Fic for uchikins (Part 1 of 2)
Title: Through the Glass 1/2
By: flamesword
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG-13
Genre/Warnings: Angst, character death (ghost!Jin), possibly crack
Notes: Written for uchikins for her kizuna_exchange request. Thanks to orange_smaug for beta comments and mnemonic_psych for betaing and valuable help with plot elements, and other people for general encouragement and helpfulness. Timeline is roughly in the present, however the recent news of the Asia tour and Jin going back to LA has been ignored.
Summary: Jin hates being a ghost; he can't remember how he died and he has no idea why, but for some reason Kame is really, really mad at him.
Jin really didn't like being a ghost. It wasn't fun - if he'd ever thought about it before, he'd have thought it would be, being invisible, being able to go anywhere and see or hear anything he wanted to, but it wasn't.
It was hard, watching his family mourning him, his friends sad and subdued, drifting around the edges of the place in their lives where he'd been.
Watching Kame hold things together in public, hold KAT-TUN together the way he always had, and in private be so angry with him, hurting and grieving and furious in a way Jin hadn't expected him to be, had never imagined he would be.
He'd thought things were good between them, they'd fixed things after the most recent storm in their often turbulent relationship, Kame was happy and Jin was happy and he'd expect Kame to grieve for him, miss him, cry even - but the anger and curses and throwing things, that was weird.
If Kame had just been mad at the universe, that would have made some sense, but Jin had gathered that Kame was mad at him personally and specifically, and he didn't know what to make of it. He was dead, but that was an accident, right, and it was hardly his fault. Was it? He didn't think it was.
At first he could do little more than hover anxiously, bewildered as he followed Kame around and watched the way he pulled off his obligations in his usual professional manner, but in private lapsed into either cold, grim silence (when in private among people he was close to and trusted) or sometimes random outbursts of fury when he was alone; swearing and violence and rage that had Jin completely bemused.
What exactly had he done that had pissed Kame off so badly? Nothing that Kame had said was giving him any clues, and he couldn't remember exactly what had happened when he died. He was sure it hadn't been suicide - he hadn't had any reason to, didn't think he'd ever thought of doing something like that, and as far as he could remember, he'd been happy with his life for the first time in a long time.
He'd finally had a solo concert, was starting to forge a path on his own personal music career, beyond KAT-TUN, because he knew that couldn't last forever and he didn't really want it to - not that he was going to leave them completely. He didn't want to be the reason they broke up or disbanded, he still cared about them and wanted to stay a part of it - but he'd needed to start branching out on his own a little bit, doing some things for himself.
Kame had been supportive of it, he thought, had accepted that Jin wasn't going to be happy focused only on the six of them forever, and they'd been getting along... well, great, actually, Jin had believed that he had his best friend back, after the various bits of drama over the years; something that Jin could admit had often been his own fault.
But he'd grown up, or at least he flattered himself that he'd gotten a lot more mature than he used to be, and Kame had always been patient with him - sometimes rather resignedly, it was true, but still Jin had never had reason to believe that Kame was this mad at him. About anything. He wasn't entirely sure now that Kame didn't hate him, and that was just scary. Impossible. Did not compute. Okay, kind of terrifying, not just because Kame was always a force to be reckoned with but...how, what, why? It just made no sense...the very unexplainableness of it somehow added to the tingle of fear.
If he still had a body left, he'd probably shiver at the thought, but he didn't and he just felt...quivery, sort of? Strange. Almost like he was seasick, and he had no idea how that worked without having a stomach to feel it in, but whatever. He wished he knew what was going on, could remember...something, anything that might give him a clue, but he was totally lost.
If he could figure out a way to talk to Kame... well, he wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to, because what if Kame told him that to his face? What if...his imagination failed him, but he was not at all sure that he really wanted to know. Kame was really, really mad at him. Jin was a little bit - okay, maybe more than a little bit - afraid of him right now.
Even if he was a ghost, and there was no way Kame could possibly hurt him. Probably. Right? If Kame threw something at him, it should go right through him. Right.
Of course, even if Kame couldn't touch him, there was hurt, and then there was hurt. Kame had always been able to hurt him deeper than anyone else, without even touching him at all. Jin not-shivered again, and maybe, if he'd still been human, he would have whimpered a little bit.
Kame was going to kill him. Err...more. Again. Something like that. Oh man, he was not looking forward to this at all.
He left Kame alone for a few days, wanting to think it over, going back to hang around near some of his other friends, mostly Yamapi and Ryo, while he tried to decide if he even wanted to try to talk to Kame, and if so, how? He hadn't figured out yet how to actually make himself visible, much less talk to people. That was possible, right?
It was hard to stay away from Kame for long, though, and he drifted into Kame's flat late one night to just maybe watch him sleep, assuming he was sleeping - never something you could count on with Kame, but he could hope.
Kame was awake, though, watching tv and drinking a beer and for once not looking particularly angry, just tired. Exhausted, even. Jin thought if he was that tired then he ought to just go the fuck to bed, but Kame wasn't always sane like that, even before Jin died. He sighed and hovered there watching Kame for a minute, wishing he was solid enough to wrestle Kame off the couch and into bed by force, or at least... push his hair back or something.
Some ghosts could do that, right? Touch things, at least? Make things fall or move, or blow past like a wind to make things flutter, or something. He'd heard stories like that. Probably ought to figure out visibility first, though. Not really sure how to go about it, he went to stand in front of the tv in Kame's line of sight and held his breath, wishing himself solid and visible as fiercely as he knew how, trying to believe that he was with all his might, as if that might help.
It worked for Tinkerbell, something like that, so maybe it would work for him.
Kame merely frowned, rubbing his eyes as if to clear them and then reaching for the remote to change the channel, shaking his head and muttering about the signal, squinting at the screen as if it were suddenly fuzzy or something.
Jin let out his breath in a sigh before he realised that he didn't have breath to hold anymore, and so yeah, that probably hadn't helped at all. At any rate, it was obvious Kame hadn't seen him. Maybe had seen a smudge or something. But not Jin. Discouraged, Jin perched himself on the end of Kame's couch and watched him disconsolately, wondering what to try next. Or how to try harder, since it seemed like it might have started to work.
He hadn't come up with any ideas by the time Kame finally turned off the tv and went to bed, and sat there in the dark for the rest of the night just letting his mind wander, remembering and wishing and feeling rather sorry for himself. He was so screwed. He was dead, after all, and it didn't get much more screwed than that.
The next day he followed Kame to work as usual, but he got bored - at least he told himself it was bored - with the endless repetitions of dance routines that no longer had him in them, the other five reworking their steps for various numbers to make it less obvious. They weren't performing yet, just rehearsing and practicing but it made Jin feel weird to watch them working without him.
He left finally to go find something else to do, not that there was a whole lot a ghost could do. He amused himself for awhile with going through walls and sneaking into places that he would normally get kicked out of, but it only reminded him that he was invisible, unable to touch or feel, not really even there. Not even real, anymore.
No one could see him, no one could hear him, and it was seeming unlikely that anyone ever would. He'd never be able to touch anyone again, get a friendly pat on the back, feel the warmth of a hand on his arm, hug someone or even get injured. On the bright side, it kept Kame from killing him - on the other hand, it all made it impossible to find out why Kame apparently wanted to.
He wished he could remember how he died - some kind of accident, he thought vaguely. Car wreck? Maybe. Those were pretty common, right, people died every day like that. Or maybe he got mugged, robbed and shot or something. Knifed in the back, that sounded kind of cool. He really hoped it hadn't been something dumb, some stupid mistake that was... well, actually his own fault.
Maybe that was why Kame was mad? He really didn't think so, but he had to admit, unhappily, that it would make a little bit of sense.
