Chanyeol hears the roar of his wheels against the concrete loud in his ears as he crouches on his skateboard, the momentum of his downwards swoop from the wall opposite sending him shooting up to the top and into the air. Then it’s a brief moment of that soaring feeling he’s always loved so much. The adrenaline rush of performing a trick that could badly hurt him if he fell pumps through his veins as he shoots down the wall again and up the opposite side of the skate bowl. This time he controls his height, kicking his skateboard up into his hand to catch it mid-air and jumping onto the concrete rim. Baekhyun, Lu Han, Minseok and the rest are waiting for their turns. Taeyong and Amber are perched on the top rail watching. Their faces light up and they wave their hands when they see him looking, begging for high fives as usual, which he laughingly walks over to give them.

He unbuckles his helmet as Minseok jumps down onto the vertical wall below and flops down beside Baekhyun, shaking his head hard to free his sweat-dampened hair from its doubtlessly helmet-shaped form.

“Nice one,” Baekhyun says, holding out his hand for a slap-and-clasp. “You got some pretty good air on those 180s.”

Chanyeol grins back, letting go and leaning back against the rail to watch Minseok swoop and soar. He’s been landing 180s since he was nine, but it’s only been a month since he started skateboarding again and he’s still working up to feeling confident throwing the flashier tricks he used to love showing off. For now, he’s content just feeling the thrill of skateboarding again, without the terrible guilt that had plagued him even thinking about it before.

It’s been two months since Jongdae left, and though Chanyeol still misses him terribly, he’s doing his best to live the life Jongdae gave him. There are times when the grief threatens to crush him, so heavy and impossible to bear that he’s not sure how he’ll ever stand up again—but he has a reason to stand up again now. When things feel like they’re getting too hard to bear, he catches himself with music, singing along to his guitar even when his throat is so tight he can barely make a sound. He jumps onto his skateboard and flies around the bowl, and lets the flowing air dry his tears. If there’s any chance that Jongdae might be able to see him every now and then, he wants Jongdae to see Chanyeol living the life he wanted him to live.

The summer skate fest was a couple of weeks ago, so finally the half-joking, half-deadly serious competition between Minseok, Baekhyun and Lu Han for the title of best local (which, Chanyeol was not even slightly surprised to see, went to Minseok) is over and they’re back to just having fun. Chanyeol didn’t compete—he’s not ready for that yet—but he helped with the kids’ contest and had a surprisingly good time herding youngsters to the right place at the right time, hyping them up before their runs and cheering them wildly when they were done. Even the kids who fell ended up cracking a smile when Chanyeol told them how great they’d done and hilariously imitated their tricks without a skateboard.

“I’m so stoked for you, man,” Baekhyun says now. It’s kind of out of the blue, and Chanyeol glances at him. Baekhyun’s eyes are following Lu Han’s movement around the bowl. “Seriously. I got my best friend back, these past few weeks. I missed him.”

If Baekhyun had said anything so sappy to him before all this happened, Chanyeol would have into next Thursday. But now, he understands how hard it is for Baekhyun to say something sincere without immediately undermining it with a dumb joke, and he appreciates it.

“I missed him too,” he says. “Guess I just needed time.” And a beautiful boy with gentle brown eyes and a smile brighter than the sun to teach him how to breathe again.

They watch Minseok and Lu Han compete for who can get the craziest air off the opposite vert wall for a while, Taeyong and Amber enthusiastically yelling out scores out of ten, until they’re interrupted by Yixing hurrying up to the railing. The lowering sun behind him casts his face into shadow as they squint up at him.

“Have any of you kids seen Koko?” he asks worriedly. “She’s run off again and I can’t find her. Usually she turns up by now, it’s her dinner time.”

Chanyeol shakes his head, standing up to survey the skate park from his greater height as Baekhyun also says he hasn’t seen her. “Want us to help look?” he asks.

