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Cardboard boxes were dropped on the floor with an ungraceful clunk! The last of them had finally been moved from the car downstairs to the top floor of the old apartment building. Stacks of them cluttered the tiny living space of Jisung's brand new apartment. New was probably a generous term for what it was, given that it was certainly showing its age. The skirting boards were starting to chip and the paint on some surfaces was starting to peel. "Beggars can't be choosers!" is what his mother had said.
Jisung's father had been overjoyed to find his son an apartment semi-close to the college campus that wasn't charging a ridiculous amount for monthly rent. He remembered vividly the face that the landlady had made when they had a preview of the place, which had been quite peculiar. Jisung recalled how uncertain she was about some parts of the apartment, and how she had been hesitant to mention that nobody had lived in that particular unit for three years. He felt that her behavior was especially odd but, given his circumstances, couldn't really afford to worry about it for very long. He needed a place to stay that was out of his parents' house, so he took the offer.
Having never moved houses in his life, Jisung could never have anticipated how difficult and stressful it would be. His chest felt tight and there was still a layer of uncertainty swimming inside of him whenever he would walk in and out of the front door. His brother joked with him about it while they were moving his things up, but it really wasn't much of a joke. "That's the last of it all." Said his brother, stretching his shoulders and groaning from all of the heavy lifting.
"Thanks, Hyung, I can do the rest on my own."
"You sure?" Jisung nodded his head and offered his brother a friendly smile. "Well then," His brother clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder and laughed lightheartedly. "Don't be a stranger."
Jisung watched him leave and he moved to close the door behind him. The dread of having to unpack and actually sort out his living situation like an adult finally settled into his stomach as he gave the apartment a once over. It wasn't anything impressive, just one room with three windows, a kitchenette and a door that led to the bathroom. The walls and kitchen were a little rundown, and it was immediately obvious that nothing had really been touched in the apparent three years the place had been vacant for. Some of the leftover decor was a little old fashioned and the light bulbs would flicker every now and again.
Fortunately, there was no dust, so at least Jisung could feel comforted by the fact that the place was cleaned and hadn't been totally abandoned. He unceremoniously plopped his mattress down on the floor, against the wall in the corner of the room which was right beside the window. Though, the mattress on its own was far too low to the ground for him to see anything outside while sitting on it. The apartment was painfully normal aside from one tiny detail. It was freezing cold. Jisung, having only been dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, found himself rubbing his arms at the chill in the room constantly. It was nearly summer and the weather had been consistently hot for the past few weeks, so it was a little bit odd that the apartment was as cold as it was. Goosebumps sprang up on the skin of his arms causing him to shudder. Was it getting colder, too?
The freezing temperature didn't feel like an ordinary chill, either, there was something about it that felt unnatural. Was the apartment really this cold usually? Was that the reason why nobody but him would move in? Before Jisung knew it, he realized that he was pacing backwards and forwards asking himself dozens of questions that were extremely irrelevant to unpacking. He blinked slowly as it dawned on him and breathed out a laugh. He could never stand still when he was pondering something.
Instead of thinking about that, though, he really ought to get his things in order. At the very least he should make his bed.
When Jisung reached into one of the boxes to pull out his stuff, he felt a gust of chilling air brush against his back. He gasped, his hand slapping the back of his neck in reflex as he looked around the room in shock. It felt as though somebody had been standing behind him blowing air at him. "Is somebody there?" He asked the room incredulously, as if it would answer him back. When he looked around for a potential culprit, there was nobody to be found. He swallowed thickly and shook his head, he was probably just imagining things. The moving itself had been exhausting, so it must've just been that.
* ੈ✩‧₊🌬* ੈ✩‧₊
Two weeks after he had moved in, Jisung had started noticing a few things.
Number one: there was a loose tile in his bathroom that he's sure if he pulled hard enough he could snap off. It looked like it very poorly hid a hole in the wall. In fact, the entirety of the tiled portion of the wall looked like the only "new" redecoration attempt made in the past three years.
Number two: the apartment was cold all the time. Jisung had even been mad enough to turn the heating on despite the fact that it was summer, and even still he could feel the tense coldness in the air. It was cold everywhere, but for some reason it was especially bad in the bathroom. Whenever Jisung walked in there, it was noticeably more chilly than it was in the main room of the apartment. He had even asked the landlady if there was a specific reason it was so cold, and she had declined to give him more of an answer other than that the walls were thin—which didn't even make sense!
And finally, number three: the apartment had not been entirely empty when he had moved in. The place was loosely furnished, apart from its own bed, and the old closet that had been standing tall in the corner since the very first day had a small pile of clothes shoved very messily at the back of one of its bottom drawers. A pair of shorts, socks and a basketball jersey that said "Golden State Warriors" on it.
The clothes had been screwed up and put there as if to be hidden from the rest of the world. They were cold, too, and covered with creases. The smell they had was something musty mixed with something extremely rotten that Jisung couldn't identify even if he tried. Jisung was sure that they were not too far off from his size. It didn't seem like much of an issue until he remembered that he was the first person to live here in three years.
Jisung had reached a conclusion. Not a very sensible or logical one, but one nonetheless. His apartment was haunted. Or, maybe it was just the bathroom that was. He had never been one to believe in ghosts or supernatural entities before, especially since he spent most of his time looking at the stars rather than what was already on the Earth, but he felt like it was plausible. Either that, or he was going a little bit crazy.
From cold air being breathed down the back of his neck to random items being in places he definitely would not have left them, Jisung felt like there definitely could be a potential ghost problem. He kept trying to tell himself that it was probably just his mind playing tricks on him and that the moving combined with his tight college schedule was making him so tired and delirious that he was misplacing things more often. That made sense, right?
He chewed the bottom of his lip as he stared down at his phone. This was all getting a bit ridiculous now. He was searching up "Are ghosts real?" On the internet and scanning through a plethora of Reddit posts from people who had sworn they saw something unnatural and were sharing their experiences on the internet. One particular thread had people describing seeing paranormal things after seeing the corpses of their loved ones at open casket funerals. It all seemed a bit far fetched. In fairness, though, Jisung believed in aliens. So who was he to judge?
He put his phone down on the counter and sighed, dragging the palms of his hands down his face to try and slap some sort of sense into him. Tiredness seeped into all of the cracks of his body. Doom-scrolling through the internet wasn't going to magically give him the answers he wanted. It was a waste of time, too, he had neglected astrophysics work to focus on.
The landlady refused to go into detail about his apartment, even when he had mentioned the abandoned clothes that were hidden in the bottom of the closet. She had just shrugged and made excuses, which Jisung was growing tired of. Nobody who owned an apartment building like this just refused to rent out a place for three years straight unless there was a specific, shady reason behind it. He could tell that she was starting to grow annoyed from his constant asking, too, because she had snappily told him to let it go the last time they had spoken.
Instead of letting it go like a normal, less wary person might, Jisung decided to do what would probably be considered the exact opposite: asking some of the older tenants who had been living there for well over five years if they knew anything. Maybe he was being paranoid. In fact, he was sure that he was being paranoid because cold rooms, mysterious streams of air and misplaced objects weren't exactly staggering proof that the apartment was haunted.
Even still, he found himself knocking on Ms Yang's door on a calm Wednesday afternoon. He could barely even focus on his classes with this crazed thought of ghosts and hauntings lingering in the back of his mind. It was driving him up the wall, and he needed an out as soon as possible. Something to put his mind to ease, hopefully.
"Oh!" Ms Yang exclaimed, a pleased look gracing her aged face. "You must be the new boy who moved in a few weeks ago, yes?" She asked, her tone sweet as she looked at Jisung. Peering past her, Jisung could see that her apartment was the splitting image of a cozy elderly lady's home. It filled him with an odd familial warmth that was a stark contrast to the cold he had been feeling as of late.
"Yes, auntie! That's me! I'm Park Jisung, it's wonderful to finally meet you." He bowed his head politely and offered the older lady a warm smile.
"It's nice to meet you too! And it's nice to finally have a neighbor again, that apartment of yours has been empty for quite some time." Ms Yang explained.
Jisung nodded his head. "That's actually what I came by to speak with you about. The landlady wouldn't tell me why it's been vacant for so long and it's made me a little bit nervous, honestly."
Ms Yang frowned and placed a hand over her heart, looking sympathetic. "Oh, bless you, dear! I'm sorry, but I'm also not quite sure why the apartment had been left empty for as long as it was."
"Do you happen to know who lived there before?"
Her face lit up and she nodded her head fondly. "Ah, yes! It was a young man around your age, I believe. His name was Zhong Chenle. He was such a polite boy, always bringing me things that he would cook and always offering to help me out." Ms Yang's smile was warm with recollection, the wave of nostalgia making her aged face look bright and cheery.
"Oh, did he move away?" Jisung asked, his head tilting slightly to the side. This all seemed relatively normal so far. Just a polite, college-aged boy who happened to live in the apartment before Jisung did. Nothing eerie or scary about that.
"Well, I'm not sure." Ms Yang replied, her face suddenly souring. A frown stretched across her lips and she sighed. "He disappeared one day. He didn't say goodbye to anybody and the landlady told me that she also didn't know where he went."
Jisung's mouth immediately dried and he felt his body become tense. "Disappeared" was quite a peculiar word to use. That was the kind of word that one might use if they had lost something or something has been taken away. Usually, that word is only used in the context of a person when something horrible had happened. Dread started building up in Jisung's gut, like the air itself was thinning at the mere mention of Zhong Chenle.
"Do you think anything happened to him?" He asked, eyebrows creased and teeth gnawing at his cheek nervously.
