It was cold, and the darkness was blacker than the inside of his eyelids. Kyungsoo's head swam, and it was as if he was floating, gently swaying to the flow and ebb of an unseen tide. Kyungsoo couldn't see, Kyungsoo couldn't hear. He didn't know if he could feel anything.

But it was peaceful, floating away like this. The darkness seemed to wash over him, lulling him with its sweet heaviness, making him content to simply drift like this forever. Till everything turned to dust and ashes, till the end of time.

And then a whisper of a sound reached Kyungsoo, and he remembered what it was to hear again. The whisper grew, until it was one voice mumbling at the back of Kyungsoo's mind, grew until Kyungsoo could distinguish it as an echo-y babble of voices, as if they were far far away.

Kyungsoo winced, and his fingers twitched, and reminded him that he had limbs, and eyelids to be opened. Something soft was pressed up against his back.

A mattress. Kyungsoo realised he must be lying on a bed of some sort.

The silence and darkness of blissful oblivion was destroyed already, and Kyungsoo found himself struggling to break free of the last shreds of inky black, his consciousness thrashing about like a drowning person fighting to get to the surface. Kyungsoo's eyes flew open, and the light that greeted him was as piercing as the first gulp of air after a long dive underwater. 

Too bright. Kyungsoo's eyelids fell shut, but the calming darkness was gone, dispelled by the sudden rays of light, like how sweet dreams are over upon waking, and nightmares still always seem lurk under the covers. Kyungsoo opened his eyes again to reluctantly acknowledge the brightness.

His eyebrows drew together as he squinted around him, his vision fuzzy, and then focusing gradually. Kyungsoo realised that it wasn't the lights that were so dazzlingly piercing, but the fact that almost everything in the room he lay in was a stark white colour, which made the light seem to bounce off things, right into his eyes. Kyungsoo blinked, still trying to adjust.

Kyungsoo turned his head to the right, where there were other beds like the one he lay on, and men and women, some with small white caps on their heads, some with stethoscopes hanging around their necks. Nurses and doctors. He must be in hospital. Kyungsoo froze.

Why? What happened? Kyungsoo sat up in bed, then got off it, looking down at himself to see what he'd damaged, where he was hurt. Kyungsoo frowned once more. That was strange. He didn't even have one bruise, not even the tiniest scratch on him. Kyungsoo ran his fingers over his arms in confusion. A nurse walked past him, and he half expected her to make him get back in bed to rest or something. She didn't, and just kept on walking, heels clicking smartly on the linolin floor. Kyungsoo cleared out his throat, and tried out his voice.

"Excuse me?" Kyungsoo called out after her. Or tried to--his voice was hoarse and raspy, as if he'd been yelling in his sleep or something, and he could barely raise it above a whisper-shout.

The woman didn't even turn around, and disappeared out of the room. Kyungsoo looked away from her, and turned to another doctor, bending over the patient in the bed next door.

"Excuse me?" Kyungsoo tried again, louder this time.

Still no response. These people were quite deaf, Kyungsoo concluded, clearing his voice.

"Uh, excuse me?" The doctor finished with his examination, and moved to another patient, further along the beds that lined two walls in the room. Kyungsoo let out a small sound of frustration.

The kid the doctor had been examining turned his head towards him, and Kyungsoo shrugged at him.

"Wasn't I loud enough?" Kyungsoo waited for a response.

The kid kept on staring aimlessly, and he clicked his tongue in annoyance. Unfriendly. It was no help talking to someone like him. Kyungsoo strode as purposefully as he could towards the only remaining nurse in the room. He realised he must look rather ridiculous, what with him rushing around, the oversized hospital clothes billowing about him. He couldn't find the heart to care at the moment though--Kyungsoo was growing desperate to find out what was going on, what ailed him.

"Excuse me?" Kyungsoo leaned forward and spoke firmly, The nurse didn't turn around immediately. She finished administrating medicine to the girl coughing pitifully on the bed before straightening up and facing Kyungsoo. She didn't seem to see him though, eyes scanning the room behind him, as if she were looking through him.

"Uh, hello?" Kyungsoo waved a hand infront of her face. She didn't even blink.

"Nurse?" Kyungsoo tried to tap her shoulder, and in the same instance, she walked forward.

The first thing Kyungsoo noticed, was that his hand passed straight through her shoulder. The next instant, he couldn't see the nurse anymore, for she had just walked right through him. Kyungsoo paused, hand still in the air.

What?

