“So, what class are you in? Are you in the arts or sciences?” Again, this ghost is awfully excited for someone who’s supposed to be dead. You’d think I’m the one that’s dead between the two of us just by my expression, which probably looks as bored and uninterested as physically possible. I don’t answer his question and stare out the window, watching the familiar route to school whizz past my eyes.

The bus hits a speed bump, and I see from the corner of my eye the ghost sinking into the seat a bit, but he quickly regains his position atop the seat rather than in it once the ground levels again.

As far as I know, these kinds of ‘people’—ghosts—are capable of walking through any physical thing in this world. But as long as they don’t push too hard, they can sit or lean on objects and surfaces. I guess their ‘laws’ haven’t changed, judging by what I’d observed just now.

The pink-haired man next to me finally notices my silence. “Oh, so you’re not going to answer me now?”

No, with all these people within earshot in the bus, I’d just love to make conversation with a person that doesn’t exist. Instead of saying this, though, I take out my phone and type one word on my notepad.

Shh.

I press the button on the side of the phone when I know he’s seen it and turn off the device.

“I can still talk, right?” he whispers unnecessarily. I unlock my phone again with a frown, annoyed at how much effort I’m putting into indulging this man.

Yes, I type on the notepad. Even if someone saw me now, they’d think I’m texting. I angle the phone in a way that no one else except him can see my screen.

“Uh,” he starts, then stops. “Sorry, I…wow, it’s been a while since I’ve actually talked to someone. I even got tired of talking to myself at some point.”

I type a question mark.

“Is that a why?” he asks bemusedly. I answer with an ‘O’, as in affirmative.

“Well, it’s a little pathetic talking when no one can hear you,” he says offhandedly. Then silence. His excitement seems to have faded suddenly. My thumbs hover over the screen, curiosity itching at the back of my skull. A question buzzing in my head just waits to be asked. But do I ask? Do I not? I haven’t genuinely been curious about a ghost—or another person, honestly—for a long time. I have no idea how to approach the topic—I feel like I’ve even forgotten how conversations work.

The screen on the bus chimes with a ding sound, though, making my decision for me. I quickly turn off the screen, shaking myself out of my thoughts. Really, Gyeowool? Curiosity? I’m pushing myself into another ghost’s trap, aren’t I?

“Next stop is—” The dull prerecorded voice of a woman begins to speak, and mister ghost suddenly springs up from his seat.

“We’re here!” He’s already waiting in front of the back door of the bus, waving me over eagerly. I slowly lift myself from the seat, grabbing onto the orange iron bars next to the seats. We’re not even actually there yet, I grumble in my head, but as always, I keep my bitter thoughts to myself. The bus hits another speed bump, and I see his feet momentarily sink into the bus floor like a glitch in a video game as it rises with the bump. I begrudgingly drag my feet to stand next to the ghostly man. He’s grabbed the support bar by the time I’m standing next to him, and I curl my fingers around the same bar a few centimeters below his clenched hand.

The bus suddenly skids to a stop. A middle-aged man loses his balance and stumbles through the ghost, granting me the sight of the man’s silhouette momentarily merging with the translucent form of the ghost. Although it’s the exact situation that I’d been dying to see, I can’t even laugh at it. I've already got a reputation with my peers as a lunatic, and I don't need that reputation following me into my community as well. The ghost frowns and tries to stand away from the man, who has recovered from his temporary loss of balance and now checks the time impatiently, but too many people are crowded around the back door, so he no longer has any empty space to occupy. A few moments pass, and two or three people now penetrate his semi-transparent body. He looks to me with a slight pout. I raise my eyebrows in response, unable to keep the amusement out of my eyes. What, you want me to do something about it? It’s none of my business. It was your choice to follow me around. I look away.

