“Cause I’m just one of those ghosts traveling endlessly. Don’t need no roads. In fact, they follow me. And we just go in circles.” – Misguided Ghosts | Paramore

Momo | October 26, 2018

The opposite of a triangle is a circle. Smooth around the edges because it has none. Endless. They roll and they scroll and they never stop. Triangles are hard. Circles are easy. Emotions are neither – but none of them know that.

There’s no center to a circle unless you draw it and that is what Momo was for them. That is what she is. The center to the lives of the people she left behind. And they’ve made due.

Or at least they’ve pretended to.

Momo’s been doing this for months now and she still wasn’t entirely used to it, but she adapts all the same. And she has a mild sort of fun as she does.

The room was spiraling – less out of control and more out of monotony. The bored woman was utilizing a small pocket of energy to propel the chair that she was sitting in around a couple of times.

It was the best part about being a spirit (or a ghost or whatever she was), being able to manipulate things as if she still existed as a physical being.

She was biding her time before her sister woke up for her noon class. Although, it was currently eleven-fifty.

“You’re going to be late,” Momo couldn’t help but sing song out loud.

She considered using some of her energy to lob something at the lump lightly snoring on the bed but in any case, it wouldn’t have been very inconspicuous. Plus the alarm from her phone had been going off for the last hour and surely she would hear it soon.

(She didn’t really believe her own thought).

She started looking around for something to throw but the plan drifted away with the wind due to the presence of a welcomed intruder.

The bedroom door was pushed open – harshly so – and stood at the door was one of Momo’s favorite morning sights.

Mina was there with her glasses perched crookedly on the bridge of her nose and her very ruffled attire.

Her sleep shirt was half tucked in, half untucked from her haste of rising to shut off Sana’s alarm. A pair of bright blue cotton shorts with cartoon penguins on it accompanied the pastel pink top. And at some point, the other woman lost one of her socks in her sleep.

The obviously peeved woman was flanked on either side by a tiny shar pei and a much tinier long haired daschund. Both puppies tripped over one another in their haste to follow Mina as she marched over to where Sana was resting,

She hissed Sana’s name in an airborne whisper as she turned off the incessant beeping from said girl’s phone. The sleeping woman did not, at any point, stir at the harsh tone that surrounded her called name.

Once the sound of the alarm ceased to exist, Mina sighed in the silence. Then her face softened when she noticed the bags under the sleeping woman’s eyes.

It softened even more so when she remembered just how hard it had been for Sana to sleep the past few months – or sleep and stay asleep.

She recalled hearing Sana stomping around their apartment around three in the morning – one, because the girl lacks all grace when she’s tired and two, because the dog that slept on Mina’s bed, barked a singular time when a body passed by the door.

She considered just letting the tired woman sleep in longer but she knew missing classes bothered the woman more than she would ever admit.

Instead, Mina laid her body over Sana’s sleeping form, her head connecting with the woman’s covered stomach. She made herself deadweight as she whispered for Sana to “wake up.” She poked her side a couple of times for good measure.

Sana pulled herself awake at the intrusion and panicked for a moment at the feeling of something resting on her stomach. However, she settled once the smell of muted spearmint met her senses.

“Mina,” she spoke with a yawn following the name out.

She stretched for a moment, arching her back off of the mattress and allowing her stomach to carry Mina slightly up as she did so. The smaller woman giggling adorably at the movement.

Mina pushed her glasses upwards a little before she laid her head back down on her sister’s stomach. “Sana, you’re late for class,” she stated, the words more than mumbled and jumbled against the older woman.

Sana understood it anyhow. She always did.

She absentmindedly asked what time it was as she searched her bed for her discarded phone while the other hand took purchase in Mina’s hair. Mina handed Sana her phone that the other had yet to find as it was still in her hand.

The time read 12:08pm.

Sana dropped open in a groan, a “, I’m late” escaping her lips.

Mina, accompanied by a mischievous smile and a laugh, spoke an “I told you so” against her torso.

Sana puffed out her cheeks in slight annoyance before exhaling aggressively. “Whatever. I’ll e-mail him later,” she started while moving her other hand to burry itself in Mina’s light brown hair. “What time do you have to be in at the academy?”

Mina answered her around a contented sigh, “I’m off today. Forced vacation time.”

