Oneshot
the haunting of liu manor
Yangyang really was about to write r/legaladvice’s wildest post yet - “Can I (20M) force the ghost (100+M) haunting my dead grandfather’s (87M) house to pay rent?”. It probably would send him to the front page by the sheer craziness of it.
Everything had started when his grandfather had died. In his will, everyone in his family got something cool: a trust fund, land, paintings, grandmother’s jewelry. Yangyang had gotten the old Victorian style manor grandfather had lived in and then abandoned, together with a modest lump to help him reform it, like an apology. If the old man wanted to apologize, he could’ve started by not letting it to him on the damned will.
Yangyang could swear he heard rats on the walls, but the guy he’d paid to come and check if it was structurally sound said it was good, no leaks on the roof or cracks in the foundation, and the electrical guy also hadn’t said he’d seen rats when fixing it up, and even the plumber who’d crawled underneath the house to reach the pipes had said nothing, so Yangyang guessed it was his imagination.
What the three hadn’t said was that there was a ghost, which he had found lazing around in the destroyed living room. He looked at Yangyang, jumped up from his spot on the couch that he assumed had been perfect one day - now half-rotted and gutted from time - and floated to Yangyang, looking at him with a shine in his eyes.
Well, as much shine as a half-transparent guy could have, anyway.
Yangyang had screamed, the ghost had tried to calm him down, and now he was sitting on the staircase that smelled like black mold and rat , half composing the r/legaladvice post to cope and half mindlessly scrolling Twitter. The soothing motions of people posting fancams under unrelated posts gave him some sense of normalcy, which he currently lacked.
The ghost had a name, and that was the worst part.
“It’s Jaemin , not ghost.” The ghost said, an almost irritating boyish figure, dressed in what the ghost itself said was the highest fashion of 1865: a sailor uniform. He was looking over Yangyang’s shoulder, reading the feed of his Twitter to kill time because otherwise he was going to scream.
“They don’t allow names on the title of posts.” Yangyang replied, like it all made sense, and Jaemin-ghost huffed. “Listen. Are you really a ghost, or have the asbestos got to me already?”
The boy ghost puffed his cheeks, putting a spectral hand on Yangyang’s shoulder, passing it through skin to reach muscle and bone. It felt exactly like being thrown into a bucket of ice cold water while being electrocuted, and lucky for Yangyang’s nerves, Jaemin took his hand off pretty quickly.
“Okay, okay, no doubt from me anymore.” A pause. “Right. So, uh.”
Yangyang didn’t know how to express himself in that situation, feelings still stiff with grief. The manor, from what he recalled from the photos he’d seen on photo albums, had one day been beautiful: a three-story building in the mid of a sprawling field, his mother telling scarce stories of raising sheeps and cattle and goats, running amok on the hills.
He’d never been there, the home abandoned when his mother was ten, sent to the city, grandfather seeking the next best thing. They had left the manor behind, and from the few colorful memories of his mother’s stories, only remained the gutted interior and rotted exterior. He didn’t know much more than that: he and his mother did not have the best relationship anymore, not since he’d been a child, before Yangyang had decided to follow his dreams and then failed miserably.
The house would be a money sink, but Yangyang guessed it could make some cash in return when he inevitably sold it. Really, he had no point in living in such a sprawling manor all by himself. With a ghost, too.
“Do you know anything about, like, construction… ?” Yangyang asked, tentative, and Jaemin shone, warm as the sun that filtered in through the broken windows.
“Not at all!”
This was going to be hard work.
“So, what I could do is start by mowing all that grass, right?” Yangyang asked the ghost, because otherwise he’d be speaking to himself, and he didn’t like being lonely. The issues of a single child, he supposed. “That can’t be too hard.”
The two of them were outside, Yangyang having hauled from his car a cooler with beer (because his original plan was to get piss drunk and start working tomorrow, not having to deal with a ghost), and he was drinking one slowly, sitting in the porch, stained with dead flies and what wasprobably animal waste in the parts that hadn’t rotted off yet, appreciating the sunset that came in through the too-tall grass.
Jaemin, by his side, sitting on the half-broken lover’s seat, looked out onto the expanse.
“You could get some cows. A few goats.” Yangyang rolled his eyes at the boy’s soft-spoken commentary. “What? If you’re going to stay, you might as well use this land. The plot on the back was a garden, you know? I think the apples still grow there.”
Yangyang wanted to ask questions, but he didn't know how to word them in a manner that made sense. How to say that he didn't know, that every story he knew was tinted with a child's glasses and that his mother, his sole source for information about this place, refused to speak?
“I don’t plan on living here.” He scoffed, in the end, and Jaemin’s head whipped to look at him. “I mean, it’s too big, and I’m just one guy.”
“Really?” The ghost sighed, eyes wistfully looking away. Yangyang felt a little bad. “Guess I’ll be back to being alone soon.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m going to sell this place. You can haunt a family.”
Jaemin smiled once more, and Yangyang looked at the grass. It was tall enough to reach his waist. Would a lawnmower be able to defeat that?
He grabbed his phone, opened Google, and wondered if goats could be rented.
“I can go to the shop with you. Don’t leave me alone. It’s been so long since I’ve had any company!” Jaemin complained, while Yangyang put on his boots, lacing them up.
He had slept in a sleeping bag, in a corner where the water damage and splintered wood hadn’t reached yet. Jaemin had floated up, disappeared through a rotten ceiling beam, and left him alone for the night. It had been a lonely, long, sleepless night. No matter, though. Yangyang was used to little sleep and long awake hours.
Yangyang had spent the morning assessing the damage on the first floor and the basement - the last one in pristine condition, except for a puddle of fetid mystery liquid with bones, which he guessed had been an animal -, and now he was going to have fun hauling wood and grabbing whatever tools he hadn’t put in his toolkit.
“You’re a ghost that has been stuck here for who knows what reason.” Yangyang shot back, and Jaemin huffed, puffing his cheeks. “You can’tleave.”
“I can, the outfit I died in is still in the attic. You just have to grab it.” Jaemin replied, unfazed, sitting on the rotten couch Yangyang had found him in.
“Excuse me?” Yangyang tried, tentative, and Jaemin nodded.
“Yes, from when I, you know.” He made a slash motion with his hand, like someone cutting his throat. Well. “My parents got rid of all my clothes,including the one I died in, and everything went to a flea market. A woman bought me a few decades later, and then I got stuck in the attic after my clothes didn’t fit any of her boys.”
Yeah, sounded like his bargain-loving grandmother, mistress of coupons, terror of magazines. Yangyang looked up, through the hole in the ceiling, to the ceiling of the second floor.
“The stairs are good.” Jaemin insisted, and Yangyang sighed.
“Fine, fine, but if I break a leg, I’m going to find your descendants and charge them for it.” He accused, rising from his spot on the floor. Jaemin grinned in answer, and accompanied Yangyang, as the living one grabbed a piece of wood that had probably been a ceiling beam, and went to the stair, poking every step to see if the wood would resist weight applied in it.
When it didn’t tear itself upon contact, he proceeded up, even though Jaemin told him to hurry, already at the second floor landing.
The second floor was much of the same: rotten wood, broken glass in the rooms with rotten doors, the occasional animal bones and trinkets of a life long gone. He’d have to throw everything out, except for the occasional drawer or vanity table that, with some work, could look good again.
“The attic?” Jaemin suggested, after Yangyang had walked around, and he nodded. Guided by the ghost, he used the wood stick to pull the attic stairs down, and rose slowly.
The attic was the best well-kept place: no window was broken, and while a thick coat of dust covered every inch, the furniture was intact. All the dust made it seem like grey mold covered the ground.
“Here, here!” Jaemin called, gesturing to a pile of half-destroyed cardboard boxes. Yangyang opened one, going through the clothes - living proof of times past - and showing them to Jaemin, until he found a yellowed sailor uniform, stained and slightly eaten by moths. “Just grab something of it and I can accompany you.”
