Sanghyuk sniffles loudly, almost daring the tear welling up in his left eye to spill over, and watches the smoke from the blown-out candle waft past his face and get whisked away by the strong sea breeze that’s ruffling his hair and uniform. He’s glad his birthday isn’t in winter.

He looks down at his cake and laughs a little – his birthday cake that isn’t so much a full cake as a sliver – and that’s when the tear stops clinging to his bottom lashes and lets go, plopping onto his pants and disappearing quickly.

“Can I disappear like that too?” Sanghyuk asks the nothingness only half-mockingly. “Mom?”

Sanghyuk takes a deep breath. If Mom was here she’d tell me to stop crying, for one thing, Sanghyuk thinks. And to keep my head down and live quietly and thankfully. And to make good plans.

Taekwoon watches Sanghyuk dip one finger into the cake’s frosting and absentmindedly eat it, Taekwoon is thoroughly confused – he had been sitting down to dinner, but now here he is, surrounded only by waves and nothing and nobody except a scrawny high-schooler trying not to cry into his slice of cake and staring hard out at the sea as if he wants to fight it with his bare hands.

“Happy fifteenth birthday to me,” the boy announces, and Taekwoon frowns slightly. He can’t see the boy’s future, no matter how hard he tries – other humans have theirs bursting out at him in vivid pictures even if he probes lightly. This boy has nothing.

Taekwoon leaves.

*

Taekwoon takes a deep breath and lifts one hand to his face, slowly wiping the pieces of cream cake away as the boy shoots to his feet and backs away almost to the edge of the jetty.

“Did you have to throw your cake at me?” Taekwoon asks, voice tightly controlled.

“Who are you?” the boy demands. “You – one second you were there and then-”

Taekwoon takes another deep breath. One year later – the boy is taller, definitely; some baby fat is gone, too. And there’s a bigger difference in him – more defiance, and the fifteen year-old holding back tears almost seems a distant memory now. Taekwoon looks at the blown-out candle by his feet, still smoking slightly.

“I will explain, but I believe I asked you first. Who are you, and how do you keep summoning me?”

“Summoning you? What are you talking about?”

“You did it one year ago, too. Same place, you with the cake, suddenly summoning me here. How are you doing it? I demand to know.”

“One year ago?” the boys asks in deep confusion. “You were here one year ago?”

Taekwoon takes one step towards the boy and the boy backs off dangerously near falling off into the dark water.

“Look, be careful-” Taekwoon starts, but the boy cuts him off, darting forward to grab his schoolbag. In the bright moonlight Taekwoon sees fingerprints – five neat bruises along his bicep – that are quickly gone from sight as the boy retreats backwards down the jetty away from Taekwoon and the sea.

“I don’t know you, creep. Stay away from me.”

*

Taekwoon glances at his calendar. It’s today, without a doubt. July the fifth has been hanging heavy on his mind for weeks now; once is a coincidence. Two years in a row is slightly harder to explain away – and if tonight the boy summons him once more then he’s not going to leave without an explanation.

It’s way past eleven o’clock at night now, and he’s been completely useless and distracted the whole day. Humans should not be able to summon him like this – no one is able to summon him, not even the Reapers; they have power only over mortals.

That thought gives him pause. It’s been a while since he’s thought of himself as human; at first he clung desperately to the word even as it became apparent he was no longer part of that world. After a while he disdained the term – he is not human. He has not been for centuries.

Five minutes to midnight.

Four.

Taekwoon dodges the thrown cake well this time, letting instinct take over and reacting before he could even properly see it heading his way.

He stares at the boy and the boy stares back, though this time with much more wariness and care than the pure adrenaline and shock of before. Seventeen years look good on him – many children go through painfully awkward growth, but this boy is eagerly welcoming the extra height and bulk with open arms.

“Who are you?” The boy’s voice only wavers slightly.

“I-“ Taekwoon begins, and then wonders how to continue. This boy is clearly something supernatural, but from the looks of it he has no idea of his own powers. “You keep wasting your cake,” he ends up saying instead.

“I wouldn’t be if you didn’t keep showing up like this and scaring me,” the boy retorts.

“You don’t have to be scared of me,” Taekwoon tries to sound reassuring.

“I’m not,” the boy declares contrarily. “And you still haven’t told me who you are. Or what you are.”

In the moonlight Taekwoon can see the boy’s left cheekbone is smudged with a fading bruise, green-tinged edges spread over the delicate skin. He thinks of bruises in the shape of fingerprints.

“Have you heard of goblins?”

“Goblins,” the boy repeats, staring hard. Taekwoon knows he looks like any other human; up until the point he disappears, or levitates, or teleports – a cool bag of tricks had come with his eternal punishment. “Goblins don’t exist. That’s a fairytale, for – for kids.”

“Fairytales are not always made up,” Taekwoon answers, already feeling strange and self-conscious. “I would also like to know what you are, since you’re able to summon me.”

