Wabi-Sabi

     (n.) The discovery of beauty in imperfection; the acceptance of the cycle life and death. 

             A poltergeist arrived at the House.

            Or maybe it had been there since the beginning. Time had no reason or rhythm here. Tao had arrived after Baekhyun did, but he had died in 1965. Baekhyun died over forty years after, but arrived first. The complications of such a thing made his head hurt. Did it mean that Tao had spent years on the Taxi? Baekhyun had vague memories of it. Screaming, he thought. There was screaming and he was afraid and confused. How long did I spend there? Or the worse alternative. How long did they spend in their coffins? How long did the House leave them in the dark before yanking them to It? Baekhyun couldn’t remember and it scared him. A lot of what he couldn’t remember scared him. That was the thing about memories, Baekhyun supposed. When you had them, you wished to forget them and when you didn’t have them, all you wanted was to know what it was you forgot.

          But the poltergeist lived in the House.

          Chen was the one who found it. The ghost had been drifting about the library when the books began to fall off their shelves. He stood there in confusion. Chen dad been blessed with the gift of perspective and perception. None of the ghosts could hide from him. Not even when they wanted to remain hidden. He could find the hermit like Lay, the crabby Kris, and could even find Luhan and Xiumin when they were ing around with each other. He stopped and looked for who was ing with him. He was about to call out when the room broke apart. The chairs shook, the chandelier rattled, and the table cracked in half. Chen yelled in anger. He demanded the ghost show. Baekhyun and Sehun were arguing beneath him. Sehun wanted something, Baekhyun didn't want to give it up. His yell had them pause.

       CRASH!

      The floorboards had shook. They groaned as if the wood was going to splinter at any moment. In panic, Baekhyun raced for the stairs. Sehun followed on his heels. He burst into the library, only to skid to a dead stop. Sehun bumped into him, unable to halt himself. Baekhyun fell forwards. Sehun threw his arms around him, managing to catch him.. He didn’t notice. His gaze was fixed on the sight of Chen. His eyes were torn out of his head.

        “Chen?” he asked. His voice was high and scared. Baekhyun couldn't rip his gaze away from the gaping black holes on Chen's face. “What happened?”

       The ghost let out a small whimper, patting the ground for his missing eyes. “There’s a poltergeist here,” he said. “There’s a poltergeist in the House.”

       Baekhyun’s spine shivered, a crackling sound of bones grating on bones. He took a step forward. Tugging Sehun along with him, he approached Chen. “Are you sure?” he whispered. Chen snorted. Shaking his head, he kept searching.

       Sehun stooped down, picking up a bloodied eye by his foot. He gave it to Baekhyun. He knelt down and took Chen’s hand in his. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t trembling. Baekhyun pressed the eye into the palm of his hand. Chen, patting his hand, pushed it into the gaping socket in his face. It made a sickening squish. Baekhyun had to look away.

       “You know,” he said. “I always thought if anyone was going to go crazy here it would be you. Turns out there's something else we need to be afraid of.”

         But Baekhyun had not gone crazy.

         There was a poltergeist in the House.

         The ghosts didn’t know where it lived. They didn’t have a face for it nor a name. There was no time period to give it nor a sob story to muse over. The Taxi, if it had brought it, had been missed by them all. The poltergeist had seemingly appeared from nowhere. Perhaps the House spawned it. The more violent ghosts believed this theory. Baekhyun, Sehun, Luhan,and Kris. Why else would it seem so intent on ripping them to pieces? The worst part was never knowing when it would strike. Days, or what felt like days would pass without incident. Then the House would scream and the poltergeist would attack an unfortunate ghost. The peaceful ghosts, Xiumin, Chen , Lay, Tao and Suho had no theory for it. Maybe, they whispered. Maybe it was here before us. Kai attributed the poltergeist’s actions to them. No one bothered correcting him.

       Baekhyun was afraid of it. Then he reasoned he was already dead. What could it do? Baekhyun was nothing if not reckless and wild. So he resumed his drifting as normal. The other ghosts followed his example with caution. They were not reckless. Baekhyun and Sehun might be willing to have their eyes ripped out. The others were not. Understandable, Baekhyun thought. Sehun ridiculed them all for it until Baekhyun kissed him. He shut up after that. Baekhyun was glad because if he hadn’t quieted him Luhan certainly would have. The ghost brooked nothing when it came to frightening Xiumin. He would have beaten Sehun to a pulp if he scared Xiumin. The poltergeist had him on high alert. The two ghosts become truly inseparable. Luhan wouldn’t let him out of his sight. Xiumin stayed by his side, the two moving together. He was constantly touching him as if he was afraid Xiumin would vanish before his eyes. Baekhyun liked Xiumin, but she couldn’t look at the tiny ghost with Luhan for too long. They loved each other. Xiumin looked at Luhan as if he were the sun. He looked at X iumin as if he were the world. Luhan held him as if he was his own heartbeat, the sign that he was alive even in death.