Yangyang carefully pulled the tie, silken and soft even with age, making it a bracelet, and he felt as if there was a weight on his shoulders when he tied it to his wrist. He looked at Jaemin, accusatorial, and the ghost shrugged.
“It’s a slight possession.”
“This doesn’t feel slight .” He cleaned his hands, looking around. This place could be a good office. Clean design, sloping roof, a circular window that allowed one to gaze upon the expanse of the land.
Jaemin shrugged. Yangyang, with a sigh, went downstairs, followed by the ghost.
At the last step of the porch’s staircase, Jaemin wavered slightly. He looked around, and Yangyang, pretending to not pay attention, walked to the car.
He shimmered in the sunlight, changing his clothes to a palette swap of Yangyang’s clothes from the day before - overalls in mint green, white long-sleeved shirt, simple shoes for walking -, and took the first step outside.
“Are those my clothes?” Yangyang asked, as the ghost, decidedly more solid, gently floated near. “Are you…?”
“People will call you weird if they see you talking alone.” Jaemin stretched in the sun, seeming content, like a fat cat. “And, besides, I want to help, too, you know? It’s my house.”
Yangyang opened his mouth, then closed it.
“It’s my house.”
“Legally, perhaps.”
“Keep talking like that and I’m going to lose this tie.” Jaemin huffed at that, but followed, stepping in the too-tall grass with lightness, like he was unaccustomed to using his legs. Like a mermaid, but more spectral.
Yangyang shook his head, opened the door of the car, and let Jaemin in.
Midway to the shop, the silence got to him - Jaemin, too gobsmacked at the outside world, spoke nothing of it, eyes shining as he drank in the scenery -, and Yangyang turned the radio.
A mistake, as he learned moments after, the voices of his friends filling the space. Yangyang gripped the wheel a little bit tighter.
He had been a trainee, once. Had given half his life, at the time, to the company, training, bettering his dance, his voice, until he had been a shell, ready to be filled with whatever they wanted him to be.
Then the cancer diagnosis came in, and Yangyang had to spend two years in the hospital. His friends visited sparsely, and gave him a meager hope of, perhaps, coming back from that hole he'd been. Debuting with them had been a dream that had kept Yangyang sane, had made him bit back every painful cry that had been extracted from him.
Unbeknownst to him, his parents had broken the trainee contract. His friends - knew , maybe. Maybe not. Yangyang had lost contact with them at some point, their training getting harder as they prepared to debut, and his parents had simply never told Yangyang he wasn’t even a trainee anymore. His mother had simply grasped his hand, patted it, and looked at him like she wanted to say “ I told you so ”, but all the wires on Yangyang’s body wouldn’t let her actually speak out the words on the tip of her tongue, reeling her cruelty in.
Besides, after the two-year hospital stint, he discovered his stamina was at floor level. He fought for a year to make it go back, but it never did, not the way it had been. If before he could spend hours singing and dancing with barely a sweat, now even a single hour was too much. He still had hopes.
Then, he’d heard his friends had debuted six months before. No, not heard : he tuned in the television one day, and saw his friends in one of those afternoon variety shows, laughing and playing around as if he'd never existed, as if that hadn't been their shared dream.
He stopped singing. He stopped dancing.
Yangyang started doing little repair projects to kill time, something he had already done at the trainee dorm when something broke, and found out he enjoyed it more than expected. Sure, he couldn’t do the big stuff - like fixing the hole in the second floor, or tiling the roof, but he could install a support beam and renovate the furniture. He was even learning how to reupholster a couch!
Maybe that was why his grandfather had left the home for him, to see if it could reignite some sort of spark in his life.
The music changed, going to the next, and Yangyang’s thoughts vanished with it. It was better this way.
At the home improvement shop, Yangyang was busy, looking around weight-bearing wood for the ceiling beams, and Jaemin, sitting inside the little cart he had grabbed, looked around like a child in a candy store. He had picked up several trinkets as Yangyang had guided the cart around, wondering if this was how a mom with a too-old child who insisted they could sit inside felt.
Most trinkets were little things, items that Yangyang took for granted: double-colored sequin pillows, flannel blankets in bright colors, a pack of blue decorative gems, sweet smelling candles: cutesy little things that made a house look pretty.
“It can’t be that interesting.” He said, and Jaemin looked at him. For a second, he forgot how necks worked, doing a full 180 ° before realizing actual living humans couldn’t do that to their necks, then facing him properly. Yangyang was almost sure he was going to use steel instead of wood, and then buy appropriate faux wood coverings for it; it was more cost effective. “Dark or light wood?”
“I haven’t been out of the house in decades. I’ve never seen a place like this.” A pause, as he looked at the wood. “I like dark wood best. Gives to the whole haunted mansion feel, you know? Very cozy for me.”
Yangyang threw one of the sequined pillows on Jaemin’s head.
At the cashier, with Jaemin outside the cart because Yangyang had to pick up cleaning supplies and other needed things, tethered to it as if if he let go he’d flow away, Yangyang saw the ghost eyeing the gossip rags, fashion magazines and candy. Bait for children to beg and cry so their parents would buy it and spend more, he knew.
And yet , Jaemin eyed it so earnestly that Yangyang grabbed a little bit of everything, throwing it amidst the extra-thick rubber gloves and sweet-smelling disinfectants. He pretended he hadn’t done this and pretended that Jaemin hadn’t smiled at him.
Back at the manor, Yangyang slowly put the things he’d bought away, in clean-ish spots, and looked around. Jaemin, back to his sailor outfit anddefinitely more transparent, looked around.
“Where should I start?” He asked, more to himself than as a conversation starter. There was the attic, messy as it was, and then the second floor, with its broken glass and dead animals, even if there were less than in the first floor.
“Maybe cleaning the dead animals.” Jaemin suggested, as if reading his mind, and Yangyang, who might as well, nodded, grabbing the rubber gloves and putting them on. Then, of course, Jaemin spoke up. “Their ghosts have been bothering me.”
Yangyang paused, looked at Jaemin. Jaemin held a serious face for the entire thirty seconds of silence that ensued, which meant that this house probably had more ghosts than expected.
“What?” He looked at Jaemin, expecting some more elaborate explanation, and Jaemin looked soberly to the horizon, until a smile failed to not crack his lips. “Son of a .”
Jaemin laughed, loud and carefree, and Yangyang, shaking his head, set out to cleaning.
It took him five days to get every dead animal outside and buried (just to be sure. Just in case. Yangyang could deal with one ghost, but with several? Not as much), and then, cleaning every surface out of dust, taking the furniture that could be salvaged to some place where the windows could be open fully to apply some wood preservative to what wasn’t full of termites and other household pests.
He made a mental note to see if his budget would allow to call someone to change the glass in the windows and fix the hole in the second floor, and set to boring hours of sanding down the good wood and applying varnishes in the what had been a library once: spacious, tall windows, faded light blue wallpaper sandwiched in-between wooden panels. The windows, open, let the smell of grass and the singsong of birds filter in, and the sunlight warmed his back as he worked.
He had found an old radio amidst the attic (things that had decayed long ago, water damaged or eaten by moths), and a few swift kicks had gotten the radio to work again. That, and a fresh set of batteries. Sometimes he regretted it, but it was better than silence.
Jaemin was fascinated by the music, now that there was no scenery to distract him. He would listen to it, transfixed, and if it was a song that played enough times, he’d have the lyrics down, able to reproduce it in tune with the singer. The acoustics of the house helped, making Jaemin’s voice that only Yangyang could listen to travel far more than expected.
Yangyang found he enjoyed listening to Jaemin’s voice, and hummed along with him occasionally, when he was more comfortable with it. Singing, as much as he liked it, wasn’t something he had good memories of anymore. His days as a trainee had been left behind long, long ago, and for good.