He stopped in front of the big plate glass window of a random shop and tried making himself visible again, not sure that he would have a reflection even if he succeeded, but not having anything better to do, either. It took him awhile and maybe he was just imagining things, but he thought eventually he saw a sort of shape or shadow on the glass. Maybe.
Another good thing about no one being able to hear him occurred to him, and he realised that now he could say anything he wanted to anyone. He spent some time swooping down on people in the street and randomly insulting them, criticizing their appearance or their taste in music (if they were listening to earphones it was easy enough for him to hear what they were hearing, somehow) or anything else he felt like shouting out to the world that he would normally get in trouble for saying.
He went looking for people he knew eventually, finding it even more fun to say things he'd always wanted to say but had never quite dared to when he was alive. Not his family, not yet, because facing their grief was still a little too painful to watch, much less to mock. But there were a few random acquaintances, not exactly friends but somehow part of the general circle he hung out with, that he'd always found particularly annoying, and it was rather satisfying to tell them to their faces - sort of - exactly what he thought of them.
Then he went back to Johnny's office at the jimusho and told him off like he had sometimes dreamed of, getting things off his chest that it had always been too unwise or too impolitic to say, even for him.
The old man ignored him, of course, not being able to hear it anymore than anyone else could, but it still felt good.
A few of the juniors earned their own rants and tirades and general verbal harassment, and then he went looking for Yamapi again. He found that it was less fun to tease his friend when Yamapi couldn't hear him, but nevertheless amused himself this way for some time, particularly when the rest of NEWS was around and he could make fun of them too.
It was more active than he'd been since he'd woken up and found himself a ghost to begin with, and by the end of the day when everyone was leaving and parting ways he felt strangely tired, as if he were... fading somehow, and it scared him enough that he stopped moving, resting for a few minutes to see if that would steady him a bit.
Rather, he only felt dizzy and more tired, and he started to panic. Not good, not good, this was not good. He was never going to figure out what was wrong with Kame and somehow fix it if he disappeared completely! Part of him reached helplessly after Kame, wondering where he was, wanting to see him and follow him home because somehow Jin was sure that the uneasy feeling would go away if Kame was there, and he'd never wanted more to be able to just somehow teleport himself to wherever Kame was. Right now, this instant.
But it didn't happen and Kame wasn't there, and the feeling got worse and worse the more he freaked out about it. He tried desperately to hang on to what senses he had, his feeling of self, the feeling that he still existed, even in this nebulous invisible form, trying to focus all his energy on feeling and being somehow, holding tightly to what he could of himself.
It felt like he was curling in on himself, and maybe he was falling, either to the ground or simply down and down and down, and everything kept getting further and fainter and less coherent. It was like he was fainting or falling asleep in some inexorable slowness, the world slipping away no matter how hard he tried to hang on to it. Then it was gone, and everything went black.
He had no way of knowing how much time had passed when he found himself aware again - it wasn't quite like waking up, but it was more like that than it was like anything else. To his immense relief he realised he was in Kame's living room again, and decided that if that was teleportation, then teleportation sucked. Looking around he saw that it was now dark outside, and apparently quite late - a glance at Kame's clock told him rather that it was early, very early morning in fact, and he shrugged to himself. Close enough.
Drifting into Kame's bedroom he went to make sure that Kame was there, and settle the lingering uneasiness he was feeling. As long as Kame was fine, or something resembling fine, that was something. He curled up on the end of Kame's bed and watched him sleep, pondering the odd blackout and wondering what had caused it. Maybe he had just worn himself out, somehow - even ghosts could get tired, maybe.
Maybe that was the ghost version of sleep? It didn't feel good at all, it was scary as hell, but Jin had to admit that it might not have been as bad if he hadn't panicked and tried to fight it like he had. He suddenly missed the familiar, ordinary kind of sleep, the kind in which you might have good dreams, if you were lucky, or at least have the pleasure of feeling comfortably lazy and relaxed as you fell into it.
At any rate, he would have to be careful from now on not to use too much energy doing... stupid things. Things that didn't help him figure out what was going on, what was wrong with Kame. Something had to be wrong with Kame, because Kame being that mad at him was just - well, it was wrong. And totally not his fault.
For the next few days he simply hung around Kame's flat, not following him to work because he'd had enough of that, but wanting to be where Kame was -- or would come back to -- anyway, still feeling a bit shaken by the weird fadeout and not wanting it to happen again when he was somewhere else. Kame and Kame's space made him feel grounded somehow, like it was home now. He didn't think too much about it, just took it as a good thing because it helped him concentrate on the really important things, like figuring out why Kame was angry with him.
As the days passed Kame looked more tired and his outbursts of anger were less frequent, and frequently less loud, but Jin still heard curses aimed in his direction whenever something particularly reminded Kame of him, not that Jin always knew what that something was, but he'd figured out before too long that something generally had.
It seemed like sometimes Kame had been holding his temper all day and just had to let it out when he got home, or he'd be sitting and thinking, brooding until his anger got the better of him and he had to get up and stomp around and throw things, swearing under his breath or shouting incomprehensible things at thin air. Jin was never entirely sure what would set him off, and it seemed next to impossible to guess when or what the next thing would be, although certain things were fairly predictable.
On this particular day Kame was doing his grim and silent thing, making dinner in his lonely kitchen while Jin wandered around humming to himself - he realised he was humming one of his own songs, and began singing it instead, paying little attention to Kame until he moved suddenly, stiffening and whirling around to stare into space.
"Jin?" he muttered to himself, seemingly spellbound and Jin stopped what he was doing to stare at him, taken aback and feeling a strange wild hope rising in his chest, or where his chest used to be at any rate.
"Yes, it's me!" he insisted, coming closer and dancing around Kame as if Kame might see or at least sense him, waving his hands in front of Kame's face and generally making an idiot of himself, if Kame could see him.
But as soon as he'd left off singing Kame shook his head as if to clear it, rubbing his temple and scowling. "I fucking hate you, Jin!" he shouted at the ceiling, as if Jin wasn't standing right next to him and could hear him perfectly well, thanks! "Shut up!" he added for no apparent reason, and Jin wasn't sure if Kame was talking to him or to his own thoughts, as he was rubbing his forehead when he said it.
"Just shut up!"
Jin winced, rubbed his ear ruefully and edged away from Kame, feeling sulky. "I did," he grumbled, but if Kame had heard him a few minutes ago it was plain he wasn't hearing him now, and Jin heaved a longsuffering sigh as he wondered what the hell the difference was. Sometimes randomly people could hear him...only if he was singing, or what? How was that helpful? Stupid afterlife. Ghostlife. Whatever this was.
He wondered too if Kame really hated him or if he was just saying that, spouting off because he was mad about...whatever he was mad about. People said things they didn't mean when they were mad, all the time. That must be it, because no matter how mad he was Kame couldn't possibly hate him. Just, no way. Jin refused to believe that, even if he was just fooling himself.
Nevertheless he was feeling out of sorts and not too sure if he should stick around at the moment, besides which he really missed having a friend right now, someone he could go to and bitch and complain about his situation, or ask for advice, or just get some sympathy - someone like Yamapi, who might or might not be at home on a night like tonight, and if not, then he might be hard to find.
Jin decided the energy drain it might cause him was worth the risk, not to mention he should experiment a little and see if anyone else might be able to hear him in a random way, right? He nodded decisively to himself and headed out to track down his other best friend.
He found Pi at the second club he checked, not really a club but more of a quiet place hang out and drink and talk if you were meeting someone for business - or just wanted to be alone, and Pi wasn't generally that kind of guy but tonight he was alone, sitting with a drink and leaning on one elbow, slouched against the table and looking bored. Or not bored, maybe. Kind of brooding, and Jin wondered how much he'd had to drink. Maybe he was missing Jin too?