“Yes please, if you wouldn’t mind,” Yixing says with relief, so Baekhyun and Chanyeol round up a few more willing volunteers and set a search party going along the beach and the nearby streets. He and Baekhyun head out towards the cliffs on the saltwater pool side of the bay. Baekhyun says he’ll check the shallow caves below the cliffs, so Chanyeol starts to climb the footpath that leads to the next bay over. The path climbs steeply for a bit, then levels out as it curves around the cliff, which soon becomes more of a steep grassy slope than a rock face. There are sheep grazing up near the top, and he wonders if Koko got excited chasing sheep up here. He doesn’t think she’d hurt them even if she was able to catch them, which is doubtful considering how slow and floppily she runs, but he’s not sure any farmer would believe that. “Koko!” he calls, but no excited retriever appears.

Chanyeol decides to go a little further before turning back. He jogs around the next few bends, calling Koko’s name, but only gets the bleat of sheep and the caw of seagulls in return.

Someone else has probably found Koko by now. She’s probably at home eating her dinner. He stops and turns to begin his journey back to the beach, but then he hears a small yelp. He freezes, listening hard. “Koko?”

The yelp comes again, followed by a couple of whimpers and whines. They’re coming from below him. Chanyeol steps to the edge of the path and looks down. There, stuck in the branches of a small, stunted tree growing sideways out of the slope a couple of metres below him, is a naughty brown retriever.

“How the heck did you get there,” Chanyeol mutters. The slope isn’t vertical here, not impossible for him to get down if he clings to the tufty grass for balance. Koko ought to be able to get up if she wasn’t caught in the tree branches. He gets to his hands and knees to inspect the ground. There are rabbit holes here and there, which makes him think Koko was chasing rabbits when she went over. She’s not exactly known for her smarts. The problem is, just metres below the tree, the grassy slope breaks off and plunges down probably thirty metres onto the rocks at the base of the cliff. He can’t see the surf from this angle, but he can hear it roaring and crashing.

Chanyeol thinks about going for help, but Koko is wriggling dangerously now that she’s seen him, trying to come to him. He can just picture her jerking free and plummeting over the edge. He sits down and slides carefully down the slope, controlling his descent by grabbing tufts of grass, until his feet meet the stunted tree and brace against the thin trunk. Now he can see that Koko’s collar is tangled in one of the twiggy branches. He braces himself on the slope with one arm and tries to work her collar free with the other, but then realises it’s going to be easier to snap the brittle branch entirely off and detangle it later. It takes a bit of working it back and forth, but eventually he gets it to snap. He grabs Koko’s collar, hauls her bodily out of the tree and shoves her up the slope. She scrambles up to the path and vanishes. Chanyeol can hear her collar bell jingling as she gallops away.

“Nothing like gratitude,” he grumbles to himself. Now he just has to get himself back up to the path. The grass is slippery and his heart thuds a bit as his hands slip, but he’s used to pushing through adrenaline rushes from his skateboarding. If he uses the tree to brace and pushes off it, he thinks he’ll be able to get his hands over the wooden skirting of the path and use that to muscle himself up. He plants the one foot he can get on the thin trunk as firmly as he can and jumps.

There’s a terrible sense of shifting below him as the tree comes right out of the cliff, and instead of his jump propelling him upwards, he’s sliding down. A cry of terror leaves his throat as he slips rapidly, fingernails tearing as he grabs at anything and nothing holds him. Then he’s off the sharp edge and falling, falling, falling…

When he hits the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, he instantly feels several things inside him break, crumple as if made of nothing more than paper. He nearly blacks out with the shock. He can’t move, can’t make a sound. He can’t even breathe, and it isn’t long before his grasp of what just happened begins to slide away from him. He’s cold, so cold, and the sky above starts to grow dim.

As his eyes drift close without him meaning them to, Chanyeol slowly comes to the understanding that he’s dying. He’s going to die, and it’s going to be very soon. Knowing this scares him, but the thing he feels most of all is cold. The weirdest thing is that it doesn’t really hurt. He can tell how broken his body is, and yet it doesn’t hurt.

Jongdae, he thinks. His lips part to let the call he can’t voice out. Jongdae, I’m scared. I need you.

