Hyukjae had never believed in ghosts.

Until he became one, that is.

He doesn’t know how it happened, all he remembers is that one second he was sleeping peacefully and the next he was staring at his lifeless body from a distance. He was a college student, a few months past twenty-years-old, living in the university’s dorm. It was quite terrifying, really, waking up as a ghost, he recalls being very confused at first and then bursting out crying because he was too young to die and his family would be devastated. And they were – Hyukjae witnessed it all from his dorm room: his parents coming to collect his belongings, his mother breaking down and his father trying to console her, silent tears flowing from the man’s eyes as well. Hyukjae expected to be overwhelmed himself by such a scene, but, as he soon learned, nothing really affects you when you’re a ghost. You’re dead. That’s all there is to it.

He also doesn’t know why he’s stuck as a ghost. They say ghosts are the spirits of those who passed and left unfinished business behind. Hyukjae is pretty sure he didn’t leave anything unresolved except for... well, the rest of his life. Maybe that’s it – he’s been so frustrated and angry that he died so young that he refuses to fully leave.

So it happened that for the past fifteen years Hyukjae has been haunting his old dorm room. He’s been having quite a blast terrorising the poor students who took his place – breaking their mirrors, misplacing their stuff, opening doors, and causing all kinds of sounds or accidents to happen. His favourite thing to do, though, is making the students think they’re crazy by doing absolutely nothing when they brought other people over to prove that there is, in fact, a ghost haunting the room.

He doesn’t feel guilty at all. He’s a ghost, he doesn’t feel anything really. Besides, it’s not like he can get punished for it – he’s dead.

For the first time since he started doing it, though, Hyukjae now finds himself staring, completely astonished, at the mess that is the new student occupying his room. Hyukjae can’t do anything to this new student because the boy is perfectly capable of ing up the whole room by himself. Donghae – Hyukjae glimpsed at the student’s ID for the name – is by far the clumsiest and the most hopeless human he has ever seen. As he watches the boy forgetting to set up his alarms, spilling food and drinks everywhere, bumping into every surface there is, and losing most of his belongings – how do you even lose something in a cramped dorm room??? – Hyukjae can’t bring himself to bring more misery to poor Donghae, so he settles for watching and feeling sorry for him. The student is quite a sight for sore eyes, all sparkling eyes and pretty smiles. His voice is very nice as well, deep and smooth and Hyukjae loves listening to him talking on the phone. Hyukjae wistfully thinks that he would totally date Donghae... if he wasn’t dead.

But as faith will have it, Hyukjae is dead and he can’t date pretty Donghae, sadly. What he can do, he decides, is at least help the boy. Hyukjae has never heard of good ghosts before and he wonders if he’ll become the first benevolent ghost in history. He starts finding whatever Donghae keeps losing and placing them so the student finds them, moving around the furniture whenever Donghae is about to bump into something, and Hyukjae even makes sure to make Donghae’s alarm ring at just the right time every morning. After two weeks of doing this, Hyukjae catches Donghae look around his room with a puzzled expression, not looking for missing stuff, but as if trying to spot someone secretly living in the same room as him. Hyukjae only sighs, wishing he could somehow interact with Donghae, let him know that there really is someone there with him, watching over him. He can, Hyukjae thinks, if he really wanted to, but he has the feeling it’s better for both of them to keep watching from afar.

If Hyukjae feels a sudden rage taking over him when Donghae brings someone into his room one night, he chooses to ignore it in favour of returning to his “keep Donghae from hurting himself” duties.

Hyukjae finds himself mulling over ways to hurt the intruder without Donghae noticing when said student asks a question that has both his friend and Hyukjae widening their eyes.

“Hey, do you think ghosts are real?”

Hyukjae gulps, frozen above Donghae’s bed, where he was previously hovering around.

Donghae’s friend looks at him weirdly for a few seconds before answering. “Only if you believe in them, I guess. Why do you ask?”

“It’s nothing, just...” Donghae mumbles, playing with his fingers, “I could’ve sworn the furniture moves around sometimes, my phone starts ringing in the morning without me setting the alarm, and I always find my things just conveniently lying around.”

“What’s so weird about conveniently placed things?”

“It’s weird because I always misplace them!”

His friend hums thoughtfully for a moment.

“You know,” he says slowly, as if not to scare Donghae, “every student who lived in this room before complained about ghosts and asked to be moved. They were pretty scared, but no one really believed them.”

Hyukjae can’t help the smug grin that tugs at his lips, reminiscing about the good, old days.

“I’m not scared, though,” Donghae says, making Hyukjae’s dead heart flutter. “It’s weird, but I feel like if there is a ghost, it’s trying to help me, not scare me away.”

His friend shrugs. “Yeah, weird.”

The conversation is dropped and the two boys return to whatever they were doing before this.

When Donghae gets into bed that night, Hyukjae watching him fondly, he hesitates, just a little, before speaking in a meek voice.

“Uh... mister ghost, if you’re there, thanks for taking care of me.”

When he wakes up the next morning, Donghae finds a little piece of paper on top of his phone. He gasps as he reads the you’re welcome scribbled on it and then looks around the room with a smile as bright as the one Hyukjae is wearing while gazing at him.