Kyungsoo never went long without seeing Jongin. When night fell, the darkness would set in and Jongin would be there, wherever Kyungsoo was. Kyungsoo could see and hear him well now, and Jongin grew less and less shy.

He tried to explain Jongin to his friends, but they didn’t believe him. He drew a picture of Jongin, but they just asked why he was so dark. Even when he explained to them he only saw Jongin at night, in the dark, all they said was that he was crazy, and needed to stop making things up.

Sometimes he managed to convince himself that he’d created an imaginary friend, but when he tried to will Jongin not to show up, he would anyway. Maybe he had lost control of the boy; maybe he’d never had control over him in the first place.

Regardless, Kyungsoo kind of grew to expect seeing Jongin, and was kind of happy whenever he did. Kyungsoo wasn’t afraid to go out in the dark anymore, walking around at night or sitting in alleys to meet Jongin. Wherever it was dark, Kyungsoo could always find him. Jongin liked to follow him home and sleep next to him, too, and Kyungsoo always tried to wake himself up before Jongin disappeared for the day so he could watch him go.

For a ghost, supernatural being, whatever, Jongin was actually pretty normal. The more they saw one another, the less timid Jongin became, and though he maintained a natural underlying shyness, Kyungsoo could tell he grew comfortable around him. He was never too dark to see anymore, nor did he disappear at random like he used to.

And Kyungsoo liked him. He cracked jokes sometimes that were genuinely funny, and told stupid jokes sometimes that were equally funny. He was really nice all the time, and he seemed to admire Kyungsoo a lot. Kyungsoo always found Jongin staring at him, but then Kyungsoo often stared at Jongin too, because when they were together, he couldn’t actually see much of anything else.

Slowly, Kyungsoo began to become somewhat nocturnal. He didn’t have anything to do during the day other than wait for Jongin, and after a while he stretched the hours until finally he would wake up just after sunset and hurry outside or, if he was lucky, he would find Jongin already beside him.

“Hello,” Jongin would always say, and Kyungsoo would always grin and return it warmly.

His closest friend was a ghost. He probably should be more worried about himself, but he couldn’t find it in him to care about his possible loss of sanity. In the hours when Jongin was there, he was happy to talk with the other about whatever came to mind, and share all their worries and their pasts and the things they liked and those they hated. Life was simple for them, but there was something underlying, a sense of urgency.

“I feel like one day, I won’t be able to come here anymore,” Jongin admitted one night, and Kyungsoo realized that, without even knowing it, he was afraid of the same thing. “One day I just showed up here, and I don’t know how, I don’t know why. When I’m not here, I’m just… existing in this void of darkness, and then I find the light and see you again. But I’m scared I won’t see that light one day, and I’ll go back to my life before, or I’ll just be stuck in the dark forever.”

“If you do, you’ll just have to keep looking for the light until you find it,” Kyungsoo breathed consolingly. “I’ll always be here.”

“What if I can’t find you?”

Kyungsoo wished he could touch Jongin, so he could pat his shoulder or give him a hug, and promise everything would be alright.

(A/n: Will everything be alright, Kyungsoo?)