Jin stood beside him for a minute and studied him, wondering, remembering that no one had reacted to anything he said when he'd been hanging around insulting them the other day, but Pi was used to ignoring him when he did that, so maybe if he tried something else?
"This is so annoying," he complained to himself, having no idea what 'something else' might be and wishing he could just talk and know that people would hear it. Being a ghost was damn inconvenient, really. A fucking pain in the ass, in fact. Jin wanted that on record, with...somebody. Whoever made records of ghost-type things.
"Pi," he tried, in his most irritating voice. "PiPiPiiiiiiii listen to meeee," he whined. Yamapi shifted and looked around, and Jin gazed hopefully at him, but he settled back in a different position and didn't seem to have heard.
"You suck," Jin told him, pouting a little, "and your band sucks, and your songs suck, and your friends suck, and your mother sucks too." That got no response either, but Jin hadn't really expected it to. Insults clearly did not work. He sighed, glaring at the straw in Pi's glass and thinking that if he was still human, he would totally pull it out and flick the drops off the end in Pi's face right now.
The straw floated up and did just that a second later, and Jin's mouth hung open in shock as he stared at it. "Did I do that?" he mumbled, taken aback and thoroughly bewildered. He hadn't even touched it, or tried to touch it, or whatever. Yamapi was sitting up straight and looking startled too, staring around wildly as if looking for someone who could have done that, and then his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"Jin! That is you, isn't it. You bastard, I know you're there."
"Well at least somebody does," Jin muttered, still baffled as he stared warily at the straw, which had fallen to the table, and his irritated friend. "Um... can you hear me?" he asked hopefully. Please, please, please say yes.
"Of course I can," Pi sighed, slouching back in his seat as he picked up the straw and fiddled with it. "You're too damn loud and annoying to miss."
Jin blinked at him. "Really," he said slowly, sliding into the seat across from him and frowning in confusion. "Because no one else can, especially Kame. Except when I'm singing. But I didn't mean to be annoying, I was just bored! It's boring being dead," he sulked. Maybe being drunk helped with the whole hearing things that weren't really there thing, or maybe Pi had just been pretending not to hear him all those times before.
It probably would seem kind of crazy to think you heard a dead person's voice coming out of thin air, like a hallucination or something. Something to ignore in the hope that it would just go away. Jin knew if he'd been hearing voices that were supposed to be dead when he'd still been alive, he would have freaked out and tried to ignore them too, and hoped he was just imagining things. Especially since he preferred not to consider the existence of scary creepy things like ghosts.
Now that he was one, he had to admit it wasn't scary at all; it was just stupid and frustrating, so at least he didn't have to worry about being scared of himself.
"I'm sure it is, for you," Pi told him in a tolerant, patient voice, and Jin would have smacked him if it wouldn't have gone right through him.
"I'm serious!" he whined. "Nobody can hear me, or see me, no one's paying any attention to me no matter what I do and.... Kame's mad at me," he added in a more subdued voice. "I dunno why, I didn't do anything! Did I? I didn't like...kill myself or something, right..." His voice trailed off uncertainly, not quite a question but not nearly definite enough to be a statement.
Yamapi's forehead creased in a frown, and he rubbed it wearily, blowing out a sigh. "This is really, really weird, Jin, you know that? I'm sitting here talking to myself like I'm totally nuts." Not that anyone was really paying attention, and not that it was that strange a thing for drunks to do, but still. He hadn't had that much to drink, yet.
"No," he said finally, shrugging. "You didn't do anything that I know of. Not like killing yourself, anyway, but you might've pissed him off before you died I guess," he noted doubtfully. Jin and Kame were like two magnets that frequently got themselves turned wrong way round, shooting sparks and pushing away instead of pulling together, but they never failed to right themselves sooner or later, either.
"Don't you remember?" he asked, puzzled.
"No!" Jin burst out in frustration. "I don't remember anything! I... maybe it was an accident? I think. I don't know, but I don't think it was my fault."
Pi laughed a little, but it sounded strange. "I'm pretty sure they put it down to an act of god," he told Jin dryly. "If you became god anytime in recent memory and didn't tell me about it, I'm going to be very, very annoyed with you as well." He sighed, tossing down the straw he'd still been playing with, now bent and cracked in several places.
"It was an earthquake, kind of a freak accident," he explained in a subdued voice. "Wasn't that bad of one, only about a 5 or so but... we found out later that the building wasn't safe, wasn't up to code and it just...collapsed, almost everyone in it was killed." Since most buildings in Japan were built to withstand the minor quakes that were fairly common, that was unusual, and no doubt someone was getting sued for it right now. A fairly significant part of it had collapsed, trapping several people and killing others outright, including Jin.
"Oh," Jin said finally, relieved but otherwise not sure how he felt. It was a weird feeling, listening to someone else talk about your death, knowing it had already happened and it wasn't just speculation or theoretical possibility.
"So, how come you can hear me but no one else can?" he asked after a minute, not wanting to think about the rest of it too closely.
Pi shrugged, not knowing the answer to that anymore than Jin did. "I'm your best friend?" he pointed out. "I think it's in the job description."
"But Kame's my best friend too!" Jin argued, or at least he was (again) the last Jin could remember.
"Ahh...sure, something like that," Yamapi answered, raising an eyebrow and shaking his head. If that was what they wanted to call it, that was their business. To everyone else, it looked a damn lot like flirting and hooking up and breaking up and making up again, over and over, but Jin being oblivious wasn't really a surprise.
"He is," Jin insisted, frowning, but he left it at that. Kame was different, somehow, had always been different, and best friend was the only word Jin had for it, but it was nothing like the easy, comfortable knowing that he had with Pi, either. "Anyway," he went on dismissively, "I have to figure out a way to talk to him, so I can find out why he's mad at me! I tried to make myself appear the other day but it didn't work," he sighed.
"Hey, can you see me?"
"Nope, just talking to thin air here," Pi told him. "Or maybe my drink," he muttered, picking it up and downing half of what was left in it.
"So... you're no help at all, is what you're saying," Jin complained. "You can't see me, you don't know how I can make Kame see me or hear me or anything, and you don't know anything else, either. Except I how I died," he admitted as an afterthought, somewhat grudgingly. Even though he'd been fairly certain of it, it was nice to know for sure that he hadn't done anything to cause his own death. It wasn't his fault. Kame couldn't possibly blame him for an earthquake, no matter how irrational he was feeling.
Then again, it was Kame, so who knew. Normally he was an eminently reasonable and rational man, but when he decided to get stubborn about something, mere facts didn't stand a chance.
Jin sighed. "Well, thanks anyway. I'll guess I'll go...annoy him some more," he noted, his mouth twisting wryly because it seemed these days he could annoy Kame when he wasn't even there, and that had to be some kind of record.
Pi lifted his nearly empty glass in a kind of toast. "Good luck," he muttered. "You're going to need it."
Jin was well aware of that, didn't need to be told that he was going to need a whole damn lot of luck if he was somehow going to make Kame see him and listen, or hear him at the very least. If he managed to make himself seen, Kame might be startled enough to pay attention, and if he could make himself heard, he'd have a chance to try and defend himself against whatever Kame had gotten so pissed off about, and if he could figure that out there was a chance Kame would listen and...well, stop being mad at him. But that was a lot of ifs, and Jin didn't have much of an idea how to go about any of it.
The only thing he could do was try, so he headed on back to Kame's place with as much determination as he could muster.
When he got there it was empty, Kame wasn't home and Jin felt irrationally annoyed by this, as if Kame should have stayed put for Jin's convenience, should have known that Jin wanted him to be there. Irritated, he wandered around for awhile and poked at things, experimenting with trying to make small things move again the way he'd apparently done with the straw.
