Soohyuk was just an afterimage, a mixture of gray and black, hazy around the edges, pining after something whole. He didn't know when it started, when Hyuksoo became Soohyuk, when his wrists shrunk to the size of a pin, when his bones sharpened into knives, when his blood ran cold and froze, when he died. He didn't know when a bathroom stall became home, when the pain became salvage. All he knew was darkness. All he knew was suffocation. All he knew was drowning.

All he knew was emptiness.

It was addicting really, the pain and the fear. It was exhilarating.The fear he had every time he looked in the mirror and saw his glassy eyes, his protruding bones, his pale taut skin, the smirk left on his lips. He always felt like choking at the sight. He always felt like he had taken a slap to the face, a knife to the chest. Except the knife never reached his chest, it roamed over his ankles and his hips, over his wrists and his neck. It left small, subtle marks, a hunter claiming its pray and Soohyuk let it. He let the knife have its way with him. He let the darkness have its way with him.

He let it devour him, let it drown him, let it maim him, let it claim him, let it eat him, let it breech him, let it break him.

Until Soohyuk was just a shadow wandering and wandering. Until someone saw the beauty in his broken pieces and dressed him up in designer clothes, and he let them. He let them have their way with him.

So he lined up behind all the other ghosts and waited his turn for the stage lights to blind him