"Holy crap," Jungkook marvels after what feels like the fifth sneeze to come out of Youngae's mouth. "You weren't kidding when you said your allergies were bad."

Youngae sniffles, a long and suffering noise that draws several irritated looks from passerbys, but the bustle of the city streets are loud enough that most mind their own business. "I hate spring," she says miserably, tucking yet another soiled tissue into her hoodie pocket. Her nose is runny enough to possibly fill a small lake, and she's running out of clean tissues to be sneezing into, having the foresight before she had left her apartment to stuff a handful into her messenger bag.

Jungkook catalogs the state of her appearance, from her disheveled hair, disrupted by the spring breeze, to her flushed cheeks and watery eyes. "Why didn't you wear one of those face masks? You have a bunch of disposable ones, right?"

"I ran out," the young woman responds, eyes dully facing ahead. It was only when she tossed her last mask that she realized a quick trip to the convenience store was desperately needed, and obviously, as a self-loathing university freshman with a penchant for staying indoors entirely while the sun was out, she had put it off as a last-minute task until Jungkook had texted her, asking if she wanted to hang out before he would end his senior year in high school with essay writing and entrance exam preparations.

She would've refused him if he didn't offer to pay for lunch as thanks for "the guidance you've bestowed upon me while we were growing up, Youngae-nim!", because a) there's no way any sane indivudual between the ages of 17 to 24 would pass up on free food, and b) it was about time that Jungkook paid her back for all the times she had been a good upperclassman and paid for their after-school meetups. Sometimes she misses when they were first- and second-years respectively, his shoulders narrow and eyes doe-like in innocence as he clumsily attached himself to her presence, fresh meat in the school hierarchy and easily lost if Youngae wasn't nearby. Now he's taller, his voice deeper, and he just says idiotic things while she has to deal with him because they're best friends.

("Oh, but I'm not asking you out on a date, though, no homo." "Jungkook, you’re as biual as they come.")

Now, after thirty minutes of cajoling and terrible text aegyo, Youngae finds herself out in the real world, glasses smudged, throat phlegmy, and she faintly thinks that this is what hell must feel like. An eternity of your body fighting against you in a struggle to survive against unknown contaminants. How do people go outside of their homes without killing themselves?

Jungkook looks at her in a state of half-amusement, half-sympathetic. "At least you're not having a nosebleed. Ugh, god, I hate blood." He shudders at the memories dredged up while Youngae stiffens. "You have them at the weirdest of times, seriously."

Youngae laughs, hoping that it comes off as more natural than tinny. "I'm sensitive to sunlight and the heat, you know that."

She is, in fact, not sensitive to the heat.

 

***

 

It began when she was a kid, possibly; Youngae's had the ability for as long as she could remember, though there are very few people who know of it.

After all, there are only so many times you can claim that no, you didn't hit your head, you're having a nosebleed because ghosts are nearby before everyone assumes that you're hallucinating and that you should visit a doctor.

The spirits aren't malicious, at least. There's nothing they can really do, aside from aimlessly float around until they disappear to wherever awaits them in the after-afterlife, like little specks floating around in direct sunlight. What Youngae remembers of her childhood encounters are slivers of light barely visible in her peripheral vision, partially transparent when she looks directly at them, and can easily be mistaken for actual people if she didn't realize she could see right through them. Those who realized she could see them would give her polite greetings, the older adults maybe trying to pat her head after she's sat with them for a solid thirty minutes chatting aimlessly until their hands pass right through her head and their faces crumple in frustration. At the limitations of being... ghostly, Youngae supposes, not that she could relate in any manner whatsoever. She doesn't remember most of what she's said, only remembers the feeling that lingers when they try interacting with her and the bloody stains that would always appear on her clothes from wiping up her nose. It's the reason why she's completely abstained from wearing white her entire life.

It's almost always adults that she encountered; the children her age that she did meet were often extremely flighty and preferred playing over chatting. From her experiences growing up, there were a few things that she learned about the ghostly world:

People only become spirits if they've died in a violent manner. She knows this because it's not uncommon for her to have blood gushing from her nose when passing a point on the freeway where an accident has occurred, details broadcasted by the nightly news, or near hazardous areas where people have fallen to their deaths. (It'd be worse if every single person who had ever died became a spirit—god, she can't even imagine the amount of blood loss she'd be going through.)

Thankfully, they're all in one piece, and there's nothing to denote the tragic ways that they've died after they inhabit their ghostly form. Youngae doesn't think she'd be able to handle it if someone decapitated walked around in the streets headless in the afterlife.

The spirits never retain their memories. Youngae speculates that this could be from the sudden trauma of their deaths, but she's not a detective, so there's no exact way to ascertain the reason. The only thing these ghosts remember are their names.

She's not quite sure how to help them... pass on. Has never tried to; as she grew older and time passed, she had stopped interacting with them so freely. Sometimes they stick around, sometimes they vanish. As a kid, it's easy to hide under the excuse of talking to imaginary friends, but as a young adult, if you're talking to things that aren't there, the academic stress has gotten to your head, and you should probably take a few days off of school.