Kyungsoo suddenly spun around on his heel, and took another swipe at the woman. And another, and another, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. His hand passed through her as if she were made of water. She didn't react. She didn't hear his desperate pleas.

Kyungsoo gave up, and crumpled to the floor, staring at one leg of the bed next to his face. What was happening? Kyungsoo raised a shaking hand to his face, and mopped up his sweat. He stared at his palm for a long while afterwards. The water that gleamed on his fingers looked real. Kyungsoo could see his arm, could see the shadow it cast on the ground. Why couldn't anyone else see him?

A strange thought flitted across his mind, and he almost laughed aloud. He'd read about something like this before. The protagonist of the story had the same thing happen to her, with just one catch--she'd died of a heart attack. Kyungsoo couldn't be dead. No, he'd surely remember his death.

Kyungsoo wracked his brain, trying to recall something, anything that could help him understand his situation. It was surprisingly hard to remember anything. Kyungsoo didn't think thinking had  ever been this difficult, but then again, he wasn't sure of anything anymore. Everything was blurred, hazy.

He did remember one thing though--a shrill screech, and then a huge crashing sound that had grated on his ears, and chilled his blood.

A noise to his right, near the bed he'd woken up in distracted him from his thoughts, and Kyungsoo was almost glad.

Tap. Tap. Tappa tap.

Kyungsoo looked to his right, eyes sweeping from the floor to the top of the closet that stood in the corner, searching for the source of the noise.

It was a boy lying on his side on top of the piece of furniture, comfortable in the space between the smooth wood of the top of the closet and the ceiling, tapping his fingers on the wood to some music Kyungsoo couldn't hear. And he was looking right at him.

After being looked through, and unheard by everyone he'd met so far, Kyungsoo felt a warm rush of relief. Maybe this guy could tell him what in the world was happening to him and fill in some of the blank spaces in his mind that clouded his thoughts, the way static makes radio broadcasts all crackly and unintelligible.

"Hello?" Kyungsoo tried, not daring to hope too much. The boy's eyebrows twitched in response to his voice.

The boy swung off the closet. Kyungsoo leapt up from lying in a dejected, crumpled heap on the floor, half in excitement that someone could see he existed, half in fright that the only person who acknowledged his prescence had gone crazy and was trying to kill himself. The boy landed nimbly on his feet, and Kyungsoo let out a sigh of relief.

"Hi, my name is Kai." The boy gave a sudden smile, and Kyungsoo watched almost in awe as his eyes crinkled up into two happy crescents.

"I'm Kyungsoo." Kyungsoo offered, still staring.

"I know."

What? Kyungsoo raised one eyebrow in a question.

Kai pointed to the end of the bed he'd woken up in and smiled again. "It's written here."

Kyungsoo rearranged his expression into a more neutral one. This boy had been watching him. Why was he here? Kyungsoo eyed Kai's clothes, identical to the ones he wore. What kind of patient used hospital furniture as a climbing frame anyway?

A mental patient?

Kyungsoo shook his head inwardly. Kai seemed strange, but it didn't look as if he had something very wrong up there.

"Why can't they see me?" Kyungsoo was afraid that he seemed like the crazy one. Maybe he was just going insane, maybe he was just imagining that the nurses and doctors couldn't see him, that they walked through him. Maybe this was what crazy felt like. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him.

Kai's smile dimmed a little.

"You died." Kai glanced at Kyungsoo, then stared at the floor.

"What." Kyungsoo raised both his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"Dead." Kai repeated himself, "You're dead."

"How? When?" Kyungsoo's head swam. He was pretty sure dead people's heads didn't get giddy, pretty sure dead people didn't have a dull ringing in their ears. But then again, Kyungsoo couldn't say for sure--he'd never died before. Kyungsoo couldn't be dead.

"Car crash." Kai answered shortly.

Kyungsoo was beginning to suspect there was something really riveting about the small patch of floor Kai kept his eyes trained on.

"How do you know?" Kyungsoo demanded of the boy.

"I overheard the doctors." Kai still didn't look up.

"And they proclaimed me dead?" Kyungsoo said incredulously. He pointed at himself, tugged on his shirt, even as the cold feeling of despair settled in the pit of his stomach. "Look at me! I'm alive! I've got to be alive."

Kai smiled sadly.

"You're a ghost." He explained slowly, as if the answer required deep thinking.

A ghost. Kyungsoo gave a shout of laughter. It wasn't him Kai was talking about, he tried to convince himself. Not him. Not him.

