"Pst! Youngie!" a youthful voice hissed. Bo Young whipped around, eyes wide, to find her childhood friend standing hidden partially behind a thin tree. 

"There you are. I've been looking for you," she chided playfully.

Dried leaves and twigs cracked beneath her feet as she walked to him. He simply grinned, taking a silent step toward her, leaving his post behind the tree. His skinny frame was draped with a cream-colored sweater and ripped navy shorts. Judging by the condition if his shoes, he probably hadn't bought new ones in a long while. Bo Young had often offered to but him new clothes, but he declined again and again. She had never seen his house, but she imagined that it would be in similar condition.

He had always been a mystery to her. She had memories of she and Taehyung chasing each other through the trees, having long conversations until she had to return home for dinner, even sharing a first kiss. Since then, they had always been soft on each other. Bo Young had always felt something strange about Taehyung. Just...different. She had never met his parents or seen his house though he said he lived just up the path. After such a long friendship - they were both 17 now - Bo Young never really asked him to meet her parents anymore. He refused every request, each time finding an excuse.

"Wanna take a walk?" Taehyung raised his brows at her.

"Sure, I don't have any homework today. Don't you have any?" she asked. He never mentioned anything about school to her, except when she asked.

"Nope! I finished it all already. Too easy," he .

"Wish I went to your school. You never have any homework."

He just giggled at her.

Bo Young paused for a moment, noticing her left shoelace annoyingly untied and flopping around as she stepped. Hands on her laces as she knelt in the dead leaves, she lifted her head up to yell at Taehyung to wait up. Her shout faltered in as she watched him saunter away.

His steps made no sound no matter how hard she listened.

 As she scanned the leaf- and twig-covered ground, she could find no imprint of his beat-up old shoes, as if he hadn't really tread there at all. It bothered her for the first time that she knew nothing about him.

 She quickly forgot her untied lace and stood frozen, unsure what to do. Her heart beat like drum inside her chest and she could hear the thrum in her ears. All of Taehyung's oddities were somehow whole and real now and rapidly becoming terrifying. What kind of creature doesn't make tracks on the ground or a sound as he walks over crispy, dead leaves? Does he even have parents or a house? Is he...real?

 All this ran through Bo Young's mind in the seconds before Taehyung realized she wasn't following him.

 "What?" he questioned innocently and motioned for her to follow him. She just stared at him, tense and ready to run.

 "No. Wait. I can explain." He put his pale hands up in surrender and took a tentative step forward, like she was a wild animal. She kept silent but took a few steps back.

 "Please let me explain. Okay - I, uh - when I first met you - you remember the accident, right? That one day when we were little I told you I got in a car accident, remember?" he spoke as rapidly as he could before she could run off. He knew it was only a matter of time before she figured out there was something strange about him, like his ability to float just above the ground. She nodded slowly that she remembered.

 "Well...that day I - I died that day. I didn't survive that crash." Taehyung couldn't meet her eyes, so he looked at the ground that his feet hadn't touched since the day of the accident.

 "What?" Bo Young couldn't believe what she was hearing. I didn't make sense. It couldn't. Why was he making up such a story? And he expected her to believe it? Somehow, however, she knew, deep down, there was truth in his words. She took another step back.

 "Wait, Bo Young, be careful. There's a really steep cliff past there," Taehyung said urgently. The wind picked up as if to accent his words, blowing through the trees ominously.

 Bo Young whimpered, never taking her eyes off of him. She didn't seem to have heard what he said. She took another step back.

 "I said there's a ledge there! Stop where you are or you'll fall," he pleaded with her. Her mind was running to keep up with what he was saying. Dead? He's-

 She took another disbelieving step back and suddenly saw sky and felt nothing beneath her feet. She heard Taehyung scream out to her, then nothing.

/ / /

 Bo Young blinked her bleary eyes. "Oh. Taehyung!"

 She looked up to find him staring down at her with eyes wide and doe-like. "How long was I asleep?" She rubbed her eyes and stretched, sitting up from her bed of grass and twigs.

 "Asleep? Youngie...you - you fell, do you remember?"

 She stared at him in silence for a few moments. Her expression went blank. She launched to her feet and began walking, like she was searching for something. She arrived at a tall rock cliff in the forest. At the bottom she found her body lying there like a doll, arms and legs sprawled out at awkward angles. Her head rested on a rock, blood still trickling down it from the wound that had killed her.

 Bo Young whirled around to face the opposite way. There was Taehyung, looking down dismally at her body.

 Then, he shook his head as if to forget all that had happened up until this point. He extended his hand, palm up. Bo Young furrowed her brows, then turned them up, making her look like a hurt puppy. She took his hand and they walked away, not once looking back.

 Neither created a print in the soil beneath them.

~*~*~*~*~

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