Her routine works. She gets her super inconvenient nose bleeds, avoids the eyes of the lost dead, and goes to sleep at night hoping that her life won't turn into a horror film where there's a woman clad in white with long black hair standing at the foot of her bed when she wakes to use the restroom.

 

***

Jungkook, thankfully, has moved on from her sensitivity that seems to have an on-off switch, and has instead pulled up his web browser on his phone, scrolling through with an intensity Youngae only wishes he applied to his studies back when they were still studying together. She raises a brow. "What are you looking at?"

"The cafe name," Jungkook says. His fingers tap against the screen thoughtfully. "Someone at school suggested I go here and try it out. It just opened."

Now both of Youngae's brows rise, though the effect is dampened by her sniffling. "Wow. You're already that desperate to spend your money on coffee and go broke? When you were talking about wanting an 'authentic university experience as soon as possible,' I didn't know you—"

Jungkook scowls and jabs an elbow into her side. Puberty may have knocked him upside the head, but his bony parts are still as bony as ever (well, duh, Youngae thinks to herself), and she hisses upon impact. "I'm not spending it on coffee only! They have nice sandwiches and stuff here! I'm trying to treat you well, but since you're such a cavewoman—ow!"

"Ugh, just keep walking towards the cafe, you little gremlin!" Youngae snidely replies after pulling at a tuft of his hair.

He rubs his head in the area she pulled, cheeks pulled up as he grimaces with a glare, but does a complete 180 with his demeanor as he bows deeply and sarcastically beams at her. "Yes, right this way, ma'am!"

Youngae scoffs, but there's a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. After they had gotten close, there was ample opportunity for Jungkook to shed his shy, protective outer layers and be who he always was deep inside: an Absolute Piece of .

It's only after the young woman has sneezed through half of her crumpled tissues and Jungkook has extensively discussed what he'll be ordering from the menu ("I heard it's American-themed, which is kinda cool, do you think they have, like, those rainbow bagels I always see online?") that they're finally at the stoplight, patiently waiting to cross the street. Her allergies are more volatile in a crowd, even a small one such as the one they're standing in at the moment, but she does her best to stifle the sneeze that threatens to come out of her. The trade-off, however, is that she ends up looking like some constipated idiot instead.

It's a little stuffy (ha!), but she has a clear view of the crosswalk to her right, thanks to her shuffling to the side of the crowd and muttering some apologies after stepping on Jungkook's foot. She'd rather take the threat of the exhaust making her nose worse than potentially dripping mucus in clear view of everyone within a meter radius of her.

... Actually, what is she even talking about? She's crazy for thinking she'd settle with making her life more miserable. What was a little public scrutiny? People can stare all they want; she can't control her bodily functions.

"Hey, scoot over," she tells Jungkook.

Jungkook stares at her incredulously. "You were just shoving past me to get to the street!"

"Yeah, and I don't wanna be here anymore, so scoot over."

"Oh my god, what are you, some kind of cat? Just stick to your side! There's no difference between here and there!"

Youngae's upper lip raises to bare her teeth in a scowl. "Hey, is this how you treat a sick person?"

"You're not even sick!" Jungkook argues. "You just have bad allergies!"

There's the sound of a throat clearing in front of them, discreet but loud enough to let the duo know in a polite manner that Hey, you're in public, please stop shouting into my ears, s. They settle for glaring at each other briefly before Jungkook sticks out his tongue in a petulant manner and looks the opposite way.

Youngae smothers down a laugh that bubbles in her gut from the absurdity of it all, and she knows that Jungkook's hiding his laughter, too, from the hunch of his shoulders. She fishes another tissue out of her messenger bag's pocket to hide her smile, looking towards the street as she blows her nose.

There's a young man sitting on the bus stop bench by himself. He's leaning on his hands, scuffing the sidewalk with his skate shoes as he absent-mindedly stares off into space. He doesn't look like he's from the city, so it's surprising that no one else is staring at the shorts-shirt-jacket combo that he's sporting when the flowers are just beginning to sprout and the temperature is still in the low 20s.

Youngae lowers her tissue as she glances over him. An upturned nose, tan skin, full lips, a mess of dark brown hair that he's more than likely have run his hands through out of habit. He's handsome by her standards, though her standards are set pretty low when it comes to her dating life; he'd be even more handsome if he trimmed his hair slightly, his bangs falling into his eyes with its length.

The stranger brushes his bangs to the side with a quick whip of his head, smoothing a hand over and through the strands, and that's when he makes direct eye contact with her.

Surprisingly, he doesn't break eye contact or crumple his face into something akin to disgust, having caught her in the act of blatantly staring at his face like some kind of creep. He holds her gaze, brown eyes open and uninhibited, and that's when Youngae turns away, her face feeling a slight tickling sensation.

