Hyukjae's head was spinning, because there was just no damn way—no damn way he was was looking across an unoccupied room into a mirror's reflection and not seeing himself, but another boy, looking back at him. And not only was he there, he was there and moving and not what Hyukjae expected to be seeing at any moment of his life, in any universe, under any circumstances.

The last thing he had expected was for the thing in the mirror to tilt his head curiously at him, as if he were the one popping up in mirrors like a damn monster on Halloween.

Hell, Hyukjae thought to himself as he stared back at the imposter with a speeding heart beat that left him breathless, if anyone should be allowed, by ing law, to be curious right now . . . It should be me. He was beginning to feel a heavy sense of nausea sweeping throughout his body, watching the boy in the mirror tentatively raise his right arm before himself and sweep it in a large arch across the surface of the mirror in a 'howdy-do, there' type of way.

In short, it freaked Hyukjae the out and he nearly started hyperventilating from his place outside the door, completely beside himself with fear.

He stumbled backwards into the hallway's pale yellow wall and grabbed at his chest in a failed attempt to calm himself down. He could feel his entire body shaking and felt how hard it was getting to breathe, but none of that stopped him from waking the house, more effectively, with the shrill voice he used to call to his father upstairs.

“Dad! Daaaaaaad, oh my God, Daaaaaaad! Come quick, hurry! Dad! Daaaaaad! Oh, God—”

It wasn't long before Sulli was loudly crying after being scared out of her sleep, adding on to the unbearable sound, and Soojung was up, rubbing both her eye and her little sister's back while simultaneously trying to figure out what was going on with the world.

Minho, on the other hand, plugged his ears with his fingers and rammed his eye lids together. “Shut up, stupid!” he cried, just wanting to get some more sleep. To his chagrin, his shrieking older brother only quieted his cries once their father came rocketing down the stairs moments later and met him around the corner in the hallway between the staircase and the kitchen, 54 year-old body out of shape and himself looking completely disheveled and all meanings of the phrase 'out of sorts'.

“Son, what's wrong? Why were you screaming like that? What's the matter??” Lee Chungho exclaimed immediately upon seeing Hyukjae pressed up against the wall, looking like he had just looked Death himself in the face.

The pale boy swallowed hard and said without turning his head, “Dad . . . I think our house is haunted and we need to move. Now.”

Chungho tilted his head to the side, much like the figure in the mirror did before, and Hyukjae caught it out of the corner of his eye. He shuddered at the much too vivid memory.

“What do you mean it's haunted? This house was newly built when we moved in ten years ago.”

“But that doesn't mean anything! We could be living on a burial ground, or a missing tooth, a fingernail, a strand of hair, a freaking eyelash, of all things! Or—Or even . . .” A cold chill ran down Hyukjae's spine as the boy in the mirror gave him a goofy grin that turned his eyes up into crescents, “A boy!” He cried, whipping his head towards his father's direction and blindly pointing into the room at the mirror, “We could be living on a boy, Dad! A boy!”

So, then . . . Was it weird, in that moment, for Chungho to think his child was on drugs somehow? Was it a thought a bad parent would have? It couldn't be considered bad parenting, could it, to be worried about such a thing?

Because this certainly was not normal . . . Even for Hyukjae who thought he was the most normal kid around, when that most certainly wasn't the case.

Chungho took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak, only to close it and try again as he looked at his son's frantically blinking eyes that somehow looked very close to tears. Giving up, he cleared his throat instead.

“Hyukjae . . . Son . . .” He paused and thought about how best to phrase, “What the hell are you talking about?” nicely.

The questioned waved his left arm around in the air crazily, “This, Dad, this! Him! In the mirror, over there, on the other side of the bed. Look!”

Chungho gave Hyukjae a look but complied anyhow. He inched closer to his son and looked to where he was pointing in the dark bedroom. Though all he saw was a king-sized bed and a nearly full-length mirror shrouded in the darkness. Nothing more.

“In the mirror?” He asked, his voice borderline flat and judging.

Hyukjae nodded quickly, “In the mirror.”

And it was then, in the silence that flooded the hallway, that Chungho absolutely had no words to describe what he was feeling about such a shocking situation. Hyukjae on the other hand felt like vomiting.

“Y-You don't see him . . . Do you?” he whispered, the fear in his voice clearly evident.

Chungho turned to face his son again, his expression completely worried now, “I don't see anything but our reflections in a mirror, Hyukjae.”

The seventeen year-old swallowed hard and bit his bottom lip to keep himself from a) screaming like a woman again, b) cursing and getting slapped for it, c) fainting and hitting his head on the floor, or d) all of the above. It was a terrible realization for him that he didn't quite want to understand, yet strangely, found himself wanting to know more about.

Why is it that he couldn't see his own body in the mirror that stood right in front of him?

