Namjoo wasn’t anyone; she was never anyone until they made her someone. In the middle of the world she suddenly became the perpetrator, the one who’d caused this mess.

What kind of misunderstanding this was, she couldn’t clarify. With no idea about what was going she was unable to even make sense of what was real. The darkness inside her head fogged around her trapping her into a cage of mist and weightless air.

Days ago she remembered setting the table and serving the man in her head a bowl of soup. The delighted smile he offered had made her heart flutter. In her heart she always believed him to be a replica of her husband with another face. Namjoo had never taken her thoughts far enough to wonder why it was the way it was. Perhaps it had to do with the reason that she’d been told her mentality was close to collapsing.

The eclipse of the night fire was still high in her head, its flames engulfing her like a hungry snake. Namjoo was still terrified of that night and wept endlessly when she thought of it. The love that had been in her grasp had left, even the love left behind for her had been removed from her life. The twins she’d given birth to had never offered her enough world to ground herself. Or maybe she was just that weak.

So that replica that had hugged her and made her feel safe in the corner of her room had served as comfort. One moment he was there, the next he was gone.

Before waking he would cradle her in his arms and hum songs through those lips of his. As the blood dried tears slipped onto his arms he’d kiss her face and she would sleep. This replica was supposed to be an illusion, a copy of her husband. It was supposed to be in her head. He belonged there, but he was suddenly standing on her doorstep beside the neighbor she often sat with outside.

How was your day? Did you have fun at work? Did you fight with someone again? Did your mother visit you? How lucky…

Namjoo often spoke with her neighbor like that. It offered her a sense of reality and made her feel normal. Sometimes he would buy her snacks because he knew she didn’t go out much. If she saw things in the middle of the street she would disturb others around her.

Namjoo was mentally ill. 80% of her had already died and rest of her was waiting to be buried six feet under the ground.

But this was crazy.

These two identicals were on her doorstep, awaiting her reaction.

A loud click resonated inside her head and she slumped toward the ground.

One of them had to be real. The other one lived in her head. The two identicals could not co-exist.

This…was all in her head.

Namjoo was seeing things…

“No, you leave!”

“Who are you to order me around!? This is my place!”

“You have no right! You’re a stalker! I’ll report you!”

“Your own brother!? Go ahead! I dare you! What’s going to happen to her then!?”

“That’s exactly why you should leave!”

There was a loud crash.

“You’ve assaulted her dammit!”

“You can’t judge me! She needs someone to offer her peace and comfort! She needs healing, not someone who will watch and worry when it’s already too late!”

“She doesn’t need someone to force himself on her! Disgusting jerk!”

There was another crash and Namjoo felt her eyes roll to the back of her head. A music box echoed throughout her head and a smile lifted her lips up. A slow laugh entranced her as the night fogged in again. The music box became louder, each high beat pulsating in unison with each pump of her heart.

The darkness eased up again and she continued smiling dazed before someone lifted her up. Namjoo’s head dangled over an arm as her eyes made a repeated round of spinning.

“Wake up,” someone urged, “wake up. You have to wake up.”

Her head landed on the flat of her bed when those two fought again.

“Leave her alone!”

“She needs help, can’t you see!? Get out! Get out of the room!”

There was a loud noise of mass shoving, but none of that made it to Namjoo’s consciousness. She listened to the door forcefully slam after a long time before footsteps rushed back toward her. By the time he leaned over her, Namjoo’s vision cleared and she thought for the first time she was seeing him.

“Who are you?” Namjoo asked minutes later, her eyes glued to the plate of food he’d set down in front of her.

“My name…is Luhan.”

Tears spilled from her frozen face as her eyes stared off into a space that didn’t exist.

“I thought you were Chanyeol.” Her voice didn’t shake, tremble, or waver. “You’re alive?”

Luhan slid over from where he sat to wrap an arm around her. She first refused his comfort and struggled before her face collided into his shoulder. Suddenly clutching onto his shirt she let out loud sobs.

Her husband hadn’t come back to life even within her head. Whether that fact stung her more than the fact that this replica was not a copy of her husband, she didn’t know. Namjoo just knew it hurt a lot. The tears in her heart couldn’t stop opening.

For a long time after she slept in his arms and when she awoke, he was once again gone as if he were the air. Namjoo found no trails of Luhan inside her apartment while walking through her apartment. While her eyes slid over the crevices in her place she fought hard to maintain the fact that he was real. It was hard to climb out of the mental state she was in. Whether anything was real or not, she couldn’t assemble her thoughts to factor it out.

Having forgotten everything for a second she stepped out through her door and paused by the railing. Namjoo’s eyes ventured out to the yard outside and the bench she often sat on underneath the apple tree. That was the place where she found common ground with the living.

Namjoo’s eyes swerved away from the bench when her neighbor turned her away leading her into his apartment; the one place she’d never been in. She had never been anywhere the past two years except for the confines of her own home. The space inside her head was a different place.

“Are you ok? Did he do anything to you?” The same face as Luhan’s spoke to her.

As she stared up at him her mind swirled. Namjoo had to rethink who was really there, if it were anyone at all. Or had she pulled herself into another dimension? Did everyone suddenly look alike?

