Suho wakes up with water on his face. And it’s not the first time, too. He jumps out of his bed, sputtering, water dripping down his nostrils and therefore down his throat, and his pillow is already wet, not to mention his hair and t-shirt.

“Chanyeol!” he screams threateningly, swinging his arms forward, eyes squeezed shut; he’s relying simply on his sense of smell and hearing, at this point, and since it’s probably around six in the morning, these are as useless as a normal human’s—

—Which means he doesn’t get to grab Chanyeol, because the giant jumps back and makes a run for his life, throwing himself at the door and laughing dumbly while doing so. Their dorm room isn’t big, so it literally takes three Yeol steps to get from Suho’s bed to the door, and he makes it in record time as Suho finally manages to open his eyes (that are now shining blue in anger).

Chanyeol laughs even louder when Suho throws himself at him, quickly swings the door to the corridor open—

And then promptly hits someone in the face with it.

The thud is loud enough to make them both jump in surprise and panic completely, because dear God, when a werewolf opens door in haste, you can count on it being freaking impressive.

Chanyeol freezes for a short second, then jumps out of his room, Suho following short after, trying to get his damp hair out of his eyes, and they look down at the guy lying on the floor with relief because he’s alive, and that’s a huge win.

“Are you okay?!” Chanyeol screams, scrambling down to help the guy up just as he begins to stand up. They’d have head-bumped if it wasn’t for Yeol’s quick reflexes. He straightens up his back jerkily. The guy goes into a half-sitting position, squinting a little at Chanyeol, looking very confused. There’s a huge red smudge in the middle of his forehead, right where Chanyeol hit him in the face with the door.

“Are you okay?” Suho repeats after Chanyeol. He holds up three fingers in front of the guy’s face. He squints even harder. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three,” he guy says croakily. “And it’s cool, I have some band-aids for these kinds of things,” he adds, sending them a crooked smile. Chanyeol and Suho both frown at him, then look up at his head.

“I think you actually need ice for that one,” Suho mutters.

“That I have, too,” the guy tells them, nodding lightly as if they’re talking about the weather.

“I am so sorry,” Chanyeol says, biting down onto his clenched fist, red in the face. He scrambles to help the guy up again and this time the other one complies. Chanyeol heaves him up. “I didn’t intend to hurt you, I swear. I had no idea you were outside—“

“Hey, accidents happen,” the guy mumbles. “Especially to me. It’s cool dude.” He smiles again, nodding, fixes his backpack, and walks past them. “Have a nice day!” he waves, walking down the corridor.

Chanyeol stares at his back, something settling heavily in his stomach, making him uncomfortable. Suho slaps him on the back of the head violently; Chanyeol ducks in pain, hissing.

“!” Suho scolds. “You’re blow-drying my pillows!”

*

“Look,” Chanyeol says, nudging Suho’s elbow. Suho makes a non-committal noise, so Chanyeol nudges him again, only harder this time. “Look! It’s the guy I hit the other day.”

Suho sputters a little, looking at him finally. “You were hitting on someone?” he asks, shocked. “Do you want Dal to rip off your ?”

“I think I would have to worry about Eun first, not Dal,” Chanyeol replies. Then he shakes his head and looks at Suho, who is now making huge eyes at him. “What? What are we talking about again?”

“You said—“

“I said hit, not hit on, Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you?” Chanyeol asks, grimacing and making this huge gesture with his arms. “There!” he says then, taking Suho’s head into his palms and yanking him a little until Suho’s eyes land on the Band-Aid Guy from a while ago looking for a book in-between library shelves. “I said that it’s the guy I hit the other day!”

“Ohh,” Suho drawls, shaking his head until Chanyeol lets him go. “So?”

“Don’t you think he’s quite peculiar?” Chanyeol wonders out loud. Suho looks at the guy again, stares at him for a few moments, and shrugs.

“I don’t know. Why?” he asks.

“He just—has this weird air around him.”