But all he hears is the crashing of the ocean on the rocks beside him, and then he doesn’t hear anything at all.

~~~

Jongdae is in Still Waters again. He’s just watched his mother fade out, her jade healer’s ring on her finger. She’s going back to Earth on another assignment. Each time she goes, he’s tempted to beg her to check in on Chanyeol for him, but he forces himself not to. The news won’t help him. He can’t help Chanyeol. He’s trying to move on, like Junmyeon has told him to. But even though he’s found his mother now and he has work to do as a lightbearer, he still can’t seem to let go. The tug in his chest won’t let him. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever be able to stop needing Chanyeol.

He turns, lantern in hand, to go back to Exordium, when he hears something. It sounded like someone calling his name, but Still Waters is always silent. For a moment he thinks it must be his mother, back for some reason and wanting him, but when he spins around the courtyard is utterly empty.

Then he hears his name again, and this time he knows the voice, and it’s accompanied by a terrible jerk on the bond in his chest. It yanks at him with such power that he drops his lantern and staggers to his knees. Instinctively he flings himself towards the other end of the bond, and hits the block they’ve put on him so hard that the recoil spends him sprawling. He scrambles back to his knees and screams for Junmyeon.

Junmyeon appears in front of him, looking alarmed. “What?”

Jongdae scrambles forwards on his knees to cling to Junmyeon’s robes. He’s nearly blacking out with the pain coming down the bond at him, and Junmyeon crouches swiftly to catch him. “Jongdae, what is it?”

“Chanyeol,” Jongdae gasps. “Chanyeol is dying. Hyung—please—”

Junmyeon’s eyes go wide. “I’ll go check on him.” He stands up and starts to slip, and Jongdae lunges to his feet and latches onto his arm without even thinking. There’s a sense of slamming into something incredibly hard at incredible speed and that something just snapping, and then Jongdae and Junmyeon are staggering on the rocks at the base of a cliff at sunset, with the ocean crashing nearby.

“What the hell," Junmyeon wheezes, clutching at his chest. “Jongdae—”

Jongdae isn’t listening. His eyes have fallen on the broken figure lying nearby. Chanyeol’s eyes are closed and blood stains the rocks below him. It’s clear he fell from the cliff. How and why doesn’t matter right now. What matters is the reaper standing at Chanyeol’s head, a paper envelope with Chanyeol’s name on it in one hand, patiently waiting for his soul to leave his body so he can seal his death.

“No,” Jongdae whispers. “Kyungsoo, no.”

Kyungsoo looks up at him then. His face is as grave as it ever is, dark eyes deep and sad.

“I’m sorry, Jongdae,” he says.

“No!” Jongdae screams the word this time. “Why isn’t there a healer here?” He spins around to Junmyeon as his vision blurs. “Find a healer. Find my mother. She’ll come.”

“I have his seal of death, Jongdae,” Kyungsoo says behind him. His voice sounds almost gentle as Jongdae spins back around, dashing the tears from his eyes. “You know how this works. This is the time for Chanyeol to die. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

“That’s not true,” Jongdae says furiously. “You can unseal it! Junmyeon told me you’ve done it before! Some guy in a desert hundreds of years ago, right, hyung?”

“Jongdae,” Junmyeon gasps, sounding appalled. Kyungsoo’s dark eyes snap over Jongdae’s shoulders and lock on to Junmyeon, and Jongdae belatedly realises that maybe Junmyeon wasn’t meant to share stories like that with him, but he doesn’t care. He needs to know.

“That takes permission,” Kyungsoo says slowly. “It’s not in my hands. It needs special permission from the Bookkeeper, and it’s only happened once in the last five hundred years. Even that was due to a mix-up.”

“I’ll get permission,” Jongdae says. He feels like he’s on fire, every inch of him blazing with desperation. “I’ll make the Bookkeeper give me permission. How do I meet them?”

Kyungsoo looks hesitant. Jongdae is about to fly at him and shake the answer out of him, reaper or not, but then a soft mist issues up from Chanyeol’s body, swirling gently upwards and gathering density, and both Jongdae’s and Kyungsoo’s eyes go to the onyx ring. It’s glowing white.

“Chanyeol,” Jongdae whispers. The mist grows denser, until suddenly it’s Chanyeol standing in front of Jongdae, only pale, like all the saturation in his clothes and hair and skin has been leached out. He has that dazed look he’s seen in the eyes of all the recently dead. “Chanyeol, no.”

At the sound of Jongdae’s voice, Chanyeol looks around. Before Jongdae can blink the tears from his eyes to see him properly, Chanyeol rushes forward and throws his arms around Jongdae, crying out his name.

The embrace softens the shock, and for a moment all the panic and despair takes a backseat to the joy that’s crashing through Jongdae with ten times more power than the waves against the rocks. He squeezes Chanyeol tightly, with all the desperation in the bond between them that has been starved for months. Chanyeol repeats his name over and over, moving his hands over Jongdae’s back and shoulders and hair, like he can’t believe Jongdae is here.

This. This is what Jongdae has been needing. To be made whole by the strength and certainty of their love, never to be lost. It just came sooner than he expected.

Too soon.

