a seven-year-old daughter. When one of Min Yoongi’s clients knocked on her door in the middle of the night for the third time that week, she made a complaint, to which he warned her never to set foot near his apartment again or bad things would happen to her and her family.

“A while later, Jieun started acting very strange.”

“How so?”

Sunye rubs her temples. “She doesn’t sleep at night. I go into her room and she’s standing wide awake at the window and doesn’t seem to notice me come in. She’s been acting up more, and when she’s scolded by her teachers or by me or her grandparents she blames it on Hana.”

“Who’s Hana?”

“An imaginary friend, I think.”

“And you think that she’s been…cursed?”

Sunye looks defensive, crossing her arms. “Do you have children, Seokjin-ssi?”

He shakes his head. Once upon a time he wanted them. Wanted to get married and have a family. That was when he was alive, though.

“I know Jieun better than anyone. And how she’s been acting isn’t just a spell of bold behaviour. She’s such a charming little girl, but now she looks so…uninterested in life. And lethargic. But she never sleeps. She’s lost her appetite, too.” She looks hesitant. “She trapped a spider in a glass the other day, and then killed it. She didn’t just squash it. She pulled all it’s legs apart and when I asked her why she said Hana told her to. She bit her cousin’s ear yesterday while at her grandmother’s, and said it was Hana. We caught her with the cat, too, and I don’t know what she was going to do with it—” she breaks off with a shiver. “You probably think I’m a terrible mother. That may be true. But this is not natural. Something’s wrong with her.”

“And why do you think it has anything to do with Min-ssi?”

“Because he knows. He barely knows her name, and a few days ago he made a joke about going to see an exorcist. Every once in a while, she seems to be coming back to her usual self before she gets worse again. It happened earlier. And when I asked, she said it was because the blond man down the hall was outside the door. He’s doing something to her, I don’t know what.”

• The source of the evil spirit dragging Seokjin about resides in the apartment. He can feel it, a pulsating wave of energy that feels so foul it makes his skin crawl. It’s coming from a nearby room; Jieun’s bedroom, where her mother said she was taking a nap. He doesn’t know what to do. He can’t just march in while her mother watches, and if he tried to explain she would never believe him.

In the end, he does his best to reassure her poor mother. “I’ll go talk to Min-ssi,” he promises. “I’m good with people. I’ll try to get him to back off.”

Sunye sniffs a little. “He won’t listen to you.”

“There’s no harm in trying, right?”

“Wait – so you really believe me?”

Seokjin nods. “Absolutely. I promise to help you, okay?”

A flicker of suspicious hope appears in her eyes. And Sunye nods. “Thank you.” Seokjin is terrified, but he feels somewhat reassured. Because even if he is some sort of undead creature, the look on her face reminds him why he agreed to this. He’s able to make a change.

And he is determined that it will be for the good. He thinks her for the coffee and goes to meet Min Yoongi.

***

Seokjin goes for the subtle approach with Yoongi. When the door opens he immediately pushes into the apartment, kicking the door closed behind him and grabbing the collar of his shirt, slamming him into the wall.

“What the fuck—”

“There’s a dark soul in that apartment,” he says, “one that belongs to neither mother nor daughter. And something tells me you know something about it.”

Yoongi has a slender build but a fierce expression (one that Seokjin has definitely seen before), large hands that wrap around Seokjin’s wrist in an attempt to free himself. However, he stops at those words, dark eyes flicking up uncertainly to his face.

“You can feel it too.” His voice is deep, and his snarl lessons a little. “Are you like me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can see them.”

Seokjin loosens his grip. “Why do you think I’m here?”

Yoongi swallows, neck bobbing with the motion. “I didn’t do anything to that girl,” he says. “But I can sense it – I can sense the evil spirit. It’s attached to her, I think, and when I told her mother to see an exorcist it wasn’t a threat. I was trying to help them.”

“And skulking around their apartment?”

“I was trying to salt the place,” he mumbles, almost embarrassed. “I thought if I salted their entrances it would repel the spirit.” He takes a step back from Seokjin, smoothing out the wrinkles in his shirt with a scowl. “You stretched this out.”

