"NO!" Jaebeom screams at the top of his lungs, sprinting forward, hands desperately trying to cling to thin air.

The rail stops him, he holds his breath as he stares down, looking for Jinyoung, too scared to even think. This is exactly like his nightmares about Jinyoung, being too late, incapable of saving the younger. And just like in his dreams, there's no sign of Jinyoung. No body falling, or any disturbance on the ground. No one has stopped, no one has screamed.

Nothing has happened.

Jaebeom still can't breathe.

"I'm not really alive..." someone speaks from behind, voice cracky as if uttering those words was more than he was capable of.

Jaebeom turns around and there's Jinyoung again, still as a student, too young to be his friend, but still the same boy he's grown so close with. There he is, a living contradiction.

"But I'm not dead either," Jinyoung continues, his eyes watering and Jaebeom doesn't understand. How can Jinyoung be in front of him, as a middle schooler, crying? It makes no sense.

How can he even be there when Jaebeom saw him falling down?!

"What's this?" Jaebeom breathes out, choked and shaky, his whole body is trembling and he feels weak. It's just the shock, he knows it, but his head is spinning and it's not helping in any way. "I don't understand. You just jumped off!"

"I jumped... but I can't die, not like this."

Jinyoung is trying to explain himself, but it makes no sense to Jaebeom. Sure, the younger has always been vague and it's been up to Jaebeom to figure the meaning behind his friend's words. Just now Jaebeom thinks that maybe he never really listened to what Jinyoung was saying.

"Are you... are you a ghost?" Jaebeom asks because nothing else comes to his head and now he's scared because the situation seems too much for him.

"No," Jinyoung replies. "But I'm not exactly alive. Not like you, at least. My body is technically alive, but not on its own," student Jinyoung says and Jaebeom takes a deep breath, listening carefully, expectant and hoping things make sense at some point. He needs to understand.

"Then what are you?"

"I'm memories," Jinyoung replies and now Jaebeom is shaking his head.

"It doesn't make sense!" He screams, rubbing his hands over his face, pinching himself as a last hope that maybe he's just dreaming. The pain is there, and the feeling he's suffocating.

"My body is in a coma," the younger begins. "My soul isn't there, as I'm not living on my own but assisted, but I'm not really dead yet. I'm in a kind of limbo. Depending on how close to death my body is, I materialise in different versions of myself. I assume my body must be dreaming, or reminiscing and that's how I'm projected. That's why I never look the same, because some days I'm younger than others," Jinyoung continues and even if he's speaking slowly, it's too fast for Jaebeom.

He's barely grasping all the story.

"I don't have control of when it happens or how, I'm conscious at some point, finding myself somewhere when I was at some point of my life."

"No, that's not true. You show up every day to meet me," Jaebeom refutes, shaking his head, clenching his fists so tight he's burying his nails in his palms.

A painful reminder that it's happening.

"At first I really didn't have any control, I just showed up at certain places. But then, as my desire to meet you grew stronger, I started to come out every day, and go where I knew I'd find you. But that also depends on how my body is doing. Remember that time when I didn't show up? My body was closer to die, so I wasn't able to come out."

Jaebeom takes controlled breaths for it still makes no sense to him. Everything Jinyoung is saying contradicts what he's lived, what he's felt. How could Jinyoung say he isn't really here when Jaebeom has been held by the younger, when he's comforted the other when he cried, when he's wrapped him in his scarfs so often, when he even kissed him?!

Just... how?

"I touched you. I hugged you. I've seen you cry. You re crying now!" Jaebeom raises his voice and indeed the student is crying, the tears fall slowly and almost prettily down his teenage face, his eyes red with anguish. "How can you tell me you're just memories?"

"Because I cried when I was like this, because I'm a materialisation of what I was at that point of my life," Jinyoung continues but he himself looks confused. "I don't really know how it works, but I know I'm here yet not really."

"Stop being vague!" Jaebeom demands, feeling his own eyes burning with tears. "Try to make sense!"

"It's you," Jinyoung whispers. "I'm more real when I'm by your side. I've noticed other people see me but they never pay me attention, no matter what I do. It's like they see me but they don't register it in their heads."

"Why?" Jaebeom asks, his voice strangled.

"I don't know," Jinyoung shrugs. "But you're the only one who actually sees me, hears me, and can touch me."

"Why?" He repeats, trying his best not to cry as well.

"I don't know," Jinyoung replies. "I just know when I'm with you, it's only you."

"Are you telling me I'm basically talking to the thin air right now?" Jaebeom asks, and a new fear starts growing in his guts, something that makes him feel so cold.

"For what I've noticed, others can see you're talking to someone, but as I'm so close to you, it's like this veil or whatever about me reaches you and people don't pay you attention. It's as if I bring you closer to whatever dimension I'm in, but not fully."

