fic: dying to meet you (hongbin + ken, pg-13)
dying to meet you
VIXX, Hongbin + Ken, PG-13, ~5.2k
Lee Hongbin dies on January 22, 2015. Dead Like Me AU. [Warnings]This fic contains non-violent mostly off-screen character deaths. It's a grim reaper AU, please proceed with caution! Originally written for nugu-seyo. AO3 link.
I've wanted to write a VIXX Dead Like Me AU since last year and I am happy I finally had the chance to! Thanks to my special cameos for their help. This is probably not a good fic to be posting on Christmas but, you know. Happy holidays!
The first thing Hongbin sees when he opens his eyes are his glasses, laying several feet away in the middle of the crosswalk, before they are crushed under the heel of a man hurrying into the intersection. He feels like he's been jolted into awakeness, like someone has thrown a cup of ice water into his face, though he has no idea what he's been woken up from. The last thing he remembers is thinking he was going to be late to class, the pedestrian light going green, taking a step into the street-
A woman's voice cuts through his thoughts. "Someone call an ambulance!"
There's a crowd gathered in the intersection, a few impatient cars trying to go around it as other drivers lay on their horns. Hongbin takes a cautious step forward, but before he can make it any closer to the scene, another man pushes past him.
Correction: a man pushes through him.
Hongbin has never been the sharpest tool in the shed, but it doesn't take a genius to put the pieces together. "Oh," Hongbin says to no one in particular. "I'm dead."
Perhaps more disconcerting than the man who just walked through Hongbin's body like it was nothing is the fact that someone responds to him.
"So it seems."
Hongbin jerks his head around to find an attractive girl watching him an expression somewhere between amused and faintly judgemental. She's wearing tall heels and a blazer, not a white robe, and Hongbin isn't even religious anyway, but he can't help asking, "Are you...some kind of angel?"
The girl laughs at this. "God, no. I'm a reaper. And now, from the looks of it, so are you."
This development has little time to sink in before they are interrupted by the wail of sirens, an ambulance and police car arriving to the scene. The crowd of witnesses disperses to allow access and Hongbin has just enough time to see the shattered remains of his DSLR at his body's feet before the girl touches his shoulder, her skin warm even through Hongbin's shirt. "Come on, you don't want to see this," she says, voice gentler now. "We've got people to meet."
Gayoon (the girl's name, the only real information Hongbin has gotten out of her since she announced the whole reaper thing and dragged him away from his own crime scene) leads the way to a hole-in-the-wall barbecue restaurant not far off the subway line. Hongbin is grateful to get away from any crowds; all the pedestrians stepping right through his body like it's no more solid than a beaded curtain at a coffee shop are really starting to freak him out. A woman even sat on him in the subway car. Hongbin had to sit underneath her until she got off for her stop.
She leads him to a table in the very back corner of the restaurant, where a group of three is already seated. Two of them, a guy and a younger girl, are either arguing or talking really loudly at each other across the table while another sullen looking guy pokes his tongs at the strips of beef sizzling on the grill in front of them.
All three heads snap to attention when Gayoon clears her throat. "This is Dasom's Lee Hongbin from this morning." She raises an eyebrow, pointing to the half-empty bottle of soju on the table. "It's not even 10 AM, are you seriously drinking?"
"The passing of any of our esteemed colleagues is reason enough to celebrate," the loud guy says. He looks to Hongbin, raising a shot glass. "And of course, our new friend."
"I'm going to miss Dasom unnie," the other girl pouts.
"She wasn't a very good reaper," the sullen one says, shrugging.
"Yeah, but-"
Hongbin can't hold it in any longer. "Can someone please tell me what is going on?" He's faintly embarrassed by how shrill he sounds, but he's only been dead for an hour, for fuck's sake. He can be spared a little hysteria.
"We're getting there. Take a seat," the loud guy says, and though he's still smiling, his voice has an authoritative edge to it that cuts through the brunt of Hongbin's panic. So Hongbin sits.
Loud guy points to himself. "Introductions first. I'm Jaehwan and this is Ahyoung, Taekwoon, and you've obviously met Gayoon. We're reapers. But not the grim kind," he says, flashing a toothy smile. "The fun kind."
An older lady swings by their table then with a fresh bottle of soju and a plate for Gayoon, and if she is at all disturbed by the current conversation, or that it seems to be directed at the empty space next to Jaehwan, she doesn't let on.
"What he means," Gayoon says, giving Jaehwan a look that says you're not helping, "is that we are not all black cloaks and scythes. We're not the agents of death, we just assist."
"Assist in what, exactly?"
Jaehwan clears his throat. "When you die, the body is taken care of. You're buried, you're cremated. Personal preference. I think cremation is better-world's running out of space, you know. But the souls, who takes care of them?" He pauses to flip the meat, giving Hongbin an expectant look like he wants Hongbin to answer his question. "That's our job, moving the souls from point A, death, to the point B, the afterlife."
Hongbin stares at the center of the table. He has about fifty questions starting with "Why me?" and ending with, "Seriously though, why me?" but what he ends up spitting out is, "Why are you guys, like, solid? And I'm not?"
"You haven't finished corporealizing yet," Jaehwan says around a mouthful of galbi.
"It weird, right?" Ahyoung says, leaning over the table. "When people walk through you. It kind of tickles."
As Hongbin drops his head in his hands, trying and failing to process the last hour, Taekwoon speaks up. His voice is quieter than Hongbin would've expected from such a cold face. "He just died. We shouldn't overwhelm him."
Gayoon touches his arm. "Close your eyes," she says. "Pretend like you're falling asleep. You'll wake up when your physical body has been laid to rest."
Hongbin closes his eyes. He doesn't expect it to be this easy, but his body, uncorporealized as it may be feels heavy in an instant, like everything that's been holding him upright is now seeping out of him. His mother's face crosses his mind and he wonders, briefly, if this is what your life flashing before your eyes feels like before it all goes black.
♠
Lee Hongbin, 21, dies on January 22, 2015. At five minutes until 9 he steps out into the intersection as the pedestrian light goes green, just as Choi Sungho, about to be late to work, runs the red light. 63 kilograms are not a match for two tons of metal-he is dead on impact.
Lee Hongbin un-dies on January 25, 2015, on a couch he doesn't recognize with a pretty girl peering down at him.
"Oh, good, you're awake!" Ahyoung says cheerfully.
Hongbin squints up at her. He feels very much like he's just been run over, which he supposes isn't far off the mark. His body aches when he shifts around to sit up on the couch, taking in his surroundings. An unfamiliar apartment, not much larger than the couch he's occupying and a bed tucked into the corner.