“It’s just a white t-shirt. I’m sure it’s easy to find another one.”

“It’s the principle of it,” he insists, crossing his arms. “So how are you involved in this whole shitshow?”

“Why, do you want deal with all of this ghost bullshit by yourself?” Seokjin asks. “How do you know about all of this? I thought humans couldn’t see spirits.”

“Humans?” Yoongi gapes up at him. “Y-you—”

“No, I’m a human too!” Seokjin is quick to reassure. “At least, I used to be. I think I still am, but I’m not entirely—”

“Holy shit,” Yoongi says. “I know where I’ve seen you before.” His gaze finds the gash on his throat. “You – the night in the bar. I saw you. You were a ghost. Those two guys were sitting near me, talking about a funeral and then you showed up behind them, and just stood there.” He shakes his head. “At first, I thought you were alive, but then you looked so sad and you didn’t greet them, and…”

Seokjin remembers now, painfully remembers the lonely night on the 6^th of January. The night when he felt so lost and alone and didn’t know what to do, but then a stranger – Min Yoongi – saw him and he felt human again. The night he agreed to the Reapers’ deal.

Yoongi locks the chain on the door. “I guess we need to talk.”

***

Min Yoongi’s apartment is like any other single man in his early twenties living alone, except a little cushier than most due to his apparently lucrative side job. It’s average levels of messy, no pigsty but no neat freak. Relatively simple décor, a few empty takeout boxes at the sink, pages of manuscript spread out over the coffee table, a keyboard in the corner, some posters and photos on the wall. He teaches music as a day job, specifically piano and music theory. However, it’s his night job that intrigues Seokjin.

Yoongi guides him to where the guest bedroom should be, pulling his keys out of his pocket. A locked bedroom door is never a good sign.

“Hey, just so we’re clear,” Seokjin says, “if you have a miniature BDSM dungeon in there, I am armed and dangerous and would prefer dinner first—”

“Shut up, ghostie,” Yoongi says, pushing the door open.

Seokjin almost laughs. It’s straight out of a horror film; the window is completely covered up by dark sheets, the room stands empty apart from a table in the middle that olds an Ouija board, some candles, and—

“Is that a fake skull?” Seokjin cackles, knocking on it.

“Shut up,” Yoongi says again, “I have to look the part for my customers!”

“So, you’re a fraud?”

“Not really…” Yoongi sits down at one of the stools. “It’s a long story.”

“I haven’t talked to anyone properly in almost three weeks,” Seokjin says, crossing his arms. “I have time.”

“Well,” Yoongi begins hesitantly, almost shy. His I-don’t-give-a-fuck façade already has begun to slip. Seokjin doesn’t blame him. It’s not everyday you meet an undead zombie ghost creature who threatens to beat you up in your own home. “I can see the dead. I saw you when you were all…” he wriggles his hands. “Ghostly. And I can see others too. And sometimes I can hear them – but it’s from a different place, far off…but sometimes I can get snatches, or phrases.”

“How?”

Yoongi shrugs. “I’ve always been able to. My parents thought there was something wrong with me. I’d point out strangers they couldn’t see. I worked out what I was seeing when I was a teenager.”

Seokjin has had the past few days filled with information overload, but nothing has prepared him for this.

Yoongi continues. “My parents told me that I was born prematurely, and had difficulty breathing in my first few days. And that at one point my heart stopped beating, but the doctors were able to revive me. Since realising that I can, y’know…see ghosts, I figured that maybe I had begun to pass over before being brought back, but that I’ve always had that connection…”

“I can ask Namjoon about it,” Seokjin says. “If you want to know.”

“Namjoon?”

“Oh, he’s from the Underworld.”

“The Underworld?”

“Never mind that right now.”

“Right. So, uh, usually I only ever see or hear ghosts. It’s not something I can really control – over the years I’ve learned to tune it out, so all I can do is try my best to listen and I might hear something. Sometimes…” he looks uneasy. “Sometimes I think I see or…sense things that aren’t human.”

“And how did this start up?” Seokjin gestures to the Ouija board.

