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Jisung was just 13 when the goemul showed up in the sky and nobody really noticed.
Well, some people noticed and tried to send out warning signs, but they were ignored. Deemed sick. Jisung notices but keeps his head down. He’s seen what happens when someone notices.
The hospitalization.
The medication.
The pity.
“Mass hysteria” is what the media called it. “Mental health plague,” others said.
Those who noticed were rounded up and locked away. Kept from society, until they “got better.”
Those who were rehabilitated eventually got let back into society, but in reality they just got better at not noticing.
The ones who didn’t get better, the ones who still noticed, were eventually sent away. Their loved ones told that they were sent somewhere less stressful, so they can recover what sanity they have left.
Funny how being told you are mad, and actually going mad is almost the same thing.
So Jisung pretended he didn’t notice, kept his head down and went about his life. Eventually, the others who noticed did the same thing.
Everything went back to “normal” after a year. As normal as it can be.
But Jisung still notices.
How some people look up at the sky a little longer than they should. How they look terrified for a split second and then fix their faces. When the other person catches Jisung staring and their eyes meet, a look of recognition, of knowing. A small nod, a tight smile. A brief sense of relief knowing they aren’t crazy. Then they break their gaze and go about their day.
The world continues and there are two types of people. Those who notice, and those who don’t.
<o>
Jisung is 16 when people start disappearing.
Or at least he thinks people are disappearing. He doesn’t know. No one he knew on a personal level has disappeared, but people in his peripheral everyday life.
Like at the restaurant he served at, every Tuesday, a man with a moustache would come in for dinner. A beer and a bowl of noodles. Pay. Sit at the back corner. Eat, drink, watch one episode of some drama on his phone. Leave with a nod and a “See you next week.” For a year.
Sure he’d skip a Tuesday here and there, but he always came back. Until he didn’t.
“Hey, has Mustache Guy been coming on my days off?” He asked his chef one Tuesday, after hours.
“Who?” The chef looks perplexed.
“Mustache Guy. Orders a beer and noodles. Every Tuesday. I haven’t seen him for like a month.” He’s wiping down tables. The place quickly fills with the sharp smell of bleach.
“Hmmm. I’ve never noticed.” The chef says as he cling wraps tin tubs of banchan.
“You’ve never noticed?” Jisung stops wiping.
“I’m in the kitchen all day, how am I supposed to notice every customer that comes in?” He eyes Jisung.
“Yeah, I guess.” Jisung tosses the cleaning cloth in the dirty laundry bin.
“Alright. I’m good. You good?” He grabs his backpack and keys. Chef gives him a nod.
“See you tomorrow. Walk safe!”
Jisung steps out into the cool spring air. The moon is full and when he looks up to meet its gaze, the goemul are right there. Illuminated by the moonlight.
It’s been three years.
He stares at it briefly, when he hears footsteps to the right of him. A woman who was also looking up, looks at him, and nods quickly and continues walking past him.
He doesn’t look up for the rest of his walk home.
<o>
Jisung is 18 when the gwisin appear.
Translucent smudges that follow people during the day. They look like what he sees when he rubs his eyes too hard.
He thinks they are the people who went missing years ago. The ones that no one noticed were missing. And just like the goemul in the sky, the ones who do notice, pretend not to.
Jisung is surprised how easy it had been to not notice these last five years. The unwritten rules of this new society.
Don’t stare too much at the sky.
Don’t say anything about the goemul .
Don’t talk about the people who aren’t there any more.
Don’t wave away the gwisin swirling around people.
At night, Jisung notices some houses leave all their lights on, just like he does. He notices how the gwisin stay in the shadows.
Countless others, just like Jisung, learn to sleep with the lights on.
<o>
Jisung is 20 when he begins to see.
A weird wrinkly face.
The name gnabnahc.
Light illuminating a doorway.
Keys.
Eyes ripped from toys.
Flickering street lights.
His finger always linger over elevator buttons, rubbing away the 1.
He knows these are messages. Mixed in with the randomness of the city. He takes pictures of them. Writes cryptic notes in his journals about it.
It’s been eight years. More or less. Jisung doesn’t remember. Doesn’t remember what the sky used to look like, when it was empty. Doesn’t remember the way the world used to be. It’s always been this he thinks, will always be this.
He is out with his parents, walking a random street, enjoying the breeze and the cherry blossom blooms when he sees the same question over and over. Written in various sizes throughout the street buildings. Hidden in alley ways. Etched into store front windows. His parents take a picture of him in front of a mural of the city scape. When they show him the picture, it’s there. Written in one of the clouds.
J.One, where are you?
<o>
Jisung is 23 when CB97 finds him.
He’s at a cafe, grabbing his morning iced americano and chocolate tart, when he sees someone staring at him. The man’s plain black hoodie is pulled up, and the backpack on his back does nothing to hide his broad shoulders.