He soon discovered that he could actually control it somewhat, even if he had no idea how he was doing it. He could lift small objects and make them float, make them fly around and manipulate them to some extent, though it took some practice. He also discovered by accident when he was poking at Kame's stereo system that he could make it come on and even change the music that was playing; after some more experimenting he found that it seemed to apply generally to anything that used electrical power.
He was able to turn on the tv, change channels and volume, turn the lights on and off and weirdly, make the phone ring. He grew absorbed in playing with different things, at one point having an impromptu pillow fight with himself, throwing Kame's sofa pillows around and awarding himself points for landing them in certain spots or hitting various things, fortunately missing anything breakable but mainly by accident.
The possibility of breaking things hadn't occurred to him when he'd started, but he had a near miss with a lamp that sobered him somewhat, and then had to go around picking up after himself, not wanting Kame to freak out when he came home to a living room that was a bit of a disaster now - magazines and books knocked off the coffee table, stacks of dvds knocked over, knicknacks fallen and things in a general state of disarray.
All this exercise left him feeling rather tired in that creepy fading kind of way, and he flopped down in an armchair to rest for awhile. Hopefully if he blacked out again he would 'wake up' here in the same place, like he had last time. He congratulated himself on his calm and reasonable frame of mind as the world slowly went hazy again, not allowing himself to freak out as he clung to the idea that he was just falling asleep or whatever, and he would be back right here soon enough.
He focused on taking slow, even breaths - or what felt like breaths - as everything slipped away, and hoped that when he woke up again, Kame would be home and Jin would be able to see for himself that he was fine. Everything would be fine.
It was early morning when he woke again, and he could hear Kame's alarm going off as if the sound of it had been what pulled him back into the world too. He went straight to Kame's room and was relieved to see him there, getting up entirely too quickly for someone who'd been out so late the night before, shutting off the alarm and heading toward the bathroom.
Jin dodged aside in time to prevent the disturbing sensation of Kame walking right through him, and stared helplessly after him. Somehow his determined plans to make Kame notice him and listen to him somehow felt much less possible when faced with Kame himself, so close and yet so unreachable. Jin felt like there was an ache in his chest, a terrible need to do something, reach out somehow and break through the glass wall that seemed to exist now between him and life - like a one way mirror that he could see out of, but no one could look in and see him.
Too bad it wasn't even solid enough to pound his fists against. He watched Kame go off to work without him and listened to the silence left behind, the comfortable flat suddenly feeling desolate, still and lifeless as a tomb. With a ghost, no less. He wandered mournfully through the empty rooms, finally settling in Kame's bedroom and curling up on his bed, imagining that he could smell Kame's scent even though he was pretty sure that wasn't one of the senses he still had left.
It was absurdly a little comforting somehow, anyway, and he wished he could hug Kame's pillow, but even though he could pick it up and throw it, it wasn't like he was actually touching it, and hugging was definitely beyond him. He amused himself with tossing it around anyway, then remembered his almost disaster in the living room the night before and hastily put it back where it belonged.
Kame not being mad at him anymore was definitely not going to be helped if Kame came home to find his mirror broken or something like that. Jin sighed and looked around the room, idly noting familiar things and smiling faintly to himself as he surveyed Kame's large collection of plushies.
Those might be fun to play with... he floated a few of them into the air and made them dance around, laughing at himself and then using them to act out little plays, skits from their concerts and from Dream Boys and finally getting bored with that and simply juggling them, seeing how many he could keep in the air circling and dancing around each other at the same time.
Eventually it occurred to him that this was one of those 'stupid things' that was draining his energy and not helping his situation at all, and he sighed and put them all back. He felt stronger than ever the wish to hug Kame's pillow and the loneliness that wished Kame was home, even if he couldn't see or hear Jin, even if he was mad at him. Jin decided that he needed to get out of Kame's bedroom now, it was making him stupid.
He went back to wandering through the house, turning on some music that he preferred and nodding his head to the beat, dancing a little as he moved - or something like it, and he wondered vaguely what dancing smoke (or whatever he was made of these days) would look like. Humming along with the music in the back of his throat, he went back to poking around at Kame's things, snooping through the cupboards in his kitchen just because he could, and snickering to himself at a few of the more unlikely items he found there.
When he came across the phone again he made it ring just for fun, then stared thoughtfully at it for a minute. Maybe... he hadn't figured out exactly what made it possible for people to hear him sometimes and not others, but it wouldn't hurt to play around with the possibilities. The cordless handset floated into the air as he thought about it, and he frowned at it for a minute, wondering if he could make it dial, and if so, how.
He tried experimentally poking at the buttons with an invisible finger, and while it clicked on and he could hear the dial tone now, he was pretty sure it wasn't because a button had actually been pressed. Frowning some more, he pursed his lips and squinted at it, deciding that just because he had no idea how he was making anything do anything, that didn't seem to prevent things from doing what he wanted them to.
So really, if he just glared at it hard enough and like... thought at it really hard, it should do what he wanted. Right. The first number that came to mind was his family's home phone, and he furrowed his brow in concentration, intently focusing on trying to aim whatever energy was apparently coming out of him into the phone and out to the number that he wanted. It made him feel stupid but if it worked it would be really cool, like he had superpowers or something, and it wasn't like he had anything better to do.
He wasn't really expecting it to work, though, and was slightly startled when he heard it ringing on the other end. It actually was calling his family's number, or at least it was calling somebody's number, and Jin was so taken aback that his concentration slipped and he dropped the phone altogether. It went skittering across the floor and he stared blankly at it for a minute, feeling weirdly as if it might bite him if he went and picked it back up.
After a minute he went over and picked it up anyway, eyeing it warily like it was a snake or a spider or something equally dangerous, not entirely sure if he wanted to try again. On the one hand he had no guarantees that it had actually dialled the number that he wanted, or that anyone would be able to hear him if he did try to reply when they answered it, but on the other hand... he might be able to talk to his family again. Leave them a message, at least. Tell his mother he was sorry and...
He took a deep breath and focused himself on the dialling again before he could change his mind, feeling the energy surge with his emotions even though he was not at all sure what exactly it was he was feeling. Hope? Excitement? Dread? He couldn't put a name to it but as he listening to the ringing on the other end, it felt like his stomach was slowly tying itself in knots.
His mother answered the phone sounding just like she always did, perhaps more tired but familiar enough to put what felt like an ache in his throat, and he blinked hard, feeling like his eyes were stinging even though he couldn't possibly have tears in them when they weren't technically even there.
"Mom?" he whispered uncertainly, and then shook his head and tried again, louder, not sure if the phone would pick up his voice or not but it almost certainly wouldn't catch a whisper - a ghost whisper, at that. "Mom, it's me. It's Jin."
There was a long enough silence that he nearly thought it hadn't worked at all, that he couldn't be heard over the phone any better than he could face to face, and then his mother's shaken, trembling voice came again.
"Jin? No, no...it can't be...my son is dead," she mumbled, sounding dazed and wary and afraid. Jin's throat hurt so bad he wasn't sure he could even say anything else.
"It is me," he managed finally, and he could swear he felt tears leaking from his eyes, even if it was all in his head. "I know I'm... I'm not there anymore, and I'm sorry. I'm really sorry that I...I'm gone." The word 'dead' seemed to be much harder to say than it used to be. He swallowed hard, if a ghost could swallow, and tried to bring his chaotic thoughts into some kind of order.
