Seryung would have just let the maids put up decorations. She didn’t understand why Tao took to doing everything himself. She found herself helping out anyway because accessorizing the walls, as well as the arranging the table was too pesky of a job for one person.

However Tao had a different frame of mind. He wished she would stay put and out of his way until he’d finished his job. It was endearing watching her try to help but she wasn’t making his life any easier. It was clear that she’d never partaken in setting up festive decorations. He would have laughed at her if they weren’t constraint for time, but he didn’t have that luxury.

She added to his to-do-list. He had to watch out for her, she’d burst too many balloons and with a pump no less. He’d told her to go sit down somewhere but she was persistent too. Eventually he’d scolded her making her protest by getting in his way as much as possible. Life was hard…

Seryung played with her fingers, feeling agitated. She pulled her feet up onto the couch and watched him rush from one side of the room to the other, still not understanding something.

“You could just let one of the maids do it! We can wrap presents in the mean time.”

Tao considered this, but quickly brushed it aside with a shrug. He didn’t trust her with the wrapping paper either. He didn’t know why but he had an inkling that she’d never done something such as wrapping. Her lack of skills at the most basic things was shocking. It made him wonder why he’d forgotten that she’d been raised as a princess since day one.

-

The banners were up. The table was ready. Cake, candles, sparklers, movie, presents, pizza, sweets, popcorn, everything was ready. Tao scratched his head still feeling as if he’d forgotten something. He wracked his brain for an answer but got nothing.

Seryung made a face. There were too many balloons around the place, in her opinion. There was barely space to move around. She was still sore about Tao berating her for bursting a few. It wasn’t entirely her fault. It was her first time doing something like this on her own.  Tao hadn’t even asked for personnel to help out.

Seryung rolled her eyes. It was more meaningful to do these things yourself, is what he’d told her. She didn’t like silently agreeing with him because he hadn’t let her do anything.

She glared at him for underestimating her. He’d judged her too quickly over balloons and her inadequacy at cooking. He’d thought she didn’t know how to wrap presents when in fact she did. Her skills were much neater than his, although she’d given herself a paper cut. She didn’t complain about it, even though it was stinging. She didn’t hit him when he’d asked her not to get blood on the gift. She didn’t let him plaster her finger because she wasn’t a child, regardless of how much she’d wanted to see him fussing over her; she’d done it herself.

One was bitter. The other was anxious. The lights were turned off in wait.

-

“I named it ‘Hara’ instead of Hana, why are you still mad?”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s only a name.”

“You’re making fun of my name.”

“Am not.”

“Why are the lights all off?”

“How am I-“

“SURPRISE!”

The lights flickered on to reveal a room full of birthday decorations. A flame of hope had suddenly lit inside her heart. Hana blinked multiple times half expecting to see more than Oh Seryung but she didn’t find who she was looking for. Disenchantment colored her face making her cast her eyes to the ground.

A pair of arms fastened around her shoulders from behind. “Happy Birthday Princess,” an accented voice whispered exuberantly.

Birthday? Sehun tilted his head in wonder. He looked to Seryung for an explanation but she was too busy eyeing Tao in distaste. Her expression was a pinch of pique, pain and proprietary.

Sehun furrowed his brows when Hana smiled instead of ing Tao away. He felt a burning sensation rise from his stomach. Sehun’s reflexes wanted nothing more than to yank the Chinese bloke and strike a fist into his face. Every cell in his body was taunting him to do just that. Resistance was tough but not futile.

“Yah, let go, you’ll strangle her,” Sehun smacked Tao making the Chinese fellow free her.

“I thought I said I didn’t want a celebration,” Hana poked Tao’s arm in a pleasantry tone.

Tao crinkled his nose, “Well, I wanted to celebrate. Deal with it.”