"How did I get here?"
"Your spirit is our property until all the funeral customs are done and you get your physical body back." Ahyoung waves a hand as she shuffles over to the kitchen area. "Ghost magic, best not to question it. The important thing is you're here now."
Any hope of this grim reaper thing being some crazy dream brought on by winter session all-nighters is fading rapidly. "I'm still not clear exactly on why I am here and not in, like. I don't know. Heaven?"
She slams a cabinet door shut. "Because you filled Dasom's quota."
"Quota?"
"Every reaper has a certain number of souls they have to reap before they can move onto the afterlife too," Ahyoung explains. "Only upper management knows what that number is, but you were Dasom's, which means you've now taken her spot."
She returns to the couch holding two mugs, one of which she gives to Hongbin. He's not sure he can bring himself to drink anything, but it's reassuring to grasp something in his hands. "How long have you been dead?" he asks.
Ahyoung gives a small laugh, looking down at her tea. "I was the last new one before you. 2010, murdered."
"Oh," Hongbin says.
"It's okay," she says, and then sings a line of something Hongbin vaguely recalls from the Frozen craze a few months back. Ahyoung can't be much older than him. Hongbin's fingers curl reflexively tighter around the handle of his mug.
Before Hongbin can say anything else insensitive, Ahyoung slaps a hand down on her knee. "Well, we better get going before we're late," she says. "How do you feel about tagging along for your first reap?"
Like the whole being a grim reaper thing itself, Hongbin doesn't really get a choice whether or not he wants to tag along. Apparently, as with driving, Hongbin has to log a certain number of hours shadowing an established reaper before he is given any cases of his own. Hongbin is quickly learning that "a certain number" is code for "no one actually has any idea."
On the subway, Ahyoung shows him how reaping works. "There's a bunch of different divisions. You're assigned to a division based on the method of how you die," she explains, keeping her voice low as not to disturb any of the passengers currently unaware that two members of the undead are sitting among them. "Infectious disease, circulatory systems, war deaths, cancer-I feel like I'm forgetting something. But our division is death by external influence, so we handle any accidents, suicides, or murders."
"That's depressing," Hongbin says.
Ahyoung shrugs. "At least we get to move around, those other guys are stuck in hospitals all day. I'd go crazy if I were them. But it does make our job a little harder than theirs. They have a vague idea of who they're going to be reaping. All we get is a name and a place." And she passes her phone over to Hongbin.
He isn't expecting to see a Kakao group chat. The majority of the received messages are from Jaehwan oppa, and they all read the same: a reaper's name, another name, a location, and a time. Today Taekwoon has a Kang Jaesung in Dongdaemun at 12:31 and Shin Mikyung in Seocho at five 'til 6. Gayoon's got a Choi Eunji at 2 in Mapo. And then there's Ahyoung. 10:02, Ryu Sunghyun at Cheonggyecheon. Ahyoung had texted back a thumbs up sticker.
Hongbin's fingertip hovers over the screen. These are real people whose lives will end today, in a matter of hours, and they don't even know yet. It makes him feel sort of queasy, but he swallows it down.
They arrive at Cheonggyecheon with twelve minutes to spare. Ahyoung slides out her phone again, checking the specific location. "This way," Ahyoung says, taking Hongbin by the hand. It's a cold day, but the sun is shining and they blend in easily with the other couples bundled up in scarves and hats. It's a pleasant enough morning, nothing to suggest someone's impending death.
"Here," Ahyoung says, pulling them to a stop as they reach one of the foot bridges. There's a group of teenage boys hanging out there, all sporting the kind of homemade haircut that screams first year high school student, and Hongbin's stomach lurches again. He contemplates running away for a split second, but then Ahyoung's fingers tighten around his. "Listen," she hisses.
Hongbin tilts his head toward the group. There's a hip hop song playing on someone's phone, that new YG group, and one of the boys wearing glasses and a snapback turned backwards is rapping along while his friends chant, "Sunghyun! Sunghyun!"
"So, how do we. Get his soul out?" Hongbin whispers.
"Do you remember if anything weird happened right before you died? Someone touching you?"
Hongbin thinks back to that day and it already feels like so long ago, though it's only been three days and he was in ghost limbo for most of it. But he remembers the crowd at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn, someone calling his name and when he looked, not a familiar face in the crowd. He'd felt something brush against him and he thought it was someone trying to elbow closer to the front.
Ahyoung reads the recognition across his face. "That was Dasom," she says, nodding. "We just touch someone, and their soul comes with us. I'll show you."
And then she steps closer, Hongbin following obediently behind him. "Excuse me!" she calls out. All five heads whip around to look at them. "Can someone take our picture?" she asks to the group, but Hongbin sees how she extends her phone specifically to Sunghyun.
"Sure," Sunghyun says. He's got a smear of acne across his chin and braces on his lower teeth. He's so fucking young, Hongbin thinks, but he forces a smile when Sunghyun counts down one two three and snaps the photo. They're just an average couple, as far as Sunghyun knows.
"Thank you," Ahyoung says, and when she takes the phone back from Sunghyun, Hongbin sees something blue and shimmering in the air where their hands touch. It's his soul.
Hongbin watches him skip back over to his friends and Ahyoung turns them around, facing the opposite side of the stream. Her phone says 10:01:25 and Hongbin counts out the last 35 seconds under his breath, until he hears, "Hey guys, take a picture of me standing up here!"
Moments later, there is a thump and several loud screams. Sunghyun's soul flickers into existence standing next to them.
"Hey, was that me?" Sunghyun asks, eyes darting back and forth from Ahyoung to his the space where he was just standing a moment ago. "Oh, shit. My mom is going to be so mad at me!"
Ahyoung touches Sunghyun's shoulder with a gentle smile. "I don't think she will," Ahyoung says. "She probably loves you very much."
On the other side of the bridge, something goes bright white like a camera flash. Transposed over the sidewalk is the image of an apartment, a woman cooking at the stove. She turns to look at them and her face lights up when she sees Sunghyun. She extends her hand, beckoning him forward. "Go on, Sunghyun. Go tell your mom that you love her," Ahyoung says, giving Sunghyun the nudge he needs to begin walking towards the light.
Hongbin watches as Sunghyun walks, hesitant at first but almost running as he reaches it, and the light follows right at his heels until it envelopes him. There is another flash just as Hongbin sees him throw his arms around his mother, and then it's gone.
