Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chan gets the call that a body has been found at about 5:03 AM. And for once he wishes that people would discover things between the hours of 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, because it is too early for this shit. 

Regardless, he drags himself out of bed and gets ready, wondering what gruesome sight awaits him. 

By 5:43 AM, he’s pulling up to the crime scene, in some sparse woods off of a main road. The coffee in his hand does little to warm him against the morning chill, and he shivers before reaching up to rub at his eyes. 

His partner, Changbin, is already waiting for him there when Chan gets out of the car. 

“Morning!” Changbin says cheerfully, probably seeing Chan’s face and deciding to be a little shit. “Bet you had a great night, huh?”

Chan just groans something unintelligible, rubbing at his eyes again. 

“I hear ya,” Changbin says, patting Chan’s shoulder. They duck under the yellow tape surrounding the area and head for where a cluster of forensic scientists are huddled in the trees. The layer of fallen leaves crunches underfoot. “As far as murders go, though, this one isn’t the worst I’ve seen. Young Asian male, probably early twenties. Bashed in skull, signs of a struggle based on the kicked up dirt and leaves. Most definitely foul play.”

“Great,” Chan mumbles into his coffee. 

“Some lady found him while she was walking her dog. There’s a trail that cuts through here, and the trailhead is off the main road back there. But said she’s the only one who lives around here. Nearest neighbor is at least two miles away. Didn’t hear anything last night, though.”

Chan’s eyes go to where a frazzled older woman is talking with a police officer, hugging a medium-sized dog to her chest. She looks like she’s on the verge of tears, and Chan can’t blame her.

Changbin continues, “There are footprints and tire tracks in the parking lot. Also some scuff marks underneath the leaves. We’re taking photos of all of it and can compare it to some suspects if we need to. But no marks that suggest the body was dragged. I think whoever did this chased the poor kid here and then ran off afterwards. But they couldn’t have gotten far, because the body’s still only a few hours old.”

Chan just rubs his temples. 

“Found the murder weapon, too!” Changbin adds.

“I’m guessing it’s a rock.”

“Bingo.” Changbin points some finger guns at him. “But it’s a really heavy rock caked into the ground that doesn’t look like it was moved. Based on the bruising on the victim’s face, though, I think there was a fight, and he fell backwards and smashed his head. But, who knows? Maybe someone grabbed his head and slammed it onto the rock. Both are possible.”

They reach the body, and Chan takes one look at the side of the kid’s bloody head and looks away. Too young. Reminds him too much of Felix. 

God, he hates cases like this. Maybe if he whines enough, he can get taken off of it.

He takes another sip of his coffee and then forces himself to look at the body again. Look at how it’s arranged, at the little number markers around it, noting some blood here, the rock there.

“Got his wallet, too,” Changbin says, holding up an evidence bag. “Name’s Han Jisung. Student at a local university. Though, there are two student IDs in there. One of them looks older, the other looks like it was printed yesterday. No phone, though.”

“Mm.”

Changbin pauses before saying, “I’ll wait until you’re more awake.”

“Thank you,” Chan says.

Changbin just snorts, pats his shoulder again, and walks away. 

Chan studies the body for a few moments more, but his brain really isn’t working right now. He turns to look at the rest of the scene, noting the area.

As he turns, his eyes fall on a young man standing off to the side, with no one around him. At first, Chan thinks he’s a witness, but Changbin didn’t mention anything about witnesses. He must be some local, trying to get a peak of the crime scene. 

“Hey,” Chan calls to the kid, whose wide eyes snap to his. “You can’t be here right now. This is a crime scene. Go home.”

The young man blinks a few times and doesn’t move. He must be processing Chan’s words, but Chan doesn’t have the patience or energy to deal with this right now. 

“I said, go home.” Chan steps towards him, and the kid finally turns and bolts. Chan waits until he’s past the yellow tape before turning back to the crime scene. 

Changbin walks up to him at that point, frowning. “Who were you talking to?”

“Some kid who was trying to peep at the scene. I told him off.”

Changbin looks at where the young man was. “I didn’t see anyone, though.”

“Well, he’s gone, now,” Chan says. 

“Wonder if he was a witness.”

“Doubt it.”

*

About an hour away, at the same time, Seungmin is heading back to campus, driving down the twisty mountain roads, which are wet from the heavy mist that’s settled over the area. It’s early, but his insomnia reared its ugly head again last night, so all he wanted to do was go for a drive. One road took him to another, and all of a sudden he was in the foothills.

He yawns as he rounds a corner, with a drop-off into a ravine to one side of the road. The exhaustion is really starting to catch up with him now. Things look a little blurry, and he can’t tell if it’s from the fog or not.

The road meanders this way and that, twisting left, then right, then left, then right. Seungmin follows it, getting caught into the swaying, hypnotic motion.

He almost gets too close to a guardrail, causing him to quickly jerk away from it, a little bit into the other lane. That snaps him awake. He forces himself to sit up straight, to shake his head to clear it of the bleariness.

He really should have gotten coffee at the last gas station he passed. But he’s been numb this entire time, so he hasn’t felt much of anything, much less exhaustion. 

Oh well. It’s not that far back to campus; he’ll get something there so he doesn’t fall asleep during his 8:00 AM lecture.

His phone buzzes from where it sits in a cupholder, and Seungmin glances at it absent-mindedly. It’s just a reminder for him to finish some homework that’s due tonight. With everything that’s happened lately, though, homework has been one of his last priorities. He can’t really seem to care about grades anymore when his life is falling apart.

As he looks up, someone materializes out of the fog up ahead, right in the center of the road. What idiot would be walking along this road at this time of day?!

He gets a little closer, and the person turns to face him, and for the first time during this drive, he finally feels something. He feels a surge of fear, along with a bunch of other emotions all tangled together. Because he recognizes them. 

Seungmin tries to brake, but his tires skid on the wet pavement. Out of instinct, he swerves to avoid hitting this person. His headlights illuminate a pair of wide eyes and a university sweatshirt before he loses control completely and goes right through the guardrail protecting him from the drop-off on one side.

Typically, something should flash before Seungmin’s eyes as he plummets into the ravine below. But just like the entire drive here, his mind is numb, except for the thought that maybe after this he’ll finally be able to catch a break.

*

The next time Seungmin cracks open his eyes, he’s being wheeled down a bright white hallway, but other than that, everything is blurry. He doesn’t know if he’s in pain or not; he can’t feel anything, really. He sees heads bent over him, can hear muffled sounds of shouts and whatnot, can feel someone put an oxygen mask over his face. But this moment of consciousness alone takes too much energy, and he slips back into the darkness. 

If he wakes up any other times before he wakes up in his room, he doesn’t remember them. He does remember waking up fully, being in a white hospital room on a white hospital bed, with lots of tubes and wires connected to him, and a thin white blanket draped over the rest of his body. 

Glancing around, he finds that he’s alone. He’s not sure how he feels about that. On one hand, he’s glad that his family isn’t here to see him at his lowest. On the other hand, he now knows that not even this is enough to get them to care about him anymore.

A nurse comes in to check on him, asking how he’s feeling, if he feels any pain. Seungmin doesn’t feel much of anything other than the desire to sleep. After the nurse checks his vitals, he does just that.

He doesn’t dream, and when he wakes again, there’s someone standing over his bed. 

Seungmin opens his eyes and squints blearily at them, wondering if one of his family members or classmates heard about the accident and finally came to see him. 

He takes in the university sweatshirt, the letters splattered with blood, and his heart leaps into his throat. 

He flinches away from this person, but his body doesn’t move as much as he thought it would. Instead, his neck just spasms painfully, and Seungmin makes a choked noise of pain.

“What are you doing here?” he whispers to Jisung, who’s standing over his bed, watching him with a frown. “How did you get in here?”

Jisung blinks, looking confused. “I—I don’t know. Am I not supposed to be here?”

Seungmin doesn’t know how to answer that, because he’s so conflicted when it comes to Jisung, now. He’s not sure if he wants him close or as far away as physically possible. 

He settles for, “What do you think?”

That just gets him another confused expression, which baffles Seungmin just as much as it does Jisung. But before Seungmin can say anything else, a doctor knocks on the door and comes in. Both Jisung and Seungmin look at him, but the doctor only smiles at Seungmin. 

“Hey, there,” the doctor says, coming in. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t feel much of anything,” Seungmin says. He glances at Jisung, but the doctor doesn’t even acknowledge him. 

Instead, the doctor just nods solemnly. “Do you remember anything?”

“I remember going off the road, but after that, it’s foggy.”

“That’s understandable. You were unconscious through most of it, and you went through quite the traumatic experience. It’s normal for your body to block out some things.”

Seungmin just nods, trying not to glance at Jisung, who’s looking in between him and the doctor. 

The doctor sighs. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Seungmin.”

“Just tell me,” Seungmin says. “I don’t need you to sugarcoat it.”

“Alright, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

The doctor sighs again before saying, “You fractured your spine, which needed immediate surgery. We did what we could, but unfortunately we couldn’t fix all of the damage. You’re now completely paralyzed from the neck down.”

Seungmin stares at him. He thought he could handle anything, but now that he hears the diagnosis, the blood is roaring in his ears. 

“Paralyzed?” he whispers, his voice cracking.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” the doctor says. “Do you have any family members we could call to come and get you? We tried to contact your emergency contact, but we couldn’t get through.”

Seungmin shakes his head, his throat closing up. His eyes burn with oncoming tears. 

“Any friends? Significant other?”

He shakes his head again. 

“Do you live alone?”

Seungmin nods. “Student housing.”

“I see. What about some neighbors or fellow classmates who could come help you? I’m afraid you won’t be able to live alone any longer, but it’s possible that your university could switch you to a room with more roommates who would be able to accommodate you. Perhaps it could even assign you a nurse, as part of their disability accommodations.”

“There’s no one,” Seungmin whispers, the words like a knife to the heart. He didn’t use to be alone. He used to have a family.

Used to, until someone fucked that up.

He clenches his jaw as he glares at Jisung out of the corner of his eye, who has been so still that he practically blends into the background. Jisung feels him staring and looks back at him with wide, innocent eyes. If Seungmin weren’t immobile, he’d throttle him.

“I see,” the doctor says again, and Seungmin quickly looks back at him, wondering if he’ll finally acknowledge Jisung. But the doctor is frowning at Seungmin. “I’ll be right back. I have to make a few calls.”

Seungmin nods, and the doctor walks out.

Once he’s gone, Seungmin turns on Jisung. 

“Leave,” Seungmin snarls. “I never want to see your fucking face again.”

“Did I do that?” Jisung frowns and points at Seungmin’s body. 

“What do you think? What the fuck were you doing in the middle of the road?”

“I don’t remember being in the middle of the road.” Jisung’s brow furrows. “I…I don’t remember anything, actually. It’s all just…foggy.” He grimaces and reaches up to his head—which is currently coated in blood, like something bashed it in. 

Seungmin feels ill at the sight. 

“What?” Jisung asks, seeing Seungmin’s pale face. 

Seungmin can’t even form the words. If he could, he would lift a hand to point, but that’s not an option anymore. 

Jisung rubs at his head, then frowns again as he feels the texture of it. “Why does this feel weird?”

Seungmin finally finds the words, though they’re choked and hoarse. “You—you should look in a mirror.”

Jisung frowns at that, but then drifts towards the bathroom connected to Seungmin’s room. Seungmin watches, jaw slack, as Jisung flicks on the light with ease. He sees the moment Jisung realizes it, the moment he sees himself in the mirror. 

“Oh my god,” Jisung says, his entire body going rigid. “Oh—oh my god.”

He runs his hands over his head, looks at the bloody dent in the side of it. Frantically runs those hands over the front of his shirt as well, which has blood and dirt stains. He’s starting to hyperventilate. Starting to say, “No, no, no” over and over again.

Seungmin can only watch as Jisung has a panic attack right there in the bathroom, letting out a horrible scream that no one but Seungmin can hear.

“Seungmin—” Jisung wails. “Seungmin, something’s wrong. I can’t—I can’t feel anything. My head should hurt. Why doesn’t my head hurt? It’s not even bleeding anymore!”

Seungmin doesn’t respond; he just lies there and stares, because what else can he do?

This is all just a dream, he reasons. This is all just a massive hallucination as a side effect of all the pain meds they gave him. 

But as Jisung collapses onto the cold, hard floor of that hospital bathroom, screaming and crying and hugging his head, Seungmin finds his reasoning hard to believe. 

*

Seungmin first met Jisung in one of their law classes. It was a required law class, which would cover the basics of law as well as provide students from many different majors with information on their rights and how to patent and when to sue and what to do when sued and so on and so forth. Seungmin figured it would be a breeze. And so far, it had been, until their first examination. 

Seungmin was used to getting the top grades in every single one of his classes. He was also used to regularly outscoring every other student on exams and projects, though he only knew that because he asked the professors during office hours, when they were allowed to tell him personally what his ranking was of all the students. 

He knew this law class would be no different. He still put in the work, of course, but was entirely unconcerned about the outcome.

Now, this professor was a bit different than the other professors and thought it would motivate the students to do better if they knew their rankings in respect to the others in the class. So, after passing back the first test, he revealed who received the highest score.

From the front row, Seungmin smiled, feeling completely confident. But then the professor said, “First place goes to Han Jisung.”

Seungmin’s smile vanished as someone let out a whoop in the back of the classroom. No, this couldn’t be right. Seungmin should have gotten the highest score, how did some random person he’d never heard of get it instead?

He turned to look over his shoulder, where he spotted the person who had whooped. That person was in the very last row, surrounded by a couple other people who were congratulating him and giving him high fives. Seungmin couldn’t believe his eyes. 

That’s who he lost to? Some guy with round cheeks, big eyes lined with makeup that looked entirely too feminine, horrible bleached blond hair, and a beanie?

Absolutely not. The student must have cheated. 

After class, Seungmin confronted his professor about it. 

“I believe there’s been a mistake,” Seungmin said. “I believe I should have received the highest score.”

“Do you, now,” his professor said, arching an eyebrow. 

“Yes. There’s no way that Han Jisung scored higher than me. He must have cheated.”

“That’s an incredibly serious accusation you’re making there, Seungmin. Do you have proof that he cheated?”

“No, but—sir, just look at him. How in the world could someone like that score the highest in a law class?”

“Well, he did,” the professor said. “I have no reason to suspect that he cheated, because he has an exceptional grasp on the material. And let’s be honest here, Seungmin, you didn’t get every single question correct on that test.”

“What?” Seungmin blinked several times, affronted. “Yes, I did.”

“Nope.” His professor took Seungmin’s test from him and flipped to the last page. He tapped the last question. “Bonus question. You missed it. He didn’t.”

Seungmin stared down at the bright red mark slashing through the very last question. He had answered it so confidently, and yet he had missed it. 

Worst of all, he had no idea what the correct answer was. 

He stormed out of the classroom, jaw clenched. He just hoped his parents wouldn’t hear of this. Their son, placing second? Unheard of. Unacceptable. He wouldn’t get into med school by placing second.

Well. They didn’t have to know of the rankings. But they would demand to see his test anyways, and they’d see that bright red mark. 

He looked at the test again, studying the red mark. He supposed he could always…change it. Write in the correct answer.

But to do that, he’d have to have the correct answer. Why didn’t he think to ask his professor just now?

Seungmin had plans to visit his parents and grandparents tomorrow. His professor’s office hours weren’t until the day after. Seungmin needed to know that correct answer now. 

Fortunately—or unfortunately—he did know someone who knew it. 

Han Jisung and his delinquent friends had bolted the moment the professor ended the lecture. He was long gone by now, but Seungmin had an idea of where he might be. 

The dining hall was a massive cafeteria, boasting several food chains to choose from, like McDonalds or Starbucks. It was available to all students, regardless if they lived on campus or not. Other than the green lawns stretching out in between the huge oak trees and historic academic buildings, this was the one place where everyone hung out. That is, if they were interested in “hanging out,” which Seungmin was not. 

The place was much too noisy, due to its high ceilings and shiny linoleum floors, and the tables were always either sticky or covered in crumbs from whichever messy college eater sat there last. Seungmin much preferred to eat his food outside or in the comfort of his room, where he could study in peace. 

The noise was nearly deafening as he walked in there now, since it was almost dinnertime. He scanned the area, looking for that awful blond hair and unwashed beanie. After walking around the cafeteria once, Seungmin finally spotted Jisung with his friends, sitting near one of the tall, narrow windows. 

Taking a deep breath to steel himself, Seungmin strode over to Jisung and said, “Excuse me.”

Several pairs of eyes turned in his direction, most of them not exactly friendly. Seungmin ignored everyone except Jisung and asked, “Do you have the answer to the last bonus question from today’s class?”

Jisung blinked up at him before finally seeming to register who Seungmin was. “Ohhh, do you mean for the law class?”

“Yes, the class we just came from,” Seungmin said shortly, wondering how the hell this idiot scored higher than him. Without cheating, too.

“Oh, sure, let me just look.” Jisung picked up his bag and rummaged around in it. 

Seungmin had to refrain from tapping his foot impatiently. He felt too uncomfortable, standing here next to these people whom he otherwise wouldn’t be caught dead with. One of the guys sitting across from Jisung whispered something in the ear of the guy with freckles sitting next to him, and the two of them snickered. Seungmin stiffened, having a bad feeling that they were laughing at him.

Eventually, Jisung pulled out a crumpled stack of papers and brandished it with a triumphant, “Aha! Here you go.”

He handed it to Seungmin, who said stiffly, “Thank you.”

“No problem.” Jisung smiled at him. Seungmin ignored him as he flipped to the last page, where the bonus question was. “What’s your name, by the way? I don’t think I’ve seen you at all in that class.”

“Kim Seungmin,” Seungmin said. “And of course you haven’t seen me—I sit in the front, while you sit in the back.”

“Ohh, wait, I have seen you!” Jisung snapped his fingers. “You answer like every single question the professor asks.” He grinned. “You’re wicked smart.”

Seungmin finished writing down the answer to the last question and handed the test back. “Thank you.”

“What, you’re not going to say that I’m wicked smart too?” Jisung smirked up at him. “After all, I did score higher than you on this test.”

“It won’t happen again.” Then, with that, Seungmin turned and walked away. 

He still heard Jisung and his friends burst into laughter, and one of them even said, “Wow, what a dick—”

“Did you see the stick shoved up his ass?” another said, and they all laughed again. 

It stung a little bit, but Seungmin didn’t care about those things. He didn’t care what other students thought about him. All he cared about was studying and ranking at the top of his class and making his parents proud.

So, with the answer to the last bonus question obtained, he picked up some food to go before heading to his dorm room to eat and study alone. 

*

Seungmin tries to get some sleep, but sleep won’t come. He can do nothing but lie there on that hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling, wishing for a miracle. His life as he knows it is over. He’ll never get into med school at this rate. He’ll never be a surgeon. All those years, wasted for nothing. 

Although he tries to hold them back, the tears slip out of the corners of his eyes anyways.

There’s movement off to his left, and Jisung walks through the wall into Seungmin’s room. There’s a hollow look in his eye, one that Seungmin can relate to.

“I don’t know where else to go,” Jisung says, sitting down on the edge of Seungmin’s bed. “I don’t—I don’t know who I am or where I’m from. All I know is you. Or, I know your name and that I should stick with you.”

“You don’t remember anything? You don’t know how you died?” Seungmin doesn’t look at him, because it’s too hard to look at him. So he keeps staring at the ceiling instead. 

“No, nothing,” Jisung says. “But…but you know me, right?” He looks at Seungmin with wide eyes, his makeup smudged. Somehow, he can pull that look off. “You said you knew me.”

“We weren’t exactly friends.” Seungmin glances at him.

“But you did know me,” Jisung says. “You would know at least where I can start in learning what happened to me. How I…” he cuts off, then swallows thickly. “How I died.”

“You died from blunt force trauma to the head,” Seungmin retorts. “There. Case solved.”

“You know what I mean! I need to know who killed me!”

“What makes you think you didn’t just fall off a cliff or something? Or get in a car accident, like me?”

“I would have more injuries, wouldn’t I? But I don’t. Just a bashed in head. Well, and a bruised cheekbone.”

Seungmin looks back at the ceiling. “I can’t help you. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have my own problems to worry about right now.”

“Please?” Jisung begs, leaning forward to grab Seungmin’s hand. Of course his hands pass right through Seungmin’s, though Seungmin doesn’t feel anything. “Please, just tell me what you know about me. You have to know if someone would want to kill me, right?”

“No,” Seungmin says shortly. “Like I said. Not friends.”

“Fine, then, how did we know each other? Did we work together? Go to school together?”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I’ll do anything,” Jisung says, trying to grab Seungmin’s hand again. “Anything, I swear, I’ll—”

“You can’t do anything for me,” Seungmin interrupts. “You’re dead. I’m alive. Just leave me alone.”

He wants to yank his hand away, but he can’t. 

“Please!” Jisung squeezes Seungmin’s hand—and somehow manages to pick it up. Even stranger, Seungmin can feel him squeeze it. No, wait, it’s not Jisung squeezing Seungmin’s hand—it’s Seungmin’s hand squeezing on its own.

Seungmin looks at him sharply. Jisung’s hand is almost completely overlaid on Seungmin’s hand, making them look nearly the same. 

“I can feel that,” Seungmin says.

“What?” Jisung looks down at where he’s holding Seungmin’s hand. “You can? How?”

“I don’t know.”

Jisung then releases Seungmin’s hand, and Seungmin’s hand loses all feeling before plopping back down onto the hospital bed. No matter how hard Seungmin tries, he can’t lift it again. 

“Try that again,” Seungmin orders.

“I don’t even remember what I did.” But Jisung tries to hold Seungmin’s hand again. It doesn’t work, but Seungmin thinks he knows why. 

“No, try laying your hand directly over mine,” he says. “Use your left hand. So it’ll match my left hand.”

Jisung frowns but obeys. The moment he puts his left hand over Seungmin’s, the feeling comes back into Seungmin’s hand. Seungmin still can’t control his hand, can’t lift it or flex his fingers…but Jisung can. 

Seungmin lets out a breath of disbelief. Jisung just blinks, his eyes wide. 

Then they look at each other, staring in shock for several moments as they process what just happened. 

Jisung is the first to recover. “So, what were you saying about me not being able to do anything for you?”

*

They test out their theory slowly, one limb at a time. Jisung can move Seungmin’s arms as if they’re his own. So far, it appears he can control Seungmin’s limbs for as long as he desires, without faltering or getting kicked out. 

But eventually Seungmin gets impatient, and he tells Jisung to just try to lie right on top of him. 

“You want me to control your whole body?” Jisung wrings his hand, looking a little worried. “But…are you sure about this?”

“Yes, I’ve never been so sure of something in my life,” Seungmin says. “Think of it—if you can control my limbs, then I’m not paralyzed anymore, and I can finally get my life back!”

“And you can find out who murdered me,” Jisung says. 

“Right,” Seungmin says, trying to stop himself from rolling his eyes. “Eventually. But for now, we need to test out if you can even possess my whole body for long periods of time.”

“But…what if it feels weird?” Jisung says. “I mean, that’s literally me occupying your body—isn’t that strange? Aren’t you a little weirded out by that? Like, what will that even be like? Do we have to fight over control? Or do I just push you out and suddenly you have no control or voice whatsoever?”

Seungmin hasn’t thought about that, but he almost doesn’t care. At this point, he’s willing to do anything. 

Even let a ghost literally possess his body.

“I’m not worried,” Seungmin says. “I just want to test it out. So please, can we do this?”

Jisung sighs but says reluctantly, “Alright. Um.” He climbs up onto the bed, but then frowns. “Do I just like…flop backwards onto you? What if it hurts?”

“Worse case scenario, you pass through me and go right through the bed,” Seungmin says. 

“Or I kill you,” Jisung says. 

“I don’t think you’re going to kill me.”

“So trusting. Alright.” Jisung sighs yet again before moving to stand at the end of the bed, over Seungmin. He turns so his back is facing Seungmin, so when he falls, he’ll fall on his back, and his body will be facing the ceiling in the same way Seungmin is.

“Here goes,” Jisung says. Then he’s falling backwards. 

Seungmin, despite himself, squeezes his eyes shut. 

The good news—it doesn’t hurt when Jisung possesses his body. The other news—it does feel very strange, like a chill passing through his body, and then suddenly the prickling feeling that he’s not alone. That prickling feeling only intensifies, becoming a spike of panic, then a growing anxiety, and then something akin to full-blown paranoia. 

Perhaps it’s just his body freaking out about an intruder?

“Okay,” Seungmin’s mouth moves on its own despite him not speaking, yet it’s his voice coming out, “this is weird. I don’t like this. Nope, I don’t like this.”

Just hold on a little longer, Seungmin tries to say, but his voice just echoes in his head like a normal thought. I think it’s just a normal reaction. It’ll pass. Deep breaths.

His body takes a few deep breaths, but the panicking doesn’t stop.

“Nope!” And then Jisung is jumping out of Seungmin’s body. Instantly, the panic vanishes, leaving Seungmin gasping for breath and shivering a little, like he was just gutted. So Jisung stepping out of his body feels a lot worse than him going in. Interesting. 

Meanwhile, Jisung is still freaking out. 

“That was too weird,” he’s saying, pacing back and forth. “Too weird. The—the panic, it was just growing in my chest, and I felt sick to my stomach, and I couldn’t stop it, and it just felt so wrong—”

“Jisung,” Seungmin says in the calmest voice he can muster, “it’s okay. Just focus on breathing.”

Er, perhaps telling a ghost to breathe isn’t the best advice, but Jisung is too distracted by his anxiety to question the logic there. The point is, Seungmin’s advice works, and Jisung takes deep, calming breaths and finally calms down. 

“Okay,” Seungmin says. “And this is why we do test runs. So we know what we’re dealing with. Honestly, I don’t think it went that bad. It could have gone a lot worse.”

Jisung considers this, then admits Seungmin has a point. 