“So.” Jaemin started, sitting atop a dresser. It was one of the few pieces left, in Yangyang’s now week-long affair with renovating furniture, that hadn’t been touched yet. He was cleaning it out, picking pieces of lint and half-destroyed items. Yangyang offered a mumble as a sign Jaemin should go on. “You like singing, don’t you?”
“Used to.” It wasn’t a lie. His throat closed at the thought of doing more than humming, his legs froze at the sheer idea of dancing, and he changed the subject. “You too.”
“Yes.” Jaemin sighed, kicking back. Yangyang kept sanding down the furniture, making a mental note to take a break soon. “Mother was going to send me to be a castrati - said I had a future, you know -, and then .”
“And then what?”
“And then.” Jaemin shrugged, and Yangyang paused his sanding down, looking at Jaemin. “You know. And then my older brother died, and I was the family heir, but I couldn’t cope, so I…”
He choked on something, which was new: Yangyang didn’t know ghosts could choke, and he quietly averted his eyes, deciding that he could do with a bit more of sanding.
Some things were better left unheard.
The goats arrived. Yangyang stopped applying varnish to things, watching, mesmerized, as they grazed. This would set his schedule back.
Jaemin wasn’t so impressed.
“City boy.” He muttered, and Yangyang shot him a glare. “What?”
“They’re… Cute.” Yangyang started, slowly weaving words together. He heard a bleating outside and smiled. “It’s relaxing to see them grazing. Just… I don’t know.”
Pause.
Yangang’s brain racked itself for a second, before a metaphorical light bulb went off - because if one of the actual physical light bulbs went off, Yangyang couldn’t blame it on Jaemin: the ghost was right in front of him.
“Okay, nevermind, I know, it looks just like one of those cottagecore ASMR Instagram videos. You know, the ones with soft jazz music, pink gradient on everything, and a romanticized view of the world? Where everything they do is bake bread and drink Earl Grey like it's their job?”
Jaemin blinked, confusion painted on his face clear as day.
“I think I know three words of that sentence.” It took Yangyang more than a few seconds to remember that Jaemin, as much as he mostly blended in, wasn’t from this century. He whipped out his phone and opened Instagram, having an idea. “Oh, your fancy rectangle. Are you going to scroll onto it again?”
“Yeah, come here.” Yangyang waved for him, and Jaemin obeyed. Quickly raising his arm when he felt the cold ectoplasm form of Jaemin on his back, he snapped a selfie, staring at the result. “Wow, you look terrible.”
He did: in the photo, Jaemin looked like a vague, trembled form, barely human, eyes all black and a sinister, red grin to his face.
“That does look bad.” Jaemin leaned in, one cold hand on Yangyang’s shoulders, eyes squinting to see. “Is that how you see me?”
“No, you look quite lovely, actually.” Yangyang grinned, before applying a few filters to it and posting the cursed photo to his story. Hopefully, people would be too dazzled by the goats barely visible through Jaemin to notice him. “Kind of like, hm… I don’t know. The sun?”
Jaemin floated around Yangyang, put his hand to his face, a troubled look to him. Yangyang, with a sigh, went back to watching the goats.
“The sun ? Thank whatever deities exist you’re a repairman and not a writer.” Jaemin huffed, and then looked behind Yangyang, were the goats were still eating, slowly making sure the grass was at a manageable level.
Jaemin sat by his side, his hand resting atop Yangyang’s own.
“But I guess you are right. They’re relaxing.”
Yangyang kept watching the goats, their hands near each other. Jaemin’s hand was almost warm in the sun.
They were back at the shop, Jaemin sitting inside the cart, leaning over the metal as the two poured over colors. Yangyang kept looking, but to him the two shades of cream in his hands were the same.
“I think a nice green would be interesting.” Jaemin said, squinting at the palettes. “Green, and a good dark purple with some interesting wood detailing…”
Yangyang looked at him. Jaemin stared back, puppy-like. There were already two lampshades in the cart that could’ve belonged to any generic English manor a century and a half ago; Yangyang had a budget to stick to, and he was going to need to stop bringing Jaemin to the shop if he wanted it to last.
“Sometimes I forget your taste is stuck in the nineteenth century.” He kept staring at the two similar, yet equal, cream colors. “If I were to stay, sure, but that house needs to go.”
Jaemin pouted, eyes going back to the color wheel, flipping over it.
“I’m just saying…”
“I’m not -”
“If you were to stay, you could raise some chickens. Goats . You like goats.”
“Stab me, won’t you?” Yangyang huffed, and abandoned the cream, leaning down, looking into the bright greens. “Fine, you get one room.”
Jaemin smiled, gave Yangyang a cold peck to his cheek, and started rambling about colors, machine gun style. Yangyang, baffled, looked to the boy until he made no sense anymore, until his words flicked from one ear to another.
Then, the cold of Jaemin’s hands on his arm.
“Thanks. Sorry, I never…” He smiled. Sunny, dazzling. Color flushed Yangyang’s cheeks, and Jaemin, seemingly, didn’t notice it. “Decoration wasn’t something they allowed me. Cooking, too, but hey, I don’t need to eat. So this is - something . Something I can grasp, that makes me feel alive again.”
Yangyang nodded, circling around, going to the paint’s counter as he grabbed the cart’s handle, pushing it slowly. Jaemin, who weighted nothing, was a perfect cart companion.
“Maybe you’ll pass on?” Jaemin laughed, looking up.
“Hopefully. I’ve heard we tend to explode in ashes when that happens, though.”
“Then remind me to get a good vacuum.”
If he was honest - Jaemin’s company was the only thing keeping him sane, lately. Yangyang didn’t want the ghost gone, but… But was there another choice? He didn’t want to stay at the house, and Yangyang doubted Jaemin wanted to live on as a ghost forever. Then, again - he was the closest thing to a friend Yangyang’s had in months.
Probably in years, actually.
“So, what do you want to put in the room? I suppose we could decorate it fully.” Yangyang started, and Jaemin made a humming sound. “If we get some wood, we could do a Louis XVI style couch in sober colors.”
Jaemin nodded, giving Yangyang the swatches, quickly pointing to what he wanted. Yangyang knew what cream colors he wanted: any. They were all the same.
“And put in some bricking on the fireplace, too?” They arrived at the paint counter, and Yangyang talked rapidly with the vendor, before being told that it would take thirty or so minutes. With a nod, he took the ghost away, onto the section for little decorative knick knacks: little soap dispensers shaped like children’s toys, decorative succulents, cascading water fountains, paintings in splashed, bright colors and replicas of actual works of art, tall, intricate glass vases, lampshades; everything a home needed and didn’t need in long, white shelves, under bright fluorescent lights.
Jaemin loved everything, even the ugly pharaoh Tut toilet paper holder. Yangyang had to admit he was fond of the ugly thing, though, so maybe that’s why he put it on the cart, near the ugly porcelain figurines of ducks in a floral pattern and the new yet old analog clock.
“If grandfather is a ghost, I bet he’d be so mad I’m letting a ghost decorate his house like this.” He sighed, gesturing for Jaemin to get out of the cart, back at the paint station. Jaemin obeyed, jumping with a graceful leap only a ghost would have. The pile of objects they’d gathered from around the shop didn’t even budge, which was a testament to either Jaemin’s building skills or to the fact he’d cocooned himself inside it, like a capitalistic dragon. He put the paints inside the cart in a neat stack.
“Your grandfather loved all the little duckies your grandmother had.” Jaemin said, eyes shining. “Ooh, can you get some ducks? There’s a pond behind the hill.”
“Decorative ones, sure. Perhaps there’s something in the gardening section…” Yangyang mused, guiding the cart there, instead of going to the cashier.
This ghost was going to be the death of his budget.
He took out the wallpaper slowly, pulling it in long strips and chipping it away in places. Not far away enough, the man he’d hired worked noisily in the hole in the floor. Yangyang made a mental note to check for someone who could change the glass on the windows: he’d been lucky that there had been no rain.