"I hope not, he was such a lovely boy." Ms Yang looked downtrodden for a brief moment before shaking her head. "That won't do, we can't allow ourselves to assume the worst. Perhaps he just moved away and didn't want to tell anybody? He was quite chatty, though, if my memory serves me correctly."
After exchanging pleasant farewells with Ms Yang, Jisung's legs felt heavy as he climbed the staircase up to his apartment. The entire building had apartments lined up in neat rows, but his one was up a set of stairs in the corner of the third floor. It led to only two places, his apartment and the utility room. An uneasy chill washed over him and he couldn't help but shiver.
"He disappeared one day."
Instead of having his questions answered, Jisung found that he had far more of them than he had hoped. If Zhong Chenle was the last person who had lived in the apartment, and that was three whole years ago, what could have happened? There was no way that he could have just left quietly. If nobody, not even the landlady, knew what happened to him then that meant something else entirely.
Something was wrong. Very wrong. And Jisung had already come this far; had already let his mind become obsessed with knowing the truth. So he had to see it through to the end.
He had to find out what happened to Zhong Chenle.
* ੈ✩‧₊🌬* ੈ✩‧₊
Searching for someone that nobody seemed to remember very well was a lot harder than Jisung thought it would be. He hadn't expected it to be all that easy, but he was at least hoping he could find out what school Chenle might've gone to or if he had a job. He could tell that his constant questions and conversations about it were getting tiresome to the other tenants in the apartment building, so he had decided to stop talking about it to them entirely. The guilt of him being bothersome was beginning to catch up. Instead, he found himself awake at three in the morning googling several different versions of the same question.
Who is Zhong Chenle?
Zhong Chenle
Local News Zhong Chenle
All of the searches came back with less than optimal results. There was no trace of a young man named Zhong Chenle anywhere at all. It was like Jisung was searching for a myth, trying to find somebody that had never existed at all. It was infuriating, really, because at the end of the day—what if Chenle really did just disappear quietly and moved elsewhere? What if there was nothing unusual happening at all and Jisung had just been making a big deal out of something that just wasn't one?
Except, there was just one little thing that Jisung had found. At the end of a list of results that quite frankly had little to do with what Jisung had searched, there was a link to a social media profile. Jisung squinted at the username that was embedded into the URL. "kh1000le." He repeated the name out loud. Upon clicking on the profile, Jisung found something that made his insides squirm. The name attached to the profile was Zhong Chenle, and on the account there were dozens of photos of a young man with sharp, cat-like features and a smile that would light up any room. Thought it all seemed normal at first, Jisung noticed rather quickly that the discomfort he felt was from one simple detail.
The posts from the account had abruptly stopped three years ago.
The last thing that had ever been posted was a picture of the young man smiling and posing with somebody else that Jisung didn't recognize. From the nature of the post, it was easy to deduce that they were friends. But after that, any trace of Zhong Chenle had completely disappeared.
His head suddenly snapped up as he heard a strange creaking sound coming from the direction of the window. There was something off, Jisung could tell. The room was pitch black, only illuminated by the screen of Jisung's laptop that was burning his retina with useless searches and empty questions that seemed to have no answers. Creaking sounds weren't that unusual, he had learned that quickly from the short while he had been living in the apartment. Jisung would tell himself that the sounds were just the apartment showing its age, just so he didn't have to think about the possibility of what was truly causing the sounds. Windows and walls and floors all creak when they've been untouched for years. He would tell himself those words over and over in the hopes that his brain would believe them and stop playing tricks on him.
He reached over to turn on the lamp that was sat on the floor beside his mattress and squinted at the sudden warm light that filled the room. As he stood up, he heard the window creak once more and he immediately hesitated. Someone wanted his attention, he was sure of it.
When he pulled the old curtains back to reveal the pitch black night that was outside of the window, he noticed that it was slightly open. That was odd, he thought. He was sure he hadn't opened it. Jisung leaned forward to close the window, his hot breath causing the glass to steam up a little bit. His brain soon came to the conclusion that nothing was wrong.
"I really must be going insane." He muttered tiredly, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands.
When he turned his back to the window, a horrid, slow squeaking echoed throughout the room. Jisung froze where he stood, eyes suddenly wide and frantic. The squeaking continued only for a brief moment before coming to an abrupt stop. His palms began to sweat as he felt the nervousness crawl up his throat like a large, ugly spider that was about to skitter out of his mouth. He slowly shifted on the spot. Despite feeling paralyzed with fear, he turned his head around to glance behind him. There was a small message in the center of the glass where Jisung's breath had steamed up the window.
Hello :)
Jisung's hand smacked itself against his mouth as he tried his best to suppress a shout. He violently shivered when a familiar chilling breath touched the back of his neck. It felt like how he imagined it would feel to have someone laugh against his neck. His free hand rose up to the window and his fingers scrubbed aggressively at the spot, wiping the message away like it was never there to begin with. He could feel his pulse in his ears and his breath felt shallow.
Something possessed him, a thought that pushed itself to the very front of his mind. A thought that demanded to be brought to reality. He breathed against the glass once again, watching keenly to see what would happen. His eyebrows twitched as he watched the lines appear in real time, the shrill squeaking of the sound of something pressing against the window sounding like white noise to Jisung.
I am Chenle.
Jisung inhaled so sharply that he started to cough, turning away to do so. Once he had recovered, he found himself speechless. He turned to stare at the words imprinted on the window as they slowly faded away, leaving only a vague impression that they were there. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hand, feeling them burning from how long he had been away for.
"You can't be here." He said softly, his voice shaking from utter disbelief. His hands reached up to snap the curtains shut again and he moved back over to sit on his mattress. One or two strange happenings could merely be a trick of the light or tiredness, but this felt completely different. Too real and too believable to be anything else. He rubbed his wet palms against the mattress cover and he trembled as he exhaled.
The room had become so cold that he could see his own breath. Not even the bathroom, which was arguably the coldest room in the apartment, had ever been so freezing that Jisung could see his own breath. Strangely, it was a nice contrast to how Jisung's body felt like it was burning with nerves.
Was he scared? He wasn't entirely sure. If the ghost had wanted to hurt him, surely it would've done so already.
It felt as though he had the beginning and end to a puzzle. Chenle had been the last person to live in Jisung's apartment and was haunting it now as a ghost. But how? And why? What had happened to lead Chenle here? Was he bound to this apartment, or was he just here because he wasn't sure where else he could go?
Jisung gnawed on his lip until he felt the skin split open and start to bleed and with a groan, he turned off his lamp and collapsed against the bed. He needed some sleep, desperately. Though, part of him worried that he wasn't going to be able to get any at all. He stared up at the dark ceiling, his mind practically ablaze with the imprint of the ghost's words.
"I am Chenle."
It was becoming completely unbearable to ignore, now. The ghost was clearly reaching out to him on purpose, not just for the sake of mischief. So it felt wrong for Jisung to not make an attempt to do the same.
* ੈ✩‧₊🌬* ੈ✩‧₊
It was about one week later when Jisung first brought up the idea to Jeno. Summer break had officially began, greeting the days with its bright sunshine, heatwaves and, occasionally, aggressive downpours. Dragging Jeno outside was already difficult enough on its own, but it was even more so whenever they were home from college. Jisung knew that had it been up to Jeno, they would probably enjoy each other's company in stark silence in Jeno's bedroom. That's just the way Jeno liked to bond. Thankfully, today was one of the days where Jeno was feeling generous enough to grace him with his presence and go outside.
They walked down one of the quieter streets of the neighborhood where Jisung's apartment complex was. The hoods of their jackets were up, but had been unfathomably soaked by the rain. The sun's rays were shielded by thick dark clouds that obscured its sense of purpose, causing a slight chill in the hot summer air alongside the flooding rain. Jisung's hair was slicked down to his head like a helmet and he knew that Jeno didn't fair much better. The water droplets on his lashes made it difficult to see much of anything, so they had ducked into one of the very old bus shelters that was no longer in operation.
It was at that point, while he listened to Jeno grumbling and trying in vain to wring out his longish hair, to say it. "I think my new apartment is haunted." He chewed on the inside of his cheek, bracing for the reply. He knew how outlandish he probably sounded and that the chances of his friend believing him were probably rather slim. Jeno just laughed, as if to brush it off as a joke. It was a fair reaction, what else was he supposed to say? When he turned to face Jisung, his smile quickly dropped when he realized that Jisung was not laughing with him. The mirth that shone in his eyes was replaced with confusion.
"You're serious?" Jeno asked, his voice rising at the end of his question in exasperation.
"I mean… Yeah?" Jisung replied, his eyebrows furrowed as he finally dropped his hood down to copy the same motion Jeno had been doing with his own hair. Water splatted down onto the concrete floor of the ground beneath them with an ungraceful noise.
"What happened to make you think that?"
Jisung swallowed a lump in his throat that he didn't initially notice was there. "Well," he opened his mouth, not really sure where exactly he should start. What could he say that didn't make him seem completely off his rocker? "Nobody's lived in it for three years, it's really cold in there all the time and the guy who lived there before me apparently just disappeared without a trace." He unzipped his jacket and frowned at how his flannel underneath it was also soaked.
"That doesn't necessarily mean that it's haunted, though." Jeno objected, his face morphing into one of his cute exaggerated expressions that secretly made Jisung's cuteness aggression go wild.
"Oh, I also found someone's musty old clothes shoved in the back of my closet. Like someone was trying to hide them." Jisung laughed absurdly as he watched Jeno wrinkle his nose in distaste. "I've asked around everywhere, Hyung, nobody knows what happened to the last tenant." He bit the inside of his cheek, realizing that he sounds like a complete lunatic. "I found his Instagram account and he stopped posting, like, three years ago."