“Answer me,” he called out.

The person she was seeing in doubles suddenly became one. Luhan…this was Luhan she was speaking to. How had he suddenly come to her again? Why was he speaking to her like this when they’d spoken earlier?

“Are you here? Can you hear me? Namjoo.”

Namjoo.

Namjoo.

Namjoo.

Her name echoed inside her head and she felt her head fall back into the wall she was backed up against. She felt his hand against her cheek before her eyes zoomed in on the picture nailed to the wall behind him. Suddenly recalling that this place was not hers she returned.

This was her next door neighbor, the one who settled her back onto the grounds of the living after her many experiences in strange dimensions of hallucinations.

“How do you…know my name? Who are you?” She sounded dazed as if she weren’t really there when she was really there.

“Sehun, I’m Sehun. I told you before,” he explained.

“Why…are you here?”

“Dummy,” he smiled, “I told you I’ll watch over you.”

“Why?” Namjoo was like a child going through her first phase of speech.

Sehun searched her face before her head further inclined back to the wall as he leaned forward. Pressure touched her lips gluing her to him. Her lids wider opened and a white mist melted into her mind and she couldn’t see anything.

A short cry escaped her lips when she twisted her head away, which even surprised herself. Tears sprawled down her face in memory of a sudden intimacy with her dead husband. Sehun’s shirt became twisted into her palm and Namjoo couldn’t remember anything afterward, but found herself sitting inside her tub. The cold water touched her bare skin, freezing her pores into goosebumps but she still sat inside hugging her knees to her chest. However much her body shivered, she couldn’t feel it.

Namjoo couldn’t taste the blue on her lips. Her eyes lolled back and forth, but she made no movement. Everything inside her world was so still. Minutes later with just a sweater draped over her body she collapsed onto the floor of her small living room, her hair still drenched.

In the dark world within the confinement of her head she saw herself as nothing. The dead flower lost another leaf before something warm was draped over her and her head dangled over an arm.

Chanyeol’s clone…the replica that should be her dead husband glanced down at her. A whimper fell through her enclosed lips and tears glazed out the corner of her eye. He wasn’t her husband.

Her head shook with her sobbing and she clutched onto the blanket wrapped around her before curling up. Whether against him or the bed she didn’t know, but it allowed her to weep out some sorrow in agony. And she always fell asleep in his presence.

It was the knocking on the door the next morning that woke her up. In a drowsy state she dragged her feet to the door in nothing, but her sweater. Sehun stared back at her elated and embarrassed before he cleared his throat loudly.

He proceeded to say, “Do you…want to go on a walk with me?”

It didn’t take her long to dress into old slacks before joining him on the staircase outside. Just as any other day the sun was shining through the clouds, its rays sharply beaming down on her. Namjoo used to love weather like this before the heat of the fire took it all away. Now she didn’t even like the warmth of the weather anymore.

At first they strolled down the busy streets before entering an empty trail beside the river. A tall fence barricaded a field of green grass under scientific observation. The sparkly water shone with every beat, every tiny wave of the current. It was pretty, but Namjoo didn’t even know what pretty was anymore. She couldn’t hear anything, but the gravel getting kicked underneath their steps. When their hands brushed, she pulled hers back and clutched onto it.

“Namjoo, are you happy in that place? I used to hear your children playing loudly, have you thought about going back for them?”

Namjoo felt her eyes sway over the sudden breeze swooping over the tall meadow. Such soft the wind offered.

“Namjoo,” Sehun’s soft voice punched her ears again.

“I can’t forget it.”

His brows moved a little.

“Where does a memory go when you forget? Where will he go if I forget him?” Namjoo turned to look at him, their eyes interlocking intensely. “Where does he go?”

They stopped in their tracks. Another trailing breeze swept by bringing with it a cold silence.

“Here,” Sehun gently pressed his fingers to her chest, above her heart. “He goes here.”

The tears poured from her eyes and down her face as her lips twisted. Clamping her eyes shut she let out a loud sob.

“Is it ok to forget him?” She wailed.

“Mmm…” Sehun nodded.

Another sob bellowed from her lips before she slowly sunk down to hug herself. When her eyes opened again she was reaching for the door. It had been ringing frantically earlier. When she pulled it open it revealed the face of her neighbor and as it opened wider she saw the face of another man she didn’t quite recognize, but she knew him.

“Namjoo.”

“Namjoo.”

They both called one split second after another.

Namjoo stared at them deeply appalled, experiencing a slap in the face. One of them lived in her illusions, or she thought so. The other was her real life neighbor she often talked with under the apple tree.

What were they?

Really…

Who were they?

***I told you this was going to be short. I've always wanted to try something like this, though I can't say I'm very satisfied with the outcome. 

***Here we have a very ill Namjoo. What happens in the middle of the story is what happened inside her head (if you're confused), but is not what takes place in reality. Her brain made her think it happened until she opens the door again at the end of the story. But does she really know them? Or are they really just a part of the creation in her mind? 

***I'll leave it as an open-ended kind of thing. I promise to write up a more decent oneshot for these three when I do have time!