Sungyeol never left his side anymore, much to his dismay. Or should he start calling himself Myungsoo? No, no, he thought, I won’t give him the satisfaction of it.
 
“You know you want to.”
 
He slapped his face with the palm of his hand.
 
“Myungsoo doesn’t sound so bad. In fact, it suits you.” Sungyeol smiled again that eerie smile he now often showed. “You’re dark, not skin dark. I mean, you’re dark, like death. Myungsoo sounds like a name some dead person would take. I hope I am not offending you or something. Plus, you’re too white. I hate that color of skin you have because I am freaking tanned. I hated my step-mom for exposing me to too much sun when we were in Spain. Uhhh darn I don’t ever want to go back to that country anymore. Too many chores like washing clothes under the heat of the sun! Sometimes she even makes me wash her jeep. Can you believe that! Ugh!”
 
Death shook his head. “For some creepy guy, you’re noisy.”
 
“Creepy guy?!” Sungyeol squealed, faking surprise. “Do I look like a creepy guy to you? No one has ever told me that but you! I don’t find myself creepy whenever I’d look in the mirror. I am handsome.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Death who wasn’t even looking at him.
 
Death ran the rough palm of his hand down his face.
 
“So, Myungsoo,” Sungyeol started, turning serious.
 
“Stop calling me that.”
 
Sungyeol pouted. “Why?”
 
“I’m not Myungsoo.”
 
There he goes with his hands on his waist again. “How did you know?” There was a smug look in Sungyeol’s annoying face, making Death want to punch the living daylights out of him.
 
“How did you know?” Death asked back. If he could poke Sungyeol’s arm for the emphasis, he would. Maybe even poke holes all over his face and body until he’s beyond recognition.
 
“You’re morbid. I like that.”
 
Death rolled his eyes and sighed exasperatedly. If this continued he’d be out of oxygen before the day ended. “Just get out of my head… or something.”
 
“And then you’d let me call me Myungie?”
 
“The will I.”
 
Sungyeol looked away, his face turning serious. The kind of serious where you’re ready to tell your life story… which didn’t seem appealing to Death because Sungyeol was too talkative to his liking. And he had a noisy voice that would make you exhausted just by listening to it.
 
“So it seems like you don’t remember, but we’ve met before.”
 
Death turned to him abruptly.
 
“Twice, for that matter.”
 
“Did we?” Death said in fake amusement.
 
“One was when you took my mom from me. The other was when I died… almost.”
 
‘Oh.’ 

This silenced him. He didn’t know what or how to react to it.
 
“When was that?” Sungyeol asked, sensing the question from Death. “Been decades, I think.”
 
“Decades?” Impossible. 
 
“Yeah. Beack when you used to say that pathetic line of yours when you took souls from the dying.” Sungyeol turned to Death with a smile. This time it was a sad one. “So you see, when I died that day, it felt like I didn’t really die.” He was murmuring, but Death could hear him clearly. “It felt like only you and not some god up there took something from me. Or, you failed to take that one thing from me. Which one do you think is it?” 
 
He remembered he had a line (for formalities, they said,) but he couldn’t remember when he actually stopped saying that. He thought it just didn’t make sense anymore, telling them they’re dying and that there’s no way to stop it. Some of them rebelled, but they died nevertheless. No matter how much they threw their hands, punched or kicked in the air. Most of them didn’t want to come with him. Some even tried to run away. But how could they run away from their fate? They couldn’t.. At some point Death grew tired of looking at poeple in their eyes and telling them they’re dying. He grew tired of them begging for their lives back, for bargaining with him, for making deals he had no interest to make.
 
“You took my Mom first,” Sungyeol’s voice broke the silence. “She was the only one I have left, but she was suffering from cancer that time. She was trying to fight it, you know? She was fighting for me because she didn’t want to leave me just like what my father did.” He was speaking so slowly Death couldn’t feel anything but guilt. It was quickly rising up like bile in his throat, ready to come out once he’s unable take it anymore.
 
“I was sitting next to her hospital bed, holding her weak hand. Intertwining it with mine, moving her fingers so they won’t go numb, when you showed up. You were standing at the foot of her bed, looking down at her with those perpetually empty eyes. I saw you that moment, you didn’t even bat an eye at me. All you did was look at my Mom, as if counting the remaining seconds of her life in front of her. Like it didn’t matter to you."
 
Death remembered everything even before the words escaped Sungyeol's mouth.
 
The words his mom spoke in her deathbed. The way she begged for a few more minutes.

His name.
 
“I heard her say something, a boy’s name. I remember his name like it’s stored at every nooks and crannies of my brain just so I wouldn’t forget about it.” He looked at Death. “'Myunsgoo,' she said, 'please. A little more time.'” As he said this, he looked at Death with an unwavering gaze. “How she knew your name, I had no idea. Maybe her ability to see the future did the trick. I would never know.”
 
Death felt the air in his lungs leave.

“The point is, you just stared at her.”

He didn’t want to hear the rest anymore. He had never felt so guilty in his life like this.
 
“I said, ‘Mom, who are you talking to?’ even