"I don't know why I was in that building that day," he told her softly, feeling apologetic even though there was no way he could have known there was going to be an earthquake, even if he'd known the building was unsafe, which he doubted. "I don't remember...how I died, I don't know what happened but I'm sorry...I'm sorry that it did. I want you to know that it's okay. I'm okay. And I love you. I always will, even... even from - here, on the, the other side," he assured her, stumbling over his words and not really knowing what to say, or how to say it, but wanting to give her something, anything to ease the sorrow and pain he'd seen in her and the rest of his family, just a little bit. From the other side of what, he didn't know, but it didn't matter.
He could hear the sound of his mother sobbing softly on the other end of the phone, and a stab of grief made his heart ache worse, making him long to be able to tell her that it was all a mistake, he wasn't really dead and he would be coming home. That he really could go home and make everything alright again, dry her tears and hug her and promise that she wouldn't lose him like this, so sudden and too soon.
"I'll be watching over you," he promised instead, the only promise he could make. And he could still feel a sensation like tears running down his face as he listened to line go dead, the phone wobbling in the air as he nearly dropped it again, and he hastily returned it to its cradle, swiping insubstantial hands across his insubstantial face and swallowing back the ache of grief that still seemed to be lodged in his throat.
The effort it had taken to make the call, not to mention the emotional intensity, left him feeling drained, and he wandered dazedly back into Kame's bedroom to collapse on the bed and attempt to bury his face in the pillow, wanting a hug so badly that it hurt. From anyone really, but preferably Kame, who had always had the ability to somehow make everything better, just by being there, even when Jin felt like his world was ending.
Technically his world had already ended, but he felt sure that if Kame had been there he could somehow make it better anyway, even if it was only a little. And Kame had always given the best hugs, which seemed odd when he was so slender and seemed small next to Jin, but Kame hugs were always, always warm and comforting and made Jin feel suddenly steady and... anchored somehow, but Kame tended to do that to him anyway.
He had some kind of gravity or something that was like a Jin-magnet, it pulled him in and grounded him and made him feel like he could get through anything, go anywhere, do anything. Anything at all.
Part 2
By: flamesword
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG-13
Genre/Warnings: Angst, character death (ghost!Jin), possibly crack
Notes: Written for uchikins for her kizuna_exchange request. Thanks to orange_smaug for beta comments and mnemonic_psych for betaing and valuable help with plot elements, and other people for general encouragement and helpfulness. Timeline is roughly in the present, however the recent news of the Asia tour and Jin going back to LA has been ignored.
Summary: Jin hates being a ghost; he can't remember how he died and he has no idea why, but for some reason Kame is really, really mad at him.
Jin really didn't like being a ghost. It wasn't fun - if he'd ever thought about it before, he'd have thought it would be, being invisible, being able to go anywhere and see or hear anything he wanted to, but it wasn't.
It was hard, watching his family mourning him, his friends sad and subdued, drifting around the edges of the place in their lives where he'd been.
Watching Kame hold things together in public, hold KAT-TUN together the way he always had, and in private be so angry with him, hurting and grieving and furious in a way Jin hadn't expected him to be, had never imagined he would be.
He'd thought things were good between them, they'd fixed things after the most recent storm in their often turbulent relationship, Kame was happy and Jin was happy and he'd expect Kame to grieve for him, miss him, cry even - but the anger and curses and throwing things, that was weird.
If Kame had just been mad at the universe, that would have made some sense, but Jin had gathered that Kame was mad at him personally and specifically, and he didn't know what to make of it. He was dead, but that was an accident, right, and it was hardly his fault. Was it? He didn't think it was.
At first he could do little more than hover anxiously, bewildered as he followed Kame around and watched the way he pulled off his obligations in his usual professional manner, but in private lapsed into either cold, grim silence (when in private among people he was close to and trusted) or sometimes random outbursts of fury when he was alone; swearing and violence and rage that had Jin completely bemused.
What exactly had he done that had pissed Kame off so badly? Nothing that Kame had said was giving him any clues, and he couldn't remember exactly what had happened when he died. He was sure it hadn't been suicide - he hadn't had any reason to, didn't think he'd ever thought of doing something like that, and as far as he could remember, he'd been happy with his life for the first time in a long time.
He'd finally had a solo concert, was starting to forge a path on his own personal music career, beyond KAT-TUN, because he knew that couldn't last forever and he didn't really want it to - not that he was going to leave them completely. He didn't want to be the reason they broke up or disbanded, he still cared about them and wanted to stay a part of it - but he'd needed to start branching out on his own a little bit, doing some things for himself.
Kame had been supportive of it, he thought, had accepted that Jin wasn't going to be happy focused only on the six of them forever, and they'd been getting along... well, great, actually, Jin had believed that he had his best friend back, after the various bits of drama over the years; something that Jin could admit had often been his own fault.
But he'd grown up, or at least he flattered himself that he'd gotten a lot more mature than he used to be, and Kame had always been patient with him - sometimes rather resignedly, it was true, but still Jin had never had reason to believe that Kame was this mad at him. About anything. He wasn't entirely sure now that Kame didn't hate him, and that was just scary. Impossible. Did not compute. Okay, kind of terrifying, not just because Kame was always a force to be reckoned with but...how, what, why? It just made no sense...the very unexplainableness of it somehow added to the tingle of fear.
If he still had a body left, he'd probably shiver at the thought, but he didn't and he just felt...quivery, sort of? Strange. Almost like he was seasick, and he had no idea how that worked without having a stomach to feel it in, but whatever. He wished he knew what was going on, could remember...something, anything that might give him a clue, but he was totally lost.
If he could figure out a way to talk to Kame... well, he wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to, because what if Kame told him that to his face? What if...his imagination failed him, but he was not at all sure that he really wanted to know. Kame was really, really mad at him. Jin was a little bit - okay, maybe more than a little bit - afraid of him right now.
Even if he was a ghost, and there was no way Kame could possibly hurt him. Probably. Right? If Kame threw something at him, it should go right through him. Right.
Of course, even if Kame couldn't touch him, there was hurt, and then there was hurt. Kame had always been able to hurt him deeper than anyone else, without even touching him at all. Jin not-shivered again, and maybe, if he'd still been human, he would have whimpered a little bit.
Kame was going to kill him. Err...more. Again. Something like that. Oh man, he was not looking forward to this at all.
He left Kame alone for a few days, wanting to think it over, going back to hang around near some of his other friends, mostly Yamapi and Ryo, while he tried to decide if he even wanted to try to talk to Kame, and if so, how? He hadn't figured out yet how to actually make himself visible, much less talk to people. That was possible, right?
It was hard to stay away from Kame for long, though, and he drifted into Kame's flat late one night to just maybe watch him sleep, assuming he was sleeping - never something you could count on with Kame, but he could hope.
Kame was awake, though, watching tv and drinking a beer and for once not looking particularly angry, just tired. Exhausted, even. Jin thought if he was that tired then he ought to just go the fuck to bed, but Kame wasn't always sane like that, even before Jin died. He sighed and hovered there watching Kame for a minute, wishing he was solid enough to wrestle Kame off the couch and into bed by force, or at least... push his hair back or something.
Some ghosts could do that, right? Touch things, at least? Make things fall or move, or blow past like a wind to make things flutter, or something. He'd heard stories like that. Probably ought to figure out visibility first, though. Not really sure how to go about it, he went to stand in front of the tv in Kame's line of sight and held his breath, wishing himself solid and visible as fiercely as he knew how, trying to believe that he was with all his might, as if that might help.
It worked for Tinkerbell, something like that, so maybe it would work for him.
Kame merely frowned, rubbing his eyes as if to clear them and then reaching for the remote to change the channel, shaking his head and muttering about the signal, squinting at the screen as if it were suddenly fuzzy or something.