He walks out of the small crowd gathered near the exit, passing through a few other people’s bodies in the process. I turn my head around to spot him again, and I find him just sitting on the same bus seat, both hands in his lap, waiting for the bus doors to open. The aforementioned middle-aged man bolts out of the bus as soon as the exit opens and I’m half pushed out of the bus with well. When I’ve disembarked, I realize the ghost hasn’t gotten off yet.

Maybe he’ll leave with the bus and I’ll never have to see him again. That’d be a lucky break. But alas, I turn around and see the ghost carefully taking a step off the first stair of the bus as the door shuts...through him with a sound. Without pause, he walks through the closed door and stands in front of me with a face of slight discomfort, probably from being passed through again. I then realize that I waited for him for whatever reason and turn around and start walking.

It doesn’t even take him a few seconds to catch up with me. “So!” he starts. There isn’t even a hint of the short-lived grief I thought I saw earlier in his expression. “Where are we headed today!”

“Where do you think?” I answer just loud enough for him to hear. Shutting up is hard when I have too many comebacks to shoot at the annoying stranger, and my hushed voice is probably hard to hear over the roaring traffic. Something occurs to me. I reach into my coat pocket and take out an awfully tangled pair of white earphones and get started on untangling the badly knotted cords as I start the walk to school. At least they properly salted the streets here. When the earphone comes to a perfectly straight line, no knots whatsoever, I plug it into my phone and in my left ear so the the built-in microphone is near my mouth. I let the right side dangle limply, though; I don’t want any random cars to run me over or I could end up like pink-haired Park Jimmy over here.

Said ghost doesn’t seem to know the answer to my rhetorical question, his eyes blank, so I elaborate. “Library,” I say into the small microphone on my earphones.

“Ooh, now it looks like you’re calling a friend. Smart.” He smiles.

“That’s funny, ‘cause I don’t have any.” I mumble this like a joke when it really isn’t.

“You have me!” he chirps, pointing at himself. I scoff.

“I don’t make friends with people like you. Plus, you’re like, three years older than me.” I try to answer without looking at his face, or else I’ll seem like I’m randomly staring at the side while I’m in a call. And that’s not what normal people do.

“That’s such an old way of thinking, Han Gyeowool. Oldies can be friends with young ones, it’s the twenty-first century!”

“Well, I don’t...” I  begin to answer as we approach the back gate of the school, “...do that.”

Pause.

He’s the one to break the silence again. “Wow, the school really looks the same!” Again with the subject changes. He points at the striped gate installed at the entrance of the parking lot. “Wait, that’s new though.” I nod but don’t bother explaining that they only installed it a few months ago. Not worth the effort. The cold is making my lips chap.

Ding-dong, ding-dong—

“And the bell hasn’t changed either!” The man is excited once more over a school bell this time. Ghosts have low standards of entertainment, I guess. I let him have his moment of excitement, but all that matters to me is that that very bell was probably the one signalling the end of first block. That means I need to get to my seat in ten minutes. I push open the glass door leading to the library, and as soon as my feet touch the indoors, I hastily make my way upstairs.

Some second and third years walk the opposite direction down the stairs and pass me, either headed to the vending machine to grab a drink or just anywhere to take a short walk. They glance at me as I take big steps, two stairs at a time. A sickening feeling I’m all too familiar with curdles in my stomach, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand and my skin crawl—I can practically feel them laughing at me as I pass, feel their eyes on me as they whisper amongst themselves. But as I’ve learned to do, I suppress the feeling and get to the designated reading room for third years in the library just a few steps later.

And, of course, on the luckiest day I’ve had in a while, my homeroom teacher is the one who pushes the reading room door open just as I approach the entrance. He notices me, of course, and his eyes travel to my backpack as well as the redness of my cheeks that clearly indicate I’ve just arrived at school.

“Han Gyeowool.” He holds his favourite bamboo stick in his right hand, the black attendance binder in his left, and approaches me, swinging the stick in a threatening way. I drop my gaze to the floor.

