I sit alone, leaning back in the hospital bed. The flower bouquet that sits on the small table in the corner of the room has long since dried out, the petals wrinkled and twisted. Raindrops hitting the window rhythmically is all I can hear. I reach for the teddy bear my mom left me even though I know I’m too old for a stuffed animal.

Han Gyeowool, I hear my name. It’s a familiar voice. He sits on the edge of my bed. I find the end of my lips curling up in a smile at last. I weakly lift my left hand in greeting, the needle stuck in my wrist connected to the IV drip bag hanging above my head.

-

I find myself asking a question I’ve never imagined asking anyone before.

“So how’d you die?”

We’re sitting in a small coin karaoke booth, a screen that reads ‘Welcome to Happy Coin Karaoke’ flashing next to us. Two microphones lie on the table next to the karaoke machine. Barely four people could fit on these small ‘couches’ that line either side of the booth. Through the thin walls, I can hear people screaming the lyrics out to a familiar pop song. I hope they don’t think they’re singing.

Jimin sits across from me, and through his semi-transparent body I can see scribbles on the walls written with black pen if I squint. Hawon, Nayeon and Janghee were here. Hana♡ Minhyuk. I wonder if Hana and Minhyuk are still together or not. The wall that was probably white once is now black and grey here and there. I think it’s mold.

“That’s what you’re curious about?” For a man discussing his own death, he looks a bit too amused.

“We had a deal.”

“You practically forced me into it.”

“But we still have a deal. You tell me everything I need to know,” I insist.

“This feels unfair.” He maintains his smile nonetheless.

“Well, I’m the one helping you out, not the other way around. So.” I tap my finger on the red couch. “How? And what was all that about? With Kim Namjoon?”

“It’s a long story,” he says warningly.

“We have all day. Or at least, till 10 PM.” I glance at the screen, where it displays the time. 11:23 AM.

“Your parents think you’re at the city hall library,” the ghost reminds me, tutting.

“I’m doing this for you, okay?” I snap, annoyed. “It’s New Year’s Day, give me a break. Just get to the point.” I’m seriously considering cancelling this agreement to help him. If he says one more stupid thing, I really will…

“Well, we rented a van, you see.” Now Jimin looks far away as if he can still see faded images of the past there. “Namjoon, I mean, rented the van.”

Ah. I can imagine where this is headed. But I patiently wait for Jimin to continue. I’m afraid that if I try to rush him through the story, I’ll ruin something. Or make things worse somehow.

“Seven people fit in the van. Two on front, two behind, and three seats in the back.” Jimin puts a hand on his chest and winces. I wonder if that’s where he got the most severe injury, the wound that rid him of his life upon impact. “And, as always, Namjoon was driving.”

The screeching that sounds nothing like singing continues from every direction. Do these people never get tired or strain their vocal chords? We sit in an odd silence in our own booth amidst the chaos. I wait for Jimin to continue the story.

“It wasn’t… I don’t think it was his fault. He did what he could do,” Jimin says. “He could’ve killed the others. But he swerved.”

I remember how Namjoon’s shoulder shook weakly as he sobbed. ‘I’m sorry, Jimin, I’m sorry…’

“He’s a good driver,” Jimin continues. “It wasn’t his fault. I was sitting next to him. The brakes didn’t work. He had to stop. What other option did he have?”

Another question lingers at the tip of my tongue, but this one I’m a bit more afraid to ask. For Namjoon’s sake? Maybe.

“So, we crashed.” Jimin’s voice is flat. Emotionless. “And my airbag malfunctioned.”

I don’t know what to do. Or say.

I don’t know how to deal with this. So I merely sit there in dumb silence.

“At least we didn’t hit another car. The front window shattered. It was so loud. That’s all I remember before I became… a ghost, I guess. I opened my eyes and I saw my own bloody corpse. The ambulances had come. The van was on fire, too. I don’t know how that started. I saw the back doors of the ambulances close. And they all left.”

Pause.

“And never came back.”

Another pause.

I’d never taken the time to ask the ghosts that used to hound me at every corner just how they died for obvious reasons. You’d think that my close encounters with the deceased on a regular basis would desensitize me to the concept of death and dying, but it still gets me even now. The way he describes it. To think how easy it is for life to end in this world...it still makes me feel small and helpless.

“I’m...sorry,” I find myself saying. I hate how ingenuine it sounds, but it’s really the only comforting word I can come up with. Sorry.

“What are you sorry for?” Jimin smiles easily as though he hadn't just recounted his own death. “It’s alright.”

The serious tone of our conversation is still occasionally interrupted by hoots and hollers from the booth next door.