Jaemin was somewhere: if Yangyang’s guess was right, he probably was looking around the man’s work like some sort of spectral cat. Well, that was a problem for another person.
He was in what had been a bedroom, probably: the floor had been bleached by the sun in the parts the bed did not hide, and it had kept that way with the passing years. The entire room, now cleaned (and in need of a good sanding down and perhaps a dark staining), looked like a ghostly memory.
He wondered what the rooms looked like with furniture - all he had were guesses and faint remembrances of yellowed family photos -, but Yangyang knew he wouldn’t see this place with more furniture than the few salvageable pieces he scavenged.
There was a knock of the door as he tore another strip of wallpaper, and he looked back. The repairman, someone he’d found on Google, was a young man with a slight accent to his words.
“Hi, uh. Sorry to ask, but is this house haunted?” He had a faint sheen of pink to his cheeks. “It’s, uh, a bit distracting.”
Jaemin waved by him, as if to show that yes , he was the ghost being talked about, and the man - Johnny, if Yangyang recalled correctly - shivered.
“Yeah, actually. Sorry, is he bothering you?” Jaemin huffed, somewhere in the background, and Johnny seemed a bit gobsmacked. Yangyang went back to tearing strips of wallpaper. “He’s kind of an old man, so do forgive him. The poor boy has never seen electrical tools.”
“I heard that!” Jaemin said, reverberating through the walls, and Johnny looked around in surprise. He approached in quick steps and leaned in, speaking in conspiratorial tones.
“Should we call in an exorcist? I know a good one.” Yangyang chuckled at that, and Johnny sighed. “Sorry. It’s kind of weird you’re chill with that, though.”
“He’s been keeping me company.” Yangyang replied, and Johnny nodded, hands on his back. “Besides, he’s just curious. So if you kinda treat him like a child, well .”
Jaemin made something fall in another room. Yangyang ignored it.
“Like, explaining things to him?” Johnny frowned, and Yangyang pulled a long strip of the wallpaper, revealing something scribbled there. He squinted to it, noticing it was letters, written in faded, familiar calligraphy. Johnny said something, leaving for a moment, and Yangyang kept looking at the writing.
He whipped his phone, took a photo, sent it to his mom. A reply popped up a few moments later.
I had forgotten I’d done that. Let me know if you find more.
He looked at the text, then at the writing. Hi from 1973!, his ten-year-old mother exclaimed from the past. I hope you’re happy here, but too bad you’re taking out the wallpaper! There’s a few photos hidden in the attic, good luck!
He let out a dry laugh and kept taking out the wallpaper mechanically.
The girl on the wall didn’t even sound like his mother.
When Johnny’s gone, the hole in the floor fixed - "it’ll take a few days to be stable, though, so do avoid that area,” he said, with Jaemin going through his toolbox and both ignoring the mess being made -, Yangyang cooked something to himself on the little portable stove.
It was something quick, instant food he’d bought in one of the last outings he’d made, and with a quick glance to his stock, Yangyang realized he’d soon have to go to the market.
Jaemin had already retired for the day, yawning, mentioning he’d spent too much energy playing around today. Yangyang ate in silence, listening to the low volume murmur of a late night radio show. Something about politics, something he didn’t care about, something just to fill the silence that otherwise would not exist, full of a conversation between Jaemin and Yangyang, discussing the renovations of the house.
When he finished eating, he threw away the cup noodle package, grabbed his sleeping sack and dragged it upstairs, and then setting it on the room that had been his mother’s.
He tried to sleep, but the words taunted him. Hi from 1973, he muttered. Yangyang tossed and turned for what seemed like an eternity, but the letters were burned inside his eyelids.
There’s a few photos hidden in the attic.
Where was this girl? This girl in the wall seemed warmer than his mother - she seemed like the mother in the memories he had, a kind person who didn’t look at her son in the hospital like she barely recognized the boy he’d become.
The writing on the wall seemed more defined in the faint light of the moon that came through the circular window, but he ignored it, rising from his spot, going downstairs, grabbing a flannel for dusting and a bucket of water, filled with diluted disinfectant, before going up again.
Yangyang had been avoiding the attic for the sheer mess factor, but now he was a man with a mission, climbing the stairs, turning on his phone lantern after he gently put everything down. The boxes seemed haunting in the pale moonlight, and the carpet of dust seemed to move in front of his eyes, like a living thing: writhing, worming through, a wrong step and it would bury itself into his skin and finally kill him.
Yangyang grabbed Jaemin’s tie, still on his wrist, and made it into a makeshift mask, tying it behind his head. He didn’t plan on sleeping tonight.
He first dusted everything, from the boxes rotting with mildew to every mystery item on the ground - piles of dirty clothes, abandoned school projects, half-deflated soccer balls, books that had been eaten away, broken little porcelain decorations, even a rug -, and classified them in piles: what was good was thrown downstairs, what was bad was thrown out of the window. Simple. Easy. A pain in the for tomorrow .
Then, cleaning the floor in bursts, making sure he was still well-rested, even though Yangyang swore he could feel his joints grinding into his bones, the meniscus becoming as thin as a sheet of paper. He gritted his teeth and washed the floor, ignoring his sore muscles.
When the sun came up, Yangyang was covered in a sheen of sweat, and the floor - dark wood and beautiful, as if the dust had protected it from damage; he wouldn’t’ve thought it so - reflected his face. He wiped the sweat out with the back of his hand and laid on the floor, trying to even out his breathing as the sun slowly crawled in through the window.
A box creaked, and he soon had Jaemin in his field of vision. The boy in a sailor suit looked worriedly at him, as if he was dead.
“You look seven different kinds of terrible.” Jaemin said, laying by his side. The roof was gothic-style, curved slightly, and it showed on the ceiling. A nice candelabra would make the place really pop as a clean, sleek home office. “Rough night?”
“I think I had a slight mental breakdown, but I’ll survive.” Yangyang replied, stifling a yawn. The floor smelled nice, flowery. “I’m going to take the day off.”
“That’d be nice. You’ve been working every day.” Jaemin rose, a little bit more solid than before, and looked around, going back to his box. Yangyang, eyes still fixated on the ceiling, swirling thoughts vague and uncertain, heard the sounds of clothes being rummaged, before Jaemin came back. In the edges of his blurry vision, he saw Jaemin set down a pile of clothing, sliding some underneath Yangyang’s head as a pillow, then covered him with a holey blanket. It smelled faintly like mothballs, and it was a bit nostalgic - although he wasn’t sure what the nostalgia was for. “Sleep now. I can even sing for you, although I don’t think it’ll be good.”
Yangyang curled into himself, head touching Jaemin’s solid leg. Cold electricity ran through him, but Yangyang didn't care.
“I don’t care if it’s good or not.” He muttered, and Jaemin soon started singing a slow song, vaguely operatic, but haunting all the same.
The acoustics are good, Yangyang thought to himself, falling into a dreamless sleep.
When he woke up, the sun was low in the sky, almost gone. Jaemin was by his side, playing around on his phone, engrossed in what sounded like a game of crosswords.
Yangyang didn’t even know he had crosswords on his phone.
He sat up slowly, stretching, feeling his body sore for both going ham on the cleaning and then sleeping on a hard surface, and Jaemin looked up. The light of the phone illuminated his face in odd shadows.
“Good evening.” Jaemin smiled, and Yangyang smiled back, eyes still full of sleep. “So, I grabbed your phone. It didn’t chirp or anything, I just got bored.”
A pause from Jaemin, with a sweet but sad smile, eyes drifting far away from the present.
“I didn’t realize how much fun having someone else around was until you arrived.” He completed, and Yangyang felt himself blush slightly, hoping the dying light did not let it show.
“Yeah, same.” Yangyang felt himself saying, and then rose. His stomach grumbled in protest, and he remembered the distinct lack of food he had. “Alright, how about this? I need to eat, but I don’t have food. Want to grab dinner with me?”