“I didn’t do anything,” the boy replies, looking at his ruined cake. “You said that last year, too. That I summoned you, but I didn’t do anything.”

“Are you lying to me?” Taekwoon narrows his eyes.

“Why would I lie?” the boy bursts out. “If I was summoning you for a reason I would have already done whatever it is I wanted. How many cakes do I have to throw at you before you believe me?”

Taekwoon almost wants to smile at the boy’s boldness, though it’s not so much bravery or defiance as a sense of – resignation? Not ‘I may get into trouble for this’ but ‘I’m going to be in trouble anyway so I might as well’ – Taekwoon looks once more at the bruise on his cheek.

“Did someone hit you?”

The boy’s hand flies to his face. “No.”

“Really.”

“…It was a slap. Not a hit.”

“A slap bad enough to give you that bruise?”

“She slapped me with a book.”

The boy looks away, then back again at Taekwoon, eyes bright. “Can you scare my aunt for me? It doesn’t have to be something big. Just – do your magic and suddenly appear by her bed at night or something and terrify her.”

“Does she hit you often?”

“I’m getting better at dodging,” the boy says, and then smiles quickly and briefly. “Like you.”

“Why are you always celebrating your birthday out here alone?”

The boy doesn’t answer, only points to his cheek, and Taekwoon thinks he understands better now, in the awkward silence that falls.

“The least you can do is buy me another cake,” the boy says eventually, looking up at Taekwoon with eyes half-hopeful half-calculating.

“Where am I going to get a cake at this time of the night?” Taekwoon scoffs.

“Then being a goblin or whatever isn’t that big of a deal, is it?” the boy scoffs right back. “Can’t even do this one simple thing.” He bends down to get his backpack, and Taekwoon grits his teeth. It doesn’t matter – he can just walk away. Whatever or whoever this boy is, proving himself to him is not a priority.

He could teleport to some country nearby that’s a few hours behind them, where the bakeries would still be open; but right then he remembers the Reaper’s strawberry tarts, taking up space in his fridge, with a big ‘if you eat this I will make life very difficult for you’ note taped to it.

“How do you feel about strawberry tarts?” Taekwoon asks, and the boy lights up.

“Wait here just one second.”

*

Sanghyuk checks around him one last time to see if he’s really alone behind the gardening shed right at the back of the school – it’s late afternoon, club activities are over, teachers should all be on the way home by now, and the school gates will be closing in an hour. Just enough time for this.

He could, of course, smoke outside of school where getting caught by a teacher wouldn’t be such a big threat, but then where would be the fun in that?

He s his shirt to get at the little secret pocket sewn onto the inside where he keeps his few sticks and shakes the box of matches out of his bag. Matches, not a lighter – matches don’t look suspicious, whereas a lighter is just a confession of guilt, and a lighter is too heavy to hide in his shirt’s secret pocket anyway. He’s rather proud of himself for figuring this one out – he aced last week’s bag spotcheck because of this genius move.

He lights up and watches the match burn until it’s almost to his fingers before blowing it out.

“Wha – what are you doing?” Taekwoon demands, making Sanghyuk inhale too fast and choke on the smoke in his shock at Taekwoon’s appearance.

“You’re too young to smoke. Put that out right now,” Taekwoon takes the cigarette from a wheezing and coughing Sanghyuk and stomps on it, waiting for Sanghyuk to come back to the land of the living.

“What is this place? Is this your school? You’re smoking in school?”

“Why are you here?” Sanghyuk asks, tears running from his eyes from his near-death experience. “I don’t have any birthday cake this time. How did you get here?”

“You’re asking me. You’re the one who keeps summoning me,” Taekwoon complains. “Also I doubt it’s the birthday cake that’s doing the trick. Anyway, you shouldn’t be smoking at all, not just in school.”

“It’s none of your business!”

Taekwoon glares at him. “If you keep summoning me like this I’m making it my business. Do you think I have nothing else better to do with my time?”

“Then go and do it!” Sanghyuk yells. “Leave me alone!”

“You leave me alone!” Taekwoon yells back, and leaves in a huff.

Sanghyuk stares at the empty spot where Taekwoon was just a second ago and then at the used, burnt-out match on the ground. He slowly takes out another match, looking at it contemplatively, and lights it.

“Three, two, one,” Sanghyuk whispers, and then blows out the flame.

Taekwoon blinks, looking at Sanghyuk once more – one second not there, the next second solid and present.

“What?” Taekwoon demands, exasperated, and Sanghyuk punches the air in delight.

“I figured it out!”

*

Taekwoon comes home to find that the Reaper has filled his bed with soil. I told you not to take the strawberry tarts says the note lying neatly on top of the mess. The effects are always negligible, these pranks they play on each other, but clean-up is always such a drag.