Sana chuckled at that, tugging fondly at a strand of hair. She looked down at her sister for a moment before adding her own thoughts on the topic at hand: “good, you work far too much.”

Giving her a noncommittal shrug, Mina remarked that it was “a good distraction” and Sana understood that entirely.

Sana pulled her hands away from Mina’s hair before pulling the younger woman up for a hug – Mina giggling at the incessant tugs all the while. She cradled her sister’s head with the entirety of her arms while Mina locked her own as best as she could around her neck.

“I love you a lot you know,” she remarked, snuggling into her sister’s neck. “I love you too.”

After lying around for a few minutes in complete silence – (with Momo staring longingly at them) – Mina eventually rolled off of Sana and the bed.

She stepped around the puppy that was immediately at her feet waiting for all the attention in the world to be given to him. She made sure to rub Xuxi behind his ears before switching to give the same affection to Ray.

“Go get ready for your two o’clock and I’ll make lunch,” Mina said as she opened the door wider for the dogs to scamper out – one considered it, while the other walked out.

“Sounds good. Oh hey, Jihyo and I are going to grab dinner around six, do you want to join us,” Sana asked. She rested her head on her hand as she gazed at Mina.

“No, that’s okay. Go have a date night. You two haven’t had one in a while,” Mina said, toeing at Ray as the long haired Dachshund pounced at her feet.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” she responded. She was now trying to fend two puppies away from her feet as Xuxi came back into the room. “Good god, leave my feet alone. Sana get your son,” she chuckled out as she shook a foot above the Shar Pei currently nipping at it.

“Your son started it,” Sana chuckled as she moved the covers off of her and sunk down to the floor – Xuxi immediately walked over to crawl into her lap.

“Fair, but Ray is tiny and couldn’t reach my foot once it was put up,” Mina said as she sat her foot back on the ground. The tinier puppy giving up once her foot was still. “Unbelievable. I put my foot down and suddenly he doesn’t care.”

Sana chuckled at the unimpressed look on her sister’s face and the dog rolling around contentedly on the floor. “On the scale from 1 to 10, how annoyed do you think Momo would be to know that we own dogs now?”

Momo grumbled at the question, not finding it humorous in the slightest.

“The scale would be broken,” Mina laughed out as a sad smile slowly graced her features. “I’ll go make lunch,” she said when the feeling of a sad atmosphere began to edge into the room.

“Okay,” Sana said simply, understanding entirely – especially with the recess of her earlier dream infiltrating her thoughts.

---0---

She found her place at the entrance of the town’s university, having followed behind the second oldest for a while as she made her way to her social psychology lecture.

Momo, however, got distracted by a barefooted woman that stood a few paces from her.

She noticed the fact that the shorter woman stood out as opposed to the people around the two of them. (And it had nothing to do with her choice in orange hair dye).

She decided to introduce herself to the first spectral being that she’s seen since her first week as one herself.

“How long have you been dead?”

She watched as the other woman jerked her head in her direction with an astonished look painted on her particularly pretty face. Her eyes focused on the woman with the feline eyes and the attractive mole at the left corner of .

She continued to watch as the smaller woman blinked at her once, twice and a third time before she found her voice to give her an answer.

“Are you- are you supposed to ask that?”

Momo kicked a bare foot against the sidewalk, encompassing the air of nonchalance. She shoved a hand into her pockets as she shrugged.

The other woman gave out a reluctant sigh as she answered Momo’s admittedly inappropriate question, “for about four weeks. How long for you?”

Momo pushed her glasses up as they made their presence known by simply sliding forward from a hard swing of her leg as she answered with a rather contemptuous, “four months.”

The newly met duo stared at each other for a moment.

She looked on in slight amusement as the other woman gaped at her in what she presumed was stupefaction. She took in the sight of the woman in her crop top tube top and dress pants – she was wearing white and it was (hopefully) not done ironically.

The woman must have been going somewhere fancy in nature before she died as opposed to Momo who was in a pair of black sweatpants and a plain white tee – the outfit that she last fell asleep in.

Tiny, pretty lady stuttered through an introduction and Momo thought she was cute.

“I’m- I’m Chaeyoung.”

She raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement before giving her a small smile, “they call me Momo.”

---0---

Momo was always much better at actions than she was at words – far more kinetic than she is passive. But perhaps she should have said something to Chaeyoung before she teleported them both to the roof of the biology building.