       That was what made Baekhyun cry when it happened.

       The ghosts had no other name for It. It was simply It. That horrible, horrible night. Baekhyun never saw It coming, but once It happened he swore he’d never forget. Sehun forgot. Sehun always forgot. Otherwise he always remembered and was a very good liar. IT happened in the garden.

       “Xiumin?” Baekhyun asked, sitting down next to the pale ghost. The other boy looked away from the roses. Xiumin had been weeding them all morning. Luhan, ever present, hovered just a few feet away. The scowl on his face told Baekhyun to watch it. He could move the fastest of all the ghosts. No one knew why. Not even Xiumin. He just could. The ghosts who pissed him off learned that the hard way. You couldn't outrun him. He'd catch you soon or later. Knowing Luhan, it would be sooner. Still, is was a good thing he could move quickly. Otherwise he would most likely cling to Xiumin forever.

       “Yes?” he replied. He tossed the weeds aside. Baekhyun reached in to help him. Digging his fingers into the dirt, Baekhyun ripped out the weeds. He felt the bones inside of him creak. An odd, disturbing feeling. Baekhyun leaned forward and they ground upon each other. It was as if he were old. That almost made him laugh. Time had no meaning here, but it felt like he’d been here for eons. If time did exist, Baekhyun was older than stars.

       “Do you think that this place is some kind of punishment?”

       Xiumin paused. “A punishment for what?”

      Baekhyun shrugged. He felt Luhan’s burning gaze on the back of his neck. He proceeded with caution, something rather unknown to him. He tossed more weeds aside. A thorn from the bushes pricked him. Baekhyun flicked away the drops of blood. “I don’t know,” he said. “For what we did in our life? The things we didn’t do or the all the bad choices we made. I mean, none of us are saints. We all did stupid thing. Is this because of that?”

      “I don’t know,” Xiumin said after a minute of stretched silence. “Do you really think we’d be here instead of Hell if we messed up that badly?”

      “It’s a possibility.”

      Xiumin sighed. The boy tugged a rose off its stem. He frowned, his forehead wrinkling in concentration. One by one he plucked the petals off. They fluttered to the ground. Baekhyun’s stomach twisted into a knot. The red on the ground looked like his blood. A splash of crimson staining the dirt. “But if we’re here to as a screwed up punishment,” Baekhyun continued. He couldn’t look away from the petals. So he stared at them, his hands twisting each other in his lap. “Then why are you here?”

       “Me?” Xiumin asked. “What about me?”

       Baekhyun glanced over at Luhan to ensure the ghost wasn’t about to fly over and kill him. As it was, he was prodding something in the grass. It couldn’t be an insect or animal. There was no life at all here. It was most likely a rock or deformed plant. Baekhyun scooted closer to Xiumin. “I-I heard about your life,” he said. Chen had told him. Chen had a way of discovering everyone's stories. “And I can’t imagine someone like you being punished. If you are being punished, it’s the most screwed up thing in the world. You’re so nice, you smile more than anyone else, you get along with everyone, even Sehun and he stabbed you with a cigar. You’re-” he swallowed the word fragile down his throat. “Not like everyone else.”

        Xiumin laughed. “You make it sound like I’m an angel.”

        “Maybe you kind of are.” Baekhyun admitted. “I mean, Luhan’s obsessed with you and he hates everybody.” He didn’t want to see the rose petals anymore. They were pissing him off. Baekhyun scooped up a handful of dirt and threw it on them. Xiumin glanced at it, but didn’t comment. Seeing the red vanish under the dirt made him feel a bit better.

       “He’s hurt,” Xiumin said quietly. “We’re all hurt, aren’t we?”

        Yes, but he didn’t say it. Baekhyun wallowed in his pain. He didn’t admit to that though. Not to Xiumin or the other ghosts, just Sehun. Always, always Sehun. The implications of that made his chest ache. “Maybe,” Baekhyun said. He curled her fingers into the dirt. Baekhyun decided a topic change was in order. “Sehun says Luhan might know about the In Between.”

       “And?”

       “He won’t talk to me about it,” Baekhyun grudgingly said. He scowled at the ghost. Luhan continued poking about the grass, oblivious to his feelings. Even if he had seen he wouldn’t have cared. Luhan didn’t care about other ghosts. “He says I have to find it for myself or it won’t work.” he stuck his tongue out. “What the hell does that mean? I found the crack in the mirror. I still can’t get through.”