-

“-And that is the beginning of four young souls coming together,” Miyoung clapped her hands in glee. She waltzes around Seryung’s bedroom whilst conversing with the owl. Once the owl moved in with Tao, Miyoung would miss him. The young ghost didn’t plan to stop haunting her human friend, who else would talk to her?

MAMA pecked at the bars of his cage in dismay. He feared that without Young Madam Seryung none of the maids would come to his assistance. It was tearful. There would be no hunt today, and just when he was beginning to get the hang of catching mice.

“You’re not listening to me~” Miyoung sang, roleplaying an opera singer. She was rather chirpy today, more than usual. MAMA had other things on his mind, food for example.

The owl hopped in his home. Space in the cage seemed to decrease with every passing day, either he was getting bigger or that he had grown accustomed to the wild. He decided the latter.

“They had cake… I imagine it was sweet,” Miyoung frowned here and crossed her arms as she floated about, “It would be sweet… right?”

MAMA didn’t know either. He’d never been fed cake nor was he willing to try it. Nothing taster sweeter than raccoons and squirrels.

“If it’s chocolate, it should be sweet,” Miyoung mused tapping her chin in a manner she often saw Oh Sehun use.

“I give up. I don’t remember much about food,” the ghost threw her hands in the air before tumbling onto the couch.

MAMA tilted his head and blinked. He sensed she would be upset. She cried often too whenever she realized she was forgetting what life as a human was like. The owl didn’t understand it much either. A ghost was not a human and therefore treating it like one would be strange.

“There were lots of presents too,” Miyoung puffed her cheeks in silent reproach. He held them that way with a scowl on her face.

“She got her DBSK endorsed products but she’s never once put flowers by my grave.”

MAMA wanted to point out that Miyoung couldn’t even smell flowers so what was the point but the owl kept silent not wanting to induce wailings from the ghost.

“I don’t like Hana,” Miyoung proclaimed suddenly facing MAMA’s cage. The owl was too used to these eccentricities by now. He was also aware of the jealousy Miyoung was harboring for Kim Hana.

“What if Sehun oppa stops visiting me because of her?” Miyoung’s expression clouded. A glower transfixed onto her translucent features. She played with the lock on MAMA’s cage.

The owl snapped his beak at it indicating it wanted to be released, as Miyoung’s fingers never really touched anything.

“You want to be free?”

MAMA stopped what he was doing. He turned to stare at the ghost who now truly resembled something frightening. Her voice no longer sounded like what human’s would emit. Her eyes had become slits of darkness and her normally porcelain features were colored in odium.

Click.

MAMA watched her draw the lock followed by the door. She remained uncharacteristically silent as she freed him. He was gripped with terror, flinching backwards until he was sure she wouldn’t grasp him in her claws and squeeze the life out of him in her snake like fingers.

She didn’t. The owl heaved a sigh as she simmered into the shadows wearing the physiognomy of an impassive zombie.

The owl didn’t know if this was a test, of some kind. Did the ghost expect him to flutter away or stay put? MAMA didn’t know the answer, but what he did know was that the ghost was very much ‘alive.’

She didn’t spend very long in her state. A sly smile found its way to her. She dematerialized.

MAMA blinked in shock, not knowing what to say. A sense of urgency kicked at him while terror surged through him. Loyalty, something was nagging at him to stay loyal. He panicked in his cage hooting with all his might, flapping his wings thunderously.

The gate skimmed open with a squeak. The owl was horrified. The ghost was capable of such, yet she’d never told him. He felt rather cheated as well as offended on top of angry.

-

Miyoung appeared to a memorable graveside. She recalled just how unceremoniously she’d been dumped in the ditch, and just how discourteously her resting body had met with cold, dirty soil. She snorted.

One by one, old memories began to return unnecessarily curdling a sensation of loathing. Slowly but surely, she quaked. A vindictive snarl published her feelings. She hated them, the whole lot of them. She wanted to see them suffer, to deteriorate as she was rotting.