“What are you, some sort of ghost cop? I didn’t mean to start it. It began in college, my roommate’s grandpa died and that night, I could hear his voice and told my roommate. He was the first one who believed me.” His voice turns bitter. “And then the rumours spread. Most people thought I was out of my mind, but a few contacted me, and I got a reputation. So, I thought, might as well make money out of it.”

“But it doesn’t always work?”

Yoongi shrugs. “I try my best. If it doesn’t work, I’ll shift the Ouija around a bit or pretend to have a vision. Most people who arrive fall into two categories. The first is that they’re mourning a loved one and want to hear words of comfort.”

“So you lie to them?”

“Not really. I tell them I can feel a presence in the room, full of peace or hope or…you get the idea.” Yoongi crosses his arms. “Stop looking at me like that. It cheers people up, and I’m sure it’s what the dead would want. If your father walked in asking me how his son was, wouldn’t you like me to reassure him so he could move on?” Seokjin’s face must give him away. As soon as he says it, Yoongi’s eyes go wide. “Shit, I’m sorry man. I didn’t think—”

Seokjin inhales slowly. “The second category?”

“Huh?”

“You said there were two types of people.”

Yoongi looks sheepish but appreciates the chance to move on. “The others are greedy fucks who want to know where their parents hid their money. I have no qualms about lying to them.”

Despite himself, Seokjin grins.

“What about you, then? You never told me your name, ghost cop.”   

“My name is Seokjin. I was born on December 4^th, 1992. I was killed on January 1^st, 2018.”

“I read about your death on my phone,” Yoongi says. “I’m uh. Sorry about that.”

“Well, you weren’t the one who murdered me,” he says, and it comes out more brusquely than he would have liked. So much for calm and collected undead law enforcer. “Anyway, I woke up in the afterlife, met a few non-humans who want me to help clean up after them. Apparently, there are some major problems going on down there, and more souls than usual are getting through and they need someone to help mop them up.”

“So here you are.”

“Here I am.”

“And you’re alone?”

“More or less.” Seokjin shrugs. “Nobody from my life remembers me. The only people I know are Namjoon and Hoseok, and they’re really busy most of the time.”

Yoongi hums. “I’m alone a lot of the time up here too,” he says. “When I’m not with a client of some sort.” He sighs back into his chair. “You’re going to have to get rid of whatever is haunting Min Jieun, right?”

Seokjin nods. “I’ll work something out,” he says. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s only reaped one soul before, and that was one that was willing to go. He doesn’t even know where to start with a malevolent spirit that has shown violence. “It’s manifesting in the form of an imaginary friend, from what Sunye-ssi told me.” Hana. “Which means it must be connected to Jieun…?” He tries to sound more assured than he does.

It doesn’t work.

Yoongi groans. “Shit. I’m going to have to help you with this, aren’t I?”

“Excuse me—”

“When you suspected me, you slammed me into a wall without a moment’s hesitation. If you pull some shit like that with a girl her mother will have us both arrested and you may have nothing to lose, but I do, okay—”

“I wasn’t going to hurt a child!” Seokjin huffs, but he’s not entirely opposed to the idea. Namjoon and Hoseok work in a pair, after all. Two heads are better than one, especially when they can both see ghosts. If Yoongi can communicate with them as well, he could be a useful asset, not to mention he knows the lay of the apartment block too.

And a part of Seokjin can admit that he has been starved for company. He’s been too on edge to socialise, too bewildered as to where to even start forming connections again. Apart from irregular, brief visits from the Reapers, Seokjin has had hardly any company.

He wouldn’t mind someone like Yoongi. Yoongi is an asshole and he’s kind of annoying too, but he knows what Seokjin is and doesn’t seem to care that much.

“For someone who has just found out crucial information about the afterlife, you’re rather calm.”

“What can I say. I’m a genius. We take these things in our stride.” Yoongi shrugs his shoulders, and Seokjin snorts. “So, do you want my help or not? I really don’t want you to fuck this up.”

“Your faith is reassuring,” Seokjin says. “If we’re doing this we need to make a good game plan. Which means…I better introduce you to Namjoon.”