"I guess that is strange." Jeno conceded, his eyes focusing on Jisung's face for a while. "You've been sleeping bad because of this, haven't you?" He observed astutely.
"I just want you to come over and experience it, Hyung. Then you can tell me I'm crazy."
Jeno brushed a hand through his hair and shook his head. "I definitely don't need to be there to know that you're crazy, Park." Jisung sighed in defeat at Jeno's amused expression. It was a little bit frustrating that Jeno wouldn't even believe him, but he supposed it was fair considering the nature of the situation.
"I'm being serious!"
"I know you are, but I think you're seriously tired. Ji, you need to get some proper sleep. This is like when you stayed up all night before the eclipse when we were kids." Jeno laughed fondly at the memory, and the thought brought a smile to Jisung's face as well. "Ghosts aren't real, Jisung-ah." He shrugged his shoulders as if that was the definitive truth. But Jisung just couldn't ignore his gut feeling. Something was living with him in his apartment. Or rather, someone was living there with him. He just couldn't prove it to somebody else.
"Yeah." Jisung croaked, forcing a weary grin onto his face. Ever the perceptive friend, Jeno put his hand on Jisung's shoulder and offered him a smile.
"But what if I saw it trying to communicate with me? I saw it writing on the window, I'm sure I did!"
As if disturbed by the conversation Jisung and Jeno were having, the clouds roared with thunder that crackled through the sky like a lightning bolt. They both jumped in surprise and Jeno cleared his throat. "You're just nervous, Jisung-ah. You haven't lived alone before and–"
"Hyung, I know what I saw!" Jisung snapped, his voice cracking obnoxiously like a teenage boy. His fingers twitched at his side, shaking in soft tremors. "I promise you that this isn't a joke! I'm being completely serious! I'm not tired and I'm not paranoid."
Jeno looked at him for a while and said nothing, his eyebrows stitched together. He looked like a kicked puppy, which was difficult for Jisung to look at without feeling guilt. Jeno slumped against the wall of the bus station, his lips pressed together as he seemed to think of what to say.
"Can you prove it?" Jeno asked.
A scoff escaped Jisung's mouth before he could stop it. "Sure, Hyung, I'll show you a picture of the damn ghost." Jeno rolled his eyes and laughed, hitting Jisung's arm lightly.
"Yah, don't get annoyed! You have to admit, it's hard to believe."
Jisung truly must be completely crazy by now, because he really felt like after everything he had just said should have completely changed Jeno's mind with one hundred percent certainty. But apparently, most sane people didn't agree with the idea that dead people could come back as cold, translucent presences that haunt the living for fun.
Jeno's gaze wandered from Jisung's face to the street they were standing on. They were close enough to the apartment complex. So close that Jisung was able to watch Jeno weigh out the options of how worthwhile it would be to entertain the idea of ghosts existing. Finally, Jeno conceded with a heavy sigh. "Alright, let's go to your crappy haunted apartment and you can show me the ghost."
Jisung wasn't sure whether he felt relieved or annoyed at the final verdict, but nonetheless he yanked his hood back up and led the way down the street towards the complex. Puddles of water that had built up on the path were stepped through without any care at all, causing the bottom of Jisung's jeans to also get soaked. Not that it mattered, at this point, because he was sure that his entire body was covered with water from head to toe.
By the time they made it to the front door, Jisung was fumbling for his keys and Jeno had his arms crossed over his chest and his lip between his teeth. The chill that the entire apartment bastes in was immediately noticeable as soon as the front door was open. Typically, it didn't bother Jisung as much as it used to. He had gotten used to it. Although, he had never entered his own apartment soaked to the bone before. Even when he was wet after his showers, the chill only served to give his skin goosebumps and harden his nipples just a little. Nothing crazy.
The sound of chattering teeth filled the room as both Jisung and Jeno walked in and shut the door. "Holy crap." Jeno gasped, his jaw shaking from the frosty feeling that enveloped the entire room. "Is it always this cold in here?!" Jisung nodded his head slowly, pulling off his shoes and discarding them by the door. He wasted little time in dawdling and moved to the bathroom to grab two towels, his wet socks squelching across the floor distastefully.
"Yeah, pretty much. Even with the heating on." He called out, eventually tossing a towel Jeno's way. He unzipped his jacket and hung it on the back of one of the wooden chairs next to his small kitchen. "The bathroom's the coldest, though." He explained, scrubbing his hair with the warmth of the towel in an attempt to dry it faster.
"How do you live like this?"
"You get used to it." Jisung shrugged his shoulders lightly. He moved to turn on the heating anyway, for Jeno's sake rather than his own. He knew the temperature of the room wouldn't change much regardless.
"So… The ghost? Doesn't it, like, I don't know…" Jeno trailed off awkwardly, sniffing as he wiped his face dry. "Does it knock stuff over? Possess you?"
"Not really. It doesn't do much of anything except exist, I guess? It draws smiley faces anytime the windows or mirrors get steamed up," Jisung said, feeling slightly ridiculous that he was talking about the ghost as if it was a cat. "Most of the time I guess it just stays still. It breathes down the back of my neck occasionally."
As if on cue, Jeno twitched and shuddered as the sensation of cold breath caressed is still damp skin. "Ah! Jeez!" He complained loudly, massaging the back of his neck with his hand and laughing at how shocked he had gotten.
"Yeah, kind of like that." Teased Jisung with a fond look on his face in spite of the situation. Jeno was especially cute when worked up, Jisung had to admit.
Jeno gasped, the breath getting caught in his throat which caused him to splutter. "Jisung-ah." He said with labored breath, swallowing thickly as he backed up against the wall of Jisung's doorway. "Something just squeezed my arm."
Jisung's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Your arm?" He watched as Jeno's hand shakily patted the spot where he was claiming to have been touched. Right on his bicep. "It squeezed your bicep? That's a random place for it to squeeze you." It was no secret that Jeno was built well for his age. His arm muscles were thick and, Jisung would imagine, very nice to touch.
"Your ghost's super handsy!"
"My ghost?! I don't own it!" Jisung made an exasperated noise at the accusation.
"Is it really appropriate to call the ghost an "it"? Isn't he a "him" instead?" Had the time called for it, Jisung would poke fun at Jeno's words. Instead, his attention was divided between Jeno and the apartment as one nervously fidgeted while the other creaked and moaned. Jisung couldn't fathom why on Earth the ghost decided that today was the day he'd be a nuisance, but maybe he was just excited that Jisung had brought somebody else home.
The spirit would usually touch him minimally, if at all and Jisung felt that the spirit especially enjoyed teasing his warm skin with cold hands and icy breath. It was always slow and methodical, never completely predictable. But even then, usually the hands of the ghost would only graze over Jisung's shoulders and trace lines on his face. He had never had his biceps touched or squeezed before.
"Do you believe that I have a ghost in my apartment, at least?" Jisung asked.
Jeno didn't answer right away. His eyes scanning the entire apartment in an attempt to find an explainable excuse for what had just happened. He glanced at the door they had come in through, at the mat that was soaked with rain water and then at the tiny kitchenette with the little table that had two chairs at opposite ends. The tap in the sink dripped lone droplets of water into the bowl below every few moments. Jisung's mattress was still pushed up against the corner of the room beside the window, leaving the rest of the living space essentially empty except for the television that was plugged in on the ground and a few text books that were stacked up next to his bed. Jisung could tell that Jeno was still trying to rationalize everything in his head.
The door to the bathroom was old and creaky, the sound of it opening and closing from the change in the air grabbing both Jisung and Jeno's attention. Silence stretched between them like a string that frayed and snapped when pulled too far and for a moment, Jisung felt his entire mouth turn dry.
"You said the bathroom was the coldest room in the house?" Jeno queried, his voice barely coherent because he was mumbling. They had a quiet agreement that didn't need to be spoken out loud. Something they both thought. Jisung was the first to act on it, the throb of nerves that had been bundled in his chest for weeks and weeks leading him before his mind could interfere.
The air was thin in the bathroom. It was always cold, so cold that Jisung could see his own breath at times, but today it was different. It felt like the air was actively being sucked out of his lungs. Jeno followed behind him, his eyes focusing on the tiled spot on the wall. "What is that?" Jeno asked skeptically, his gaze hardening into something not quite readable. "It looks awful."
Jisung nodded his head in agreement. "I know. It's been here since before I moved in. There's something wrong about it, but I never really gave it a closer look."
"It looks like it's hiding something."
"Do you think so?"
"Yeah. Pull the bottom tile off, it's loose."
The tile was sat at the very bottom of the wall, white in colour but caked with dust due to the fact that it stuck outwards instead of being flush to the wall. It stared back at Jisung dauntingly, its very essence a mystery. Every single time Jisung had entered the room, his eyes always found the out of place tile first. In a normal situation, it would be easy to just brush it off as shoddy refurbishment and not give it any further thought. But in this case, it called to him. Like there was something dark and sinister waiting to be uncovered behind it.
Jisung swallowed thickly, his heart lurching up his throat as if it wished to jump out and escape as he crouched down beside the wobbly tile. His hand, somehow shaky from the cold whilst also being lathered in sweat, gripped the bottom of the tile and pulled. A crack echoed out from behind the wall, but the tile barely budged. Behind him, Jeno audibly shivered. When Jisung pulled again, he put much more force into it and the tile snapped off clean in his hand.
"What the fuck." Jeno whispered, kneeling on the floor beside Jisung. They both moved themselves as close to the floor as possible. Sure enough, there was a hole in the wall. Jisung hesitated for a moment.
