He faces the window, a frail strand of black tracing the raindrops pattering softly against the misty glass. Rain falls in a quiet song accompanied only by the soft susurrus of rustling leaves, dancing in harmony to his sighs.

He wonders for a brief moment the texture of rain; how would it feel against his translucent veil, whether it’d sear his darkened cloak and inflame his brittle bones or cut straight through his core, numbing it all the way till the tip of his black finger like tendrils.

Raising his arm, he tries to catch the falling rain. He knows that no matter how much he tries he will never know how it’s like to feel, to be. And so he stops, allowing the drapes to fall gently over the light.

Hollowness is immensely painful and yet surprisingly painless.

A hypnotizing beep he tends to tune out of brings him back to his bedside. He watches the steady rise and fall of her breathing, observing yet again how fragile the transparent plastics makes her.

He is waiting, these days.

And on days like this, he sits by the window and watch the raindrops race, silently edging them on as one droplet joins another, watching as they disappear into the puddle down below.

He wonders if he is that lone raindrop at the side that will never join the puddle.

A soft knock and a man walks in, a presence he has became familiar with. His gentle aura spreads through the room and she shows him a smile that is exclusively his, so warm and filled with life.

“How are you feeling?” 

He holds her hand, caressing her fingers and occasionally bringing them close to his lips.  

“You seem more nervous than me, Hoseok.”

The man laughs, a single forced one that sounds more like a sob and buries his head in his young wife’s shoulder.

“Perhaps you’re right.”

He watches all of this from the far side of the room. No matter how many times he’s had to do this, he has never gotten used to farewells.

He starts to see the time the two have left slip between their fingers and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“Mr and Mrs Jung? We’re ready for you.” 

Hoseok clears his throat and stretches from the position he’s been in for hours. Reading her favorite novel to her has became some sort of routine the two cling on to these days. 

“Will you be okay?”

Don’t let her go.

“I’ll be fine. I don’t want you to see me like this.” 

Make him stay.

Hoseok combs his fingers through her hair and kisses her forehead.

“Promise you’ll return?”

“Promise.”

The door closes with a click that seems to signal the finality of this moment, one that leaves a strange ache in his chest. But what could he, a mere abstract concept, do but lament the cruel hand of fate.

A deep sigh permeates the room, an unfamiliar sound to this overly familiar loneliness.

Hoseok sits alone and watches the silent fall of autumn leaves from the window, until he can no longer feel her lingering presence.

His tears had dried and his soul still gaping and painful. Hoseok walks with darkness dripping off his shoulders towards the inevitable.

So he stands, alone in the empty room listening as the wind whispered through the oak’s leaves. A dryad appears to the wind’s calls and burst out with a magical laugh that sounded a bit like raindrops.

The time draws closer.

The scent of death dances about, peeking between his veils and calls out to him. It flutters between his hair and he follows it.

“Five more minutes,” it tells him, “It is a job that must be done.”

The scent draws him closer and closer until he is right by the foot of her operating desk, until he hears every panicked breath, until he hears nothing but her breath.

“It is almost time.” 

He raises his hand and reaches out to her. In an instant, they were transported. To a void that can be reached by him and him alone, a space that exists only for him, a slip between life and death.

It was a colorless place. It has no depth, no direction, it has no time. It was here that he spends most of his time, silent, asleep and wandering but he never finds the end, just like how he doesn’t remember the beginning. 

Surely it was a blasphemy, for him to bring anyone but himself here. But to whom he did not know, for this is space unknown to all but him. 

And yet he knows, somewhere deep that what he is doing is wrong.

Who can blame him though, for he is nothing but a guide, a channel, a connection between life and death.

So instead, he turns to her.

“A-are you death?”

No, he tells her not with words no but she hears him anyway, I do not like death.

A smile, she shows him, “Neither do I.”

“But without death, there’s no life.”

And she was right. 

He nods.

“Why am I here?”

Tell me, she tries to move closer to hear him but ends up in a different direction altogether for there is no logic in his space, something that is still impossible to understand, what is it you desire?

She ponders for a moment. 

Do you wish to live?

“No.”

He takes in her words in a thoughtful manner, silently he observes her resolve, quietly he processes her emotions and what a thrill it was to finally be this close to be. 

Why?

She tries once more with solid resolve to get closer to him, to look him in the eye when they speak and he lets her, for reasons he did not know.

“It hurts to become.”

He ponders for a moment.

It hurts not to be. 

She looks at him for a moment, then two, and it stirs something within him - a change perhaps. 

“What is your name?”

It was a difficult question. 

What use do I have of a name if I have no one to call me by?

“So if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?”

She smiles and he feels an inexplicable sense of constriction in his chest, feels a light starting to form behind his eyes and he feels, for the first time. 

Namjoon, he tells her, his voice feeling more solid than before. 

“Namjoon.”

He smiles. 

“Hey I said you can’t go there!”

A third voice rips into the peace that has settled down between them, like a heavy blade, it tears through the heavy colorless blanket and brings them back to the reality that was waiting.

A vague flood of sadness seeps in through the enlarging cracks, intensifying in waves until there was nothing but despair left in this temporary constructed space.

 

He is waiting for you.

He sees Hoseok beyond the flickering realities, his silence in the face of her death more painful than any tears he’s seen but perhaps he has never really seen till now.

She turns to him in surprise.

I’m sorry this is all I can do for the both of you.

The emptiness was falling apart, in a most silent way possible, it evaporates, shred by shred, brushing past him in angles and it burns, bit by bit he feels himself disappearing. 

Go.

“Thank you.”

Namjoon watches her go and closes his eyes.

From the moment he brought her here, he knew. No matter how much he wanted to, he is never allowed to interfere with the cycle of life and death. It was something that was encrypted into him, carved deep into his conscious, into his every fibre. 

And the moment he starts to deviate, to evolve beyond his purpose, he will no longer be of use. 

But that’s okay. 

An eternity of existence is nothing compared to this fleeting moment of being and Namjoon knows it all too well.

Death approaches. 

He holds Namjoon close with a cold caress, a face he knew so well, a face he never knew well enough. 

A chill wraps around him, an invisible veil that surrounds him, suffocating him with a paralyzing fear, a feeling that comforts Namjoon, assuring him of his being.

 He doesn’t fear death.

He fears not knowing, he fears that he will no longer become.

But death holds his hand and welcomes him like an old friend, whispering with the wind, It’s been hard on you, I’m sorry. 

Death spirits him away and finally, finally, he finds his end. 

Finally, I am home again.