“The boy can summon me with fire,” he tells Hakyeon when Taekwoon finally finds him, lying on Taekwoon’s sofa reading one of Taekwoon’s books. Trust a Reaper to act like the king of everything.

“Don’t even talk to me if you don’t have more strawberry tarts with you,” Hakyeon cuts him off, and Taekwoon takes a deep calming breath before disappearing himself and reappearing ten minutes later, holding out a box full of expensive pastries.

“The boy can summon me with fire,” he repeats, and Hakyeon sits up, delightedly taking the box. “The boy with no future that I can see. He just has to blow out a flame and that summons me.”

“No future and has the power to summon a goblin, huh,” Hakyeon muses, slightly muffled around a mouthful of tart. “Maybe he’s a goblin himself.”

Taekwoon gives him a disgusted look. “The whole point of being a goblin is that you know the curse that’s been put on you. And he’s just a child, only seventeen. Please focus.”

“What’s his name? Maybe I can search him up in the records.”

“Oh,” Taekwoon looks sheepish. “I forgot to ask.”

Hakyeon just gives him a Look. “Next time he summons you make that be the first thing you ask him. I can’t search the records without his full and original name.”

“I wi-”

Taekwoon disappears. Hakyeon goes back to his book.

*

“Can’t you give me some sort of warning before you do this?” Taekwoon pleads, Sanghyuk standing before him holding a smoking match. They’re standing now in a park, the sun setting painting everything in a distractingly beautiful gold, and Taekwoon is too worked up to pay attention to how disoriented he is. “What if I’m – I’m – doing something you shouldn’t see-”

“Oh?” Sanghyuk raises an eyebrow, mischief personified.

“Anyway,” Taekwoon clears his throat, refusing to let this boy fluster him any further. “You can’t just keep summoning me like this. There should be rules. Why did you call me this time? I barely left you half an hour ago.”

“Just because. I’m curious about you. I’ve never met a goblin before. I haven’t asked all my questions yet.”

“What’s your name?” Taekwoon asks quickly, remembering Hakyeon’s words.

“Sanghyuk. What’s yours? How old are you? Where did you come from? What exactly is a goblin?”

“What’s your, uh, full name?” Taekwoon repeats delicately, ignoring the curious look Sanghyuk gives him.

“Why?”

“Because I want to know who exactly it is that has the power to summon me. You’re the only human so far in all my life who’s done it.”

“I’m that special, am I? I knew it.”

“Your name.”

“Han Sanghyuk. Of the Daejeon Hans. That’s where my mother’s from, anyway. So, come on. Answer me.”

Sanghyuk hunkers down in the shade of a tree among the fallen autumn leaves and pats the pile of leaves next to him.

“Don’t you need to eat dinner? I’ll tell you everything you need to know as we eat.”

Sanghyuk looks up at him from the ground, and Taekwoon is struck in that moment of just how young Sanghyuk looks. He really is still just a child; and it is so difficult to imagine him as anything more than a poor kid in bad circumstances. But for some reason this boy is special – the bruise on his cheek is even more obvious now in the light, and Taekwoon wonders what Sanghyuk’s teachers had to say about it. Taekwoon hopes that the reason why he cannot see Sanghyuk’s twenties and thirties and forties and why Sanghyuk has the power to summon a goblin isn’t yet more bad news.

Taekwoon puts out a hand to him and Sanghyuk looks at it suspiciously for a moment before he takes it and allows Taekwoon to pull him to his feet.

“What do you like to eat? Anything at all.”

“Gopchang,” Sanghyuk answers promptly, making Taekwoon laugh.

“Sure, but – I’m feeling generous here. What’s your favourite non-Korean food to eat?”

“I don’t know,” Sanghyuk shrugs. “I’ve never really had the chance to try a lot of other food.”

“What do you think about sushi? Japan is nicer than Korea this time of year.”

“Japan?” Sanghyuk asks, eyes wide. “What do you mean Japan-”

Taekwoon reaches for Sanghyuk’s hand once more and the next second the park is empty.

*

“His name is Han Sanghyuk,” Taekwoon tells Hakyeon, trying to peer over his shoulder to get a look at the List of the Living. Hakyeon tsk-s at him, elbowing him a little to get Taekwoon to stop crowding him. “Birthday July fifth.”

Hakyeon scans the list, stops, and then scans the list once more, slower this time.

“What?” Taekwoon asks impatiently.

“He’s not on here,” Hakyeon says, surprised. “Are you sure Han Sanghyuk is his real name? And his birthday is really the fifth of July?”

“As far as he knows, yes,” Taekwoon replies. “What does this mean?”

Hakyeon looks at Taekwoon. “Every single human alive right now is on the List of the Living. Either this child is not actually alive… or he’s not actually human.”

“He’s alive, that part is for sure,” Taekwoon says. “Whether he’s really human… if not human, then what?”