"You can see me. You can hear me. You talk to me." Kyungsoo spat out, jabbing a finger in Kai's direction to get his point across. "You must be a ghost too."

Kai fidgeted. Kyungsoo waited, breathing hard.

"I' not dead. I'm...psychic." The boy said at last. And when he next looked up at Kyungsoo, it was almost as if he looked apologetic, and Kyungsoo softened his expression. And then he shrugged. Maybe this wasn't so bad. Kyungsoo couldn't remember anything about his life anyway at the moment, so he wouldn't miss it just yet. For some reason, Kyungsoo couldn't bring himself to panic at the new information. It was all so surreal.

Kai's expression brightened once more.

"I'm hungry, want to come get some food with me?"

Kyungsoo wasn't sure ghosts needed to eat, but he shrugged. There wasn't anything to do anyway, nobody to talk to. He watched as Kai grabbed a ten thousand won bill that lay inside a small bedside table next to the bed he'd woken up in, then half-skipped to the door of the ward. Looking back, Kai motioned for Kyungsoo to follow--which he did, looking slightly bemused.

Kai stopped in the corridor, breathing in deeply. Kyungsoo sniffed too, but couldn't detect the scent in the air that made the corners of Kai's mouth twitch upwards slightly. All he could smell was a faint whiff of antiseptic wipes. Nothing too out of place in a hospital. But then again, maybe Kai liked the smell of antiseptic wipes.

Kyungsoo turned to see Kai grinning at him, which was slightly unnerving. Kyungsoo whipped around to make sure the boy wasn't looking through him or anything.

"What is it?" Kyungsoo rubbed the back of his neck.

"Nothing." Kai's smile increased in wattage.

"You're weird." Kyungsoo muttered to himself, studying a floorplan of the hospital that was pasted on the wall beside him, then following the directions to where some shops and cafes sold food and drinks.

"Am not," Kai followed behind him. Kyungsoo could still hear the smile in his voice.

The cafe Kai decided on was a small one in a corner of the hospital, at the far end of the reception lobby. It was a pleasant place, the perfect sort of cafe to cozy up in a booth with a mug of hot chocolate, some waffles and a book on rainy days.

When Kyungsoo mentioned this, Kai's eyes lit up, and he nodded once in agreement, and rushed off to the counter to order himself the two items Kyungsoo'd mentioned.

He watched in amusement as the boy returned with a tray. Kai set it down at a table in the corner with two chairs, then glanced at Kyungsoo, and moved over to a booth further away from the counter, a more private seat with two sofas built in on either side. Kyungsoo watched, tilting his head.

"Now you can sit without anyone noticing the furniture moving on its own." Kai explained. Kyungsoo nodded in understanding.

Kai brandished his knife and fork, and cut a small piece of his waffle, nearly drowning in maple syrup, and placed it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, closing his eyes and delighting in the sticky sweetness. When he opened his eyes again, he found Kyungsoo staring again.

"Want some?" Kai motioned at his waffle.

"You look like you're enjoying it way more than I ever could," Kyungsoo grinned. "I'm fine thanks."

"You're missing out, you know?" Kai cut another piece.

"I'm fi--" Kyungsoo tried to insist, but Kai snuck a piece of waffle in when he opened his mouth, and Kyungsoo had no choice but to munch on it.

"Is it good?" Kai asked, fork poised in the air, a look bordering on nervousness taking over his face.

Kyungsoo swallowed, nodded. Kai smiled, and stabbed another piece of waffle to try to feed him.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kyungsoo watched as Kai slurped up the last drop of hot chocolate.

"How old are you?" Kyungsoo aked after a moment of comfortable silence.

"Nineteen. You?" Kai nodded at Kyungsoo.

"Twenty." Kyungsoo shot another question at Kai, "What's wrong with you?"

"Huh?" Kai froze, fork-stabbed waffle halfway on its journey to his mouth.

"As in," Kyungsoo clarified himself, "Why are you in hospital? Why are you here?"

"Car crash." Kai shrugged. "But I'm all better now." Kai's voice dropped a notch, "I'll be going home soon."

There was a silence, and Kyungsoo felt obliged to say something.

"That's great."

Kyungsoo didn't know what else to say, because from Kai's expression, Kyungsoo could tell something wasn't so wonderful about the news.

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Urgh. So I marked this as a oneshot, but I couldn't finish typing everything down before I had to go for class, so I'm going to have to split this chapter in two! So sorry guys! Will finish asap! <3 Subscribe and vote up if you likey!