"You should… We need to…" He stammered, the words getting stuck in his throat. After a deep breath, he tried once more. "Shine your phone flashlight in there." Jeno nodded his head and complied, pulling out his phone and shining the bright white light into the small hole.
"There's something in there." Muttered Jeno, who was biting his lip with unease.
Jisung reluctantly reached his hand inside the hole and he gagged immediately. "Dude." He laughed humorlessly, his voice hoarse and anxious. "This hole is fucking huge."
"What do you think they were trying to hide?" Jisung pulled a face at Jeno, his hand grazing against something that felt like paper. He pinched it between his fingers and retracted his hand from the hole. The paper was yellowed and completely screwed up like trash. They flattened it out against the floor and shared a look. The paper held writing on it as well as dried, brown splotches that were starting to crack on the surface of the paper.
"Is that blood?!" Jeno asked, his voice high pitched and terrified.
Jisung scanned the paper with furrowed eyebrows. "This letter is to Chenle." He mumbled, his frown etched deep onto his face. "It doesn't say who it's from though." Judging by the blood that was splattered all over the paper, Jisung assumed that whoever had sent Chenle the letter did not have good intentions. "Whoever wrote it was trying to threaten him."
"So maybe Chenle received that letter and ran away?" Jeno said, trying to piece together what could have happened.
"Maybe… Unless…" Jisung plunged his hand back into the hole, feeling around for anything else that might give them more leads. His hand soon came into contact with something foreign. It felt cold and skeletal, with a slight humidity against its surface considering where in the apartment they were. "There's something else in there." He said, lips quivering as the realization slowly dawned on him. "Jeno-Hyung, we need to pull more of the tiles off."
Jeno nodded slowly and they both moved to pry off a few more of the tiles to make the hole bigger. For a final time, Jisung pushed his entire arm into the hole. His face immediately grew pale as he felt around.
"What?" Jeno asked breathlessly, his eyes searching Jisung's trembling ones. "What is it?"
Jisung pulled carefully until his hand came back out of the gap in the wall along with what he had found. He immediately felt sick upon seeing what it was. Jeno shrieked, but it was nothing but white noise on Jisung's ears. He had pulled a decayed arm that had been trapped behind the wall. It was still attached to the rest of the body, which made its appearance more disturbing. There was no doubt left in Jisung's mind about what he was seeing.
That was the body of Zhong Chenle.
Jeno forced himself backwards to escape from the horror of a dead body being hidden behind the wall, but Jisung couldn't bring himself to move at all. He was frozen in shock, in disgust and in fear. There wasn't anything he could do to escape it. Like an electric shock, Jisung reanimated when a bright light filled the bathroom. Similarly to Jeno, he let go of the decayed hand and threw himself backwards.
The light was a blindingly bright orange that both burned Jisung's eyes and captivated them. Both he and Jeno had been stunned to complete silence, with neither one of them being at all able to speak. By the time the beam of light had faded, there was an impression of a young man leaned up against the tiled wall. He blinked a few times before tilting his head down to see the decayed corpse he was sat next to.
Recognition washed over Jisung like a warm wave as he looked at the young man. He was completely translucent like he wasn't actually there, but his face had the same sharp jaw, cat-like eyes and the same smiley mouth. The man had short hair that fell over his forehead with a slight wave. Jisung's jaw fell open. He couldn't believe his own eyes.
"Chenle?"
"That's a ghost." Jeno whimpered with fear behind him, his face pulled into an expression of discomfort.
The man, who had been staring at the corpse beside him, turned to look at Jisung and Jeno. He offered them a friendly smile. "Oh? You can see me?" He asked, his eyes shut in a cute curve and his hands coming up to rest on his lap. "Yeah, I'm Chenle." Jisung felt his vision black out.
* ੈ✩‧₊🌬* ੈ✩‧₊
Jisung tried to ignore it for a while, but it was practically inescapable. Whenever he went outside he could see them. Dozens and dozens of spirits all walking among the living like they were still physically there. Jisung saw them in local cafes, not interacting with anybody in particular but they would longingly gaze at the menus and the living staff behind the counter. Some would seem to go around acting as though they were still alive while others would silently grieve. The worst part was that from what Jisung could understand, most of the ghosts were unseen by the rest of society.
After finding Chenle's body, an investigation was launched into the apartment to try and uncover the truth about what had happened there. Jisung, for his part, had been cleared of any involvement and had been moved to the apartment downstairs in the meantime.
The more time that passed, the more difficult it was to ignore the fact that he could see ghosts. From whenever he was out to whenever he was back at his apartment, he always saw more than a handful of them. One of them, of course, was Chenle. There was a small amount of guilt that pooled in the pit of his stomach. At first, Chenle had tried to be friendly. He would try to start small talk with Jisung and would ask about his life, but Jisung couldn't find it in himself to ever say anything back. It wasn't just the fear that held him hostage.
After a few days, Chenle stopped trying to speak with him at all. He would still show himself, usually politely sitting on the sofa or on the counter top, but he didn't say anything. If Jisung ever looked at him for too long, he would never be able to mistake the patience in his pretty eyes. There was, unfortunately, several layers to Jisung's problem. The first and most obvious was that he had no control over what he was seeing. He could see ghosts now. Apparently, finding the dead corpse of an unfortunate young man was the definitive moment that caused one to not just see the dead but sense their longing. So many people, young and old were trapped in this strange second realm of reality where they could see the world but the world could not see them.
It was cruel and unjust, but even if Jisung cried to the universe about how unfair it was he knew that he couldn't change the way everything was written. He knew he certainly wasn't helping by gawking at them whenever he would walk past, though he supposed that ghosts were used to not existing in the eyes of many.
The second layer to his problem was that Chenle was pretty. Not just pretty, even, he was gorgeous in a way Jisung had never seen before in his life. He smiled like the sun and the aura of his spiritual body was a vibrant orange. Even despite what had happened, Chenle still smiled and talked and laughed. Jisung could appreciate everything about him from the curve of his lips to the soft appearance of his hair. He was always awestruck in Chenle's presence, because he couldn't fathom having been killed and hidden away to rot and yet still finding reasons to smile in the afterlife. But Jisung was a coward. Fear still burned in him, the flame licking his insides and turning it all to ashes in the presence of a ghost. When what he thought was impossible became possible, how was Jisung supposed to react?
It was Thursday afternoon when he returned home and found Chenle staring out of his window. He had immediately felt a sense of whiplash, but he couldn't tell whether that was from Chenle's presence or the fact that he was still adjusting to his new apartment. It wasn't much different than the previous one, but it did feel good to know that there were no secretly hidden dead bodies in the walls. Jisung knew now that ghosts didn't haunt one specific place because they had to; often it was by choice. Chenle had wanted to stay in that apartment, and he also wanted to visit Jisung in the new apartment.
"Hi." He said softly, his voice almost too quiet to travel all the way across the room to reach Chenle.
A startled noise left Chenle's mouth, not because he was surprised that Jisung had returned home—but because he was shocked that Jisung had anything to say to him at all. "Hey." He breathed out a short laugh that warmed the chilled room filled with paranormal presence.
"What are you, uh, up to?"
"You care about what I'm up to?" Chenle raised an eyebrow, seemingly unconvinced that Jisung suddenly cared about him.
Jisung visibly winced and he swallowed thickly. "Look, I'm sorry for ignoring you, Chenle. I spent all that time figuring out what happened to you and I wasn't ready for the answer." Jisung huffed out a sigh, moving further into the apartment after tearing off his shoes. "How am I supposed to react to finding out ghosts are real? That you all just, I don't know, roam around having to deal with the potential injustice you faced and could do nothing about?"
Chenle shrugged his shoulders in a lazy fashion. "I don't know, but ignoring me wasn't a good idea." His eyes narrowed slightly and a slow smirk was drawn on his face.
"Yeah? Why's that?"
"Because now I'm going to shove my arm through you and make your entire body uncontrollably shiver every morning." Chenle's gaze didn't turn away from the window. Admittedly, the sight out of this apartment's window was much more superior to Jisung's previous apartment.
Jisung made a face, his nose scrunching up slightly. "Eugh, Jeez. I said I was sorry." Chenle only laughed and shook his head, finally turning to stare at Jisung with his dreamy eyes. God, he could stare into those eyes all day.
"I'll forgive you just this once. As long as you stop ignoring me. Being a ghost is a bit lonely, you know." Chenle's words were slightly coy, slightly teasing. The lilt to his tone was soft, a voice Jisung could listen to for all eternity.
Jisung's eyebrows pinched together with concern and he sighed, nodding his head. "Yeah, alright. I don't want you to feel alone." He shuffled forward to stand beside Chenle at the window. "And I do mean that, I'm not just saying it." He tried to come across as sincere as he felt. He watched Chenle smile and felt relief cool his heated nerves.
"I appreciate that."
"What were you looking at, anyway?"
"I was people-watching." Chenle shrugged his shoulders, his eyes following a jovial ghost girl with a sunny yellow aura walk on the air above the path. She showed no sadness or remorse, only happiness. "I guess it's more like ghost watching. Seeing how happy some people are."
"I noticed it." Jisung responded, nodding his head in agreement. "Do you not feel happy?"
Chenle thought for a moment. "I don't really feel much of anything, I guess. I haven't in a long time." His filmy hand reached forward to press up against the glass pain of the window. After a few seconds, it phases through the glass entirely so that half of his arm is inside of the building and half of it is outside. "Nope, still nothing." He smiled at Jisung mischievously, causing the other man to laugh.