She looked at the woman with amusement edging along her features as said woman slightly freaked out in a winded tirade.

“Can you at the very least warn me the next time you decide to uproot me from the ground onto the top of a building? That was scary without warning,” she wheezed out.

Momo tilted her head to the sky to stifle the laughter that bubbled within her chest.

She focused her attention back on the woman as said woman shuttled around the area of the roof. She eyed her for a moment before meandering her way towards the green house.

(It was her favorite place and she sends a small thanks towards Jihyo for telling her about the environmental club’s project).

She made her way to the bench residing in the middle of the house – a spot that she made her home away from home both when she was alive and after the fact.

After wandering around for a moment, Chaeyoung joined her on the bench.

Momo noticed the glimmer in her eyes as she took in the various flowers and greenery surrounding them. “This… it is very pretty here. How did you find this place?”

“My sister’s girlfriend told me about it last year. I’ve spent a lot of time here since,” Momo answered, still staring at the flowers in front of her.

“I figured you could use a peaceful place since there’s obviously something bothering you with you being a,” she waves her hands in her direction, “lingering spirit and all.”

“You seem to know a lot about our current existence,” Chaeyoung remarked with Momo nodding in agreement. “Any tips for the newbie?”

Momo thought about it for a second before smiling slightly, “I do in fact have a guide for the misguided.” She smiled as Chaeyoung laughed almost silently. Then she turned towards the younger woman with a look that was an odd mixture of seriousness and playfulness.

Tip Number 1: sleep.

“Sleep? We can sleep,” Chaeyoung asked incredulously.

Momo blinked at her once before answering, “I mean, yeah. Do you ever get tired when you transport through walls or over lengthy distances?” Chaeyoung nodded in lieu of a verbal reply.

“Ghosts utilize energy much like a living being. You get tired, you sleep. You get too tired, you pass out. I learned that the hard way – I’ll tell you about that later. So, tip one is: sleep.”

Tip Number 2: practice.

“Practice using your energy so you don’t get tired as fast. The more you practice, the more you can do things like-” and Momo showed her an example by picking up a potted plant and moving it to the opposite side of the table “-that.”

Chaeyoung looked on in wonder with a question rising behind her eyes. Momo had a bit of an idea of what the curious woman wanted to ask, so she continued on before she could.

Tip Number 3: don’t show yourself.

Chaeyoung looked at her with a soft gaze and spoke, “you knew what I was going to ask didn’t you?”

“I did. As much as I would love to tell you otherwise, it does more harm than good. Tried it during my second week floating around and I ended up scarring my youngest sister to the point where she has occasional nightmares about it,” Momo started.

She lightly tapped the soles of her feet along the ground before she continued: “I have no idea what happened when I showed up. But, I understood that it interrupted her process of grieving. So showing yourself, is a bad idea.”

They sat in silence for a beat before Chaeyoung interrupted with her own anecdote: “I have sisters myself, both older than me.”

Momo connected her eyes to the side of Chaeyoung’s head before asking her, “What are your sisters’ name?”

Chaeyoung hummed for a moment before she actually answered: “Nayeon is the eldest, and she studies here actually. She’s a fourth year going for her doctorate in psychology. She’s currently having an off year, considering everything.

The second is Jeongyeon. She was a third year education major and wanted to teach kindergarten but she dropped out after the whole-” she waved her hands in the air to indicate what she wanted to say. “-me dying thing,” she finished with a frown marring her face.

Momo shared a little about her own family, hoping to distract the younger woman from any bad emotions.

“I have two little sisters. The youngest one and I are both adopted actually. I knew her before we found a home. She used to trail after me at the orphanage because, according to four year old her, I was very nice since I gave her my cookies a few times. She doesn’t know that I did that only because I hated oatmeal raisin,” Momo said. She chuckled at the memory of a tinier than ever Mina with a mouth covered in crumbs waddling behind her.

“Her name’s Mina, she was the one I mentioned about having the occasional nightmares. She and I worked at a dance academy together instead of going to university. She and I kind of loathed school, but dance was something that we both loved. Sana on the other hand thrived in any school setting. She also goes here and she’s a third year working for her doctorate in psychology much like your eldest sister,” Momo finished.

Chaeyoung looked at her astonished at the last bit of information, “small world huh.”

Momo once again turned her attention towards the flowers and nodded as she did so, “yeah.”