Just as he says that, a couple of books literally fall off the shelf right above the guy’s head, hitting him with a clatter. Chanyeol and Suho both gasp. The guy gets knocked off his feet, letting out a loud ‘oomph!’ sound and almost everyone in the close proximity sends him weird looks. Chanyeol and Suho both stand up from their chairs as someone says ‘shush!’ to the poor book attack victim, and Chanyeol throws his arms up in disbelief.

“You shush!” he hisses, pointing at the girl who then hides behind her books. They jog towards the boy, throwing the books off of him, and he looks a bit lost when he finally emerges onto the surface.

“Oh, hi,” he says. “You’re the Death Door guy.”

“I got a nickname!” Chanyeol says, laughing, reaching out for the boy. He accepts Chanyeol’s hand and stands up, still dazed. “That looked pretty serious.”

“Are you okay?” Suho asks, looking close to patting the guy down for wounds.

“Oh, nothing is hurt except for my dignity,” the guy says. “Not that I had any of it left in the first place, but you know, gotta be positive.”

He sounds utterly negative, if it’s up to Suho’s or Chanyeol’s judgement.

Chanyeol realizes that the boy still has a bruise from where Chanyeol hit him with the door, and he feels super bad about it.

“What book were you looking for? I could find it for you. Maybe you should just—sit.”

“Yeah, Chanyeol is pretty good around books,” Suho says, smiling. “Seriously, you should sit. Are you going to puke?”

The guy does look very pale, and they’re sure the books have hit his head, and hard.

The boy looks pretty unsure at first, but eventually nods. He takes a step forward, stumbles upon one of the books that fell on him, and face-plants onto the floor.

Chanyeol opens his mouth widely. Suho stands there with his arms out-stretched because he honestly tried to catch the boy, but he simply didn’t.

And it’s weird because Suho could swear that his hands were right there where the boy’s body was. Suho also thought, for a moment, that that darn book the boy stumbled upon wasn’t lying there a second before the guy moved.

“Okay,” Suho says, sending Chanyeol a meaningful look. Chanyeol is frowning at this point. Suho helps the guy up. The only thing he lacks, with his squinty eyes and wobbly legs, are those cartoon little birds flying in circles above his head. “Are we good?” he asks, as if asking a child.

“Uh-huh,” the guy says. “I’m Youngjae, by the way,” he adds.

“Good, calling you the Band-Aid Guy took way too long in my head,” Chanyeol says.

*

Youngjae turns out to be a really fun guy, if you decide to ignore all the situations in which he’s on the brink of death.

During two hours which the boys spend with him, they count six murder attempts on Youngjae’s life. It’s getting dangerously close to the amounts of times they almost died, and they battle mystical creatures, so it’s really unnerving.

Youngjae is unbelievably clumsy. Or, as Suho thinks, everything around him seems to be out to get him. He stumbles on a rock and lands head-first on a nearby bench, he almost impales himself on a tree trunk when a stray dog decides to run at him and knock him off his feet; there’s a guy joggling knives in the middle of the park and Youngjae tries very hard to avoid him, literally says to circle him when they’re a few hundred meters away from him, and one of the knives still somehow ends right next to Youngjae’s foot. A freaking squirrel attacks him and Chanyeol has to wreck it away from Youngjae’s face.

These are the major near-death experiences. There’s also a football ball flying by the boy’s head when he doesn’t see and, of course, a girl speeding down on her bike who almost ends up squashing him to the ground.

They finally sit down to eat. Suho and Chanyeol are freaked out by this point. Youngjae seems unfazed, or just too tired to even care.

(The boys also discovered that he carries a first-aid kit around him. Youngjae tells them he has to re-fill it almost every week.)

“So, uh,” Chanyeol says, shifting awkwardly in his seat. Youngjae is munching murderously slowly on his burger, and Chanyeol thinks that he’s probably scared to freaking choke on it and die. “Is it—is it normal?”

“The accidents?” Youngjae asks, at his finger. “Yeah. Fifty-four a day is my record. I actually ended up in a hospital that time.”

Suho and Chanyeol open their eyes widely at him.

“So, like,” Youngjae shrugs, trying to look like he doesn’t care, “you don’t need to hang out with me. It’s cool, I’m not mad about that door incident.”

