He sighs, leaning back in his chair to gaze at the sliver of a crescent moon, hanging high above the buildings of Seoul.

It’s not easy to see the moon these days, and even harder to see the stars. It had been pure chance that there happened to be a blackout in this area of the city on this particular night.

This day, one that he spends every year alone, dimming his lights during daytime, sitting in the dark at night.

He sighs again, letting the tears run down his face, dripping into the long-stemmed glass in his right hand.

---

“Hey, wake up.”

The voice is familiar, less than friendly, and he slowly opens his eyes.

“I said, wake UP.”

There’s a sharp tugging on his hair, and he lifts his head with a grimace, trying to keep the pain at a minimum.

“Stoooop,” he whines, batting at the arm that is connected to the hand that contains the fingers that have an iron grip on his soft brown hair.

The boy standing above him has messy black hair and dark eyes that normally sparkle under the sun. Right now, however, they are steely cold.

“God, Jongwoon, stop,” he mutters, trying in vain to pry Jongwoon’s hand out of his hair. “I’m awake, okay?”

Jongwoon suddenly laughs, flashing a bright smile. “Kyuhyun, you idiot. Class has ended. It’s lunchtime.”

Kyuhyun jumps up, grabbing Jongwoon by the wrist and dragging him outside to sit in the courtyard. Jongwoon laughs, flopping down onto the soft grass.

They stay like that for a while, watching the clouds float lazily across the clear blue sky, feeling the wind rush past their faces.

Kyuhyun raises a hand, attempting to close his fingers around a wisp of cloud that seems to be within his grasp. Jongwoon smiles softly.

“Idiot,” he murmurs. “That’s stupid.”

Kyuhyun sits up, keeping his hand aloft, eyes fixed on that faraway cloud, already drifting away.

“No,” he says suddenly. “No, it’s not. Do you know about that abandoned shack? The one that has about a million different rumors associated with it?”

Jongwoon snorts, closing his eyes. “What, you want to break in?”

Kyuhyun doesn’t say anything, and Jongwoon opens his eyes again, sitting up to look at his friend more closely.

“You can’t be serious,” he says accusingly, eyes darkening in anger. “That’s a suicide mission.”

Kyuhyun lifts his chin stubbornly. “I’d rather go out with a flash.”

“Not on something as stupid as this!” Jongwoon stands up abruptly, walking back into the building. Kyuhyun only hesitates a moment before chasing after him.

“If you’re not going to go with me, I’ll make Ryeowook or Sungmin do it!” he yells, knowing that the names would call Jongwoon back.

He was right; Jongwoon stops, turning around, murder evident in his eyes.

“You are NOT dragging those two into whatever moronic business of yours,” he growls, slowly walking back to Kyuhyun. “I don’t care about your wellbeing, but they are staying safe.”

“Then do it with me,” Kyuhyun shrugs, acting casual, pretending that Jongwoon’s sudden anger hadn’t scared him. “It’s that simple.”

Jongwoon’s eyes blaze, and he holds out a fist. “Consider it done.”

And that is the story of why Jongwoon is now standing outside the rotting door of a dilapidated shack in the middle of the woods.

“So, let’s go,” Kyuhyun says, laughing a bit. Jongwoon glances at him, hearing the slight tremble in his normally-confident voice.

“If we die, it’s your fault,” he mutters, pushing past Kyuhyun to enter the building. Jongwoon wonders why he wore his favorite denim vest today. He also wonders why the – why the – Kyuhyun wore a suit coat over a vest over a t-shirt. And suit pants.

Jongwoon pulls down the sleeves of his black-and-white striped shirt – Kyuhyun always called it the “zebra shirt” – and follows Kyuhyun into what may have once been a garden.

“Put that thing away,” he hisses, referring to the expensive camera in Kyuhyun’s hand.

“Damn, no,” Kyuhyun whispers back, hugging the equipment to his chest. “I promised Changmin that I’d get a picture of a ghost.”

“SHIM CHANGMIN??” Jongwoon screams, flinging Kyuhyun away from him. “THAT IDIOT?? WAS THAT WHY YOU MADE ME COME? BECAUSE HE WAS TOO SCARED?”

“Shut up, oh my god,” Kyuhyun whispers frantically, whipping his head around. “Something’s going to find us!”

“No, Cho Kyuhyun, no.” Jongwoon’s chest heaves. “Shim Changmin is a ing idiot who knows absolutely nothing, and I-”

Suddenly, Jongwoon’s head snaps forward, and he tumbles to the ground.

“JONGWOON!” Kyuhyun drops his camera and scrambles to his friend, desperately checking his breathing and pulse.

“You…” Jongwoon’s voice comes out as a rasp. “Save yourself…”

“WHAT THE !” Kyuhyun screeches as an invisible force punches his jaw, causing him to fly a good five feet away from Jongwoon.

A deep chuckle resonates within the walled courtyard as Kyuhyun slowly struggles back up.

“Hey, Kyu,” Shim Changmin greets with a smile, fading into opacity. Kyuhyun’s eyes widen in shock, then narrow in anger.

