First thirty minutes into Suzy’s last 4 hour class, Kai finally realizes why Suzy hates going to her classes.

They dragged on forever.

He sees almost all the students in that auditorium half asleep, Suzy along with them. He looks up to the powerpoint presentation being presented and notes that this was some physics lesson.

“You take physics?” Kai asks Suzy who suddenly perks up upon hearing his voice.

She scribbles down her response. No. Well, yes, kind of. This is Natural Science, a mix of all sciences?

“I see,” Kai responded. Suzy detects the boredom in his tone. She then sees him stare longingly out the window.

She shakes her head. I guess he’s just as fed up of this class as me, she thinks as she stares out the window with him. The sky was of a beautiful bright blue and the thin white clouds were rolling lazily with the weak gusts of wind.

“The weather. It’s nice isn’t it?”

Suzy merely nods as she writes something down in her notebook.

Do you want to go out?

Kai reads this and raises an eyebrow in response.

I meant, just you. I can’t go until this class ends.

“I’ll go… Without you?” Kai asks incredulously. “I just promised you a while ago I won’t leave you.”

This is different. Suzy scribbled in retaliation quickly.

At least I’ll know where you’re going.

You can stay on one of the benches outside.

“Suzy…” Kai groaned. While he would like nothing more than to get out of that room and just leave… He just didn’t have the heart to make Suzy worry like that again.

Why? I know you’re bored Kai.

He sighed and pulled up a fake smile. “Me? No!” He laughed a bit. “I mean, I just love listening to your professor go on about…” he looks up to the powerpoint presentation and reads the title of the slide “The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle…” he squints his eyes after reading that. He sees some symbols on the board that looked like characters from a foreign language. “What is that anyway? And is that a… Trident?”

Suzy couldn’t help but smile after hearing what Kai had to say. But of course she had to force it down.

 Yes. Suzy then draws a trident and points an arrow to it.   This is not a trident. It’s called PSI. It’s from Schrodinger’s equation. For atoms and what not.

“Someone’s been listening…” Kai nodded proudly. “To think you were half asleep like the others.”

Of course I was listening. I’m just lethargic, is all. I mean, who would look enthusiastic with this lesson.

“I bet you make a good tutor.”

No. Not really.

“If I asked you to tutor me, would you?”

You look like you would be hard to teach. You wouldn’t even listen to me when I told you to go out.

Kai shrugged. “I guess I wasn’t a very good student.”

Suzy bit her lip in thought. About that… She wrote down in her notebook.

I think we should look for your identity here in this school.

“How?” Kai stared at the writing on Suzy’s desk. “How do we even start? We don’t even know my real name yet.”

True.

“Or if I even study at this school…”

Maybe you do. Suzy flourishes her handwriting.

“What makes you think so?”

She shrugs. Why would I find you around here if you didn’t go to school here?

“That’s a sound argument,” Kai rolls his eyes.

It’s all we’ve got.

Don’t you want to find out who you were?

Kai sighs. “I don’t even know anymore,” he then zones out and walks out through the nearest wall.

Suzy’s eyes widen as he did. Not again. Kai, what is wrong with you! She mentally scolds him.

After a few seconds, Kai’s goes back to the room, remembering he had just left Suzy again. He peeks in and yells “I’ll just wait for you at the bench outside.” With only Suzy looking up to him, and giving him a small nod.

Suzy heaves a sigh of relief. Well. At least I know where he’s going.

He doesn’t want to talk about his feelings. Kai crossed his arms as he went down the stairs of the Physical Sciences building. It’s not like his memories mattered anyway. He shrugs. In the end, he and Suzy may figure out who he was, but for what? Ultimately, he would stay the same – immaterial, unseen, unfelt by others. He may get to know about his past, but he doubted if he could return it.

Could a dead man suddenly go back to life?

“No, of course not,” he answers himself and proceeds to head out the building.