“Are you sick?” Hyukjae jumped, the voice beside his ear interrupting his thoughts.

He wasn't really given time to reply, though, as Chungho slapped a hand across his forehead, while sincerely hoping he felt something, anything there that indicated even slight sickness, to feel for fever.

That, too, wasn't considered bad parenting, was it?

Chungho didn't have to check (or pray) for too long, as Hyukjae answered with half a lie. “Yes, I think. I don't feel too well, Dad.” His voice was monotone and slightly lost.

Chungho noted it, but didn't ask any questions. Instead, he nodded hastily, “Yeah—Yeah, just go to bed, sleep on it, and you'll feel better in the morning.” He encouraged, wiping all following doubts away and figuring sickness and lack of sleep had done this to his son.

Hyukjae nodded, swallowing as he watched the boy in the mirror smile widely and wave at him again, fully this time, as if he was trying to catch his attention. Hyukjae closed his eyes, took a deep breath. “O-Okay. I'll be better in the mor—”

Suddenly, the front door opened to the very far right of the house and the two in the hallway looked to find Kyuhyun entering, slowly closing the door behind him as his eyes took in the couple of suspiciously lingering figures he saw staring back at him. He approached them quite quickly, his right eyebrow raised in question as he saw the opened bedroom door.

Kyuhyun frowned, “What in the world are you guys doing outside my room?”

Chungho sighed, thinking that he'd ought teach this one some more manners, “Your brother's sick. He was just about to head upstairs to bed.”

Kyuhyun looked Hyukjae up and down, realizing that he did look awfully pale and warn out. “Oh,” he said, staring at his older sibling with his usual feelings of worry leaking through easily, “You should drink water before you do, Hyuk.” He offered.

Hyukjae shook his head, though, “No, I think I'll just go lie down. Night.” He said, and dismissed himself from the living room without another word.

Four minutes later on that Friday night found Hyukjae trying to shatter the mirror in his own bedroom with a random soccer trophy he'd snatched off his dresser top. The moment he'd switched on his bedroom light and turned towards his closet to hang up the pink abomination of a Hello Kitty Isle work uniform (and possibly hide it away forever so it could corrode and crust and eventually fall apart into unrecognizable dust particles) had been the beginning of the end of his sanity.

The orange-blonde boy was back and closer than ever before. So close that Hyukjae could point out every key point of the boy's features, make out each shining strand of hair that shook when the boy chuckled softly at the shock frozen on Hyukjae's face, see the pink of his thin lips turn upwards into a small smile that revealed slightly crooked teeth as the boy's amusement with Hyukjae's silence grew.

It was a stunned silence that fed on the fact that it had only just occurred to him how truly human the boy in the mirror appeared. How it wasn't that ghostly, heavily animated figure Hyukjae actually wanted to believe was simply a figment of his imagination that had somehow become an overactive burden.

He had sincerely hoped that it would serve as some simple form of reasoning, because the boy in the mirror had followed him upstairs and illogical things like that weren't supposed to happen to him.

The boy, he wasn't only in Kyuhyun's room, but he was now in Hyukjae's too. And Hyukjae, who was scared incredibly less, wasn't okay with that. He was truly being haunted by a ghost. A real one. An actual ghost. A boy. A ghost boy.

Truthfully, he was only freaking out earlier, saying random things to soothe his whirling mind, but now . . . My ing house was really built on a goddamn boy. . .

It was then, that he squeaked in fear and started freaking out again.

The trophy smashed into the higher center area of the mirror where the boy's face was located, a circular ring of cracks wounding around the offended area. Hyukjae held his breath and hoped the figure would fade away and leave him in peace.

But the exact opposite happened, actually.

The boy in the mirror drooped his upper half to the left side suddenly, a huge smile on his face and a little wave as he peered at Hyukjae from behind the crack in the middle of the mirror. Suddenly, he was standing upright again before leaning back over to peer at Hyukjae, body drooping over on the right side now. Hyukjae noted the slight bounce in his movements, and might have found the act cute and adorable had they been in a different situation.

Or a different galaxy, for that matter.

Because in this galaxy, Hyukjae didn't give a damn.

His wish for the figure in the mirror to fade away wasn't granted, and now the bastard was taunting him by doing that little 'cutesy' dance on his side of the mirror, smiling as big as the sun that wasn't even in the sky at 11:15 pm. To Hyukjae, it felt as though this was his fourth little piece of Hell, being directly behind foster care, that nightmare he lived at 7 years old, and the color pink that will forever cloud his senses from now until forever.

He grunted with the effort it took to lift the heavy trophy again, “Why won't you go away?!” Hyukjae whined at the mirror-boy, taking an aim accurate with the boy's astonished face yet again.

He must realize that I'm completely done with him, Hyukjae figured and set himself to swing the heavy bronze object with considerable strength.

