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1. the encounter.
_______
it's raining outside.
jeongguk notices this rather vaguely, there's a waterfall on the window next to him, thick teardrops sliding down the murky glass, drowning out the view beyond the small classroom.
in the reflection, he can see his face; ashen, sunken, deprived of sleep, cheeks hollow and ghostly. he was well accustomed to the bags under his eyes, countless nights of tossing and turning in bed and wondering why the hell he couldn't just shut his eyes and shut the world out for a few peaceful hours. as though his body was waiting for something big to happen, preparing himself. jeongguk had no clue what.
everyday was the same. he'd come to school, he'd leave. he'd go home, he wouldn't sleep. then he was pretty sure he'd start hallucinating in lessons.
he saw strange things. strange, peculiar, rare.
he wasn't complaining though.
he took no heed.
somedays, when there isn't a cloud in the sky, he sees a man staring at him from the football field- far off, he's just stood there, holding a pair of binoculars, gazing into his eyes.
jeongguk's not scared, just wonders when this will stop.
somedays, he sees a cute little girl on a tricycle, riding around in circles, a few feet away from him now.
her smile is bright and blinding and he wonders how she's so joyous when she's had her arm cut off, limb thrown in the centre of her little circle. she grins as she rings her little bell and wipes her crimson bone on her little translucent poncho which is already stained from the gushing red fluid that oozes from her.
somedays he sees his dead sister ferociously banging on the glass, blood dripping like a river down her pale chin as her crestfallen face slides down the window beside him, he only watches, wondering how unfair this all was. somedays he wants to say something, to get up and open the window and tuck those stray locks out of her face before she cries again and vomits blood onto the pavement, before he watches the life drain from her pale eyes.
before she grabs the attention of jeongguk's classmates but he knows that that won't happen, she's far too invisible for that. someday he wishes that they'd look up and see her though, to see the pain she's in.
jeongguk can't remember how she died.
she just did.
the boy props himself up from his crossed arms, head raising up ever so slowly as he took in the classroom of zombie students, their bleak, bloodshot eyes boring into the dirty whiteboard that his teacher wrote on. it makes him chuckle how they could be so focused when the world was raging outside of their dainty little school. perplexed at how calm they were, how they managed to get on with their lives without their past haunting them would forever baffle him, he could never quite comprehend it.
he feels his breath hitch in his throat when the window slams shut and the glass has shifted to the boy behind him who's staring at him with this unnerving glint in his eye.
taehyung kim was a strange kid.
there wasn't much else to say.
he looks at him like he's nothing, just a head in the way of what he was supposed to be seeing. When jeongguk looks past his reflection, he sees him staring at that same spot again. the old, rickety shed on the outside of the highschool's car park.
he knows that he sees something. jeongguk wants to know what but he was always too weirded out to ask him. usually, he doesn't dare concern himself with him but lately, things are different.
things for him are.. different.
when the bell rings and class ends and taehyung stays in his seat, jeongguk walks out of the classroom only to find himself being followed by the younger boy.
he can hear his solemn footsteps behind him, a dull din in his head. thump, thump, thump. they only stop when he places a hand on the bathroom door to turn around and face him.
he isn't there.
he never was.
jeongguk wants to know.
he wants to know what the hell is wrong with taehyung kim.
