This was previously posted to the main story, then deleted. I'm putting it here just for the heck of it. Main story is here. 

Donghae double checks the byline on the article: Lee Hyukjae. He looks up at the room number, underneath which is a dry erase board. On the left side it says Han Kyung beside something written in Chinese, and on the right, Lee Hyuk Jae. The rest of the board is covered in half-erased messages: journalism meeting wednesday 6pm; COMPUTER LAB CLOSED FRI; Kim Junsu was here!!!. On the bottom in neat handwriting it says Han Geng studio hours Tuesdays, Thursdays 5-8pm, and the rest of the messages are in Chinese. Donghae reads the words but none of the messages mean anything to him - he doesn’t know anything about these people and he’s feeling slightly nervous now that he’s here. It wasn’t easy tracking this guy down, and Donghae is not about to let the effort go to waste. He takes one deep breath and knocks.

There’s no answer. How did Donghae never realize that it’s possible Lee Hyukjae is busy? In class? Out with his friends? He knocks again to be sure, a little louder this time.

He’s about to turn around and resolve to try again later when he hears a voice call out from inside, “He’s in the studio!”

Donghae freezes. The studio? Does he think - oh, he thinks it’s someone looking for his roommate.

“Um,” Donghae starts, too quiet to be heard through the door. He tries again. “I’m - looking for Lee Hyukjae?”

Another pause. Then a shuffling sound before finally the door opens.

The person he assumes must be Lee Hyukjae looks confused, hand still on the doorknob as he eyes Donghae uncertainly. “Hi,” he says with a little bow of his head. “Are you… in one of my classes?”

Donghae shakes his head. “No, no, we haven’t met. Are you, um - “ Donghae lifts the copy of the school newspaper in his hands. “ - the same Lee Hyukjae who wrote this article?”

Hyukjae’s eyes lower to the newspaper, confusion still furrowing his brows, which tick up a little when he sees which issue Donghae is holding.

“Are you here to ask for a tarot card reading or something, because I’m not -”

“No!” Donghae cuts him off quickly, because the tone of his voice had become very unamused and the door had begun closing. “I’m here because I believe you.”

The door stops closing. Hyukjae opens it further instead, hand dropping off the doorknob. He looks at Donghae properly for the first time. “You do?”

“Yeah. I’ve had experiences too. I was wondering if we could talk?” Donghae swallows thickly.

Hyukjae studies him for a moment longer while Donghae holds his breath, and then the guarded expression clears from Hyukjae’s face and he turns, motioning for Donghae to follow.

“I was getting ready to leave for class, but I have a few minutes. You really believe me?”

Donghae closes the door behind him, sweeping his eyes over the dorm. The layout is exactly like his, but there are two beds instead of one on either side of the window, one desk to the left of the door and the other sitting under the window. The room is pretty neat, the left side with more books piled haphazardly on the desk and a few things littered across the bedspread. The right side of the room is spotless, and if Hyukjae hadn’t lifted a backpack off the bed and started piling books into it, Donghae would have guessed that nobody occupied that side of the room.

“I really liked your article. It got a lot of things right.”

Hyukjae stops in the middle of zipping up the bag to look at him. “What do you mean?”

. “I mean - like, the movies always make it so fake. Like for jump scares. Or there are articles with faked pictures and stuff. But you took it seriously so I.” He swallows, wishing he could get the nervous lump to dislodge from his throat. There’s nothing to be nervous about, he doesn’t understand why he’s feeling like this. “So I wanted to see if you really believe what you wrote.”

“Yeah, I do. The editor almost wouldn’t let me publish it, I had to wait until it was my turn for an op-ed piece. But it’s true. Everything I wrote is true.”

He says the last like it’s a challenge. Donghae just nods along.

Hyukjae swings his desk chair around and sits in it, but he doesn’t indicate that Donghae should sit down too, so he just stands awkwardly in the middle of the room. “Did you have any questions about the article?”