"That kind of sucks though, doesn't it?" Jisung asked, a fond glint in his brown eyes. He raised his own larger hand to press it up against the window. Unlike Chenle's, Jisung's hand stayed firm against the glass and it left a little steamed up imprint from how hot his hands were verses the cold of the window. "What do you like to do? Maybe we could do something like that?"
Chenle's eyebrows raised in shock, as if he had never been asked a question like that before. Had Jisung ever talked to him, he had always expected questions like "What did you like to do?" or "What was your life like?"
He had anticipated that Jisung would ask him about the past, not the present. What did he like when he was alive? What did he like now? Both concepts suddenly felt foreign to him and he was unsure how to answer.
"Was that Golden State Warriors jersey in the other apartment yours? I looked it up, it's a basketball team, right?" Chenle's face lit up in excitement, the kind of glow that reminded Jisung of an excited cat.
"Right! Yeah, that's right!" Chenle nodded, enthusiasm animating his ghostly form. It was like the memory had just returned to him and had given him life once more. "And my favorite player is Stephen Curry!" He turned his head from the road of bustling bodies below to Jisung's general direction. Their eyes met, and Chenle looked at Jisung with a gaze of meaningful gratefulness. Jisung, meanwhile, could feel something inside of him thrum. He could melt just from that look alone, and he really couldn't explain his attraction.
"Then…" Jisung trailed off to turn and point at the TV that sat on the ground. "Do you want to watch a game together?" Jisung wasn't much of a sports person, honestly. He had always preferred to look up at the stars rather than watch two teams of sweaty people pass a ball back and forth. But he truly had meant what he said to Chenle; he didn't want the other to feel alone. He told himself that he wasn't pitying the dead, or anything. It actually felt as though he was inexplicably drawn to Chenle. From his natural handsomeness to the way he carried himself, Jisung felt hooked on him. Had Chenle been alive, perhaps it wouldn't have felt so weird.
Part of Jisung felt as though he owed it to Chenle to be a friend, considering he had ignored Chenle and had been afraid of him for a few months. Chenle smiled. "Yeah, I'd like that."
* ੈ✩‧₊🌬* ੈ✩‧₊
Jisung had learned fast that Chenle could probably talk enough for the entire country if he hadn't been, of course, dead. Typically, people who talked and talked weren't the type he enjoyed spending time with since he was a quieter person. With Chenle, he found that he really didn't mind the amount of things that were said. It wasn't the kind of talking that was a cacophony of words about anything and everything, only there to fill the space with its noise. Instead, it was a consistent stream of passionate thoughts, funny quips and likeable ideas. Chenle was all around a likeable person and, for a ghost, didn't really seem to have a vendetta against the living at all. Jisung had been panicking for a while at the beginning that Chenle might've been vengeful, but now he felt as though it couldn't be farther from the truth.
He saw Chenle's true personality, a young guy who was barely a couple of months older than Jisung who had so much to say and had even more to laugh about. He was opinionated, but never in a brash way that felt too assertive or uninviting to other viewpoints.
He was also extremely critical about Jisung's lack of kitchen skills, which was fair considering the fact that the only meal Jisung could make with semi-confidence was instant ramen.
They made it a ritual of sorts to 'share' a meal once per week. 'Share' was a generous term for what was essentially Jisung eating take out while Chenle watched with a slightly smaller portion in front of him that he couldn't touch tangibly let alone eat. It felt weird to Jisung for just him to be sat there eating food, though, so he had insisted upon it despite Chenle's boisterous laughing and complaints.
He still went outside semi-regularly and Chenle had even accompanied him sometimes. He learned about Chenle's favorite park, his favorite food, his favorite desserts, how he doesn't like snacks over bigger meals and how he loves basketball. Chenle could sing, too and had always had somewhat of a passion for music despite pursuing business school. Jisung learned who Chenle was and felt joyful by every small detail.
Knowing Chenle felt warm.
"You like space?" Chenle asked, looking at the new solar system poster Jisung had recently bought and put above his bed. His hand reached out to trace the lines between the planets for a short while before his hand phased through the wall.
"Yeah, I study astrophysics and space science in school." Jisung replied with an absentminded sound as he cleaned the dishes. "Why d'you ask?"
"I was just curious about you." Chenle said breezily, his eyes never leaving the poster. A fond look crossed his face. "You're cute, Jisung-ah." Jisung wished that those words didn't make his heart thump as fast as they did. Chenle was so casual about everything. So cool and suave, like nothing ever flustered him or made him stop in his tracks. It was somewhat amazing, and Jisung hoped that he didn't look dumb whenever he'd stare at Chenle for just a bit too long.
In all of the time he'd been spending chatting to the ghost in his apartment and bickering about this and that, Jisung felt like he had neglected something. There was a bad feeling that had lingered in his gut from not speaking to Jeno.
After they had discovered the body together, Jeno had left Jisung's apartment with eerie silence and hadn't said anything since then. It had slipped Jisung's mind that they had even found anything horrific at all, too distracted with all of the fluttering feelings and excitement. He had been swept so far away by Chenle's bright light like an astronaut thrown out of the atmosphere of Earth that he was struggling to plant his feet on firm ground again. After talking with Chenle, Jisung felt like he couldn't think about anything else.
"Are you okay, Jeno-Hyung?" They were sitting cross legged on the floor of Jeno's bedroom, their backs leaning up against Jeno's bed for support. On the outside, there wasn't anything noticeably wrong. Jisung could see the subtleness, though. There were dark circles under Jeno's eyes and an overall feel of tiredness paints a sorry sight on his face.
"I'm alright." He shrugged his shoulders, offering Jisung a smile that stretched cutely across his face and caused his eyes to wrinkle sweetly. "I guess I'm just overwhelmed."
Jisung nodded. It was a lot to get used to. Seeing echoes of people who no longer shared the same flesh and bone as he did, floating around like they're still physically there; as if they hadn't yet realized that nobody noticed them. As if they didn't know they were dead. The concept of death had never been something that Jisung had pondered. The inevitability of an end that nobody could predict was anxiety inducing to the point where most people would choose to simply not think about it rather than face its reality. For those who had already experienced the end, though, Jisung did wonder how it felt to wake up cold and different. In a way, they were still themselves but they would never be the same again. What purpose did being a ghost serve, anyway?
"It's weird. I feel like I'm seeing something I was never supposed to see whenever I look at a ghost." Jeno continued, his head falling back to rest against the bed. "What about you? Is Chenle still around? Do you guys… Talk?" Jeno voiced the word like it was foreign. Talk. Talking to a ghost. It sounded crazy, and Jisung felt crazy, too. Because the answer was so bizarre, so peculiar, that he was certain that even Jeno would look at him funny if he voiced it.
"I like him."
"You do?" Jeno's eyebrows raised, hiding under his side swept fringe. "You mean that you like him like him or…"
Jisung's tongue darted out to wet his chapped lips. He wasn't sure how to even begin to answer that question. On one hand, he wanted to be a friend for Chenle. Someone to listen to him, because Jisung was sure that silence was a horribly deafening sound when nobody was aware of one's existence. He wanted to empathize with Chenle's pain, because he knew that something sinister had happened and Chenle had died so young and so tragically. Life was taken away and left to rot in a run down apartment. It wasn't fair.
On the other hand, Jisung felt addicted to Chenle. He anticipated returning to the apartment whenever he'd go out for snacks or to do some work just so he could see Chenle again. To hear his voice, the way it grew louder when he was excited and the way it softened when he was tired. Jisung felt like he was pining for something he should not want to have, and it was uncomfortable.
"I just want to be there for him." He said.
"That's good. Do you think he'll tell you what happened?"
Jisung bit down on his lip. "I don't know. I've never asked him. We just watch basketball and he talks about what he likes doing. And he judges me."
Jeno laughed softly. "Really? I didn't expect him to be a judgemental ghost, just a touch starved one."
"Touch starved? You think?"
Jeno's face was struck with confusion and he chuckled in disbelief. "You're kidding." He teased. His hand slapped against Jisung's shoulder in a playful manner. "He was breathing down your neck and poking you and squeezing you before we could see him. He was touching my biceps like crazy that day we found his body. Jisung-ah, he's been dead and alone for a few years now, I think that qualifies as being touch starved."
Jisung paused, eyebrows furrowing as he absentmindedly picked at his fingers. The thought hadn't even crossed his mind, but it made a lot of sense. During their free time together, Chenle had explained things about himself animatedly. He had a thing for guys with big biceps, apparently, and while he had insisted to Jisung that he didn't feel attracted to men because of it—the number of times he had stared at Jisung's arms and entire body said otherwise. It was rude to point that out, Jisung had thought. "Yeah I guess that's true. He hasn't really done anything lately, though." Jisung sighed.
"Yeah, obviously! He can't get away with feeling you up as easily if you're watching him do it, can he? Unless you wanted him to." Jeno locked eyes with Jisung, grinning slowly and perceptively as if he had figured something out. "Do you want him to?"
"Want him to what, Jeno-Hyung?"
"Y'know, touch you? Do you want him to feel you up with his cold hands?" Jeno wiggled his eyebrows and his grin grew wider, like he was picturing it. God, Jisung was also picturing it. Chenle's hands slipping under his shirt, making him shiver with the unnatural chill. They exchange temperatures, Jisung would become cold and Chenle would become warm. Would it feel good? Jisung's ears turn red just from thinking about it.
"No! Yes? I don't know!"
"It's okay if you do." Jeno shrugged, seeming unbothered by the conversation in true Jeno fashion. For someone so expressive and cute, he sure could be nonchalant when talking about perverse things. "I think it'd be kinda cool, but I don't suppose you'd let me join in with you and Chenle, huh?" Jeno perked up at his own words like a puppy, and it took everything in Jisung to not pat his head.