“Is it really?” I can’t seem to control my own thoughts, mind to mouth filter utterly shut down and allowing me to blurt out whatever comes to mind.

“It is,” Jimin assures, but I’m not convinced.

“Is it really alright, or are you just saying that to make others feel better?”

“I’m saying it to make myself feel better.” He doesn’t miss a beat as he replies to my loaded question nonchalantly. I can’t think of anything to say to that.

Luckily, I don’t have to, as he starts to speak again only a few moments later. “You know, if you just sit there, on the road…” I press my lips shut as he continues, “and you’re, say, crying like a five-year-old, crying about the most stupid things—crying because you forgot to call your parents last Parents’ Day and now you’ll never have the chance to again, or crying because you realize you’ll never know what happens next in your favourite movie series, or crying because you’re stuck dead with stupid pink hair…”

I’m still speechless. Jimin takes a deep breath, looking tired and much older than twenty-something.

“After a month or two, it all becomes useless.”

“Doesn’t it hurt? When the cars go through.” I know it’s extremely uncomfortable when someone walks through them.

“Not as much as it did when I died.” It’s really hard to tell if his tone is bitter with contempt or amused whenever he makes death jokes. He goes on, elaborating, “It’s… not pleasant. But I got used to it. I used to jump from one lane to another to avoid traffic, but that became tiring after a while, so I just learned to deal with it.”

Stuck on the road forever, huh? I don’t meet an awful lot of ghosts from car crashes. When I do, they’re never as persistent, giving up fairly quickly and leaving this world for good.

While this pink-haired Park Jimin stayed.

“I’m sorry… about the others, too.” I fill in the awkwardness with another sorry.

“I’ll find them,” he says, determination in his voice. “I’ll check up on how they’re doing. Then I’ll leave, abiding to the terms of our agreement, of course.”

“...Alright.”

I hope this works out.

“They’re all alive, at least,” Jimin says. “I’ll see them eventually, right?”

I try to imagine being in his shoes. Dead, somehow still present as a ghost, with a barely cooperative girl being the only one that can see and hear him. I would have actually went insane. Or still would be crying. But he looks so calm. And he smiles like he doesn’t care at all.

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to figure him out.

“So, what’s your story?” I didn’t expect to be asked a question myself. I look across the booth at him, eyebrows raised.

“My story?”

“I can’t be the only one that’s tried bothering you.”

A memory crops up in my mind. No, go away, please, I’d beg as I cry…

“Were you always able to see us?” Jimin’s voice brings me back to reality. I blink, fully dismissing unwanted images from my thoughts, and shake my head.

“No,” I answer.

“So you just started seeing ghosts out of nowhere one day?”

I don’t want to explain in detail. “Pretty much,” is all I say.

“I’m sorry, then,” Jimin says. Talking with this ghost man seems to involve at least five ‘sorry’s per conversation. “I meant it when I said I wouldn’t ask for much.”

“No, it’s…” I inhale. “It makes sense. I know. You can’t talk to anyone else, and you’ve been out in the cold for so long. It’s just, it’s a rule of mine. Never acknowledge, just ignore.”

“Mhm.” Jimin nods. It’s weird explaining this to someone. Especially when that someone is one of the same ghosts I’ve sworn to ignore.

“You know, one time...” I start, not knowing why I’m saying this to him. “Once upon a time, I used to talk to ghosts.”

“When?”

“Years ago.” I shut my eyes for a few seconds and the vague silhouettes of the ghosts I once knew appear in front of me. I open my eyes. Park Jimin, the ghost with pink hair is sitting there still. Waiting for me to continue talking.

“And that didn’t go well?” he asks carefully.

“Well, it started going downhill the moment they realized I could act as their personal ambassador to the living or whatever,” I scoff. “Do this, do that… I was, like, in my first year of middle school when that all started. I was fourteen.”

It’s his turn to be wordless, I guess. I continue, still not sure why I’m saying all this in a coin karaoke booth surrounded by people probably celebrating the new year by screaming their hearts out, sounding like they’re drunk despite the fact that it’s not even noon.

“They would come after me, find me in my room, and they wouldn’t leave until I did what they said. Some were old—not like old as you, old, but my parents’ kind of old.”

The memories come back a little too painfully, turning my vision foggy, but I can’t cry. I cried enough at home. I was once the bravest, most reckless kid around. I never cried, no matter what. If anyone were to pick on me, I’d chase them down and make them pay for it. Horror movies never scared me; they weren’t real, after all. They’re all actors dressed up pretending to be ghosts. I would laugh at my friend for screaming at fake ghosts.

Those times stopped when the horror movies became reality for me.

“But I was their only link to the living, after all, and I knew that. So what else was I supposed to do?”

