“Excuse me, sir, do you have this carpet in scarlet?”

Chanyeol looked up from his business ledger to meet the old woman’s gaze. She was standing next to one of the larger room-sized carpets carried in the store. “Of course! It’s in the back, I will fetch it for you.”

Wide and friendly smile, check. A plethora of merchandise, check. A prime location near the larger shops in the bazaar, check. A can-do attitude and never taking no for an answer, check. If a person were to compile a list of all of the elements to become a successful shopkeep in the largest bazaar in the capital city, Chanyeol would fit most of them. Almost all of them. Ninety nine percent of them. Everything but…

“You do realize that scarlet dye costs more and therefore you should charge her more, right?” a voice reminded him the moment he stepped into the back room.

Finances. He wasn’t the best when it came to finances, which of course was a cornerstone of business. It was his one weakness. He could keep a ledger, but he couldn’t keep it as well as some of the other merchants he befriended. Understanding earnings confused him, and more than once he ended up with too much inventory -- all of which would have been his problem to fix, and his problem alone. That is until a certain someone decided to make themselves known, tossing out stern words of warning every time Chanyeol even considered not upcharging or ordering too much product. Kyungsoo was Chanyeol’s voice of reason.

“Fifteen gold more than the regular carpet should suffice,” Kyungsoo instructed, watching Chanyeol struggle to get the carpet off of the tall shelf.

“She seems nice though and she hasn’t been here before so what about only charging seven gold?” Chanyeol rambled. He tugged at the rolled carpet, the item wedged in between two similarly oversized rugs. With one particularly hard pull he tumbled backward, landing on his . Kyungsoo laughed, which wasn’t a surprise.

“You already gave someone the they-seem-nice discount twice today,” Kyungsoo reprimanded. “Do I need to remind you that you are running low on incense? How are you going to pay for it if you keep giving everyone a discount?”

Chanyeol made a face as he stood, scrunching his nose up and mocking Kyungsoo’s words. He reached for the carpet, giving it another tug. This time it slid freely off the shelf.

“Fifteen gold!” Kyungsoo reminded him as he carried the carpet into the store. “Fifteen gold!”

Chanyeol ended up charging only seven more gold than the “average” carpet. He knew he was in for an incessant bit of scolding for the discounted er, discount, which he would have attempted to avoid if he could. But as Chanyeol had learned over the years, it was easy to ignore a ghost. But once you acknowledged them, there was no avoiding them.

Kyungsoo, the resident advice giver of Chanyeol’s shop, happened to be a ghost.

Chanyeol could see spirits for as long as he could remember. One of his earliest memories was of watching his mother give spirit readings, customers arriving with questions as his mother queried local spirits for answers. It was a gift that ran in his family, this ability to see ghosts, his older sister could too. And while his sister followed their mother into the spirit reading business, Chanyeol had no inclination to do so himself.

Spirits, he had learned, could be demanding. Wandering souls could be intrusive and attach themselves to a person for years. It wasn’t unusual to have three to five ghosts living in his family's home at a time, staying up at all hours of the night being loud. They were his mother's and sister's friends, ghosts that they talked to that decided to stay. When Chanyeol found his own place to live he was confident that he did not want the same for himself, so he began to ignore the ghosts he saw. Ignore a ghost and they will never know you can see them. Pay them attention and you are stuck with them.

His method worked until a year ago, when a peculiar ghost caught Chanyeol off guard. So off guard he slipped up and acknowledged him. Do Kyungsoo had broken Chanyeol’s resolve for a minute, long enough to into his life, long enough for Chanyeol to acknowledge he saw him, long enough for Kyungsoo to latch on.

“It’s loneliness, Chanyeol,” his mother would tell him. “Think, if most people never saw you but suddenly someone did, would you want to leave that person?”

Chanyeol had a hard time reconciling Kyungsoo and the description of lonely. Kyungsoo liked to be alone, didn’t bother Chanyeol at all unless he had some advice for him. He didn’t talk all night like his mother's ghosts (thankfully), in fact he didn’t really talk at all when Chanyeol tried to engage him in conversation (and Chanyeol liked to talk, a lot). Kyungsoo, it seemed, had only latched onto the shopkeep to scold him, to reprimand him for poor business practices, and to remind him on a daily basis he was terrible at math. Kyungsoo wasn’t lonely, he just wanted someone to boss around.