Jaemin nodded, rising as well, and handing Yangyang his phone. Nothing new on there at a glance; he stuck it in his pocket, and smiled at Jaemin, softly.
“Great. Give me a few minutes to get clean and meet me at the car, okay?” Yangyang gestured to himself, covered in dust and dried sweat, and Jaemin nodded again.
“Sure. See you soon.” He said, and disappeared from view. Yangyang, with a sigh, passed a hand through his hair, cringing at how it felt. Yeah, a bath was in order.
A bath and some travel later, with the sun already gone from the horizon, Yangyang arrived at the nearest fast food place, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt. It had a stain of varnish on the side, but the jacket he wore easily covered it. The pants, too, were splattered with paint from a previous repair job, but it looked artistic and cool. He looked back at Jaemin, who had foregone his usual overalls and shirt combo for a sweater and slacks, looking dapper - kind of like a protagonist of some indie movie about academia.
“Sorry, it’s fast food.” Did the people from centuries past have fast food? Jaemin looked at him, then at the building, squinting. “You know what fast food is, or…?”
“No, it’s just that fast food looked different back when I was alive. More street vendors, less cement, definitely more awful smells.” Jaemin sighed as they entered, the bright neon lights of the restaurant making Jaemin almost transparent. Well, he was a ghost. “Do they have pea soup still? I miss it.”
“What kind of fast food you guys used to eat?” Yangyang frowned, and Jaemin shrugged. “No, it’s just hamburgers and fries.”
A pause from Jaemin, as he looked at the menu. There wasn’t much in terms of a line: it was just before dinner rush. Yangyang asked for his usual order, and paid with the card grandfather had loaded. He was sure a meal wasn’t going to set back the project.
After a few minutes of waiting, there was already a buzz of people around, dinner in full swing: Jaemin passed by people as if he wasn’t real while Yangyang balanced his food tray, going after what he could see of Jaemin.
They found a small table with a view to the children’s playground in a corner almost hidden from view. Jaemin sat down first, his back to the wall, looking through the window and seeing the children playing under the lights. Yangyang, sitting down, grabbed a few fries to eat. Silence fell between them, and the food was soon devoured by Yangyang, who felt like he had a hole instead of a stomach.
“You know,” he started, in a low tone of voice. Yangyang tore his eyes off the fries, looking up. Jaemin was looking outside without actually looking, like something distracted him. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
“How so?” Yangyang asked, cocking his head.
“Fast food. Children playing. The stars are the same, too.” He looked pleased with himself. “Although I’ll admit that back then, food wasn’t as good as you make it seem to be. I used to drink curds and whey.”
A shudder from Yangyang, and Jaemin finally looked at him, smiling. He seemed...
“Sometimes I forget you were human.”
“Me too.” Jaemin replied, sadly.
While looking for a return to the house, Yangyang saw a 24hrs supermarket. He rose an eyebrow at the red sign and sighed. He’d have to go in today or tomorrow: there wasn’t food in his stocks anymore, so he might as well.
Taking the exit, Jaemin woke up from his rest - he was practically invisible, recuperating energy he’d spent by being visible - looking out of the window to the cement box corporations called a market.
“What’s that?” He asked groggily, and Yangyang smiled.
“You know the shop we go to buy things to renovate the house?” He could’ve had an hours long monologue about his usage of we in this situation, but right now wasn’t the right time for it. Jaemin nodded. “Okay, now imagine it has every item under the sun. Maybe more.”
Jaemin’s eyes sparkled to life.
“Magazines?”
“Of every kind. Books, too. Stationary .”
“Quills?”
“Expensive taste you got there, but yes? Maybe?” Yangyang sure hoped that Jaemin didn’t expect him to also find -
“Inkpots?” Yeah, he did. Yangyang offered the ghost a nervous smile, entering the parking lot and looking, almost distracted, for a spot. “Oh, probably not inkpots. But books! It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, probably not.” Oh, a nice spot near the entrance. Great. He parked, checked if his wallet was still there, and then opened the Door. Jaemin didn’t bother with these formalities: he simply passed by the car’s husk directly, standing by Yangyang’s side. “You know, being a ghost probably , but being able to pass by things is nifty at least.”
Jaemin shrugged, the two walking to the brightly lit entrance, the chemical smell of nothing wafting to him. He grabbed a cart, and Jaemin jumped inside like the kid he was. Yangyang sighed, but started maneuvering the cart around, walking slowly. He went straight for the small section with books and dusty CDs no one bought anymore, near the entrance.
“It’s nice. You do end up seeing what’s inside the walls, though.” Jaemin turned up his nose at that thought. “The walls at our house are full of… You know.”
Yangyang paused in the middle of the corridor, and Jaemin, distractedly, grabbed a CD. He analyzed it for a moment.
Our house? Had he heard it right? It wasn’t - was it? Sure, the house was in Yangyang’s name, but Jaemin had lived on it far longer than, well, anyone else. So yeah, technically, it was their house, but - but was it? Was it their house , just because they were living together, renovating it together, and buying things for it after discussing the renovations together? What did that make them? They were friends, sure, and Yangyang couldn’t exactly deny that he enjoyed Jaemin’s presence, but was it like that? Was he having the beginning of some sort of feelings for a ghost? What were these, in the grand scheme of things? It wasn’t like he could have a full life with a ghost: for starters, how would -
, he was having the we monologue. Yangyang bottled it up neatly, took a deep breath. He was not going to have a questioning of his future in the middle of the 24/7 supermarket, as tempting as it was.
“Full of what?” He asked, instead of asking himself questions. Externalize , not internalize. Besides, the question of the walls was important - what if one of his uncles had hidden a skeleton there? He knew one who probably had a hidden skeleton in the walls of his house and in the crawlspace too.
“Oh, you know.” Jaemin put the CD back in place, and Yangyang continued walking. The books were just a short distance away, and Jaemin, seeing them, squinted. “What are those?”
“Books. What are the walls full of, Jaemin?” Yangyang asked once more, and Jaemin grabbed one of the books carefully.
“They’re quite thin. More like a collection of pamphlets.” He turned his nose at them. “Ah, you know. Dust. Roaches. Dead rats. Some faulty wiring.”
A headache was forming itself on Yangyang’s head, but some ibuprofen could probably solve it. He set that particular problem aside.
Jaemin leafed through a few books, and Yangyang leaned in, giving his opinion on the ones he’d read (few) and the ones he hadn’t (a lot); the ghost picked up a few choice books, and they moved on swiftly.
“Back in my day…” Jaemin started, as they passed by the clothes’ section. Yangyang made a vague humming sound, pausing at one of the little clothes rack to see the price of a t-shirt; the weather was warming up, and he didn’t have much in terms of summer-y clothes. “Clothes were tailored. This is… A sight, surely.”
“Yeah, they’re mass produced.” A pause. Yangyang racked his brain, trying to remember what little history he had learned, then realized he knew nothing, actually. Curse his trainee years, he supposed. Yangyang should probably get a few classes to make up for that. “Uh, when you mean tailored…?”
“A visit thrice a year to get new clothes, yes. Two or three hours spent with mother to choose fabrics, styles, general clothing.” Jaemin sighed, and Yangyang felt slightly awful for simply picking up what he felt was nice and cheap and throwing it in the cart. “Awfully boring. This is much simpler. I just wish I could...”
A pause, and Jaemin seemed to be grasping with something inside himself. Yangyang waited, patiently pretending to not see the struggle as he went through; it seemed like something private.
“It’s nothing.” He looked around, with a glint to his eyes that was hard to name. “Just… It gave me a few good ideas, that’s all.”
“If you say so.” Yangyang replied, and wondered - was the blood drumming in his ears, his heart beating too fast in his chest at the sight of Jaemin’s face, or was it thunder, roaring outside? There had been no rain in the forecast, but Yangyang preferred to think it was that option.