Jisung is a little unsettled, but bows slightly to the man and leaves the cafe. He’s halfway down the street when he faintly hears footsteps behind him. When Jisung speeds up, so do the footsteps, when they slow down, they do also. He slows his breathing and quickly scans places where he can hide. He turns into a small alleyway with full intent to sprint when he’s suddenly grabbed from behind and pushed into a doorway.
The man turns Jisung around quickly and pulls down his own hoodie, revealing his face.
“J.One. It’s me.” The stranger’s face is so close to his. His voice is accented.
Jisung knows he should struggle, should break free from the man’s grasp, but his kind eyes look tired. There’s a faded bruise on his check.
“I’m- I’m sorry. I think you have the wrong person.” Jisung stammers and the stranger loosens his hold and backs up.
“You don’t know me.” He says it like a statement instead of a question.
“N-no. Should I?” Jisung knows he should run now, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know why.
“I just. I thought. I. I looked for you everywhere. I’ve been looking for so long.” The stranger hides his face in his hands.
“Looking for me? What do you mean?” Jisung starts to reach out, but decides against it. He doesn’t know this man.
“Nothing. I’m sorry to bother you.” The man bows and turns to walk away, when Jisung blurts out.
“Wait! My name is Han Jisung. Maybe I can help you find him. This… Jay Won person.”
The stranger turns around and offers a small smile.
“I’m Christopher Bahng. Or Bang Chan here, I guess.” He starts to offer his hand, then thinks against it and gives a small bow instead. “Is there somewhere we can go to talk? That isn’t… outside.” His eyes dart to the sky quickly and back to his face.
“Uh, yeah. My place isn’t too far from here. We can talk there.”
They walk back in silence. Chan pulls up his hoodie again, looking forward. Jisung ignores the screaming thought of how stupid he is to invite a potential murderer into his home.
Once they get inside Jisung’s one bedroom apartment, Chan sinks into the couch.
“You want something to drink, or are you hungry? I have instant Ramyeon. It isn’t spicy, tho.” Jisung automatically sets out a pitcher of cold tea and whatever snacks he has and settles on the floor across from him.
“No. No, I’m-” Chan stops talking and closes his eyes, for a while. “Sorry, I’m just. I’m so tired. I shouldn’t have come.” He takes a few deep breaths and gets up to leave.
“Oh, I. Um. Okay.” Jisung does nothing, but watch him walk to the door. Right as Chan puts his hand on the door knob, Han opens his mouth.
“Do you sleep with the lights on, gnabnahc?”
Chan hasn’t moved from his spot by the door. Hasn’t turned around to face Jisung. His shoulders round, though. Jisung thinks he might be crying.
“The goemul don’t show up on camera. I’ve tried taking pictures. There are no drawings. No literature. No one talks about them. For the last 10 years we’ve just pretended they aren’t there. Because if we pretend hard enough-” Chan finally turns around.
“If nobody notices, everything is still okay.” Jisung gets up off the floor and stands in front of Chan.
“And the world isn’t slowly ending.” Chan looks at him, tears in his eyes. Jisung puts his hands on Chan’s shoulders and pulls him in for a hug.
“J.One.”
Jisung nods.
“I finally found you.” Chan’s hands grip at his back, breaking into silent sobs.
“I had to make sure, I’ve had some close calls before.” Jisung leads him back to the couch.
“How did you-” Chan wipes his eyes.
“Bang Chan backwards. Have to say, not very creative.” Jisung reaches into the end table and pulls out some files. He begins spreading out papers on the coffee table.
“And J.One is better?” Chan begins to pull out various note books from his pack as well.
“Han means one.” He gives Chan a look.
“Jisung Han, J.One.” Chan sighs.
“See. Easy. But not that easy.”
Chan looks over Jisung’s notes. They are almost identical to his own.
“Now we have to find the others.”
<o>
Jisung is 25 when Minho shows up at his door.
The world still turns, with the goemul in the sky, the gwisin in the air.
In the years since Chan found Jisung, they’ve tracked down six others. I.N in an abandoned school. Sam on the subway. SpearB at a club. Felbok in a church. Skye on a hotel rooftop. Their code names and symbols left throughout the city. Clues for Chan and Jisung to follow.
Sam -Hyunjin- drew the doorways.
SpearB -Changbin- left signatures on street lamps.
Skye -Seungmin- left a trail of eyes from stuffed animals.
I.N -Jeongin- left keys.
Felbok -Felix- left broken compasses.
They are all in Jisung’s apartment. Mapping. Recording. Listening. Noticing.
They’ve been searching. Following clues and red herrings.
“This one doesn’t want to be found. Maybe he belongs somewhere else.” Seungmin is taking sticky notes off the wall.
“Then why do we see it? Wrinkles. If he’s not one of us, then why do we see it?” Felix is the sensitive one. They’ve been burned many times before. Jisung thinks Felix gets too attached. Jisung knows that at any minute they could all be gone. He keeps a comfortable distance. Even with Chan.
A knock at the door.