It was a bright sunny day. Birds were chirping out, the sun’s rays made a beautiful contrast with all the luscious green on the university’s lawn. The skies were so clear, the people passing by seemed so happy, chatting around, reading books, listening to music, living life.

It was definitely one of those days one can say “It’s good to be alive.”

Kai cracks a sardonic smile at the thought and shoves it behind his head. He didn’t live after all.

He just existed. Like how the dirt beneath him existed. Or the wind that blew against the trees’ leaves. Or like that statue of some founder the school had.

Unalive, but existing.

A pain in his heart ensues when he suddenly thinks “I probably wouldn’t think I exist without Suzy.” Without that day she spotted him in the library, and talked to him about borrowing that book, he probably might have gone crazy thinking what he was, and why he was there.

He sighs and proceeds to sit on one of the benches there. He leans back against the wooden railings of the bench, only to feel nothing. He shuts his eyes for a while and thinks really hard. What had happened even before he had met Suzy? Even before he found himself giving up when no one can see him?

He wrinkles his eyelids together, wishing – hoping, to remember anything. A scene, an image… Anything.

In the end he sees darkness. In the end, he remembers nothing.

“Yo, Sehun,” a very familiar deep voice echoed beside him, disturbing his moment. He opens his eyes and sees ‘weird ears’ seated next to him, talking against his phone.

“Oh great! Just the guy I wanted to see,” he sarcastically commented as he eyed Park Chanyeol who had his black baseball cap on once again. “As if my day couldn’t get any worse.”

Of course, Chanyeol doesn’t hear him, or know he was even there. Kai eyed him from head to toe. The regular university kid. No tattoos, he didn’t seem like he was smoking. He had his guitar case slung against the bench. He looked neat, wearing presentable clothing and a smile that doesn’t seem to fade.

Kai notes that he had the same toothy grin on when talking to Suzy.

He begins to talk to the phone once more. “I have succeeded in what our homeboy has successfully failed in.”

The other line speaks, but Kai doesn’t hear speech. More like the incoherent murmuring noises out a small speaker.

Chanyeol barks in laughter. “No, you idiot. I mean about ‘dream girl’.”

“Dream girl?” Kai repeats what he has heard. It wasn’t like he would intrude on their conversation anyway.

“Yup, her,” Chanyeol confirms. A smile crept up his face. “Even got her number.”

Kai squinted his eyes. “You better not be talking about Suzy.”

Chanyeol gives another hearty laugh. “No, no, no. Don’t misunderstand, dude. You know I’m not like that. Alright?”

Kai groaned. “What the heck are you even talking about?!” he frustratingly raised his voice. To no effect, of course. Chanyeol kept talking.

“Yeah, I’ll go tell him later,” Chanyeol nodded. His smile, slowly turning solemn. “Wanna go with me?”

“Yeah, okay. I guess I’ll just visit him by myself then,” Chanyeol stood up and got the strap to his guitar. “I’ll talk to you later. I need to run off to my next class.”

And before even Kai can say anymore, Chanyeol went off running to the College of Music, which was right in front of the Physical Sciences building.

He huffs and had second thoughts on whether to follow Chanyeol there and find out just a bit more of what he was talking about, but decides not to. Aside from the fact that he was supposed to stay on the bench as he told Suzy, right now, the last thing he wanted was to be bothered by Park Chanyeol.

Unfortunately, his thoughts do not go very far, and kept returning the conversation he heard with Chanyeol on the phone. The words “dream girl” and “got her number”, it wouldn’t take a genius to put one and one together and conclude they were talking about Suzy. Kai clenches both of his fists in frustration. Remembering Chanyeol’s face irked him. It annoyed him how happy he looked when he got Suzy’s number. It even annoyed him more when Chanyeol seemingly wants to tell his friends about it, as if announcing to everyone and anyone who cared that he finally got Bae Suzy’s number.