“Food surely has changed, too.” Jaemin rose from his seat in the cart, grabbing a cup noodle, looking at it from every angle. “Doesn’t the seafood inside this spoil easily?”
“No, it’s dried and preserved.” Yangyang replied, grabbing handfuls of instant food and sweet things. “I’d like something fresh, though. I’ll be just preservatives if this goes on, but the kitchen still isn’t done yet.”
Jaemin made a noise, and kept staring at the food. Yangyang persevered on, grabbing candy and assorted things, with Jaemin carefully piling everything around him, taking in a few moments more to observe the packaging, touching it like he’d never seen it before - well, Yangyang reasoned, as a ghost stuck to the house, Jaemin probably was seeing much for the first time.
“Everything’s changed while I was asleep.” He sighed, finishing his pile of candy as Yangyang slowly drove to the self-checkout. “I mean, chocolate before was a delicacy, and now you can buy it for less than a penny.”
“Times change.” Yangyang offered, and Jaemin shrugged. “Hey, think about it: at least you’re here to see it.”
A pause. Yangyang let him have his time.
“But I’m not here, am I? I’m just an afterimage. A leftover of times long gone. I can’t even eat food, much less breathe.” Jaemin struggled with words, wavering from visible to invisible in a quick moment, and the lights at the supermarket flicked ominously, like they were in a bad horror movie. A rumble of murmurs swept through the supermarket, and Yangyang knew he’d have to act fast. “What sort of life is that? It’s not a life, it’s a mockery. I stayed and others moved on. I could’ve reincarnated, I -”
“Jaemin.” Yangyang started, in a soft tone. Jaemin’s eyes tore to him, and Yangyang hoped the note of panic in his voice was only audible to him. “Listen, who cares if it’s a mockery or not? You don’t even know if reincarnation is real or not. You’re here, you’re seeing things, you’re experiencing things, and you’ll still do the same forever.”
“Stuck in a house, as I am?” Jaemin asked, in a bitter tone, and Yangyang bit his tongue. “I am only seeing the world around me because you’re, quite literally, carrying me by the hand as if I were a child.”
“Then I’ll keep doing so. I’ll wear you around my wrist as a bracelet, and we’ll travel the world so you can see how different it is.” Jaemin’s eyes scanned him, a frown etched so deeply in his face Yangyang worried it would not let go. “Unfortunately, I grew attached to you.”
The feelings his chest harbored spilled into his tongue, becoming words, and Yangyang hoped the other would not notice it; that it was just a declaration of friendship by Victorian era standards or whatever.
Jaemin smiled, and the lights settled back to normal, the ghost seemingly having calmed down.
“You’re sounding like a bad pamphlet.” Jaemin joked, going back to adjusting his pile of food, and Yangyang felt his shoulders relax. “Like one of those very gaudy ones.”
“Oh, so you read those, huh?” Yangyang kept walking, placing one foot after another mechanically. Soon enough, they’d be back at home, safe and with food, and Yangyang wouldn’t have to leave until the renovations were done.
Jaemin laughed, but his cheeks were dusted with pink, which just prompted Yangyang to laugh with him.
Another day, another time Yangyang was slowly going mad by sanding down furniture.
After putting everything he’d thrown through the window in the back of his car for later disposal, Yangyang hadn’t touched the pile of items still lying in the attic. From his frenzied memories of a sleepless deep cleaning, he remembered seeing albums of photos, trinkets of a childhood well lived, and the thought of going in depth at them for more than the second it took for him to sort it out was still too raw to be lingered upon, so Yangyang simply didn’t. He ignored the attic and its pull-through stairs, and watched ty YouTube videos on how to reupholster a couch.
Jaemin also did not mention it, bless him: he read his terrible paperback novellas, floating mid-air. Surely, for those who didn’t see Jaemin, it was probably quite the sight - and Yangyang thanked whatever deities were listening in that they lived in the middle of nowhere.
“So, hear me out - this woman thinks the bear is in love with her.” He scoffed and rolled his eyes. Yangyang, sanding down a bed frame, hummed in agreement. “It’s a bear. Can it feel love?”
“I don’t know.” Yangyang replied, barely thinking about his words. “Can you?”
A pause, and Yangyang finished sanding down the varnish. Now he had to apply another coat, and then wait for it to dry. Maybe he should mess around the attic, sort stuff out and see if he could sell what his extended family didn’t want or need in some sort of flea market.
“I can, I think.” Jaemin said, slowly, as if he was weighing every word on his tongue. Yangyang rose his eyes, and Jaemin had set the novel - Bear,with a very vivid cover of a woman in the arms of an actual bear - aside. Yangyang realized what he’d said, and bit his tongue, ready to apologize. “Isn’t it weird? I can’t eat, can’t breathe, but I can feel.”
“Does it mean you’re human, then?” Yangyang wanted to sand out his brain, because it seemed to not be working today, speaking stupidities.
Jaemin laughed, and the air eased up around the two.
“Maybe. Who knows?” The ghost stretched, and Yangyang rose from his spot on the floor, looking through the window. They were in the once-upon-a-time library of the house, bathing into the early afternoon sun. “Where you’re going?”
“Attic. I have to sort the things there at some point.” He sighed, passed a hand through his black hair. He hated the idea of finding anything of his mother’s in there, hated the idea of confronting the feelings it arose in him.
“Alright, race you there!” Jaemin nodded, going straight to the attic. Yangyang sighed again - there was no point in competing when you could just torpedo yourself through the wood, into the air. He slowly started the trek upstairs, feet heavy, as if he didn’t really want to do that.
It wasn’t an option: he had to.
Sorting was - well, sorting. He folded old clothes from the boxes after checking them, put away albums in neat piles. Yangyang found more trinkets: broken toys, letters that had never been finished, moth-eaten novels that he trashed straight away, the words too faded for him to make sense of it. Jaemin helped, in the only way he could, by talking incessantly, chattering and chattering.
He opened one of the albums by accident, the binding too weakened by time to support being handled, and there was his mom, smiling at the photo, laughing loudly in a birthday party, a paper hat askew on her head. On the other page, a photo of her and one of his uncles being carried around by his grandfather.
“You look like him.” Jaemin said, over Yangyang’s shoulder. Yangyang looked at Jaemin, then at his grandfather. “It’s the eyes.”
He didn’t see it. No, all he saw was his mother’s smile, reflected in his mouth, his mother’s hair in his own, his mother’s -
“Really?” he asked, dryly. Jaemin nodded, one spectral finger on the photograph.
“When you laugh, you show your teeth. And your mouth does this shape, too, and your eyes…” Jaemin left the phrase die, and looked away. Yangyang laughed.
“What, have you been staring at me? Are you in love with me?” A pause from Jaemin. Yangyang looked at him, heat pooling in his cheeks the more the silence continued. He was close, so close, lips full and - no, stop . “Jaemin? Sorry, I shouldn’t have -”
“Sorry, it seems like my energies are low. I’ll go rest for a while.” Before Yangyang could reply, Jaemin disappeared, and the living boy put his head in his hands.
Did he like Jaemin? Possibly. He wasn’t going to name this feeling on his chest. The question here, however, was another - did Jaemin like him back? If so, what were they going to do? Jaemin was a ghost, Yangyang was not.
Jaemin disappeared for hours on end, and Yangyang, just in case, wore the tie around his wrist as he went on a walk before dinner. The attic had been sorted, and messages to his family had been sent out, in case they wanted anything from the house before Yangyang burned the items to a crisp. Not that he said it with those exact words, a more neutral and careful “dispose of it” in the copy and pasted message he sent out, but that was the sentiment. Perhaps he should’ve added that bonfire emoji...
He had nothing to do for a few minutes, and the air was crisp, so why not take a walk? He went through the kitchen door, kicking it to stay in place - cringing when it folded like wet tissue paper, falling in two clumps; he made a mental note to grab some of the spare canvas he had and stick it there when he came back -, then looked around the backyard: a perfectly empty space that could fit a large pool, a chicken coop, a vegetable garden, and still have enough space for children to run around freely.