***

Hoseok had picked 11pm as a suitable meeting time. Most days they aren’t around, busy reaping souls across the city and beyond, but they chose this time to try and check up on him. Sometimes they don’t make it, sometimes they can only stay for minutes. Seokjin is glad that’s the case tonight; when he leads Min Yoongi into his apartment Namjoon is hovering above the kitchen counter in a spirit form.

“Oh,” he says, when he sees Yoongi. “If you’re hooking up with him we can come back—”

“Namjoon!” Seokjin hisses. Yoongi raises an eyebrow, while Hoseok’s guffaws are head from the couch.

“Oh!” Namjoon looks flustered. “I—You can hear us?”

Yoongi nods, sheepishly. “Uh. Yeah.”

“Pretend I never said anything.” Namjoon squints at him. “I think I recognise you,” he says. “Hoseok, take a look at this!”

Hoseok hops off of the couch, steps up to peer into Yoongi’s chest. The latter looks uncomfortable under the scrutiny, so Seokjin coughs, hoping the Reapers will take the hint.

“He’s that one soul,” Hoseok says, “from the early 90s. I remember you! You began to pass but managed to get back okay. It happens on rare occasions. But gosh, you were only a tiny baby! You’re so big!”

“He’s not that big,” Seokjin says smugly, from his few centimetres above.

“You don’t know how big I am,” Yoongi retorts back, folding his arms.

He’s not sure if it goes over his head or if he just ignores what Yoongi said, but Namjoon continues regardless. “It was ’94, right?”

“’93,” Yoongi corrects.

“1993?” Seokjin grins. “I’m 1992. I’m your hyung.”

Yoongi respectfully rolls his eyes.

“Anyway,” Seokjin says. “Yoongi saw me when I was a ghost.”

“So, he knows…” Hoseok studies his face. “Let me guess. You told him everything.”

“Don’t say it like that! I know people aren’t supposed to know, but he lives right across from the evil spirit that’s been bothering me, and he wants to help.”

Namjoon frowns. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Normal humans aren’t supposed to know anything about Underworld affairs.”

“But he’s not just a normal human,” Seokjin says. “He’s been seeing and sensing spirits all his life. He’s more experience at this than me. He picked up on the spirit weeks ago. I only noticed it last night.”

“I am right here, you know,” Yoongi says. “But please, go on.”

“What exact abilities do you have?”

Now that Namjoon’s focus is directed at him, Yoongi seems a tad uncertain. “Well, I can contact spirits,” he says. “I can speak with them, and stuff. Sometimes I can call on them, but it only works if they have just died and even then…it doesn’t work very often. I can sense them, though! Sometimes I feel a presence nearby, sometimes I just…feel a disturbance.”

Seokjin nods. “See – even if only accidentally, he can help us, right?”

Namjoon opens his mouth to protest but Hoseok gets in first.

“Maybe it’s not a bad thing. Two are better than one, and if you’re going to be dealing with malevolent spirits and d—” he cuts himself off. “Well, it will be good to have someone watching your back.”

“What’s haunting your apartment now?” Namjoon asks, still cautious.

“It’s my neighbour. Something is showing itself to her daughter, she’s acting…well.”

“Could be a case of possession. And your plan?”

“Go in, drag the spirit out, let the child live her life in peace,” Seokjin answers. “We just need to find a way to do it without alarming her mother.”

Namjoon purses his lips. To Seokjin, he says; “there’s something happening down below,” he says. “Taehyung thinks he’s found a lead as to what’s causing all of this, and he wants us to help him check it out. Hoseok and I won’t be here tomorrow. We won’t be here to help if things go badly.” To Yoongi, he asks “are you sure you want in?”

Yoongi takes a moment to respond. “She’s a nice kid,” he says, “and whatever is in there…it’s dark. I don’t think I can just ignore this.”

“I still don’t approve,” Namjoon says, slowly, “but I’ll trust you, for this one. However, if you try talking…”

“I won’t. Nobody has ever believed me before, right?”

Seokjin smiles. “Nobody believes him, nobody remembers me, we’re like two ghosts ourselves! A perfect team to bust up the ghostie in Jieun’s place, right?”

“If you say so.”