He pulls back, reaching up to Chanyeol’s pale face with both hands. He feels the sensation that isn’t quite like touch, the polarity of two spirits coming up against each other. “Chanyeol,” he whispers. “You can’t come yet. You’ve barely started living.”

Chanyeol looks confused. “I can’t come where?”

“You died, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo says. Chanyeol turns around and sees his body at his feet.

“Oh,” he says.

Jongdae grabs his wrist, pulling him back to him again. “No,” he says to Kyungsoo. “I won’t let it be true. I won’t.” He hears his mother’s voice in his head. You always fight for the ones you love. It’s true, and Jongdae will not give up this fight. Not ever. “Tell me how to get to the Bookkeeper. Tell me where you go when you see him.”

“I don’t know how to explain it to you,” Kyungsoo says slowly. “When I take souls to the river, I slip to a boat that’s already sailing. I don’t think there even is a far shore. The same thing happens when I go to see the Bookkeeper, except this boat is on a black lake underground, and when I’ve crossed it, I’m at the Bookkeeper’s house. But I don’t know how you’d get there without a reaper’s power to slip to the boat.”

Jongdae goes still. A black lake underground. He knows where that is. It had the same quality as the river did. It has to be the Black Lake at the bottom of Exordium, where all the bad memories drain to.

“Then you take me there,” Jongdae says. “Slip to a boat on that lake and take me with you. If you’re worried you’ll get in trouble, I’ll tell the Bookkeeper I made you do it.”

Kyungsoo sends a faintly desperate look over Jongdae’s shoulder to where Junmyeon is still standing, and Jongdae realises with astonishment that he’s actually making headway. “Please,” he says to Kyungsoo. “I’m not asking you to break any rules. I just want the chance to fight.”

“Just bringing you to the lake is breaking a rule,” Kyungsoo mumbles, but Jongdae shakes his head.

“No, no it isn’t. I’m a lightbearer. I’ve seen the lake myself, I’ve been there. I just can’t cross it without a boat. That’s all I need.”

Kyungsoo’s shoulders sag, and Jongdae knows he’s won. This round, at least. He has a bigger battle to come, but for now, he has a chance. He spins back to Chanyeol, who still looks dazed, clearly not following what’s going on. “Wait here,” he tells him. “Junmyeon-hyung will wait with you. Right, hyung?” He turns to look at Junmyeon, who nods. “I’ve got to go somewhere, but if you wait here for me, I’ll be back soon. Do you promise to wait for me?”

Chanyeol nods. He’s still confused, but he’s looking at Jongdae so trustingly, his big eyes shining like a child’s. “I’ll wait here for you, Jongdae.”

“I love you,” Jongdae says fiercely. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Chanyeol says. “Come back soon.”

Jongdae nods, throat choking up. He turns to Kyungsoo, who holds out his hand like he does to spirits who have just died. Jongdae takes it, and a moment later they’re standing on a small wooden boat, in a lake of utter darkness. Jongdae doesn’t have his lantern, but Kyungsoo holds up his hand with the ring on it and it glows white again, shining through the darkness.

“There are memories in the lake,” Kyungsoo says softly. “I am sorry, but you must not close your eyes. It is the price we pay for visiting the Bookkeeper.”

Jongdae looks at him, aghast. In the strange light of the ring, Kyungsoo’s eyes look as deep as oceans. “Do you mean you have to relieve your worst memories every time you get assigned a job?”

“All reapers must,” Kyungsoo says softly. “One only becomes a reaper by striking a bargain with the Bookkeeper. We work this job to settle a debt we owe to the Balance. The memories ensure we don’t forget what we owe and why.”

Jongdae is confused by this answer. He opens his mouth to ask another question, but then something flashes in the water below them, and his eyes are drawn to it. Just like last time, the sight of his father’s angry face drags him into a vision of it, and this time it’s not just the one memory, but a string of them.

He’s in a dark room. The metallic taste of blood coats his tongue. A child screams. Jongin’s tiny figure runs through the doorway towards him. Heavy steps follow.

His father in dark blue prison clothes. A glass partition between them. He’s pointing at the phone on Jongdae’s side, urging him to pick it up so he can hear what his father has to say. But Jongdae has heard enough of that hard, angry voice, and he backs away, shaking his head. His father’s hand comes up and slams against the glass.

He’s loading dirty laundry from the basket into the washing machine. Something sharp stabs into his finger and he cries out, jerking his hand back. There’s a hypodermic needle stuck into his finger.

Huddled under a bus shelter in the rain. The bus isn’t coming. Jongin is crying. They will be late. Running home in the dark. Their father in the doorway to meet them.

An open coffin. His mother in her best dress. Eyes glued shut. Hair curled. Not like her. Only a shell now. His mouth is dry. He’s as cold and empty as her body.

Jongin clinging to him, sobbing. A social worker prises him free and carries him out of the room. Jongdae screams and flings himself against the closed door so hard he loses consciousness.

On the phone to Jongin. His little brother cries, begging him to come home. But Jongdae has no money to travel so far, and Jongin is too young to understand why his new parents won’t let Jongdae live with them too.

In Chanyeol’s arms. “Don’t go,” Chanyeol’s voice cries. But he doesn’t have the power to hold Jongdae’s fading body, and Jongdae doesn’t have the power to stay.

