~V~

The gates shut behind me as I hurried over to Sulli, who was lying on the red bridge. She smiled faintly with the last bit of energy left in her body. “He’s gone.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll miss that guy. But…Sulli, are you…”

“I’m dying. Well, I’m already dead, but now my spirit is fading into nothingness. I used all my energy for this spell, my last gift to Minki.”

I held back my tears and hugged her close to me. “Don’t go. Don’t go, Sulli! What about our bond? Ren made me promise to look after you while he’s away! I love you!” I couldn’t help it now; my tears welled up in the corners of my eyes and streaked down my face, smudging my eyeliner.

Her hands held mine. “You’ll be fine. You’re so popular, and you have your restaurant. Besides, if you change your mind and decide to return to the human world, you can do that. You can be friends with Minki. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“But you won’t be there.”

“All the more reason to go. You should build your own future, V, and be happy. Be happy for me, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. “I’ll do it for you.” I tried to engrave her image into my mind: her brown hair and red full lips, her gentle brown eyes and pale skin.

“I love you, V. You’re an amazing best friend.” Sulli’s body went limp, but her eyes remained open, staring past my face and up into the big blue sky. I tried to hold onto her form, her spirit, but her body was fading away and then there was just me sitting there on that red bridge. Just like that, she was gone. There was no trace of her existence. Only I left alone in this world, without my two friends. What would become of me now? Did I even have the courage to keep going on like this, forever and ever, for all eternity?

It seemed lonely.

~Ren~

I was transported back to the tunnel that I’d crossed, the red bouncy ball now in my hands. There was no longer any lion statue lingering around here. It was safe. I felt the shock of being here once again, after what felt like a lifetime spent in the Spirit World. Before I knew it, my feet were carrying me, running to find my human friends. Minhyun was standing there, waiting for me with an anxious look on his face.

“Ah, you found it! Good job!” He took the ball from me and grinned. “What a relief that we didn’t lose it!”

“Yeah,” I agreed, feeling strange inside.

“Come on, Minki; let’s go catch up with the others.”

We caught up with JR, Baekho, and Aron, and walked back to JR’s family’s new house. Just as I was about to follow them inside, a huge white butterfly fluttered around me, hovering in the air as it was waiting for me to try and catch it. What a tease. It reminded me of her. I reached out my finger, and it sat on it. The butterfly was even more beautiful close, yet again sending a pang of longing through me. I was missing her already.

“Hey, Minki, what are you doing?” JR came outside by the front door, curious to see what I was up to.

“Look,” I said, but when I glanced back down, the butterfly had disappeared. I whipped my head around to see where it had flown off to but couldn’t spot any sign of its white wings anywhere. “Nothing. It was nothing.” I joined him inside the house, surrounded by my laughing friends and all of our good times together. I was glad and relieved to be back on earth, but what about her…?

Had that butterfly been…?

No way…could it really have been Sulli?

~V~

Arms grabbed at me, leading me away from the red bridge and back towards the city square, to the Palace of Lights, where I was held for questioning by Headmaster Leeteuk himself. He was furious, in a rage, throwing things and shouting down at me. I didn’t even have the energy to tell him what he wanted to know. Besides, this was the Spirit World. He couldn’t possibly put me in prison. I was safe.

However, he made me stay under watch all night until the next morning, when he got up early to continue his questioning. This lasted for weeks, until finally, he decided to give up. He knew I wasn’t going to leak any information to him, and actually, he didn’t need any. I suspected that he only wanted to hear more about Sulli from me, and I refused to give him the satisfaction. On the morning that he set me free from the palace, I turned around on the front steps and glared at him.

“Headmaster, you’re sick. How could you kill her? You were part of the reason why her spirit faded away, if it hadn’t been for you and Shaman Deo interrupting her spell to set Ren free. How could you? Didn’t you love her? Ren told me everything, so you don’t need to try to hide it. But seriously, what kind of man-”

“I had to let her go, V,” he suddenly said. There was a distant, faraway look in his eyes, and it seemed as if he was gazing at something that was no longer there. “She would have died already. After all the pain she caused me in the years after her death, I needed to end everything once and for all. That way, I wouldn’t ever have to wonder again.”