“7 years of bad luck if you completely shatter it and a shard falls.”

Hyukjae froze with his arm held stiffly in mid-air. His heart flipped in his chest and his eyes glued themselves onto the figure literally grinning at him through the mirror.

There's no ing way. . . he thought, but immediately dispelled the impossible possibility. Indeed the boy's lips had moved, but there was no way the words had come from his mouth. Nuh-uh. No way.

Hyukjae had already come as close to terms as he could with the sudden Harry Potter-like fiasco he was now living. He was not yet ready for Snow White's evil stepmother's famous mirror to start in on him, too.

Paranoid now, Hyukjae slowly drew his eyes away from the grinning boy in the mirror and allowed them to dart all around his room, all the while keeping an eye half-trained on the boy he held under a suspicion he thought was totally ridiculous.

It wasn't even possible, so why was he even worrying?

“W-Who . . . Who said that?” He dumbly asked the empty air around him, smothered in denial.

A soft chuckle floated to his right ear and his head whipped around instantly. “Of course it was me, silly. Who else?”

And he was right. There was no denying it now. The boy in the mirror had talked. Mirror-boy spoke. ing Ghost Boy opened is thin-lipped mouth and answered Hyukjae back with words. It was overwhelmingly abnormal.

And Hyukjae screamed. High-pitched. Ugly. Crazy. Just completely done.

Harry Potter and Snow White be damned, this was some freaky that he was not about to get used to in a single lifetime.

Or ever.

Kyuhyun woke up at 10 am Saturday morning with a heavy weight stuck to his side. He groaned while rubbing his eyes and opening them, peeking to his left ribcage in order to see what the problem was.

His eyes widened a little when he saw that it was his best friend who had his head resting against his chest and the rest of his body smothering his left side, the older boy's left leg lying haphazardly across his own numb legs.

Kyuhyun groaned, “What in the living hell. . .” He muttered before trying with little success to pry Hyukjae off of him. “Hey, get off of me. Hey. Hyuk!” His voice was scratchy and he coughed a little from the slight raise in pitch.

Giving up his futile attempts at waking the other with simple words, Kyuhyun frowned deeply and raised a hand in the air. His arm came down hard and his palm landed a good smack on the entirety of Hyukjae's left ear. The younger boy laughed as his best friend yelped in pain, silently vowing to startle him awake in this way more from now on.

“Why would you do that?! That's not funny, it hurts!” Hyukjae whined as soon as the pain subdued enough for him to speak. Kyuhyun continued laughing anyway.

“I had to get your head off my chest somehow, big head. I could hardly breathe!”

Hyukjae gasped, “So it's true!” He was suddenly feeling very wide awake now.

Kyuhyun frowned, laughter having died down, “What's true?”

“You really do call me 'big head'. Your little minion told me. He calls me that too, now, because of you, you jerk!”

Kyuhyun effortlessly smirked, Minho—his minion—was his pride and joy. He'll grow up well, he surmised.

“And I don't know why you think you, of all people, have room to talk since it's your head that takes up so much space it's hard to hold up. Don't think I haven't seen your loose head bobble when you look to the side, Kyu. You try stopping it before it's noticeable, but don't think I haven't noticed, bobble head!”

Silence washed over the two and Kyuhyun swallowed thickly. He knew his head was big . . . but Hyukjae didn't have to point it out like that. . .

It hurt his feelings.

But deciding not to show how -hurt he was too deeply, he changed the subject, “Why are you in here, anyway?”

Hyukjae almost laughed, he noticed the defeated undertone to his best friend's voice. But he ended up sitting up quickly and shivering instead. He whispered to Kyuhyun, “I was scared.”

The younger of the two raised an eyebrow, “Of. . . ?”

Hyukjae leaned closer, “Ghost Boy,” he whispered, the blondish haired boy's new nickname feeling acceptable to him, “he's haunting me. From inside the mirrors.”

To say that Kyuhyun was dumbfounded . . . Actually, there wasn't even a phrase to complete the sentence in that moment of utter dumbfounded-ness, if that's even a word, he was subjected to.

“Are you high?” He asked seriously, “Still sick?”

Hyukjae clucked his tongue in annoyance, “No! The hell? And I was never sick in the first place! I was just scared because we're living on top of a boy buried underneath the house! And now he's haunting me. I'm the only one that can see him, Kyu! What do I do??”

Hyukjae watched the younger blink multiple times fast, his mouth was literally just hanging open. Kyuhyun was still dumbfounded, and Hyukjae's sudden abnormal attitude was making it harder to come back.

“Oh my God, Hyuk, you are sick.”

“No, no really I'm not! I'm perfectly okay.”

“You are not, you're going crazy. Oh, God, I have to tell Mom! Ohmahgawd!”