His voice doesn’t fool them, though. They can both hear the slight uptick in Youngjae’s heartbeat, indicating that it’s painful for him to say that.

“Why’d you say that?” Suho asks. Youngjae shrugs again, biting his burger. His heart is beating even faster now, definitely uncomfortable and hurt.

The thing is - Youngjae is really fun. They get some peaceful moments in-between something trying to kill him, and during that time they get to understand that Youngjae is quite smart, has a sharp wit to him, and is very easy to talk to. He also looks quite grateful that the boys decide to spend some time with them.

“I’m just saying,” he mutters. “I don’t want these things to, like, move onto you, you know? And that happens sometimes. The closer you are, the bigger chances of you getting hit in the head by something aimed at me.” He laughs nervously.

*

“Can Bad Luck be a person?” Chanyeol asks. You raise your brows at him, your face curious on his laptop screen.

“What?” you ask, blinking quickly.

“We’ve met this guy,” Chanyeol says, leaning closer to the screen. “It seems like everything wants to kill him. I’m not even kidding. It’s like he’s cursed, or something, and he said it started when he was like, ten, so I don’t even—I can’t imagine living like him. It’s seriously bad. I’m scared he might actually die one day.”

You’re frowning now, a little bit taken aback.

“Well, witches can cast some bad luck spells,” you say. “I mean, curses. But you’d probably scent a witch’s magic on him, wouldn’t you? Unless she or he can hide it well. How bad is it?”

“Uh, random books bombarding him, wild animals attacking, car accidents bad,” Chanyeol says, nodding vigorously. You let out a low hum, leaning back in your bed, thinking about something for a while.

“Well, I can just drop by, can’t I?” you say. “See if it’s anything supernatural. You know what, now that I think about it, it also sounds a bit like a ghost or a trickster.”

Chanyeol shivers.

“Ugh, please, no.”

“It’s possible."

“God, no!”

Suho chooses that moment to enter the room, looking worn-out after the long day, but he still trots happily towards one of the desks, where your face welcomes him on Chanyeol’s laptop screen.

“Dal!” he says. “Did Yeol tell you about—“

“Yes,” you interrupt. “I’m coming to the rescue! And I’m taking aid.”

*

“Oh my God,” Sulli mutters, making a face and hiding behind the menu.

“What is it?” you ask, leaning closer and peeking out from your own menu. Suho and Chanyeol do the same, only the top of their heads and their eyes visible from above the big menu cards.

“Yeah, it’s a ghost alright,” Sulli hisses. “It’s a poltergeist, if I’d have to bet. And he’s freaking creepy.”

You're sitting by a table outside a restaurant, while Youngjae is feeding some pigeons from a bench not so far away from you. He looks quite relaxed.

Then one of the pigeons decides to go mental and attack him. Youngjae drops all the bread he was holding, screaming as the bird tries to massacre his face.

You all cringe, gasp, and squirm in your seats.

“How is he even still alive and functioning?” you gasp. “If I were him I’d shut myself in my room and never get out. How is he—okay, this is freaking impossible.”

“That poltergeist is literally doing everything to make his life miserable,” Sulli says. “I’m not even kidding. He’s freaking looming over him. And—yeah, now he’s laughing because Youngjae is distressed. Super.”

“, I’m so glad I’m not a medium,” Chanyeol says, opening his eyes widely. “How does it look like?”

Sulli shrugs. “Black, long limbs, he looks like he’s dressed with black mist or some other like that. He has a smile like the Joker, Jack Nicholson version.”

“Okay, I actually did not need to hear that,” Suho says, pained. “I just—don’t ever do that again.”

“This is actually not that bad,” Sulli counters. “Some of the ghosts I’ve seen—“

“No, no, no, please don’t,” Suho says, shaking his head.

Sulli rolls her eyes. “Okay, sorry. What are we going to do about him?”

“I wonder why he chose Youngjae specifically,” you wonder out loud. “There must be something about him. It’s unusual for a ghost to stick to one person for such a long period of time.”