They try it again, though this time they do it much slower. As in, Jisung sits down first, lines up his feet and legs with Seungmin’s, then sits back slowly. They discover that that is a much stranger feeling, like that annoying, prickling feeling of your arm falling asleep but all over your body and at a much slower rate. The panic isn’t as bad, but the pricking sensation is worse than that, so jumping in it is. 

They do it enough times where the panic finally subsides, as if Seungmin’s body is getting used to Jisung and accepting that he’s not a threat. Once that’s out of the way, they both exhale at the same time, and then Jisung says in Seungmin’s voice, “Okay, maybe this isn’t so bad.”

Seungmin wants to nod, but he realizes that Jisung is in control for right now. Yet he wants nothing more than to lift his hands and just look at them, to sit up and swing his legs over the side of the bed, to take a walk around the room. 

Jisung must sense Seungmin’s thoughts, because he slowly lifts Seungmin’s hands, palm up, as if he’s never seen his own hands before. 

Seungmin watches as Jisung flexes those hands a few times, even rubs them together and runs his fingertips over the skin. Seungmin can feel everything, and he’s so overcome that in that moment he wants to just cry. 

His life isn’t completely over. He hasn’t wasted all that schooling for nothing. He can finally get it all back. 

Jisung lifts his hand to Seungmin’s face, and Seungmin is a bit mortified to find that there are, in fact, a few tears slipping down his cheeks. 

“It’s okay,” Jisung says. “It’s okay to cry. I think that’s a valid reaction to something like this. Anyone would react the same.”

Seungmin can’t help snort. You mean other people become paralyzed after car accidents and have to ask a newly-dead ghost to help them walk again?

“Well, I didn’t say it was a common occurrence.” But Jisung smiles using Seungmin’s face. 

Their next step is to try walking, but before that, Seungmin insists that they need to alert the nurses. 

“It will be more believable if we start small,” Seungmin says to Jisung, after Jisung is out of his body and sitting next to him again. “Try showing movement in the arms or hands, then in the legs.”

Jisung nods. “I agree.”

So that’s exactly what they do. Seungmin calls in the nurse one morning to show that he can move his hand, and her reaction is nothing less than shocked. They then call in the doctor and show him, and he’s just as shocked.

“Well,” the doctor says after the shock has passed and reason is taking over again, “I suppose it isn’t entirely impossible to regain some mobility. Perhaps it was just your body taking time to heal that left you immobilized for so long, but now it could be recovering enough for you to start getting some movement back. 

“But I’m just warning you,” he adds, “you might not get full movement back. It might just be from the waist up. Try not to get your hopes up too much.”

“Even from the waist up would be better than being fully paralyzed,” Seungmin says.

The day after that, they show that he can move the other arm, and then after that, they show that he can sit up on his own. Slowly but surely, it appears he’s gaining full mobility back. 

They take a day or so before moving a leg, figuring that it would be more believable if it were a slightly slower process. By then, the doctors are already discussing moving Seungmin to a rehab facility, but that’s just another medical bill that Seungmin doesn’t want to pay for. So, time to speed things up. 

The nurses come in the next day to find Seungmin sitting up with his legs over the side of the bed. They rush to his side, telling him to lie back down, to not move too much. But Seungmin is determined, and he says, “I think I can do it.”

Then, to prove it to them, he stands up on his own.

This is the first time he and Jisung are trying this, and after lying in a bed for a week now, Seungmin’s legs aren’t used to it. His knees buckle, and the nurses have to catch him and wrangle him back into the bed. But in a way, he’s grateful that his legs reacted in that way, because it’s much more realistic like that.

“We’re one step closer to being discharged,” he whispers to Jisung that night, staring up at the ceiling like usual. It’s dark, and the hospital is quiet, but Seungmin’s insomnia is acting up, so he can’t fall asleep. Jisung is curled up in the chair in the corner of the room, and he only hums in response.

“One step closer,” Seungmin whispers again, as if that will help him fall asleep.

Within a day, he’s being discharged. His doctors are calling it a miracle. They’re a little confused as to how it happened, but the sooner Seungmin vacates a bed, the better. 

The nurses have to buy and bring him some clean clothes to change into, since the clothes he was wearing during the crash had to be cut off of him. When they bring his personal belongings that survived the crash, he finds that only his wallet is in there. His phone, apparently, was crushed in the impact, and nothing of it could be saved. One more thing that Seungmin will have to buy, now.

“And your car was totaled, unfortunately,” the nurse tells Seungmin as she hands him his discharge papers. “Sorry. But remember, it fell into a ravine.”

Seungmin should have expected that, but it’s still a punch in the gut. He can’t afford a new car now. And he can’t exactly pay for an Uber to taxi him around, now can he?

You could always ride the bus, Jisung says in the back of Seungmin’s head, since Seungmin is in control of the body right now. 

“I’ve never ridden a bus in my life,” Seungmin whispers back. 

Really? I can help you. I’ve ridden it a bunch of times!

So their first challenge together once they get out of the hospital is to find a bus station and get Seungmin a bus card. The nurses tell him that there’s a station a few blocks away from the hospital, which Seungmin finds is full of homeless people. 

Calm down, they’re not going to bite, Jisung tells Seungmin when Seungmin’s heart rate spikes at the sight of them. They’re literally just people.

“They’re unpredictable,” Seungmin whispers back. 

It’s not like you have anything to steal off of you. And, with you talking to yourself, they probably don’t want to be around someone as crazy as you, either!

Seungmin ignores that and focuses on buying a bus card. Somehow, he manages to ride the bus on his own without panicking too much, though his body is completely rigid the entire ride, and he plans to burn these clothes once he gets home.

But he’s finally, finally on his way back to campus. He was in the hospital for little over a week, and he can only imagine the amount of late work he missed. Oh, god, he hopes someone thought to contact his professors and tell them that he was in the hospital. Otherwise his GPA is going to be in the toilet from the marked absences and missing work. Wait a minute—some of his professors fail students after oh so many unapproved absences. Oh, god, did he just fail half of his classes?!

Calm down, Jisung says. I’m sure they’ll understand once you explain it to them.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Seungmin murmurs, and the person sitting next to him on the bus glances at him as if to check if Seungmin is talking to himself or not. 

The university bus stop is on the academic half of the campus, meaning Seungmin has to walk halfway across campus to get to the dorms. He steps off the bus and lets out a sigh of relief. It feels good to be back on campus, to see the huge oak trees and brown buildings. It’s autumn already, and the leaves are changing colors, while the air is finally crisp enough for Seungmin to wear a sweater. He breathes in deeply as he walks past students rushing to classes or lounging on the lawns. 

Yeah, he feels safer now that he’s back, especially since it’s the only home he has left. 

He heads up to his dorm, badly in need of a shower and a change of clothes. He doesn’t really pay attention to people as he passes them in the hallway, too focused on pulling out his keys and unlocking his dorm. He has a single room, with its own bathroom, something his parents paid extra for, and he’s never been so grateful. 

Um, why are people staring at you, Jisung asks as Seungmin goes into his room. And before you say this was all in my—er, our—head, it definitely isn’t. They were like full on gawking at you, bro.

“Don’t call me bro,” Seungmin mutters, opening up his wardrobe. “We are not bros.”

Okay, fine, fine.

Seungmin pulls out some clean clothes and goes into the bathroom. As he shuts the door and catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, though, he pauses. 

“We have to shower together,” Seungmin says, blinking at himself. 

Huh? Oh. Yeah.

“I’m not comfortable with that,” Seungmin says. 

Well, no offense, but you gotta start getting comfortable, because you can’t exactly shower without me, Jisung says.

“Can’t you, like, go dormant or something?”

What?

“Or close your eyes.”

If I close my eyes, then you close your eyes. Our eyes are connected now, remember?

“I guess I’ll just have to shower with the lights off,” Seungmin mutters. 

That’s creepy. No, don’t do that. What if you slip and fall? Oh wait, hold on, I just thought of something. Jisung chatters in Seungmin’s head as Seungmin turns on the shower, makes sure everything is where he needs it to be, then turns off the lights. What happens if you die? Or, we die? Like, while I’m in your body. Are our souls like intertwined or something?

“Don’t know,” Seungmin says, starting to pull off his clothes.

We really should have thought some parts of this through, Jisung says as Seungmin steps into the shower. Oh well.

“Please shut up.”

Fine, but only because you said please.

Seungmin is usually one to take quick, efficient showers, but he hasn’t had more than a sponge bath from the nurses in literally a week, so he takes his time. He can tell that Jisung is enjoying it too, though the moment he realizes that, it kind of sucks the fun out of it for Seungmin. He forgets that he’s not alone. And he’ll never be alone again. For some reason, that annoys him.

He finishes showering, then dries off and carefully feels around for his clothes. Once he pulls his underwear on, he flicks the lights back on. 

Oh thank god, Jisung says. I’m not a fan of showering in the dark.

Seungmin doesn’t respond as he pulls on his clothes.

As he’s finishing getting ready, Jisung suddenly says, Whoa whoa whoa, what the hell are you wearing?

“Excuse me?” Seungmin looks at his reflection, showing a sweater vest over a button-up shirt and some dress pants. “I’m just wearing what I always wear.”

Oh my god, Jisung makes a puking noise. Oh my god, you’re actually wearing a sweater vest. I can’t go out looking like that. 

“It’s not you who’s going out,” Seungmin retorts. “It’s me. And I wear sweater vests.”

Do you also wear cardigans with the elbow pads? Actually, don’t answer that. Jisung sighs. At least you’re not wearing khakis with it. The dress pants are already bad enough.

Seungmin scowls as he shoves his shoes on. It’s almost dinnertime, and he’s starving. Hospital food is truly disgusting. He needs something tasty to make up for it.

As he passes the mirror on the back of his door, though, he pauses. He never used to worry about his appearance. He still took care of his appearance, making sure his face was cleanly shaven and his hair was combed nicely, but he’s never worried about his sense of fashion. Honestly, he’s always liked his clothes and has always felt comfortable in them, but after Jisung said that, Seungmin can’t help looking at his clothes in a new light. 

“Do you really think the sweater vest is that bad?” Seungmin asks quietly, staring at his reflection. 

Yeah, you look like a prep, Jisung says. 

“A prep?”

Yeah, like a goody two-shoes. A teacher’s pet. A nerd. But like a rich nerd.

“And I’m guessing that’s a bad thing.”

I mean, I guess it depends. Do your friends all dress like that? Because if they do, then that’s not so bad. At least you blend in.

“I don’t have any friends,” Seungmin says. 

Jisung falls silent.

Once again, the lack of friends has never bothered Seungmin. He’s always been fine with being alone, because he’s always been too goal-oriented. He’s never had time for friends. Besides, he’s always had his family.

But now he doesn’t have them, either. And suddenly Seungmin feels unbearably lonely. 

Well, I guess you and I are kinda friends now, Jisung says, trying to cheer Seungmin up. I mean, what else would you call our relationship?

“A symbiotic one,” Seungmin says. Then he adds, “A symbiotic relationship is a term in biology where—”

I know what a symbiotic relationship is, Jisung says. 

“Oh. You do?”

Dude. I’ll have you know that I had a 4.0 GPA while I was going here.

Seungmin blinks at that, and even Jisung seems surprised at the revelation. 

Wait, I just remembered that, he says. I went to school here. I was a student here. Damn, I must have been hella smart.

“I wouldn’t know,” Seungmin says, and then he turns to walk out of his room. 

Jisung continues to chatter in the back of his mind like an annoying internal monologue as Seungmin walks to the dining hall. Actually, some of it is coming back to me! I recognize those lawns and those buildings and this dining hall! I used to skateboard around here with my friends Felix and Jeongin! And then we’d hang out in the dining hall and do our homework together.

“You actually did homework?” Seungmin mutters before he can stop himself.

Uh, yeah? I never had a late or missing assignment.

Seungmin is truly shocked at that. 

Wait a second, why are you so surprised at that? Jisung says. And why were you surprised that I had a 4.0? Did you think I was stupid or something?

“No,” Seungmin says, a beat too late. 

Oh my god, you totally did. Jeez, dude, can you stop it with the condescending judgments? Just because I was here on a scholarship and didn’t dress like I go to the Hamptons on the weekends doesn’t mean I wasn’t smart.

Seungmin doesn’t respond and instead pushes open the door to the dining hall. 

It’s busy and noisy, but that’s to be expected, he supposes. He doesn’t plan on staying long, though. Just long enough to grab a sandwich from the sandwich bar. Then he’ll head back to his dorm to study and catch up on some homework.

As he pulls out his wallet with his meal card, he can’t help sighing in relief that this is pre-paid. He doesn’t know what he would do if he couldn’t afford to eat. Which he can’t, now.

He gets in line for the sandwich bar, but then can’t help glancing around. He’s usually not one to care about things like this, but…people are staring. They’re staring at him. And they’re whispering to each other while glancing in his direction. 

Why are they staring? Jisung whispers. 

Seungmin doesn’t dare speak to himself here, so he just shakes his head.  

Bro, are you like some sort of social pariah?

Seungmin swallows and looks straight ahead, refusing to answer that. Which in of itself is an answer, he supposes.

He gets his sandwich and swipes his card at the register, where the student employee keeps glancing at him with a wide-eyed look. Seungmin doesn’t talk to her, just waits for her to approve his card before grabbing his food and walking away. 

As he heads for the door, though, Jisung suddenly exclaims loudly enough for Seungmin to wince, WAIT!

“What?” Seungmin hisses under his breath. 

They’re right there—Felix and Jeongin, they’re right there!

Seungmin’s heart leaps into his throat as he glances around, finally spotting Felix and Jeongin sitting at one of the tables. To his surprise, they’re both staring at him, and they’re not exactly being subtle about it. When Seungmin looks back at them, Felix scowls at him.

Can we please go talk to them? Jisung begs, oblivious to the way Felix and Jeongin are glaring at him—er, them.

Seungmin quickly looks away and shakes his head. Then he continues heading for the door. 

What?! Why not?! Come on, please? I just need to tell them that I’m okay! They’re probably worried sick about me!

“No,” Seungmin hisses again.

Kim Seungmin, I can and will take control of this body.

“You’d better not,” Seungmin growls. “Jisung, do not.”

Jisung must hear the tone in his voice, because he backs off. Fine. But I do want to talk to them.

Seungmin shakes his head again and hurries back to his dorm. On the way, people continue to stare at him, and he wants to curl up and hide. Not one person actually talks to him, though. 

He reaches his dorm and slams the door behind him like he’s being chased. Now that he’s here and he’s safe, he realizes that he’s breathing heavily and his heart is pounding. 

What the hell was that? Jisung demands as Seungmin stumbles to his desk to eat his food. 

“Please just shut up,” Seungmin says. “I—I need to study.”

Fine, Jisung grumbles. 

But as Seungmin takes a bite of his food, he finds that his appetite is gone. Regardless, he knows he needs the energy, so he forces himself to eat it. 

The food tastes like ash.

*

Chan has to tell the parents that their son died. He hates that part. Though, the worst part is afterwards, when he has to then more or less interrogate them, asking them where they were the night Jisung died.

Both of them have alibis that check out, so then Chan has to ask them what Jisung’s final days were like, if he was in trouble with someone, if the parents have any idea who would want to do this. 

The parents go wide eyed and shake their heads.

“He was such a good boy,” Jisung’s mother says, her eyes full of tears. “He—everyone loved him. He had a great group of friends, he never got into trouble…he was just a sweetheart.”

She sniffs loudly and blows her nose. Her husband puts a comforting arm around her and hugs her.

“Sure, people thought he was trouble because of how he dressed,” she continues, “but he’s not a delinquent like they all say! He was so smart and bright, and now he’s gone.” Her voice trembles.

Chan just sighs and nods, unsure of where to go from there. 

On his way home from work, though, Felix calls him.

Chan can’t even properly say “Hello” before Felix is demanding, “Is it true?”

“Is what true?” Chan asks. 

“Is—is Jisung—is he—” Felix can’t even get the words out. “Did you really find a body?”

Chan pauses, his exhaustion momentarily disappearing as he realizes what Felix is saying. “Hold on, how do you know about that?”

“It’s all over the news, Chan,” Felix whispers.

Chan blinks several times, momentarily speechless. “Wait, did you know Han Jisung?”

“Know him? Chan, he was my best friend!”

Wait. “That Jisung?!”

“Yes, Chan! Jesus, how did you not know that?”

“I forgot his surname and I only met him once a long time ago, so I didn’t even think—” Chan cuts himself off and sighs. “Never mind. But…yes, it’s true. We found his body a week ago.”

“Oh my god.” Felix’s voice is thick with tears. “No, no, god no—”

“I’m so sorry, Felix,” Chan murmurs as Felix sobs on the other end. God, he hates this job sometimes. He never expected it to hit so close to home, too.

He listens to Felix cry for several moments, and for once he has no idea what to say. Usually he’s great at comforting people, but how can he comfort his little brother when he’s just found out his best friend has been murdered?

“We’re trying to figure out who did it, though,” Chan says. “So if you have any information that could help us—”

“I know who did it,” Felix says.

Chan is caught off-guard. “Wha—you do?”

“Yes.”

“Do—do you have evidence? Did you see it happen?”

“Well…no, but—”

“Felix, I can’t arrest someone without probable cause or a warrant. But if you have a reason to believe that someone did it, then I’m willing to sit down and discuss it with you.”

“Okay,” Felix says. “I’m free all afternoon tomorrow.”

“Great,” Chan says. “Come down to the police department around three and we’ll go from there.”

They say their goodbyes and hang up. By then, Chan is almost to his house. At a stoplight, he quickly texts Changbin the update, and Changbin sends him a thumbs-up emoji in reply. 

*

Seungmin is right back into the swing of things the following morning. He has an 8AM lecture, so he sets his alarm for 6:45, which gives him plenty of time to get ready and eat breakfast without having to rush. 

Unfortunately, his amnesiac ghost is not so eager to wake up that early. 

Ugghhhhh shut it offffff, Jisung groans when Seungmin’s alarm goes off. Too early. I wanna sleep. You get like zero sleep as it is, man, and then you wake up early? Worst fucking body to possess ever.

Seungmin hates how Jisung’s grogginess is also affecting him. It takes him a whole ten minutes to get out of bed, when usually he’s up only a few moments after his alarm goes off. 

“Jisung, wake up,” Seungmin snaps. “I need to go to class.”

Fuck class, why do you have such early classes?

“Because I’m a morning person.”

Oh god WHY?!  

Jisung whines in Seungmin’s head the entire time he gets ready. Seungmin can’t stop yawning, and he’s sluggish as he gets dressed and washes his face and brushes his teeth.

By the time he’s heading out the door for breakfast, it’s already 7:15, which gives Seungmin only fifteen minutes to eat before he has to head for class. He’s already stressed from his morning routine being thrown off, and Jisung’s whining and sluggishness is not helping whatsoever. 

He decides the best way to perk Jisung up is to get some coffee. And he’s right. 

Ooooh, coffee! Jisung pipes up, suddenly wide awake. I love coffee! And energy drinks. Aw, man, I could totally go for a Monster right about now—

Before Seungmin can even begin to list off how bad Monster is for you, someone appears next to him at the coffee machine. At first, Seungmin doesn’t pay attention to them, figuring they’re just waiting in line. But apparently he’s taking too long, because suddenly someone says, “Out of my way, fag.”

The next thing Seungmin knows, someone’s shoving him, which knocks into the coffee he’s holding. It spills all over the front of his shirt, and he hisses at the scalding pain. 

Seungmin barely has time to process what just happened—something that has never, ever happened to him—when anger swells up so strongly in him that he has no time to fight Jisung for control over his body. Jisung wrestles the control away from him, and then Jisung is snapping at the person who just shoved them, “What the fuck did you just say?”

Jisung, Seungmin warns in the back of their mind. Let’s just leave—we need to get to class—

The guy who shoved them—some frat looking dude—looks at him and laughs. “I called you what you are, fag.”

That word hurts even more the second time, like someone just stabbed Seungmin right in the heart. 

So, he doesn’t fight Jisung at all as their fist smashes into the guy’s nose. 

Jisung must know how to hit, because the guy’s nose gives a satisfying crunch, and blood goes everywhere. The guy lets out a wail that’s completely undignified, his hands flying up to his nose.

“Say it again, I dare you,” Jisung snarls.

But before the guy can say it again, one of the managers of the dining hall storms up, demanding in a voice that carries, “What the hell is going on here?!”

And that’s when Seungmin really processes what just happened, and what the consequences will be. 

Ten minutes later, he’s sitting in the office of some dean. The frat guy is sitting in a chair next to him, still holding his nose, despite the blood ceasing almost five minutes ago. Seungmin is in control of his body again, though Jisung is still seething in the back of his mind, muttering about not causing enough damage. 

The dean is droning on and on about how this is unacceptable behavior that could have serious consequences blah blah blah. All she does is make Seungmin apologize and let them off with a warning that if this happens again, then it will go on their permanent records, which might result in the frat dude being kicked out of his fraternity and Seungmin losing one of his academic scholarships. And Seungmin cannot afford to lose that right now.

So he swallows his pride and apologizes, then books it out of there as soon as he’s able. He’s late for class now and his shirt is stained with coffee. Not to mention the fact that he didn’t get to drink coffee or eat breakfast. He’s running on fumes right now. 

Or, more accurately, he’s running on Jisung’s rage right now. 

An apology?! Jisung demands as they walk across campus at a clipped pace, head down, arms wrapped around their torso in an attempt to hide the coffee stain. That guy calls me a slur and I have to apologize? Fuck him! Fuck them honestly! God, if the Diversity and Inclusion Department wasn’t so fucking terrible at their jobs, I’d report that guy in a heartbeat—

“Please stop talking,” Seungmin whispers. 

There must be something in his tone, because Jisung surprisingly falls silent. 

They reach the dorms, where Seungmin peels off his stained clothes and pulls on one of the few hoodies he owns without hesitation.

You should really get some burn cream or something, though, Jisung says. That coffee scalded you.

“It’s fine,” Seungmin says. He grabs his backpack and a granola bar and heads out again.

He arrives twenty minutes late to his anthropology lecture, and his professor quite literally stops mid sentence to stare at Seungmin when he walks in.

“Seungmin,” she says, surprised. “I—didn’t expect to see you back so soon.”

“Sorry for the disruption, it won’t happen again,” Seungmin says, keeping his head down as he rushes to his seat in the front. It’s still dead silent in there as he sits down and pulls out his notebook and pens.

He glances up at his professor to find her staring at him as well, her jaw dropped. He stares back at her, and she quickly clears her throat and continues with the lesson as though nothing happened. But Seungmin can feel the stares boring into his back, can see the people sitting next to him looking at him out of the corner of his eye. 

He tries to ignore them and just focus on the lecture, but his mind wanders throughout the whole thing.

Seungmin, Jisung says after class, when they’re walking to their next one. He was silent all throughout class; this is the first time he’s spoken. Do you know why everyone keeps staring at you? I’m serious, it’s starting to really bother me. Did you like…do something?

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Seungmin whispers back. 

So you did do something…Jesus, what the hell did you do to make everyone treat you like this.

Seungmin doesn’t respond.

He only has two classes today, the second one being his law class, yet he can’t focus throughout either of them. No matter how hard he tries to take good notes and ask questions when he doesn’t understand, his mind still drifts. He can’t stop thinking about that frat guy and that horrible word he called him and how Jisung defended him. Even though he appreciates the way Jisung did that, his mind fixates on everything leading up to that, on that word that guy called him. It echoes in his mind, making Seungmin feel sicker and sicker to his stomach.

He stays silent throughout the whole class, which is entirely unlike him. 

Afterwards, his law professor stops him and asks to talk to him. 

“I’m sorry about the absences, sir,” Seungmin says. “I was actually in the hospital for a week, and I meant to get a doctor’s note to excuse it, but—”

“Seungmin,” his professor interrupts gently. “Don’t worry, I know that you were in the hospital.”

Seungmin blinks, then frowns. “You do?”

His professor nods. “The hospital contacted the university about getting adequate accommodations for you. The university then contacted all of your professors to explain the situation. Not to mention, your accident was on the news.”

“It…it was?” Seungmin didn’t think that his accident would be newsworthy. Not unless he died or something. 

In the back of his mind, Jisung winces.

“Yes, it was,” his professor says, still in that soft tone that tells Seungmin that he’s trying to phrase this lightly. “It was on the news because of an incident that happened with another student, right around the same time. The news that two students from the same university were involved in accidents on the same day was enough to capture the media’s attention.”

Seungmin stiffens.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of what happened to Han Jisung?”

Wordlessly, Seungmin can only nod. 

“Such a horrible tragedy,” his professor says, his face falling. “I just wanted to let you know that if you need to talk to anyone, the counselors are offering specific grief sessions for anyone who was close to him.”

“What makes you think I was close to him?” Seungmin scoffs. 

His professor raises his eyebrows. “Well, you two were in a group for that patent project. Even if you weren’t friends…someone you knew died, Seungmin. It’s okay if you feel grief despite not being particularly close to him.”

“I have to go.” Seungmin turns away sharply. “See you next class. I’ll try to get my missing work turned in by the end of the week.”

“No rush,” his professor says. 

Seungmin practically bolts out of that classroom, desperately needing air. Once he’s outside, he inhales sharply, welcoming the cool, biting air on his face. He sets off for the dorms again at a clipped pace, focusing only on walking. He keeps his head down, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. Doesn’t make eye contact with anyone, can’t let anyone see how he’s on the verge of tears. 

Seungmin? Jisung says in the back of his mind. Hey, are you okay?

Seungmin shakes his head.

Okay, I know you’re not feeling well, but can you at least stop to get some food from the dining hall? You haven’t eaten anything all day.

The thought of stepping into that crowded place and seeing everyone stare at him again and whisper things about him as he passes by makes him sick to his stomach. He keeps walking past the dining hall, telling himself that he just needs to get to his dorm, just a few more buildings and he’s there, he can do it—

He barely makes it into his dorm room before he can’t hold back his emotions anymore and starts crying. 