“Stop, wait! You have to believe me! He's probably here in your mirror right now! He does that. He jumps from mirror to mirror like that. And he talks, Kyu, he talks, like the ing mirror in Snow White!”

Silence, again, dominated the room for a while as Kyuhyun simply stared at his friend. He's slipping, dude. He thought.

But the silence between the two was suddenly broken by a clear voice spoken from behind. Well, at least for Hyukjae, it was.

“Yeah, I'm always here. Good morning! Or, or would you prefer I say, 'Buenas Dias' or something? B-Because I could if— ”

Hyukjae screamed.

Kyuhyun stared.

~*.*~

“Hey, what are you doing?” Eight year-old Hyukjae asked as he approached his best friend from behind.

The small boy jumped in surprise and quickly took up whatever he had been occupied with into his hands and hid it behind his back as he turned around to face Hyukjae. “N-Nothing!” he chirped in a high-pitched voice.

Hyukjae smiled at his best friend, finding his attempt at hiding something from him rather amusing. “Why can't I see?” he whined playfully, “You're being mean!”

The little boy looked panicked, “No, no I'm not trying to! It's just. . .” Hyukjae could literally see him trying to snatch a reason out of the air. He also deciphered the look when he finally caught one, too, “It's a secret!” The boy cried.

Hyukjae laughed, “Sure it is. Will I ever know about this secret?”

His best friend cocked his head to the side and lazily sent a random rock tumbling with his foot, thinking. “Maybe. . . It deepens.”

To himself, Hyukjae figured the five year-old meant 'depends'. “On what?” he asked.

~*.*~

During the two days that passed with the weekend, Hyukjae came to find out that the blondish haired boy would absolutely not go away. Not only was he in the mirrors in both his and Kyuhyun's rooms, he was also in the bathroom's mirror, the hallway's mirror, and any other mirror set up around the house.

And his presence was not only limited to mirrors, Hyukjae also found out with a bit of resentment. It was a definite, solid proof that anything that was able to cast a reflection back to himself is what Hyukjae saw the stranger reflected in. As he ate his cereal in the mornings, he fought hard not to glance into the milk-filled bowl, or at the spoon he'd put into his mouth.

Because consuming Ghost Boy's reflection . . . That in itself was as disturbing to think about as disturbing gets.

Taking showers and being completely paranoid at the puddles on the shower's floor was mind boggling as well, and getting dressed once finished while trying to avoid being peeped at through the bathroom's mirror was enough to drive Hyukjae very close to over the edge.

It was really very challenging for Hyukjae to try ignoring Ghost Boy since it took a lot of brain power and energy.

Hyukjae sighed heavily on Monday morning after opening his locker door at school before classes began. Way before classes again.

Normally, he was on time or slightly earlier than when the school's bell rang. But after realizing that, oh crap, he really did have homework over the weekend, and not only a homework assignment or two, but several, Hyukjae thought it would be smart to get as much as he could done before school started for the day.

Sighing again seconds later, Hyukjae removed his black and white backpack from its place in his locker and slung it over his shoulder, slamming his locker door with a bang. There was hardly anyone in the hallways as he walked on in silence, glancing around at the white walls and blue classroom doors with boredom and no feelings of happiness or nostalgia whatsoever.

The countless half-wall length windows set in a row on all the hallway walls facing the exterior of the school continuously reflected the blondish haired boy in each one of them. Hyukjae had partly gotten used to him after those two and some days in his company, so as he watched the boy make face after face with each appearing window, Hyukjae kind of had to fight down the laugh he felt bubbling up within.

The act was definitely cute and adorable enough to make one smile, but Hyukjae refrained from doing so because, frankly, the whole ordeal was still creepy to him. Reflections, moving-talking ghost boy with orange-blonde hair, shy personality, though bubbly enough to be Santa Claus's right hand man.

Nice features. . .

Who in their right mind wouldn't find that anything less than odd?

Finally coming to a stop at a round marble table directly outside of the cafeteria, the outdoor lunch area, Hyukjae dumped his school bag atop the surface and sat down with a heavy sigh.

Homework time. At school.

He extracted his pencil and several of his unfinished and late school papers, and set them neatly upon the table top. Although tired, he whistled a soft tune as he began to work through the science problems on his first page. It was a tune of near extreme contentedness, as there was not even one reflection in the vicinity—therefore, no Ghost Boy to make his spine tingle and distract him from working.

Being relatively good at science, Hyukjae finished quickly and began on his English papers—where the word 'several' came from in his stack of missing assignments—that required a lot of writing in a language he barely knew. He scribbled a crapload of nonsense and vowed to move on and never look back when a light tap was dealt to his right shoulder.

His head followed the direction of the tap and came face to face with Choi Seunghyun himself; no red note from in his locker, no random messengers to relay annoying messages between himself and Seunghyun like owls, no messily written desktop notes upon the polished wood that were 'illegal' in school in