Everything was clogged up and didn’t make sense. I wake up everyday, feeling bored and spent as ever—as if I wasn’t used to this weariness, as if I was only born twenty-something years ago. I wake up everyday, feeling fed-up and enough with this world, feeling all of those feelings I wasn’t supposed to feel but did anyway, feelingreal feelings about you; and you only.

You were eleven when your eyes blinked only to catch me in your vision. You were perplexed, because you were young, and I was too, and I thought the fact that I was in my nine-two-months year old form was one of the reason your eyes got so big, because I remembered watching your expression relaxed and you thought, I finally found someone to be friends with. I also remembered how your childish behaviour made me want to smile and changed myself again, because I didn’t want you to feel any kind of happiness with me, not when I could help it, because I wanted to ruin you just like what I did to many humans before you. But you let out a bubbling laughter and I couldn’t help the growing feeling in my chest, one that scarily yelled at me not to do whatever cruel things I was thinking because you were different.

I found out your name was Taehyung on our second encounter. I didn’t want to admit it but the reason I was gone so fast on our first was because I was scared of you—you, your contagious smile, and your mortality. You were born and supposed to die. You weren’t like me.

“Gukkie,” you childishly called me. “My cutie Gukkie.” Then you started singing about incoherent things with a nickname of mine that you made that day slipped here and there, you didn’t even stop when your mother barged in and told you that you had to sleep right then, because it was eleven-thirty and you were eleven, and I had no age or curfew or even parents.

You laid there in the middle of your bed, your blanket the color of morning sun, and you whispered to me about today being your best day ever after your family took you away from your home and your friends, and I hadn’t had the the heart to tell you that I was the farthest thing frombest.

It wasn’t like you could understand, anyway.

-

You told your parents about me, and they laughed.

I swear to whatever ruthless deity that created me I wasn’t hurt. I was used to human laughing at my nonexistent existence, but just like what I’d predicted earlier, you were different, and you were mad that your parents thought my presence was a joke. You threw a tantrum, not wanting to talk to any of them before they acknowledge me, and there were terrified looks on their faces because while they knew you were stubborn, they never expected your ‘imagination’ to be that wild and uncontrollable. In the end, they told me to play nicely and kissed your rosy cheeks and said goodbye.

“What do you wanna play, Gukkie?” you asked me several minutes after your kindergarten teacher left you alone to play with some wooden cubes and puzzles. You still thought you were older than me, and even went further as telling me to call you hyung. Again, I hadn’t had it in me to change my form—some silly, childish parts of me were afraid that it’d scare you, and although I knew they weren’t supposed to feel anything like that, I did nothing about it.

I wasn’t in the mood to see people freaking out over things moving by its own, so I said, “I’ll just watch you play.”

You told me I was no fun, that I was really silent and that your friends from Daegu were nothing like me. I told you you were being rude, and then disappeared. By the end of the day, when I showed up again in your room, you were crying.

“I am sorry,” you hiccuped, eyes and nose red. You looked a little bit like a reindeer. You looked small and vulnerable, and that image got me so happy, how easily it was to destroy you, how effortless it was to hurt you. “Please don’t go again. Mommy also says I’m rude. I’m not rude.” You shook your head so frantically after—wouldn’t stop doing so until I stepped in and told you that I forgave you.

I fell asleep in your bed that night; you hugged me so tightly even when I wasn’t warm, you kept hugging me even you ended up shivering, and I finally let myself think you were eleven and I was nine. Really nine.

-

The summer you turned thirteen, I was ten centimeters below you.

You thought you were so grown-up and ready to face life without the help of your parents, and I thought that was so stupid of you because at thirteen and you still thought I was alive. You thought about a lot of things I disagreed with, one of them being you thinking that ten centimeters shorter and two years younger meant I was a lot more childish than you were, which was, of course, never true. You were still the oh-so-sweet-Taehyung, you still smiled brightly and easily, you still said the most dumb things thirteen-year-old could ever said, but you were also different.

You changed school, you found many new friends, and you woke up early everyday because otherwise you wouldn’t have time to play with them. You spent less hours with me and I was okay, perfect, because I finally had time to maneuver myself into the direction I used to aim—which did not include you and being your friend.

But by that time, I was already too involved in your life that I couldn’t help but going back to your bedroom at night, sitting beside your sleeping figure and watched as you breathed.

You started missing me again after two weeks—pretty damn short, I thought, not like I was complaining. You started wishing for me to appear again to accompany you, to talk to you, and the stupidity in me started digging deeper, wondering if those were the only reason why you wanted me back that bad. You blamed yourself for being too busy with your new friends, and I laughed at how silly you were being, who the let you think you were That important to me?

But I showed up, because I loved games and fire and disasters, and you were the perfect combination of those.

Your eyes were wide the moment you spotted