       “I don’t think it works like that,” Xiumin said thoughtfully. “The Afterlife doesn’t work with the same rules as Earth did. There’s a Heaven, a Hell, and the In Between. We’re somewhere not there. So we’re truly nowhere and yet somewhere. Places don’t seem to really be places. They’re just where you happen to be. You can’t cross over into the In Between by just crawling through a crack.”

       Baekhyun groaned, flicking the dirt away from him. “So what then?” he demanded. “What do I got to do to get out of here?”

       “I have no idea.”

       “Luhan won’t tell you?” That surprised him. B aekhyun leaned back on his ankles. Xiumin bent over his roses, his face turned away. Baekhyun couldn’t see his expression. “I thought he told you everything.”

        “Not everything,” Xiumin said slowly. “I don’t tell him….everything.” The small ghost glanced over at his lover.  He was watching now. Luhan always seemed to be watching. He was further away from them though, too far to hear. Xiumin waved. Luhan smiled brightly, his eyes shining. He waved back, then in a rare display of shyness ducked his head down. Xiumin sighed. He gestured for Baekhyun to come closer. Shifting on the ground, Baekhyun leaned in until he could feel Xiumin’s cold breathe upon his face.

        “He doesn’t know everything,” he whispered. “I-There’s something’s I don’t want to tell him. I can’t tell him. He’s got so much guilt over his own life. I can’t hurt him by throwing the guilt of my life on him. He knows most of it, but not all of it. He doesn’t need to.”

        “What doesn’t he know?” Baekhyun asked. This is where he went wrong. Baekhyun didn’t know it, but he and Xiumin were dangling off the edge of a cliff. It was coming closer and closer. His question, asked from idle curiosity, threw them off over it. Xiumin should have known better than to tell. He should have known. For some wild reason he didn’t. Or maybe he did and that was worse. Xiumin pulled Baekhyun closer. He drew him in until his lips brushed against the hair above his ear. And then, with his simple words, he fell.

         “He knows a lot,” he whispered. “He knows I came from a broken family. He knows my parents said some nasty things. He knows I was bigger when I was kid. The other kids used to make fun of me. They laughed at my old clothes and chubby cheeks. I’ve told him that it made me not want to eat at all. He knows that.” he paused and Baekhyun felt his stomach drop. He wanted to tell Xiumin to stop. Don’t say it Xiumin, don’t say it! But the House in all its wickedness – or mercy- stopped him.

         Xiumin whispered into his ear. “I’ve never told Luhan. I’ve never told anybody, but maybe that’s why I cry so much. The bullying was a big part of why I died, but it wasn’t all of it.” His words entered Baekhyun’s ears and turned his heart to stone. “I used to have a little sister,” he said. “I don’t even remember her name but I remember she was beautiful. She laughed a lot and she made me smile. She was the most precious thing I’d ever seen. I loved her Baekhyun. I really did. But my dad got drunk a lot. He’d get angry and make stupid decisions. One of those decisions was to pick her up and throw her down the stairs.”

          And Baekhyun could not say a word. It felt wrong to. Some things were meant to be listened to and not commented on. Besides, what could he say? I’m sorry for your loss? Everyone lost things. That didn’t mean it hurt any less. Losing things hurt Baekhyun and he couldn’t even remember what he had lost. There wre holes in his mind and the emptiness of them ached. It’s got to hurt so much, he thought. To watch someone you love die. I can’t remember anyone dying except for me. That hurt, but in a different way.

          “After he did it,” Xiumin continued softly. Something wet dripped down into Baekhyun’s hair. Xiumin was crying quietly. “He laughed about it. She died a few months later because he wouldn’t take her to the hospital. It made me angry. I was so mad I couldn’t think straight. I just wanted to hurt him. The problem was that he was bigger than me.” More tears. More heart ache. “He had already killed one child, why not the other one?”

         Baekhyun drew back in horror. He stared at him with wide eyes. “You were murdered?” he hissed. Xiumin sniffed, wiping his eyes. His cheeks were red. It was a stunning contrast to the white of his face. It was like rose petals on snow. The sight wanted to make B aekhyun cry. But he’d already buried the roses. Burying Xiumin wouldn’t do anything. You couldn’t kill the dead. “I thought you drowned yourself.”

        Xiumin looked down at her hands. He twisted them together in his lap. “I-I did,” he said in a hushed tone. “I hurt all over. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk. Even breathing hurt. So I drug myself into the bathroom and drowned myself. I-I didn’t know what else to do. L-Luhan knows I drowned, but he doesn’t know about my dad. Or my sister. I told him it was only because of the bullying.” he gestured to his small frame. “I lost so much weight because of the stress. Isn’t that ironic? All I wanted in life was to be beautiful so people wouldn’t hurt me. Then I lost the one person who always thought I was. When she died I became beautiful, but it didn’t matter. I killed myself anyway.”