Jisung rolled his eyes and scoffed, smiling. "Sometimes you're so ridiculous." The thought of Chenle touching him lingered in the back of his mind, briefly tucked away but not forgotten.
His attraction was growing beyond admiration and fluttering feelings whenever he and Chenle would talk, which was becoming much more of a daily occurrence. His mind thought of Chenle when he would walk passed the basketball court that was a few miles away from the apartment building and he'd think of Chenle whenever he saw that one drink brand that Chenle said he loved. With all the simple pleasures that Chenle was now denied in his current existence, Jisung wondered if he could help Chenle indulge in one another a little bit.
* ੈ✩‧₊🌬* ੈ✩‧₊
The summer sun was scalding hot and unforgiving as time ventured into the heart of the season. Clouds were scarce and the heat was inescapable and it just so happened that the air conditioning unit in the apartment complex Jisung was living in was completely, inexplicably broken. Just his luck. "You're sweating buckets." Observed Chenle, who was sat across from Jisung at the tiny table they would have their weekly meal date at. Jisung had been craving fried chicken, so that's what they had gotten. As usual, Chenle's plate held a smaller portion on it that wouldn't be touched. It's the thought that counted though, right?
"Yeah, it's so hot today." Jisung agreed, his forehead and face wet. He wore a tank top today, and he could swear that Chenle was staring at his arms and shoulders a lot more than his face. It was distracting, but not in a way that was bad. It was dizzying, pleasing even. Jisung wondered whether Chenle liked his arms. Were his muscles any good according to Chenle's standard? He had tried his best to keep up his workout regime despite how busy things were getting. "I feel like I'm on fire." The sound of Jisung's voice came out somewhat whiny, making Chenle laugh. The sound made Jisung swallow thickly. If he were entirely insane, which at this point he might as well be, he'd say he wanted to eat that laugh. And Chenle's mouth, while he was at it.
"Poor baby, I wish I could feel hot."
"Trust me, Chenle-yah, you really don't. I'm sweating from every orifice."
"That's so gross!" Cackled Chenle, his face scrunching up in a sweet mixture of playful disgust and amusement. Chenle's eyes flickered from Jisung's face to his arms, then his chest and then back up to his face again. It was somewhat maddening, but Jisung got the strangest feeling that Chenle was doing it on purpose. He couldn't prove it, of course, but there was always a certain gleam in Chenle's gaze whenever he was doing something particularly mischievous.
Pulses of some sort of tension had been buzzing between them in recent days, like how waves sloshed against a rocky cliff. Each time the water and the rocks met, Jisung felt the same shudder of desire wash over him sinfully. He had long since passed whatever moral dilemma he had in his brain about fucking a ghost, because his curiosity had been much stronger than his moral compass. Was it curiosity, though, or was it just perversion? Perhaps it was both mixed together in some crude way.
Every time their eyes met Jisung imagined something new. If they kissed, would it feel cold? How would his tongue feel lodged inside of a ghost's mouth? Would his skin tingle pleasantly if Chenle ran his hands over it? Would he get goosebumps? If Chenle were to fuck him, or vice versa, what would that look like? Or feel like, for that matter? Could ghosts undress? Jisung hoped so, his many fantasies that were strung out in daydreams about how Chenle's body looked were driving him crazy. Was he lithe? Toned? Jisung was sure that he'd like what he saw no matter what. Not to be presumptuous, but Jisung felt as though Chenle shared similar thoughts.
Chenle's eyes were sharp and knowing in a way. Between friendly conversations about changing seasons and shifting perspectives, there was always a twinkle of something in Chenle's eyes. A sort of "I know that you're picturing me naked." look. And he wasn't wrong, Jisung was becoming more obvious about it. Every bob of his Adam's apple when Jisung swallowed had eyes watching it rise and fall. The tension was hot and potent, anybody could walk in and practically smell that they wanted each other.
Surprisingly, it was usually Chenle who set up the invisible boundaries that weren't made to be crossed. If they were too close. Chenle would look away. If they were practically eye fucking one another, Chenle would purposely blink after a few lingering moments. Laid-back conversations suddenly morphed into words that dripped with innuendo. Every moment between them that stretched out for eternity, it was Chenle who pulled away and left Jisung wanting. Jisung tried to take the hint, but when Chenle indulged him for just a few seconds longer than normal—it felt impossible. It was as if he wanted something, but remembered too soon that he couldn't have it. Well, perhaps it wasn't a matter of whether he could have it or not, and it was instead a matter of whether he should have it. Jisung deserved another living, breathing person to hold and be intimate with. But when desire coiled deep within one's body, spiritual or physical, sometimes 'coulds' and 'shoulds' mean absolutely nothing at all.
"I want you." Jisung said, like a river bursting its way through a flimsy dam. "Now. Let me kiss you, Chenle-yah, please."
Chenle's tongue passed the seam of his lips to lick them, the action slow and thoughtful. He hesitated. Eyes flicking back and forth between Jisung's earnest gaze and his parted lips. The answer seemed as though it was on the very tip of his tongue, but Jisung couldn't hear it. "Are you sure? I'm a ghost."
"Yeah, that's why I want you. I want to feel what it's like." Jisung's words were earnest in a way that made Chenle feel weightless. Jisung had never been known to be blunt. He was soft, never quite sure of himself or what he wanted. In this, though, he seemed confident. Chenle swallowed, his hand sliding across the surface of the table to touch Jisung. They exchanged temperatures, warmth became cool and cool became warm.
Chenle's eyebrows raised and his face sharpened into something mischievous. "Call me Hyung first."
"What?" Jisung spluttered, laughing in exasperation.
"I'll give you what you want if you call me Hyung."
"I can't believe that's your condition!"
From their touching hands, Jisung's eyes traveled up Chenle's arm and to his face. Their eye contact was firm and smoldering. "Hyung." Jisung breathed out, biting down on his lower lip. "Please, can I?" It was uncertain for a moment, but they both ended up moving at the same time and locked lips briefly. A light flutter of contact. Jisung felt the chill against him, which he had expected, but he also felt a strange softness. It was the kind of cushion-like sensation that any person would feel during a kiss. The space between them was infinitesimal, so minute that Jisung could feel Chenle's breath against him. His hands closed into fists on his lap, more than prepared to pull himself back if that was what was most comfortable; to stretch meters between them.
Chenle shifted his hand so that it slid up Jisung's chest purposely and cupped his jaw. "It was your idea?" He exhaled with amusement, his gaze only on Jisung's mouth. "Don't back down now." Chenle kissed Jisung, his head tilting to lock their lips like a puzzle. His tongue poked at Jisung's lips slowly, its freezing touch making Jisung involuntarily shudder and open his mouth slightly. Jisung's mouth was hot, so hot that Chenle could feel his own mouth warming as they moved in sink to kiss. Making out wasn't where the line was drawn, because Chenle's teeth grazed against Jisung's lower lip slowly. The bite and gnawing was as gentle as it was meaningful. Chenle's tongue licked the inside of Jisung's mouth, from his teeth to his lips and the inside of his cheeks.
Breathlessly, Jisung whimpered. "You're better than I thought you'd be?"
Chenle grinned widely, his tone laced with mischief. "Really? What's that supposed to mean? Were you hoping that I died as a virgin?" He took Jisung's speechlessness as an opportunity to stand up and shuffle closer so that their bodies were in close proximity with one another. Somewhere along the way, Jisung had been pulled up and he was against the wall of the kitchen. "That's not very pure of you, Jisung-ah."
If Jisung could have ever overstated how good it felt to have his mouth abused, licked and bitten by the handsy ghost he had been crushing on for months, he was entirely sure that he'd be called insane. Chenle was relentless and Jisung was addicted to it. He hadn't expected small kisses and shy flirting by any means, Chenle was not a shy person, but he hadn't been expecting such passion. Maybe he should have. Three years with no contact predictably led a person to a certain breaking point. He supposed Chenle was as eager to feel him as he was to feel Chenle. Their desires evened out.
"Chenle-yah." Jisung's lip, which was no swollen and red, wobbled with the same neediness that his voice had. "More. Want more."
"It's a good thing you do, because I'm nowhere near done."
There were many things that had transpired in the past few months that Jisung had never anticipated would ever happen in his life. Finding an apartment to move into was one and getting pushed against his thin mattress on the floor of said apartment by a ghost that was probably the most gorgeous person Jisung had ever seen was another. Though, to be fair, those two things were on the opposite ends of the spectrum from one another. There was a layer of awkwardness that came from the whole thing. If Chenle's hand was on his stomach for too long, it would inevitably phase right through him and give him a sharp shiver crawling down his spine. Chenle didn't make it feel all that awkward. It felt like it was part of the experience, and the way he laughed whenever something stupid happened made Jisung's skin tingle.
"Take your shirt off?"
Jisung nodded obediently, his hands dropping to the hem of his tank top to lift it up. Chenle clicked his tongue disapprovingly almost immediately. "Not like that! Do it slower. Do you even know how to be sensual?" Jisung didn't, honestly. It had never occurred to him that slowly taking his shirt off was that sensual, but who was he to deny Chenle at this point? They had already come this far. Chenle's eyes followed his hands, gawking at the way Jisung's tanned skin was revealed. His bare skin had a slight sheen of sweat clinging to it, and he could see that Chenle was ogling him like he was a slab of meat. He threw the shirt to the side, forgotten, and raised his head slightly to get a better look at Chenle.
"Can I lick it?"
"Lick what? My stomach?"
"Yeah, well the sweat off of your stomach to be specific."