Hoseok is the only one that returns his smile. “If you’re sure, I think I have an idea on how to get in there. I’ll leave a present for you outside tomorrow morning, alright? Then you can go up against your first evil spirit.”

How fun, Seokjin thinks drily. He just hopes they don’t get their souls sucked out in the process.

***

The next morning, Seokjin finds a small vial of clear liquid on his countertop, along with a note.

            seokjin-ah,

a gift from a friend! we’ll take you to meet her soon. she sends this to help you tonight. two drops consumed and the recipient will fall into a deep sleep that night. you can make as much noise as you want and they won’t wake up. do with this what you will.

and remember, she says it’s a gift, but she might call in a favour. don’t let your guard down.

good luck!!!!! lots of love from your favourite reaper hoseokie seokie <333

***

“Oh! Seokjin-ssi, come in…”

Sunye invites him in for another cup of coffee when he shows up. Her kitchen window faces the street, and he admires a large stone ornament perched on the windowsill while she makes coffee. It’s some sort of religious statue, some Christian figure with a blessing for protection carved into the base of it. How ironic.  He makes small talk with her, going on to tell her about his visit to Yoongi. “Yes, he says it was just a misunderstanding. However, if you’re still suspicious of him…”

Just as they planned, there’s a banging on Sunye’s front door. She excuses herself to answer it. Seokjin knows that it’s Yoongi, with mail that supposedly was put in his mailbox instead of hers this morning. Once Sunye leaves the room, Seokjin begins to get to work. He goes for the handbag on the counter first, rifling through the contents. When he finds nothing, he looks through the drawers in the kitchen. He can still hear their voices outside, but he needs to be quick—

There’s a coat draped across one of the kitchen stools. He sticks a hand in there and, a-ha! A keyring with four keys linked onto it. He puts them into his own pocket, hopping back into his original seat before Sunye comes back in, envelope in hand.

“So, how is she today?”

Sunye looks increasingly tired. “She was very antsy last night. She was moving around her room, banging on walls…whenever I came in she told me Hana was angry.”

Could the ghost have sensed Seokjin’s nature?

“The imaginary friend?”

Sunye nods. “She’s had imaginary friends before, when she was younger, but it was never like this. You probably think I’m crazy—”

“I don’t,” Seokjin is quick to say.

She sighs. “It’s reassuring to hear that. when I told my mother, she told me I sound like a lunatic.”

“I know how that feels,” Seokjin says. “When it feels like you’re alone.” Talking to Sunye strangely feeds his determination; the coiling evil he can sense in the next room is a constant source of fear and anxiety but seeing Sunye…he’s convinced that he needs to rid this world of that evil. “My uncle was very spiritual,” he lies, easily, “he was involved in a lot of cases like this.”

Sunye looks concerned. “Do you really think it is something spiritual?”

“I can’t say. I’ll call my uncle tonight about it. Would I be able to see her? If I can describe any physical symptoms it would help him to understand…”

Sunye nods, going to fetch Jieun from her room. Seokjin takes the opportunity to slip out the vial, letting two drops fall into the remainder of her coffee.

“Jieun-ah, this is Seokjin! He lives on our floor.”

Jieun is a cute kid, but Seokjin has to fight the rush of nausea that emerges when he sees her. He can sense the malevolence radiating off of her. Not from her, of course, but from Hana. Jieun doesn’t smile when she sees him, but she stares him down with a blank expression.

“Hi there,” he says, with a friendly smile. “My name is Seokjin.”

Sunye sits on the stool beside Seokjin with Jieun on her lap, sipping her coffee. “Why don’t you be a good girl and introduce yourself?”

She says nothing. Seokjin’s skin is crawling. There’s an unnatural gleam in her eye, one darker than a child this young should have. It’s putting him on edge. It’s like every horror film he’s every seen, where the demon child is about to attack. From the pictures on the walls he can see that Jieun is usually a bright girl, but right now she looks like she could be Sadako crawling out of the TV.

“So,” he says, doing his best to keep a friendly smile on his face. If Jieun is in there, he doesn’t want to scare her. “What age are you?”

Jieun says nothing.