Ryu Sunghyun is gone.
♠
Over the next week, Hongbin adjusts to his life as a reaper. After four nights he is kindly kicked off of Ahyoung's couch, which he can't exactly blame her for considering her apartment is small enough as it is. What might be the worst thing about being a grim reaper, Hongbin learns, is that the job is entirely unpaid. They are expected to keep a second job to actually pay the bills.
Jaehwan has been around long enough to afford a slightly larger apartment, so Hongbin ends up on his couch next.
He knows that Jaehwan is in charge of their division, that he is the one that gets a list every morning of souls in need of reaping, and he knows that Jaehwan has been dead the longest of any of them, but he doesn't know how long that has been.
He accompanies Taekwoon to reap the soul of a middle-aged salaryman who jumps off of his office's roof, follows Gayoon to the outskirts of the city to reap a homeless man who drunkenly trips down the subway stairs, but it's Jaehwan that surprises him. For all the empathy he showed when Hongbin turned up dead, he's a lot nicer to the souls he reaps. He has a certain kind of warmth that people respond to and Hongbin sees it on his face when each soul finishes passing over, the pride he gets in giving them some measure of comfort.
Jaehwan's Tuesday is Hongbin's first child reap. She's a cute little girl and Hongbin hopes that they've got the wrong person, that there is another Park Seohyun who will show up any time now, but her name written in permanent marker on a backpack too large for her tiny frame confirms it.
Her soul reappears in between Jaehwan and Hongbin, and she bites her lip, looking very much afraid. Jaehwan squats down to eye level, taking one of her hands in his as he guides her away from the accident scene. "Seohyunnie," he says, reaching up with his free hand to brush a stray piece of hair behind her ear. "Don't be scared. Do you want to go somewhere fun?"
Seohyun nods, her pigtails bobbing. Hongbin's nails dig into his palms.
"Where do you want to go, huh? Everland?" And this gets a buck-toothed, dimpled smile out of her. Jaehwan smiles back. "Come on, let's go."
Jaehwan holds her hand as they approach the light, and when they're close enough, he lets her hand slip from her grasp as she goes running towards the teacup ride as fast as her little legs will take her. "Bye Seohyun," Jaehwan says as the light closes in on her.
Hongbin finally unclenches his fists, looking down to see crescent moon smears of blood on the inside of his palms. They'll heal soon, but Park Seohyun will still be dead.
"Do you want to go get drunk?" Jaehwan asks. Hongbin wants nothing more.
Still, considering the nature of their business, it's not all doom and gloom. It might take a metric ton of alcohol to get properly shitfaced when your body heals itself, but he gets to see Taekwoon smile when Jaehwan makes a truly, amazingly stupid joke and that almost makes up for it. As long as Hongbin can compartmentalize, can pretend like there isn't a family out there grieving the loss of their too-young daughter, he can do this.
♠
As part of his role as official grim reaper ambassador, Jaehwan helps get Hongbin a job at the temp agency he works at and a new phone, which he delivers to Hongbin at the end of his first day of work.
"Your first assignment," he says, handing the phone over to Hongbin. "You up for it?"
Hongbin has been on a dozen or more reaps now, but he still finds himself hesitating before he says, "Yeah, I think so."
"It's an easy one," Jaehwan says, tapping on Hongbin's screen.
Hongbin:
Hanah Thompson
18:46
Outside Gangdong ECC
Jaehwan claps his hands together. "We show up, look for the foreigner, grab her, and then we celebrate your first successful reap."
"You're coming with me? You said it was my assignment."
"It is. You're like a toddler, Hongbin," Jaehwan says, holding holding a hand up to his stomach which Hongbin thinks is supposed to indicate toddler height, but is closer to something like a preteen. "You've learned to walk, but we're not ready to let you do it unsupervised."
Hongbin doesn't like being compared to a toddler, but he doesn't entirely mind the supervision. Jaehwan makes for good company, like when he spends the bus ride detailing something the stupid thing his client did at lunch that has Hongbin's sides aching from laughter. That only encourages Jaehwan further, because he's one of those people that feeds off of positive attention. Hongbin wonders what he was like when he was alive, if he was a class clown or if this is his way of coping with being dead. Either way, Hongbin could use the laugh.
It turns out to be a bit harder than Jaehwan anticipated. It's started raining by the time they get to the right area and there's a group of three foreign girls taking shelter outside the hagwon under some construction scaffolding.
There's five minutes until one of them is going to die, but Hongbin has no idea which. "Any ideas?" he asks Jaehwan.
Jaehwan shrugs. Hongbin supposes this must be part of the learning to walk process. Four minutes left and Hongbin hopes one of them will go inside or something, but they're busy chatting about something that happened on Friday night.
So Hongbin improvises.
His reaper face, the one he projects to the world instead of the face of a dead man, is plain. It's meant to be. Their average identities allow them to pass through crowds, slip in and out unseen without catching any attention. But Hongbin hopes, as he approaches the girls, that he's maintained some of the confidence his real face gave him.
The girls look up when he says hi. Hongbin gives a small, awkward wave. "Do you have the time?" he asks in crappy English, because it was never his best subject.
"Yeah, it's almost 6:45," the one on the left says. She's shorter than her friends, blonde hair that hangs past her shoulders and blue eyes. Maybe it's his reaper intuition, but in that instant he knows it's her, like you know even before you've reached the platform that you've missed your train. He feels it in his gut.
"Thank you," he says. And then to the group,"What are your names?"
"Jessica."
"Hannah."
"Kayleigh."
They think he's weird. Hongbin can tell from their matching judgmental looks, though he doesn't care. He's reaching down, pulling up Hannah's hand to shake it before she has a chance to pull away. "I am Lee Hongbin," he says.
He's watched this be done countless times now, but Hongbin has no idea what it feels like until his skin touches Hannah. He can feel her soul humming under her skin, every minute pulse of blood running through her body, the steady thump of her heart, and beyond that something more intangible, something warm and soft. Hongbin sees the familiar shimmer and he lets go.
"Nice to meet you," Hongbin says, giving a deep bow. He is the last person on this earth that Hannah Thompson will meet. He almost wants to give her a hug, but he's weirded her out enough already and her time is coming rapidly.
"We should get back inside," Kayleigh says, nudging her friends with her elbow.
"Bye," Hongbin says, and then he turns around quickly, because he doesn't want to see what happens.
Jaehwan is watching him from across the street, giving him a slight nod just as Hongbin hears a horrible crash and then Hongbin blocks the rest out, focusing on the feeling of Hannah Thompson's soul, still alive and beating under his skin like a bird's wings against a cage.