Jin let out his breath in a sigh before he realised that he didn't have breath to hold anymore, and so yeah, that probably hadn't helped at all. At any rate, it was obvious Kame hadn't seen him. Maybe had seen a smudge or something. But not Jin. Discouraged, Jin perched himself on the end of Kame's couch and watched him disconsolately, wondering what to try next. Or how to try harder, since it seemed like it might have started to work.
He hadn't come up with any ideas by the time Kame finally turned off the tv and went to bed, and sat there in the dark for the rest of the night just letting his mind wander, remembering and wishing and feeling rather sorry for himself. He was so screwed. He was dead, after all, and it didn't get much more screwed than that.
The next day he followed Kame to work as usual, but he got bored - at least he told himself it was bored - with the endless repetitions of dance routines that no longer had him in them, the other five reworking their steps for various numbers to make it less obvious. They weren't performing yet, just rehearsing and practicing but it made Jin feel weird to watch them working without him.
He left finally to go find something else to do, not that there was a whole lot a ghost could do. He amused himself for awhile with going through walls and sneaking into places that he would normally get kicked out of, but it only reminded him that he was invisible, unable to touch or feel, not really even there. Not even real, anymore.
No one could see him, no one could hear him, and it was seeming unlikely that anyone ever would. He'd never be able to touch anyone again, get a friendly pat on the back, feel the warmth of a hand on his arm, hug someone or even get injured. On the bright side, it kept Kame from killing him - on the other hand, it all made it impossible to find out why Kame apparently wanted to.
He wished he could remember how he died - some kind of accident, he thought vaguely. Car wreck? Maybe. Those were pretty common, right, people died every day like that. Or maybe he got mugged, robbed and shot or something. Knifed in the back, that sounded kind of cool. He really hoped it hadn't been something dumb, some stupid mistake that was... well, actually his own fault.
Maybe that was why Kame was mad? He really didn't think so, but he had to admit, unhappily, that it would make a little bit of sense.
He stopped in front of the big plate glass window of a random shop and tried making himself visible again, not sure that he would have a reflection even if he succeeded, but not having anything better to do, either. It took him awhile and maybe he was just imagining things, but he thought eventually he saw a sort of shape or shadow on the glass. Maybe.
Another good thing about no one being able to hear him occurred to him, and he realised that now he could say anything he wanted to anyone. He spent some time swooping down on people in the street and randomly insulting them, criticizing their appearance or their taste in music (if they were listening to earphones it was easy enough for him to hear what they were hearing, somehow) or anything else he felt like shouting out to the world that he would normally get in trouble for saying.
He went looking for people he knew eventually, finding it even more fun to say things he'd always wanted to say but had never quite dared to when he was alive. Not his family, not yet, because facing their grief was still a little too painful to watch, much less to mock. But there were a few random acquaintances, not exactly friends but somehow part of the general circle he hung out with, that he'd always found particularly annoying, and it was rather satisfying to tell them to their faces - sort of - exactly what he thought of them.
Then he went back to Johnny's office at the jimusho and told him off like he had sometimes dreamed of, getting things off his chest that it had always been too unwise or too impolitic to say, even for him.
The old man ignored him, of course, not being able to hear it anymore than anyone else could, but it still felt good.
A few of the juniors earned their own rants and tirades and general verbal harassment, and then he went looking for Yamapi again. He found that it was less fun to tease his friend when Yamapi couldn't hear him, but nevertheless amused himself this way for some time, particularly when the rest of NEWS was around and he could make fun of them too.
It was more active than he'd been since he'd woken up and found himself a ghost to begin with, and by the end of the day when everyone was leaving and parting ways he felt strangely tired, as if he were... fading somehow, and it scared him enough that he stopped moving, resting for a few minutes to see if that would steady him a bit.
Rather, he only felt dizzy and more tired, and he started to panic. Not good, not good, this was not good. He was never going to figure out what was wrong with Kame and somehow fix it if he disappeared completely! Part of him reached helplessly after Kame, wondering where he was, wanting to see him and follow him home because somehow Jin was sure that the uneasy feeling would go away if Kame was there, and he'd never wanted more to be able to just somehow teleport himself to wherever Kame was. Right now, this instant.
But it didn't happen and Kame wasn't there, and the feeling got worse and worse the more he freaked out about it. He tried desperately to hang on to what senses he had, his feeling of self, the feeling that he still existed, even in this nebulous invisible form, trying to focus all his energy on feeling and being somehow, holding tightly to what he could of himself.
It felt like he was curling in on himself, and maybe he was falling, either to the ground or simply down and down and down, and everything kept getting further and fainter and less coherent. It was like he was fainting or falling asleep in some inexorable slowness, the world slipping away no matter how hard he tried to hang on to it. Then it was gone, and everything went black.
He had no way of knowing how much time had passed when he found himself aware again - it wasn't quite like waking up, but it was more like that than it was like anything else. To his immense relief he realised he was in Kame's living room again, and decided that if that was teleportation, then teleportation sucked. Looking around he saw that it was now dark outside, and apparently quite late - a glance at Kame's clock told him rather that it was early, very early morning in fact, and he shrugged to himself. Close enough.
Drifting into Kame's bedroom he went to make sure that Kame was there, and settle the lingering uneasiness he was feeling. As long as Kame was fine, or something resembling fine, that was something. He curled up on the end of Kame's bed and watched him sleep, pondering the odd blackout and wondering what had caused it. Maybe he had just worn himself out, somehow - even ghosts could get tired, maybe.
Maybe that was the ghost version of sleep? It didn't feel good at all, it was scary as hell, but Jin had to admit that it might not have been as bad if he hadn't panicked and tried to fight it like he had. He suddenly missed the familiar, ordinary kind of sleep, the kind in which you might have good dreams, if you were lucky, or at least have the pleasure of feeling comfortably lazy and relaxed as you fell into it.
At any rate, he would have to be careful from now on not to use too much energy doing... stupid things. Things that didn't help him figure out what was going on, what was wrong with Kame. Something had to be wrong with Kame, because Kame being that mad at him was just - well, it was wrong. And totally not his fault.
For the next few days he simply hung around Kame's flat, not following him to work because he'd had enough of that, but wanting to be where Kame was -- or would come back to -- anyway, still feeling a bit shaken by the weird fadeout and not wanting it to happen again when he was somewhere else. Kame and Kame's space made him feel grounded somehow, like it was home now. He didn't think too much about it, just took it as a good thing because it helped him concentrate on the really important things, like figuring out why Kame was angry with him.
As the days passed Kame looked more tired and his outbursts of anger were less frequent, and frequently less loud, but Jin still heard curses aimed in his direction whenever something particularly reminded Kame of him, not that Jin always knew what that something was, but he'd figured out before too long that something generally had.
It seemed like sometimes Kame had been holding his temper all day and just had to let it out when he got home, or he'd be sitting and thinking, brooding until his anger got the better of him and he had to get up and stomp around and throw things, swearing under his breath or shouting incomprehensible things at thin air. Jin was never entirely sure what would set him off, and it seemed next to impossible to guess when or what the next thing would be, although certain things were fairly predictable.
On this particular day Kame was doing his grim and silent thing, making dinner in his lonely kitchen while Jin wandered around humming to himself - he realised he was humming one of his own songs, and began singing it instead, paying little attention to Kame until he moved suddenly, stiffening and whirling around to stare into space.
"Jin?" he muttered to himself, seemingly spellbound and Jin stopped what he was doing to stare at him, taken aback and feeling a strange wild hope rising in his chest, or where his chest used to be at any rate.
"Yes, it's me!" he insisted, coming closer and dancing around Kame as if Kame might see or at least sense him, waving his hands in front of Kame's face and generally making an idiot of himself, if Kame could see him.