Slowly, she scanned the vicinity, rumbling with animosity. Everywhere she looked, kindness shunned her because evidence of loved ones was found. She had no one, or she had them, they’d stopped caring.

Miyoung screamed piercingly in a thin, high voice, quite suited to resonate from a seven-year old. She demanded to be acknowledged calling upon the resting souls to contact her. Nothing. Not one appeared.

She swallowed back the adhesive rancor. In a graveyard of a few hundred, not one had replied. They were hiding. It wasn’t possible for everyone to have passed on, Miyoung knew. She knew more than she let on.

“I will defile your graves if you refuse to appear!” She thundered shakily.

“Defile yo’self!” ^[1] A rather skunk-y voice replied rudely.

Miyoung turned to glare at the cretin. She looked like she had come from home from a rave. Miyoung wasn’t interested in finding out why she was in such a state. The ghost opposite her looked to be in its mid-twenties, short untamable hair, shockingly, silver, sequined ‘70’s disco attire supporting the stale scent of soju with a side spray of spew. Still, who was Miyoung to judge? She was donning pigtails.

“Why’d ya call me? I was bleedin’ tryin’ ta rest!” ^[2]

“How is that even possible? You’re a ghost.”

“Figure o’ speech, yenno? Can’t freakin’ take a joke, can ya? An’ wuts up wi’h all y’all creepin’ in da middle o’ da bleedin’ nigh?’ Can’t bloody get over dat one. Y’all be a proper bunch o’ ghosts, da lot o’ ya. Now whaddaya wan?’" ^[3]

“I want to why I’m still here! Why can’t I move on? Why don’t I know what I’m meant to be doing?”

“Yeh be askin’ me?” The ghost stuck her pinky in her ear and shook it, scrunching her face as she did. “Be hearin’ stories o’ y’all ‘can’t remember-ers.’ Y’all got major biziness lef’ behin.’

“Can’t be too easy. Prob’ly somet’in’ ‘portant, mostly to do wi’h family o’ friends. Dem people ya be close tah o’ vile t’ings like murduh. Den ya get dem crazies screamin’ fo’ revenge. Mental yokes, dem lot. Be killin’ ‘emselves twice. Can’t be too friendly wi’h ‘em. Dem lot be puttin’ stuff in yo ‘ead. Da reap-uh don’t like ‘em. Be sendin’ ‘em out o’ existence. Extinction.” ^[4]

“You’ve seen the reaper?”

“Who me? Naah, yer one only visits da crazies. Be hearin’ stories from da dead ‘uns. Dunno if day be true. Ya wanna move on; ya gotta finish yer biziness. Ain’t no on’ goin’ nowhere till ya finish.” ^[5]

“I would have finished it if I knew what it was! I don’t want to spend the rest of my existence like this!”

The elder ghost listlessly surveyed the child ghost with artificial interest. She was trying to find a way to escape too, from the child whose eyes were hinting at vengeance.

 A vengeful spirit… Somehow ghost’s all had a built in hard-drive that told them vengeance was wrong similar to what humans called morals.

Sins… ‘Vengeance’ was an unforgivable one. There were others too, possession, mind control, mind reading etc… They all hovered closely to bothering living creatures.

A fine line was drawn between what was allowed and what wasn’t. The boundaries overlapped and sometimes even contradicted. So what?

Who asked you to pass away thinking you couldn’t leave yet? Since when did a person decide when and how they died? Natural or unnatural, it was all set in stone for them. Those in denial lived in purgatory solving a puzzle that would become their key to the afterlife. Those who accepted their fate didn’t roam the earth.

“What am I supposed to do? How long do I haunt people? Why can’t I leave?!”

“Yer on’ step away from yer answer.”

“My answer?”

“Yeah.”

The adult ghost smirked nastily. The young ghost was beginning to smell like revenge.

-

When Miyoung had left him, MAMA had been plagued with his own set of troubles. He was stuck inside the room, the door was closed and the windows sealed. He fluttered over to a set of controls.