“Don’t be rude, Jieun-ah!”

Jieun looks at him, blinks, and then lunges at him.

Seokjin wasn’t prepared for a tiny human to throw herself at him, and the shock sends him tumbling out of the chair, hands flying out so that Jieun doesn’t hit anything on the hard tiles of the floor. His own head hits it with a smash and he grunts, and then there are two tiny hands clawing at his eyes. Seokjin squeezes them shut, but this girl moves with a superhuman viciousness, her nail catching the delicate skin under his eye and pulling a scratch down his cheek.

Sunye shrieks in alarm. “Jieun!” She throws herself down, picking Jieun up around the waist and hauling her away. “Stop it this instant!” The poor woman is so distressed, clutching her child to her chest until she stops struggling. Jieun’s eyes never leave Seokjin’s.

“I think that I should go,” he says, shocked as he climbs to his feet. His cheek stings, but he can feel another weird sensation tingling over it too.

“I’m sorry Seokjin,” Sunye says, tears in her own eyes, still clutching her daughter. “Don’t think too badly on us.”

***

In Yoongi’s apartment, Seokjin goes to wash the tiny bit of blood he felt off of his cheek. When he looks into the mirror, the cut has already been healed. The medallion around his neck is warm.

They leave the apartment to make plans away from the negativity of a spirit next door, and as they reach the street Seokjin hears the shattering of glass. He looks up. It takes a split second for his reflexes to kick in; he grabs Yoongi’s shoulder, pushing him out of the way. He falls, skidding along the pavement with a curse, right before something heavy smashes into Seokjin’s head, thrown from the third floor.

It’s heavy and blunt and Seokjin cries out as he feels his skull crack – there’s blinding pain as he hits the ground, feels wet and warm blood on his skin. He begins to panic, remembering the night where he was murdered, but he forces himself to stay calm. What is dead cannot die a second time.

“Holy shit,” Yoongi is babbling, grabbing his shoulder. “What the fuck, what the fuck—”

Seokjin’s glad that the heavy rain has kept the citizens of Seoul indoors. “Help me get out of here.”

“What the fuck, we need to get you to a hospital—”

“Yoongi. I’m already dead. I can’t die again.”

Yoongi is pale, but he helps Seokjin up, puts an arm around his shoulders and hauls him into the dry carpark. As they walk, Seokjin sees what hit him. The ornament from Sunye’s window.

“The ghost,” he mutters, dizzy. “Hana threw it. It knows we’re coming.”

It’s so sore, but Seokjin grits his teeth, finds the medallion around his neck and presses it, as if to tell it to hurry the fuck up. Almost immediately it glows in his hand. And then the pain occurs; searing pain even worse than the actual impact. He can’t help but curse through gritted teeth even as he feels his body jerking, his skull reforming, his blood clearing.

“Holy shit,” Yoongi says, looking half-scared, half-awed. “They really don’t fuck around with their Underworld technology, do they?”

Seokjin offers a weak grin, but it’s more like a grimace. Fuck, that hurt. “I need to sit down.”

He breathes slowly, as the pain heals him. Yoongi still looks pale, a little scared. Seokjin reminds himself that Yoongi is still a normal, living human; fragile, breakable, like all people. He doesn’t voice this. If someone told Seokjin that he was fragile he would have laughed, but all it took was one cut for his life force to bleed out, to escape his body like smoke diffusing in the air. Now, however, he can be hurt. He can be injured. And it will be painful, but he won’t break. Or rather; if he breaks, he can be put together again.

He wonders if Yoongi helping him was the best decision. He’s supposed to be helping people, he can’t let innocent civilians get hurt.

“You pushed me out of the way,” Yoongi says slowly. A moment passes. “Thank you.”

Seokjin smiles, this time it’s a little more genuine. “Only one of us needs to be dead, am I right?”

Yoongi returns the smile (a little shaky) and claps him on the shoulder. “Let’s get you home.”

***

It’s 3am, when they make their way to the third floor. Seokjin has his useless stick weapon in his back pocket, hoping that he’ll work out how it works if he needs to use it. He has two cylinders in his jacket pockets. Yoongi creeps ahead of him, walking with slow but sure steps that contradict the trembling of his hands.