Oh, Jisung says, surprised. Uh, it’s okay, don’t cry—

“Please stop talking,” Seungmin mutters, covering his face with his hands. “Just—please don’t say anything.”

Jisung thankfully doesn’t respond. 

After quickly kicking off his shoes, Seungmin collapses onto his bed, where he curls up and hugs his pillow. Now that the tears have started, he can’t stop them. But he hates crying, even when he’s by himself. He tries everything he can to suppress the sounds of his sobs, to compose himself, but it just makes it worse. 

He still can’t stop thinking about that incident in the dining hall. He thought he had gotten past all of this, that he didn’t care about what other people thought, but after being stared at for the past two days even by his own professors, his resolve is crumbling.

He really needs someone to vent to, someone to comfort him and tell him that it’s all okay.

Without really thinking about it, he reaches for his phone, only to remember that he doesn’t have one anymore. He has to buy a new one. Just another expense to add to the list. 

Regardless, he still lets himself imagine picking up a phone and pressing on his grandfather’s contact at the top of his Favorites list, imagines it ringing for only a few rings before that familiar voice answers. He imagines telling his grandfather about everything that’s happened, imagines his grandfather listening so well like he always used to, imagines his grandfather telling him exactly what Seungmin needs to hear. He was always so good at comforting Seungmin. 

But he doesn’t have a phone, and even if he did, his grandfather wouldn’t pick up.

Seungmin sniffs and covers his face with his hands. 

Jisung stirs in the back of his mind, then says quietly, Hey, Seungmin? I know you said you don’t want to talk, but I really think you need to talk about this.

“No, I don’t,” Seungmin whispers.

You keep saying that, but sometimes I can hear your thoughts, especially when they’re particularly loud. I know you’re more caught up on what happened in the dining hall than you want to let on.

Seungmin shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about it, especially not with you.”

I know but…Jisung sighs. I know what you’re going through.

Seungmin just laughs bitterly.

I do! Jisung says. Why do you think I got so angry when that guy called you that? I’ve been called that disgusting word so many times before. I’ve heard other people call my friends that and make other really homophobic remarks. Point is, I know what you’re feeling, and that’s not just because we’re sharing a body and can literally feel each other’s emotions. So, if you want to vent to me…

“I don’t, so leave me alone.” Then, with that, Seungmin rolls over. He pulls a blanket over him, squeezes his eyes shut, and goes to sleep.

*

Seungmin had hoped that that law exam incident would be the last he’d see of Han Jisung, but life had other plans for him. 

To help them practice writing a patent proposal, his law professor decided to give everyone a project where they created a fake product (the more ridiculous it was, the better) and create a patent application for it. While other students groaned about how much work it would be, Seungmin sat there quietly, already coming up with ideas and writing them down.

His brainstorming, unfortunately, was interrupted when his professor said that it would be a group project. 

While all other students cheered, Seungmin wanted to scream.

God, no. Of all things, why a group project? Was Seungmin in hell? He was definitely in hell. 

Worst of all, Seungmin didn’t know anyone in that class. As soon as their professor let them loose to choose their groups, and the people all around him turned to find their friends, Seungmin just sat there. Perhaps he could ask his professor if he could just do the project independently. It would be a lot of work, but Seungmin wouldn’t mind. 

Just as he was about to get up and ask his professor if he could be a group of one, someone stepped in front of Seungmin’s desk. 

“Hey, Seungmin, right?” 

Seungmin took in the all-black attire—today it was black skinny jeans with chains hanging out of the pockets, black combat boots, and a black band t-shirt tucked in at the waist. By the time Seungmin dragged his gaze to the speaker’s face, he already knew who it was. 

No beanie today. Nope, today, that fake blond hair was parted and styled, and a pair of sparkly silver earrings hung from his ears. 

“Yes, that’s me,” Seungmin said. 

“Wanna be in our group?” Jisung asked.

Seungmin paused and couldn’t help looking over his shoulder at Jisung’s friends, who sat in the back laughing together. 

“I’m not sure I would be a good fit,” Seungmin decided to say. 

“Nah, I’m sure you would. Come on, be in our group.” Jisung gestured for Seungmin to follow him. Sighing, Seungmin had no choice but to gather up his things and walk to the back of the classroom with him.

Jisung spoke up when they reached his friends. “Seungmin said yes! Everybody be on their best behavior! That means you, Yang.” He looked sternly at the tallest one, who also looked the most normal, with regular black hair and minimal makeup. 

All of Jisung’s friends turned to look at Seungmin, who couldn’t help stiffening.

Jisung sat down and patted the empty chair next to him, signaling for Seungmin to sit. Seungmin did sit, though his spine was still rigid. He felt like a robot, pretending to be human. He was sure that these people probably thought so, too. 

“So, going around, that’s Felix, that’s Jeongin, then Ryujin.” Jisung pointed to each person in turn. Felix was the guy with freckles, whose hair was dyed silver and styled into a mullet, which he somehow pulled off. He smiled when Jisung pointed at him. Then Jeongin was the one with normal dark hair, and Ryujin was the only girl, who had shoulder-length hair with silver highlights, her ears almost completely full of earrings, all along her cartilage. 

“Sup, nerd,” Ryujin said, jerking her chin at Seungmin. 

Jeongin snorted, but Jisung shot Ryujin a look. 

“Hey,” Jisung scolded. “Be nice.”

Ryujin stuck her tongue out at Jisung, then grinned.

Seungmin didn’t reply to Ryujin and instead looked down at his notes. 

“So, anybody got any ideas on a fake product?” Jisung asked. 

“A product that gets through to their far-right, super religious, brainwashed parents,” Jeongin said. 

“Hear, hear,” Ryujin said. 

“Wouldn’t that just be considered more brainwashing?” Jisung asked. 

“It’s not considered brainwashing if it’s literally telling them the actual, proven truth,” Jeongin said.

“That sounds exactly like what a brainwasher would say,” Felix said. 

“Well, then, you got any better ideas, Lixie?” Jeongin smirked and leaned into Felix. “Huh, hyung?”

“Mm, nope.” Felix smiled back at Jeongin. 

“Pfft, slacker.”

“What about you, Seungmin?” Jisung asked. “Do you have any ideas?”

“I wrote down a few,” Seungmin said. 

“Sweet, can I see?”

Seungmin sighed but begrudgingly pushed his notebook towards Jisung.

Jisung picked it up, scanned Seungmin’s list, and hummed. “You have ridiculously neat handwriting.”

“Nerd,” Ryujin said again.

“I like your ideas, though.” Jisung glanced up and smiled at Seungmin. 

Seungmin could have said many things in that instance, but instead apparently he thought it was best to blurt, “I don’t need your approval.”

Jisung raised his eyebrows, and Jeongin let out a low whistle. What followed was a painful, awkward silence during which Seungmin contemplated throwing himself off a cliff.

“So, brainwashing product?” Felix said. 

“Since we don’t have any other ideas, sure,” Jisung said, pushing Seungmin’s notebook back to him.

“If you think about it, it’s just social media,” Ryujin said. 

“Says the one who spends way too much time on social media,” Jeongin said. 

“Hey, wouldn’t the one who spends all their time on social media know firsthand how brainwashing it is?”

“I didn’t think you had that kind of self awareness.”

Ryujin smacked him on the arm.

“I don’t think that will get us a good grade,” Seungmin said. 

Everyone looked at him. 

“It needs to be at least a little practical,” Seungmin said. “Something that we could hypothetically build if we needed to.”

Ryujin snorted. “What, you’re saying you wouldn’t be able to build an anti-brainwashing device on bigots? But I thought you were so smart!”

Jeongin snickered at that.

Seungmin clenched his jaw but didn’t let that bring him down. “I think one of my ideas would be better. After all, I only wrote down what I thought would be practical to make in addition to being ridiculous.”

“I think our definitions differ on what we think is ridiculous,” Jeongin said, and he, Ryujin, and Felix all burst into giggles. 

Seungmin blinked, then glanced at Jisung, who was trying not to smirk. When he saw Seungmin looking at him, though, his smirk vanished, and he quickly cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter. 

“Come on, guys, I think Seungmin’s right,” Jisung said. 

“Of course you do.” Ryujin rolled her eyes. 

Jisung shot her a look before taking Seungmin’s notebook and holding it out to the others. “Here. He already came up with a bunch of ideas—it might be easier just to pick whichever one we like from there. Then we can divide up the work and get this shit done, because I have better things to do than this.”

“At least that we can agree on,” Felix said, taking the notebook.

By the end of class, they had decided on the fake product and had divided up the work. Seungmin mentally prepared himself to do all of the work anyways, since that was what always happened.

Once class was over, Seungmin deliberately packed up his things slowly so he wouldn’t have to walk out with the group. Most of them took off right away, chattering about some pop culture thing that Seungmin didn’t understand. But as he finished packing up, he looked up to find Jisung still standing there. 

Jisung smiled at him, but Seungmin didn’t smile back, too busy being wary of what Jisung wanted. 

“What’s your number, by the way?” Jisung asked, pulling out his phone. “I have everyone else’s number, but I don’t have yours. So, if we’re gonna do a group chat, I gotta be able to add you.” He held out his phone for Seungmin to put in his contact information. 

“Oh.” Seungmin blinked, hesitating for several moments, just long enough for it to be awkward. Reluctantly, though, he took Jisung’s phone to type in his number. After he was done, he handed it back, gave Jisung a flash of a smile, and turned back to pretending to pack something up. 

He had hoped that Jisung would leave after that, but Jisung still lingered, focused on typing something into his phone. Probably creating the group chat. Seungmin supposed he would have to walk out with him, now.

With a quiet sigh, he stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulder. Jisung glanced up from his phone and smiled, and Seungmin’s phone dinged a moment later. Pulling it out, he saw that an unsaved number had sent him a smiley face emoji. 

“So, got any plans for tonight?” Jisung asked as they walked out. “Gonna go get dinner or hang out with friends or a girlfriend or something?”

Seungmin glanced at him, wishing he would stop talking. After a moment, he said, “I’m going to my parents’ house for the weekend.”

“Oh, that’s cool! Do they live nearby?”

“Yes.”

“Nice. I wish my parents lived nearby. But no, they live like two hours away. Which isn’t far, but it’s still a drive.”

Seungmin just hummed at that. 

“What’s your major, by the way?” Jisung asked. 

“Pre-med.”

“Oh, nice! I’m a business major.”

“Mm.”

“What kind of doctor do you want to be?”

“A neurosurgeon.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Jisung’s eyes widened. “That’s a lot of schooling, my dude. Lotta student debt.”

“Not really. My parents and grandparents have already agreed to pay for it. Plus I have scholarships.”

Jisung blinked. “Oh.” He looked straight ahead, finally falling silent. 

After a few moments of walking in blissful silence, though, Jisung asked, “What do your parents do, anyways?”

“My grandfather owns a baseball team,” Seungmin said.

“Jesus Christ,” Jisung whispered.

“And my father works as a CEO for—”

“Never mind, forget I asked.” Jisung quickly waved the thought away. 

It was Seungmin’s turn to blink, now, wondering what he’d said wrong. 

“What do your parents do?” Seungmin decided to ask. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Jisung said.

Well, Seungmin was all out of conversation topics, then. Fortunately for them, they reached the dining hall at that moment. 

“Well, goodbye,” Seungmin said.

Jisung turned to him suddenly and said, “Hey, don’t worry about the others, okay? They’re just messing around. They’re really nice once you get to know them, I promise.”

Seungmin frowned and said, “I don’t care what they think.”

Jisung blinked in surprise at that. “Oh,” he said. “Cool, then.”

“See you next class,” Seungmin said, starting to turn away. 

“Yeah, yeah, see you next class.” Jisung gave him a small smile. 

Seungmin turned and walked away without another word.

*

Seungmin wakes up from his nap at about nine o’clock at night, with a pulsing headache and a growling stomach. He groans, his mouth feeling like the desert, and goes to push himself up. But his arms don’t react, and neither does his torso. Seungmin’s heart leaps into his chest as he lifts his head, noting that he’s curled up in the same position from when he fell asleep earlier this afternoon. 

“Jisung?” Seungmin calls out, but Jisung doesn’t respond. Oh, god, Seungmin is really starting to freak out. What if Jisung left? What the hell is Seungmin supposed to do, scream for help? What if no one comes?

Seungmin tries to move again, yet nothing happens. His breath is coming in short bursts while is heart is pounding in his chest. Worst of all, he’s starting to tear up again. Even after a whole afternoon of crying himself to sleep, he still has tears to cry?

Just as he’s about to contemplate how long it would take for him to die of dehydration here, Jisung steps through Seungmin’s wall. 

“Jisung!” Seungmin exclaims. “Oh my god, I thought you’d left and weren’t coming back—”

“What? I just stepped out for a few minutes,” Jisung says, rushing over to him. “Sorry, you were still passed out, and I just wanted to kind of stretch my legs a little, metaphorically speaking—”

“Don’t ever fucking do that again!” Seungmin interrupts.

Jisung pulls back slightly at his tone but says, “Alright, I won’t.”

“Can you please just—” Seungmin isn’t sure how to say it. “Help me sit up.”

Jisung nods and steps back into Seungmin’s body. The moment Seungmin can move again, he heaves a huge sigh of relief. He sits up and grabs his water bottle from his desk, where he chugs down half the thing. Then, to help with the headache, he pops a few pain relievers and swallows those too. 

The only thing he can’t deal with is the growling stomach. 

So…hungry…Jisung whines.

“Dining hall’s closed,” Seungmin says, standing up to go to his desk. 

Come on, you’ve gotta have some sort of snack lying around here, right? Or could you just like order takeout?

“I don’t eat takeout.”

YOU DON’T EAT TAKEOUT? Who the hell are you? Why is your life so miserable?!

Seungmin doesn’t respond to that, but he does wince a little. 

“I need to study, so unless you’re going to help me with that, please be quiet,” he says, opening up his laptop.

Jisung grumbles in the back of his mind but otherwise falls silent. 

Seungmin works on his homework for an hour, but after that, he finds it difficult to concentrate. His stomach won’t stop growling at him, and his mind keeps wandering. It doesn’t even wander to this morning at the dining hall—it just finds a tangent and runs with it, and suddenly Seungmin is down a mental rabbit hole that he doesn’t know how he fell into. 

You need food, Jisung says. Your brain takes most of the energy you get from food, so when it doesn’t have that food, it stops thinking so clearly. “Brain food” is actually a real thing. So eat a fucking granola bar right now or else I’m gonna commandeer this body and do it myself.

“Fine,” Seungmin grumbles. He gets up to go to his closet, where he stores some nonperishable snack foods. There isn’t much in there—just some granola bars, some trail mix, and a few types of dried fruit. You know, healthy snack options. He grabs a granola bar and heads back to his desk. 

As he sits down, though, Jisung asks, Is this all you’re going to do tonight?

“I’m behind on a lot of homework after being in the hospital,” Seungmin says. “I need to catch up. Not to mention, finals are coming up in just a few weeks. I need to start studying if I want to keep my good grades.”

Okay, but like…enough is enough sometimes, you know? How much do you really think you’re going to get done tonight? At this point I’d say call it a day and go watch some anime or something, dude.

“I don’t—”

Do NOT say you don’t watch TV. I might actually scream.

Seungmin snorts but says, “I don’t watch anime.”

Bruh, Jisung says. Anime is literally all I watch. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen every anime movie and show known to man.

“Even hentai?”

Hell yeah, you know it.

“Gross.”

What do you watch, when you have the time?

“Sometimes when I go home for the weekends, I watch romance dramas with my mom,” Seungmin says, but then his throat seizes up. His eyes burn with tears again, but he quickly swallows them and says, “I need to focus. Stop distracting me.”

Actually, hold on a second, we need to talk about this, Jisung said. What I’m trying to get at is that all you do is go to class and study. And I’m stuck doing all of that with you. Which is fine! But like…how are we going to make this last?

“What do you mean?” Seungmin is half listening as he scans the assigned readings for his biology class.

Like…you need me to walk and do normal things, right? Which means I have to be stuck in your body the whole time. I can’t even really leave to go do ghosty stuff and drift around. Jisung is fidgeting, mentally. So, that means you’re going to need me to be here with you for the rest of your life. We’re stuck together until you die. We think.

“I’m having trouble figuring out what your point is.”

My point is that I don’t get to do anything that I want to do, Jisung blurts. I don’t get to go out and talk to my friends or watch movies or eat takeout. Even though you need me to do anything, we do everything that you want to do. And I get it, it’s your body, but like…do you see where I’m coming from?

Seungmin blinks. “I…actually didn’t think of that.”

That’s okay, now you know! Jisung says. So like, maybe we could come to an arrangement. You get control of your body during the week and during the day, but then during the evenings and on weekends, I get control.

“But what would you be doing with my body?” Seungmin asks. “I have a reputation to uphold. I can’t be going out and partying.”

A reputation? Maybe for being a stick in the mud.

“I just…I can’t get in trouble, Jisung. I almost came close to losing one of my scholarships today. I can’t afford that.”

I don’t know why you’re so caught up on that aspect of it, I mean, your parents and grandparents pay for anything anyways, Jisung grumbles bitterly. 

Seungmin swallows a lump in his throat. “Not anymore.”

Whoa, what? Why not? What’d you do?

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ugh, you never want to talk about anything.

“I…I’m not used to having someone to talk to.”

Jisung is silent at that, before he says softly, Oh.

“Yeah.” Seungmin cringes, because why the hell did he have to say that? Now Jisung is going to pity him and Seungmin doesn’t want his pity.

But now you have me! Jisung says. You can talk to me about anything. Seriously! Felix and Jeongin used to tell me literally everything, to the point where it was kinda weird. Like, if I ever needed to blackmail them, I would have so much stuff to use. He laughs.

Seungmin just rubs his temples. 

I think that’s what I want to do next, Jisung says. I really want to talk to Felix and Jeongin. They’re my best friends. Or, were.

“I don’t know how you’re going to do that,” Seungmin says. “I’m not exactly friends with Felix and Jeongin. They wouldn’t talk to me.”

You can’t figure out a way to talk to them without being weird?

“No.” 

Jisung sighs. Damn.

An idea pops into Seungmin’s head. “Why do you want to talk to them so badly, anyways? They could be suspects.”

Whoa, what? Jisung says. You think Felix or Jeongin killed me?

“I mean, we can’t rule it out,” Seungmin says. “You said it yourself—you know so much about them that you could easily blackmail them. What makes you think you didn’t blackmail them when you were alive?”

There’s literally nothing to blackmail them for, Jisung retorts. Like, yeah, they’re both hella rich, but like…they’re not stuck-up rich.

“They’re not preps or nerds,” Seungmin mutters bitterly. 

Exactly! Plus if I wanted them to buy something for me, they would. In a heartbeat. Because they’re really nice like that. Though, I never would ask them to do that, because I have a pride issue.

Seungmin rolls his eyes. 

Come to think of it, though, Felix’s older brother is a detective, Jisung mumbles. And no one would suspect the sweet, innocent best friend. Ugh, curse you, Seungmin, now you have me questioning everything!

“Sorry. But to be fair, you kind of do have to question everything when you’re trying to solve your own murder.”

Pfft, you speak from experience? Luckily, Seungmin doesn’t have to respond to that, because Jisung lets out a sigh and says, Alright, since we’ve come to an agreement about my body privileges, then it’s my turn to control what we do! And I say we watch anime until we fall asleep.

“But I need to work on homework—”

Nope, your professors are giving you some leeway, fucking take advantage of that, bro. Before Seungmin can protest, Jisung takes control of their body and closes out of Seungmin’s homework. Then he pulls up some anime site and carries the laptop to the bed. “We’re watching Spy x Family.”

You’d better not give my computer a virus, Seungmin mumbles.

Jisung grins, and they settle down to watch.

Seungmin will never admit it, but he does enjoy it.

*

Seungmin is in a surprisingly good mood the following morning. Maybe it’s because he was able to get a decent amount of sleep with his afternoon nap yesterday. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t feel as stressed. 

Whatever it is, he and Jisung wake up much easier than the day before, and Seungmin gets to the dining hall at 7:00, giving him plenty of time to eat before his 8:15 lecture.

Jisung scans for “that homophobe,” then reports that the coast is clear. Seungmin gets his breakfast and coffee with no issue and sits down at his own table with a sigh of relief. 

Thank you for eating a normal meal today, Jisung says. I’m both proud and grateful.

Seungmin just snorts at that, pulling out a textbook that he needs to finish reading before class.

Aaaand you ruined it, Jisung says. 

People still stare at him when he passes, and his chemistry professor is just as surprised as his other professors to see him. But Seungmin finds himself ignoring it all again, and he hopes he’s getting back into his routine of not caring what other people think of him. 

His chemistry class goes well, and then it’s lunchtime, where Jisung more or less threatens to commandeer the body again if Seungmin doesn’t eat a normal meal. Seungmin sighs but heads into the dining hall, fully planning on grabbing and going like he usually does. It’s nice outside, and he wants to take advantage of the nice weather before it snows. 

As he’s about to head outside, though, someone steps in his path.

Seungmin tenses, yesterday morning flashing in his mind again. Once he recognizes who it is, though, he still doesn’t relax. 

“Hey,” Felix says, putting his hands in the pocket of his hoodie.

“Hey,” Seungmin says warily. 

Felix!!! Jisung exclaims in Seungmin’s head. Oh my god, I’ve missed you so much, you have no idea—

“What’s up?” Seungmin decides to say, and nearly winces at how unnatural and stiff it sounds. 

Felix just narrows his eyes at him for a moment, then says, “Figured you’d want this.” He pulls something out of his pocket and holds it out to Seungmin. 

It’s a small piece of card stock, the kind that invitations would be written on. Seungmin takes it and looks down at it and immediately wishes he hadn’t. 

Oh god, Jisung says, pulling back. Oh—oh my god.

It is an invitation, but not the kind Seungmin would ever want. 

“The memorial service is this Saturday,” Felix says, his face and tone still void of any of his usual cheeriness or brightness. His skin doesn’t have its normal golden glow, and his cheeks look almost hollow. He seems like a completely different person, especially with the way he’s more or less glaring at Seungmin. “Come or don’t come, I don’t care. I know how much you hated him.”

What? Jisung says. 

“I didn’t hate him,” Seungmin retorts. 

Felix scoffs at that. “Yeah, sure. Keep telling yourself that. Doesn’t matter, though. Everyone knows the truth. Sooner or later, the consequences will catch up to you. And I can’t wait to be there when it does.”

With one last glare, Felix walks away, making sure to smack into Seungmin’s shoulder on the way, forcing Seungmin to stumble out of the way. 

What was that about? Jisung demands.

Seungmin doesn’t answer as he crumples the invitation in his hand and rushes for the door. He tosses it into the trash can as he goes outside, desperately needing some air right about now. 

Seungmin? Hey, don’t ignore me on this one. I’m serious.

“I didn’t hate you,” Seungmin whispers. “Felix has it all wrong.”

Then what the hell is he talking about? What “consequences”?

“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

Jisung growls in annoyance, so to placate him and to keep him from taking control, Seungmin quickly whispers, “I promise I’ll explain more later. When I’m ready. Please don’t ask until then.”

Jisung is silent for a few moments, but this is more than Seungmin has given him, so he eventually grumbles, Fine.

“Thank you.” Then, with a sigh, Seungmin sits down under one of the huge oaks, the leaves crunching under him, and pulls out his food. 

*

The week passes in a blur, where the only exciting thing they do is go to the Apple store to buy a new phone. Seungmin dies a little inside when he sees how much it is, but in this day and age, he really does need a phone. So he sucks it up and pays for the phone and a new cell phone plan.

Then it’s Friday night, and Seungmin has no idea what to do. Fortunately, he doesn’t get to decide, because as per the agreement, Jisung gets to take control.

“Oh my god, this is gonna be so fun,” Jisung says, jumping up and down in their dorm room and shaking out the “cramps,” which he claims he gets whenever he doesn’t get to control the body after a while. “What should we do first? I have so many ideas, I don’t even know where to start!”

Don’t go crazy, please, Seungmin begs.

“Alright, alright.” Jisung sighs and looks around as if that will give him ideas. His eyes fall on the mirror on the back of Seungmin’s door. “Actually, I know what I’m going to do first. I’m going to change your outfit.”

What? Seungmin says as Jisung goes to the closet.

Throwing it open, Jisung rummages through all of Seungmin’s clothes, making comments on what’s cute and what’s not. Whatever he deems “not cute,” he throws over his shoulder onto the floor. 

Hey! Careful with that, that’s designer! Seungmin protests as Jisung chucks one of his sweaters over his shoulder. You’d better pick this all up. I’m serious, some of that stuff wrinkles so easily and I don’t exactly have access to an iron or a steamer.

“Bruh, you need better clothes,” Jisung says. “There is like zero clubbing attire in here.”

I’ll have you know that I like my clothes, thank you very much, Seungmin says, only to realize what Jisung said. Wait a second, clubbing attire?! Oh my god, you’d better not be thinking what I think you’re thinking.

Jisung holds up a dark shirt in the mirror and shoots a finger gun at their reflection while winking.

Oh my god, no! Seungmin exclaims. Han Jisung, we are not going clubbing!

“Why not? It’s a Friday night, and it’s my turn with the body,” Jisung says, holding up a pair of dark dress pants that are a little more form-fitting. After a moment’s consideration, he tosses them over his shoulder. “Do you seriously not own a single pair of jeans?”

Seungmin grumbles at the sight of all his clothes scattered on the floor, but he says, They’re in the back.

Jisung finally finds one of Seungmin’s only pairs of jeans and holds them up. “These’ll work,” he decides, then starts changing. As he pulls off the shirt, though, he pauses to look at their reflection in the mirror. 

Hey, no looking! Seungmin says.

Jisung ignores him and takes the time to study Seungmin’s bare torso. He hums in approval, then runs a hand through Seungmin’s brown hair, tousling it. “You’re really not that bad looking, Min,” he says.

Seungmin blushes, though thankfully that doesn’t show up on his face, since he’s not in control. He still thinks Jisung can feel his embarrassment, though. Put on a goddamned shirt, will you?