"This fucking sucks," she says when her soul becomes free. "I totally wasn't ready."
Hongbin has been on enough reaps now to know, in their division, no one really is.
Jaehwan makes good on his promise to celebrate, gathering them all at the same barbecue restaurant where Hongbin's ghostly body was first introduced
"You will celebrate anything, won't you?" Gayoon asks, shaking her head at Jaehwan.
"Look, when you've been around as long as I have, you will take every opportunity to appreciate the advancement of soju."
Hakyeon, one of the reapers from infectious diseases who's been invited out with them, leans over the table. "Then why do you still drink the cheap shit?"
"Because there's no accounting for taste," Jaehwan says, throwing back a shot to prove his point. He looks at Hongbin, then gestures down to the table. "Would you like to make a toast, Hongbinnie?"
Hongbin raises his shot glass. "Uh, to being dead?" he says, which makes the table laugh as they clink their glasses together.
"Drink up," Jaehwan says, leaning into Hongbin's space. His breath is hot on Hongbin's neck and it sends a pleasant rush through his body. "No more hangovers when you're dead."
♠
Hongbin gets the day's KaTalk while he's brushing his teeth. He can hear Jaehwan puttering around in the kitchen, probably bent over the counter with his appointment book and a bowl of sugary cereal. If he's tired of having Hongbin sleeping on his fold-out couch, he hasn't let it on yet, which Hongbin is grateful for considering his paycheck is miniscule.
As he's rinsing, Hongbin checks his phone. Ahyoung has a 9:12 and a 19:01, which means she should still be able to get to do her shift at the cafe she works at. Taekwoon has 15:27 on the other side of Seoul. Gayoon has three appointments all at 21:43 which makes Hongbin cringe and quickly scroll past her message. As for Hongbin:
Hongbin:
Oh Kyungsook
19:59
Neungdong, 165-2
Hongbin's stomach does an uneasy flip. This is his university's area. This is where he died and he hasn't been back there since undying and, frankly, he doesn't really want to go back. Not this soon.
"Hey, Hongbin," Jaehwan calls from the kitchen. "Are you ready to leave?"
Hongbin pockets his phone. When he looks up in the mirror, he sees an unfamiliar face, one he's still struggling to get used to. He fakes a smile but it just looks awkward on his body double. "Yeah, I'm coming."
He tries to keep it off his mind at work. Jaehwan seems to sense that something is wrong, but he doesn't push, just wishes Hongbin good luck as they depart in separate directions after their workday.
He lived here for over two years. Every crack in the sidewalk, every overgrown weed suddenly seems familiar to him as he follows his phone's directions to the address. It isn't until he gets within a block that he realizes he knows exactly where he is going, because he's been here more times than he can count, and the recognition hits him so hard he has to stop to catch his breath.
The Looking Glass Cafe is a small cafe, a family-run place with soft cushions and student art work on the walls. Hongbin's own photo for a second-year project is hanging on one of the walls. The smell of tea and coffee hits Hongbin when he pushes through the door, bells jingling behind him. There are less than ten minutes until the shop closes and it's empty on a Friday night, but the lady cleaning up behind the counter greets him with a happy, "Hello! What can I get for you?"
He's been coming here since freshman year, but he never knew her name. Oh Kyungsook. He forces his mouth into a polite smile. "I'll have an Americano to go, thank you."
"Have a seat," she says, "I will bring it out to you."
How many times had Hongbin sat in this seat, working on essays or writing and rewriting the personal statements that had to accompany every student art submission? Kyungsook had been kind to him, always telling him to eat more, to frown less. He wonders if she knows he died. He wants to see if his photo is still hanging on the wall, but he can't bring himself to check.
"One Americano," she says, interrupting his thoughts. She sets it down on the table and next to it, a pastry wrapped in wax paper. Hongbin goes for his wallet but she stops him. "It's on the house. You're all skin and bones, honey."
She couldn't be more than five years older than Hongbin's own mother. Hongbin reaches up and takes one of her hands, soft and wrinkled, clasping it in his own. Her soul comes without fighting. "Thank you," he says. "For everything."
"You kids keep me young," she says with a laugh. "Now you stay warm tonight, okay?"
Hongbin nods. "I'll try."
She locks the door behind him, flipping the sign from open to closed and Hongbin makes it across the street before he stops and shuts his eyes. His grip is so tight on his paper cup that the lid pops open and a trail of hot coffee winds down his fingers, but he doesn't care. He doesn't open his eyes again until he hears her voice, as calm as ever, saying, "Well, it happens to the best of us."
By the time Hongbin reaches Jaehwan's apartment, he is furious. Something inside him has snapped and the full weight of the unfairness crashes into him, like-well, like a fucking car.
Jaehwan is in the kitchen again when he storms inside, but he drops whatever it is he's doing when he sees the look on Hongbin's face. He doesn't say anything sarcastic like Hongbin half-expects. Instead, Jaehwan sinks down on the couch next to him.
"In the beginning, everyone has that one death," Jaehwan says in a quiet voice. "The one death that trips them up, the one death that makes them realize how fucked up this is. You knew her, right?"
Hongbin gives a weak nod.
"I thought it might be the little girl, but you've been handling this all pretty well."
Park Seohyun. Ru Sunghyun. Hannah Thompson. Oh Kyungsook. "She didn't deserve to die."
"No one," Jaehwan starts to say, and then, "Well, most people don't deserve to die. But they have to. There can't be life without death. They have to co-exist."
"You know what Hannah Thompson said? This sucks," Hongbin says, throwing his head back against the couch cushion like he's a child throwing a temper tantrum. "I feel like I should have tried to prevent it."
Jaehwan sighs. "I've lived long enough to see everyone I love die. Of course it fucking sucks."
"And you never wanted to save them?"
"The first rule of death is that you can't save anyone. Everybody dies, and it's not our job to stop it."
"Then what's the point of us?"
"It's not our job to talk someone off the ledge, or to fix the faulty wiring, or-" Jaehwan tilts his head to Hongbin. "Or to stop the car from running the red light. Our job is to make sure that no one has to spend the last moment of their life in pain. That's important."
Then he scoots over until their thighs are touching on the couch cushion and he leans in, wrapping his arms around Hongbin. The angle is a bit awkward, but Hongbin can't remember the last time he really touched someone who wasn't about to die and he sags against Jaehwan, anger dispelled.
"It'll get easier," Jaehwan says, whispering against Hongbin's ear. Hongbin has to believe him.