He wished he’d paid more attention to which button automatically opened the window. There were plentiful buttons, none of them made much sense. The dots were too enigmatic for the creature of the night. He hopped against each of them.

The ceiling fan , the radiators clicked, a lamp switched on, the air conditioning began to hum, the curtains divided before the window parted.

Freedom!

MAMA raced into the darkness. Night was his favorite time of the day. The skies were pitch black and only the moon reflected light. There was plenty to do at night, especially for an owl like MAMA. It was the ideal time to hunt! Pleasant weather, made things all the more desirable, yet he knew he could not. There was something on his mind that out-weighted the taste of moles.

MAMA’s flight had been rough. The skies were peaceful for the most part, until a falcon had picked a fight with him. The owl hadn’t appreciated that. He’d fought, clawed and pecked mercilessly until the falcon had been left with crippled wings. MAMA hadn’t stopped there; his vacant stomach had gotten the best of him. He’d enjoyed a decent feast.

The meal had left him feeling warm and bubbly. He’d wanted to laze around and possibly frighten a few rabbits along the way. He was in the mood for mischief. He’d long forgotten what he’d intended to do.

Indolently he perched on a wall and ruffled his feathers. The fight with the falcon had left him sticky with blood and what not. A flight companion had incessantly pointed out that it was ‘gross.’ To an owl it was nothing, not a big deal at all, he could have fought a dozen scrap fights without feeling the need to wash up.

However, washing up had become a habitual routine, which was why the owl found himself diving into a pond. He may not have been as elegant as a swan in washing but he didn’t care for grace; not when his feathers were refined with blood, guts and other things that were labeled, ‘gross.’

The thought, or the lack of, his flight companion reminded him of his mission. The reflection had come to him rather abruptly and had cut his shower short. Before he knew it, Mama was dashing through the skies again, his destination best known to him.

He feared what could happen if he were late. Silently, he cursed the falcon species wishing them extinction. They were nothing but trouble but even falcons couldn’t cause as much havoc as the owl’s friend could. She had to be stopped…

-

**Flashback**

An empty juice carton hit her head. She winced at the powerful strike and glanced up to find the offender. She received a sneer instead of an apology. She bit her lip not sure how to deal with such bad behavior. She would tell the teacher, the teacher was best at dealing with bully wannabes. Beside her, someone pushed her chair back, standing up to slam her palms against the desk.

“Yah! What is wrong with you?”

She listened to the bellowing voice. Although it wasn’t much, she felt grateful.

Eyes were watching them and not just two or three. It seemed like the whole rooms attention was divided on the three. Hushed whispers arose all around, derisive chuckles, and fingers aimed to point.

“Seryungie, sit down,” she hissed to the person beside her.

Seryung hesitated; the earlier confidence seemed to dissipate. Undertones grew louder until one word stood out like an ugly duckling in the pond.

Wangta…

From there on, life had become hell.

Books were taken from her and torn. Her school bag was thrown from the window. Her packed lunches were tramped on and returned to her. Tufts of hair were used to yank her out of the way. She was tripped in the corridors, kicked when the teachers weren’t around. She became the of spitballs. They secretly gave her a haircut from behind once. Her table was upturned every morning. No one chose to sit with her. She was the plague. No one spoke to her. She was alone.

At first she didn’t retaliate knowing that she was out numbered. She thought it would die down. She’d been given plenty of sympathetic smiles and shame-ridden eyes had averted from her. She began to believe things would improve. Not everyone was against her, just a few, not everyone chose to torment her, they watched because they were made to; she’d convinced herself.

Her best friend had gotten sick and missed most of it. She wished she could be sick with a high fever too, just until things got better.

Seryung got better. She was glad to see Seryung back in school. Seryung became her shield. Things were starting to get better with her best friend back in school. The torment became infrequent. She began to think it would stop soon, very soon.