Donghae notices that Hyukjae swivels the chair just slightly from side to side while he waits  and realizes that he’s nervous, too.

“Well, I was wondering if I could see where you got your sources from? I don’t have a student account for the article database yet and I really wanted to read them.”

Hyukjae bites the inside of his cheek a bit, but then he swings the chair to face the desk and pulls open one of the drawers, saying over his shoulder, “I printed them out, you can have them if you want. I can always print them again.”

Donghae nods his head eagerly, taking the offered stack of papers. There are some handwritten notes in the margins, but he doesn’t mind.

“Thanks,” he says, and then awkwardness settles over the room again. “I… I really liked the part you wrote about auras,” he tries.

“Oh, yeah? That’s why people keep asking if I can tell their fortunes or something. I’m not a medium, I just did research!”

Donghae considers it. It would be easy: I can see auras. He thinks this Lee Hyukjae might even believe it. But in the back of his mind he imagines it being laughed off, worried that he’d tell other people until everyone thinks Donghae is too weird to be friends with - he’d have to switch schools - he’d have to -

Stop worrying about this. Hyukjae is looking at him oddly again. “That would be silly,” Donghae tries haltingly. “Mediums can’t tell fortunes.”

Hyukjae laughs, nodding. “And if they say they can, they’re lying.”

They share a small smile.

“Yeah,” Dongahe agress. “But mediums don’t really see auras either. They’re just sensitives. They just feel things.”

Hyukjae’s smile falters. “Well, I’ve never met a real medium but all my research says they can. Extrasensory perception varies, so some of them can see auras too.”

Donghae shakes his head. “They can’t. It’s clairvoyants that can see them. Sometimes.”

The frown is still there. Suddenly the awkwardness is back, thick in the air. “Hey, listen, uh… wait, what’s your name?”

“Oh! Donghae, I’m Lee Donghae.” He gives a short bow with the introduction.

“Lee Donghae, I’m really glad you stopped by but I do have class in like ten minutes, so. If you have any more questions after you read those articles let me know. You can stop by the newspaper offices and look for me there if you want.”

Donghae nods. “Okay. Sure, I’ll do that.”

“Thanks for stopping by, Donghae,” Hyukjae says again, standing up and turning back to his bag.

“Thanks for…” Donghae lifts the pile of articles, but Hyukjae isn’t looking. “The articles. Thanks for them.”

“No problem,” Hyukjae says, giving him a polite smile.

Donghae leaves. He hesitates with his back to the door, debating whether that went well or not. He glances down at the articles again, Hyukjae’s scrawl in the margins.

He doesn’t think he’ll stop by the news room. He thinks he’ll read these articles and maybe try to contact whoever wrote them instead. He and Hyukjae probably won’t cross paths, so he doesn’t have to worry about running into him: Hyukjae probably spends his time in the liberal arts buildings; English and Journalism and Communication, while Donghae is in the gym and the science buildings. Their dorm buildings are even on the opposite ends of the campus. He sighs, a little mad at himself for messing that up, but it wasn’t a complete waste. He still knows know that there are more people like Hyukjae, people who believes that what he sees is real. That Donghae isn’t crazy.

He pushes off the door, deciding to leave before Hyukjae heads out on his way to class and runs into him again. He doesn’t want a repeat awkward performance.

Donghae barely takes one step before dizziness forces him to grab onto the wall to steady himself. He drags in a deep breath and the dizzy feeling clears, but all his senses are on high alert. He half expects to see an apparition in the hallway. He’s been blocking out his senses for long enough to know that only something really strong can break through his barriers. Nothing ever has. Maybe his nerves are just catching up with him?

He struggles to gets his blocks back up, made practically immobile there in the dorm corridor by everything bombarding him at once - all of the students behind all of the doors lining the hall, all of the lingering emotions of stress soaked into a university dorm building over the years.

