Hwang Sungyeol is the name in his book and Myungsoo is the name he is given.

"You need a name, I’m tired of calling you it.”

And he had to snort at that one because the one to denounce Myungsoo as an it had originally been Sungyeol when he found the black cloaked boy sitting under his dinner table, soaked to the bone from the rain.

"How long until I die?" Sungyeol asked one night, Myungsoo curled on the couch watching a rerun of some sitcom.

"Until I go back," was Myungsoo’s dry response, his lips in a tight line. The color on the television set seemed to have melted into one at that point but Myungsoo didn’t care, Sungyeol’s hand was already weaving through his hair, the suddenly familiar warmth feeling immediately cold at the silence that followed.

He didn’t know why his body had materialized into that of a human male, solid and heavy, forcing Myungsoo into a life he was never meant to have. Though here he was, clothed in Sungyeol’s slightly less depressing attire and wearing the scents of whatever soap brand it was Sungyeol was using. The days were far too long for Myungsoo’s tastes, but human time ran like that and Myungsoo was now human.

A different time, a day where it was cloudy and the air was cold, a sensation Myungsoo associates with pressing his fingers against Sungyeol’s nape, right where his hair ends, just to feel the soothing warmth the other male produced when pulling off his scarf. It didn’t rain that day, maybe later on in the night when everyone but Myungsoo was asleep, thoughts too muddled with the moment in which Sungyeol was supposed to die. It should have happened on a day like this, Myungsoo could remember reading it in the black covered book, seeing Hwang Sungyeol’s face materialize on the pages as drops of cold rain hit the concrete buildings.

"Why hasn’t anyone else come to reap my soul?" Sungyeol asked, brow creased and eyes wandering around the room.

"I don’t know," Myungsoo could only answer honestly. There could have been multiple reasons as to why Sungyeol was breathing right beside him and Myungsoo doesn’t think his presence as a human is one of them.

It’s hard to tell at first, but Myungsoo is pretty sure the girl standing across the intersection is an angel, too. She’s tiny but Myungsoo knows size has nothing to do with potency, she could easily take any human’s life away just as Myungsoo can. Used to.

"Let’s go home, Yeol," he had said, tugging on Sungyeol’s sleeve.

Sungyeol had barely budged, “Dad wants me to get spring onions for dinner though.”

It doesn’t take him long, but Myungsoo is a capable being and he is capable of bending Sungyeol’s will (and patience) enough to get his way whenever he wants. There are no spring onions for dinner that evening, but Myungsoo brings home a terrible sore in his chest and he wonders why he hadn’t brought Sungyeol to confront that girl instead. Sungyeol had told him later that night (Myungsoo had crawled into his bed, crying about the pain in his chest) that all wounds heal, all ailments go away with time. Humans always heal, no matter how slowly.

Summer is when Myungsoo goes back, that once familiar tome feeling foreign in his hands as he watches Sungyeol’s eyes switch from those of an alarmed boy watching someone fade right before them to a clear and frighteningly calm demeanor. It was to be expected, but the last moment of Myungsoo’s humanity is enough to make the sore in his chest fester into something that he knows will remain with him longer than the allotted time needed to heal.

"You saved his life so he isn’t going to die now," Someone tells him, but they don’t have a name. None of them have names, but Myungsoo. Myungsoo has a name. "He’ll live a full life maybe, granted he doesn’t do anything stupid with it."

He doesn’t have to ask to know that Sungyeol won’t — doesn’t remember him. None of the humans he interacted with will remember who Myungsoo is, the mysterious boy who one day appeared in the Hwang’s lives and then suddenly left just as he came.

Myungsoo doesn’t know if he will ever stop feeling again, if what being a human has left will leave his body — his mind, his heart. But when he sees Sungyeol laughing beside a boy and a girl (a familiar girl, but he can’t recall her face) happily enjoying their young lives after a tiring day of class, he discovers that angels do not heal, at all.