I couldn’t fight back. I couldn’t shut them out. Real people I could push, I could kick, or ask others for help with. Ghosts? Whatever I did wouldn’t affect them. Even when I’d cried into my parent’s shoulders, asking them to help me, save me, take the ghosts away from me, the ghosts would still be screaming into my ears, unbeknownst to my parents. Weak child! Stupid kid! Listen, just listen!

My parents would tell me it’s okay, ghosts aren’t real, I’m just a bit too sick and seeing things, but they were real to me. They wouldn’t go away. Whatever I do. I stayed awake crying as the dead surrounded me, demanding I listen. The only way I could escape was to run, run before they catch me, run fast enough so they’ll freeze in their tracks and lose the ability to follow me.

I had to return to being normal.

“Am I being that type of ghost?” Jimin’s voice wakes me up from the past, thankfully.

I ponder on it for a second. Thinking on it, Jimin had never overstepped the boundaries into my house except for...one time, and even then, he’d left after I’d demanded for him to. Neither had he hung off of me every living, breathing moment, begging for my help. “Not really.”

“I don’t want to… traumatize you.” It takes him a while to find the right words to complete his sentence.

“Well, we made a deal, so...” I hold up my pinkie, smiling stiffly. “I hope you don’t as well.”

I feel a vibration in my pocket and take out my phone, worrying for a second that it’s my parents and they’ve found out I’m not actually at the city hall library. But the display reads Kim Namjoon instead, to my relief. He’s sent me a text.

“Are you available this Friday?” I read the text out loud. “Tell Jimin—”

As soon as I say his name, Jimin springs up from his seat across the room and sits down next to me. “Is that Namjoon?”

Instead of answering, I show him the phone screen.

Are you available this Friday? Tell Jimin I talked to Hoseok. I haven’t told him about Jimin still being here as a ghost or anything like that though. He wants to come visit this Friday. He’s bringing Seokjin and probably Yoongi as well. If you can make it there with Jimin, he can see the others too.

I notice that the text does not mention Taehyung or Jungkook. Jimin is still staring at the phone screen.

“I mean, I think I’ll have time,” I say after I’m fairly sure he’s read the text at least ten times.

Jimin says nothing.

“Do I say yes?” I ask slowly, thumbs hovering above the screen.

Jimin finally nods.

I type in, Okay, I’ll be there, then tap send. “Good?” I look at Jimin. He nods again. The question I’ve been wanting to ask since I saw the grieving Namjoon is right at the tip of my tongue.

“You know, Namjoon,” I start, and Jimin looks up. “Do you really not blame him?” I ask.

“Of course not,” Jimin says it like it’s a simple answer.

“You’re not just saying it to, like, stop Namjoon from killing himself or something?”

“I mean, he’s always been that kind of person.” Again with the tone I can’t decipher. “He loves taking on all the burden and blaming himself. Even when it’s not his fault.”

“But you died.” I instantly regret saying this and look over my shoulder worriedly, but Jimin seems unaffected by my comment.

“Yep,” he says.

“And you’re just like, oh well, I died, not his fault?”

“I guess.”

“So you really never blamed him, not even for a second?”

Pause.

“What’s the point?” Jimin says, then stands up. “Can we go somewhere else now? It’s stuffy here.”

You don’t even need oxygen to live. I complain in my head, but as always, I keep my thoughts to myself. “If you say so,” I say as I stand up and open the door. “Where do you want to go?”

“Huh, good question.” He says, and I remember that I’m again out in public and can’t acknowledge the existence of the ghost anymore. I look away and take out my phone.

“Oh, right.” Jimin seems to realize that I can’t talk to him outside. “Whatever, I’ll just talk. You look away and pretend you’re having the time of your life by yourself.”

Gee, thanks, I mentally remark.

“Wait, isn’t there a movie theatre upstairs?” Jimin suddenly sounds excited. “I really, really want to go watch a movie.” He beams at me as I attempt to appear as though I’m looking at the crane machine right behind him. “That new superhero movie is out now, right? It’s December.”

“January,” I correct him under my breath. My voice is somewhat muffled by the horrible screams that barely resemble singing around me.

“Oh, right. It’s New Year’s Day.” He stops. “Wow, you’ve aged a year!”

Yep, but you’re still twenty-one, says inner Gyeowool.

“Let’s go watch a movie,” he insists, looking a lot younger than a man over twenty once again.

I sigh. I take out my phone, open the notepad app and start typing, the motions basically committed to my muscle memory at this point.

I’m third year in high school. I’m not supposed to have a life.

“You’re the one who asked me to give you a break.”

Different story.

“It’s just a movie. We have a lot of time to kill anyway!”