Jisung grins but does as Seungmin says.

Once he’s done, he studies their reflection in the mirror again. He’s picked out a pair of designer jeans, some Converse, and literally the only plain black t-shirt Seungmin owns.

“Too bad you don’t have any jewelry,” Jisung says. “Some accessories would totally pull this together. And maybe a bit of eyeshadow…”

You are NOT wearing eyeshadow while in control of my body! Seungmin exclaims. 

“Killjoy.” Jisung sighs dramatically. “And here I was hoping you’d let me dye your hair a little, too. This brown is so boring.”

Over my dead body.

Jisung snorts at that. 

Wait, Seungmin says as Jisung turns to grab his phone, wallet and keys. I—I really don’t have that much money to spend.

“Don’t worry, I’m used to having fun on a budget,” Jisung says, opening up Seungmin’s wallet to check it. He snorts. “Bro, you literally have a handful of fifty-dollar bills in here. That’s more than I’ve ever had to carry around.”

Yeah, but that’s cash for an emergency, Seungmin says, already getting stressed.

“What’s your bank account look like?” Jisung uses Face ID to open Seungmin’s phone and pull up his banking app. His eyes nearly bug out of his head when he sees how much Seungmin has in his account. “Holy shit, dude! You literally have twenty grand in your bank account! And you think you don’t have that much money to spend?” He lets out a short laugh. “That’s more money than I’ve ever had in my life.”

Do not spend all of that! Seungmin exclaims. That’s literally the only money I have left! I have to pay tuition and medical bills with that!

Jisung snorts. “Ever consider getting a job? And I mean, like, actually apply for a job and not just ask daddy dearest to get you a job at his company.”

I don’t have time to work, Seungmin says miserably. School takes up all of my time.

“Aww, poor you.” Jisung finishes fixing their hair and smiles at the mirror. “You really should smile more. It suits you.”

Seungmin doesn’t bother saying that he doesn’t have anything to smile about in his life. 

Jisung finishes making Seungmin club-ready, then heads out the door. As they walk, Seungmin can’t help feeling anxious, worried that people will see him dressed differently and stare at him. 

“Calm down, they’re going to stare anyways,” Jisung mutters to him. “Might as well give them something to stare at though, huh?”

Seungmin doesn’t respond; he’s too anxious. 

They don’t come across anyone Seungmin knows on their way to the bus stop, and soon they’re on the bus and heading to whichever club Jisung has picked out. On the way, Seungmin keeps glancing at the other people on the bus, noticing that some of them look a little sketchy tonight, and there’s at least one homeless person sitting directly across from them. Jisung doesn’t seem bothered by it, though, and instead just crosses his arms and leans back in the seat, tapping his heel.

After about a ten-minute ride, they get off, and Jisung starts walking a few blocks. He seems totally at ease, walking alone at night. Isn’t he worried about someone mugging him?

“Dude, you’ve gotta calm down,” Jisung says. “I can hear your thoughts and they are so freaking loud.”

I don’t like this, Seungmin hisses. Can we please go home?

“Nope, my turn to do something fun,” Jisung says. “Besides, I think you’ll really enjoy this. I know it’s not exactly a study group, but trust me, it’ll be great.”

I hate study groups, Seungmin grumbles. Such a waste of time. People just mess around and let you do all the work and then ask for your answers afterwards.

“Well, would you give them to them?”

Absolutely not!

“Good for you, Seungmin.”

Seungmin can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not. 

They reach the club, which has a pink neon sign hanging above the door. Jisung shows his ID to the bouncer and then strolls right in.

Seungmin already had a feeling about what this club would be like, but discovering that he’s right about it makes him feel even worse. It’s so loud already—they step through the door and the music and bass immediately assault them. Seungmin winces, but Jisung is unfazed. On his way to the bar, he walks past people of all genders dressed in all kinds of strange, scandalous outfits, like neon and short shirts and platform shoes and leather, yet Jisung doesn’t so much as bat an eye. As he casually leans against the sticky surface, Seungmin glances at the people around them again, noticing that some—mostly the men—are staring at him again. 

Jesus, why can’t he go anywhere without people staring at him?

“It’s cause they think you’re hot, Seungmin,” Jisung mutters, and it’s so loud in here that Seungmin almost can’t hear him. 

Why would they think I’m hot? Seungmin asks, but Jisung doesn’t have a chance to respond as one of the bartenders comes over to him.

Jisung suddenly goes rigid at the sight of this bartender, his heart rate spiking. Seungmin doesn’t understand why he’s reacting like that—that is, until he really gets a good look at this bartender.

The bartender is a man a little older than them, probably closer to his thirties. But even Seungmin could admit that this guy is drop dead gorgeous, with perfect facial structure, sparkling eyes, and a toned figure. 

But he doesn’t want to admit that, because he recognizes this guy—it’s Lee Minho, who used to be their student teacher in their law class for half of the semester. 

Minho smiles at Jisung, fortunately showing no sign of recognizing Seungmin’s face from class. 

“What can I get you?” Minho asks. 

“Uhh—” Jisung’s eyes are wide as he stares at Minho. Seungmin has literally never seen him speechless like this before. He’s staring at Minho like he dropped out of the sky. 

Minho raises his eyebrows, and Seungmin quickly snaps, Jisung.

That gets Jisung to snap out of it, and he smiles back at Minho, even if it’s not his usual, confident smile, but something a little shyer. “Just a couple of lemon drops, please,” Jisung says. 

“Coming right up.” Minho flashes a smile at Jisung before going to make his drinks. 

As soon as he’s gone, Jisung lets out a huge breath. He rests his elbows on the bar, bringing his hands up to casually cover his mouth a little bit. “I recognize him, Seungmin,” he whispers.

You do? Seungmin says.

“Yeah. He triggered a bunch of memories.” Seungmin can feel Jisung blushing. “A lot of memories.”

That makes Seungmin uneasy, but he can’t exactly tell Jisung why. Fortunately, he hopes that Jisung just attributes the tight knot of panic in Seungmin’s chest to the fact that they’re literally in a gay bar. Seungmin has never felt so out of place in his life. 

If his family could see him now—

No, bad thought, bad thought.

Minho comes back with the drinks and sets them in front of Jisung with a flirty smile. “Let me know if you need anything else,” he says, then strolls away. 

Like his number, Seungmin can’t help saying.

Jisung nearly chokes on his spit. After clearing his throat, though, he downs one of the shots, and Seungmin wants to gag at the flavor. 

Oh my god, what the hell is that? That’s disgusting! he complains.

Jisung ignores him in favor of downing another shot.

Oh no, you’re not planning on getting drunk, are you?! Seungmin demands. Absolutely not—do not get drunk, or else I’m taking back control!

“You need to lighten up,” Jisung says, then downs the third shot. At that point, the alcohol is absolutely getting to his head, and the room is starting to spin a little. Seungmin feels blissfully light, and Jisung giggles. “Wow, your alcohol tolerance is nonexistent. Well, on the plus side, that means I don’t have to burn a hole in your wallet trying to get drunk. Woo!”

I don’t like this, Seungmin says, hating how he feels like giggling.

Jisung just hums, pushes his empty shots away, and hops off the bar stool. He stumbles a little but regains his balance easily, and then he’s heading straight for the dance floor.

Seungmin is having trouble seeing and thinking clearly already, but he thinks he can see the blur of sweaty bodies pressed up against one another, and his stomach pitches. Worse, Jisung is heading right for the thick of it.

No, no, please no—Seungmin tries to say, but Jisung ignores him. 

For better or for worse, Seungmin doesn’t remember a lot of it. He remembers being surprised that Jisung can dance so well, even in Seungmin’s awkward body, remembers Jisung cheering and singing along to almost all of the songs, remembers someone suddenly touching him. Remembers Jisung grinding up against some stranger, remembers the heat pooling in the pit of his stomach. Remembers feeling like his skin is on fire, especially when that stranger’s hands run over it, mapping him out. Remembers wanting more and hating himself for it. 

He catches a glimpse of the stranger’s face a few times, like when Jisung turns around to grin at him and loop his arms around his neck. Seungmin isn’t sure if it helps knowing that the stranger is absolutely stunning—with long, dark hair, catlike eyes, plump lips, and a single beauty mark under one eye. 

He really is gorgeous, and Seungmin can’t help thinking that he’s seen this guy somewhere before. 

They dance together, and Seungmin has never felt so uncomfortable with the way Jisung moves his—Seungmin’s—body into the stranger’s, or how Jisung uses Seungmin’s face to give the stranger a very suggestive look. Worse, the stranger is mirroring it.

Seungmin doesn’t want to watch. He wants to squeeze his eyes shut. 

At some point, the crowd naturally ebbs and flows and parts just enough for him to catch sight of the bar, where Minho is staring right at them, his jaw clenched. Seungmin doesn’t think that’s a good sign, but he doesn’t know how to tell Jisung that.

Eventually, the stranger snags Jisung around the wrist and drags him off the dance floor. Jisung laughs, his hair messy, his skin flushed and glistening, and goes along easily. Seungmin is still bothered by the alcohol and the dizziness of the dance floor, so he blames that for making his head so foggy, for not letting him intervene until it’s too late. 

The stranger pushes Jisung up against a wall and kisses him. And Jisung just has to kiss him back. 

The moment the stranger kisses him, Seungmin snaps out of his haze. His anxiety becomes a palpable thing, surging up from deep and suffocating him, making his heart rate spike. Before he can process what he’s doing, he regains control of his body and shoves the stranger away from him. 

“Shit!” the stranger stumbles a little and stares at Seungmin like he’s insane. “What the fuck?”

“I can’t do this,” Seungmin gasps. “I—I can’t—” 

Then, at the worst possible time, the alcohol starts to get to his stomach. Combined with his anxiety, Seungmin does not feel well at all. He quickly covers his mouth with his hands, shoves past the stranger, and bolts for where he hopes the bathroom is, barely making it inside and into a stall before he pukes. He tells himself to ignore how disgusting this bathroom is as he’s forced to kneel on it, refuses to think about how he has to hold on to the toilet bowl while he literally empties his stomach into it. 

Seungmin, what the actual fuck?! Jisung whines. Why did you do that?!

Seungmin can’t respond, because now that he’s done coughing up everything he ate that day, he’s starting to shake. And once he starts shaking, he can’t stop it. His throat and chest are so tight that he feels like he’s choking, like he can’t breathe.

Oh holy shit, Jisung says. Hey, Seungmin, it’s okay, you’re safe, just try to breathe! You’re just having an anxiety attack, but it’s all okay—

Seungmin, for once, doesn’t even hear him. His head is full of some droning noise, blocking out every single thought and sound except for the thought that he hates himself and that he wants to go home.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there on that disgusting bathroom floor, hugging his knees to his chest. He figures he can’t have sat there for long, because eventually someone kicks the unlatched stall door down and snaps at him to hurry up. Seungmin scrambles to his feet and stumbles out of the stall and out of the bathroom. 

Outside, the bass and noise are deafening, more than ever. The crowd seems even bigger, or maybe it’s because the room feels even smaller, with the walls starting to crush in on him. Seungmin stumbles for the front of the club, accidentally bumping into people on the way. Some turn to glare at him, and Seungmin tries to apologize, but he’s not sure if it comes out coherent. He’s too distracted by the way everyone else stares at him as he passes by, and he’s so sick of people staring at him, at people judging him and hating him, because don’t they know that they’ll never be able to hate him more than he already hates himself?

Before he can reach the door, someone grabs him by the collar, tugging him backwards. Seungmin gags a little and whirls around, finding himself face-to-face with Minho, who does not look happy whatsoever. 

“Can’t leave without paying,” Minho says.

Seungmin tries to wriggle away from him, just needing some space, but Minho’s grip is like iron, and he holds Seungmin in place. Seungmin quickly pulls out his wallet, slaps a fifty into Minho’s palm, and then practically throws himself away from Minho once Minho releases him. 

He makes it the last few feet to the door, and then he’s out into the cool, evening air. Finally, he can breathe again. 

As his throat and chest begin to loosen, the ringing in his ears subsides as well, and Seungmin finally realizes that Jisung is yelling at him. 

SEUNGMIN! Jisung yells, making Seungmin wince. Oh, FINALLY you hear me! What the actual fuck—

Seungmin ignores him and keeps stumbling down the street, trying to remember the way to the bus stop. It’s late, and there aren’t many people on the streets, except for a few people leaning against the buildings and smoking. They watch him as he walks by, and he wants to scream at them to look away. 

Seungmin— Jisung starts to say. 

“Just help me get back to campus,” Seungmin whispers.

Will you let me take control?

Seungmin nods. 

Alright. Jisung takes over, and the body stumbles a bit more than usual, to the point where they have to catch themselves on a nearby building. Then Jisung straightens up and starts heading down the street, holding their head as high as he can. 

They make it to the bus stop, and Seungmin is so relieved once they sink in to a smelly bus seat that his emotions spill over. Tears spill down his cheeks, much to Jisung’s surprise. For once, the other people on the bus don’t stare, maybe because they’re used to seeing things like this, or they finally realize that it’s none of their business. 

Seungmin doesn’t stop crying all the way home. And for once, Jisung doesn’t pry. 

*

About a month into the semester, Seungmin walked into his law class to find another man standing near the podium at the front of the classroom, talking with their usual law professor. Seungmin had never seen this man before, and even he would have remembered a man as striking as this one.

“Alright, let’s get started,” his professor said once everyone had settled down. “Now, I’m sure you all have noticed that I have someone up here with me today. So, I’d like to introduce Lee Minho, who is a graduate student completing his studies and transitioning into being a full-time professor. For the rest of this semester, he’ll be shadowing me and helping me grade and teaching a few lessons. Feel free to come to him for any extra help or clarification on homework or tests.”

Seungmin glanced at this Lee Minho, who smiled politely at the rest of the class. He looked more like a model or a lead in a Korean drama, with his form-fitting dress pants and pullover sweater and effortlessly-styled dark hair.

Some girls were giggling in the front row, but Minho fixed his gaze on them, and they stopped laughing right away. Because although he had a gorgeous face, he had that teacher death stare down. It was downright chilling to see all politeness drain from his face as he stared unblinking at a student for long periods of time, as if he enjoyed watching them squirm from the intensity of his gaze. 

Not Seungmin, though. Seungmin could care less. All he cared about was whether this Lee Minho actually understood the material and could help him when he needed.

His group, on the other hand, didn’t think the same. 

“He is so fucking hot,” Ryujin said, fidgeting with her bottom lip as she gazed with half-lidded eyes at Minho on the other side of the classroom. “I want him to rail me in this classroom.”

“Ugh.” Jeongin shot her a disgusted look. “He’s like, thirty.”

“Exactly! That’s hot. He’s like…almost a DILF?”

“Thirty is not old enough to be a DILF,” Felix said. “DILFs are in their 40s. Minimum.”

“Also he has a ring on his finger,” Jeongin said. “A wedding ring.”

“Damn,” Ryujin said. “Think he’s straight?”

“Nah, do you see how well those pants fit him?” Jisung bit his lip, totally checking Minho out with Ryujin. “Gotta be bi at least.”

“Can we please focus?” Seungmin snapped. 

“You can focus, we have more important things,” Ryujin said, waving him off.

Seungmin scowled. “Ogling our student teacher isn’t going to get you better grades.”

“No, but it is going to give us better fantasies when we need to get off.” Ryujin grinned at him. 

Seungmin made a look of total disgust, and she burst out laughing. 

“You are so easy to mess with,” Ryujin said. “I bet you still think sex is for marriage only and that it’s dirty and sinful? Do you even know how to find the clit?”

“I think trying to have sex with a student teacher is going to get both of you expelled,” Seungmin said. 

“Only if you get caught,” Jisung said in a singsong voice, grinning.

Seungmin shot him a look, but Jisung was too busy staring at Minho to notice. Felix and Jeongin were no help either—they were both looking at something on Felix’s phone. Seungmin was left doing all their work as per usual. 

Fine, he told himself. He’ll do all the work. But he’ll make sure to explain to his professor that his group members were no help at all, which will result in lower grades for them. Then Jisung will have a lower grade in the class, and Seungmin will get that number one ranking once again.

Perhaps having Minho as a distraction was a good thing…

Eventually the newness of Minho’s arrival wore off, or at least it did for Seungmin. His classmates continued to gaze at Minho in class, and his group continued to thirst over him both in person and in their group chat. Seungmin kept doing all of the work, but at one point, he came to a part of the patent that he was confused on. Since his professor was out of town for the week, Seungmin went to Minho instead. 

Minho’s office was right next door to the professor’s, and the door was slightly ajar. Seungmin knocked on it, and Minho called out, “Come in.”

Seungmin walked in, and Minho looked up from grading papers.

“Hello,” Minho said. “Seungmin, right?”

Seungmin was surprised he knew him. “Yes,” he said.

“What can I help you with?”

“I’m confused about this part of the patent project.” Seungmin pulled the form out and handed it to Minho. “Could you give me some pointers on how to fill it out?”

“Yep, easy peasy,” Minho said. “Grab a seat.” He pulled out a pencil as Seungmin sat in the chair in front of his desk. 

Minho explained what each of the boxes on the form were asking for, and Seungmin found himself nodding along. Minho’s explanation was much clearer than his professor’s, which surprised him. 

“Thank you,” Seungmin said when Minho was finished. “That really helped clear things up.”

Minho smiled. “Anytime. Anything else I can help you with?”

“Oh, yeah.” Seungmin filed the form away into its correct spot in his folder, then said, “Are you allowed to tell me my rankings in the class, or do I have to go to the professor for that?”

“I should be able to. One second.” Minho turned to his computer and typed a few things in it. As he did so, Seungmin’s eyes went to the ring on his left hand, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Then his eyes went to one of the few photos on his desk, which looked like an engagement photo of him and another man. Honestly, though, it looked more like a fashion shoot, since Minho’s husband was also drop-dead gorgeous. Not that Seungmin noticed, or anything.

“Looks like you’re ranked at the top of the class.” Minho looked at Seungmin and smiled. Seungmin quickly dragged his eyes away from the photo. “Number one. Congrats.”

“Thanks.” Seungmin managed a smile. Then, “You wouldn’t be able to tell me Han Jisung’s rank, would you?”

Minho arched an eyebrow, his gaze slowly morphing into his signature teacher death stare.

“It’s just, the professor thinks that if we know each other’s rankings, then it will encourage us to do even better,” Seungmin continued. “I’ve found it to be very motivating, so his philosophy is paying off.”

Minho stared him down for a few more moments, and Seungmin discovered that it was possible for Minho to make him squirm. Just…not in the same way as the other students. 

“That might be your professor’s policy, but he didn’t discuss that with me,” Minho said. “I’m afraid if you really want to know, you’ll have to ask him.”

Seungmin nodded. “That’s fair.”

Minho flashed him a sweet smile that Seungmin didn’t trust for a moment. 

Seungmin decided it was time to go and quickly gathered his things. “Anyways, thank you for your help,” he said, standing. 

“Anytime,” Minho said. “Happy to help.”

Seungmin managed a smile before booking it out of that office. He was moving so quickly, though, that he almost smashed into someone in the hallway right outside.

“Whoa!” Jisung. “Easy there, Minnie, don’t wanna crash into each other.”

“Don’t call me that,” Seungmin snapped before storming away. 

He heard Jisung say, “Jesus, what’s up his ass?” And it made Seungmin scowl. But as he looked over his shoulder to glare at Jisung, he saw that Jisung had already slipped into Minho’s office. 

Seungmin paused, half tempted to listen in on their conversation to learn how Jisung was planning on getting a higher grade than him. But his phone buzzed with a reminder that he needed to finish some homework, and Seungmin could not afford to fall behind.

This opportunity would come again. He was sure of it. 

So, reluctantly, he left to go work on homework instead.

Over the next few weeks, leading up to midterms and the due date of their patent project, Seungmin continued to do all of the work on their project, while his group members were content to mess around. He grew used to them ignoring him in the group chat, and soon the group chat fizzled out entirely.

Only Jisung seemed to pay attention to him, out of all of them. He used to be the only one to respond to Seungmin’s request in the group chat to fill out certain forms or draw up certain diagrams in their project. He would also say hi to Seungmin whenever they saw each other on campus. Even though he was a little annoying and seemed all too fond of relentless chitchat, Seungmin found that he didn’t mind it as much as he thought he would.

But a week or so after Lee Minho’s arrival as their new student teacher, even Jisung stopped paying attention to Seungmin. Soon, Seungmin was back to being ignored. 

He told himself that he didn’t mind it. After all, he had a plan. He was counting on Jisung and the others getting distracted by “more important things,” i.e. Lee Minho, and fall behind.

Yet as their professor gave them time in-class to study together and work on their project, Seungmin found himself staring at Jisung, who was too busy staring at Minho across the classroom to notice. 

Worst, Minho glanced up, saw Jisung staring at him, and stared back. Then Jisung smirked at him, and Seungmin witnessed for the first time ever Minho looking away first.

At that point, Jisung finally turned back to their group. His eyes went to Seungmin’s, and he jumped a little, surprised at seeing Seungmin looking at him.

“Did you say something?” Jisung asked, blinking. 

Seungmin looked at him for a few moments more, then flicked his eyes in Minho’s direction. Glancing back at Jisung, who seemed to literally gulp, Seungmin said, “No.” Then he turned back to their project. 

Their second test came up shortly after that. It was a breeze. Seungmin felt confident about all his answers, especially the bonus questions. 

He thought for sure that he had outscored Jisung on this one.

Yet—

“Highest score on this test was Han Jisung, once again,” his law professor said, smiling. And right on cue, Jisung whooped in the back row. 

Seungmin clenched his jaw as he stared straight ahead. He kept his hands folded over his test on the desk in front of him, as if to hide the two red slashes on the very last page. 

Before his professor could move on, though, Seungmin’s hand shot into the air.

“Can you go over the bonus questions?” 

“Sure thing,” his professor said. “Now, I made them a little trickier than usual this time, so no one should feel bad about missing some of them. Or even all of them. They’re bonus questions for a reason. That being said, only a handful of people got them right.”

Seungmin narrowed his eyes at that but dutifully wrote down the correct answers once his professor went through them. 

After class, as he was packing up, he noticed Jisung break away from his group and head to the front of the classroom. Based on his trajectory, Seungmin knew he wasn’t heading in his direction. No, he was headed right for Minho.

Seungmin paused from packing up to watch, noticing the way Jisung smiled at Minho and how Minho gave the smallest of smiles in return. 

“Thanks for your help, by the way,” Jisung said to Minho. “The extra tutoring really helped me study better.”

“No problem, that’s what I’m here for.” Minho was still giving him that faint smile, which was practically a grin compared to what his face usually looked like. 

Seungmin’s hand clenched into a fist. Of course. Jisung got extra tutoring from Minho, who was allowed to advise him on what topics to study in order to be properly prepared for the test. He couldn’t tell Jisung the answers, but he could still give hints and direction. 

And Seungmin didn’t even think of doing that. Jisung had utilized a resource that Seungmin had failed to consider. 

Well. He would not be making that mistake again. 

He misjudged the timing for leaving class, and suddenly he was walking out with Jisung, who had a smile on his face and a spring in his step. 

Swallowing his pride, Seungmin said, “Congrats on the test. Highest score, second time in a row.”

“Aw, thanks, man!” Jisung playfully punched Seungmin in the upper arm. “Not gonna lie, it totally made my day. I barely studied for it and thought for sure that I was gonna fail.”

Seungmin blinked several times. “You…you didn’t study for it?”

“Nope. To be honest, I rarely study. Never really learned to because I never really needed to.”

There was a sudden, steady roar in Seungmin’s ears, but he managed to say, “Oh.”

Jisung looked at him and smiled. Seungmin looked straight ahead so he wouldn’t have to see how brightly Jisung’s smile shone, or how his eyes looked prettier than usual today, with just a simple bit of eyeliner and mascara outlining them. 

“Honestly, though, I couldn’t have done it without Minho,” Jisung said. “That guy has a way of explaining things, I swear.”

Seungmin just hummed at that, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. 

“Too bad he’s married,” Jisung said with a sigh. “To this super hot guy, too. Felix and I were bored one day so we looked him up. Found him on social media and everything. Look at this guy!” He suddenly shoved his phone in Seungmin’s face. It was an Instagram post of Minho hugging this other man, with long hair, catlike eyes, and plump lips. They were both smiling, looking genuinely happy. It looked like one of their wedding photos. 

Something stirred in Seungmin’s chest at the sight, though he couldn’t figure out what it was. Hatred, probably. He could already hear his mother saying, I don’t care who you marry, but do those homosexuals have to shove it in our faces? Kids don’t need to see that.

“And they have three cats and a dog and they’re so freaking cute,” Jisung continued, oblivious to Seungmin’s lack of a reaction. “God, I wish that were me.”

When Seungmin just hummed again, Jisung looked up at him. He must have seen something in Seungmin’s expression, because his smile faded. He then cleared his throat and put his phone back in his pocket. 

“Don’t tell anyone I stalked our student teacher on social media, please,” Jisung said.

“I won’t,” Seungmin said. 

He meant what he said. He knew professors and student teachers weren’t allowed to be Facebook friends or mutuals with their students on social media, but Jisung hadn’t actually followed Minho on any account, so he technically wasn’t breaking any rules. 

Besides, if Jisung did break a rule by doing that, then Seungmin did the exact same that very night. He couldn’t stop thinking about the ring on Minho’s finger and the photo on his desk and the smile on his and his husband’s face in their wedding photo. And every time he thought about it, his chest hurt.

Usually he would just ignore things like this and tell himself to stop caring because it was a meaningless distraction. But as he sat at his desk that night in his dorm, trying to read his textbook for class, his mind kept going back to Minho and his chest kept hurting.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he grabbed his phone. It was a bit tricky finding Minho’s Instagram account, since there were so many other Lee Minho’s in the world. Seungmin tried typing his name in the Roman alphabet and in Hangul, and eventually he found Minho’s account. 