I tried to make sense of what he was saying. “It was still for your own selfish reasons, Headmaster, and I’m sorry, but I can never forgive you. In fact, I’m going to leave, and you can’t stop me. Don’t try to stop me.”

He gasped. “V, what are you saying? You can’t leave the Spirit World too!”

“No, I will. I never died. I was just a human who got lost. And by the codes of the Spirit World, you cannot stop me, because I am no longer bound to any other spirit present here. My soul is set to drift off if there’s nothing holding me back. So I’m going to leave and that’s the end of it. And if I do, won’t you be able to rest more easily? After all, I was connected to Sulli by a bond almost impossible to break. She meant everything to me. Aren’t you jealous? Her spirit lived in this dimension while only truly caring for me and Ren, not you. Sure, she worked for you, but in the end it was Ren and I who were bound to her for eternity.” I headed down the front steps of the palace. “An eternal love. Romantic, isn’t it?”

I heard his quiet crying in the background, as I left the Palace of Lights and then stopped by my restaurant. It was time to find someone else who could run it for me, and that wouldn’t be hard, considering it was the most popular place to eat in all of the Spirit World.

                                                                     ***

“Thank you sir, this is my stop.” I handed the taxi driver the money and climbed out of the vehicle.

It seemed to be the right place. I remembered Minki mentioning it a few times. It was a big house with flowers in the front yard and lanterns hanging at the entrance. I knocked twice and waited outside, the January wind biting at my fingertips and sending a shiver down my spine.

The front door opened to reveal a middle aged woman with hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing an apron over her sweater and jeans. “Hi, what can I do for you?”

I cleared my throat and bowed. “Hello, is Choi Minki at home? I’m his friend. I just moved back in the city after years of being away.”

She called for Minki and invited me inside for tea. I sat in their living room that was full of family pictures. It was a warm, cozy home. I sipped the tea, excited to see my friend after so long apart.

“Hello?” a voice rang out.

I was face to face with him, with his shoulder length blond hair and bangs that fell into his dark eyes, with that same old friendly yet cautious expression on his flower boy face.“Hi, Minki." I lifted my black hood from my hair.

His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. We stood there in silence for a long moment, and then he hugged me and we did our little handshake thing. “How are you? How did you get here? Oh, V, I can hardly believe my eyes right now. This is incredible!”

I snorted. “What, are you the only one who can return to the human world? By the way, it’s Kim Taehyung now.”

“Kim Taehyung...Oh, right, that must be your real name.”

“Yeah. After…you know what happened…Headmaster tried to get me to confess and everything for helping you leave, but I couldn’t betray you. So he left me alone and then I decided to leave the Spirit World and find you. I found out my real name by sneaking around in places I shouldn’t have. And now I’m finally here.”

Minki smiled. “Wow. I’m glad you changed your mind about being lost forever. What happened to the restaurant?”

“I sold it to this spirit named Rap Monster. He was pretty eager to take the place over for me, and he promised that he would take good care of it, that way it continues being a place for spirits to gather and eat,” I replied.

“I’m impressed. Come on, let’s go upstairs to my room.”

A little while later, the two of us sat in his bedroom, reminiscing about our days that we spent together in that different dimension with Sulli. “Listen, Minki, there’s something I need to tell you. I feel like I have to clear this up.”

He took a deep breath as if to steady himself. “Go on, Taehyung.”

“She... encouraged me to leave and come here. As you probably already know, sh-”

“She didn’t make it,” whispered Minki. “I knew it. I knew that she probably died, that her spirit faded away into nothingness.”

“That’s right. And she said, ‘wouldn’t it be so nice to become friends with Minki?’ It really changed my perspective, and I knew I didn’t want to stay in a world where my two best friends were gone forever. Even if I can’t ever see her again,” I said, wiping away my tears with the back of my hand, “I still want to see you, Minki.”

“So let’s start over! We can become friends all over again. There’s no harm in that, you know. Sure, we were friends when we were V and Ren, but back then there was a weird love triangle forming with us and Sulli. Now that Sulli’s gone, and God bless her spirit, you and I can be friends more easily without having to worry about which one of us gets the girl.” He stuck out his hand. “What do you say? Shall we become real friends and start over?”

I shook his hand and grinned. “Yes! Ah, I love the human world! It feels good to be back after all.”