He calmed himself down by taking a deep breath in. He pressed himself against the bench he did not feel. He stares off into space and finally vocalizes why everything about that situation irked him.

“Someone else likes Suzy.”

He lay back on the bench, shutting his eyes, letting the darkness engulf him. The words he just said echoed in his head. He found it unusual that the words and the manner he said them in sounded so bitter. Like he didn’t even complain, or that he wasn’t even mad… yet he wouldn’t have said it in any other way. He realizes why he shouldn’t complain. Why the thought of someone else liking Suzy should be ‘okay’ with him.

“He would be more alive than I am.”

He opened his eyes to bask at the glory of the clear open sky. The pang in his heart, no longer relieved by the solitude darkness had offered him. He sighs and clutches on to his chest. “Why wasn’t I alive?”

Kai doesn’t remember dying.

He remembers waking up to a non familiar white-walled room. The room was empty, had it not been for the bed and the table beside it. He takes a look around and sees someone sleeping on the bed. A girl. He takes one glance at her and knows that the girl was familiar. He knew her, but a name wouldn’t come out of his head. He tries to touch the top of the girls head, as if to pat it… but in a blink of an eye, everything out.

The next thing he knew, he was alone.

All his memories seemed to have been out of the top of his head. Everything became unfamiliar, he couldn’t even remember why he was there, or who he was. He decides to ask around, to ask where he was, and maybe, just be given the reassurance that he was fine. The memories will come back. Maybe he had just himself too hard on the head.

He never got that reassurance. Instead, he realizes that no one can see him, hear him, or even feel him. He couldn’t even touch anything.

It took him three days of wandering around that university and seeing if any stranger would so much as  go out of their way and avoid bumping into him. They don’t. They merely pass through him, carrying on with whatever they were doing, going to wherever they were going.

It took him three days to realize that he wasn’t fine. The memories will never come back.

Fast forward to Suzy finding him, and accepting him to her home. Fast forward to Suzy crying about her past, and Kai comforting him. A ghost without a past, no memories, comforting a girl who couldn’t seem to get out of hers.

 Fast forward to Kai realizing memories only held people back, and he was sort of glad he had no memories that gave him pain, as Suzy’s did.

Fast forward to the Kai now, sitting on the bench, not caring much for his memories, but wanting very much to be alive.

Don’t you want to find out who you were?

Suzy’s scribbled question in her notebook pops out in Kai’s head.

“I don’t think finding out who I was is going to fix anything,” he sighs as he runs his hand over his dark brown curly hair. In the end it wouldn’t matter. If Suzy can move on from her past, then why couldn’t Kai?

Not knowing what happened to him when he was alive, is better he thinks. It saves him from the burden of regret of the things he could have done differently and the load of guilt he may feel if had left anyone important in his past life.

Kai suddenly thinks of Suzy’s family and wondered if they remembered her. She certainly remembered them. He wondered if, someone remembered him as well. It pained him to think if someone did, remembering Suzy’s tears that spilled every time she was reminded of her family. He didn’t want to cause that much pain. It would only hurt him back.

Maybe forgetting was part of dying. Forgetting everything makes letting go easier.

Maybe he wasn’t meant to remember anything, simply because he would never go back to them.

Besides, knowing he had lived a good life would just have bothered him.  He would just regret why he couldn’t keep that life and had to be a ghost that was only seen by one person. Not that he complained of Suzy being the only one to see him. He was thankful for Suzy. Very thankful. But at the end of the day, he wishes he could be something more than just a ghost to wander around and just live a normal life with her.

But he doesn’t have a normal life. He was a ghost – a spirit.

He had nothing, and would continue to have nothing, if it weren’t for Suzy.

He smiles sadly and thinks, “Maybe that isn’t so bad, after all.”

His thoughts go back to Park Chanyeol’s phone conversation, and realizes why he had felt so bitter about the whole thing.

Suzy was the only thing he had. He couldn’t imagine having someone else take her away from him.