The apple tree Jaemin had mentioned was there, too, full of bright white flowers in moonlight, looking like little stars just out of reach. That looked like a perfect spot to put in a swing tire, so he walked there, enjoying the smell wafting to him.
Maybe staying wouldn’t be such a bad idea. He could plant a few more apple trees, start a mead production, sell some honey. It would be a timed life, full of the routine of a small farm, but it would be a life he could see himself leading.
Yangyang, however, didn’t really want that right now, but maybe in a few years, after he traveled for a while, knew the world before setting down. Touching the tie around his wrist, he felt as if to stay before seeing the world would be a betrayal to Jaemin somehow.
He shook his head. What was he even thinking? The ghost was a ghost. What was there to betray? He rested his back against the tree trunk, sliding to the ground.
Above him, stars shone, blinking slowly. The moon hung in the sky, pale and quiet, and Yangyang stared at it for seemingly a long time, but he knew, logically, it was closer to a few minutes.
The moon offered no answers, no respite, and he sighed. Yangyang passed a hand through his hair and kept staring at the sky; maybe if he did for long enough, the stars would offer some sort of answer to his predicament.
“What are you doing?” Asked Jaemin, and Yangyang craned his neck, looking upwards: Jaemin was sitting on a branch of the tree, upside down, looking like a pitch-perfect illustration of some unruly boy in an old-time magazine.
“Hey, Jaemin.” He started, and the boy jumped from the branch he was sitting on, resting by Yangyang’s side. “Just thinking, I guess? Are you feeling better?”
Jaemin made a confused expression, a question mark visible in his eyes, before some sort of realization dawned on him, and he offered a carefully measured smile.
“Oh, yeah, absolutely! Just needed to soak up some sun.” Yangyang cocked his head, but didn’t question it. Maybe even ghosts needed some vitamin D once in a while. “So, why are you here?”
Yangyang shrugged.
“Figured I could take a walk before dinner.” What he did not say was a vague, almost silent and I kind of missed you . Jaemin simply nodded, resting by his side, their fingers intertwining before they realized what they’d done. The cold static was already a comfort to Yangyang.
His mother was at the doorstep, or at least that was what the message he received thirty seconds ago said. He’d heard the sound of the motor of a car dying, but had ignored it, thinking it had been a construct from his head after listening to so many hours of machinery.
But then his phone had pinged, too loud in the empty house, making him cringe. He peeked through the master bedroom window, where he holed himself up to fix a small hole in the wall, and found her car, empty.
“.” He said, and Jaemin, rising his head from the bear novel he was still diligently reading, looked up. “It’s my mother.”
“Greet her?” Jaemin said, turning a page, and then pausing his page turning. “Did you tell her I haunted this place?”
“That’s the least of my problems.” He rose from where he was, dirty with splatters of spackling paste, covered in a sheen of sweat. “She hates what I do.”
Jaemin looked at him up and down, nodded, and stopped floating in place as he was wont to do, instead settling onto the floor with his own two feet. Jaemin huffed, passing a hand through his black hair, and Yangyang stared at him, not understanding anything.
“Come on, I’m not going to let you alone. You had two breakdowns because of her - don’t think that just because I’m old I wasn’t taught how to count -, and I’m not going to let you have a third because you dealt with her on your own.”
Yangyang made a quick calculation in his head, and offered a defeated nod.
“Thank you.” He said, almost shyly, and Jaemin gave a bright smile, offering a hand for Yangyang to hold.
“We’re friends, and I’m here to help by keeping you company.” Yangyang rolled his eyes, descending the staircase. If he looked closely, he’d see where the sun had bleached long-gone portraits; however, he knew that pausing and stopping to let his mind wander wouldn’t make his mom disappear from the doorstep.
Jaemin lightly nudged him, and his touch felt cool as usual. With a sigh, he kept his trek, and went to the front door.
From the little glass windows in the door, he could see his mom, standing regally amidst the mess he hadn’t cleaned up yet, wearing the pantsuit combo he’d never seen her not wearing. When looking through the photographs, it had surprised him to not see her wearing one as a child.
Yangyang opened the door, and her gaze analysed him critically - from the mussed up hair that hadn’t seen a brush in a few days, the clothes dirty with paint and dust, to the steel-inforced boots he wore for safety.
“Hi, mom.” He started, and his mom offered Yangyang a curt nod, as if she resented being there. “The things are in the attic, do you want to go there or…?”
His mother sniffed. Sure, the house still smelled a little bit bad, but at least it wasn’t decay anymore: no, it was that pleasantly unpleasant scent of renovation, a mix of wood dust and paint.
“No, thank you.” She replied, looking anywhere but into Yangyang’s eyes. Jaemin huffed. “If you could please pick it up and bring it to me, it’d be preferred.”
Yangyang gave her a meaningless smile and closed the door on her face. It felt like an empty gesture.
“You okay?” Jaemin asked, as Yangyang moved, almost mechanically, upstairs.
“I don’t know.” He replied, and ruminated over his thoughts for a long second: step, step, step, the creaking noise of the stairs. “It just feels like I’ve built up this whole confrontational script in my head, but she wasn’t told to act like it, so now I’m left behind wondering if I’m not the one who’s wrong.”
“Sounds like typical mother problems to me.” Jaemin hummed, in answer, and Yangyang nodded. “But if it can’t be fixed, well. Throw it away?”
“I just might.”
His mother did not get the box. Instead, all she did was gesture, amidst a phone call, for him to put it in the hatch, opening it with a click of the car keys. Yangyang bit his tongue and obeyed, Jaemin watching his mother with a watchful gaze, hovering around her.
Yangyang, busy, did not notice what he was doing until his mom let out a yell, and he looked up, worried. His mom seemed frazzled for a second, before recomposing herself.
Jaemin had a grin on his face, much like a cat that ate a canary. He ignored it.
“Everything alright?” He called, and his mother, who looked like she had seen a ghost (Yangyang solemnly pretended he did not see Jaemin behind her) stared at him.
“Yes, yes. Are you done yet?” She asked, and Yangyang closed the hatch. His mother moved swiftly, with Jaemin floating gently behind her.
When they passed by, she stared at Yangyang for a long second. Jaemin leaned in, staring as well, unblinkingly. Like this, he almost seemed like a terrifying ghost.
Almost: the sailor uniform made it sort of laughable.
“Are you… Alright?” She asked, and Yangyang nodded. “Good.”
Then, without another word, she entered her car and left. Yangyang stared at the figure it made until it disappeared in the horizon, and then stared at Jaemin.
“Did you say anything?”
“Not much.” Jaemin replied, and Yangyang offered a weary sigh. “Come on, now. Cheer up. I think you left the can of drywall open.”
Yangyang panicked, grabbing Jaemin’s ghostly hand, and dragged him upstairs with laughter ringing in his ears.
Yangyang stretched, looked at the clean walls: he’d applied a careful coat of primer a few days before, as soon as the drywall he’d put in had dried, and then had busied himself with cleaning the floors properly, applying some coats of finish until it shone as if new.
“You’re lucky.” He had complained to Jaemin, sitting on the steps of the second floor, watching the finish dry on the first floor. “You don’t have to walk.”
“The dead have to have some advantage over the living!” Jaemin had called, floating lazily around the floor as if he was in a pool instead of in the air.
Now, however, the walls stared back at him, the message his mother had scribbled gone, hidden underneath the paint never to resurface. The living room, the room he’d let Jaemin design, had been painted a vibrant teal green, the decorations he’d carefully selected covered with canvas so it wouldn’t get dirty until everything was ready to be put in place. Jaemin had a plan, one Yangyang had helped sketch in loose sheets of paper, in the back of his terrible paperback with half-dying pens he’d fished out of his car.