Jisung was going to protest, to ask whether Chenle would even be able to taste the sweat. Did his taste buds even still work? An even quieter voice that whispered in the back of Jisung's brain complained that the concept was slightly disgusting. Then again, Jisung wanted to have sex with this ghost, so was he really one to complain about what was slightly gross? His brief hesitance was completely overshadowed by an overwhelming need to feel Chenle's tongue against him. And to see that in action, too. Jisung nodded. "Yeah, please."
Chenle's head bowed, his tongue pressing against Jisung's lower stomach. The touch alone was freezing, but Jisung's entire body was already covered with goosebumps. He was beginning to feel numb to the chill. His head fell back against his pillow at the feeling of a cold, wet stripe being licked from his lower stomach up to his nipple. A stuttered gasp left Jisung's throat at the way Chenle's mouth immediately latched onto his nipple and sucked hard. The frostiness of the sensation made his toes curl and he moaned. If he wasn't aroused before, he could definitely feel himself stirring now.
Chenle looked up through hooded lashes as he dragged his lips against Jisung's nipple. It was slightly sloppy and sticky with cold saliva, but the sight alone made Jisung stiffen with sizzling arousal. "You're getting even hotter." Chenle crooned, his finger tracing cruel circles around Jisung's other nipple. "You like this more than you thought you would, right? You're warming me right up." Something about those words made Jisung moan involuntarily.
There was nothing subtle about the way Chenle touched him. It was slow, purposeful and agonizingly teasing. Chenle took his time in appreciating every line and curve. Jisung had no time to be coy with the way gasps and sounds were being coaxed out of him so easily. Chenle's lips pressed against his stomach, his ribcage and his collarbones. "I wonder if I could mark you up." Chenle pondered, his tongue poking out to drag itself from Jisung's shoulder to his neck.
"Why don't you find out?"
"I could." Chenle stopped, his breath tickling the cold stripe of wetness that he had licked up Jisung's throat. "If you call me Hyung again." His lips sharpened into a wicked smirk.
A frustrated huff left Jisung's lips and he brought his hand up to tangle in the strangely silky mess of Chenle's hair before pulling his face down. "I don't think so. You've teased me enough, haven't you?" Asked Jisung. The sensation of Chenle's face hitting his neck made him grunt. Chenle only laughed but complied anyway, his mouth sloppily worshiping Jisung's neck like it was his only reason for being.
The sound of Chenle's kissing was loud and wet in Jisung's ear and the feeling was ticklish. Jisung's hand moved down from the back of Chenle's head to sweep over his body. It was the first time he had touched Chenle anywhere except on his arms. Chenle's spirit body was somehow both tangible and not at the same time Jisung could grope him for a good few seconds before his hand slid right through Chenle. His touches were slightly fumbled, but he still was able to feel everything. It was the exact same feeling as it would be had Chenle been alive, just colder and slightly less dense. That hardly mattered at that moment, thought Jisung as he squeezed Chenle's side. The lack of reaction was both slightly funny and a little bit disappointing.
Chenle pushed himself back so that he could look at what he had done. "Looks good." He said with impish delight. His fingers traced the circles of bite marks and the reddened skin that had been suckled on. "What if I did it all over? Would you like that?" He grabbed the bulge in Jisung's jeans and squeezed it tightly, reveling in the pathetic noise that forced its way from between Jisung's lips.
"Yeah!" Jisung cried out, his teeth gritted together due to the sharp sting of the squeeze. "Yeah, I want it. Want your mouth everywhere."
"Everywhere, huh?"
"Between my legs, under my arms, on my back. Everywhere."
"I can work with that." Chenle's finger looped through the belt hole of Jisung's jeans and gave it one forceful tug. "Take these off first. Can't worship your sexy, warm body if you're still half dressed, can I?" Jisung nodded quickly, his hands snapping to pop the button of his jeans undone. He pulled them down hurriedly with his underwear in toe, kicking them off with a sort of desperate wiggle. His hardened erection sprang free and the contrast between how hot he felt and the freezing temperatures of the room made him hiss.
"Fuck." Chenle cursed, his eyes scorching holes into Jisung's body. "You're sexy, Jisung-ah. How come you haven't gotten someone who's alive to bang you? Wanted to save yourself for me?" He cooed mockingly as his hand wrapped around Jisung's dick, pumping it only one time before letting go. "We'll save this until later. You'd better not cum before I get back to it."
"Kay. I won't. I promise I won't, Hyung."
Chenle bit his lip. "Good. Now turn over."
Jisung did, his heart thumping in his chest. He had never felt as turned on as he did right now. Propping himself up on his elbows, he glanced back around to see Chenle's stare. "D'you like it?"
"Do I like it?! Dude if I was alive I'd want a piece of this every day. I thought your puppy friend was hot, but you're somehow way hotter." Chenle's head ducked down to bite Jisung's thick bicep, making Jisung jolt in surprise. "Your ass is good, too. Anyone ever eaten it out before?" Chenle queried, his hands squeezing both globes dutifully with a lewd smile. Jisung could tell that Chenle was firmly enjoying himself, which made sense.
"You're so touch starved." Joked Jisung with a lopsided grin on his face.
"Was that what I asked?"
"Fine. No, I haven't. You'd be the first." Chenle seemed pleased by that answer as he trailed kisses down Jisung's spine with increased feverishness.
"You're, like, the hottest guy I've ever seen."
"I thought you told me you were mostly into girls when you were… Y'know?"
"Yeah, that's why I'm here about to eat a man's ass." Chenle rolled his eyes and chuckled, smacking his hand sharply against Jisung's butt and snickering at the way Jisung yelped. "You're a lot more chatty than I expected. Maybe we should change that." He quipped, his tongue licking at Jisung's lower back reverently. His fingers slid between Jisung's ass cheeks and rubbed against his hole. Truthfully, Jisung hadn't actually taken anything up the ass in a while. He was always more of a top.
"Shit, you're tight." Chenle mumbled as his finger eased inside. The heat from Jisung's body seemed to make his body more tangible in some ways, since he was able to slide his finger in and out a few times before shoving his tongue to draw a wet line over Jisung's barely stretched hole. Jisung choked on his own gasp.
"That's so cold!" He whimpered loudly, his hands gripping onto his bedsheets with an iron grip as Chenle tried to finger him and tongue fuck him at the same time. When Chenle's finger was able to fit almost all the way in until his knuckle, Jisung breathed out a low groan. "God, fuck me." He pleaded, feeling the heat from his nether region only grow. "Chenle-yah, please."
Chenle whistled lowly. He pressed a kiss right up against Jisung's hole, admiring the way it twitched and the way Jisung groaned. "At this rate you could be my personal heater." He teased, entirely too nonchalant about how easily he was driving Jisung completely wild. Chenle's tongue pressed against Jisung's hole and stayed there for a few seconds. "Damn." Chenle mumbled as he pulled back, enjoying the way Jisung looked back at him through hooded eyes. "I kind of want you to fuck me, instead." He crawled closer until he was basically on top of Jisung.
"Would you even feel it?" Jisung asked softly.
"Dunno, maybe. I'd definitely feel how warm you are. Can we try?" Chenle moved to link their fingers together. The act was somewhat intimate, more so than how Chenle usually was. He squeezed Jisung's hand in a way that craved more. More warmth. More intimacy. More feeling.
"Yeah." Jisung's voice cracked, and it suddenly dawned on him. He wanted to give Chenle that feeling of warmth. The kind of warmth that could he could bathe his whole body in. The kind of warmth that, if Chenle closed his eyes, could remind him of what it was like to breathe and live. "Yeah, let's try."
A ghost he had known for less than a year was on top of him, pumping his dick with the same grin as the Cheshire Cat from 'Alice's Adventures In Wonderland' but with the kind of look in his eye that was beguiled. It occurred to Jisung that Chenle had died young, in some kind of sinister ploy that took him from the Earth too soon. And here they were, having sex on Jisung's floor. There was a mattress between them and the floor, but even still it was close enough to qualify. Perhaps pondering the possibilities of a ghost's afterlife only surrounding their death was not the kind of thoughts to be having during such a hot, sticky act of affinity, but Jisung had always been known to be curious to a fault.
Something in Chenle's spiritual appearance dwindled, like a glitch on a television, and suddenly he was no longer clothed. Jisung's jaw hit the floor and if he hadn't been so focused on the curves and tones of Chenle's body, he would probably find it in himself to feel some shame. "No lube needed." Smirked Chenle as he licked an intensely chilling stripe up Jisung's aching dick. Jisung gasped, not really having time to ponder those words. Chenle wasn't patient by any means, because his mouth was suckling the crown of Jisung's cock.
The touches of his tongue were just as teasing as they were when it was lapping at Jisung's nipples or his squirming hole just a few moments ago. Chenle deep throated Jisung methodically, causing Jisung to understand one of the fantastic perks of having sex with a ghost. No gag reflex. Despite Jisung's rather impressive size, Chenle was able to take the entire length with no issues whatsoever. That in itself was one of the hottest and unholy things that Jisung had ever bared witness to.
"Holy shit." Jisung hissed as Chenle bobbed his head slightly, his eyes rolling back. With Jisung's hotness in Chenle's mouth and Chenle's frostiness surrounding Jisung's dick, both of them were whining at the same pitch.
"Need to get on you. Now." Chenle rasped. His fingers dug into Jisung's shoulders, their mixed temperatures grounding Chenle's body as he hovered over Jisung's erection. They both groaned in unison. Jisung's dick filled Chenle easily with hardly any effort at all. "Fuck yes!" The sheer icy feeling of Chenle on his dick made Jisung's teeth chatter aggressively, but he didn't even care. Chenle's face had lit up with euphoric glee, feeling the scalding temperature of Jisung's body heat inside of him.