“He’s not a ghost, he’s not a Reaper, he’s not a goblin,” Hakyeon ticks off his fingers. “He’s just a human boy who apparently has no future, is not in the List of the Living, and has powers over goblins. What are you going to do?”

“We’re in Japan?!” Sanghyuk yelled, running first in one direction and then back to Taekwoon, and then off in another direction again like he couldn’t make up his mind what to do. “Japan???”

He had wolfed down the sushi Taekwoon had ordered for him in a little place in Shibuya he favoured, and then refused to let Taekwoon bring him home for hours, just wanting to walk and walk and walk down endless Japanese roads and streets, soaking up the unfamiliar language and sights and sounds, eyes wide and mouth hanging open in awe and excitement.

“Sanghyuk, it’s almost midnight. We need to get home.”

“But-”

“We can come back anytime.”

“Any-” Sanghyuk stopped, making people flow around him like a stone in a stream. “You mean that? You really mean that?”

Taekwoon swallowed. What was he getting himself into with this kid? “Within reason. You still have to go to school, for one thing. But when you’re done with classes and you – I guess, if you don’t have homework or something, then – yes.”

“You would bring me anywhere I wanted?” Sanghyuk asked slowly. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Taekwoon admits.

*

They go back to Japan three more times, and then: Canada. Germany. Hawaii. Indonesia. Alaska. Norway. Fiji. Mount Everest (Taekwoon said no) – India instead. Sanghyuk is late for school eight times, and gets detention for a month.

(“Can’t you turn back time to get me to school when I need to be? Detention ,” Sanghyuk complains.

“Nothing on earth has power over time, Sanghyuk,” Taekwoon tells him.)

Sanghyuk summons him on other times to:

Help him study for a Chemistry test; play football; go with him to try to get an after-school job; get one-for-one bubble tea, both of which he then proceeded to drink; but most times, just to talk. Once it is an accident –

Sanghyuk turns away from the stove, putting down a rag carelessly too close to the fire as he reaches for the salt to add to the soup he’s boiling for dinner that night. It’s already late, and he hasn’t been home to cook for the family for four days already; his aunt is becoming unbearable.

“How long more are you going to take?” comes the unkind shout from the living room just as Sanghyuk turns back in a panic to see the rag is on fire. He quickly blows on it, flapping his hands at the rag for good measure, and the next thing he knows Taekwoon is standing next to him in his aunt’s kitchen. They stare at each other for a second, dumbfounded, before Sanghyuk cracks up and has to clap both hands over his mouth to keep his aunt and cousins from hearing him.

“You two are getting awfully close,” Hakyeon observes casually one evening from his sofa – it is no longer even remotely Taekwoon’s any longer – and Taekwoon narrows his eyes at Hakyeon.

“Don’t say it like that. The boy has no friends, Hakyeon. His mother died when he was nine and he’s been living with his horrible aunt since then, and she used to hit him. Now he’s too big for that she’s stopped mostly but it still doesn’t keep her from saying all sorts of terrible things to him. Wouldn’t you feel sorry for him?”

“Given my line of work I try not to have feelings of any kind towards humans, so, no,” Hakyeon answers. “But what did you say – no friends?”

“He can see ghosts,” Taekwoon admits. “His classmates are all freaked out by him. I have to say it is slightly creepy to see him walk around someone you can’t see, or turn to look at something that isn’t there. And he says they talk to him.”

“He can see ghosts?” Hakyeon says, sitting up. “Wait – wait. You said something about him when he was nine?”

“His mother died,” Taekwoon repeated. “What is it?”

“Did he tell you her name?”

“Kang Eunsong, I think. He took me to her grave. Hakyeon, what is it?”

Hakyeon disappears and then comes back with a huge binder labelled ‘2008’. “This is everyone that died in 2008, eight years ago when the boy was nine years old. His mother should be in here… Kang Eunsong. Kang… Eun- Yes, here she is. And this answers everything.”

Hakyeon holds out a death certificate. “Kang Eunsong, hit and run. Missing soul, finally collected nine years after she was supposed to die in another car accident. I remember this because I went to the house to collect her son too, but he’d left before I could find him. Both of them had been on the missing soul list, but because her son had died when he was still in the womb he had no name of his own. Do you have any idea how much paperwork missing souls create?”

“Hakyeon, I don’t understand.”

Hakyeon leans forward. “Taekwoon, humans who can see ghosts are humans who have died, even for just a second. Sometimes it’s a heart attack, or a , or they drown before someone gives them CPR. Kang Eunsong and her son both died seventeen years ago in that car accident, but someone brought them back to life. She must have been pregnant with him at the time. Ring any bells?”

Taekwoon stares at him.

“That’s what missing souls are. Humans that do not show up on the List of the Living because technically, they’re dead. That’s why you can’t see the boy’s future. That’s why his name isn’t in the List. He’s supposed to be dead.”