And, in-between: sketches, in Yangyang’s mind, of Jaemin’s smile. He knew that he’d had no artistic talent for it, so it was better to keep it in his mind. Besides, since Jaemin did not sleep near Yangyang, how was he supposed to draw him otherwise?
He wasn’t sure he wanted to name these feelings, but he knew, instinctually, what they were: love, fluttering amidst his ribs, blooming in his chest in a beautiful garden that was private to Yangyang. He hesitated in naming them because Jaemin was, at the end of the day, a ghost from the Victorian era - how would he react to such things? Time had passed him by, culture and expectations had changed, and he wasn’t sure how Jaemin would react. Part of him feared losing the ghost that had grown so much in his heart; part of him wanted to speak up.
Yangyang, however, ignored it for now: what those concerns would aid him, really? All they would do was distract him, as he was setting up the decorative wood ceiling beams, the radio playing a soft song, barely reaching his ears, and Jaemin floated by his side, acting as an assistant of sorts.
Of sorts - he was chatting Yangyang’s ear off, talking about the newest paperback they’d bought on their bi-weekly outings. He enjoyed reading, and Yangyang, with funds to spare, saw no reason to not indulge it.
“Yeah, and then in the novel, the girl just…” Jaemin was saying, with Yangyang half-listening, half-tightening the last screws of one of the ceiling beams - six down, three to go! -, eyes focused on that little thing, when he lost balance.
There was no rhyme or reason to it: perhaps he had put too much strength on screwing it, perhaps he had leaned too far in; all Yangyang knew was the breathlessness of falling, even though it was just three meters or so.
Still. He saw the floor approaching too fast, heard the loud clank noise of the stairs hitting the ground much faster than him, and closed his eyes:
He didn’t feel the floor crush him, break his ribs and make him into a corpse. All Yangyang felt was a hand pulling his shirt, and he craned his head, opening his eyes, and finding Jaemin holding him as if he weighed nothing - or, at least, he assumed that was what Jaemin wanted to show, but the strain on his face said otherwise.
“Thanks.” He said, and Jaemin, with a silent nod, gently floated both of them down.
“You can’t become a ghost yet.” Jaemin replied, with his usual smile, although it seemed a bit strained. He gently let him go to the ground, feet touching the floor much later than he would have, had Jaemin not interfered. Yangyang righted himself on the floor, and Jaemin held his arms carefully, as if he was glass. To a ghost, a mortal must seem like one, he reasoned. “I mean, I like you alive.”
Jaemin’s hands rested on his arms, cold and electrifying, and both seemed frozen, unable to move, rooted to the spot. He seemed almost warm, even though Yangyang knew there was no logic to this thought - it must’ve been his head, playing tricks with him. Yes, surely that was why his heart raced so, a steady thump-thump-thump against the walls of his ribcage.
“I…” Yangyang choked out, and Jaemin’s smile could’ve outshined the sun itself, before his mind went blank, his mouth crashing against Jaemin’s own while he was still solid and real.
It felt like touch the static of a tube television, like lightning coursing its way through his body: it felt unreal and real at the same time, and when he let go, Jaemin’s eyes were focused on him.
A blush crept through Yangyang’s cheeks.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have -” Yangyang started, and Jaemin kissed him once more, his arms circling around Yangyang’s waist, trying to bring him closer without actually going into the ectoplasm of his body. Electricity made his fingers tingle pleasantly, as if limbs were awakening after a long time of disuse, and Yangyang let himself go during it.
Jaemin might’ve been a ghost, but he felt real during those brief seconds: why shouldn’t he use that time to its fullest?
“Finally.” Jaemin said, with a smile, when they separated, with a grin on his face. His hand rested on Yangyang’s face, warm, impossibly warm, and Yangyang wasn’t sure how much it was his nerves overheating with questions and how much it was Jaemin. “I had thought you were like me, but I wasn’t ever sure. Times have changed so much that not even customs were the same amongst men.”
He cocked his head, failing to understand what Jaemin was speaking about, even though he knew, instinctively, it was about a long time ago.
“Like you ?” Yangyang echoed, blinking fast, and Jaemin chuckled darkly.
“Do you think I killed myself for fun?” He asked, obviously rhetorical, and Yangyang bit his tongue. “No. My parents wanted me to marry this one girl. She was nice, but she deserved better than someone like me, who could never love her like she deserved to be loved. I knew that if I blew off this offer, my parents would find another, and another, and another, until I was too worn down to do anything but comply. So I...”
Jaemin paused, eyes distant, as if he did not want to speak what he’d done to himself, biting his lower lip. Yangyang held his hands for a long moment, the red tie he wore as a bracelet bright as blood.
“You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.” He started, softly, and Jaemin’s eyes still did not turn to him. “And I’ll not let you go. We are stuck together. I mean, come on. You already got me in shackles, see.”
He waved the bracelet for good measure, and Jaemin laughed a little, eyes returning to him.
“I’ll hold you onto that promise.” Jaemin said, dazzling in his beauty, and Yangyang held his hand tighter.
They finished the house, once a more splendorous thing, and when it came to put it up for sale, Yangyang hesitated.
“It would be nice to come back to it.” He told Jaemin, both sitting on a bench near the real estate agency. Jaemin, sunning himself as if he could get a tan, hummed in answer, eyes closed. “On the other hand, I need money.”
“I already told you my two cents on it.” He drawled, like some sort of lazy alley cat. “It’s your house.”
“I invested a lot on it, and would like some return on it.” Yangyang returned, and Jaemin shrugged.
“Does it matter, really? Are you attached to the house or to me?” Jaemin joked, and Yangyang paused for a moment. “I mean, sure, the place is lovely and all, but it’s… Land. Land, a few apple trees, four walls and a roof. You can have that anywhere. But me? No offense, but there’s only one of me, and I’m here with you already. Place’s cozy and all, but...”
Yangyang laughed, rose up and stretched.
“Alright, alright, you convinced me. I’ll go there, put it for sale. So, after this - where do you want to go?” He asked, and Jaemin silently asked for Yangyang’s phone, which he handed without thinking. “We can go anywhere you’d like.”
A pause for a small eternity, only the warmth of the sun on his back.
“I never saw the sea when I was alive.” Jaemin replied, so small and quiet Yangyang was almost sure he’d imagined it.
“Then find somewhere with a nice beach while I’m in there.” He kissed Jaemin’s lips for a moment, before letting go.
It was a lovely hotel room, in one of the tallest floors offered and with an ocean view. He’d never expected the house to be popular, but Yangyang guessed that promoting it as being haunted did the trick. Sure, the ghost was with him now, but hey - that wasn’t important, was it? Yangyang guessed not.
Jaemin looked around in awe, floating from one side to another, while Yangyang put his bags on a corner, slightly tired from the flight - Jaemin had enjoyed walking around the airplane, had even put his head out of the window (“so, how’s the weather outside?” “Freezing!”) - and went to open the window.
Jaemin looked at Yangyang’s passport, left strewn over the hotel bed, and Yangyang took in the sun's warmth, the smell of sea salt, the breeze mussing up his dark hair.
“Oh, so that’s your name!” Jaemin chirped. Yangyang turned to face him, looked at Jaemin. The ghost was flicking through the pages of the passport, and it baffled Yangyang.
“What?”
“You never told me your name.” Jaemin shrugged, floating lazily over the bed. “I mean, weird, really, to not give your name when someone gives theirs to you, but you were having a really bad time, so I let it slide.”
Yangyang opened his mouth and closed it several times, much like a fish.
“And after that?”
“I figured it was rude to ask.” Jaemin smiled. “I’m Jaemin.”
Yangyang paused for a moment, then laughed. Jaemin approached him, his fingers intertwining with Yangyang’s in a gesture so automatic neither of them really noticed it.
“Fine. I’m Yangyang. Nice to meet you. Please, keep haunting me.”
“That’s my entire plan.”
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