He felt his body tremor with every aggressive slam that Chenle made, thrusting Jisung's erection in and out of himself with hardly any input from Jisung. It didn't matter, though, because Jisung could only focus on the pleasant, cold sting that Chenle provided him with. Jisung's hand reached up to pull Chenle down so that he could crash their lips together in a messy kiss that had them both panting and whimpering.
"Is it good?" Chenle asked, his voice ragged and rough with desire.
"So good! You're so—fuck—you're so cold!"
"And you're so damn hot. I love it."
Chenle's head ducked down to bite and lick Jisung's neck once again. Jisung could feel the warmth coil in his lower half. His body begged for release. "Chenle-yah!" He felt breathless. He needed to release and he needed it now. "I'm gonna–" his words were cut into silence by Chenle's sped up grinding.
"Do it. Cum in me."
His body didn't need to be told twice. Jisung spasmed slightly during his release, the hot ejaculation spurting. Obviously it couldn't actually find its way inside Chenle, so it all splatted against Jisung's stomach, thighs and on the mattress beneath them. Chenle's hands trembled as if he was reluctant to pull himself off of Jisung. The warmth lingered inside of him and made him feel alive, as if he was still so much more than a ghostly presence.
Jisung was wheezing and panting to recover from the intensity of the sex while Chenle remained strangely silent. "Thanks." He mumbled. Chenle wasn't known for being shy or quiet, but Jisung understood without having to ask why he was acting that way. The familiar euphoria of feeling something. A physical something.
"Good?"
"Really good." Chenle lifted himself off of Jisung and sighed deeply. Just as quickly as the warmth had filled him, it dissipated without a trace. He was still cold. He was still a ghost. Despite that, the high from seeing Jisung come undone was unbeatable.
It wasn't often that they found nothing to say to one another. There was always a petty argument to be had or a little detail to laugh about. Jisung laid against his mattress, still dirty and still damp with sweat while Chenle floated beside him in an act of also lying down. The quiet wasn't as uncomfortable as Jisung thought that it might be. He had grown used to Chenle's voice filling the empty void, but this wasn't bad either. It gave Jisung all the time in the world to ponder what had just happened and wonder, perhaps foolishly, whether loving somebody who was no longer alive was considered stupid.
* ੈ✩‧₊🌬* ੈ✩‧₊
To say that a person who died young had died meaninglessly felt wildly abhorrent to Jisung. Six months ago, he probably wouldn't have given it more than a few seconds of thought. Ghosts were far less plausible than aliens were in the wide stretch of the universe. After finding Chenle's body and having his mind opened to the dead, he saw everything a lot more clearly than he did before.
The ghostly bodies of people who once had lives or perhaps were too young to have even had lives at all were everywhere for the right eyes to gaze upon. A woman who would stand in front of an old bakery with a forlorn look on her face, a man who would ride the bus to an office building he used to call his daily livelihood. A young girl who still experienced joy even though her body was no longer tangibly real. It all made Jisung feel a certain way. Sympathy for those who had lost and still couldn't grasp it and warmth for those who still enjoyed the world they once lived in as ghosts.
When Jisung looked at Chenle, there was no obvious signs of sadness anywhere in him. Chenle was jovial, bright and smiley. He always had something to say about any given thing and had the kind of laughter that brought the mood of a whole room up. Despite his chattiness, though, Jisung found that there was one particular topic that Chenle didn't ever speak about. His death. The question itched Jisung's brain uncomfortably at every chance it could. It felt impolite to ask, and Jisung had figured that at some point if Chenle wanted to talk about it—he probably would.
Things seemed normal after they had sex. In fact, it was almost as if nothing had changed at all. So much so that Jisung had to embarrassingly ask whether it had happened or whether he dreamed it. In a normal relationship, having sex would probably lead to normal questions like: "what now?" or "should we date?" and as much as Jisung wished that it could be that simple, he was well aware that it wasn't. Chenle wasn't alive. He was an animated spiritual body who had very little impact on the world around him and probably could only be seen by one in ten people. That fact didn't make Jisung like Chenle any less, even if he subtly wished it did.
It felt wrong, disrespectful even, to want to date a ghost. Respecting the dead didn't usually mean date them. Jisung knew it was impossible to ignore his feelings or get over them. Chenle's presence was so large in his life now, so all encompassing and real, that it was impossible to repress or even pretend that he could get over how he felt. They talked daily about anything they could think of, they watched basketball once per week and Jisung didn't even like basketball and they shared a meal together once per week, too.
Jisung knew of Chenle's love for sports and how he studied diligently when he was alive. In return, Chenle knew about Jisung's love for the stars and his dream of working in space sciences. They knew so many things about each other that they were practically best friends, soulmates. But Jisung still found himself standing in front of the same large query. Was this right? Should he want this?
They had made a new routine ever since the night when they had intercourse; it the only real difference between now and before then. Each night, before Jisung fell asleep, Chenle would lay beside him, not quite against the mattress but not too far above it either. They'd lay side by side and talk, which wasn't too different from what they did during the day. It felt more intimate, though.
"Chenle-yah." Jisung's voice was quiet when he cut Chenle off. He stared directly up at the ceiling with a thoughtful expression on his face. Immediately noticing the shift from the lighthearted tone that had been there previously, Chenle stopped talking. "Do you… Know how it happened?" Jisung's mouth was dry when the question that had been on his tongue for ages finally left his mouth. He knew that he didn't need to be specific for Chenle to know what he meant.
There was no way for Chenle to indicate how tense the question made him feel, but the air around them became almost suffocatingly thin. "You don't have to answer." Mumbled Jisung, quickly backpedaling from his own words.
"I don't know." Chenle said. His lips curved into a frown, still pretty but somber. "I don't remember how it happened." His tone, usually casual, carried a twinge of upset. A wound that had never fully healed. "By the time it had happened, I was already awake again outside of my own body." His hands pressed against the mattress beneath them before phasing through like he wasn't even there. "I don't have all of my memories from when I was alive, either. You sort of… Forget. Time does that, I guess."
"That's so awful, Chenle, I'm sorry."
"I was angry for a long time after that." Chenle's hands closed into fists at his sides and he took a slow, deep breath. "It wasn't fair, I still had a lot I wanted to live up to. I had a dream, I had friends and I had a life, you know? It was all ripped away from me before I could even blink."
Jisung pursed his lips, his expression grim. "When I… When me and Jeno-Hyung found your body, there was a letter smeared with blood hidden in there with you." He explained. His hands came to rest on his stomach as he stared at the blank ceiling. "It was a threat, but it wasn't signed by anyone. I don't think the police are likely going to find any leads." There was an amount of sorrow in Jisung's chest at the knowledge that Chenle's death might be a mystery for everybody forever. It made him realize how little he understood about anything, and how some things were meant to remain unknown.
"It's okay, Jisung-ah." Chenle's voice was reassuring and warm, making Jisung's chest tighten. "I've come to terms with the fact that I'll never know."
"You did? How come?" Jisung's eyebrows pinched together with concern, his head turning to the side to look at Chenle's side profile. Slightly translucent, but still there. He had never really left.
Chenle's head also turned so that their eyes could meet. He smiled widely, his cheekbones lifting and causing his eyes to crinkle slightly. "I found something else to care about, I guess." He nudged Jisung's arm with his arm in a playful sort of way.
Jisung smiled. Everything about Chenle captivated him. Like two asteroids colliding together in space, part of Jisung felt that his and Chenle's relationship was inevitable. He wasn't one to believe in fate, but with the way Chenle had him feeling—there were few other words that could accurately describe it. "Do you think it's okay? Like us… Kissin' and all?" Jisung asked tiredly, his lips curving into a lopsided frown. "I was kinda worried that I was being weird."
"You kinda are weird." They both laughed as they stuck their tongues out at one another. "At first I did feel bad." Admitted Chenle. His eyes studied Jisung's face, as if to map out every curve and line. He appreciated every quirk of Jisung's mouth and every single twitch of Jisung's eyes. "I'm a ghost and you're alive. Don't you feel like you deserve to have someone who most people can actually see?" Jisung had never known Chenle to be unsure of himself. Even in spite of his state, Chenle was always positive and confident. Chenle was patient when teaching Jisung to do things that his mother really ought to have taught him and was almost always grinning. There was no person alive who ever made Jisung feel like that.
"I don't really care that you're a ghost. I don't care if you're not technically here." Jisung awkwardly shrugged his shoulders, the movement looking quite odd considering he was lying down. "Whether you're a live human or a ghost or a zombie, it doesn't matter. You're just Chenle to me, there's not really anything else to it." Over-complicating things was usually Jisung's forte, but when it came to this he had decided that it didn't matter. They didn't need to wonder whether it was wrong or right or what the logistics of it all was. They didn't even have to worry about the future. The only thing that mattered was here and now.
"Just Chenle, huh?" The words floated into the air with a relaxed flutter. Anxiety was put to rest and any doubt withered away like a dying plant. "I'm gonna kiss you again."
"Are you promising me or threatening me?"
Chenle's lips brushed against his and the world stopped spinning. When their bodies touched, it felt like time itself halted for them. Two different energies merging into one singular entity. They were so different, but went well together.
That was that. They kissed on the slightly flat mattress that had been pushed into the corner of Jisung's apartment on a sticky summer's night. Except, it wasn't as hot when Chenle was around. The temperatures balanced one another out; so then they simply just were. Just Chenle and just Jisung, and maybe that's all they had to be.