God, it was even worse than he thought it would be. Minho didn’t post often, but when he did, he either posted the most beautiful selfie Seungmin had ever seen or the strangest selfie with the weirdest filter he had ever seen. There were lots of pictures of his cats, and his dog, and then his husband. 

And now Seungmin knew Minho’s husband’s name: Hyunjin. Hyunjin was not a model like Seungmin thought, but an artist. Minho liked to tag Hyunjin in all of his photos, and Seungmin briefly considered tapping on Hyunjin’s username to see his artwork. Instead, he kept scrolling, and soon he came to the photos of Minho and Hyunjin’s wedding day.

He wanted to click on the photo dump, and he almost did. But then he heard his grandfather’s voice in the back of his mind, scoffing, Marriage is between a man and a woman, as God intended. Anything else is sinful and wrong and is the work of the devil.

Right.

Seungmin swallowed a bitter taste in his mouth, wondering when his throat became so tight. His chest still hurt, but he figured it was just from stress. 

He quickly closed out of Instagram, then put his phone face-down on the desk and tried to turn back to his book. 

But no matter how hard he tried to focus, he couldn’t stop thinking about Minho looking so happy with his husband Hyunjin, and Seungmin wondered if he would ever be happy like that, too.

*

Seungmin wakes up the morning after clubbing with a splitting headache and a disgusting taste in his mouth. He groans, his entire body feeling icky and gross. He wants to just lie here forever and sleep. 

But before he can do that, he remembers that he has a glass of water on his desk next to his bed. He opens his eyes and squints blearily at it before grabbing it and chugging it. Water has never tasted so delicious. 

Just as he sets it back down and is about to burrow back into his bed, he feels Jisung stir in the back of his mind and say, Seungmin?

Seungmin doesn’t respond and instead pulls his sheets over his head. 

Are you feeling any better? Jisung asks.

“No,” Seungmin mumbles into his pillow. “Just wanna sleep.”

Okay.

Yet Seungmin can’t fall back asleep, because now that he knows that Jisung is awake, it’s getting hard to ignore him. Usually he can’t feel Jisung’s emotions as strongly as Jisung can feel his, but right now he can feel Jisung doing the equivalent of pacing inside of his head. It’s annoying, and Seungmin can’t sleep like this. 

“If you have something to say, just fucking say it,” he grumbles. 

I just—I wanted to apologize for last night, Jisung says. I should have asked you if you were okay with that before I did it. I overstepped and I’m sorry.

Seungmin doesn’t respond right away, because he’s not sure if he forgives Jisung for that just yet. He’s not sure if he ever will.

But he doesn’t want to fight with the ghost who’s literally giving him the ability to walk, so he says, “I accept your apology.”

Oh, good, Jisung sighs in relief. I’m still really sorry, though. I just—god, this ghost thing is harder than I thought. I know I can live vicariously through you, but our needs are so different that it’s honestly frustrating. I just really needed to make out with someone or get laid. Sorry.

“How, exactly, did you expect to do that with my body?” Seungmin retorts.

I don’t know, I clearly didn’t think it through. I was only thinking with my dick, as you can see. Er—your dick?

“Oh my god, don’t ever talk about thinking with my dick ever again.”

Jisung laughs. Alright, alright. But…seriously, don’t you get urges? You haven’t even jerked off since we’ve been back. How the hell do you function?

Seungmin’s face turns red. “I’m not talking about that with you.”

I mean, if you need me to walk you through it, I’m happy to do so—

“Oh my god, no!”

Or if you need some really hot porn videos—

“Jisung, I swear to god—”

I know I sound like I’m joking, but I’m kinda not! Jisung says. Sexual exploration is totally fine and healthy, and it’s okay for you to be curious and find out what you’re into. I, for one, am totally into being manhandled—

Seungmin grabs his pillow and screams into it.

See, that sounds like the scream of someone sexually repressed, Jisung says. 

“Please stop talking about this,” Seungmin says, his anxiety starting to rear its ugly head. He doesn’t want to think about sex or kinks or anything, because as soon as he does that, he can’t stop thinking about the guilt or how disgusting and dirty he is for even imagining that. What would his family think if they learned about that?!

Alright, alright, I’ll stop, Jisung says. Anyways. Not to be that person, but it is still my turn to drive.

“Not after the shit you pulled last night,” Seungmin mutters. “I just want to sleep.”

Oh, actually, that works. I usually sleep most of my weekends away anyways. Or, I used to. Can we get takeout for dinner?

“No.”

Pleaseeee? Jisung whines. I really want some fried chickennnn.

Seungmin’s stomach lurches at the thought of eating anything that greasy. “Just let me sleep and we’ll talk food later,” he says. 

Fine.

With that, Seungmin closes his eyes and goes back to sleep. His dreams, though, are more like nightmares.

*

The weekends on campus are quiet and lonely. While most students live on campus, a lot of them find things to do off campus on the weekends, or they go home for the weekend. Seungmin has always been part of the group that goes home on weekends, but now that that isn’t an option anymore, he’s stuck finding something to do here instead. 

Or, he supposes, Jisung is stuck finding something to do, since it is still Jisung’s turn to control the body. And Jisung, apparently, just wants to sit inside and watch anime all day. 

Seungmin supposes he’s fine with that. He’s still feeling ill and hungover and lethargic, so he doesn’t really feel like getting up and doing anything. He doesn’t even feel like taking a shower. It’s nice to sort of just lie in bed all day and relax, but at the same time, he thinks it’s making his mood even worse. 

He can’t stop thinking about his family and his home, which just worsens the ache of homesickness in his chest. 

Briefly, he wonders if Jisung misses his family, too. Maybe Seungmin should have gone to Jisung’s memorial service, so Jisung could see his family again. Something tells him that it wouldn’t have helped, because Seungmin wouldn’t have been able to approach Jisung’s family. 

He has never met Jisung’s family, though Jisung talked about them before. Seungmin always thought they sounded nice. They sounded much nicer than his family, that’s for sure.

Thinking about his family and Jisung’s family makes him think of the one time Jisung met his family, when Seungmin’s mother came to campus for a visit.

It was after Lee Minho had arrived but before midterms and before their patent project was due. Seungmin remembers it quite clearly, because he was frustrated that his mother chose one of the most stressful times during the semester to visit. Although he loved his family almost more than anything, he was annoyed that she was cutting into time he could have spent studying or working on projects.

Worse, of all the days, she chose to show up on the one day of the week when Seungmin had his law class…with Jisung. Which meant Seungmin was walking out of the classroom with Jisung, since apparently that was what they did, now. It was one of the few days when Seungmin was in a good mood despite his stress, and he was listening to Jisung rant about some new anime he had found, and he might have been smiling at him, perhaps a little too fondly. 

That all came crashing down when someone called out sharply, “Seungmin-ah!”

Seungmin jumped, both the blood and the smile vanishing from his face. Jisung blinked at him, but then they both looked to find a woman walking towards them, dressed in an expensive white pantsuit with heels higher than some of the students here.

“Who is that?” Jisung asked, smirking as he raised his eyebrows.

Seungmin couldn’t respond; it was like he had forgotten how to speak, how to move, how to breathe. He could only stare as the woman marched up to him, her designer handbag dangling from the crook of her arm. 

“Seungmin-ah, darling,” she said, reaching up to lift her sunglasses. “You’re late.”

Seungmin snapped out of his trance and quickly bowed to her. “I’m sorry, I had to talk to the professor after class.”

“Mm.” His mother studied him for a few moments before her eyes flicked to Jisung. “And who is this?”

She made no secret of looking Jisung up and down, taking in his bleached hair, makeup, earrings, and dark clothes. Thank god he wasn’t wearing his beanie today, but those platform boots weren’t much better. 

“Oh, hi,” Jisung said, smiling despite her piercing gaze. “I’m Han Jisung. Seungmin’s friend.”

Seungmin almost winced at Jisung calling him his friend, but he managed to suppress it. 

His mother stared at Jisung, her eyes slightly narrowed, before she said to Seungmin in Korean, “These are the kind of people you’re spending your time with? Have you picked up smoking and partying as well?”

“No, it’s not like that,” Seungmin said quickly in Korean. “We’re just classmates. We’re in a group project together.”

“A group project?” his mother said. “Why did you let them put you in a group? You should have done it independently, your grades would have been much better. Are all your group members delinquents like that?” She sighed and shook her head, crossing her arms. “I imagine he doesn’t tell his mother that he dresses like that.”

“Eomma—”

“Actually, my mom knows exactly how I dress,” Jisung said in Korean, smiling sweetly despite the way Seungmin and his mother’s heads snapped in his direction. “And she doesn’t care, because she lets me express myself however I want. She’s really awesome like that.”

Seungmin’s mother stared at him. Seungmin almost wanted to laugh but knew he would get his mother’s death glare if he did.

“So, Seungminnie, this is your mom?” Jisung continued in Korean, making a show of putting his arm around Seungmin’s shoulders. Seungmin stiffened, his heart rate skyrocketing when his mother’s eyes followed that movement. “That’s so cool! It’s really great to meet you, Mrs. Kim. I just want to say that you have an amazing son. He’s so smart. Did you know he has the highest grades in the class?”

Seungmin glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, wondering what Jisung was doing. 

His mother arched an eyebrow before smiling sweetly. “Yes, my Seungmin-ah is very intelligent. He has the highest grades in all of his classes. One day, he’s going to be a neurosurgeon. What are you going to do, Han Jisung?”

“Oh, me? Hmm...” Jisung thought for a moment. “Probably be a lawyer.”

“Ahhh,” Seungmin’s mother said, in an enthusiastic voice that was so condescending that it hurt. “But to do that you’ll have to study hard and get good grades.”

Jisung smiled back at her, just as condescending. “What makes you think I don’t have good grades? I’ve actually outscored Seungmin twice on our law exams.”

Seungmin was certain that he had just stopped breathing.

“Did you, now.” Seungmin’s mother looked at Seungmin. “Seungmin-ah, I thought you said that you had achieved the highest test score. But this…Han Jisung is claiming you didn’t?”

“I—” Seungmin stopped himself from glancing at Jisung. “I missed some of the bonus questions.”

His mother was silent for several moments, but Seungmin knew from the sudden reddish tint to her cheeks that she was furious. 

“I see,” she said. “Well, we’ll discuss that later. For now, your grandfather and I have some time, and we’re going out to dinner with you, to catch up on how your semester is going.”

Seungmin nodded, his gaze lowered.

“Ooh, sounds fun!” Jisung said. “Makes me miss my parents. You’re really lucky, Seungminnie. Anyways, see you later! Have fun!”

Then, to Seungmin’s horror, he hugged Seungmin goodbye. After bowing to Seungmin’s mom, saying, “It was very nice to meet you, Mrs. Kim,” Jisung turned and walked away, his head held high, a spring in his step. 

Seungmin and his mother watched him go, but then his mother turned to look at Seungmin. 

“So,” she said, “that delinquent outscored you not once but twice?”

Seungmin winced but nodded. “I’ve been trying to bring my score up. I’m still at the top of the class, and I’m going to my professor for extra tutoring—”

His mother held up a hand, silencing him. “Save your excuses. We’ll discuss it at dinner, with your grandfather.”

If Seungmin’s mother was bad when it came to school and grades, his grandfather was even worse. Like father, like daughter, he supposed. 

But he had no choice, so he nodded and went along. 

Later that night, after dinner, his mother and grandfather dropped him off on campus. Although it was well after dark, campus wasn’t entirely quiet, and there were still some students walking back to their dorms or heading to the parking garage, talking and laughing with each other. Seungmin kept his head down and walked back alone, trying not to think of that disastrous dinner. 

He told himself that he loved his family—he really did—but he couldn’t deny that he felt horrible sometimes after visiting them, like he was never good enough. Worse, he always felt like he could never be himself around them, like he was holding his breath and pretending to smile and swallowing his complaints. But that feeling confused him more than anything else, because he had always acted the same around his family, so why would he think that he wasn’t being himself? What other version of himself was there?

He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t hear someone coming up behind him until someone was punching him in the shoulder. Seungmin jumped, already opening his mouth to snap at whoever ran into him, when Jisung appeared beside him, grinning. 

“And he lives!” Jisung said. “How was dinner with your hella strict parents? I’m guessing it was bad, huh?”

Seungmin blinked at him. “Excuse me?”

“Trust me, I’ve seen it before,” Jisung said. “Jeongin’s parents are just like that. Ultra conservative, super religious, have ridiculously high expectations, and have never said they’re proud of him…yeah, it can be a lot. He hasn’t talked to them in literally three years.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yup, but that’s what happens when enough is enough.” Jisung looked at him and smiled. “You seem like you’re still in the denial phase. The phase where you claim that you’re fine and that your parents aren’t like that and that they truly love you, blah blah blah. Look, you’re gonna do it right now!”

Seungmin’s mouth was open to tell him off, but after Jisung said that, he closed his mouth and scowled. “You don’t know anything,” he retorted. “You have no idea what my life or my family is like, so why the hell should I listen to you?”

“Yup, Jeongin told me that too,” Jisung said, rolling his eyes. “Let me ask you something—do you really want to be a neurosurgeon? Or is that something your parents told you that you wanted to do?”

“Do you really want to be a lawyer?” Seungmin shot back. “Or is that something you just told my mom to make you look better? Maybe if you stopped dressing like a queer, people would stop judging you.”

Jisung drew back, but then scowled. “I’m guessing that’s what your family called me at dinner, huh? Well, guess what—they’re not wrong! But I don’t care what other people think of me. I could care less about what your rich as fuck mom thinks of my clothes. I like my clothes—they make me feel confident and comfortable in my own skin. I don’t owe them anything. And neither do you.”

Seungmin scoffed and shook his head, staring straight ahead. “Just leave me alone. We’re not ‘friends’ like you claimed we were to my mom. We’re nothing more than classmates. So leave me alone.”

“Alright, fine.” Jisung shrugged. “Have fun being a loner. Byeeee.”

With that, Jisung walked away. Seungmin glared at his back, his hands curling into fists, his nails digging into his palms. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to shout at Jisung that he was wrong, that Seungmin was happy with his life, that he loved his family more than anything. But he knew Jisung wouldn’t listen, or he’d laugh at him, and then Seungmin would have just embarrassed himself. 

He shook it off and took a deep breath. Jisung didn’t know anything. And Seungmin didn’t care what Jisung thought, or what anyone else thought, for that matter. 

But even as he told himself that, he knew it was a lie. 

Seungmin! Jisung suddenly says in the back of his mind, snapping Seungmin out of his flashback. 

“What?” Seungmin quickly shakes his head, trying to come back to the present. “I zoned out.”

Yeah, I know, Jisung says with a snort. But I just remembered something!

Oh god. Seungmin really hopes Jisung didn’t just sense his memories or his thoughts. 

“What did you remember?” Seungmin asks. 

So, last night, you know how I told you that I recognized that bartender? And how it triggered a whole bunch of memories?

Oh god. “Yeah?”

Well, I was just thinking about it today, and I actually remember a little bit more, Jisung says. And I think I might have a couple of suspects.

Seungmin raises his eyebrows in surprise. 

*

About twenty-four hours after that disastrous clubbing experience, Seungmin is right back at that club, much to his annoyance. Though that annoyance might just be branching off from the sheer anxiety he has about going back. But Jisung insists they go, promising that they won’t stay that long. 

On the way there, Jisung tells him his thought process. 

So, that bartender is Lee Minho, right? Jisung says as they ride the bus. Well, he used to be our student teacher. And, um, well, this is going to be embarrassing, so please don’t judge me.

“I won’t,” Seungmin murmurs. 

Well…turns out I was actually messing around with him like all semester.

Seungmin’s eyebrows shoot upwards. 

Yeahhhh, Jisung says, cringing. That’s what I remembered last night. I really, really liked him, and he liked me back. Problem is…he’s married. Or, he was.

“Was?”

Yeah, that’s what I remembered today. Parts of it are still foggy, but it’s against the rules to mess around with a professor or a student teacher. Minho and I were good at sneaking around and stuff, but then somehow our secret got out. And that secret also got out to his husband. I think you know where I’m going with this.

Unfortunately, Seungmin does. 

So, Minho’s husband, Hyunjin, found out that Minho was cheating on him with me, a student, Jisung continues. They get divorced, and Minho loses his job as a student teacher, which is why he’s now bartending. Thing is, I think both of them have a pretty good motivation to murder me for that. Honestly, I kinda wouldn’t blame them, either.

Seungmin hums at that, and they get off the bus. As they walk to the club, Seungmin says, “It makes sense. Husband finds out their spouse is cheating, decides to kill the lover right then and there.”

Or I’m pretty sure I was the one who made the first move, so Minho could totally blame me for ruining his career, Jisung says. Enough to want to murder me. I remember how much he loved to teach.

He sounds so sullen and guilty that Seungmin can’t help saying, “Hey, it takes two, remember? If he was so worried about ruining his career, then he could have just told you ‘no.’ But it doesn’t sound like he did. Sounds like he wanted it just as much as you.”

Yeah, maybe. Jisung sighs. But I guess we’ll find out.

They reach the club, and Seungmin has to swallow back the bile as he shows his ID to the bouncer, who then ushers him inside. It’s early enough that the club isn’t busy yet, but the music is still loud, and there are still enough people inside to look at Seungmin as he walks past. He avoids everyone’s gaze as he heads to the bar, where he hopes a certain bartender is on shift.

Fortunately, their luck pays off. Minho is behind the bar, his face an expressionless mask as he wipes out some glasses in preparation for what’ll probably be a busy night. 

Seungmin takes a deep breath to steel himself and walks up to the bar. Minho glances up at him, then does a double-take, his sharp brows coming together. 

“Oh, I remember you,” he says. “If you pull that bullshit like you did last night, I might actually have to kick your ass. Or ban you altogether. Don’t test me.”

Nice guy, Jisung mumbles. 

Seungmin swallows but says, “I’m not here to drink.”

“Oh?” Minho arches an eyebrow. “Good. You clearly can’t hold your alcohol.”

“I’m actually here to talk to you.”

Minho rolls his eyes, muttering something under his breath. “Not interested,” he says. 

Before Minho can walk away, though, Seungmin blurts, “It’s about Han Jisung.”

Minho goes rigid, his hands tightening so much around the glass that Seungmin is worried he’ll break it. 

“I don’t know who that is,” Minho says shortly. 

“Yes, you do,” Seungmin says. “And I’m pretty sure you know who I am, too.”

Minho looks at him, his eyes narrowing. But then he seems to take in Seungmin’s appearance, particularly in the fact that Seungmin isn’t dressed in an outfit fit for clubbing tonight. No, instead, he’s wearing what he usually wears—a collared shirt peeking past a pullover sweatshirt, the university letters massive and visible. 

Seungmin sees the moment Minho connects the dots. 

“You.” Minho points at him. “You were one of my students. Seungjin or something?”

“Seungmin,” Seungmin corrects. 

“Right. The stuck-up rich boy who acted like a know-it-all.” Minho’s lips twist into a mirthless smile. “Who also didn’t have any friends. Big shocker.”

Seungmin clenches his jaw at that. “Jisung was my friend.”

Minho laughs at that. “No, he wasn’t. Anyone with eyes could tell that you hated him and thought you were better than him.”

“I didn’t hate him!” Seungmin insists. “I just…didn’t know how to talk to him.”

“Uh huh.” Minho studies him. “So, let me guess, you’re here to ask me about where I was the night Jisung died. Well, you’re about to be disappointed. I was here, all night. Even had someone throw up on me, which was great. You can ask any of my coworkers to confirm that I was here. And if you don’t believe them, then you can ask some regulars.”

“Regulars?” Seungmin repeats. 

As if on cue, someone slides up to the bar next to him, close enough for their shoulders to brush. Seungmin goes rigid as the warmth of another person spreads through him. 

“Oh, you’re back?” an unfamiliar voice practically purrs. “How interesting. After the panic attack you had last night, I figured I’d never see you here again.”

His face flushing, Seungmin looks to find the handsome stranger whom he nearly made out with standing right next to him, smirking. And this time, now that Seungmin is sober, he recognizes him instantly. 

Ohhh shit, Jisung says. What the hell is he doing here?

Hyunjin grins at him, enjoying the panicked look on his face. Then he looks across the bar at Minho, whose jaw is clenched even tighter now. A bit belatedly, Seungmin realizes that Minho isn’t wearing a ring, and neither is Hyunjin.

Well, of course they’re not, because they’re divorced.

“A Long Island Iced Tea, please,” Hyunjin tells Minho. 

Minho doesn’t move. “A bit early for that, isn’t it?”

“Nope,” Hyunjin says, tilting his head to one side, his expression becoming somewhat dangerous. “I have plans to be out of here earlier than usual. So, that means I’m starting earlier than usual. With this cutie, of course.” He loops an arm around Seungmin’s waist. 

Oh, I think I know what this is! Jisung says, a bit too excitedly. Hyunjin’s clearly still pissed about the whole cheating thing, so he’s giving Minho a taste of his own medicine! Going after college students in the same bar where Minho works, and Minho can do nothing about it. How cold blooded, Hyunjin.

Seungmin quickly steps back, forcing Hyunjin to drop his arm from around his waist. It also gives Seungmin some room to breathe. 

“Not interested,” Seungmin tells Hyunjin. 

“Of course you’re not.” Hyunjin rolls his eyes. “You like doing this push-pull thing. One moment you’re all up on me, the next you’re shoving me away. But that’s okay.” He smirks at Seungmin. “I like that.”

Minho is shooting daggers at Seungmin with his glare right now. Seungmin really hates the position he’s in, but he might as well try to take advantage of it. 

“So you come here often?” Seungmin says to Hyunjin. 

Hyunjin smiles. “Often enough.”

“Were you here the night of the twenty-third?”

Hyunjin arches an eyebrow but then puts his hand on his chin as he looks up to the ceiling, making a show of trying to remember. “Let me see…that was the night I brought home that one really muscular army guy, I think. It was also drag night, which are some of my favorites.” He looks at Seungmin. “Why?”

“Was Minho here all night?” Seungmin asks. 

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Hyunjin says dismissively. 

Oh he totally cares, Jisung says. 

“Did you leave the club early that night?” Seungmin asks. 

Hyunjin narrows his eyes. “Hold on, this sounds like an interrogation. Unless you plan to handcuff me to a bed and roleplay, I’m not into it.”

“He thinks you murdered Han Jisung,” Minho says shortly. 

Hyunjin looks at Minho, then looks at Seungmin and lets out a laugh. “Han Jisung? That’s what this is about? Why is everything always about that whore?”

Hey, now, no need for name-calling, Jisung says. 

“For your information, I didn’t kill him,” Hyunjin tells Seungmin, looking him right in the eye. “I’ll admit that I was tempted to, after the shit he pulled, but I’m not suited for prison, so I decided to take out my anger in other ways.”

He looks at Minho and smiles at that. Minho just stares down at the bar. 

“Right,” Seungmin says. “Um. Is there I way I can contact the guy you were allegedly with?”

“Oh my god.” Hyunjin rolls his eyes. “No, I didn’t bother getting his number, because I had clearly misjudged that one. Ugh. So slobbery and rough. I like getting manhandled as much as anyone else, but the way he did it wasn’t even sexy. Felt like I was some military weapon he was handling.”

“No, he probably made you do some of the work, and you, being the pillow princess you are, didn’t like that,” Minho says. 

Hyunjin looks at him sharply. “Did I ask? No. So shut the fuck up.”

“You’d better be nice to me, or else I’m not serving you,” Minho says, arching an eyebrow. “And at that point, I know you’ll just leave, because you don’t like how any of the other bartenders mix your drinks.”

Oooh, they totally still have feelings for each other, Jisung says. Is there any way that we can shift focus and try to get the two of them back together?

Hyunjin looks back at Seungmin and smiles sweetly. “Anything else you’d like to ask? Like my number, perhaps?”

“Thought you didn’t get people’s numbers,” Seungmin says. 

“I don’t, but for you I’d make an exception.”

“Uh huh.” Seungmin is a lot less intimidated by Hyunjin now. He’s way too flirty, and even though he’s pretty, he’s not really Seungmin’s type. 

Whaaat? Jisung says. Kim Seungmin has a type?! And here I thought you’d like the more feminine-looking guys like Hyunjin to help with that internalized homophobia.

Before Seungmin can even process that, he tells Minho and Hyunjin, “Thank you for your time.”

Hyunjin snorts, muttering, “Thank you for your time. What are you, an undercover cop?”

“Don’t come back,” Minho tells Seungmin. 

“Trust me, I don’t plan on it,” Seungmin says. He turns to walk away, but then whirls back around as another thought occurs to him. “And just fucking make up already. It’s obvious you two are still into each other. Talk about it like adults maybe? Or not. None of my business. Bye.”

Then he books it out of there before he can process the surprised looks on both Minho and Hyunjin’s faces. 

Once they’re out into the fresh air, Seungmin lets out a huge breath. 

Eyyy, look at my Seungminnie, not having an anxiety attack in a gay bar! Jisung says. I’m proud of you, dude.

A shiver goes down Seungmin’s spine at those words, particularly the “my Seungminnie” and “I’m proud of you,” but he shakes his head again and starts heading back to the bus stop. 

“So, that was a bust,” Seungmin murmurs.

Yeah, oh well, Jisung says. I still think it was worth it, though. Do you really think the two of them will get back together, though? I mean, once someone cheats, it’s kinda hard to ever trust them again.

“I don’t know,” Seungmin says with a sigh. “But probably not.”

Yeah, I do feel bad about that, Jisung says, back to sounding guilty and sullen. I really ruined their relationship and their lives. God, I was such a dick, wasn’t I?

“Again, Minho could have said ‘no’ at any point,” Seungmin says. “But he didn’t. He’s just as guilty as you. No offense.”

I know, but I made the first move, knowing full well that Minho was married and happy, Jisung says. I shouldn’t have done that. I think I knew it was bad, but I think that was part of the thrill of it. God, if I could go back in time…

If only that were possible. Seungmin sighs. “It doesn’t really matter, now.”