She faces forward again, fighting the urge to look over. Five seconds pass before the urge overwhelms her and she glances across the street again. The young man is still staring at her, his expression curious. She almost feels flattered that she's held someone's attention for that long. Maybe she looks like a circus attraction if she looks how she feels. A car accident happening in slow motion, horrific to look at but impossible to look away from.

He waves at her, a tentative smile building. Youngae isn't an , and she's not one for screwing up the first step of social interaction, either, so she waves back. His smile grows broad at that, more excited. It makes her wonder how long he's been sitting there without a single hello. That's pretty sad.

"Who are you waving at?" Jungkook asks, brows knitted together.

The guy is still happily smiling at her, and he's unfortunately cuter the longer she looks. "There's a guy sitting at the bus stop," she says, turning away. There's a sneeze building up in her nose.

Jungkook peers past her for a long second. "I don't see—oh my god!" The end of his sentence turns into a strangled yelp.

Youngae is immediately alarmed. "What? What is it?"

"Blood! There's blood!" her friend shouts with a pale face, and it's only then that Youngae belatedly realizes that the warm sensation on her face genuinely isn't from making eyes at the stranger, but from a steadily trickling red stream down her face, dripping onto the cement below. The amount of drops beneath her tell her that her nose has been bleeding for a while. Ah, Youngae thinks almost detachedly as Jungkook frantically makes for her messenger bag and tries pulling out as many tissues as he can. There's never been this much blood before when she's had her nose bleeds.

The second thought that occurs to her is that there's a ghost nearby that she hasn't spotted yet, but it quickly gets shoved away in favor of her third and most pressing thought, which is that she's been waving to this dude across the street and making eye contact for at least a minute, and he didn't bother miming out that, oh, by the way, you look like you got socked in the face! Might want to clean that up!

Jungkook's already dabbing the tissues against her face, smearing what's coming out more so than absorbing it, especially when his hands are too shaky to function right and every time he stares straight at her in horror he makes terrified noises in the back of his throat.

And because her life isn't a show enough, her body reminds her that she still has allergies, and she quite possibly lets out the biggest sneeze she ever has in her lifetime without warning.

The tissues fly out of Jungkook's hands. The blood splatters on the back and head of the person in front of her.

Everything seems quiet for a solid minute. The light turns green, and the milling individuals around them that have better things to do than watch the catastrophe that is Youngae's life quickly cross the street. The stranger in front of her stands completely still while Jungkook stares wide-eyed at the dark red soaking into the grey sweater.

Then Jungkook says, "Someone catch me, it's going dark," and promptly crumples onto the sidewalk before Youngae can react.

 

***

 

Once, as a kid, Youngae had taken to her mother’s makeup, trying to paint and contour her face in a manner she’s only seen on television and on older women, encouraged by the other girls in her class who started becoming interested in makeup and came to class with newer additions: glossed lips, brighter eyes, rosy cheeks.

Her mother had found her, shimmery dark blue eyeshadow and all, right before she headed for school, and promptly forced her to wipe it all off.

The younger Youngae was incredibly disappointed that she wasn’t able to show off her mascara prowess to her classmates, but the Youngae now is thankful that her mother didn’t send her out looking like a clown. Saved her the embarrassment of marching in front of her classmates and being mercilessly teased to the point of changing her identity and moving to another city.

The Youngae now also wishes that her mother could save her from her current situation—standing awkwardly in a laundromat, fumbling for change in her wallet and asking the employee if they have anything to easily remove stains with. Because as it is right now, she very much wants to change her identity and move to another city. Incheon sounds nice.

Some color has returned to Jungkook’s face, though he still looks shaken up, even though he’s sitting at the table right next to her. Whether he’s spooked by his terrifying memories of what had occurred earlier or his fainting on the spot and getting the knees of his jeans dirty, Youngae doesn’t know.

The stranger who she sneezed on is no happier now than he was fifteen minutes earlier, as Youngae all but stammered her apologies as she knelt and tried to rouse her best friend. He’s standing in front of one of the washers being used, watching the load spin endlessly. Though he’s facing away from her, she already knows what expression he’s currently fronting: a Very Unhappy one, eyes clouded with disgust behind his glasses, mouth thinned into a line.

His arms are crossed as he watches the load cycle, and it’s about five minutes into their arrival that Jungkook leans towards Youngae.

“Are you okay?” Jungkook asks.

“You’re the one that fainted, I should be asking you that,” the young woman replies. Her words are muffled, however, because of the tissues stuffed so far up her nose they’re probably halfway through Narnia. It absolutely looks ridiculous, tufts of paper sticking out of her nostrils, but she’s not taking the risk of sneezing mucus and blood out on anyone else again.

Jungkook toys with the sleeves of his cardigan. “Well, yeah, I am, but you had one of your freak nose bleeds again. It’s not even hot out!” His voice is still low, probably so as to not bother the stranger standing in front of them.

“I can’t control my body,” Youngae says, matching his volume. “I don’t know what happened, seriously. I think it’s the sunlight.” Damn,