“Please help me.”

The strangled whisper nearly escapes his attention, but he hears it nonetheless, soft as it is. It’s desperate, and strident, for all its lack of strength – and Taekwoon battles with himself. Helping humans never comes to any good, in the end.

“Please… my baby… save him.”

Taekwoon leaves the rooftop and touches down, feet crunching into the snow as he approaches the woman lying in a steadily-growing pool of her own blood, skid marks of a car speeding off ugly against the pure snow that’s been falling all day.

“Please…”

He’s here now, and he cannot ignore this; he cannot ignore this woman pleading for the life of her child, as sentimental as that sounds. He’s seen so many people die, over the years. Honestly, one – or two, as it is in this case – more would not matter.

He watches the breath go out of her and her body sag against the hard road, the ebb of blood out through her wounds slowing. How many humans has he killed without a thought during his own lifetime? They did not matter to him then. Humans die by the thousands every day.

It may not matter to him but it would matter to her, Taekwoon thinks finally, before putting out his hand and giving her and her baby back their lives.

“Oh, gods, it was you, wasn’t it?” Hakyeon asks with intense annoyance, watching Taekwoon’s face as he remembers. “You’re the reason why this boy is alive now. You’re the reason I have been searching for him for the last seventeen years with no head or tail to start with! Missing souls cannot be allowed to run around like this!”

“So what will you do now you know his name?” Taekwoon asks quietly, and Hakyeon stills at his tone.

“I have to do my job, Taekwoon,” Hakyeon answers.

“You have to kill him?”

“He’s already dead,” Hakyeon stresses. “He’s not supposed to be alive.”

“That makes no difference,” Taekwoon argues, standing up. “He’s alive anyway. Are you telling me you’re going to take this boy’s life?”

Hakyeon looks at him calmly until Taekwoon sinks back down onto the sofa. “It’s admirable you want to protect him, Taekwoon, but-”

“It’s not fair. He’s so young.”

“You do realise he will die one day no matter what?”

“After a full life. When he’s old!”

“You don’t know that. What if he gets hurt? What if he dies of some terrible injury and suffers?”

“He won’t.”

“Why, because you’ll be there to protect him? His entire life?”

Hakyeon’s voice rings out like a slap and Taekwoon looks away. “He’s lived eight years with a woman who’s supposed to be his family but has made his life miserable. He has no friends because nobody wants to be friends with someone who can see the dead. Both of these things are because of me, Hakyeon. But what was I supposed to do? Just let her die? With her unborn baby? She begged me.”

“It might have been for the best,” Hakyeon says softly.

“Promise me, Hakyeon. You will not go near him.”

Hakyeon sighs, and closes his binder with a snap. “You are the most stubborn bastard I have ever met. Just – keep him out of my sight.”

*

“You’re awfully good at dodging questions about your life,” Sanghyuk says, swinging his feet off the edge of the jetty, the birthday cake sitting between them with candles waiting to be lit and wished upon. One big candle to symbolise ten years, and eight smaller ones. “I’ve known you for a year and all I’ve managed to get out of you is that you were supposed to die about a thousand years ago, you’ve had a curse put on you that doesn’t let you die but you won’t tell me why, you can make gold out of nothing, and that your full name is Jung Taekwoon. You’ve lived in many different countries but you come back here every half-century or so, and you can speak Japanese and English and French and blah blah blah blah. Why won’t you tell me anything interesting? Though the making gold out of nothing part is very interesting. I am very interested in that bit.”

“I’m sorry you have not been entertained sufficiently,” Taekwoon mock-glares at Sanghyuk out of the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry I’m not that fascinating.”

“I think you’re much more interesting than you let on,” Sanghyuk says, and then takes a quick breath, as if nervous. “For example, you’ve never talked about that sword you carry around on your back.”

Taekwoon goes completely still, even as the wind around them begins to pick up. Sanghyuk grabs the cake protectively – Taekwoon’s emotions don’t always run away with themselves like this, and Sanghyuk worries he may bring a thunderstorm.

“You can see the sword?” Taekwoon asks, voice tight.

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Always. That’s why I was so shocked when I first saw you – very few things scare me, you know, because of the seeing ghosts thing – but that night the sword wasn’t on your back, it was – sticking right out of you. Glowing green, transparent, while the rest of you was solid – I’d never seen anything like that before. Sometimes it’s strapped to your back, sometimes it’s bloody, but only when I look at it out of the corner of my eye. When I look at you straight on sometimes it disappears.”

Taekwoon is silent for a while, and then he laughs – short and curt.

“What is it?” Sanghyuk asks warily.

“Sometimes fate works in really strange ways,” Taekwoon says, half to himself. “This is the reason I saved you that night.”

“What are you going on about?”