♠
VIXX, Hongbin + Ken, PG-13, ~5.2k
Lee Hongbin dies on January 22, 2015. Dead Like Me AU. [Warnings]This fic contains non-violent mostly off-screen character deaths. It's a grim reaper AU, please proceed with caution! Originally written for nugu-seyo. AO3 link.
I've wanted to write a VIXX Dead Like Me AU since last year and I am happy I finally had the chance to! Thanks to my special cameos for their help. This is probably not a good fic to be posting on Christmas but, you know. Happy holidays!
The first thing Hongbin sees when he opens his eyes are his glasses, laying several feet away in the middle of the crosswalk, before they are crushed under the heel of a man hurrying into the intersection. He feels like he's been jolted into awakeness, like someone has thrown a cup of ice water into his face, though he has no idea what he's been woken up from. The last thing he remembers is thinking he was going to be late to class, the pedestrian light going green, taking a step into the street-
A woman's voice cuts through his thoughts. "Someone call an ambulance!"
There's a crowd gathered in the intersection, a few impatient cars trying to go around it as other drivers lay on their horns. Hongbin takes a cautious step forward, but before he can make it any closer to the scene, another man pushes past him.
Correction: a man pushes through him.
Hongbin has never been the sharpest tool in the shed, but it doesn't take a genius to put the pieces together. "Oh," Hongbin says to no one in particular. "I'm dead."
Perhaps more disconcerting than the man who just walked through Hongbin's body like it was nothing is the fact that someone responds to him.
"So it seems."
Hongbin jerks his head around to find an attractive girl watching him an expression somewhere between amused and faintly judgemental. She's wearing tall heels and a blazer, not a white robe, and Hongbin isn't even religious anyway, but he can't help asking, "Are you...some kind of angel?"
The girl laughs at this. "God, no. I'm a reaper. And now, from the looks of it, so are you."
This development has little time to sink in before they are interrupted by the wail of sirens, an ambulance and police car arriving to the scene. The crowd of witnesses disperses to allow access and Hongbin has just enough time to see the shattered remains of his DSLR at his body's feet before the girl touches his shoulder, her skin warm even through Hongbin's shirt. "Come on, you don't want to see this," she says, voice gentler now. "We've got people to meet."
Gayoon (the girl's name, the only real information Hongbin has gotten out of her since she announced the whole reaper thing and dragged him away from his own crime scene) leads the way to a hole-in-the-wall barbecue restaurant not far off the subway line. Hongbin is grateful to get away from any crowds; all the pedestrians stepping right through his body like it's no more solid than a beaded curtain at a coffee shop are really starting to freak him out. A woman even sat on him in the subway car. Hongbin had to sit underneath her until she got off for her stop.
She leads him to a table in the very back corner of the restaurant, where a group of three is already seated. Two of them, a guy and a younger girl, are either arguing or talking really loudly at each other across the table while another sullen looking guy pokes his tongs at the strips of beef sizzling on the grill in front of them.
All three heads snap to attention when Gayoon clears her throat. "This is Dasom's Lee Hongbin from this morning." She raises an eyebrow, pointing to the half-empty bottle of soju on the table. "It's not even 10 AM, are you seriously drinking?"
"The passing of any of our esteemed colleagues is reason enough to celebrate," the loud guy says. He looks to Hongbin, raising a shot glass. "And of course, our new friend."
"I'm going to miss Dasom unnie," the other girl pouts.
"She wasn't a very good reaper," the sullen one says, shrugging.
"Yeah, but-"
Hongbin can't hold it in any longer. "Can someone please tell me what is going on?" He's faintly embarrassed by how shrill he sounds, but he's only been dead for an hour, for fuck's sake. He can be spared a little hysteria.
"We're getting there. Take a seat," the loud guy says, and though he's still smiling, his voice has an authoritative edge to it that cuts through the brunt of Hongbin's panic. So Hongbin sits.
Loud guy points to himself. "Introductions first. I'm Jaehwan and this is Ahyoung, Taekwoon, and you've obviously met Gayoon. We're reapers. But not the grim kind," he says, flashing a toothy smile. "The fun kind."
An older lady swings by their table then with a fresh bottle of soju and a plate for Gayoon, and if she is at all disturbed by the current conversation, or that it seems to be directed at the empty space next to Jaehwan, she doesn't let on.
"What he means," Gayoon says, giving Jaehwan a look that says you're not helping, "is that we are not all black cloaks and scythes. We're not the agents of death, we just assist."
"Assist in what, exactly?"
Jaehwan clears his throat. "When you die, the body is taken care of. You're buried, you're cremated. Personal preference. I think cremation is better-world's running out of space, you know. But the souls, who takes care of them?" He pauses to flip the meat, giving Hongbin an expectant look like he wants Hongbin to answer his question. "That's our job, moving the souls from point A, death, to the point B, the afterlife."
Hongbin stares at the center of the table. He has about fifty questions starting with "Why me?" and ending with, "Seriously though, why me?" but what he ends up spitting out is, "Why are you guys, like, solid? And I'm not?"
"You haven't finished corporealizing yet," Jaehwan says around a mouthful of galbi.
"It weird, right?" Ahyoung says, leaning over the table. "When people walk through you. It kind of tickles."
As Hongbin drops his head in his hands, trying and failing to process the last hour, Taekwoon speaks up. His voice is quieter than Hongbin would've expected from such a cold face. "He just died. We shouldn't overwhelm him."
Gayoon touches his arm. "Close your eyes," she says. "Pretend like you're falling asleep. You'll wake up when your physical body has been laid to rest."
Hongbin closes his eyes. He doesn't expect it to be this easy, but his body, uncorporealized as it may be feels heavy in an instant, like everything that's been holding him upright is now seeping out of him. His mother's face crosses his mind and he wonders, briefly, if this is what your life flashing before your eyes feels like before it all goes black.
♠
Lee Hongbin, 21, dies on January 22, 2015. At five minutes until 9 he steps out into the intersection as the pedestrian light goes green, just as Choi Sungho, about to be late to work, runs the red light. 63 kilograms are not a match for two tons of metal-he is dead on impact.
Lee Hongbin un-dies on January 25, 2015, on a couch he doesn't recognize with a pretty girl peering down at him.
"Oh, good, you're awake!" Ahyoung says cheerfully.
Hongbin squints up at her. He feels very much like he's just been run over, which he supposes isn't far off the mark. His body aches when he shifts around to sit up on the couch, taking in his surroundings. An unfamiliar apartment, not much larger than the couch he's occupying and a bed tucked into the corner.