“Is he going to be harder to get rid of?” Chanyeol questions.

“Not necessarily,” you say. “He might try to pull some nasty tricks on us, though.”

*

It’s almost 2 am and Suho can’t sleep. He turns to his other side for the hundredth time that night, swallowing hard.

“Uhh,” Chanyeol groans. “Stop trashing around."

“Sorry.”

A few minutes pass by. Chanyeol speaks up again, making Suho jump.

“Suho?” he asks groggily.

“Yes?”

“Come here, you .”

Suho has never been as relieved to be in one bed with Chanyeol. The moment they settle together, he forgets all about the creepy ghosts and falls asleep promptly.

Their little bonding moment does not stop Chanyeol from drawing cat whiskers on Suho in the morning, but at least this time he does it with a highlighter that isn’t waterproof.

(You and Sulli still laugh).

The boys call Youngjae in-between classes, asking if he wants to grab some coffee, and Youngjae sounds super suspicious on the other side of the phone.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol says. “We have two friends over for a short visit. It’ll be fun.”

“Okay, but I’m sitting as far away from you as possible,” Youngjae says, worn-out. “I spill coffee at people all the time. Not to mention flying forks—are we getting any cake?”

“Uh, we don’t need to,” Chanyeol says, frowning. “Sandwiches, on the other hand—“

“You get sandwiches. I’m allergic.”

“What the duck,” Suho mouths, listening into the whole conversation. Chanyeol flails around in a show of confusion.

They say their byes and you all wait for Youngjae by the toilets, not so far away from the campus’s café, hanging out and trying to look normal (when, in fact, you have iron and silver chains in your backpack and a bag of salt, too. If campus security decided to check you…). Youngjae finally comes along.

He looks quite shy at first, especially when he sees you and Sulli, but he greets you politely. You notice a long shredded line on the back of his shirt and an accompanying, fresh, red on his skin, but you say nothing.

“Sorry,” he says. “I got caught up,” he says, giggling nervously and pointing shyly at the said wound.

“A twig stopped you, or something?” Chanyeol jokes playfully.

“Uh, there was actually a guy walking by, carrying garden shears, or something. He turned really quickly and yeah. Haha.”

He sounds so pained that you all probably look like hurt puppies as you look at him. He flushes deep red, totally embarrassed, and you think that he looks like he’s about to run away. You’re not half wrong.

“You know what, I remembered I have this—thing,” he says, turning on his heel. Chanyeol grabs him by the neck, dragging him back and pushing him a little towards the café.

“You just need coffee, dude,” he says. And then, just as Youngjae is about to turn and look at you, Chanyeol takes a powerful swing and hits the back of his neck with the outer side of his flat palm.

Then, just as quickly as he’d hit him, he catches Youngjae’s body like it’s a sack of potatoes and hurriedly carries him towards the toilets.

You look around. Thankfully, there’s not much people around, and if they are, they’re mostly headed to the café or to the cafeteria. Sulli opens the door to the men’s toilet, Chanyeol drags Youngjae inside, and as you all pile in you lock the door with some magic, your fingers hurting a little afterwards.

“Okay, so the ghost is confused,” Sulli says as you place the unconscious Youngjae in the middle of the toilet. “And now he’s looking at me—oh .”

Sulli takes a wary step back and you react quickly by throwing your backpack at Suho and also putting your hand inside your jeans pocket. You’ve filled it with salt beforehand, just for safety, and it comes in handy (handy, haha) as you grab a handful of it and throw it around the spot Sulli’s eyes are fixed on.

You can feel the ghost’s presence then and yeah, he’s quite angry. You see him for a quick moment, and he looks like an angry, black parrot, and he even screeches. Suho and Chanyeol, these cowards, jump back as far away as possible, Suho hastily throwing you the bag of salt and almost tripping over the chains that spill from the backpack.

“Great, thanks,” you say sarcastically.

That’s when the poltergeist decides to use some of his power and tears one of the cubicle doors off its hinges. The door fly towards you with clear intent of killing you, but you have enough time to stop it with telekinesis, your tattoos shining.