But as soon as he'd left off singing Kame shook his head as if to clear it, rubbing his temple and scowling. "I fucking hate you, Jin!" he shouted at the ceiling, as if Jin wasn't standing right next to him and could hear him perfectly well, thanks! "Shut up!" he added for no apparent reason, and Jin wasn't sure if Kame was talking to him or to his own thoughts, as he was rubbing his forehead when he said it.
"Just shut up!"
Jin winced, rubbed his ear ruefully and edged away from Kame, feeling sulky. "I did," he grumbled, but if Kame had heard him a few minutes ago it was plain he wasn't hearing him now, and Jin heaved a longsuffering sigh as he wondered what the hell the difference was. Sometimes randomly people could hear him...only if he was singing, or what? How was that helpful? Stupid afterlife. Ghostlife. Whatever this was.
He wondered too if Kame really hated him or if he was just saying that, spouting off because he was mad about...whatever he was mad about. People said things they didn't mean when they were mad, all the time. That must be it, because no matter how mad he was Kame couldn't possibly hate him. Just, no way. Jin refused to believe that, even if he was just fooling himself.
Nevertheless he was feeling out of sorts and not too sure if he should stick around at the moment, besides which he really missed having a friend right now, someone he could go to and bitch and complain about his situation, or ask for advice, or just get some sympathy - someone like Yamapi, who might or might not be at home on a night like tonight, and if not, then he might be hard to find.
Jin decided the energy drain it might cause him was worth the risk, not to mention he should experiment a little and see if anyone else might be able to hear him in a random way, right? He nodded decisively to himself and headed out to track down his other best friend.
He found Pi at the second club he checked, not really a club but more of a quiet place hang out and drink and talk if you were meeting someone for business - or just wanted to be alone, and Pi wasn't generally that kind of guy but tonight he was alone, sitting with a drink and leaning on one elbow, slouched against the table and looking bored. Or not bored, maybe. Kind of brooding, and Jin wondered how much he'd had to drink. Maybe he was missing Jin too?
Jin stood beside him for a minute and studied him, wondering, remembering that no one had reacted to anything he said when he'd been hanging around insulting them the other day, but Pi was used to ignoring him when he did that, so maybe if he tried something else?
"This is so annoying," he complained to himself, having no idea what 'something else' might be and wishing he could just talk and know that people would hear it. Being a ghost was damn inconvenient, really. A fucking pain in the ass, in fact. Jin wanted that on record, with...somebody. Whoever made records of ghost-type things.
"Pi," he tried, in his most irritating voice. "PiPiPiiiiiiii listen to meeee," he whined. Yamapi shifted and looked around, and Jin gazed hopefully at him, but he settled back in a different position and didn't seem to have heard.
"You suck," Jin told him, pouting a little, "and your band sucks, and your songs suck, and your friends suck, and your mother sucks too." That got no response either, but Jin hadn't really expected it to. Insults clearly did not work. He sighed, glaring at the straw in Pi's glass and thinking that if he was still human, he would totally pull it out and flick the drops off the end in Pi's face right now.
The straw floated up and did just that a second later, and Jin's mouth hung open in shock as he stared at it. "Did I do that?" he mumbled, taken aback and thoroughly bewildered. He hadn't even touched it, or tried to touch it, or whatever. Yamapi was sitting up straight and looking startled too, staring around wildly as if looking for someone who could have done that, and then his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"Jin! That is you, isn't it. You bastard, I know you're there."
"Well at least somebody does," Jin muttered, still baffled as he stared warily at the straw, which had fallen to the table, and his irritated friend. "Um... can you hear me?" he asked hopefully. Please, please, please say yes.
"Of course I can," Pi sighed, slouching back in his seat as he picked up the straw and fiddled with it. "You're too damn loud and annoying to miss."
Jin blinked at him. "Really," he said slowly, sliding into the seat across from him and frowning in confusion. "Because no one else can, especially Kame. Except when I'm singing. But I didn't mean to be annoying, I was just bored! It's boring being dead," he sulked. Maybe being drunk helped with the whole hearing things that weren't really there thing, or maybe Pi had just been pretending not to hear him all those times before.
It probably would seem kind of crazy to think you heard a dead person's voice coming out of thin air, like a hallucination or something. Something to ignore in the hope that it would just go away. Jin knew if he'd been hearing voices that were supposed to be dead when he'd still been alive, he would have freaked out and tried to ignore them too, and hoped he was just imagining things. Especially since he preferred not to consider the existence of scary creepy things like ghosts.
Now that he was one, he had to admit it wasn't scary at all; it was just stupid and frustrating, so at least he didn't have to worry about being scared of himself.
"I'm sure it is, for you," Pi told him in a tolerant, patient voice, and Jin would have smacked him if it wouldn't have gone right through him.
"I'm serious!" he whined. "Nobody can hear me, or see me, no one's paying any attention to me no matter what I do and.... Kame's mad at me," he added in a more subdued voice. "I dunno why, I didn't do anything! Did I? I didn't like...kill myself or something, right..." His voice trailed off uncertainly, not quite a question but not nearly definite enough to be a statement.
Yamapi's forehead creased in a frown, and he rubbed it wearily, blowing out a sigh. "This is really, really weird, Jin, you know that? I'm sitting here talking to myself like I'm totally nuts." Not that anyone was really paying attention, and not that it was that strange a thing for drunks to do, but still. He hadn't had that much to drink, yet.
"No," he said finally, shrugging. "You didn't do anything that I know of. Not like killing yourself, anyway, but you might've pissed him off before you died I guess," he noted doubtfully. Jin and Kame were like two magnets that frequently got themselves turned wrong way round, shooting sparks and pushing away instead of pulling together, but they never failed to right themselves sooner or later, either.
"Don't you remember?" he asked, puzzled.
"No!" Jin burst out in frustration. "I don't remember anything! I... maybe it was an accident? I think. I don't know, but I don't think it was my fault."
Pi laughed a little, but it sounded strange. "I'm pretty sure they put it down to an act of god," he told Jin dryly. "If you became god anytime in recent memory and didn't tell me about it, I'm going to be very, very annoyed with you as well." He sighed, tossing down the straw he'd still been playing with, now bent and cracked in several places.
"It was an earthquake, kind of a freak accident," he explained in a subdued voice. "Wasn't that bad of one, only about a 5 or so but... we found out later that the building wasn't safe, wasn't up to code and it just...collapsed, almost everyone in it was killed." Since most buildings in Japan were built to withstand the minor quakes that were fairly common, that was unusual, and no doubt someone was getting sued for it right now. A fairly significant part of it had collapsed, trapping several people and killing others outright, including Jin.
"Oh," Jin said finally, relieved but otherwise not sure how he felt. It was a weird feeling, listening to someone else talk about your death, knowing it had already happened and it wasn't just speculation or theoretical possibility.
"So, how come you can hear me but no one else can?" he asked after a minute, not wanting to think about the rest of it too closely.
Pi shrugged, not knowing the answer to that anymore than Jin did. "I'm your best friend?" he pointed out. "I think it's in the job description."
"But Kame's my best friend too!" Jin argued, or at least he was (again) the last Jin could remember.
"Ahh...sure, something like that," Yamapi answered, raising an eyebrow and shaking his head. If that was what they wanted to call it, that was their business. To everyone else, it looked a damn lot like flirting and hooking up and breaking up and making up again, over and over, but Jin being oblivious wasn't really a surprise.
"He is," Jin insisted, frowning, but he left it at that. Kame was different, somehow, had always been different, and best friend was the only word Jin had for it, but it was nothing like the easy, comfortable knowing that he had with Pi, either. "Anyway," he went on dismissively, "I have to figure out a way to talk to him, so I can find out why he's mad at me! I tried to make myself appear the other day but it didn't work," he sighed.