All told, it lasts only about as long as the dizziness had, and everything falls away to silence in his head. But it’s replaced by something that Donghae has never experienced for which he has no basis of understanding. It’s like he’s watching a movie play out in his head. He’s still there, in the dorm corridor, but he’s somewhere else too, a house he’s never seen before. And he’s somewhen else, too, but he can’t identify what makes him think that. He just knows. He’s sure of it.

The Donghae who is in the corridor doesn’t move, but the Donghae who’s vision he’s experiencing does. His other-self turns in that house to see another person enter the room, someone who looks vaguely familiar. Someone whose aura is twofold: the kind of aura Donghae is used to seeing is superimposed with something bright and shining that makes his other-self feel safe. At ease. Rich with life and purpose.

But it can’t make any sense. His other-self is much older than nineteen, and so is the other person. He’s old, laugh lines etched deep into his face, around his mouth and eyes. Age wearing him down, thinning his hair. Old enough to be Donghae’s grandfather. This person says something to his other-self, but there’s a ringing in Donghae’s ears, a white noise getting louder and louder, so he doesn’t make out the words. The white noise becomes loud enough to drown out all of his other senses, and then it leaves him entirely, just as suddenly as all of this started.

Donghae is back in the corridor. He’s only one self again. No dizziness, nobody else’s emotion crowding in on him. It’s silent, and utterly normal, and Donghae feels like crying at the same time that he feels his heart beating quickly with anticipation. He almost misses him, that other self, and how contented he had felt. And the other person, too  - he knows who it is. It’s unmistakeable.

Donghae needs to only turn on his heel to be close enough to the door to knock on it again. He does knock, but he tries the handle at the same time, and it’s still unlocked. He opens it swiftly, steps back inside the room and shuts the door just as quickly, pressing his back against it again, heart beating nervously just as it had five minutes ago. It feels like it was five decades ago.

Lee Hyukjae has his backpack on his shoulders, and he had frozen seconds away from setting a snapback on his head when Donghae had burst again through the doorway.

“Lee Donghae? Um. Did you forget something?” He lowers the snapback, leaning backward to place it on the desk.

Donghae studies him closely this time. His dark hair is long enough on the sides to frame his face, features both angular and soft, and his fringe brushes just above his large eyes. On the back, the ends of his hair fall just above the base of his neck. His nose is round above a full mouth, currently parted in concern. Hyukjae’s features are unusual but striking the longer he looks, and Donghae has to stop himself from smiling at the dual image of him that he has in his head. He knows exactly what Lee Hyukjae is going to look like when he’s an old man.

Donghae is distantly aware of how lucky he is to have the privilege of that knowledge, but for now, he has to focus on the present.

“Clairvoyance means clear vision,” he blurts, and catches the annoyed look on Hyukjae’s face. But he presses on. He’s not nervous anymore. He knows now that it will be okay. He has to do this. “It’s not always vision, there are other ways. Claircognizance, clairsentience. Sight, knowing, feeling. I know because I am one. I’m clairvoyant.”

Silence, in which Hyukjae stares at him warily. “Are you ing with me, because I was nice to you and -”

“You’re a lot of warm colors. A kind of muted red because you’re trying to push me away right now, but it’s orangey too. It’s getting yellower because you’re trying to figure me out. Generally brown-ish too, because of stress. I’m not trying to make you miss your class, sorry. And I’m not ing with you.”

It’s exhausting to read his aura right now, to keep the rest of his blocks up and focus on only one person. He’s not used to it, and the last few minutes have been a lot. Really a lot. So Donghae drops it, but he almost regrets missing the moment that what Hyukjae is feeling all changes. Outwardly, his shoulders relax. He’s still got that crease at the bridge of his nose, but he’s looking at Donghae like he can’t believe his eyes.

Hyukjae shrugs the backpack off his shoulders, grabbing it by one of the straps and letting it drop slowly to the ground.

“Well,” he says. “I guess missing one class won’t hurt.”