There was only one person that Kyungsoo took the initiative to make small talk with, and that was Chanyeol’s mom. The ghost and his mother adored each other.

“Kyungsoo, Mom is here!” she would greet as she entered Chanyeol's shop. Kyungsoo would come floating out of the back room with a smile on his translucent face, overjoyed to see the woman. Chanyeol would usually sulk in the background, jealous of both his mother and Kyungsoo paying more attention to each other than to him. His mother, well she was his mother, yet she seemed to prefer the ghost to him. And Kyungsoo, that was a bit more complicated.

It had been many months since Chanyeol had accepted that he was in love with his resident ghost.

“You made…” Kyungsoo finished tallying up the daily ledger, “one gold piece today.” The ghost looked up from the ledger book to give Chanyeol a disappointed stare.

“One is better than none,” Chanyeol answered quietly, broom in hand as he finished cleaning up the shop.

Kyungsoo sighed, a heavy and dramatic sound considering he was a spirit and therefore had no air to exhale to begin with.

“Yeol, how will you ever make enough to buy this plot outright if you keep giving discounts?” Kyungsoo floated around the counter.

Yeol. Kyungsoo had just called him Yeol. Kyungsoo never called him anything but his full first name. Chanyeol felt warmth creep into his cheeks. “Did you just…”

“What?” Kyungsoo stopped in front of the shopkeep.

“Did you just call me, Yeol?” Chanyeol felt a swell of happiness as he repeated the nickname.

“I...did I?” Kyungsoo looked thoughtful. “Perhaps. Your friends call you that.”

“I like it better when you call me that, Soo.” Chanyeol blushed furiously as he let the cheesy line roll of his tongue.

“My name is Kyungsoo. KYUNG-SOO.” The ghost floated towards the back room, apparently not amused.

Chanyeol watched him go, letting out his own sigh when the ghost was gone. With each step forward they inevitably took a step back. It was hard to woo a ghost.

It was a scorching hot day when Chanyeol met Kyungsoo for the first time. Mid-afternoon, sun beating down on the sands, the wave of heat obscuring the far reaches of the bazaar as Chanyeol plodded along. He had a delivery to make, a customer who had ordered a large quantity of sandalwood and fabric demanding the delivery be made the same day, brutally hot day or not.

Chanyeol had loaded the merchandise into a cart and begun the difficult task of pulling it through the bazaar, into the city, and to the customer’s house while sweat dripped down his back and the sun brutalized the small amount of skin he had exposed on his face. By the time he arrived at the customer’s house he was out of breath, hot and miserable and not at all ready for the return trip - even if it would be technically easier since the cart would be empty.

The customer had offered him water and a place to rest for a few minutes, which Chanyeol was eternally grateful for. It was while he sat in the courtyard of the customer’s home, taking refuge under the shade of a palm tree, that he saw him.

At first Chanyeol had assumed it to be a hallucination, a mirage as the heat played tricks on his eyes. Because, he thought as he stared at the man across the courtyard from him, no one could be that beautiful, that ethereal, that captivating. Boyishly handsome, with wide eyes and jet black hair, the hallucination stared back at him. He was small, his full lips slightly open as he watched Chanyeol from afar.

Chanyeol hadn’t considered that what he was seeing was a ghost until he had already staggered across the courtyard, his usually clumsy self, and introduced himself to who he assumed would be the love of his life. “Chanyeol, shopkeep. You should come...buy incense sometime. Or something. I’m single.”

Kyungsoo narrowed his eyes at the tall shopkeep. “To think, the first person who has seen me in five years hits on me.”

Chanyeol was confused by the stranger’s words, letting them sink in, mulling them over for a few seconds before realization hit him. Now that he was closer to the figure he could see the translucence, the unmistakable sign he was a ghost. The first ghost Chanyeol had acknowledged in years. And not just acknowledged, hit on. He stepped back, mumbling apologies.