Maybe not, now that we know that they have alibis that check out, Jisung says. Oh well. Let’s just…go get some dinner.

“Okay,” Seungmin says, then adds, “Wanna drive? It’s still the weekend.”

He can sense Jisung smile a little, but then Jisung says, Nah, I don’t really feel like it. I think I’m just gonna…ride along. Be with my thoughts for a little while.

“Okay. But just let me know.”

Thanks, Min.

“Anytime.” Seungmin gives a small smile, but then Jisung retreats into the back of his mind, leaving Seungmin to walk back to campus alone.

*

The rest of the weekend is nothing interesting. Seungmin spends some of Sunday working on his late work, then spends the rest of it watching anime. He tries calling his mom, his dad, and his grandpa, but none of them pick up. 

Monday morning dawns, and Seungmin gets up and goes through his normal routine. As he’s walking back from class that afternoon, though, he gets an email from the university telling him that he has some mail in his mailbox. Seungmin then walks to the mailroom in his dorm building, already having a bad feeling of what will be waiting for him. 

It’s a bill from the hospital. Seungmin refuses to open it until he’s back in his dorm room. And even as he steels himself for it, knowing it will be outrageously expensive, nothing prepares him for the real number. 

Oh, holy shit, Jisung says when he sees the cost.

Seungmin stares at the amount that’s way more than his meagre twenty-thousand in his bank account and can’t take it anymore. 

He bursts into tears. 

He can tell that Jisung is caught off guard, and even Seungmin is caught off guard. He isn’t a crier. He never has been. But these past few weeks have been nothing but hell, and Seungmin has cried more during them than he has in his entire life leading up to that point. 

He can’t afford to pay this. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. 

The bill falls from his hand, and he crouches down in the doorway to his bedroom, his hands covering his face. Once he starts crying, he can’t stop, and it’s painful. Each sob feels like it’s tearing itself from his body, making his chest ache. 

Seungmin? Hey, it’s okay, just take a deep breath, in, out, in, out, Jisung says in the back of his mind. Just focus on me, okay? I’m right here. I can’t physically hug you, but pretend that I am.

“I can’t—” Seungmin chokes back a sob. “I can’t—I can’t afford to pay that, Jisung, I don’t know what I’m going to do—”

Maybe you can negotiate the price with them, I mean, how do you owe that much even with insurance?

Seungmin only whimpers and cries harder. “I don’t—I don’t have insurance anymore.”

What?

“My—my parents—they took me off their insurance plan, and I was—I was trying to get another plan when the accident happened.”

He can tell that Jisung is shocked. Why the hell would they take you off their plan? You’re not 26 yet.

“They cut me off,” Seungmin whispers. “They cut me off from everything.”

What? Why?

Seungmin shakes his head. Even now, he can’t say it. He can’t admit it to himself. He doesn’t want to admit that his family are bad people.

But he has to remind himself that his family didn’t even come to see him in the hospital.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he whispers again. “I wish…I wish I had just died in that accident. I should have died.”

Don’t say that! Jisung says. Seriously, please don’t say that. I need you, Minnie. This is just a rough patch, but you’ll get through it. I know you will.

Seungmin just closes his eyes. 

He could have sat there on his bedroom floor for god knows how long. He’s mostly done crying, even if he’s hiccuping a little and his chest and head hurt. 

As he sniffs and wipes his nose on the back of his hand, someone knocks on his door. 

“Hey, Seungmin, you in there?” his RA asks. “I need to talk to you.”

Seungmin doesn’t want to answer it, but his RA never talks to him unless she needs something, so he forces himself to his feet. He catches sight of himself in the mirror, where his eyes are still red and swollen. He quickly wipes away the tears and sniffs one last time before going to the front door. Opening it, he sees his RA standing there, and she looks way more serious than Seungmin has ever seen her. 

“You need to come downstairs,” she says. “There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”

Seungmin frowns at that but says, “Okay. I’m coming.”

She doesn’t let him go back into his dorm, so he has no choice but to follow her down to the first floor of the building. There, she leads him past the mail room and into one of the few offices there, where she gestures for him to go inside. 

This doesn’t sound good, Jisung murmurs, and Seungmin has to agree. 

He sniffs one last time and tries to compose himself before he steps into the room. There are two men sitting in front of the desk, but they both stand when Seungmin comes in.

“Kim Seungmin?” one of them asks.

Seungmin blinks, having a really, really bad feeling about this. “Yeah?”

The two men pull out their badges. 

“I’m Detective Bang, and this is my partner, Detective Seo,” the first one says. “Mind if we ask you a couple of questions?”

*

Earlier that week, Chan sat down with Felix in his office at the local police department. His office wasn’t anything special; just a tiny room with a desk, some bookshelves, two cushioned chairs in front of the desk, and a pretty decently sized window directly behind Chan’s desk chair. It made the room feel less cramped. 

Felix sat in one of the cushioned chairs, while Chan sat behind the desk. Changbin came in with some coffees, and after handing one to Felix, he said, “So, you think you know who did it?”

“It can only be one person,” Felix said. 

“Do you have proof?” Changbin asked. 

“No, but I know their motivation.”

“Eh, that’s a start.” Changbin shrugged and sat down in the other cushioned chair in front of Chan’s desk. He pulled out his phone and set it down on Chan’s desk, where he pulled up the voice memos app and pressed record. “You don’t mind us recording this, right?”

“No, go right ahead.” Felix smiled, even though he looked exhausted. There were rings under his eyes, and his skin looked pale and drawn. Chan fought the urge to ask him if he was doing alright, if he was taking care of himself, because clearly his little brother wasn’t alright. His best friend had been murdered, for god’s sake. 

“We’re just going to ask you some standard questions first,” Changbin said. “So, what’s your name and relation to the victim?”

“Lee Felix, and I was Han Jisung’s best friend,” Felix said. 

“When was the last time you saw Jisung?”

“I hadn’t seen him for a while, actually, ever since he dropped out of school. But I texted him all the time and FaceTimed him a lot, too,” Felix said. “The last time I talked to him was the day before he was murdered.”

“What did you talk about?” Changbin asked. 

“We were talking about a bunch of things,” Felix said. “Anime, K-Pop, hanging out. We wanted to get together that weekend to watch a new show together and just hang out. We didn’t get to do that very often, since he lived two hours away.” He sighed, fidgeting with his coffee cup. “We went from seeing each other every day to seeing each other maybe once or twice a month. It sucked.”

Changbin nodded. “And where were you the night he was killed?”

“I was on campus,” Felix said. “In my room. I have roommates, so you can check with them.”

Changbin nodded again, and Chan made a note to confirm that Felix was in his dorm all night. He knew that Felix wasn’t the perpetrator, but he had worked enough cases to know that no one could be trusted in instances like this. Anyone could be a suspect, and anyone could be the perpetrator. 

He just prayed that it wasn’t Felix. It might break him. 

“How long did you talk to Jisung?” Changbin asked. “Or, when was the last text you sent or received?”

“It was in the evening, right around dinnertime the night before,” Felix said. “We usually text or talk right until one of us goes to sleep, but this time he said he was heading into the mountains to see the leaves change and that he wasn’t going to have any service. He didn’t say who he was going with, so I just assumed that he was going by himself.”

“But you think he went with someone?”

Felix nodded. “I think he went with Kim Seungmin.”

“And who is that?” Changbin asked.

“He’s another student,” Felix said. “All three of us were in a law class together this semester. We were also in a group project together, with two other students.” After a beat, he added, “I think Seungmin killed him.”

“And why do you think that?”

“Because Jisung’s the one who outed Seungmin to his super conservative family.”

Chan raised his eyebrows at that. 

“But there’s so much more to it than that,” Felix said. “This whole semester, Seungmin has had this rivalry going with Jisung. He’s the one who started it after Jisung scored higher than him on a test. Seungmin is the kind of person who has to get the best grades in all of his classes, has to be number one in everything. But then Jisung got higher scores than him on all of the tests, and Seungmin hated him for it.”

“Okay,” Chan said, making Felix look at him. “But why would Jisung out Seungmin for that?”

“At the beginning of the semester, we got a student teacher,” Felix said. “His name was Lee Minho.”

Changbin wrote that down.

“Minho was really, really attractive, and he was young, so naturally all of us were kinda drooling over him. But Jisung was really interested in him, even though Minho was married. I don’t know how it happened, but at one point, Jisung told me and our friend Jeongin that he was messing around with Minho.”

Chan and Changbin exchanged glances. 

“Obviously that’s against the rules,” Felix said. “But I don’t think Jisung really cared. We just told him to be careful, and he kind of just waved us off. Right before midterms, though, their secret got out.”

“And I’m guessing that didn’t go well,” Chan said. 

Felix shook his head. “Minho was fired almost immediately, and Jisung lost his scholarship. Our school is really expensive, so his parents couldn’t afford to pay for him to attend without taking out huge loans. He probably still could have stayed for the rest of the year, but it was implied that Minho helped Jisung cheat by giving him some answers to the bonus questions on the test. Since that was an academic violation, they expelled Jisung too.”

“Damn,” Changbin said. “But what does this have to do with Seungmin?”

“That’s the thing,” Felix said. “Seungmin was the one who ratted Jisung and Minho out.”

“Oh,” Chan said. 

“Yeah. Jisung was livid. He wanted to get back at Seungmin for that, but Seungmin has a ridiculously clean record, and he’s loaded. His grandpa owns a baseball team and his parents are like CEOs of some company. If he got into any trouble, he’d get out of it easily with their help. People like him don’t face any consequences—they just write a check to get out of it.” Felix scowled, and Chan hated that look on him. “But the thing is…his family is super conservative, like I said. So, Jisung came up with the idea to out Seungmin to his family so then Seungmin would be cut off from everything. We knew he’d be fine, so Jisung photoshopped a picture of some random guy with Seungmin and sent it to Seungmin’s parents.”

“Did you help him?” Chan couldn’t help asking, staring Felix down.

Felix lowered his head, refusing to meet Chan’s gaze. “Yeah,” he said quietly. 

Chan clenched his jaw. Both he and Felix were bi. Luckily, their parents were very accepting, but coming out to them had been one of the most nerve-racking experiences of Chan’s teenage years. He had heard of kids getting kicked out of their homes and facing all kinds of violence after coming out, and it terrified him. Fortunately, his parents were very accepting, and it was even easier for Felix to come out to them a few years later.

But now, he had never felt so disappointed in Felix for putting another queer kid—rich or not—through that kind of hell. Just because Felix had it easy in that aspect didn’t mean that other people would.

“And then you think Seungmin snapped and killed Jisung for it?” Changbin asked.

“Yes,” Felix said. “I don’t even think he has a good alibi for it. He was literally out driving in the same part of the mountains where Jisung’s body was found.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because he got into a car accident literally an hour later.”

“Wait a second,” Chan said. “Seungmin was that kid whose car went off that mountain road?”

“Yeah,” Felix said. 

“I heard he’s, like, paralyzed right now.”

“He was supposed to be paralyzed. But somehow he made a miraculous recovery and regained full mobility. He just came back to campus this week.”

Changbin nodded slowly before exchanging glances with Chan, signaling the end to their interrogation. 

“Just…look into him,” Felix said. “There’s literally no one else it could be.”

Chan cleared his throat, making Felix look at him. “Thank you for telling us this, Felix,” he said. 

Felix nodded, though he stared down at his coffee a moment later.

Changbin turned off the recording, and that was that.

Now, Chan sits in the same office days later, thinking over what Felix said. He and Felix had a conversation off-record last night, where Chan made Felix promise to never do something like that ever again. Even though Chan didn’t raise his voice, Felix was crying by the end of it, and it made Chan feel like shit. He hates making Felix cry, but in this instance, Felix was in the wrong. It’s never okay to out someone, even someone you hate.

Besides, Chan doesn’t want to tell Felix that doing such a thing more or less led to one of his friends getting murdered. He has a feeling that Felix knows that, though, and it’s probably eating him up inside. 

Someone knocks on his office door, snapping Chan out of it. Clearing his throat, he calls out, “Come in.”

Changbin opens the door and pokes his head inside. 

“Hey,” Chan says. “What’s up?”

“I looked into that Kim Seungmin guy,” Changbin says, walking in with a file. “Felix was right. Squeaky clean record. He’s never even ran a red light or gotten pulled over.”

“Typical,” Chan mumbles. He sighs. “We should probably go question him.”

“Yeah, probably. But I thought of something else,” Changbin says. He leans against the desk. “If Seungmin did do it, and if he didn’t kill Jisung in that forest, then he had to transport the body there to dump it. So, there would be evidence in his car, wouldn’t there?”

Chan looks up.

“Thing is, his car was totaled after that accident,” Changbin says. “But I was able to pull the records of that car accident, which means that I know where his car is.” He smirks triumphantly. 

About a half an hour later, Chan and Changbin and a handful of other CSIs are at a junkyard, which is stacked high with totaled cars. Chan groans a little at the sight, thinking it’ll take forever for them to find the car they’re looking for. Will the thing even be recognizable? Will it even have a license plate?

Thank god Chan has Changbin as his partner, because Changbin says, “I already called ahead and asked if they could find the car for us. There have been a few cars since then, but the guy I talked to said he remembered seeing that one. Specifically, he said he was surprised that anyone had survived from a wreck like that. Take that as you will.”

They walk into the junkyard, where a crane has already gotten a car out of one of the piles. If one can even call the crumpled hunk of metal a car. 

Chan lets out a low whistle when he approaches it. It used to be a Porsche. A beautiful one, too. Shame. 

Changbin walks to the back of the car, then curses when he sees it. “It’s all torn up,” he says. “I doubt we’d be able to get any DNA from it.”

“Let’s have forensics swab it anyways,” Chan says. 

It’ll take a few days for them to run the DNA and match it, but if Jisung was ever in that car, they’ll know. 

Chan still can’t help feeling a little pessimistic, though.

“What?” Changbin asks, seeing Chan’s expression as he stares at the car. “You’re not feeling bad for this kid, are you?”

“I just don’t think it’s enough to convict,” Chan says.

“Well, it’s just a start,” Changbin says. “We’ll get more information later. Plus, who knows, maybe we’ll even get a confession.”

With that, he claps Chan on the shoulder and walks away. 

*

This is not good, Jisung says. I repeat, this is not good.

Seungmin wants to tell him to shut up, because he’s not helping. 

The one who introduced himself as Detective Bang smiles at him. “You okay, Seungmin?” he asks. “You look like you were crying.”

“Stressed,” is all Seungmin says. 

“Mm. Need something to drink? We can get you some water. Or a snack?”

“I’m fine. But thank you.” Seungmin notices that he’s already fidgeting by picking at his cuticles, and he forces himself to stop. 

Detective Seo holds out his phone. “Mind if we record this?”

“No, go ahead,” Seungmin says. 

Detective Seo sets his phone down and uses it to record the meeting. 

“So, Seungmin,” Detective Bang says. “Full name, Kim Seungmin, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how did you know Han Jisung?”

Seungmin’s throat closes up, and he has to clear it before saying, “We were classmates.”

Pfft, just classmates? I thought we were at least friends, Jisung says. 

“Were you two close at all?” Detective Bang asks. 

“No, like I said, we were just classmates,” Seungmin says. 

“But you two worked together on a group project, right?” Detective Bang says. “So, you would have gotten to know each other over the course of that, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess you could say that I got to know Jisung, but he didn’t get to know me,” Seungmin says. “He talked a lot. I didn’t.”

“Mm.” Detective Bang smiles at him. “You didn’t have many friends, did you?”

“Why is that relevant?”

“Just curious, that’s all,” Detective Bang says. “How well did you know your student teacher, Lee Minho?”

“Not well. I think I went to him for help maybe once or twice. I never talked to him in class, though.”

“Did Jisung?”

Seungmin hesitates for a moment, and Jisung says, It’s okay, you can tell them.

“He did,” Seungmin says. 

“The two of them were seeing each other, weren’t they?” Detective Bang says. “But I think you already know that.”

“It wasn’t exactly a secret,” Seungmin says. 

It wasn’t?! Jisung says. 

“Oh?” Detective Bang says. “Why do you say that?”

Yeah, Seungmin, why do you say that? Jisung demands. 

“It just…” Seungmin scrambles for a good enough excuse. “In retrospect, it was obvious.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know, it just was.”

Detective Bang smiles like he knows something Seungmin isn’t telling him. “Right. So then, you don’t know who ratted the two of them out to the university?”

I never even thought to ask you…Jisung murmurs. Wait, do you know, Seungmin?

“No,” Seungmin says. 

“Interesting,” Detective Bang says. “Because we asked the university, and they told us it was you.”

Seungmin clenches his jaw.

WHAT? Jisung exclaims, nearly making Seungmin wince. You ratted me and Minho out?! Why? You had to have known what would happen, there’s no way you didn’t know the consequences! Unless…He falls silent, and Seungmin can practically hear him thinking. Unless…you did know that, and that’s why you did it?

“Why would you do that, Seungmin?” Detective Bang asks.

“They were breaking the rules,” Seungmin whispers. 

So?! Jisung says. That doesn’t mean you can go and just ruin my life like that! You fucking got me expelled!

Seungmin blinks several times, trying to hold back a wave of tears. He’s worried that the detectives can tell. 

“Jisung was cheating,” Seungmin adds quietly. “Minho was giving him the answers to the tests. That’s not…right.”

Oh, but if you had gone and done it, it would have been all fine and dandy, huh? Jisung scoffs. Because no rules apply to the great Kim Seungmin, no, not at all.

“In case you’re wondering, I’ve never cheated,” Seungmin tells the detectives, though he’s mostly telling that to Jisung. “Ever.”

“Never said that you did,” Detective Bang says. “Did you want Jisung expelled?”

“No,” Seungmin says quickly. “I didn’t.”

“But you wanted him out of the way.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then you mean to tell me that you turned Jisung and Minho in just because they were breaking the rules and you thought it was wrong?” Detective Bang raises his eyebrows. “There was no other ulterior motive?”

Seungmin looks away. 

Detective Bang tilts his head to one side. “You weren’t jealous, were you?”

“Jealous?” Seungmin repeats before he can stop himself. He lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Why would I be jealous?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

“I wasn’t jealous of Han Jisung,” Seungmin retorts.

“Maybe not of Jisung specifically,” Detective Bang says. “But of…Minho, perhaps?”

HUH? Jisung says. Why would you be jealous of—oh.

Seungmin’s ears turn red, and his throat closes up. He has to swallow to make himself able to talk, and even when he does speak, his voice is weak. 

“That’s ridiculous,” he says. 

“Mm.” Detective Bang just smirks at him again, then looks down at his notepad. 

Seungmin takes the time to focus on relaxing his throat, since it’s closing up even further, making it hard to breathe. His heart is beginning to pound, too, the early signs of an anxiety attack. 

“Where were you the night Jisung was murdered?” Detective Bang asks. 

“I was in my dorm,” Seungmin says.

“Do you have anyone who can confirm that?”

Seungmin’s heart is pounding harder. “No.”

“Did you stay in your dorm all night?” Detective Bang asks. 

“Yes.”

“Did you. Hmm. Then how did you suddenly get into a car accident early that morning if you stayed in your dorm all night?”

Fuck. 

“I woke up early and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I went for a drive,” Seungmin says. “Sometimes I wake up really early, though, and I count that as morning, even if it’s technically still dark out.”

“Sure you do,” Detective Bang says. “Well, I’m sorry to hear about your accident. But we noticed that your accident and the discovery of Han Jisung’s body happened within a few hours of each other. They were also right in the same area, and if we look at the distance and how long it takes to drive from one location to the other…that puts you right at the time and place of the murder.”

Seungmin is certain he’s stopped breathing. 

“So, Seungmin,” Detective Bang says. “Care to explain that?”

Yeah, Seungmin, Jisung says in a deathly level tone. Care to explain just what exactly you’ve been keeping from me?

*

For the record, Seungmin never planned to turn Jisung and Minho in. He honestly didn’t even realize the two of them were messing around, and he probably never would have if he hadn’t literally seen them together. 

It was a week or so before the huge midterm test, which would take up a good percentage of their grade. Their patent project was also due at the same time, and it took up even more of a percentage of their grade. After the last test, Seungmin was completely stressed out of his mind. 

But he figured he’d do what Jisung did and take advantage of Minho as an additional resource, as someone to glance over his patent project and hint at whether he was in a good place or not. 

Seungmin headed for Minho’s office, and just as he was about to knock on the door, he realized that it was partially ajar, and that there were voices coming from inside. Another student was probably in there. That was fine, Seungmin would wait his turn. 

But as he went to move away from the door, he noticed something through the cracked door. 

He saw Minho, seated at his desk…and he saw Jisung, leaning over the desk, partially on top of it, one hand fisted in Minho’s pullover sweater. He was kissing Minho—hard. And Minho was kissing him back, just as hard. As Seungmin watched, shocked, Minho lifted a hand to grip the hair at the back of Jisung’s head, and Jisung let out a moan, which seemed to only spur Minho on.

Before things could get too heated, Seungmin turned on his heel and walked away, his eyes wide. He kept walking, kept putting one foot in front of the other until he was out of the building. And it was only then that he realized that he was close to hyperventilating. 

He tried to process what he had just seen. Jisung, kissing Minho. Minho, kissing Jisung. Was this what Jisung meant when he thanked Minho after the second test for his help in studying?!

Seungmin shook his head, wondering why the hell his face was burning, or why his stomach felt weird. He decided he just needed to get back to his dorm, where he could think this through. 

But as he walked at a clipped pace back to his dorm, he couldn’t help asking himself why he needed to think this through. After all, this was none of his business, right? 

Unless…Jisung was using Minho to cheat? To get the answers to bonus questions on the test?

Seungmin nearly stopped in his tracks. His professor had said that the bonus questions were ridiculously tricky this time around. And Jisung said that he never studied because he’d never needed to. So how the hell did he know the answers to the bonus questions if he didn’t use Minho to cheat?

Anger boiled up inside of him, and he stormed back to his dorm. Once he was safely inside, he slammed the door behind him and nearly threw his backpack across the room. He wanted to punch something. 

Instead, he sat down heavily on his bed and dropped his face into his hands, gripping his hair hard enough for it to sting. The thought of Jisung cheating on that test made him unbearably angry, but his mind kept going back to the sight of Jisung’s hand fisted in Minho’s shirt, and Minho gripping Jisung’s hair. The sound of Jisung moaning into Minho’s mouth, the sight of him practically crawling across the desk to reach Minho—

Seungmin squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, as if that would burn the image out of his mind. If anything, it just made it clearer, and then he was wondering what would have happened next, if he had stood there a few moments longer. Would Jisung have crawled completely into Minho’s lap? Would Minho have pulled him towards him? Would shirts come off?

Seungmin imagined a hand pulling up Jisung’s shirt, revealing a toned abdomen. He imagined that hand running over his stomach and wondered how smooth that skin would feel like, what sounds Jisung would make—

Wait a second, now as he thought back on that scene, he didn’t see Minho anymore—he saw himself, kissing Jisung, Jisung kissing him back, grabbing the front of his pullover, Seungmin’s hand in Jisung’s bleached blond hair—

Seungmin’s eyes flew open as he quickly shook his head, as though that would clear those indecent thoughts. He couldn’t—he couldn’t think of Jisung like that. He couldn’t. It was wrong and sinful and…addicting. Thinking of kissing Jisung and touching him and pulling him into his lap made Seungmin’s heart flutter, made his stomach feel queasy but excited at the same time. 

What was wrong with him?

Seungmin closed his eyes again and took a deep breath, but it was like that image of Jisung kissing Minho was burned into the back of his eyelids. And now every time he remembered it, it sent a sharp, stabbing pain through his chest, to the point where his eyes burned with oncoming tears. 

He had to stop thinking about this. Had to think of something else. Like studying for the midterm. Or finishing up the patent project. 

So he tried to distract himself. He threw himself into his normal routines, forced himself to study and get ahead on some of his other classes. But every time he sat there, and his mind lost focus and trailed off, he was inevitably back to thinking about Jisung and Minho, and suddenly he couldn’t take it anymore. 

He had to tell someone. But who?

He thought about it for the rest of the week and over the weekend when he went home to see his family. He considered telling them, but every time he opened his mouth to bring it up, he thought of him making out with Jisung instead, and it triggered such shame and disgust and anxiety that he was rendered speechless. If he opened his mouth now, he’d tell his parents everything, and that terrified him more than he expected, to the point where he honestly thought he was going to pass out or throw up. 

The midterm test was coming up that following week, and Seungmin had barely been able to study because of his mind going crazy. He couldn’t go on like this. If this cost him his grade, he would never forgive himself. 

So, he went to the dean of students. 

He thought it would make himself feel better afterwards. He thought he’d feel lighter, less conflicted, knowing that he had done the right thing.

But he walked out of that office feeling worse than he had when he gone in, like he was about to cry or throw up again. He couldn’t help wondering if he had made a mistake. 

A few days later, it came back to get him. Literally.

Seungmin was in the dining hall that morning, feeling more exhausted than he had in a long time. His insomnia acted up last night, leaving him to toss and turn. Worse, his anxiety and stress were so high that he almost couldn’t stomach anything. But he needed to get in some last-minute studying before his midterm tomorrow, so he needed some caffeine to keep him going. And even if he didn’t feel like eating it, he grabbed some food, too. 

Just as he was turning from getting his coffee, someone came up behind him and smacked it out of his hands. Seungmin jumped, barely processing that his coffee and food were both on the floor before a pair of hands grabbed him by the sweater.

“You fucking turned me in?!” Jisung exclaimed, his voice slightly shrill. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

He shook Seungmin with almost every word, and Seungmin instinctively leaned away from him. 

“Let go of me,” Seungmin managed to say. 

Jisung did not. “I fucking lost my scholarship thanks to you, and the school is planning on expelling me!”

“Well, maybe next time, don’t fuck the student teacher just to get a higher grade!” Seungmin shot back. 

Jisung finally shoved him away from him, forcefully enough for Seungmin to nearly slip and fall. He managed to catch himself against the counter, just in time to see Jisung pull back as though he was going to hit him. 

