The 13^th day.

The room was a daunting bright white, its walls smeared with nothing but blankness. An ancient clock ticked away in an eerie manner. Two old wooden chairs that creaked with every movement sat in the middle of the room, occupied. The psychiatrist was tall and bony, with tufts of gray hair latching onto his balding head. Large, circular glasses sat on the bridge of his nose as he gazed at Chaerin with tired, droopy eyes and a heavy, almost cynical, smile. He hovered his pen above his clipboard momentarily before relaxing his hand and speaking again.

“So you’ve been—if I recall correctly—hallucinating?” The man enunciated, putting emphasis on the last word.

Chaerin nodded slowly, her lips pursing together in a troubled manner.

“I hear screams and I see things that are there… for one moment yet they disappear the next,” she muttered as she fidgeted anxiously in her seat.  

“Miss Kim, look at me.”

Chaerin shook her lowered head quickly and raised a trembling hand in objection, her gaze glued to the floor.

“What’s the matter?”

“Can you j-just—” she took a deep breath. “C-can you please just prescribe me more medication?”

The man frowned and turned around briefly. “Is there something behind me?”

She shook her head again as she clamped her hand over . Her eyes began to burn with tears. She felt sick to her stomach as her eyes settled on the figure standing behind the doctor.

“Miss Kim?”

“Doctor…”

“Miss Kim?” His voice was more urgent now.

“Why…” She raised her head to face him.

“Miss…Kim?”

“Why did you kill your own son?”

She began to see things shortly after meeting Yoongi that fateful night as if something in her mind had gone completely haywire. She heard too much, saw too much… knew too much. And they weren’t simple hallucinations—they were glimpses into the past and sometimes, even more terrifyingly, a taste of the future. Dead souls tormented her everywhere she went, slowly gnawing away at her soul. So she, like any sane human would, turned to medication to find the cure. But that too, as she eventually found out, ceased to be of any help. As the days progressed, things seemed to only get worse. One day, she couldn’t see her own reflection in the mirror—all she saw was a sack of skin and bones.

Perhaps the worst part of it all was that there was nothing that could be done. She was sick and there was no cure.

--

Yoongi gave an inhumane, bloodcurdling scream as he hurled the wine glass towards the wall, causing it to shatter on impact. Red wine trailed down the wall like blood.

“Why?” he seethed through clenched teeth. “Why is this happening? She doesn’t deserve this.”

He raised the wine bottle to his drunken lips and was infuriated to find that it was empty, without a single drop remaining. He curled his fingers around the bottle and obliterated it, embedding his own skin with shards of green glass. He looked at the raw cuts in his skin and smiled bitterly at the absence of blood. He then stalked over to the counter to grab another bottle of alcohol. He seized the black bottle in a victorious manner, a smirk sneaking onto his lips as he roughly uncapped it. Then the bottle slipped out of his hands and collided to the floor as Yoongi was pinned forcefully to the wine-stained wall.

“Stop it,” Hoseok ordered fiercely, his own hand around Yoongi’s throat.

“H-Hoseok.”

They stared at each other in cold silence before Hoseok loosened his grip with a sigh. “Come to your senses, Yoongi.”

Then Yoongi laughed the laugh of a maniac. He pushed Hoseok off of him and sent him sprawling to the floor with a punch to the stomach. Hoseok gasped for air as Yoongi raised him back onto his feet by the collar.

“You knew this was going to happen,” he snarled, the stench of alcohol prominent on his breath.

“I warned you, but you never listened,” Hoseok managed to sputter.

“No—”  

“We all know you made a deal with the devil… Every reaper does. And each of them fails.”

“What?” Yoongi growled quietly as he let go of Hoseok’s collar.

“The devil does nothing but lie, Yoongi. You couldn’t have possibly believed it,” Hoseok retorted bitterly.

Yoongi took a step back from Hoseok and shook his head, blinking furiously as the realization began to set in. “No… I got on my knees and begged. I offered to serve him for the rest of eternity. That’s… all I had to offer.”

“Yoongi, look at me.”

Yoongi raised his head slowly and stared at his friend in desperation.

“You can’t change things now, but you still have time.”

Yoongi shook his head again, this time in utter denial, before sinking to his knees, his face buried in his hands.

“I can’t even look at her,” he began with a sob. Tears trailed relentlessly down his cheeks.

“Yoongi.”

“Every time I look at her… my heart just breaks over and over again. She’s dying… and all I can do is watch. It’s all my fault… I made her like this. I shouldn’t have been selfish.”

Hoseok smiled sadly and wrapped a comforting arm around Yoongi.

“Sometimes it’s okay to be selfish. Death never means the end.”

--

Jieun was screaming her name desperately as she tried to pick the lock to the bathroom door.  

“KIM CHAERIN! OPEN THE DOOR!” She pleaded, her voice tarnished with fear.

Then she heard a faint click on the other side as the lock surrendered. She turned the knob and barged into the bathroom, her eyes wide with terror.