"How did I get here?"
"Your spirit is our property until all the funeral customs are done and you get your physical body back." Ahyoung waves a hand as she shuffles over to the kitchen area. "Ghost magic, best not to question it. The important thing is you're here now."
Any hope of this grim reaper thing being some crazy dream brought on by winter session all-nighters is fading rapidly. "I'm still not clear exactly on why I am here and not in, like. I don't know. Heaven?"
She slams a cabinet door shut. "Because you filled Dasom's quota."
"Quota?"
"Every reaper has a certain number of souls they have to reap before they can move onto the afterlife too," Ahyoung explains. "Only upper management knows what that number is, but you were Dasom's, which means you've now taken her spot."
She returns to the couch holding two mugs, one of which she gives to Hongbin. He's not sure he can bring himself to drink anything, but it's reassuring to grasp something in his hands. "How long have you been dead?" he asks.
Ahyoung gives a small laugh, looking down at her tea. "I was the last new one before you. 2010, murdered."
"Oh," Hongbin says.
"It's okay," she says, and then sings a line of something Hongbin vaguely recalls from the Frozen craze a few months back. Ahyoung can't be much older than him. Hongbin's fingers curl reflexively tighter around the handle of his mug.
Before Hongbin can say anything else insensitive, Ahyoung slaps a hand down on her knee. "Well, we better get going before we're late," she says. "How do you feel about tagging along for your first reap?"
Like the whole being a grim reaper thing itself, Hongbin doesn't really get a choice whether or not he wants to tag along. Apparently, as with driving, Hongbin has to log a certain number of hours shadowing an established reaper before he is given any cases of his own. Hongbin is quickly learning that "a certain number" is code for "no one actually has any idea."
On the subway, Ahyoung shows him how reaping works. "There's a bunch of different divisions. You're assigned to a division based on the method of how you die," she explains, keeping her voice low as not to disturb any of the passengers currently unaware that two members of the undead are sitting among them. "Infectious disease, circulatory systems, war deaths, cancer-I feel like I'm forgetting something. But our division is death by external influence, so we handle any accidents, suicides, or murders."
"That's depressing," Hongbin says.
Ahyoung shrugs. "At least we get to move around, those other guys are stuck in hospitals all day. I'd go crazy if I were them. But it does make our job a little harder than theirs. They have a vague idea of who they're going to be reaping. All we get is a name and a place." And she passes her phone over to Hongbin.
He isn't expecting to see a Kakao group chat. The majority of the received messages are from Jaehwan oppa, and they all read the same: a reaper's name, another name, a location, and a time. Today Taekwoon has a Kang Jaesung in Dongdaemun at 12:31 and Shin Mikyung in Seocho at five 'til 6. Gayoon's got a Choi Eunji at 2 in Mapo. And then there's Ahyoung. 10:02, Ryu Sunghyun at Cheonggyecheon. Ahyoung had texted back a thumbs up sticker.
Hongbin's fingertip hovers over the screen. These are real people whose lives will end today, in a matter of hours, and they don't even know yet. It makes him feel sort of queasy, but he swallows it down.
They arrive at Cheonggyecheon with twelve minutes to spare. Ahyoung slides out her phone again, checking the specific location. "This way," Ahyoung says, taking Hongbin by the hand. It's a cold day, but the sun is shining and they blend in easily with the other couples bundled up in scarves and hats. It's a pleasant enough morning, nothing to suggest someone's impending death.
"Here," Ahyoung says, pulling them to a stop as they reach one of the foot bridges. There's a group of teenage boys hanging out there, all sporting the kind of homemade haircut that screams first year high school student, and Hongbin's stomach lurches again. He contemplates running away for a split second, but then Ahyoung's fingers tighten around his. "Listen," she hisses.
Hongbin tilts his head toward the group. There's a hip hop song playing on someone's phone, that new YG group, and one of the boys wearing glasses and a snapback turned backwards is rapping along while his friends chant, "Sunghyun! Sunghyun!"
"So, how do we. Get his soul out?" Hongbin whispers.
"Do you remember if anything weird happened right before you died? Someone touching you?"
Hongbin thinks back to that day and it already feels like so long ago, though it's only been three days and he was in ghost limbo for most of it. But he remembers the crowd at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn, someone calling his name and when he looked, not a familiar face in the crowd. He'd felt something brush against him and he thought it was someone trying to elbow closer to the front.
Ahyoung reads the recognition across his face. "That was Dasom," she says, nodding. "We just touch someone, and their soul comes with us. I'll show you."
And then she steps closer, Hongbin following obediently behind him. "Excuse me!" she calls out. All five heads whip around to look at them. "Can someone take our picture?" she asks to the group, but Hongbin sees how she extends her phone specifically to Sunghyun.
"Sure," Sunghyun says. He's got a smear of acne across his chin and braces on his lower teeth. He's so fucking young, Hongbin thinks, but he forces a smile when Sunghyun counts down one two three and snaps the photo. They're just an average couple, as far as Sunghyun knows.
"Thank you," Ahyoung says, and when she takes the phone back from Sunghyun, Hongbin sees something blue and shimmering in the air where their hands touch. It's his soul.
Hongbin watches him skip back over to his friends and Ahyoung turns them around, facing the opposite side of the stream. Her phone says 10:01:25 and Hongbin counts out the last 35 seconds under his breath, until he hears, "Hey guys, take a picture of me standing up here!"
Moments later, there is a thump and several loud screams. Sunghyun's soul flickers into existence standing next to them.
"Hey, was that me?" Sunghyun asks, eyes darting back and forth from Ahyoung to his the space where he was just standing a moment ago. "Oh, shit. My mom is going to be so mad at me!"
Ahyoung touches Sunghyun's shoulder with a gentle smile. "I don't think she will," Ahyoung says. "She probably loves you very much."
On the other side of the bridge, something goes bright white like a camera flash. Transposed over the sidewalk is the image of an apartment, a woman cooking at the stove. She turns to look at them and her face lights up when she sees Sunghyun. She extends her hand, beckoning him forward. "Go on, Sunghyun. Go tell your mom that you love her," Ahyoung says, giving Sunghyun the nudge he needs to begin walking towards the light.
Hongbin watches as Sunghyun walks, hesitant at first but almost running as he reaches it, and the light follows right at his heels until it envelopes him. There is another flash just as Hongbin sees him throw his arms around his mother, and then it's gone.
Ryu Sunghyun is gone.