Seungmin flinched despite himself, but the hit never came, because they had caused enough of a commotion for one of the staff members to get involved. She marched over and yelled at them to break it up. Jisung backed down, but he still glared at Seungmin like he wanted to break Seungmin’s face. Eventually, Jeongin and Felix appeared to pull Jisung back, and they walked away, but not without shooting looks at Seungmin too.

The other students nearby had stopped to stare at the two of them. They watched Jisung walk away, then looked at Seungmin, who had no choice but to pick himself up and straighten his wrinkled sweater. His coffee and food were unsalvageable, but he found he didn’t have an appetite for either, anymore. He left the dining hall with his head lowered, but all around, people stared and whispered as he walked past. 

Seungmin thought that would be the worst of it. The school did end up expelling Jisung, and he moved out by the end of the week. He wasn’t even there to take the midterm. 

Minho was gone, too. Seungmin still heard whispers about him in class, and he wondered if he had ruined Minho’s career.

He handed the patent project in by himself, since his group members had blocked him and stopped talking to him altogether. Whenever they were around, though, Jeongin and Felix glared at him with more hatred than Seungmin had ever seen. Seungmin did his best to ignore them, but their stares burned into his back. 

He got through midterms, then looked forward to taking a break from studying and school by spending a long weekend at his parents’ house. He just really needed to get away from everything, to stop feeling so guilty. He could barely walk to the dining hall without people looking at him or glaring at him, and it bothered him more than he thought it would. He ended up holing up in his dorm room for as long as possible, but it just made him feel sicker and guiltier. And lonelier. 

Funny how in retrospect, Seungmin realized that Jisung was the only one who ever willingly talked to him. He had thought he had hated Jisung’s constant chatter, but now he’d almost give anything to go back to the way things were before. 

So it was a relief when he stepped into his parents’ house two weeks after midterms. His grandparents were supposed to be here for dinner, and his grandfather even planned to take Seungmin to a baseball game tomorrow night. Seungmin hadn’t gone to a baseball game in so long; he was really looking forward to it and to spending some time with his grandfather. 

Maybe, if he didn’t make it into med school, he could just help his grandfather manage the baseball team. Seungmin would have loved to be a professional baseball player, but his parents wouldn’t let him, telling him it was a waste of his talents. 

He would have been good at it, though. 

“Mom?” he called out as he walked through the foyer. “Dad?”

There was no reply, but he kept walking and found them in the living room, along with his grandparents. They looked at Seungmin when he stepped into the room, but none of them looked happy to see him. 

Seungmin stopped, glancing around at where his father was standing in front of the window with his back to him. His mother was standing by the fireplace mantle, her arms crossed, and both of his grandparents were sitting on the couch. 

“Is something wrong?” Seungmin asked, now starting to get worried. “Did something happen?”

Did they find out about him ratting Jisung and Minho out? But if they had, then why were they acting like this? They wouldn’t be mad at him for that, would they?

Or, did he get a bad grade that they heard about before him?

As Seungmin was starting to panic, his mother finally spoke.

“How could you,” she said. 

This was definitely about Seungmin ratting Jisung out.

“I—” Seungmin started to say when his father finally moved.

He turned away from the window, strode across the room to Seungmin, and backhanded him across the face. 

Seungmin stumbled, his jaw dropping in shock as he lifted a hand to where his father had hit him. He stared up at his father with wide eyes.

His father just glared down at him, his expression so similar to the way everyone on campus stared at him. Seungmin never in a million years wished to see his father look at him that way. 

“You are no son of mine,” his father said. 

Seungmin gasped like all air had been knocked out of him. “What—what did I do?”

“Don’t play dumb,” his father snapped, his voice booming through the room and making Seungmin flinch. “We know everything now. We know what you really are.”

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Then explain this, Seungmin!” his mother exclaimed, holding out her phone. 

Seungmin tore his eyes away from his father to look at the phone, and he almost wished he hadn’t.

There, on his mother’s phone, was a picture of him and another boy he had never seen before in his life, lying shirtless in bed together. 

Seungmin took one look at that photo and felt his chest constrict. Suddenly it was too hot in here, the room too small, the air too stifling. He couldn’t breathe. 

“That—that’s not me—I’ve never seen that photo before—” he tried to say. 

His grandmother scoffed and looked away in disgust.

“I’m serious!” Seungmin exclaimed, his eyes already filling with tears. “Mom, I don’t even know who that is—”

“Every word out of your mouth is a disgusting lie,” she interrupted. “This whole time, you’ve been nothing but a liar.”

“I knew you shouldn’t have let him be friends with that homosexual,” his grandmother piped up, jabbing a finger at Seungmin’s mother. “Now he’s corrupted him! And I’ve lost my only grandson to that despicable lifestyle.”

“No, it’s not true!” Seungmin could barely get the words out. “Please, just listen to me—”

His father suddenly raised his hand again, and Seungmin let out a choked whimper of panic as he flinched away from him. The hit never came, though, and slowly his father lowered his hand. 

“Get out,” his father said. 

Seungmin almost wished he had just hit him again. That would have hurt less. “What?”

“Get. Out.” His father pointed at the door. “And don’t bother coming back.”

Seungmin stared at him, hoping he had misheard him. This had to be some sort of joke, right? Or a nightmare? He had to be dreaming. There was no way this was real.

He looked at his mother for help, but she just glared at him. The full force of her glare was enough to make him stagger. 

“Mom—” Seungmin whispered.

“I said, GET OUT!” his father yelled. “Unless you change this disgusting lifestyle of yours, you are not welcome in this house or this family. So get out, or so help me I will throw you out.”

Seungmin was fully crying now. “I’ll change, I swear—”

His father made a sharp gesture that told him he was done listening. Seungmin flinched again, but he still didn’t make a move to leave. He didn’t want to leave. He had nowhere else to go, no one else in his life—

His grandfather finally spoke for the first time. 

“Wait,” he said. 

Everyone turned to look at him, and Seungmin’s heart lifted hopefully. Of all of them, he was closest to his grandfather. He had to think that even though his grandfather was the most conservative and the most vocal about his thoughts on the gay community, maybe their bond would outweigh that?

His grandfather looked Seungmin right in the eye, held out his hand, and said, “Your key.”

Seungmin stared at him. “What?” It came out as a weak, broken whisper.

“Your house key. Hand it over.”

All of the hope died in Seungmin’s chest. “But—”

“Hand it over, or else I’ll come over there and take it from you,” his grandfather said in a completely level tone that made Seungmin flinch. 

“I said I’d change,” Seungmin whispered, his voice trembling from a sob. “Why don’t you believe me? Why won’t you let me change?”

“Clearly, you have some thinking to do,” his grandfather said. “Decide which is more important—your sins, which you keep holding onto, or your family.”

“It’s you—I keep saying that! But you won’t listen to me—”

His father took a step towards him, and Seungmin instinctively backed up a step.

“Give me the damn key, Seungmin,” his father growled. 

Seungmin didn’t know what else to do. He knew he didn’t want his father to hit him again, though.

So, with great difficulty, he reached into his pocket for his keyring, which had his house key, his car keys, and his dorm key on it. He stared down at the house key as if trying to memorize it, but after a moment, he carefully pried it off.

His father snatched it out of his hands the moment the key was free. Then he pointed at the door and said, “Out.”

Seungmin finally bolted. He turned and ran out of the house. By the time he stumbled outside, he was crying so hard that he couldn’t even see straight. His foot caught on the front step, and the next thing he knew, he was falling forward onto his hands and knees. But even the sting of some scraped palms wasn’t enough to distract him. 

He didn’t think he’d be able to get up. He didn’t think he had the strength. But he knew that his family might come after him if he stayed there for too long. He had a feeling that they’d clear him off of their property. Would they call the police if he lingered? He didn’t want to think that they would, but he never thought they’d do something as cruel as this to begin with. He supposed that anything was possible, now. 

So he pushed himself to his feet and stumbled towards his car. He got in and drove away, though it was difficult to see the road through the tears in his eyes.

He didn’t know where to go. Back to campus, where people would stare at him? Back to his empty, lonely dorm room, where there was no one to care about him?

How long had that photo even been circulating? Was that why people stared at him on campus? Did everyone in the world now know?

He ended up in a gas station parking lot, where he dropped his head against the steering wheel and tried to stop crying. He didn’t know how long he sat there, but eventually his phone buzzed, and he was almost too afraid to check it. He pulled it out anyways and immediately wished he hadn’t. 

His mother had texted him, and the text outlined in the same formal language one might send an email just how they were cutting him out of their lives. They were dropping him from their insurance and from their cell phone plan. They were no longer paying for tuition or housing or his meal plan. He would no longer get a monthly allowance from his parents or his grandparents, and his trust fund no longer belonged to him. He was not allowed back near their house, and if he was, they would call the police. They didn’t say anything about what they would do with the things he had left in his room at their house, but Seungmin had a feeling that they would clean it out.

Seungmin stared at the text, praying for the fiftieth time that this wasn’t real, that this was a horrible nightmare. He tried texting his mother back, telling her that that photo was fake, that he hadn’t done anything with any guy—or girl—at all, that he wasn’t g—

He couldn’t even finish texting that last part. Maybe it was because he knew that it was a lie. No matter how much he wanted to believe otherwise, he wasn’t straight. His constant, impure thoughts about Jisung proved that much. He still couldn’t use that label to describe himself, though. He wasn’t ready. And he didn’t think he’d ever be.

Seungmin didn’t end up responding to his mother. He just turned off his phone and dropped his head against the steering wheel again.

At least his car and his dorm and his meal plan were already paid for. He’d have to pay for his own gas and to renew his housing and meal plan next semester, but perhaps by then his parents would come around?

A stupid hope, yet Seungmin clung to it anyways. 

Eventually, it grew dark. There were some sketchy people hanging out a few cars down from Seungmin. He should leave. 

He meant to head back to campus, but instead, he just kept driving. He didn’t want to go back to that dark, empty dorm room. He wanted to just drive and escape his thoughts and his sudden, horrible reality. Maybe if he drove far enough, he’d leave everything behind. 

He didn’t cry anymore, but he couldn’t stop thinking, either. He couldn’t stop thinking about what his future looked like without his family’s support. How expensive it would be. How he didn’t have any other support system, how even if he worked himself to death to prove himself, no one would probably notice or care. 

He needed to stop thinking. He needed someone to talk to, someone to tell him that things were going to be okay. 

There was only one person he could think of who would tell him what he needed to hear. He didn’t even realize he was pressing their contact number and calling them until they picked up on the other end. 

“Why are you calling me?” Jisung demanded on the other end. “Why do you even have my number? Delete it, or I swear to god I’ll—”

“I’m sorry,” Seungmin said.

Jisung didn’t speak for a moment, but then fired back, “After everything you did, you think ‘I’m sorry’ is going to fix it?”

“No,” Seungmin said. “But it’s a start, isn’t it?”

Jisung once again was silent. Then he let out a sharp breath and muttered to himself, “Why the fuck did I even answer…”

“I shouldn’t have done it,” Seungmin continued. “I—I don’t even know why I did it. But I did do it, and I ruined everything, and I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you did ruin everything,” Jisung scoffed. “You’re a shitty person, you know that? You only care about yourself.”

“I know.” Seungmin blinked a few times, then realized that he was crying again. He sniffed. 

“Are you crying?” Jisung asked. “Or do you just have allergies? Are you allergic to apologizing? Actually, scratch that—I know what this is. Someone’s holding a gun to your head and making you apologize right now, huh?”

“No, I just…I’ve had a really bad day,” Seungmin said, his voice shaking.

“Oh no, did you get a ninety-nine percent instead of a hundred percent?”

“My parents kicked me out.”

Jisung was silent on the other end, and Seungmin could tell that he was shocked. “Wait, what?”

“They cut me off,” Seungmin whispered, the tears starting to fall again. “They—someone posted a picture of me with some other guy I’ve never seen before and my family saw it and—they kicked me out. They wouldn’t even listen to me.”

“Holy shit.”

“I—I didn’t know who else to call. I’m sorry. I just needed someone to talk to. I don’t—I don’t really have anyone else.”

“Where are you?”

“Um.” Seungmin glanced out the window at the neighborhoods he drove past. “I don’t know. I just started driving.”

“Okay, find somewhere to stop and send me your location.”

Seungmin didn’t even bother asking why. He just said, “Okay.”

He found a decent-looking parking lot by a playground, which didn’t have any other cars parked there. He figured it was a safe area. He texted Jisung his location, then just sat there, staring out into space. 

A short while later—it really wasn’t long at all—someone knocked on his passenger window. Seungmin nearly jumped out of his skin, but he looked to see Jisung standing outside his car, looking in at him. Seungmin quickly unlocked the doors. 

“Did you purposely drive to my hometown or what,” Jisung said, getting into the passenger seat and shutting the door. “I literally live like five minutes away.”

“Oh,” Seungmin said. “I didn’t know that. I swear. I just started driving.”

“Yeah, well, admittedly, my hometown is right off the highway if you keep heading north from campus.”

Seungmin didn’t know what to say to that. 

“So.” Jisung was fidgeting. “Are you okay?”

Seungmin shook his head. 

“Do you need a hug?”

Seungmin hesitated at that, because he wasn’t sure. He’d really only hugged his parents, but even that wasn’t very often. He wasn’t really a hugger. But he also wasn’t a crier, and now look at him. 

After a few moments, he nodded. 

Jisung hesitated for only a second before leaning across the middle console and wrapping his arms around him. Seungmin was rigid for a few beats, but eventually he relaxed and hugged Jisung back. It was a bit awkward, but Seungmin didn’t care. He just dropped his face onto Jisung’s shoulder and tried not to burst into tears again. 

It didn’t really work. Despite his best efforts, he still teared up, and then he felt bad about sobbing into Jisung’s sweatshirt. 

He pulled back, sniffing and wiping at his face, mumbling, “I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay,” Jisung said. 

Seungmin managed a flash of a smile, but then Jisung’s brows furrowed. 

“What’s on your face?” He reached out to tilt Seungmin’s face towards him, and Seungmin nearly short-circuited at the feeling of Jisung’s fingertips gently holding his chin. “Holy shit, is that a bruise?”

“I don’t know.” Seungmin reached up to touch his face, then winced at a tender spot on his cheekbone. “I guess?”

“How the hell—did your family hit you?”

His lower lip wobbled, but Seungmin nodded. 

“Fuck,” Jisung whispered. “I didn’t know rich people did that.”

Seungmin gave him a weird look, and Jisung quickly waved the thought aside. 

“Do you want some ice for it? Might make it feel better. It’ll stop the swelling, too.”

Seungmin shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

“Can you…can you just tell me the cold, hard truth?” Seungmin squeezed his eyes shut. “Like, you’ve always been so vocal and opinionated. I just need you to tell me what I need to hear.”

“I don’t know what you need to hear,” Jisung said. “What do you mean, the cold, hard truth?”

“Tell me that I’ll be okay. Or that life will suck for awhile but I’ll get through it?”

“You’ll be okay. You’re better off without your family anyways.”

Seungmin sniffed, his eyes still stinging. “Even if I’m completely alone now? Even if everybody on campus is going to stare at me for being—” He still can’t say it. 

“Do you really even like our campus?” Jisung asked. “Be honest—now that your parents aren’t guiding every single little aspect of your life, do you really even like that school or that program or any of it?”

“I never used to care about what other people thought,” Seungmin said. “It’s different now.” He sniffed again but then looked at Jisung. “How do you do it? How do you ignore them, especially when they say such awful things about you?”

“Like you did?” Jisung arched an eyebrow. “Specifically, after you hung out with your homophobic family?”

Seungmin winced but said, “Yeah. Like I did.”

“Cold, hard truth, right?” Jisung sighed. “It’s all an act. I just pretend that I don’t care, that I’m confident. But the truth is that it still gets to me. It always has. Even if my friends and family have been really accepting, and even if I knew I wasn’t straight for the longest time, it’s still hard sometimes to accept that part of myself.”

“How did you know?” Seungmin asked. 

“I don’t really remember, if I’m honest,” Jisung said. “I guess I saw a couple of guys being really cute together and not caring about what other people thought of them, and I realized that that’s what I wanted, too.”

Seungmin hummed at that. “I don’t even know how whoever made that photo knew. I didn’t even know. And I didn’t even tell anyone.”

“Some people have freakishly good gaydar.” Jisung shrugged. 

Seungmin looked at him. “Do I…act like that? I mean, is it obvious?”

“I mean, how would I know? You don’t exactly talk to me. I’m pretty sure I never would have known what your family life was like if I hadn’t literally met your mom on campus.” Jisung reached back to rub at the back of his neck, his eyes darting away from Seungmin’s. “Though, if I had to guess…yeah, it’s kind of obvious.”

“How?!”

“I dunno, like the fact that you don’t have a girlfriend despite being pretty good looking—” Seungmin’s face burned at that compliment, “—or how you literally don’t talk to girls at all or like how you put way too much effort in your appearance.”

“How is that—” Nope, still couldn’t say the g-word. “How? Just because I shower and have clear skin and comb my hair doesn’t necessarily mean anything!”

“Like I said, some people just have freakishly good gaydar,” Jisung said. “I happen to be one of them. It takes one to know one, y’know? Also, we travel in packs. The token gay friend is a stupid trope. The real trope is the token straight friend.”

That didn’t really make Seungmin feel any better. 

“But it’s okay!” Jisung said, reaching out to touch Seungmin’s shoulder. “Being gay isn’t a bad thing. It’s not a sin, it’s not disgusting, it’s just normal.”

“That’s not what my family thinks,” Seungmin said miserably. 

“Then fuck them,” Jisung said. “Like I said, this situation can kinda be a good thing! Now you can start living your life the way you want to!”

“They said they’d welcome me back if I changed, if I chose them over…that, but when I told them that I would change, that I did choose them, they didn’t listen to me.”

Jisung sighed. “Just…give it time. Who knows, maybe they’ll come around.”

Seungmin really hoped they would. 

“Thanks, though,” he said. “For…answering the phone. For talking to me.”

Jisung smiled, but it looked slightly strained. “Anytime.”

Seungmin managed a small smile in reply. “I guess I’ll head back to campus, now. Do you want me to drive you home?”

“Sure,” Jisung said. “That would be great.”

Jisung’s house was nothing like Seungmin’s—it was much smaller, set too close to the houses on either side of it, but it was quaint and sweet, especially with the wide porch out front and the thriving garden and the huge oak tree that took over almost the entire front yard. There was even a tire swing hanging from the lowest branch. 

Jisung looked at Seungmin and smiled again. “Let me know if you need anything, okay? I know I’m two hours away and going to a different school now, but…maybe we can set our rivalry aside for now and call it a truce?”

Seungmin nodded. “That’d be nice.” After a beat, he added again, “I’m still really sorry about what I did. I know I can never make that up to you.”

Jisung quickly waved the thought aside. “Don’t worry about it. I’m over it. I wasn’t exactly innocent, anyways. I’m pretty sure we would’ve gotten caught and turned in sooner or later, by a classmate or the husband…” He trailed off, then grimaced. 

Seungmin didn’t know what to say to that. Fortunately, he didn’t have to respond, because Jisung looked at him again and smiled one last time. 

“See you later,” Jisung said. “Be safe driving back, yeah?”

“I will.”

Jisung then got out of the car and headed up the short stone path that led to the front door of the house. Seungmin watched him go, and once Jisung got the front door unlocked, he waved at Seungmin over his shoulder before going inside. 

Seungmin headed back to campus after that, spending the two hours in silence. He still felt terrible about what had happened, but he found that talking about it with Jisung had made him feel a little bit better. 

He spent the rest of the weekend lying in his bed, mostly, sometimes crying, sometimes just staring at the wall. He tried to work on homework a little bit, but for the first time in his life, he realized he didn’t care about it, because what was one bad grade compared to the shit he was going through? His midterms were over, the patent project was finally done, he still had a few weeks until he had to start stressing over finals. For now, he could just…relax. Take some time to process everything that had just happened. God knew he needed it. 

He didn’t expect to ever talk to Jisung again, but Jisung texted him out of the blue, asking how Seungmin was doing. Seungmin told him that he was doing alright, even if he was still struggling to come to terms with everything. He thought they’d leave it at that, but to his surprise, Jisung kept texting him, and suddenly they were having an actual conversation. And Seungmin wasn’t just giving one-word responses, either. 

It was really nice, actually, to talk to Jisung. Seungmin wished they had become friends under different circumstances, but it was still nice. 

Though, the not-so-fun part was the way his heart always fluttered whenever he saw Jisung’s name pop up on his phone, how he got butterflies in his stomach whenever he waited for Jisung to text back, how he found himself smiling during their conversations. Worse, he started dreaming of Jisung, too. He still dreamed about kissing him like Minho had, but now he started dreaming of other things, too, like going on dates together or holding hands or cuddling. Seungmin always woke up feeling this strange combination of loneliness and happiness, because on one hand, the dreams were sweet, but on the other hand, he always woke up alone. Not to mention, he wasn’t exactly a hand-holding, cuddling sort of guy. And the thought of actually initiating any of that terrified him to the point where he wanted to throw up. 

A few weeks after the incident with his family, when Seungmin was once again on his own in his dorm for the weekend, Jisung asked if Seungmin wanted to hang out. Seungmin hesitated, because other than that one night, they hadn’t really “hung out” in person. Seungmin wasn’t entirely sure how to hang out. 

Though, he supposed he was willing to try?

He was about to respond, but then Jisung added, “My mom said you can come over for dinner too if you want!”

Well, now Seungmin was definitely going to say no. The thought of going home and eating a home-cooked meal with family sent a sharp pain through his chest. He knew he definitely wouldn’t get through that without crying. Besides, he doubted Jisung’s parents would even like him. 

“Thanks, but I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that just yet,” Seungmin texted back. 

Jisung’s response was quick and lighthearted. “No prob! Do you still want to hang out?”

Seungmin honestly wasn’t sure. “Maybe tomorrow?”

“Ok. Or…could we talk on the phone instead of texting tonight?”

Seungmin’s heart leapt at that. But he found himself saying yes right away. 

They ended up talking for hours. Seungmin still doesn’t quite remember what they talked about, but he remembers feeling like Jisung was in the room with him. Seungmin worked on some of his homework while Jisung was on the other end, playing some video game or watching something and occasionally talking about it. They even stayed on the phone as Seungmin went to get food from the dining hall and Jisung’s mom let Jisung eat in his room. And when all of that was done, and Seungmin had set aside his studying and homework for the night, he lied on his bed and stared up at the ceiling as Jisung talked on the other end. 

He remembers wishing that Jisung was there with him, in person. Maybe Seungmin would sleep better if Jisung was snuggled up next to him in bed. But then he thought about that photoshopped image of him and some random guy and he squeezed his eyes shut. Obviously, their clothes would stay on. Seungmin was just sick of being lonely. 

He didn’t fall asleep with Jisung on the phone. Instead, they said their goodbyes when Jisung kept yawning. Seungmin needed to go shower anyways. But they promised to talk tomorrow.

The loneliness came rushing back the moment Seungmin hung up. He told himself that he wasn’t entirely alone anymore, that he had Jisung now, but even he wasn’t convinced by that. 

Then, the following Wednesday around lunchtime, when Seungmin was walking back from class, Jisung texted him asking if he had any afternoon classes. Seungmin frowned but texted back saying that he didn’t, though he was going to study and work on some homework. Jisung then said that he was bored and really just needed to get out.

“I know you want to work on homework, but I was wondering if you wanted to go for a drive?” Jisung asked. “The colors are changing and it’s almost November and I’m worried they’re all gonna be gone before I get the chance to see them!”

Seungmin was reluctant, since he really didn’t like going out and doing things on a weekday, but he had to admit that going for a drive to see the changing leaves with Jisung did sound nice…

So, he texted Jisung, “Okay, sure. Do you want me to drive?”

“No, no, you don’t need to,” Jisung texted back. “It’s my idea, and it’s such a far drive up here.”

“I don’t mind,” Seungmin said, and he really didn’t. “I like driving. Plus, I found an audiobook version of one of my textbooks that I can listen to in the car.”

And Jisung promptly shot back, “Wow, nerd.” But then he quickly sent a winky smiley face, so Seungmin knew he was just teasing. 

Once that was decided, Seungmin quickly rushed back to his dorm room, where he set down his backpack and grabbed his keys. He was about to leave when he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He thought he looked alright today, but he didn’t feel too confident about his outfit. Maybe…he could put a little more effort in, and maybe…Jisung would notice?

He didn’t have much time, so he quickly changed out of his pullover and into a comfortable, loose sweater, which was a flattering light brown, showed off his neck and collarbones, and was long enough to tug down over his hands. He paired it with a pair of plaid-patterned pants—which were admittedly a bit more form-fitting than his usual pants—and a pair of comfortable sneakers before calling it good.

He felt uncharacteristically nervous as he pulled up in front of Jisung’s house, unable to stop himself from drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, like a nervous tick. Jisung’s house looked even cozier in the daylight, with its white trim and dark blue paint. Jisung came right out when Seungmin pulled up, dressed in a university sweatshirt, ripped up jeans, and Converse.

Seungmin couldn’t help smiling when Jisung hopped into the passenger seat. 

“Sup,” Jisung said. 

“Sup,” Seungmin said, even if he had never said that in his life. 

It made Jisung snort, and Seungmin had to tear his eyes away from Jisung’s face to stop himself from staring. 

“So, where to?” Seungmin asked. 

“We’re heading into the mountains!” Jisung said, pulling out his phone. “I’ll direct you. I hope you don’t get carsick, because we’ll be doing a lot of twisty roads.”

Seungmin smirked but said, “Alright.”

He was worried it would be awkward as they drove, but if Jisung was one thing, it was not quiet. Jisung immediately started chattering about how he had all this free time on his hands now, since he wouldn’t be starting classes at his new school until the spring semester. And honestly, he kind of liked not having to stress about school and homework for a few months, because he realized that their old school was way too intense. 