“No need to be sorry, yet. You said you have a shop? I want to see the ledger.” Kyungsoo floated towards him.’

“O-okay.” Chanyeol was caught.

His sister told him that he wasn’t the first person to fall in love with a ghost, but by far he was probably the most hopeless.

“Have you even told him you like him?” Yoora, Chanyeol’s sister, asked over coffee one day. Kyungsoo was thankfully busy chatting up Chanyeol’s mom, so Chanyeol wasn’t afraid of the ghost overhearing the sensitive conversation between the siblings.

“I haven’t found the right time,” Chanyeol explained. In reality he wasn’t sure that he could survive being turned down if he did confess. As long as he kept it vague and continued to engage in flirtations (that often failed) there was hope.

“Hmm, right.” His sister clearly wasn’t buying it.

“You know, a lot of the time he annoys me, always nagging and scolding me.” Chanyeol traced a finger on the rim of his coffee cup. “But even when I am annoyed I still like him. It’s so weird.”

“Not really. You have a crush on him, it makes perfect sense actually.”

“But he probably thinks I am too stupid to go out with since I can’t balance my books,” Chanyeol frowned.

“I enjoy that you don’t think the fact one of you is a alive and the other is dead might be why he would turn you down, not your subpar math skills.” Yoora chuckled. “Kids these days.”

“Well there is that.” Chanyeol slumped onto the table, head down. It was impossible, the odds were against them. Not to mention Kyungsoo didn't seem interested in him at all. He lifted his head and looked at his sister. “Has anyone ever had a successful relationship with a ghost?”

“Yes, I have heard of it. It isn’t a physical relationship, of course, but romantic nonetheless. I mean, in the end you will end up together, because you aren’t going to be here forever.” Yoora sipped her coffee. “Love is a strange thing, brother. And if that strange thing is you wanting to spend the rest of your life with a ghost, who am I to judge.”

“But that will never happen because I can’t figure out profitability!” Chanyeol whined.

Yoora rolled her eyes. Chanyeol truly was hopeless.

Chanyeol finally mustered up the courage to ask Kyungsoo. After a week of internal struggles, mini-whining sessions in his head, and snarky comments from Kyungsoo, he finally asked him.

“Can you teach me how to ..you know...math in the ledger?” Chanyeol looked away from the ghost, afraid of the rejection that may come.

“Math.in.the.ledger?”

“Yeah…”

“About time. Yes, I can show you how to math.”

At Kyungsoo’s agreement Chanyeol felt confident enough to look at him. He found the ghost smiling fondly at him, which made his stomach flip in the strangest of ways.

“This is the cost of the products in your shop.” Kyungsoo hovered his index finger over the ledger. “Whatever you sell should be for more than what you paid for it, which you know. But you also have to consider how things sell in your store. If you have too many of an item and it doesn’t sell, you could lower the price, assuming of course you aren’t randomly lowering other prices too.”

Chanyeol took notes, nodding that he understood.

“You should pay close attention to what sells and when, so you don’t carry too much inventory. Remember, cash is king.”

Chanyeol jotted down the saying. Cash is King.

“Kyungsoo, how did you learn all of this?” Chanyeol asked as he was writing. It was strange he had never thought to ask before, but for the first several months of having Kyungsoo around he was mostly so smitten he was tongue-tied.

“When I was alive I owned a store,” Kyungsoo explained, his voice quiet with an edge of sadness. “It was in this bazaar actually.”

Chanyeol regretted asking. They had never before talked about Kyungsoo’s old life - his alive life - and Chanyeol felt like he was intruding where he wasn’t welcome. Much to shis surprise, Kyungsoo did not seem to feel the same way, going into more detail.

“I was doing well, but needed some capital.” Kyungsoo noticed Chanyeol's confused expression so he added, “Money, to invest back in the business, to expand.”

“Ohhh.”

“I ended up partnering with someone I thought was good, but they ended up stealing all the profits of the business and running away. I was left with nothing, everything I had worked so hard for was gone.”

Chanyeol felt tears well in his eyes. How horrible that Kyungsoo had to experience that. “H-how did you die? If you don’t want to tell me you don’t have to!”

