a/n: OKAAAYYYY GUYS I LIED. THERE IS GONNA BE AN EPILOGUEEEE. So this is not the end.

{part 2/2. Start.}

A week after your funeral, you stopped by the window outside his bedroom. His birthday, and soon autumn, had passed, greeting winter with snow in place of all the yellow and red of falling leaves. The sun had long lost its warmth and the winds picked up; it was a wonder how your light weight wasn’t swept away with it. Sitting at the bench just across from his room, which he seemed to refuse to leave, you watched as his little red nose shrivelled up, giving way to another sneeze. His neck was covered up in a woolly, green scarf, and his hair had long lost its glow. It was messy, like the rest of his life. You watched in despair as he sat there all alone, with nothing more than a cup of hot homemade coffee as his acquaintance, watching the children on the front of his lawn kicking at the snow.

Caught in the arrival of winter, he was crying.

And worse, over you.

Your eyes, your smile, and your hand motions still torture me

Making it so I can’t do anything, think anything, or do something else

Cutting the seemingly infinite amount of space between the two of you, you felt a heavy load position itself onto the inert muscles of your shoulders. To him, you were already gone. But you continued to see him, to watch over him like this. You couldn’t leave– no, you didn’t want to leave until Sunggyu had gotten over you. You wanted to see him happy without you, but somewhere deep down inside you didn’t seem to have the confidence… Heck, who were you kidding–he loved you so much. And your visit to him this morning was only proving how much you were failing.

You looked at him through the pane from a closer range now, committing every single feature of his existence to your memory. When you disappeared, you certainly didn’t want to forget. But what you were even more carried away with was the person reflected in it. It’d been only a few months, and already you looked thinner and paler than last time. An unfriendly feeling gnawed at your bones, if you had any, as you were barely able to recognise yourself. A simple, cream-colored halter dress covered you today, and your curls were held in place under a beanie similar to the boy in front of you. The mist in the air and the frequent movement of the trees behind you told you the weather was cold, but you couldn’t feel anything. Your hair, the most colourful part of you, reached just below the tip of your elbow. It had grown so long, and so dry.

You leaned closer to the glass pane to get a better view of your eyes, curious as to what they looked like on a ghost, when suddenly, you did something to trigger a reaction from Sunggyu. He who was expressionless a moment ago had just shot back in surprise, almost falling out of his chair.

You pulled away instantaneously and drove a fist into the back of your empty head when you realised what had scared him–a breath stain had formed on the glass. Your, breath stain. You didn’t even know ghosts had the right life source in them to do that.

… Did they?

“… Hye… Su? Is that... you?”

His sudden voice from the other side clung to you like a hungry predator, not letting you go.

“…”

You didn’t know how to reply.

Instead, you flinched at the depression in his tone. Despite the glass already separating the two of you, you found the need to take a step back. You were afraid of him sensing your presence, because you didn’t want him to face the experience of him not being able to touch you, to hold you when he needed you most. You were afraid of the fact that he would find you there, next to him when really you weren’t supposed to be altogether.

“I know you’re there.”

This time, you heard the desperateness in his voice. The voice which he used when it was yearning for an answer, yearning and calling out for you.

Something involuntarily in you wanted to reply, but the lack of human spirit in your body prevented it from reaching the ears of your loved one. Nothing came out of your mouth. You took a few more steps back as he kicked off the chair he had been sitting on and fumbled to the front yard.

I hear that

Where you are right now,

How you are, I don’t know

But why do I hear your breath

As he stuck his head out the front door, you found yourself running. Hiding behind a tree, you watched his saddened reaction from afar. Feeling the cold presence beside him subside, he knelt to the snowy floor in defeat, slamming down a fist as he cried. Again. Unable to protect him, you could only watch and cry with him.

--

The next time you visited him, he was still locked up in his room. Instead of having coffee though, this time he was fiddling with a box. A box that contained everything that reminded him of you. You watched intensely as he poured your memories out onto his lap.

You took a seat at his study desk knowing this was going to be another long night, when he pulled out his favourite photograph of the two of you. Then, his face scrunched up in an effort which had made him look ten years older. Just judging from that, you knew that the thought running through his mind was the same as the one that was running through yours. The day the photograph was taken was your last. Your face went from nervousness to deadpan as you found yourself reminiscing that evening–that evening the careless driver took your life, that evening he took the most precious thing away from Sunggyu…

Sunggyu jolted as though something had snuggled up against him. You didn’t realise until later, but you were just a few centimetres away to his side right now.

“W- Who’s there!?” Hoping you could pull away like you had last time, you got up to leave. But to your dismay, Sunggyu showed no sign to give up. “It’s you again, isn’t it!?” He threw his arms to the side suspiciously, as though to catch you. You watched helplessly.

Tears.

“Sunggyu… Don’t cry…”

“Where are you, Hye Su!?”

Again, only silence gave him a response, but the gaze in his eyes told you that he was certain you were in the room somewhere. In the sudden wrath at his own misery, the ‘throwing’ of his arms around the bed upgraded into ‘thrashing’.

He screamed.

“Why… Why do you always linger around me like that! Answer me, dammit!” This was the angriest you’ve seen him. “Come out already! If you want to come back, THEN WHY DON’T YOU. LET. ME. SEE. YOU?”

He resumed his fit in a pandemonium as he took the lid of your treasure box and hurled it at the bedroom wall. Another thud, and you fell to your knees with hands to your ears, tears swelling within you in fright. Only when his temper had gone had you gotten up from your helpless stance. The room was a mess. A little longer and you were afraid you were going to have to see Sunggyu hurt himself.

Your heart twisted in pain as you watched the life slowly drain out of him. He had sunken to the side of his bed now, fingers ripping through his hair in much distress. His next words came out as no more than whispers.

“Why do you have to be so unfair… Do you know how much I’m hurting because of you… Hye Su-ah… Why did you leave me all alone...”

Please don’t stay in my heart once you’re gone

I still want you

Don’t linger around my ears anymore

I wanna listen.

I wanna listen to your sound.

It was then that a thought that had never crossed your mind before hit you. Your thoughts were spreading like wildfire.

It was all your fault that he was suffering.

He couldn’t forgive you for leaving him.

He didn’t want to see you unless you could promise to return to him.

He hated your presence after you were already gone.

If you had known that all this following him around would drive him to the brink of insanity, you would not have come back. Hurting him was the last thing you had in mind. Before you left, you wanted him to be happy. You wanted him to forget about you… But instead, you gave him all this pain.

Slowly, you started to fade.

And immediately he realised. That once more he was going to be faced with thin air, that he was no longer going to be talking to anyone.

You... you were gone.

{part 2/2. End.}