“Why?” he asks tersely. Changmin smiles, blinking slowly.

“I didn’t want to,” he says, a hint of regret in his voice, “but I wanted Jongwoon, and you were in the way.”

Chills snake their way down Kyuhyun’s spine. “That’s why you wanted him here. That’s why you asked me so much stuff about him. That’s why you wanted me to be friends with him in the first place.”

Jongwoon manages to climb to his feet, stars dancing in a void in front of his eyes. The world spins, but he lunges at Changmin’s unprotected back.

He lands on the ground, bruising his knees and scraping his elbows. Changmin sighs, snapping his fingers. Immediately, vines spring out from the ground and bind him.

“I didn’t want to,” Changmin repeats, bending down to Jongwoon’s face. “You provoked me. It’s not my fault, you see; it’s yours.”

Kyuhyun bites down a curse and takes heed of Jongwoon’s eyes, flashing with rage.

The blinking seems to be a pattern, but Kyuhyun never learned Morse code. Even so, he’s pretty sure that Jongwoon’s telling him to run the away while he still can.

Sorry, bro, Kyuhyun thinks. I can’t leave you behind.

“But why?” he says, desperately trying to draw Changmin’s attention. “Why do you want him when you can have, say, Jung Yunho, the pretty boy?”

Changmin raises his eyebrows. “Jung Yunho is already mine,” he states simply. “As is just about everyone else who has ever dared to lay foot in my home.”

“Just about,” Kyuhyun repeats. “You let someone go?”

Changmin smiles again, showing his teeth. “Yes, I did. He was useless to me, although the guilt of leaving behind his girlfriend ultimately killed him in the end.”

Kyuhyun’s mind whirls. A few years ago, there had been a rare case of suicide in their small town. The guy had thrown himself into the river, leaving behind a note that only said, “I should never have let her go.”

“Park Jungsoo,” he says, voice shaking. “You killed Park Jungsoo.”

“No, no,” Changmin explains patiently, shaking his hands. “Park Jungsoo killed himself. I simply guided him onto the path because you see, if someone kills themselves over one of my hostages, their soul is also mine. It’s a win-win situation here, Kyuhyun.”

“Kim Heechul, then, was also yours? And Han Geng? And Kim Youngwoon?” Kyuhyun starts listing all the suicides he’s ever heard about. Changmin nods, urging him to go on.

“And Shin Donghee, Lee Hyukjae, Lee Donghae, and many more,” he agrees. “Very well. You’ve obviously done your research.

“But now it is time to go.”

Changmin snaps his fingers again, and the earth quakes. Changmin himself fades into thin air, while Jongwoon begins to sink through a crack in the ground. Kyuhyun yells and dives, but he hits an invisible wall and crumples to the ground, black overtaking his vision.

When he wakes up, he is in the hospital, surrounded by family, both his and Jongwoon’s. Without even speaking a word, Kyuhyun starts crying.

“Kim Jongwoon, a student of XXX High School, was found dead in the shack in the woods just yesterday, along with Cho Kyuhyun, also a student of said school. Kyuhyun was severely injured and is now undergoing treatment at XX Hospital.”

Kyuhyun could not bear going to the funeral. He could not stand seeing Jongwoon again, especially since he had dragged him into the whole thing.

Hadn’t he said that it would be Kyuhyun’s fault if they died? Now he’s dead, and it’s all Kyuhyun’s fault.

---

He didn’t bother telling his parents about Shim Changmin and the supernatural. It wasn’t as if anyone would have believed him anyway.

Instead, he requested to be homeschooled for the rest of high school, heading as far away as possible as he could from Cheonan after graduation.

He had landed in the United States as a successful businessman, eventually returning to Korea to settle in Seoul.

He couldn’t even imagine going back to Cheonan, not after all that had happened.

Kyuhyun never did see Changmin again, but his words continue to haunt him to this very night.

He swirls the wine in his glass and raises it to his lips.

Changmin was right, Kyuhyun thinks. The guilt did kill Jungsoo.

He thinks back to just an hour ago, right before the blackout had started. He had been sitting in this chair, pouring a white powder into the wine, making sure it dissolved uniformly.

Is it worth it? Kyuhyun asks himself, feeling his breathing constrict. Oh well, no matter.

He thinks back to half an hour ago, when he had been leaning against the railing. He had been rolling a small glass vial in his fingers, debating whether or not to smash it. Ultimately, he let the antidote slip from his fingers, crashing onto the pavement that is ten floors below.

I don’t want this pain, Kyuhyun begs, clawing at his throat and eyes as the poison works itself through his body. It would have been better to use a knife.

But then again, Jongwoon had been in this much pain too, hadn’t he?

And it is only fitting for Kyuhyun to repay him like this, isn’t it?

A bright white flash appears in front of Kyuhyun, and his breath returns. Smiling up at the figure silhouetted against the light, he reaches up to take Jongwoon’s hand.

And meets Changmin’s fingers.