“Oh, that was actually really funny. I got super drunk after my business partner ran away and I ended up playing fisticuffs with a donkey. The donkey won, clearly.” Kyungsoo laughed.

Chanyeol had no idea how to respond so he laughed too. “You were killed by a donkey?”

“Yep. Probably the best thing that happened to me, to be honest.” Kyungsoo’s laughter quieted down.

“Why?” Chanyeol asked, curious.

“Because now it doesn’t matter my shop failed, I found you. Together we can build up your shop.”

Chanyeol swallowed. He was okay that he died because he found Chanyeol? Oh, this was not good for keeping his crush in check, not good at all. “You are glad you met me?”

“Yeah. Now back to math-ing.” Kyungsoo cleared his throat, changing the subject.

Chanyeol went to sleep that night with a smile on his face. He had never been happier.

Math-ing, it turned out, wasn’t as bad as Chanyeol thought it was. Kyungsoo was patient with him, explaining concepts again and again until Chanyeol understood. Chanyeol did his part, beginning to offer less discounts than before, and always thinking them through before giving them. By the end of the first four months of Chanyeol’s reformed behavior, the shop was making record profits.

“We should celebrate,” Kyungsoo uncharacteristically suggested.

“Celebrate?” Chanyeol repeated dumbly.

“Yes, celebrate.” Kyungsoo floated towards the entrance of the shop. “I have the perfect thing in mind.”

“You do?” Chanyeol’s anxiety began to well. Kyungsoo never said a word about celebrating before.

“Yep. Now stand there and wait with your eyes closed,” Kyungsoo instructed.

Chanyeol closed his eyes, tensing up. He was really nervous now. Was Kyungsoo going to disappear forever?! What if he thought he didn’t need to stay now Chanyeol knew how to math?! Chanyeol was about to blurt out that he would always need Kyungsoo when someone whispered in his ear. The words took his breath way.

“Chanyeol, will you go out with me?”

Chanyeol opened his eyes and spun around, shocked beyond words. Kyungsoo smiled at him, looking positively ethereal.

“You only like me because I can math now!” Chanyeol blurted out, finding an unwelcome vindication.

“I liked you before you could math, but you never asked me out so I thought it was about time I did something about it,” Kyungsoo retorted.

“Y-you like me?” Chanyeol stuttered.

“Why else would I hang around you and watch you give nice-people discounts and trip over your merchandise and bemoan to your sister that you love me more than quote a bee loves a flower?”

“You heard that!” Chanyeol clapped a hand over his mouth, mortified.

“Among other things.” Kyungsoo floated closer. “But I liked it. I like you. So what do you say? Should we make it official?”

Chanyeol felt happier than he ever had in his life. “Yes, we should make it official.”

He was dating Kyungsoo. They were together. Kyungsoo liked him. Everything was perfect. Everything was -

“Is this the boy you were telling me about?”

“Where is he? Does he treat you well? How much money does he make??”

Two middle aged spirits floated into the shop, and it wasn’t hard to guess they were related to Kyungsoo by their facial features alone. Chanyeol took a step back in surprise.

“My parents have wanted to meet you for a while.” Kyungsoo explained, turning to his parents and whispering, “Did you have to show up now?!”

“Why, are we not good enough to meet your boyfriend?” Kyungsoo's mother asked.

“Well he doesn’t look so special.” Kyungsoo’s father looked Chanyeol up and down.

“Sorry, they will be gone soon, I promise,” Kyungsoo whispered, giving Chanyeol an apologetic look.

Chanyeol wasn’t mad, Kyungsoo didn't need to apologize. He could put up a visit from his boyfriend’s family if it meant he would have Kyungsoo with him. If it meant Kyungsoo loved him, he could put up with anything

“So can he add and subtract now?” Kyungsoo’s mother asked, floating over to inspect the shelf full of carpets. “Because I will not have my baby spending eternity with someone who can’t math.”

Anything, he reminded himself. He could put up with anything.

“Mom! Please, you're embarrassing me!” Kyungsoo uncharacteristically whined.

Anything, because he had Kyungsoo and they had eternity together.