A man with intense eyes and sharp features. He bows in greeting.
“Hi. I’m Lee Minho. Or Lee Know as you probably know me.”
Jisung is glaring. Then Minho meets his stare, tilting his head and blinking.
“Hello.”
Jisung says nothing.
Chan looks at the group.
“Finally.”
<o>
Almost overnight, people began to lose their voices.
Others lost their hearing.
They all lost their lives.
The goemul vibrate. Waiting for thunder to strike. They know.
The news reports called it another mental health epidemic. Doesn’t explain how the world is slowly losing sounds.
People die. Have been dying. Have gone missing. Gone crazy. And still no one says they notice, but the reporter on the TV looks briefly to the sky. Blink and you miss it. But Jisung sees it. He know they all see it.
Jisung walks to the window. He looks up. He stopped pretending not to notice. They all did when they found each other.
He stares at the goemul he’s seen everyday for over half his life. The one that took his family. The one that took all their families slowly over the years.
They listen to the reporter, see the images on the screen, warped by what doesn’t show up on camera. The gwisin swirl around them, agitated.
Chan looks at the others.
“Let’s get ready.”
<o>
They gather their packs.
Head towards what feels like the right direction.
Their compasses no longer point north.
Jisung looks at the ruins of the city. The decaying buildings. The worn down streets. Jisung wonders how long it’s been like this. How long it’s been that he’s pretending not to notice that he actively didn’t anymore.
No one is on the streets. All the messages they’ve written to each other over the years, faded or gone. In their place are signs. Watch out for the darkness.
They’re traveling during the day, the gwisin swirling around them. There’s so much more of them now. He wonders if his brother is one of them.
They find abandoned places to settle into at night. Minho rewiring what’s left to make it bright enough to stay. Jisung doesn’t remember the last time he slept in complete darkness. His eyes strain. On bad days he wears an eye patch, to let one of his eyes rest. He wonders if eye sight is the next thing people will lose to the goemul.
When he wears the patch he feels Minho in his blind spot. Minho is good at that, keeping his distance yet making his presence known. It’s happened so frequently that when he doesn’t feel Minho hovering like a shadow, it makes his spine itch.
<o>
I.N wants to go home.
Except he can’t remember where home is. Just a child when he left Busan. A baby, Jisung thinks. This is too much responsibility. Too much to live knowing so much depended on you being somewhere at some precise time. Jising doesn’t pretend to understand when everyone rallies around the kid, how they pat him and take him into their arms. He thinks there might be something broken with him. He wonders if empathy is the next thing the goemul take.
Or if they took that first.
Minho steps into him as his thoughts surround and swirl. He does that, been doing that a lot lately.
“Little baby, you rebooting again?” His fingertips firm on Jisung’s jaw.
Something pops inside Jisung.
He backs away. Looks for Chan.
“We need to head into there.” He points in a random direction. Chan sees a school yard.
“We’ll sleep there tonight.” Chan nods as Jisung counts his breaths.
<o>
The school is small but well equipped. The dry goods still fresh. The electricity strong. They stay longer than a night. They find everything they need. Small miracles.
Chan is waiting. Jisung knows. Something is coming.
Felix sees the fireflies first. How they hover. He takes a torch and Hyunjin’s hand. Walk into the fenced area. The wonder on their faces.
Changbin sees the shooting stars first. One, then several.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s a sign.” Minho says next to Jisung, and Jisung wants to press into his space. Wants to crowd into him and steal his breath. It’s sudden this feeling, but it’s also been bubbling up for years. Every time he saw Lee Know signature over the last decades. Every time Minho blinks at him. He understands why Minho looked for him and not the other way around. He takes Minho by the wrist. Leads him far away from the others. Minho doesn’t question.
When Jisung finally turns around, Minho places his fingertips on his jaw.
“Have you finally noticed me, jagi?” and Jisung’s lips are on the dip of Minho’s collar bone. His hands gripping the back of Minho’s thighs.
“You’re all I see,” and his lips move up to meet Minho’s urgent mouth. Everything is a blur of clothing and skin and heat. Jisung sinks to his knees and when his mouth is around Minho, breathing and sucking as Minho trembles. He looks up and thinks this is the only way he can worship. He hears Minho’s breath quicken and feel the rush inside his mouth, catches Minho as he sinks to the ground. This. This is how the world ends for Jisung.
<o>
Hyunjin had always said his doorways were portals.
“I found us a way out. I saw it the other night during the meteor shower.”
He leads them back through the tear in the fence, into a wooded area.
“There.” He points to a clearing. “We have to come back at night. No light.”
And they are scared, but what is there left to lose.
They don’t remember the dark. But the dark isn’t dark, the sky is full of stars and the fireflies surround them. The gwisin swirl and the goemul watch as a crack in reality opens for them.
They all look at each other, and when Minho is the first to step up to the portal, his hand extended and eyes only on Jisung, he just smiles.
“Where ever you go, I’ll follow.”