“Have you ever done something like this?” he asks him.

Yoongi shakes his head. “Never.”

They stop outside door 0316. Yoongi slides the key in soundlessly, and they enter.

The apartment is silent. Yoongi creeps to where the master bedroom is, cracking the door open silently. Sunye lies asleep, not even moving when the door creaks loudly.

“Time to find the kid,” he says.

Seokjin moves to the second bedroom, presses his ear to the door. He can hear nothing. Swallowing his fear, he pushes it open. It’s empty. He looks in the wardrobe, under the bed, but the child isn’t there.

“Seokjin,” Yoongi calls from outside. “It’s in the kitchen.”

Fear builds up in his stomach. He wants to run away, but he steps in front of Yoongi as he opens the door to the kitchen. He can feel the presence of the spirit, but it’s so close he can’t locate where it is. It surrounds him, it’s like looking for the door in a room of mirrors.

“Where is the little shit?” Yoongi asks, entering the kitchen.

The door slams shut.

Then there’s a screech.

“Shit!”

Something crashes into Seokjin, and he hits the tiles.

Yoongi must manage to hit the light switch because suddenly the room is illuminated, and Seokjin can see the ghost possessing Jieun. Her face is pulled back into a snarl and she has a fucking kitchen knife in her hand. Hana doesn’t fuck about, even when possessing a tiny girl. With her superhuman strength she pins his neck down. She stabs the blade through his chest and Seokjin coughs—

He's back in the alleyway, back in the snow, coughing up blood, screaming for oxygen, alone and cold, dying, help help—

Namjoon said that the longer a spirit spent manifesting the stronger it became. That meant this spirit must have been festering here for a long time, growing stronger and more powerful and sapping the life from this young family. He snarls. He’s going to send it to the deepest pits of the Underworld.

Yoongi’s there suddenly, arms wrapping around Jieun’s chest, dragging her off him. Seokjin grabs one of his cylinders but she kicks it from under his hands, breaking free from Yoongi’s grip and running out of the kitchen.

They follow her, and Seokjin barely has time to duck and drag Yoongi with him before the coffee table is thrown right at them.

“What the fuck!” Yoongi shouts. “How the hell are we supposed to get near her when she can throw shit around like this?”

A vase shatters above their heads.

Seokjin groans. They can’t use too much force because they can’t harm the child.

“You said you could summon spirits, right?”

“Not really!” Yoongi says. Hana lifts up the fucking couch, and Seokjin turns on his heel, Yoongi following him back into the kitchen where they slam the door shut just as the couch crashes into it. “Only if they’re recently dead!”

“That means you can only summon ones that haven’t passed to the Underworld yet,” Seokjin says. “Like the one out there. Can you draw it out of Jieun’s body?”

“I don’t know!” Yoongi shouts back, looking scared and a little desperate as there’s another loud crash on the other side of the door. “I usually just talk a little and they come out—”

“Try it.”

“What? No, I don’t think I can—”

“Too late! I’ll distract it.” Seokjin pushes open the door, grits his teeth and launches himself at the little demon child.

She screeches as he crashes into her, hands scraping at his chest. Seokjin isn’t concerned initially (he’s getting used to this whole immortality thing) until her tiny hands close around the medallion and squeezes it tight. He gasps in a new sort of pain. It’s like she’s trying to break it, and fear shoots through him as he wonders if a ghost like Hana can destroy his soul—

“Hana!” Yoongi says, firm, voice low, demanding. “I command you to leave that body.” Jieun hisses, shaking her head, but Yoongi continues to speak, his voice growing more confident, more powerful. He moves forward, putting a hand on Jieun’s shoulder, squeezing tightly. “You have to leave it. Come to me, now. Now. Now.” There’s something hypnotic about his voice like this, and he finds it hard not to run into Yoongi himself.

Seokjin tries to help it along, a hand on Jieun’s other shoulder. Just like he did with Sanghyuk, he imagines the pull of the magnet working both ways, using his own presence to drag Hana out of Jieun.