Chaerin sat in the bathtub, fully clothed, with the water up to her shoulders. Yellow prescription bottles floated in the water around her, all of them empty. Chaerin stared numbly at the gray tiled wall, her eyes dull, barren orbs of blankness. Strands of her long black hair drifted in the water in an unsightly manner as she drew circles around her with the tip of a bony finger. Her lips were stained with bright red blood. She took on the haunting form of a corpse.

Jieun sank to her knees and shook her head weakly. “Did you overdose?”

“They won’t stop talking to me.”

“C-Chaerin…?”

“The world is littered with the dead.”

“Chaerin, I’m going to call Yoongi and the hospital. You’re going to be okay.”

“He’s already here,” she murmured softly.

Jieun began to tremble as she turned around slowly. “W-What? There’s no one here.”

“He’s always been here. I just didn’t know it before. I can see him too, now.”

Chaerin picked up an empty bottle with a forced laugh. “I couldn’t overdose even if I tried. Yoongi wouldn’t let me.”

Jieun seized her best friend by the arm. “G-Get up. We’re going to the hospital.”

She shook her head. “Just… leave me alone. I’ll be okay. I don’t need to go to the hospital.”

“You’re too much.”

“What?” Chaerin turned to face her friend for what felt like the first time in years. She was crying.

“I care about you, Chaerin. You’re my best friend and you know that I’m always here for you. But for the past two weeks, you keep on… changing. You keep on talking about things that aren’t there. You wake up in the middle of the night screaming and crying. I don’t know what to do. I’m confused and scared. I feel like I’m losing you,” she confessed as she tried to blink back her tears.

Chaerin wiped away her friend’s tears and offered her a smile. “You’ll always be my best friend, Jieun.”

“D-Don’t say things like that,” Jieun sobbed. “It makes it sound like you’re saying goodbye.”

--

Day 16.

The light gleamed through the windows embedded in the ceiling of Yoongi’s piano room. He hadn’t touched the antique creature in years, but today Chaerin wanted to hear him play. His fingers effortlessly kissed each key, filling the room with a delightful, timeless melody.

“Yoongi.”

He looked up, his graceful fingers hovering above the next set of tunes.  

“Yes?”

“You play the piano beautifully,” she said softly.

He smiled briefly. “It’s nowhere near your beauty.”

They had made a promise. A promise to love each other in the present without thinking of the past or the future. And for the remaining days, that’s exactly what they did—foolishly love each other. Although those days had been the saddest, they had also been the happiest days. No one could make her feel as alive as Yoongi did.

--

On the night of the 24^th day, they went stargazing.

They sat on the deserted rooftop of Seoul’s tallest building, with Yoongi’s arms cradled around Chaerin. The night sky above was strewn with stars that glimmered like tears and a lonely crescent moon. And tonight, Yoongi was out of character. He was extremely talkative, bringing up an endless flood of all the memories they had made together. Chaerin listened and gave a nod or a small laugh as Yoongi continued to talk through the everlasting night. If they didn’t know better, they would’ve thought the night was ordinary. But it was everything but normal. Yoongi eventually fell silent, treasuring the last moments he would have with her in silence.

--

“Thank you, Yoongi,” she murmured, her voice as frail as a feather.

He tightened his embrace around her. His eyes were already stinging with tears. He knew it was time for her to go.

“I love you. I-I love you so much, Chaerin,” he stammered, his voice breaking with each sob.

“I love you too, Yoongi.”

He was overwhelmed with guilt and sorrow. She wasn’t supposed to die at such an early age—the deities had had another plan for her. She was supposed to live until her late 60s. She was supposed to have raised a family and live happily, just like her mother had wanted. But then she had met Yoongi and had fallen in love with him. Perhaps it had been some sort of twisted trap of fate that they had both walked into, or perhaps it had just been their luck. Yoongi would, if he could, turn the clocks back to day one. He would have protected her from afar. He had wanted to return the good deed her mother had done for him—that was the reason why he had remained on earth as a grim reaper. He wouldn’t have let himself fall as deeply as he had. He wouldn't have fallen in love with her. 

Chaerin had always been the sun and Yoongi had always been the moon. They could never meet.

She shook her head feebly and smiled warmly at him. She could see the unspoken words harbored in his eyes.

“I’m glad I met you, Yoongi. Don’t be sorry.”

And then Yoongi leaned in closer, kissing her for what would be the first and last time. The moment their lips met, Chaerin briefly relived her entire life. She had lived a beautiful life with beautiful people in it. She had loved and received love. She had no regrets.

“You were never a grim reaper…” she whispered as she gazed at him one last time. “You were always a guardian angel, Yoongi.”

And then her eyelids fluttered shut and she fell into a deep, eternal sleep in the arms of her beloved. He bowed his head and continued to cry, his frame shaking with each sob.

A grim reaper and human were never meant to be. Their love story had been doomed from the start. Yet perhaps Hoseok was right—perhaps there still would be life after death… for the both of them. If it was truly meant to be, surely they would meet again, in a world void of pain and suffering. 

A final tear trailed down the grim reaper’s cheek as he closed his eyes to drift off into a slumber of his own.

---

Thank you for reading!