“Like, I’m smart, obviously, and I could keep up, but it was just so exhausting, you know?” Jisung said. “I don’t think I like school. I honestly don’t even want to go to this new school. I just want to drop out and, I dunno, do whatever I want.”

“Are you still going to be a business major at your new school?” Seungmin asked. 

“Yeah, figured it’d be useful. But let’s be serious here—can you see me as a businessman?”

“Maybe as a businessman passed out on the street after a weekend out drinking.”

Jisung laughed at that, and Seungmin smiled. 

“Yeah, honestly,” Jisung said. “But who wants to work a boring nine-to-five office desk job? Not me, that’s for sure. But I have no idea what I want to do instead.”

Seungmin wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he just hummed. He’d always known what he was going to do. His parents made sure of that.

“I know I’ve asked you this before, but what would you do if you weren’t going to med school?” Jisung asked.

“I don’t know, probably get a PhD or something,” Seungmin said. 

Jisung was silent for a moment before he snorted. “Honestly, I don’t even know what I expected.”

“Though…” Seungmin said, and Jisung perked up. 

“Though? Though what?”

“I did always want to become a professional baseball player.”

Jisung stared at him, then grinned. “No way. Kim Seungmin, an athlete? A jock? No fuckin’ way!”

“Way,” Seungmin said with a smirk. “I played ever since I was little. I loved it. And I was really good at it. I actually got offered a full-ride scholarship to play baseball at another school.”

“Holy shit, you did not!” Jisung sat up in his seat to gawk at Seungmin. “Why the hell didn’t you take it?”

“That’s not where my parents wanted me to go,” Seungmin said, and just like that, his smile vanished. The mood changed drastically, becoming awkward and tense. Seungmin wasn’t sure how to change it back. 

“Well,” Jisung said after a few minutes of painful silence, “I think you would have been amazing. And I’m not just saying that because I like to stare at athlete’s asses whenever I actually have to watch sports.”

Seungmin snorted. “Baseball pants can be pretty flattering.”

“Not as flattering as football, whew,” Jisung said. “But to be honest, football players aren’t really my type. Too big and beefy.” 

“What is your type, then?” Seungmin couldn’t believe he was even asking this.

“Tall, lanky, maybe a little muscle…okay, I like a little more than just a little muscle. A toned body is really nice. But with a nice face. A handsome face. Different from a pretty face, you know?” Jisung glanced at Seungmin, then added, “And maybe with a hint of nerdiness and weirdness to make it interesting.”

“Mm.” Seungmin was thinking of Minho, though he wouldn’t exactly call Minho lanky or tall. Everything else, though, fit Jisung’s standards. 

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Jisung said, “what about you?”

“I’ve never thought about it,” Seungmin said, even as his mind immediately went to the image of Jisung and Minho kissing in the office again. He could feel his face turning red. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Thankfully, Jisung let him change the topic without much fuss. He started talking about some anime he and Felix had started watching together, and Seungmin didn’t follow the convoluted storyline whatsoever. Besides, his mind went to the last piece of television that he watched, which was a ridiculous Korean drama with his mother, and suddenly he was zoning out completely.

“—min? Hey, are you even listening to me?”

“Those trees look really pretty,” Seungmin said, since they were finally in the mountains. Aspens rose up on either side of them, turning gold in the sunlight. 

Jisung sighed but once again let Seungmin change the subject. “They are, aren’t they,” he said. 

“They’re kind of like the color of your hair,” Seungmin said. “Though, their color looks more natural.”

“Hey! My hair is a natural blond, thank you very much!”

“There is absolutely nothing natural about that shade. Besides, you’re Korean.”

“I feel like a Korean could be born with naturally-blond hair,” Jisung said, crossing his arms. 

“What? No they couldn’t,” Seungmin retorted. “Unless they were mixed race, but even then it would be rare and difficult.”

“There could be exceptions!” Jisung argued. “Like, a genetic variation or something.”

“I think you need to go back to biology.”

“Pfft, nah, who needs biology when I have a walking encyclopedia right next to me?” Jisung grinned. 

Seungmin rolled his eyes, and Jisung laughed. 

They kept driving, appreciating the red and orange and gold leaves on all sides. They had truly chosen the perfect time to drive, since there was barely any green in sight, but not many of the leaves had fallen yet. 

Autumn was so beautiful. Seungmin wished it lasted longer. He wasn’t looking forward to a cold winter. 

“Ooh, we should pull off and take pictures!” Jisung said. “Hashtag Christian girl autumn! Aw, damn, I forgot to wear boots.”

“I understood only half of that,” Seungmin said. 

“You’ve never heard of Christian girl autumn? Oh, man, you’re gonna regret being stuck in a car with me.”

Seungmin snorted as Jisung continued to chatter on, describing the aesthetic of the season, complete with scarves, brimmed hats, and pumpkin-spice scented everything. Oh, and tall leather boots tucked into skinny jeans or leggings. Don’t forget that. 

“Honestly, I think you could totally pull off the Christian girl autumn aesthetic,” Jisung said. 

“I think I should be offended at that,” Seungmin said.

Jisung just laughed. 

There weren’t many people out here. Seungmin thought it was nice. Peaceful. For a moment, he could imagine that it was really just the two of them out here, and then he wondered if this counted as a date.

“Oh, hey, there’s a place to pull off over there,” Jisung said, pointing. “We should get out and get some pictures.”

Seungmin obediently pulled into the narrow dirt parking lot off the side of the road, which apparently also served as a trailhead. There was a sign marking the start of the trail. Seungmin wasn’t really into hiking, and he didn’t think Jisung would be, either. But Jisung hopped out regardless, and Seungmin had no choice but to follow. 

“I don’t think we wore the right shoes for this,” Seungmin said.

“We’re not going far,” Jisung said. “Besides, it’s almost evening! That means animals are gonna start coming out. Now, even though bears are adorable, I’d rather not meet one in person.”

“Do you even know what to do if you meet a bear?”

“Ask for his number to pass on to a friend?”

“What?”

Jisung grinned and waved the thought aside. “Never mind. Gay joke.”

Seungmin just blinked several times, completely lost and confused. He decided to just let it slide rather than ask Jisung to explain it. 

They walked down the trail, which was completely shaded and secluded. The trail itself was nice, densely-packed dirt, with old bike tracks caked into it. It curved this way and that before flattening out, the trees opening off onto the right to a small, open field, which was still shaded by the huge trees arching over it. The ground was covered in a thick layer of fallen leaves, and the air was full of the musty scent of decomposition. Jisung let out a whoop before promptly running off the trail and into the leaves. He kicked some up, then turned to look at Seungmin, who was just standing there. 

“Bro, stop standing there, come here!” Jisung said, grinning. 

Seungmin didn’t want to tell him that he was momentarily stunned by how carefree and happy Jisung looked. Instead, he blurted, “You’re not supposed to go off the trail.”

Jisung rolled his eyes. “There’s no one around! Come on, we should totally rake these up into a pile and then jump into it.”

“We don’t have a rake?”

“Then find a big stick! Or a tree branch!”

Seungmin sighed but walked off the trail, and Jisung cheered and kicked up more leaves at him. But Seungmin didn’t join in—instead, he pulled out his phone and started taking pictures. 

“Ooh, wait, I have an idea.” Jisung bent down and picked up a handful of leaves. Cupping them in his hands, he faced Seungmin and the camera and blew them in his direction. Seungmin took a video of it instead of just a picture, which captured the puff of Jisung’s ridiculously-round cheeks and his bright smile as he laughed afterwards. 

“How do I look?” Jisung ran over to Seungmin, who showed him the video. “Ey, that’s sick.”

“The lighting looks really nice, too,” Seungmin said, pointing to the way the afternoon sunlight turned Jisung’s blond hair gold, like the aspen leaves.

Jisung grinned, then said, “Alright, your turn. Go pose. Embrace your inner Christian girl! It’s autumn! It’s your season!”

“You are so weird,” Seungmin said, but he bent down to scoop up some leaves. Instead of doing what Jisung did, he tossed them into the air. He felt stiff and awkward, not bright and candid like Jisung. It felt weird to smile, but he felt even weirder when he had no expression at all. 

“You look dead inside,” Jisung said. “A little more soul, please?”

“I’m not very photogenic,” Seungmin said. 

“Sure you are. Come on, try again. Think about whatever makes you happy, like, uh, big books.”

Seungmin couldn’t help snorting. “Big books?”

“Or big boobs, y’know, whichever floats your boat,” Jisung said. “Now, toss some leaves!”

Seungmin snorted again before scooping up more leaves. As he went to toss them into the air, Jisung said, in his best fashion photographer impression, “There we go, just like that, so beautiful, oh my god!”

Seungmin couldn’t help it and laughed.

“Gorgeous, darling!” Jisung said, still snapping photos. 

“Okay, that’s enough,” Seungmin said, walking towards him but still smiling. “Let me see?”

“You have a leaf in your hair,” Jisung said before holding out his phone. Seungmin snorted and swiped through the photos as Jisung reached up to pluck the leaf out of Seungmin’s hair. He tried not to pay attention to how close they were standing, their shoulders practically touching. Seungmin could feel the heat radiating from Jisung into him. 

Surprisingly, his photos turned out pretty well, where Jisung captured the moment before Seungmin threw them, his expression as he watched them fly into the air, and then his grin at Jisung as the leaves fell down around him. 

Seungmin snorted, then swiped to see if Jisung took any before that. He accidentally swiped too far, though, and then he came to some photos that weren’t from this trip. Seungmin didn’t mean to go that far and was about to swipe back when he saw what the photo was. 

It was that same photo that had been sent to his parents, the photoshopped one of Seungmin in bed with some random guy.

Jisung saw Seungmin swipe to that photo and jerked his hand backwards, trying to pull the phone away. But Seungmin grabbed him by the wrist, stopping him.

“Seungmin—” Jisung started to say.

Seungmin didn’t listen as he swiped through a few more pictures, including one of the few pictures of Seungmin from his mom’s Facebook account and another photo of two random guys, shirtless, in bed, staring at the camera.

Jisung finally succeeded in wrenching his arm and phone away from Seungmin, but by then, the damage had been done. 

Seungmin just stood there, his jaw dropped, as he tried to comprehend what he just saw. 

“I can explain,” Jisung said.

“It was you?” Seungmin whispered. “You—you made that photo and sent it to my parents?”

“No!” Jisung backed a few steps away. “Well—yes, but it’s not what you think!”

“You outed me?!” Seungmin exclaimed, the emotions finally starting to bubble up. He couldn’t even process what he was feeling—some dangerous combination of shock, betrayal, and rage. So, so much rage, to the point where it made him see red. “How could you?”

“It wasn’t supposed to go that far!” Jisung said. “I—I was angry and I wanted to get back at you for ratting me out and I wasn’t thinking clearly and—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence, because Seungmin stepped forward and punched him as hard as he could. Jisung let out a cry and stumbled backwards, but Seungmin wasn’t finished. He lunged at Jisung, prepared to tackle him and knock him down and hit him again and again and again until his stupid pretty face was a bloody mess—

The thing about a field covered in a thick layer of leaves, though, is that it hides what lies beneath it.

Seungmin did tackle Jisung, and he did knock him down, but Jisung’s head hit something hard—something much harder than a bunch of leaves covering a dirt floor. His head made some sickening, wet crunch, and Jisung let out a horrible cry that snapped Seungmin out of his rage. 

Seungmin pulled back abruptly. Jisung convulsed on the ground but otherwise didn’t move, didn’t even try to get away from Seungmin. The metallic scent of blood filled the air, and Seungmin let out a strangled noise. 

“Jisung?” he said, crawling forward. Jisung didn’t respond, but he did let out a low, pained groan and shudder one last time, his head facing the side, his eyes staring straight ahead. Seungmin inched a little closer, and then he saw the rock underneath Jisung’s head and the red staining it. 

The blood roared in Seungmin’s ears as he choked back a cry and grabbed Jisung by the shoulders. He pulled him towards him, cupped his face, tried to get Jisung to look at him. Jisung’s head just lolled around limply, and when Seungmin held his face to make him look at him, his eyes were already distant and glassy. Blood streaked down the side of his face, trickling over Seungmin’s fingertips. 

Seungmin gasped like someone had knocked the wind out of him. “Jisung? Hey, hey, look at me, please look at me—” He shook Jisung a little bit, but it was like shaking a limp rag doll. 

“No,” Seungmin whispered, the horror creeping up his throat, choking him. “No, no, no, please no, please wake up—”

He hugged Jisung to his chest, the tears already spilling over. He let out a broken sob, cupped the back of Jisung’s head, kept saying, “No, no, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry—”

He might have screamed, but he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember how long he sat there, either, hugging Jisung’s rapidly cooling body and sobbing. At one point, he pulled back to cup both sides of Jisung’s face again, studying his face intently. Without even really thinking about what he was doing, he pressed a kiss to Jisung’s cold forehead, like that would get him to wake up, like he would wake up as soon as he learned just how sorry Seungmin was.

Eventually, though, it grew dark and cold. Seungmin still sat there in the middle of all of those leaves, his body trembling as he held Jisung for the first and last time. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t call anybody. He couldn’t let anyone know about this. If anyone found out, they would arrest him, and he’d go to prison for murder. Even if he argued that it was an accident, he doubted he’d get away with it. 

All of the hard work from these past few years, ruined because he couldn’t handle his emotions. 

Well, he had to make sure no one found out it was him, then. 

Seungmin quickly let go of Jisung, and his body fell back onto the ground. Seungmin winced, wishing he could have set Jisung down gentler. He forced himself to his feet and backed up quickly, like Jisung would come alive and attack him again. Then, taking a deep breath, Seungmin reached up to rake his hands through his hair. He looked around, noting the thick layer of leaves, disturbed in some places from their struggle. 

What had Jisung said about raking them up?

Seungmin quickly got to work in picking up some of the leaves and putting them back and smoothing them out so it wouldn’t look like anyone had been here. As he was doing this, he found Jisung’s phone lying a few feet away from Jisung, having fallen during the fight. Seungmin picked it up, remembering the photos Jisung took of him. If people found his body, then they’d find the phone, too, and they’d find the pictures. They would know that Seungmin was here with him. 

The phone was password protected, though. Seungmin turned back to face Jisung’s body, wincing about what he was about to do. 

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, covering his hand with his sleeve and using that to pick up Jisung’s hand. He pressed Jisung’s thumb onto the right button, and once it recognized it, Seungmin dropped it and stepped away from him again. He deleted all of the photos of him, then went into the recently deleted folder and deleted them permanently. It stung, seeing such a happy set of photos of him disappearing forever, but it had to be done. 

He then went to the Find My Friends app and stopped sharing Jisung’s location, just in case. But as he wiped the phone on his pants, trying to get all of the fingerprints off of it, he paused, remembering how he and Jisung had texted back and forth for weeks. The last text they sent to each other was Seungmin telling Jisung he was on his way, just a few hours ago. If he left the phone behind, the police could easily just check Jisung’s texts and figure out that Seungmin was with him right before he died.

No, he couldn’t leave it behind. But he couldn’t take it with him, either. 

He’d figure out what to do with it later. For now, he put it into his pocket.

There was nothing else to do, now. He stood over Jisung’s body, staring down at it in horror. At least he had stopped crying, but now a chilling numbness had settled over him, and he wasn’t sure if that was much better. 

He didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want this to be real. He didn’t want to think about how he’d never get a text from Jisung again. He’d never get to hug him, hold his hand, tell him how he really felt, kiss him…

Seungmin had never hated himself more than he did in that moment.

But he had to go. He couldn’t risk being seen here.

So, with great difficulty, he turned and walked away, careful not to leave any indents behind in the leaves he had so carefully arranged into a flat blanket. 

He walked back to his car, where he slid behind the wheel and just sat there, staring straight ahead. He told himself that he needed to get out of there, needed to leave, needed to run away. But fleeing felt so wrong. Leaving Jisung felt so wrong. 

Something sharp and painful worked its way up from his chest. Seungmin let out a pained sob and dropped his head against the steering wheel. 

He knew it was stupid, but he didn’t leave that parking lot for a long time. He couldn’t, with the way he was crying harder than even when his parents kicked him out. All his life, it had been so hard for him to make any friends at all, and yet he had just killed his only one. He truly did not have anyone left, and he had no one to blame but himself. 

Maybe he should just stay here. Wait to be caught. Wasn’t that what he deserved?

But no. He was too scared. He didn’t want to go to prison. He had to get away.

So, finally, he sniffed and wiped at his face and turned the car on. Then, swallowing back the sobs, he pulled back onto the road and drove away. 

He didn’t head back to campus, though. Instead, he just drove and drove until it got dark, and then he drove some more. He kept following the same path that Jisung had planned out for him, and tried to imagine Jisung sitting in the passenger seat, looking at the leaves changing with him. 

*

Seungmin doesn’t tell the detectives any of that, though. He can’t get the words out. He just sits there, frozen, his entire body rigid. 

In the back of his mind, Jisung murmurs in shock, I remember now. I remember everything.

The detectives look at Seungmin, as if waiting for him to speak, but then look at each other. 

“I think that’s enough for today,” Detective Seo says. “We’ll be in touch. But if you think of anything else that will help us with the case, do let us know.” He holds out two business cards. 

Seungmin just nods, takes the business cards, and stands. As if on autopilot, he walks back to his dorm, his breaths loud in his ears, his footsteps seeming to echo down the hallways. 

He steps into his bedroom, then feels a strange prickling sensation all over his body, and that’s about as much warning as he gets before he loses all feeling in and control of his limbs. He can’t help letting out a cry as he falls forward, landing hard. 

He can’t see behind him, but he imagines that Jisung is standing there, glaring down at him. 

“How could you,” Jisung says.

“It was an accident,” Seungmin says. “It was an accident, I swear—”

“You lied to me, this WHOLE TIME!” Jisung yells, making Seungmin flinch. “This whole time, you’ve either put off trying to find out who murdered me or you’ve been pointing me in the wrong direction. Oh, it might be Minho! Oh, it might be Hyunjin, or Felix, or Jeongin! Look, they have the motive! But no! It was you, this whole time!”

Seungmin is already crying again. “I’m sorry—”

“I can’t believe you,” Jisung growls. “I can’t believe that I believed you, that I actually fell for all of that. Well, I guess now I know.” He lets out a sharp, bitter laugh. “Case solved. I don’t need you anymore. But you know what’s funny? You need me.”

Seungmin’s heart leaps into his chest. “Wait, Jisung, don’t leave, please don’t leave—”

“And the best part is that no one will probably come looking for you,” Jisung says. “No one but the detectives, maybe. So, have fun just lying there. I hope they come for you before you die of starvation or dehydration, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

Jisung doesn’t make any noise when he moves, but Seungmin just knows that he’s turning and walking away. And the panic rises up in Seungmin once more. 

“No, wait!” he exclaims. “Wait, Jisung, please don’t do this, please don’t leave me here, please—”

There’s no response, and Seungmin chokes back tears. He can’t do anything but lie there on the floor, begging Jisung to come back, to come back, please—

But he know he won’t. And Seungmin has no one to blame but himself. 

*

“The forensics lab came back,” Changbin says as he and Chan are walking off campus after questioning Seungmin. “There’s traces of Jisung’s DNA in the car, in the passenger seat. I bet his phone was in there, too, but it was destroyed in the accident.”

Chan just hums at that. 

Changbin looks at him. “You okay? I figured you’d be a little bit more optimistic about this. We have our first piece of evidence. We’re slowly building a case, and I bet we could already arrest Seungmin.”

“It just doesn’t feel right,” Chan says. “Even though it’s looking obvious that Seungmin did it…I don’t know, I just feel wrong about it.”

“Because Jisung outed him?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, yeah, that sucks, but he killed someone for it, Chan,” Changbin says. “He killed one of Felix’s best friends. Imagine how Felix is feeling right now, how Jisung’s parents are feeling. A human being is dead because of him. You shouldn’t feel bad for him at all.”

“I know.” And Chan does know, he knows all of those things. He knows this is his job, a job that he chose to do, but he still feels sick to his stomach. 

Changbin studies him for a few moments, then sighs and puts a hand on Chan’s shoulder. “Just go home and get some sleep. Try to get your mind off of it.”

Chan just nods, because what else can he do at this point.

*

At some point, Seungmin passes out from crying. When he wakes up again, it’s dark, and his mouth is parched and his head is pounding and his nose is clogged. His stomach is already growling at him, and Seungmin wonders how painful it would be to die from dehydration, since that will kill him faster than starvation. He wants to think that someone would find him before then, but he knows that’s not likely. 

As he’s about to close his eyes and try to sleep again, he senses another presence enter the room. His eyes fly open, and he whispers, “Jisung?”

Jisung doesn’t respond, and a moment later, he takes control of Seungmin’s body again. Seungmin lets out a breath as he gets to his feet, his body stiff from lying on the uncomfortable, thin carpet. 

I— Seungmin starts to say, but Jisung cuts him off. 

“Not a word,” Jisung growls. Then he turns and walks to the front door. 

Seungmin doesn’t understand where they’re going. Maybe they’re going to the dining hall? Or they’re going for a drive? He has no idea. 

He starts to get an idea, though, when Jisung heads for the stairwell. And instead of going down, he goes up. 

The panic rises in Seungmin’s chest again, and it only increases as Jisung climbs and climbs, reaching the locked door that leads to the roof. Jisung reaches out and unlocks it, and Seungmin doesn’t have time to ask how or why it’s unlocked before they’re stepping out into the cool night air. 

Jisung shuts the door behind them, then pulls out Seungmin’s phone and one of the detective’s business cards. He punches in the number, but before he can press “call,” Seungmin says, Wait.

Jisung hesitates, though he’s not happy about it. “What?”

Seungmin swallows back the tears and the torrent of emotions in his chest and says, Let me do it?

Jisung’s eyes narrow, and Seungmin says, Please. I have to be the one to do this.

With a bit of reluctance, Jisung cedes control. Seungmin takes in a lungful of the cold air as he regains control of his own body. Tears are already prickling at the corners of his eyes as he presses “call” and holds the phone up to his ear. 

It rings only a few times before Detective Bang answers. 

“Detective Bang,” he says in lieu of hello. 

Seungmin’s throat momentarily closes up, and Jisung hovers threateningly at the back of his mind. Letting out a shaky breath, Seungmin says, “It was me.”

There’s silence on the other end before Detective Bang says, “Seungmin?”

“It was me,” Seungmin says again, the tears starting to slip down his cheeks. “I…I killed Han Jisung.”

Once again, there’s a shocked silence. Eventually, though, Detective Bang manages to say in a level tone, “I see.”

Move, Jisung orders. 

Seungmin doesn’t question it, already knows what Jisung is planning. He steps closer to the edge, where the ground is at least five stories away. It makes his stomach pitch uneasily at the sight.

“Thank you for telling me,” Detective Bang says.

“Can you—” Seungmin breaks off, then takes another shuddering breath and forces himself to continue, “Can you tell Jisung’s parents that I’m sorry? And Felix and Jeongin, too.”

“I can, but you could tell them yourself,” Detective Bang says.

“I can’t,” Seungmin says immediately. “I can’t—I can’t face them. They won’t want to talk to me, anyways.”

“Alright,” Detective Bang says. “I’ll tell them.”

“Thank you,” Seungmin says. He steps closer to the edge. “And—” he cuts off once again when he catches sight of the ground so far below. 

“Yeah?”

“Never mind,” Seungmin says. “It—it doesn’t matter.”

“Are you sure? You can tell me anything, you know.”

Seungmin closes his eyes, trying to suppress a sob. “Tell my parents I love them?”

Detective Bang pauses, but then he says, “Wait a second, where are you?”

“They probably won’t listen, though,” Seungmin continues as if the detective didn’t say anything. “They didn’t even come to see me in the hospital. They probably won’t care now, either.”

“Seungmin, where are you? Seungmin!”

"I'm sorry," Seungmin whispers.

He quickly hangs up and tosses the phone away. He stares out over campus, his home for the last few years. He watches some students walking back from the dining hall, laughing with their friends, or sitting on the yellowed lawns underneath the massive trees. The leaves have already started to fall. Soon, the trees will be bare.

Seungmin takes it all in, then draws another sharp, shaky breath.

“You asked me what my type was, once,” he says to Jisung, who he knows doesn’t care. “I know you were joking, but…it’s you. It’s always been you.”

His mind goes back to those pictures that they took of each other, of Jisung’s smile after he blew the leaves in Seungmin’s face, plucked the leaf out of Seungmin's hair. Seungmin wishes he could look at those photos now, but they’re lost forever.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Jisung one last time. “I’m so sorry.” But honestly, he does think this is for the best. He has nothing left to live for, anyways. His life is ruined.

Jisung doesn’t say anything. And Seungmin doesn’t blame him. 

He also doesn’t blame him when Jisung steps out of his body for the last time, and Seungmin’s limbs go limp once again, unable to support him on the edge of that roof.

He closes his eyes and falls. 

*

Chan was almost home when he got the call, and he does a U-turn right in the middle of the street the moment it ends. He turns on his sirens and floors it, weaving in and out of traffic and blasting through lights, even though he knows that there’s no way he’s going to make it in time. 

He parks haphazardly on the side of the road, half on the sidewalk, then jumps out of the car. He sprints up to Seungmin’s dorm building, spots a small crowd gathered, and already knows he’s too late. It still knocks the breath out of him when he shoves the people aside, flashing his badge, and sees the blood already spreading across the sidewalk. 

There are sirens in the distance, and some of the campus police are already here, holding people back and setting up tape. Chan just lets out a curse as he puts his hands on his hips, forcing himself to look away. He doesn’t know why he’s blinking back tears, but he stares up at the sky as he does.

His eyes fall on the roof of the dorm building, and he does a double-take. There’s a person standing on the edge, looking down at the scene with an indifferent expression. Even from here, Chan can see the huge letters on the front of his sweatshirt, and the blood matted on the side of his head. 

As Chan watches, Han Jisung turns and walks away, vanishing into thin air.