       Baekhyun could only stare. Xiumin looked up, a fierce glint in his eye. “And none of that matters anymore Baekhyun,” he said. “Because I-“ he laughed. “I think I’m finally happy. I have Luhan and that’s all that matters now.” Xiumin smiled and hos eyes grew soft. For the first time, Baekhyun saw someone genuinely content with their After Life. “I love him,” Xiumin said.

       Then he vanished.

        One moment he was there, the next he was not. There wasn’t even the time it took to blink in between the two. That wasn’t how ghosts faded. They faded. Bits and pieces of them slowly vanishing from view. Even the Baekhyun knew they were there. He could feel them. Xiumin  just wasn’t there at all.

        Baekhyun screamed. He reached out for Xiumin, his hands groping the empty space. His mind buzzed with panic. He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone. “Luhan!” he screamed. “Luhan!” he needn't have yelled. The instant Xiumin was gone, he was there. Luhan tore at the dirt, scrambling on his knees to find him. Baekhyun stretched out his hand. It trembled in the space between them. Luhan knocked it away. He looked at him with wild eyes.

       Where is he?” he screamed. “Where is Xiumin? Where did he go?”

        Baekhyun sobbed. It felt as if his soul had been torn to bits. Xiumin wasn’t anywhere. Not anymore. "He vanished right in front of me,” he cried. “We were talking-“

       “Where did he go?” Luhan hissed. He stood up, turning around and around. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Xiumin! Xiumin! Baby answer me. Baby where are you? Xiumin!” Baekhyun wanted to tell him that Xiumin was gone. The ghost had vanished for good. He had no idea how he knew it, only that it was so. Xiumin’s disappearance had a left an aching hole inside of him The House had let Xiumin go.

       But he was crying too hard to say this. Looking at the way Luhan cried, he knew it too.

       Xiumin had moved on.

       It took days (or what felt like days) for Luhan to realize this. Rather, to accept this. Baekhyun cried in the garden until Lay came and got him. Luhan had dug feverishly at the ground. It was like he thought Xiumin had fallen through the cracks of the earth. It was like he thought he could dig him out again. Six feet later he abandoned it in favor of running into the House. He tore it to pieces. Luhan ripped apart the Library, searched the basement, the kitchen, the rooms. He even looked in the attic. Luhan never went into the attic and no one had been brave enough to ask why.

      Why didn’t matter anymore. Luhan was up there now, crying into the floorboards. The rest of the ghosts stood at the bottom of the creaking stairs. No one went up after him. They weren’t that brave. They only sat and listened to him weep. It was a broken, gut wrenching sound. It filled the entire House. It was not a shout, nor a roar. It was a whisper of lost things. It was the sound of a shattering heart and it broke Baekhyun’s cold heart.

       Xiumin's gone. 

       What does that mean for us?

         Chanyeol was rushing up. Up and up and up.

         It was like running through water except he couldn’t move at all. A strong, painful force was shoving him ahead. Chanyeol would scream, but the noise died in his throat. He tried breathing. There was no air, only the rush of light whipping past him. Chanyeol panicked, trying to thrash around. He couldn’t move his legs or his arms.

       He could only rush up.

    Baekhyun! His mind screamed. He needed to find Baekhyun. The Taxi Driver had said he could find Baekhyun if he could-

     What had he said? Chanyeol had forgotten. He had jumped out of the Taxi when the Driver said to. Something about avoiding the Powers that Be. That was a long time ago. He had been pushing against the light for a very, very long time now. Or maybe only seconds. There wasn’t something as trivial as time here. Only the light, the pain, and the idea he needed to find Baekhyun. The light roared, getting louder. Chanyeol forced his eyes open. The white light blinded him. The rush flung him upward, ever upward.

      I need to find Baekhyun!

     I need to find Baekhyun!

     The light screamed and suddenly it all came to an abrupt halt. Chanyeol was flung to the ground. The light vanished. The roaring ending. He was left with a face scrapped on wood. His hands thrown out in front of him and his feet dangling behind him. Chanyeol opened his eyes.

       He was in a hallway. A normal, every day hallway. A footstep echoed from behind him. Chanyeol went to stand up. A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Chanyeol started. Looking over his shoulder, he found himself staring into the dark brown eyes of a tall boy. He smiled, revealing a row of white teeth. He wasn't Baekhyun. 

      “Hey there,” the non Baekhyun said. "My name's Chen, welcome to the House."