Ticket is expensive.

“You said you’d do whatever it takes for me to move on...”

Our agreement didn’t include watching a movie.

“It’s not like I’m telling you to kill a man,” he huffs.

Things could escalate. You never know.

“It’s a dead man’s wish, please.” Jimin stresses the word dead.

I’m regretting offering to help.

“Come on, you know you wanna watch it too. Let’s go!” He leads the way without even asking anymore. I sigh and put my phone back in my pocket. I’m not used to this, someone else trying to get me to go somewhere...to do fun things.

Time to look like a loner, buying a movie ticket for one person.

We ascend a few floors on an escalator. The movie ticket machine is on our right as soon as we get off. As I select my seat on the machine and wait for it to print out my ticket, Jimin stands behind me and watches a trailer for another movie on the screen. The receipt prints out from another thin opening, and Jimin points out my seat number on my ticket.

“Nice. You sit on the aisle seat, I sit on the stairs, we watch. Perfect plan.” Jimin claps once, looking utterly satisfied with himself.

I’m glad he’s excited, I guess.

Then his smile freezes. He suddenly looks concerned as he says, “Wait, is this illegal?”

I look at him, trying to convey what are you even saying with my dead expression. He laughs. Too excited for a ghost.

“Like, I’m watching it without paying for it. Isn’t that a crime?”

Seriously? I raise my eyebrows. I don’t think they’ll be particularly worried about a ghost watching their movie for free. What are they going to do anyway? Arrest the ghost? They can’t even see you, Jimin. I shake my head, sighing. One moment, he acts like a proper adult, all serious about death and all that. And now what? He’s worrying about...breaking the laws, as a ghost.

“Whoa.” His attention span must not be that good, because now he’s pointing at the bright popcorn machine next to the ticket machine. “Can you get caramel popcorn? I can’t eat but still. I love the smell of caramel popcorn.”

Aren’t you asking for a bit much, Park Jimin? His mood is too lifted to notice the way I’m looking at him, I suppose. I can’t say anything out loud in public, so all I do is stare incredulously at the child I didn’t know I was going to be accompanying to the movie theatre today.

He’s looking around in awe, standing still as people walk past him. They’re all here with someone else. Parents, kids, lovers, friends, all in line for popcorn, drinks, nachos, in line for the tickets, sitting around the tables outside, and so on. A group of teenage guys laugh boisterously about something. A middle-aged couple stares at the trailers on the TV screen installed nearby. A young man walks past Jimin, hands occupied with popcorn and two drinks. He holds his ticket between his lips. With him is a young woman… his girlfriend, maybe? She smiles as the man comes closer, and takes the ticket from his mouth along with the popcorn from his hands and gestures for him to sit at a nearby table.

On the first day of the year, the theatre is full of life.

And I stand alone, seemingly here on my own.  

I realize it’s been such a long time since I’ve gone out to somewhere like this. Taking a step out of the house means that I could stumble into any ghost at any given moment. Even though the ghosts can’t tell I can see them unless I mess up royally like I did with Jimin, just walking past them would make my heart pound painfully. What if they start following me, what if they scream, what if they demand I do something, I don’t know what to do—

“Gyeowool!” Jimin calls. He points at the hall leading to the theatres and the sign above the hall that tells us it’s okay to go in now. No one turns their head at Jimin’s voice. No one can hear the excitement in his voice. I can see through him. In the middle of the living, breathing crowd, Jimin stands alone. Dead.  

He grins like a kid nonetheless as the screen comes to life with advertisements as soon as we walk into the dark theatre. The light from the screen shines through him, making him look more see-through than he already was. I follow the glowing arrows on the floor, searching for my seat, while Jimin jumps up the stairs, two at a time.

As if there’s nothing in the world to worry about.

_{IVE BEEN ON A WRITING SPREE LATELY im dizzy}

_{i listened to bap's all the way up on loop while writing this so 👀👀 shoutout to bap (pls go listen to their entire blue album bap is a treasure)}

_{i didn't mean for this to come out so angsty at the start lol???? it just sort of happened. my hands are cursed.} 

_{lastly a lil tidbit of info about the new year and what it means for people in korea: once the new year starts at 12 AM on january first, you're considered a year older in korea. like, if you were born in 2000, as soon as the new year rolls around in 2019, you're considered an adult already even if your actual birthday is somewhere in like july or whatever. (also side note the age you're considered an adult in korea is 20) so you're allowed to drink and smoke and all that jazz as soon as you turn 20 on new year's day. legally, you're still considered a minor (if you're being tried in court, they'll charge you as a minor, not an adult) until your actual birthday.} 

_{thats all! thanks for reading~}