“,” someone says as you throw the door back. You see Suho and Chanyeol picking up the chains. One of the toilet seats fly at you, then, and you squeal, ducking; it shatters next to your head, pieces flying everywhere, including your hair and shoulders. You open your eyes for a moment, realizing that you’re still holding that salt bag with your left arm, and you wreck it open, throwing half of the salt – quite ungracefully, too – at the spot in front of you.

The ghost becomes visible for a moment again, the salt burning its skin, and Suho, Chanyeol and Sulli use that moment to throw the chains over the poltergeist’s form.

The ghost collapses onto the floor, the chains heavy on his usually non-materialized body. He screeches and becomes completely visible as the iron and silver burn him.

“Booyah!” Chanyeol screams. The ghost hisses at him angrily and Chanyeol goes from happy to scared all over again, and hides behind a very disgusted Suho.

The ghost looks like a very wet, very big hedgehog, or something like this, lying on the floor. He even hisses like an angry hedgehog.

“Okay,” you say, approaching Youngjae and going through his pockets. You find nothing, so you open his backpack. You go through all his stuff, finally finding a tiny something in his wallet that does not feel normal. It looks like a hand-made bracelet but it oozes bad energy. “Found it. It’s definitely cursed.”

“Man, that ,” Chanyeol says quietly. You hold the wooden bracelet in your fingers and let it set on fire. You watch as it burns for a few seconds, the wood cracking a little. The flame reaches your fingertips and so you throw it into the sink, watching the poltergeist disappear together with the bracelet.

He hisses one more time before disappearing completely.

You realize that there’s someone knocking at the door, screaming “I need to pee!” at the top of their lungs, and that one of the toilets is gone – shattered next to your head earlier – and a steady stream of toilet water is shooting up from everything that’s left of it. Dammit.

“Dal, it’s totally time for that Howl’s magic of yours,” Sulli says, nodding at you. You sigh.

*

Youngjae opens his eyes to find a girl above him. It takes him a few moments to realize that he’s lying on the said girl’s lap and he shoots up as if burned, his head swirling immediately.

“Whoa,” Sulli says. “Go easy on the flailing, maybe.”

Youngjae looks around. He’s in the café. Chanyeol is slurping on a chocolate shake, Suho is drinking coffee (in a way that reminds Youngjae of a British lord) and the other girl – Dal – is smiling at him around a mouthful of a donut.

“Uh,” he says eloquently. “What happened?”

“You passed out,” Chanyeol says.

“Just like…that?”

“Just like that.”

Youngjae doesn’t really question it. With the amount of that happens to him daily, passing out is actually pretty normal.

*

“He asked me today if anyone went through his stuff when he passed out,” Chanyeol says. “Or if I’ve seen a wooden bracelet of his.”

“Did he tell you where he’s gotten it from?” Suho asks. They’re already in their beds, darkness enveloping him.

“No,” Chanyeol says and yawns. “But he sounds pretty sad to part ways with it. But God, he was so freaked out nothing happened to him today. Like, nothing at all. He says it’s a miracle and he’s ‘scared to feel comfortable with this new life update because maybe his back luck decides to come back’. I told him it won’t and he said we’re his lucky charms.”

Suho smiles. A few minutes pass by; Suho’s eyelids grow heavy.

“Hey, Suho,” Chanyeol whispers.

“Hm?”

“Wanna sleep with me?”

“Oh my God, shut up."

So last week I got a request of doing another Q&A session, like I used to do when writing RWW, so. Please vote? :

Updates will be once a week now on since my last year of high school started and I should probably focus on my studies now, but I have a lot of chapters in draft ready to post, so. I probably won't be as active these days as I usually am, though, so please be patient with me ;A;

Also, this chapter's Youngjae is BAP's Youngjae :)

Aaand, some of you might've noticed that RWW suddenly became subscribers only. It's to fight plagiarism. I'm not gonna say anything more. But I'm sorry if you find it inconvenient/rude/whatever. Please bare with me.

Thanks for reading fudgy orange brownie cakes with orange cream cheese icing!