She was wrong.

It reared its head when Seryung opposed her.

It spiked up from where it had stopped. It was worse this time. It happened in secret.

A group of students established that they didn’t want Seryung to know what they did with her. They’d always question her before privately beating her in the toilet stalls. One would hold her by her hair while the others punched and kicked her; she wasn’t allowed to fall down. If she fell, they would stomp on her and spit when they were done.

Private beatings became the norm. Day in and day out, she would be given a tattle to tell about how she hurt herself, her story wasn’t allowed to deviate.

She became reclusive, hiding as much as she could from everyone. She still tried to convince herself it would get better, somehow; they would get tired of her. She cut her hair, very short, to make it harder to grab. Mocking and ridicule became harder to hear with time.

Slowly but surely, Miyoung reached her threshold…
 

Footnotes for anyone who might have gotten lost with the accented-toned ghost

“Defile yo’self!” ^[1]  -- "Defile yourself!"



 “Why’d ya call me? I was bleedin’ tryin’ ta rest!” ^[2]  -- "Why'd you call me? I was bleeding trying to rest!" << 'Bleedin'' is slang. It's just a filler word without meaning. Miyoung however, takes it in a literal sense.

 “Figure o’ speech, yenno? Can’t freakin’ take a joke, can ya? An’ wuts up wi’h all y’all creepin’ in da middle o’ da bleedin’ nigh?’ Can’t bloody get over dat one. Y’all be a proper bunch o’ ghosts, da lot o’ ya. Now whaddaya wan?’" ^[3] 

--  "Figure of speech you know? Can't freaking take a joke, can you? And what's up with all y'all creeping in the middle of the bleedin' night? Can't bloody get over that one. Y'all be a proper bunch of ghosts, the lot of ya. Now what do you want?" << 'Bloody' is a filler word. 'Y'all' is short for 'you all.' 'Ya' means 'you.'



 

 “Yeh be askin’ me?” The ghost stuck her pinky in her ear and shook it, scrunching her face as she did. “Be hearin’ stories o’ y’all ‘can’t remember-ers.’ Y’all got major biziness lef’ behin.’

“Can’t be too easy. Prob’ly somet’in’ ‘portant, mostly to do wi’h family o’ friends. Dem people ya be close tah o’ vile t’ings like murduh. Den ya get dem crazies screamin’ fo’ revenge. Mental yokes, dem lot. Be killin’ ‘emselves twice. Can’t be too friendly wi’h ‘em. Dem lot be puttin’ stuff in yo ‘ead. Da reap-uh don’t like ‘em. Be sendin’ ‘em out o’ existence. Extinction.” ^[4]
 

--"You're asking me?" The ghost stuck her pinky in her ear and shook it, scrunching her face as she did. "Be hearing stories of you can't-remember-ers. Y'all got major business left behind.
"Can't be too easy. Probably something important, mostly to do with family or friends. Dem people ya be close to or vile things like murder. Then ya get dem crazies screaming for revenge. Mental yokes, dem lot. Be killing themselves twice. Can't be too friendly with them. Dem lot be putting stuff in your head. Da Reaper don't like them. Be sending them out of existence. Extinction." <<  'Dem' is 'them.'  When the ghost says: 'can't remember-ers' she means the ghosts who can't remember why they died.

 “Who me? Naah, yer one only visits da crazies. Be hearin’ stories from da dead ‘uns. Dunno if day be true. Ya wanna move on; ya gotta finish yer biziness. Ain’t no on’ goin’ nowhere till ya finish.” ^[5] 

-- "Who me? Naah, yer one only visits the crazies. Be hearing stories from the dead ones. Dunno if they be true. Ya wanna move on; ya gotta finish yer business. Ain't no one going nowhere till ya finish." << 'Yer one' means 'that person,' in this case they're talking about the Reaper. 'Yer' is 'your.'