It’s only been a week since I visited the grave of Himchan, and the figurine of Kim Himchan playing his usual days with me had been left behind. I must have been naïve enough to wish him ‘Rest in peace’ a couple of days ago, but afterwards – a bigger chunk of my life just vanished.

After the hallucinations of my late lover ended, with no one opening me the door, pouring me coffee or getting himself seated without permission on the other side of my car seat to blabber things I never grasped well… I started to feel how empty my life had been without him. It’s our fifth year anniversary.

He had to leave so soon. I understand that it was unavoidable. Not only had the accident left me a couple of scars that I stare at each evening under the shower; had it not only taken away my lover; but it had driven me insane and had changed the man I had been so far. I wasn’t sorry that I couldn’t deal with his death like it was a given in nature. I couldn’t let him go. I couldn’t let him pass on in my memories and mind, and I lived up to everything he had wanted me to be in my life; but I’ve changed.

Changed in a way that people never dared to approach me. The only ones who tried to keep in touch with me was my collage friend Daehyun and his boyfriend Youngjae; still a couple I didn’t want to see together as much. It wasn’t jealousy. I never wanted to see anyone.

Daehyun forced me onto a physiatrist a couple of weeks after skipping work and staying home for no apparent reason. I didn’t understand well if I was sick or not – which is the only reason I never gulped down the yellow pills standing oddly in the front desk of our apartment.

Life went on.
It just wouldn’t stop.

 Odd things started to happen a few days later. My glass of milk would be spilt on the table as I returned from the bathroom for breakfast. Pages in my newspaper went missing before I read it. Countless times I had gotten stuck in elevators, and every time I’d shut out the lights I’d start to hear a distant, long sigh right next to my ear.

Then it turned me paranoid.

The sigh kept getting louder behind my shoulder everywhere I went. I’d turn pale and would shoot glances across my shoulder every time it hushed behind me; and it had only been a few days since I’ve heard the voice in broad daylight. The front door to my apartment was trying to open itself before I walked in with my cup of coffee to fetch my newspaper and I watched the door shiver about in absolute fright. When it stopped, I had cowardly went ahead and opened it to find my weekly newspaper in shreds, cut and chopped to a point I slammed the door close on it.

My physiatrist said I was growing paranoid; and listed me a couple of more pills. Annoyed as I carried home a new bottle and kept it standing next to the previous one without an intention to really drink any of it. But it got me thinking about all the things that had been haunting me so far and I reached for a bottle. Maybe a slight thought of taking a dose must have crept into my mind for once; but before I could have reached to uncap it, the raspy sigh rang right behind me.

Gasping, I turned around to find my apartment empty. I looked back onto the bottle of new pills in my hand just before I noticed the other rolling down the table to swing off the edge to crash into the floor shattering the glass. My breath hitched in my throat at how the wind gushed into my room right afterwards and I left the other bottle to go ahead and close the window.

I must have kept it on the edge that the same fate came around for the second bottle as it shattered right next to the yellow pills rolling about the floor. It was six thirty in my wall clock and I didn’t know what odd reason made me check my wrist watch following that. It said three to twelve and I raised a brow wondering when it stopped working.

The wind turned louder in my ears as I hurriedly walked to the windows and closed it, turning the lock. I jumped to my toes at the sudden lightning, and I watched ahead in the fading light and when thundering came afterwards, I saw a shadow behind me from the glass.

A shadow that looked like Himchan.

I gasped; and it vanished right in front of my eyes.

It put out my puzzle together and I never bothered to take stairs again. Every time my elevator got stuck and I started to suffocate in the thickening air; the mirror behind me always gave me the brief moments I could see Himchan.

He was different than last times though. His face was paler and longer, brows darker and bags deep under his eyes. His fingers had always been feverish, and he wouldn’t stand still. He always rocked back and forth in t