♠
Over the next week, Hongbin adjusts to his life as a reaper. After four nights he is kindly kicked off of Ahyoung's couch, which he can't exactly blame her for considering her apartment is small enough as it is. What might be the worst thing about being a grim reaper, Hongbin learns, is that the job is entirely unpaid. They are expected to keep a second job to actually pay the bills.
Jaehwan has been around long enough to afford a slightly larger apartment, so Hongbin ends up on his couch next.
He knows that Jaehwan is in charge of their division, that he is the one that gets a list every morning of souls in need of reaping, and he knows that Jaehwan has been dead the longest of any of them, but he doesn't know how long that has been.
He accompanies Taekwoon to reap the soul of a middle-aged salaryman who jumps off of his office's roof, follows Gayoon to the outskirts of the city to reap a homeless man who drunkenly trips down the subway stairs, but it's Jaehwan that surprises him. For all the empathy he showed when Hongbin turned up dead, he's a lot nicer to the souls he reaps. He has a certain kind of warmth that people respond to and Hongbin sees it on his face when each soul finishes passing over, the pride he gets in giving them some measure of comfort.
Jaehwan's Tuesday is Hongbin's first child reap. She's a cute little girl and Hongbin hopes that they've got the wrong person, that there is another Park Seohyun who will show up any time now, but her name written in permanent marker on a backpack too large for her tiny frame confirms it.
Her soul reappears in between Jaehwan and Hongbin, and she bites her lip, looking very much afraid. Jaehwan squats down to eye level, taking one of her hands in his as he guides her away from the accident scene. "Seohyunnie," he says, reaching up with his free hand to brush a stray piece of hair behind her ear. "Don't be scared. Do you want to go somewhere fun?"
Seohyun nods, her pigtails bobbing. Hongbin's nails dig into his palms.
"Where do you want to go, huh? Everland?" And this gets a buck-toothed, dimpled smile out of her. Jaehwan smiles back. "Come on, let's go."
Jaehwan holds her hand as they approach the light, and when they're close enough, he lets her hand slip from her grasp as she goes running towards the teacup ride as fast as her little legs will take her. "Bye Seohyun," Jaehwan says as the light closes in on her.
Hongbin finally unclenches his fists, looking down to see crescent moon smears of blood on the inside of his palms. They'll heal soon, but Park Seohyun will still be dead.
"Do you want to go get drunk?" Jaehwan asks. Hongbin wants nothing more.
Still, considering the nature of their business, it's not all doom and gloom. It might take a metric ton of alcohol to get properly shitfaced when your body heals itself, but he gets to see Taekwoon smile when Jaehwan makes a truly, amazingly stupid joke and that almost makes up for it. As long as Hongbin can compartmentalize, can pretend like there isn't a family out there grieving the loss of their too-young daughter, he can do this.
♠
As part of his role as official grim reaper ambassador, Jaehwan helps get Hongbin a job at the temp agency he works at and a new phone, which he delivers to Hongbin at the end of his first day of work.
"Your first assignment," he says, handing the phone over to Hongbin. "You up for it?"
Hongbin has been on a dozen or more reaps now, but he still finds himself hesitating before he says, "Yeah, I think so."
"It's an easy one," Jaehwan says, tapping on Hongbin's screen.
Hongbin:
Hanah Thompson
18:46
Outside Gangdong ECC
Jaehwan claps his hands together. "We show up, look for the foreigner, grab her, and then we celebrate your first successful reap."
"You're coming with me? You said it was my assignment."
"It is. You're like a toddler, Hongbin," Jaehwan says, holding holding a hand up to his stomach which Hongbin thinks is supposed to indicate toddler height, but is closer to something like a preteen. "You've learned to walk, but we're not ready to let you do it unsupervised."
Hongbin doesn't like being compared to a toddler, but he doesn't entirely mind the supervision. Jaehwan makes for good company, like when he spends the bus ride detailing something the stupid thing his client did at lunch that has Hongbin's sides aching from laughter. That only encourages Jaehwan further, because he's one of those people that feeds off of positive attention. Hongbin wonders what he was like when he was alive, if he was a class clown or if this is his way of coping with being dead. Either way, Hongbin could use the laugh.
It turns out to be a bit harder than Jaehwan anticipated. It's started raining by the time they get to the right area and there's a group of three foreign girls taking shelter outside the hagwon under some construction scaffolding.
There's five minutes until one of them is going to die, but Hongbin has no idea which. "Any ideas?" he asks Jaehwan.
Jaehwan shrugs. Hongbin supposes this must be part of the learning to walk process. Four minutes left and Hongbin hopes one of them will go inside or something, but they're busy chatting about something that happened on Friday night.
So Hongbin improvises.
His reaper face, the one he projects to the world instead of the face of a dead man, is plain. It's meant to be. Their average identities allow them to pass through crowds, slip in and out unseen without catching any attention. But Hongbin hopes, as he approaches the girls, that he's maintained some of the confidence his real face gave him.
The girls look up when he says hi. Hongbin gives a small, awkward wave. "Do you have the time?" he asks in crappy English, because it was never his best subject.
"Yeah, it's almost 6:45," the one on the left says. She's shorter than her friends, blonde hair that hangs past her shoulders and blue eyes. Maybe it's his reaper intuition, but in that instant he knows it's her, like you know even before you've reached the platform that you've missed your train. He feels it in his gut.
"Thank you," he says. And then to the group,"What are your names?"
"Jessica."
"Hannah."
"Kayleigh."
They think he's weird. Hongbin can tell from their matching judgmental looks, though he doesn't care. He's reaching down, pulling up Hannah's hand to shake it before she has a chance to pull away. "I am Lee Hongbin," he says.
He's watched this be done countless times now, but Hongbin has no idea what it feels like until his skin touches Hannah. He can feel her soul humming under her skin, every minute pulse of blood running through her body, the steady thump of her heart, and beyond that something more intangible, something warm and soft. Hongbin sees the familiar shimmer and he lets go.
"Nice to meet you," Hongbin says, giving a deep bow. He is the last person on this earth that Hannah Thompson will meet. He almost wants to give her a hug, but he's weirded her out enough already and her time is coming rapidly.
"We should get back inside," Kayleigh says, nudging her friends with her elbow.
"Bye," Hongbin says, and then he turns around quickly, because he doesn't want to see what happens.
Jaehwan is watching him from across the street, giving him a slight nod just as Hongbin hears a horrible crash and then Hongbin blocks the rest out, focusing on the feeling of Hannah Thompson's soul, still alive and beating under his skin like a bird's wings against a cage.