It begins to work; Hana’s ghostly form begins to emerge out of Jieun’s body. Jieun drops to the floor, out for the count, and Hana hovers above her, a shadowy, ghastly old woman that towers over them. She screeches, a sound that makes all of Seokjin’s hair stand on end, and darts away from them. She manages to grip a chair, throwing it at Yoongi.

Shit. They’ve let this get out of hand. If this ghost has become strong enough that it can possess humans and grip physical objects—

Seokjin’s attention changes abruptly when the chair hits Yoongi in the stomach, sending him knocking back into the wall, winded. And Hana howls, moving forwards towards him.

If she can possess Jieun, could she possess Yoongi too? If she could attack Seokjin’s soul, could she attack Yoongi’s?

Seokjin’s not going to give her the chance. He leaps in front of Yoongi, and in a desperate last chance he grabs the stick in his back pocket, hefting it in his hand. Maybe he can throw it at her?

Just as he thinks that, the stick grows warm in his hands. The metal suddenly expands, growing longer in a smooth whoosh sound until what’s left—

It’s a spear.

Seokjin doesn’t have time to think. Hana approaches and he uses both hands to drive the spear into her shoulder. Her howls change, this time in pain, and he follows the movement through to pin the spear, and the ghost to the ground.

“Holy fuck,” Yoongi says.

The cylinders have fallen out of his pockets, but Yoongi is there, pressing one into his hand. Seokjin lifts the spear again and plunges it through Hana, this time where her stomach should be and presses his hand against her form. He pulls once more, and her soul – a sickly green – begins to slide out, into the palm of his hand. It wriggles in resistance but Seokjin shoves it into the cylinder and screws the top on, and then—

Silence.

Hana disappears, leaving behind a sleeping Jieun and a messy apartment.

Yoongi sits down heavily. “Well, that was something.”

“It certainly was.”

Seokjin looks at the spear. It’s similar to the jangchang he’s seen in history books and museums; about ten feet long with a sharp point at the end, a dark grey. The metal cools in his hand, before shrinking back down to its original size. He mentally thanks Taehyung.

“Those Underworld bastards are on another level,” Yoongi breathes as Seokjin slumps down beside him.

With Hana’s spirit secured in his jacket, they do what they can. Sunye sleeps soundlessly throughout the whole thing thanks to the mysterious liquid they put in her coffee, and Jieun – while fast asleep – snores peacefully, her face already looking healthier. They fix back the couch and coffee table to where it was, and hope that Sunye will write off the rest of the mess as her turbulent daughter’s work. Seokjin tucks the keys back where he found them in her jacket pocket, and they slip out of the apartment like nothing ever happened, crossing the hall silently to Yoongi’s door.

Once the door closes behind them, Seokjin laughs in relief. He’s almost hysterical, relief and satisfaction and the dregs of fear and anxiety all mixing up. Yoongi begins laughing too. He’s not sure if they’re simply feeling victorious, or if they’re laughing as opposed to crying. Either way, they both end up slumped against the wall.

“Thank you,” Seokjin manages. “For helping. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Are you kidding me?” Yoongi says. He scowled a lot since Seokjin met him, but right now his smile is gummy and he looks warm and much younger than he acts. It makes Seokjin’s grin grow wider. “I would have been ghost food if it wasn’t for you.”

“We both saved each other’s necks, then.”

“I guess we’re a good team.”

It’s possibly the most heartfelt thing Seokjin has heard since he was killed. He blinks rapidly. “Yeah. I guess we are.”

He knows that there are going to be far more ghosts, and possibly other things, breaking through in the coming months. This was probably just a taster for what is brewing in the Underworld. And Seokjin’s future is so uncertain, he has no idea where he’ll be in a few months. But right now, he flops onto Yoongi’s couch and clinks their beer bottles together, and he thinks that maybe things aren’t so bad. He can do this. They can do this.

Seokjin is happy he didn’t move on. He’s happy he has a second chance. He’s happy he can make a difference.

“To victory,” Yoongi says, crooked smirk betrayed by kind eyes.

Seokjin smiles. “To victory.”

Little does he know, that this was only the beginning of the hell about to be unleashed.