Taekwoon turns to Sanghyuk, and begins to talk. He tells him of his life, when he was alive – properly alive, a warrior so powerful his own king feared him and had him declared a traitor; watching his family be murdered; impaled by his own sword and cursed with immortality; centuries alone with only generations of caretakers for companionship – how the wide earth shrinks painfully when you have endless amounts of time to travel it with.

“My thirst for vengeance was so great that I couldn’t die. But even after having my revenge – the king’s death didn’t change anything. My family was dead. My wife, my household – and then I realised that exacting my revenge didn’t end the curse. I wasn’t able to die, and I won’t be able to die until I find someone who can pull out the sword.”

Taekwoon looks at Sanghyuk, all agog, and has to smile. “It all sounds very melodramatic, doesn’t it? An overwrought metaphor for revenge and letting go.”

“What did you mean just now, when you said you saved me?”

Taekwoon shrugs helplessly. “You were never supposed to be born. Your mother, when she was expecting you – she was hit by a car. She was supposed to die that night, and you along with her, but she asked me to save you. So I did. I’m the reason you can see ghosts – because only humans who have died, even briefly, can see into the other world. I’m sorry, Sanghyuk,” he implores.

“Sorry?” Sanghyuk repeats, frowning. “Why are you sorry?”

“I gave you this life. Look how wonderful it is.”

Sanghyuk doesn’t answer straight away, looking out over the waves and playing with the lighter Taekwoon had brought to help light his birthday cake candles.

“My mother knew she was living on borrowed time,” he says eventually. “It makes sense now. She was always telling me what to do in case something happened to her. And when something in the end did happen to her… she didn’t seem very shocked about it. Just regretful.”

“Regretful?” Taekwoon asks, unsure.

“She came back to see me,” Sanghyuk says, and then at the horrified look on Taekwoon’s face he rolls his eyes. “I was used to seeing ghosts by then, even at nine years old. And I was thankful for it. I got to say goodbye.”

“I’m sorry,” Taekwoon whispers once more.

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know what would happen, I think,” Sanghyuk muses. “And would I prefer to be alive right now or dead like I should be? That’s not something I can answer, either. So don’t be sorry.”

“You’re strangely mature for your age,” Taekwoon says gruffly. “Suddenly so grown-up.”

Sanghyuk smiles and lights the candles, holding up the cake to his face so that the orange light of the flames play off his skin and sparkle in his eyes. “Eighteen years old. That is rather grown-up.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Taekwoon cuts in. “You’re still a child.”

“To someone a thousand years old, sure,” Sanghyuk says, grinning. “Grandpa.”

“Blow out your candles,” Taekwoon tells him flatly.

Sanghyuk closes his eyes for a moment, and then blows out all nine candles in one big puff. Taekwoon takes the cake from him to help cut out two slices, Sanghyuk watching him quietly.

“Finish your story.”

Taekwoon doesn’t look at him. “What story?”

“The part where I’m the one who’s fated to pull out your sword and finally let you die.”

Taekwoon looks up at him and then away again, small frown between his brows as he busies himself with the cake.

“Taekwoon.”

“Taekwoon.”

“You should call me hyung,” Taekwoon mutters.

“Hyung.”

Taekwoon finally stops. “What do you want me to say?”

“There’s more to the story, isn’t there?”

Taekwoon shoves a slice of the cake at Sanghyuk, and takes a big bite out of his.

“Hyung, for ’s sake.”

“Language!” Taekwoon scolds immediately, little bits of cake spraying in Sanghyuk’s direction.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Taekwoon sighs deeply, looking up at the stars as he finishes chewing. “The one who’s supposed to be able to see the sword and pull it out is called the Goblin’s Bride. That’s the rest of the story, Sanghyuk.”

“Bride?” Sanghyuk begins, puzzled. “As in bride and groom? But isn’t a bride a girl?”

“It’s 2016, Sanghyuk, get with it,” Taekwoon jokes hollowly. “You asked, anyway. So I told you.”

“I’m supposed to marry you?”

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you!”

“I’m a bit young to be married, I think.”

“Nobody’s proposing marriage to you, Sanghyuk, relax.”

“You don’t seem very happy about this.”

“You’re a child.”

“No, I’m not, I’m an adult. I just turned eighteen. So what am I supposed to do?”

“Nothing! You don’t have to do anything!”

“But don’t you want to die?”

Taekwoon opens his mouth, and the words dissolve on his tongue. Sanghyuk holds his gaze steadily until Taekwoon drops it, feeling like it’s slightly hard to breathe. Yes, I want to die. I want it more than anything in the world.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Taekwoon tells him finally. “This isn’t your responsibility.”

“It is, though, if I’m the first one in a thousand years to be able to see the sword,” Sanghyuk says reasonably. “Oh! This explains why I can summon you, doesn’t it?”

Taekwoon nods, resigned.

“Well, I want a long honeymoon,” Sanghyuk begins, and Taekwoon nearly smushes the remainder of his cake into Sanghyuk’s face.