“Hm? Aren’t you going to answer me?” I see the grip around his stick tightening and I swallow. My throat feels thick.

“Yes.” My voice is shaky.

“Tell me, why were you absent this morning? ” His tone is cold and anticipating any lame excuse I could possibly come up with. Even though the heating had thawed my frozen fingers minutes ago, I feel my blood go cold again within seconds.

“I… I, uh...missed the bus.”

“You missed the bus?”

I don’t say anything.

“Han Gyeowool, come here.” I lift my head up to see him already striding across the hallway to open the reading room door. I quickly follow.

“Look inside.” I do as I am told. “What do you see?”

“Kids,” I croak.

“Louder?”

“Kids.”

“How many of them take the bus to school?”

I stand in silence, frozen.

“Answer me, Han Gyeowool.”

“...Many.” I manage to get out my eloquent response before my throat closes up again. Thankfully, he seems satisfied with my answer.

“Yes, many. And how many of them were absent this morning?”

Well, if they’re here, that means they weren’t absent in the first place is what I don’t say. “None,” is what I do say.

“So why were you late?” he presses.

“...I’m sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t the answer I’m looking for.”

I feel my mouth drying.

“If it isn’t, why are you even asking?” I hear someone speak from behind. I know who it is, but I still turn around to check. Pink hair. I hold in my sigh.

“Your teacher is speaking to you, where are you looking?” My teacher swings his stick again. I return to looking at the floor.

“Yeah, some things really don’t change. He was my homeroom teacher for… third year. He likes feeling superior to, what, eighteen-year-olds?” the ghost mutters from behind. “Really, what’s changed in three years? He’s just got more wrinkles now. That’s it.”

I decide silence is the best option for me. Luckily for me, he spots another victim. “Hey, you.” He points at a guy in my year, who hurriedly pushes something into his pocket. “What’s that?”

“Nothing,” the boy answers stiffly, a surefire way of aggravating this teacher.

“Nothing? I didn’t see nothing there.” True to his nature, he stops glaring at me and strides over to the boy.

“Quick, get inside,” I hear the ghost whisper next to me. Really, why is he whispering when no one can hear him? He puts his right hand on the reading room door as if to guide me. I push it open without hesitation.

“Where’s your seat?” he asks, surrounded by hundreds of identical desks with dividers attached to them. I don’t answer, instead turning into the first aisle of the reading room and walk straight. A few girls are gathered around a seat a few feet away from mine. I ignore them and take my chair off the desk. I slam my backpack down onto the desk and start taking out my workbooks.

“Wow, Chemistry I, Physics II… you’re a science kid, aren’t you?” He leans by the window right next to my seat.

I plug my earphones in, tapping the first song on the playlist and raise the volume up high enough that it blocks out whatever the ghost might be saying. Then I bury my head on the desk, cushioning my head in my arms. I’m still drowsy from the lack of sleep last night. Why can’t I just live in peace, I wonder tiredly. Why does this keep happening to me…?

Suddenly, I feel a sharp blow hit me across the back of my head. I jolt up from the desk. My homeroom teacher is right behind me, holding the stick. I realize I fell asleep and slept through the bell. I look at the teacher and he mouths no sleep. The reading room is silent despite the fact that it’s filled with a few hundred kids. He walks away after that, probably scoping out the next victim of his stick like some sort of shark.

“Wow, aren’t you a good student,” the ghost teases. I can hear him clearly now without the ambient sounds of traffic and street noises. Not that that’s a good thing. He sounds like he never hit puberty properly, like a kid. “Falling asleep in the library?” Then he chuckles to himself, “...says Park Jimin. I’m sure that guy’s stick has left a permanent lump on my head from hitting me so many times for falling asleep. Right around… here?” I just know he’s probably feeling around on his own head, looking for a lump.

I narrow my eyes momentarily. So that’s his name? Park Jimin, not Park Jimmy. Oh well, I was pretty close. I guess I can stop mentally calling him Jimmy, pink hair, and ghost man now.