Jaebeom looks away, biting his lips together and trying to calm down. His head starts recollecting all the memories with Jinyoung, since the first time they met, on the bridge when he pulled the younger to stop him from jumping. But now when Jaebeom looks back, Jinyoung fades away from the memory and he is interacting with thin air.

Jaebeom doesn't pull Jinyoung back, he's just grabbing the air.

When they met at the hospital floor, the mesmerising picture of Jinyoung against the sunset turns into just the beautiful horizon.

When Jaebeom pulls Jinyoung form being ran over under the rain, he just pulled at the emptiness.

It hurts, it leaves him void imagining how Jinyoung disappears from all of his memories, thinking that he was never there but in a hospital bed, dying. It knocks the air out of him and leaves him gasping, just thinking Jinyoung is dying, for real and the person he's got to know isn't a person at all, not even a ghost.

It feels like he can't breathe, like there's no air and he's becoming desperate, gasping for air.

"I'm sorry..." Jinyoung whispers and when Jaebeom's eyes look for him, the younger is crying harder, his whole face contorted with despair.

"I don't get it. You gave me food. You took me home. I gave you my scarfs! How could you do all that?" Jaebeom whines, incapable of stopping one tear from falling, but wiping it angrily with his sleeve.

"What I touch doesn't get people's attention. When I gave you food, I didn't pay for it. Sorry about that, but even if I wanted I couldn't pay for it. I just took it." Jaebeom wants to laugh he's apologising for stealing when there are bigger problems. "That time you were very sick people only saw that, but you were the one to stop the car, to tell the driver your address and everything. I was just your support," the younger continues and Jaebeom doesn't even want to imagine it. It hurts him seeing Jinyoung disappear from the memory. "The scarfs... I've lost them all. At some point, I cease existing in this form and go back to my body, I guess, or my mind, I don't know. The scarfs, as they aren't part of the memory, never go back with me. I've lost them where I just... disappear."

Disappear.

Jinyoung really disappears at some point of the day, going somewhere he doesn't even know. Just like he imagines it, the younger just isn't there anymore and there's only the city, the landscape.

Jaebeom thinks of all the pictures he's taken and realises they must be all empty, no Jinyoung in them. No wonder why he couldn't find the picture on his phone, the first one he took of the younger.

Nothing. There's nothing.

"Are you real?" Jaebeom asks and the pain he's feeling makes his throat hoarse, his voice deeper. "Or are you just my imagination? Maybe I just have schizophrenia and you're not even real."

That doesn't hurt any less, it makes the newfound hole in his chest deeper and blacker, just considering that Jinyoung might not be real.

"I'm real," the younger replies. "My body is in this hospital and it's been for quite a few moths already. You're not crazy," Jinyoung reassures him but it doesn't ease the panic Jaebeom is feeling. "But you're special and for some reason I don't know, you can come closer enough to my world that I'm actually here, tangible, existing. It's like coming back to life for a little bit when I'm with you."

More tears fall from Jaebeom's eyes because he's feeling too much. He's overwhelmed with betrayal and sorrow, confusion and despair, hopelessness and fear. It's been months since he met Jinyoung and just now he comes to find out all this? When he's already so fond of the younger? When he started to fall in love with Jinyoung?

Couldn't have Jinyoung told him sooner?

Jaebeom wants to scream, frustrated with everything and still so lost.

Do you think it's wise getting closer? Jaebeom remembers Jinyoung asking that a while ago and now he understands. Now he really understands why he seemed reluctant, scared for what it would cause. Jaebeom never imagined the repercussions of deciding to accept Jinyoung in his life.

No, Jaebeom should've said. It was a bad idea to get closer because now he's hurting. He hasn't stopped feeling one emotion when a new one strikes him harder.

He's feeling scared because Jinyoung might die for real when the betrayal that Jinyoung didn't tell him sooner comes in, but then he feels confused because how could've he believed if the younger said anything? And then he feels so incredible sad thinking that maybe, had he known before, he wouldn't have gotten to know Jinyoung and that hurts so deep, removing Jinyoung from his memories hurts the most.

"You should've told me sooner," Jaebeom says although he is scared of how that would've changed things, he just knows it would've hurt less because he wouldn't have been so attached to Jinyoung then.

"Sorry, hyung," Jinyoung breathes out. "I was scared you would tell me to leave you," the younger confesses. "And I didn't know how to tell you."

"Still... you should've..." Jaebeom whispers, standing straighter, clenching his chest and taking a deep breath.

He doesn't say anything else, too overwhelmed with everything and incapable of taking in anything else. He steps forward, towards Jinyoung and sees the younger tensing up, but he walks past the student and away from him.

"Hyung!" He hears, but he doesn't turn around, he just wipes his tears and leaves that rooftop. He leaves Jinyoung behind.

∞

When I said the angst would come, I meant this ^^ but it isn't that bad, is it?

Bel, xx