*

Taekwoon takes Sanghyuk travelling – he insists on hiring tutors for Sanghyuk to make up for missed school, but the way Sanghyuk is beginning to blossom upon the realisation that he never need go back to his aunt’s house weakens Taekwoon’s resolve to make Sanghyuk go back home, go back to school, go back to his old life. Sanghyuk learns to paint in Paris, and takes up cooking with a passion in Florence. He makes Taekwoon bring him back to that one tiny sushi restaurant in Shibuya every few months and is soon making his own sushi, which Taekwoon has to grudgingly accept is exceptionally good. Sanghyuk takes up dance, and then singing, and gleefully burns all his math textbooks. 

“Does living this way make you my sugar daddy?” Sanghyuk innocently asks one day during dinner, and Taekwoon splutters and nearly chokes; the look on Sanghyuk’s face one of pure joyful mischief.

“Han Sanghyuk,” Taekwoon warns. “I will drop you in the middle of Russia and leave you there. Don’t you dare go around telling people we have that sort of relationship!”

“Oooh let’s go to Russia!” Sanghyuk perks up instantly, teasing forgotten.

Watching Sanghyuk embrace life sometimes makes Taekwoon forget he wants to die. Life seems less tired, less flat, when you’re around a gangly teenager throwing himself with full enthusiasm at the myriad things the world has to offer; it seems like there are new things to discover once more, new things to enjoy.

“You should learn how to rap,” Sanghyuk tells him one day over their pasta dinner Sanghyuk had cooked.

“No,” Taekwoon answers, but he finds himself typing in ‘rap’ into his Spotify chart search anyway. It is an Experience.

They have terrible fights, too – over the smallest things, and both their stubborn natures and Taekwoon’s bad temper flare up into something explosive. This is also new – Taekwoon hasn’t argued with anyone in centuries. He never thought yelling at someone over white clothes turned pink in the wash could feel like a release, even as he’s following Sanghyuk’s stomping footsteps up the stairs in order to cajole him into a trip outside for new adventures – always new adventures. Sanghyuk makes him feel alive, and he snorts at himself for thinking that. He truly is a grandpa.

It’s three years before Sanghyuk kisses him, under strategically-placed mistletoe in Taekwoon’s Korean house – back once more because Sanghyuk was missing kimchi. Taekwoon has no idea where Sanghyuk picked up the mistletoe, and he resolves to throw it away as he gently moves Sanghyuk away from him.

“No, Hyukkie,” he says softly.

Sanghyuk turns red, which makes Taekwoon hug him in apology.

“I think I should be offended,” Sanghyuk mumbles – he’s so tall now, taller than Taekwoon – but hugs Taekwoon back anyway. “Aren’t you defying fate?”

“Shut up,” Taekwoon tells him affectionately.

Sanghyuk begins to spend more time away from Taekwoon – he goes to work in a bakery, then a suit-and-tie company, then a music shop, then takes up competitive yoyo-playing; he makes friends and connections easily, in a way Taekwoon has always found slightly baffling.

“How do you manage the ghost-seeing thing?” Taekwoon asks, and Sanghyuk shrugs.

“Somehow they don’t seem to mind as much.”

“Children can be brutal,” Taekwoon tells him reassuringly, thinking of friendless teenaged Sanghyuk.

“Well, I don’t blame them. It’s hard to understand,” Sanghyuk says. “I think I wanted to scare them, too, in school.”

Taekwoon wonders when it is that Sanghyuk grew up, and he thinks about Hakyeon, whom he hasn’t seen in years; making good on his promise and staying away from Sanghyuk. This is Sanghyuk’s borrowed time. Is he also fated to die in another car crash?

When Sanghyuk gets his car license Taekwoon doesn’t sleep properly for two weeks.

It’s another two years before Sanghyuk realises Taekwoon’s feelings for him before even Taekwoon does, and the first thing Sanghyuk says to him is –

“I can’t believe it’s taken you this long to fall in love with me.”

The second thing Sanghyuk says to him is –

“Do I pull out the sword now?”

And Taekwoon doesn’t let him say another word.

Taekwoon realises, finally, the genius of the curse. To be motivated by revenge to the point that it drives your entire existence, and to be only able to be released by making the one you love have to kill you in turn. What kind of release can there be?

Times passes, too quickly. Nights last a blink of an eye. Kisses last even shorter. For the first time in his life, Taekwoon fears death when he’s been craving it for as long as he can remember; not his own, but Sanghyuk’s. Often the selfish thought crosses his mind that before anything can happen to Sanghyuk he should get Sanghyuk to release him first – he will never know the agony of a life without Sanghyuk then, but immediately after such thoughts come the image of Sanghyuk alone and grieving him and Taekwoon shuts down mentally and emotionally. There is no answer to this. Sanghyuk is the only one who can release him; but because of Sanghyuk Taekwoon refuses to die.