In response to Jimin’s jab at me, I write in the margins of my workbook, I never fall asleep. Just today. I can feel him looking over my shoulder to read what I’ve written.

“Sure, that’s what they all say!” he answers with a tone I can only interpret as mocking, which pisses me off. It’s true, I’ve never fallen asleep before. It’s his fault that I stayed up last night, and now he has the nerve to mock me and call me a bad student?

I flip the page and start working on the questions without looking back. All I hear is the sound of other kids writing on their pages or flipping the pages, but that doesn’t tell me anything if the ghost left or not. I still manage to go through the block without looking around. Don’t give into stupid temptation, Han Gyeowool, I constantly remind myself as I move on from one question to another. Just leave him be.

Ding-dong! Ding-dong!

The bell signalling the end of the block emits the sound that everyone had been waiting on for about an hour or so. I hear chairs scrape against the floor and friends calling each other’s names, trying to find them amidst the crowds of kids in uniform. Instead of getting up, though, I plug my earphones in and bury my head in my arms again.

“Sleeping?” Jimin asks. I pretend I can’t hear him.

“It’s lunchtime,” he says when I don’t lift my head. I know. I still don’t answer. “Don’t you need to eat?”

Stop asking me. I mentally try to project my thoughts to him by holding up my index finger.

“Gyeowool,” he calls my name again. Apparently my attempt didn’t work. I quickly raise my head this time, aggravated, and bump it into the shelf installed on the desk. I rub the back of my head in irritation.

“Ouch, you okay?” he asks in concern. I reach for the mechanical pencil and scribble in my notebook.

Obviously not. You don’t have to deal with these kinds of problems anymore, do you?

“Fortunately not.”

Perks of being dead.

“So you aren’t going to go eat?”

He’s one persistent ghost, I think to myself. Then I remember that’s probably why he managed to become one.

Line too long, I scrawl in the notebook.

“So you’ll go after.”

Sure. Why do you keep asking?

“Kids need to eat properly.”

One nagging person in my life is enough, thank you.

“I can’t eat anymore. Appreciate what you have.”

Too bad. You still ate more meals than me in total before kicking the bucket.

He pauses. I grin for the first time today, satisfied that I about my pretty decent comeback.

“I guess you have a point there,” he says in surrender. He sits down in the desk next to mine. “I hope the desk owner doesn’t mind,” he mutters.

Don’t think she can even see you.

“Another good point.” He rests his cheek on the divider between my desk and the one he’s sitting on. “I’m bored.”

Welcome back to school.

I hesitate before I write down a question. It’s not the question, though. Not the one I had earlier. This isn’t as important.

What exactly do you want?

“Nothing, for now,” Jimin answers with his cheek squished against the divider. “Just revisiting my old school for the memories.”

Why’d you follow me then?

“You go to my old school,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone that I cannot refute. “I’m just minding my own business. Don’t mind me.”

Says Park Jimin, staring at my paper and reading everything I’m writing.

He laughs. I grin as well, although it stays for only a few seconds before it vanishes. The way he talks and laughs is natural, as if he’s known me for a long time. Maybe…

I rip off the page from the notebook. I’m going to the cafeteria, I write on the page before crumpling it into a ball. I slip the paper into my pocket and grab the student card in my pencilcase. He’s staring at my photo, I realize, which I then cover with my thumb on instinct.

“You had really short hair back then,” he comments. I look at him and frown. No one’s around to wonder why I’m frowning at nothingness at the moment, so it’s fine.

“Yeah, yeah.” He pushes his hands into his pockets. “First year photos are always crappy, I know.”

I take out the crumpled paper ball from my pocket and show him the part that says I’m going to the cafeteria as a reminder.
 

“I know,” he says, getting up. “I want to check it out too.”

You don’t need me for that, though, I scream in my head. But of course, as always, I don’t say anything.