"This fucking sucks," she says when her soul becomes free. "I totally wasn't ready."
Hongbin has been on enough reaps now to know, in their division, no one really is.
Jaehwan makes good on his promise to celebrate, gathering them all at the same barbecue restaurant where Hongbin's ghostly body was first introduced
"You will celebrate anything, won't you?" Gayoon asks, shaking her head at Jaehwan.
"Look, when you've been around as long as I have, you will take every opportunity to appreciate the advancement of soju."
Hakyeon, one of the reapers from infectious diseases who's been invited out with them, leans over the table. "Then why do you still drink the cheap shit?"
"Because there's no accounting for taste," Jaehwan says, throwing back a shot to prove his point. He looks at Hongbin, then gestures down to the table. "Would you like to make a toast, Hongbinnie?"
Hongbin raises his shot glass. "Uh, to being dead?" he says, which makes the table laugh as they clink their glasses together.
"Drink up," Jaehwan says, leaning into Hongbin's space. His breath is hot on Hongbin's neck and it sends a pleasant rush through his body. "No more hangovers when you're dead."
♠
Hongbin gets the day's KaTalk while he's brushing his teeth. He can hear Jaehwan puttering around in the kitchen, probably bent over the counter with his appointment book and a bowl of sugary cereal. If he's tired of having Hongbin sleeping on his fold-out couch, he hasn't let it on yet, which Hongbin is grateful for considering his paycheck is miniscule.
As he's rinsing, Hongbin checks his phone. Ahyoung has a 9:12 and a 19:01, which means she should still be able to get to do her shift at the cafe she works at. Taekwoon has 15:27 on the other side of Seoul. Gayoon has three appointments all at 21:43 which makes Hongbin cringe and quickly scroll past her message. As for Hongbin:
Hongbin:
Oh Kyungsook
19:59
Neungdong, 165-2
Hongbin's stomach does an uneasy flip. This is his university's area. This is where he died and he hasn't been back there since undying and, frankly, he doesn't really want to go back. Not this soon.
"Hey, Hongbin," Jaehwan calls from the kitchen. "Are you ready to leave?"
Hongbin pockets his phone. When he looks up in the mirror, he sees an unfamiliar face, one he's still struggling to get used to. He fakes a smile but it just looks awkward on his body double. "Yeah, I'm coming."
He tries to keep it off his mind at work. Jaehwan seems to sense that something is wrong, but he doesn't push, just wishes Hongbin good luck as they depart in separate directions after their workday.
He lived here for over two years. Every crack in the sidewalk, every overgrown weed suddenly seems familiar to him as he follows his phone's directions to the address. It isn't until he gets within a block that he realizes he knows exactly where he is going, because he's been here more times than he can count, and the recognition hits him so hard he has to stop to catch his breath.
The Looking Glass Cafe is a small cafe, a family-run place with soft cushions and student art work on the walls. Hongbin's own photo for a second-year project is hanging on one of the walls. The smell of tea and coffee hits Hongbin when he pushes through the door, bells jingling behind him. There are less than ten minutes until the shop closes and it's empty on a Friday night, but the lady cleaning up behind the counter greets him with a happy, "Hello! What can I get for you?"
He's been coming here since freshman year, but he never knew her name. Oh Kyungsook. He forces his mouth into a polite smile. "I'll have an Americano to go, thank you."
"Have a seat," she says, "I will bring it out to you."
How many times had Hongbin sat in this seat, working on essays or writing and rewriting the personal statements that had to accompany every student art submission? Kyungsook had been kind to him, always telling him to eat more, to frown less. He wonders if she knows he died. He wants to see if his photo is still hanging on the wall, but he can't bring himself to check.
"One Americano," she says, interrupting his thoughts. She sets it down on the table and next to it, a pastry wrapped in wax paper. Hongbin goes for his wallet but she stops him. "It's on the house. You're all skin and bones, honey."
She couldn't be more than five years older than Hongbin's own mother. Hongbin reaches up and takes one of her hands, soft and wrinkled, clasping it in his own. Her soul comes without fighting. "Thank you," he says. "For everything."
"You kids keep me young," she says with a laugh. "Now you stay warm tonight, okay?"
Hongbin nods. "I'll try."
She locks the door behind him, flipping the sign from open to closed and Hongbin makes it across the street before he stops and shuts his eyes. His grip is so tight on his paper cup that the lid pops open and a trail of hot coffee winds down his fingers, but he doesn't care. He doesn't open his eyes again until he hears her voice, as calm as ever, saying, "Well, it happens to the best of us."
By the time Hongbin reaches Jaehwan's apartment, he is furious. Something inside him has snapped and the full weight of the unfairness crashes into him, like-well, like a fucking car.
Jaehwan is in the kitchen again when he storms inside, but he drops whatever it is he's doing when he sees the look on Hongbin's face. He doesn't say anything sarcastic like Hongbin half-expects. Instead, Jaehwan sinks down on the couch next to him.
"In the beginning, everyone has that one death," Jaehwan says in a quiet voice. "The one death that trips them up, the one death that makes them realize how fucked up this is. You knew her, right?"
Hongbin gives a weak nod.
"I thought it might be the little girl, but you've been handling this all pretty well."
Park Seohyun. Ru Sunghyun. Hannah Thompson. Oh Kyungsook. "She didn't deserve to die."
"No one," Jaehwan starts to say, and then, "Well, most people don't deserve to die. But they have to. There can't be life without death. They have to co-exist."
"You know what Hannah Thompson said? This sucks," Hongbin says, throwing his head back against the couch cushion like he's a child throwing a temper tantrum. "I feel like I should have tried to prevent it."
Jaehwan sighs. "I've lived long enough to see everyone I love die. Of course it fucking sucks."
"And you never wanted to save them?"
"The first rule of death is that you can't save anyone. Everybody dies, and it's not our job to stop it."
"Then what's the point of us?"
"It's not our job to talk someone off the ledge, or to fix the faulty wiring, or-" Jaehwan tilts his head to Hongbin. "Or to stop the car from running the red light. Our job is to make sure that no one has to spend the last moment of their life in pain. That's important."
Then he scoots over until their thighs are touching on the couch cushion and he leans in, wrapping his arms around Hongbin. The angle is a bit awkward, but Hongbin can't remember the last time he really touched someone who wasn't about to die and he sags against Jaehwan, anger dispelled.
"It'll get easier," Jaehwan says, whispering against Hongbin's ear. Hongbin has to believe him.
♠