~~~

They’re standing on the far shore of the Black Lake. Kyungsoo’s hand grips Jongdae’s arm just above the elbow, practically holding him up as Jongdae trembles uncontrollably. It’s not dark here, though. More of a dim greyness, like the light in Still Waters. When he spins around, the lake behind them is not black, but silver, like the mists above.

“It’s not the same lake,” Kyungsoo says. “Don’t bother trying to get back that way.”

Jongdae accepts this. Things never work here the same way as they do on Earth. He’s still shaking, but Kyungsoo is standing firm beside him, like the memories he’s seen haven’t affected him.

“Did you see mine,” he asks, voice unsteady, “or your own?”

“Mine,” Kyungsoo says. “The horror wears off after a hundred years or so.”

Jongdae swallows. Deciding he doesn’t really want to know more, he looks ahead. There’s a house just metres from the shore, a traditional hanok like Still Waters. Kyungsoo starts walking towards it, and Jongdae walks with him. Kyungsoo doesn’t let go of his arm, and Jongdae is grateful for the steadiness it lends him. When they get to the door, Kyungsoo stops.

“You go in alone,” he says. “It’s up to you now.”

“Where are you going?” Jongdae asks. He feels like he’s being abandoned at the entrance of a lion’s den.

“Back to your friend. I can slip from here, and he needs to be kept stable. It’s hard for souls to stay connected to their bodies without a reaper present.”

Jongdae watches Kyungsoo fade out. Then he turns and, gathering all his resolve in his hands, pushes the wooden doors open and steps through.

Yet again, he’s somewhere entirely different. A beautiful, airy pavilion, hung with gauzy floating drapes in light colours. The sides are open to the air and bright sunlight streams through, making the polished wooden floor glow gold. Outside, Jongdae glimpses a garden of such beauty it takes his breath away, winding paths and ancient trees and highly arched bridges over lotus ponds. There seems to be a lake glittering in the distance on both sides, like the pavilion is built out into a lake, but it’s not the black and horrible lake he just crossed, nor even the silver one outside. This lake is bright blue, reflecting the sky. A faint breeze stirs the gauze hangings, and he hears birdsong, and the rustling of the tree leaves. He gasps, so awed as he stares around that he almost forgets what he’s here for.

“Where is this place?” he breathes.

“This is my garden,” a voice says from the front of the pavilion. Jongdae’s head snaps around to see a slim young man with strong, handsome features sitting cross-legged behind a low table at the head of the room. His robes are pale blue silk, and he wears a narrow silk band around his forehead, a white jewel