One year turns into two, and then ten, and then twenty, thirty. Forty. Fifty. Sixty. The world is nothing like the one it was when he first met Sanghyuk on that jetty, and Sanghyuk now is nothing like that Sanghyuk, either. Sanghyuk traces the wrinkles on his own hands with shaky fingers and then the smooth skin of Taekwoon’s face, the black of his hair while picturing in his mind’s eye the white of his own.

“Now I’m the grandpa,” Sanghyuk tells him, and Taekwoon wants to break down and cry.

“You can’t put it off much longer,” Sanghyuk warns, watching him. “If I suddenly go in the middle of the night you’re going to be stuck here forever. Clock’s ticking, babe.”

“How can you be so casual about it?” Taekwoon frowns.

“Everything has its time,” Sanghyuk says, in his Wise Sage Voice, and then cracks up, ending up wheezing.

“Sanghyuk,” Taekwoon whispers, pressing Sanghyuk’s hands hard to his mouth. “I love you.”

“Ditto,” Sanghyuk replies. “I’ll find you in the afterlife. Hopefully I won’t be this decrepit version. I want to be hot again.”

Taekwoon laughs against Sanghyuk’s fingers, feeling tears start to gather heavy in his throat. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Sanghyuk smiles. “Don’t be scared.”

“Thank you, for everything-” Taekwoon begins, but Sanghyuk shushes him.

“Oh, stop it,” Sanghyuk scolds. “I know. I know.”

“Well, as long as you know,” Taekwoon murmurs, and gets to his knees.

Sanghyuk looks down at him, at the spectral sword plunged into Taekwoon’s chest, and wonders what it will feel like when he touches it. It seems more solid now than it has ever been, and Sanghyuk stares at the carvings on the hilt, the glint of the steel. Taekwoon’s sword, a whole other lifetime ago.

Sanghyuk grasps it tightly with both hands and pulls, and it slides out neatly with no resistance at all. Taekwoon gasps raggedly, looking up at Sanghyuk holding the sword – real now, and heavy – in Sanghyuk’s hands, and looks down at warm blood beginning to flow from the wound in his chest. For a horrifying moment he thinks that this is the final cruelty of the curse – to make Sanghyuk watch him die for real, bleeding out onto the floorboards of their kitchen, and then to leave Sanghyuk to deal with his body, empty and lifeless –

But a tingling begins in his feet, and Taekwoon looks down to see himself slowly disappear. It’s the most curious feeling – he’s as light as air. He quickly reaches out for Sanghyuk, who drops the sword with a clang to take his hand, gripping it tight.

Sanghyuk watches Taekwoon go, until he is standing alone in a brightly-lit kitchen with a warrior’s sword at his feet and a thousand questions in his head.

It takes some time for the tears to come.

*

Sanghyuk becomes aware of the presence by his bed by degrees, though with his failing eyesight and the dark of his room he can hardly make out the figure’s features. For some reason he doesn’t feel scared, and he wonders if all old people are this fearless. What else can terrify you when death itself is so close all the time it’s like living right over a minefield? Even something like getting too excited over a really delicious cookie can be dangerous.

“Hello, Han Sanghyuk. We finally meet.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m… an old friend. Of Taekwoon’s.”

“That’s very vague.”

“I’ve been looking for you since you were born. I made a promise to Taekwoon that I think… I can break, now.”

“You’re going to have to speak up, I can’t hear all that well these days.”

“I said, I’ve been looking for you since you were born!”

“Why?”

“To tie up loose ends. You’re overdue seventy-eight years, Han Sanghyuk.”

“Do I have to pay a fine?”

“What?”

“Do I have to pay a fine? It’s a joke.”

“Oh. No, no, you don’t have to pay anything.”

“Good. I don’t think I’ve got enough money lying around to pay a seventy-eight year-old fine, anyway.”

“This payment will not be in legal tender, I’m afraid.”

“You’re a Reaper, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you Hakyeon?”

“Oh, Taekwoon told you about me?”

“Yes. I’m sorry about the strawberry tarts.”

Hakyeon smiles.

“Time to go home, Sanghyuk. Your mother has been waiting.”

“And Taekwoon? What about him?”

“I think he’ll be rather surprised to see you so quickly. He’s prepared himself to wait a few years.”

“Oh, then I’ll surprise him. Good, he doesn’t like surprises. He gets all blotchy and flustered. Right then, how do we do this?”

Hakyeon reaches out a hand and lays a cool palm gently on Sanghyuk’s chest. “Go well, Han Sanghyuk.”

Hakyeon sits beside the cooling body and opens his binder, taking out a large seal and an inkpad. He carefully inks the seal before stamping ‘CLOSED’ over a document with the name ‘Han Sanghyuk’ right at the top, and takes a deep and satisfied breath.

“Finally!”

*