"Hey, can you see me?"
"Nope, just talking to thin air here," Pi told him. "Or maybe my drink," he muttered, picking it up and downing half of what was left in it.
"So... you're no help at all, is what you're saying," Jin complained. "You can't see me, you don't know how I can make Kame see me or hear me or anything, and you don't know anything else, either. Except I how I died," he admitted as an afterthought, somewhat grudgingly. Even though he'd been fairly certain of it, it was nice to know for sure that he hadn't done anything to cause his own death. It wasn't his fault. Kame couldn't possibly blame him for an earthquake, no matter how irrational he was feeling.
Then again, it was Kame, so who knew. Normally he was an eminently reasonable and rational man, but when he decided to get stubborn about something, mere facts didn't stand a chance.
Jin sighed. "Well, thanks anyway. I'll guess I'll go...annoy him some more," he noted, his mouth twisting wryly because it seemed these days he could annoy Kame when he wasn't even there, and that had to be some kind of record.
Pi lifted his nearly empty glass in a kind of toast. "Good luck," he muttered. "You're going to need it."
Jin was well aware of that, didn't need to be told that he was going to need a whole damn lot of luck if he was somehow going to make Kame see him and listen, or hear him at the very least. If he managed to make himself seen, Kame might be startled enough to pay attention, and if he could make himself heard, he'd have a chance to try and defend himself against whatever Kame had gotten so pissed off about, and if he could figure that out there was a chance Kame would listen and...well, stop being mad at him. But that was a lot of ifs, and Jin didn't have much of an idea how to go about any of it.
The only thing he could do was try, so he headed on back to Kame's place with as much determination as he could muster.
When he got there it was empty, Kame wasn't home and Jin felt irrationally annoyed by this, as if Kame should have stayed put for Jin's convenience, should have known that Jin wanted him to be there. Irritated, he wandered around for awhile and poked at things, experimenting with trying to make small things move again the way he'd apparently done with the straw.
He soon discovered that he could actually control it somewhat, even if he had no idea how he was doing it. He could lift small objects and make them float, make them fly around and manipulate them to some extent, though it took some practice. He also discovered by accident when he was poking at Kame's stereo system that he could make it come on and even change the music that was playing; after some more experimenting he found that it seemed to apply generally to anything that used electrical power.
He was able to turn on the tv, change channels and volume, turn the lights on and off and weirdly, make the phone ring. He grew absorbed in playing with different things, at one point having an impromptu pillow fight with himself, throwing Kame's sofa pillows around and awarding himself points for landing them in certain spots or hitting various things, fortunately missing anything breakable but mainly by accident.
The possibility of breaking things hadn't occurred to him when he'd started, but he had a near miss with a lamp that sobered him somewhat, and then had to go around picking up after himself, not wanting Kame to freak out when he came home to a living room that was a bit of a disaster now - magazines and books knocked off the coffee table, stacks of dvds knocked over, knicknacks fallen and things in a general state of disarray.
All this exercise left him feeling rather tired in that creepy fading kind of way, and he flopped down in an armchair to rest for awhile. Hopefully if he blacked out again he would 'wake up' here in the same place, like he had last time. He congratulated himself on his calm and reasonable frame of mind as the world slowly went hazy again, not allowing himself to freak out as he clung to the idea that he was just falling asleep or whatever, and he would be back right here soon enough.
He focused on taking slow, even breaths - or what felt like breaths - as everything slipped away, and hoped that when he woke up again, Kame would be home and Jin would be able to see for himself that he was fine. Everything would be fine.
It was early morning when he woke again, and he could hear Kame's alarm going off as if the sound of it had been what pulled him back into the world too. He went straight to Kame's room and was relieved to see him there, getting up entirely too quickly for someone who'd been out so late the night before, shutting off the alarm and heading toward the bathroom.
Jin dodged aside in time to prevent the disturbing sensation of Kame walking right through him, and stared helplessly after him. Somehow his determined plans to make Kame notice him and listen to him somehow felt much less possible when faced with Kame himself, so close and yet so unreachable. Jin felt like there was an ache in his chest, a terrible need to do something, reach out somehow and break through the glass wall that seemed to exist now between him and life - like a one way mirror that he could see out of, but no one could look in and see him.
Too bad it wasn't even solid enough to pound his fists against. He watched Kame go off to work without him and listened to the silence left behind, the comfortable flat suddenly feeling desolate, still and lifeless as a tomb. With a ghost, no less. He wandered mournfully through the empty rooms, finally settling in Kame's bedroom and curling up on his bed, imagining that he could smell Kame's scent even though he was pretty sure that wasn't one of the senses he still had left.
It was absurdly a little comforting somehow, anyway, and he wished he could hug Kame's pillow, but even though he could pick it up and throw it, it wasn't like he was actually touching it, and hugging was definitely beyond him. He amused himself with tossing it around anyway, then remembered his almost disaster in the living room the night before and hastily put it back where it belonged.
Kame not being mad at him anymore was definitely not going to be helped if Kame came home to find his mirror broken or something like that. Jin sighed and looked around the room, idly noting familiar things and smiling faintly to himself as he surveyed Kame's large collection of plushies.
Those might be fun to play with... he floated a few of them into the air and made them dance around, laughing at himself and then using them to act out little plays, skits from their concerts and from Dream Boys and finally getting bored with that and simply juggling them, seeing how many he could keep in the air circling and dancing around each other at the same time.
Eventually it occurred to him that this was one of those 'stupid things' that was draining his energy and not helping his situation at all, and he sighed and put them all back. He felt stronger than ever the wish to hug Kame's pillow and the loneliness that wished Kame was home, even if he couldn't see or hear Jin, even if he was mad at him. Jin decided that he needed to get out of Kame's bedroom now, it was making him stupid.
He went back to wandering through the house, turning on some music that he preferred and nodding his head to the beat, dancing a little as he moved - or something like it, and he wondered vaguely what dancing smoke (or whatever he was made of these days) would look like. Humming along with the music in the back of his throat, he went back to poking around at Kame's things, snooping through the cupboards in his kitchen just because he could, and snickering to himself at a few of the more unlikely items he found there.
When he came across the phone again he made it ring just for fun, then stared thoughtfully at it for a minute. Maybe... he hadn't figured out exactly what made it possible for people to hear him sometimes and not others, but it wouldn't hurt to play around with the possibilities. The cordless handset floated into the air as he thought about it, and he frowned at it for a minute, wondering if he could make it dial, and if so, how.
He tried experimentally poking at the buttons with an invisible finger, and while it clicked on and he could hear the dial tone now, he was pretty sure it wasn't because a button had actually been pressed. Frowning some more, he pursed his lips and squinted at it, deciding that just because he had no idea how he was making anything do anything, that didn't seem to prevent things from doing what he wanted them to.
So really, if he just glared at it hard enough and like... thought at it really hard, it should do what he wanted. Right. The first number that came to mind was his family's home phone, and he furrowed his brow in concentration, intently focusing on trying to aim whatever energy was apparently coming out of him into the phone and out to the number that he wanted. It made him feel stupid but if it worked it would be really cool, like he had superpowers or something, and it wasn't like he had anything better to do.
He wasn't really expecting it to work, though, and was slightly startled when he heard it ringing on the other end. It actually was calling his family's number, or at least it was calling somebody's number, and Jin was so taken aback that his concentration slipped and he dropped the phone altogether. It went skittering across the floor and he stared blankly at it for a minute, feeling weirdly as if it might bite him if he went and picked it back up.
After a minute he went over and picked it up anyway, eyeing it warily like it was a snake or a spider or something equally dangerous, not entirely sure if he wanted to try again. On the one hand he had no guarantees that it had actually dialled the number that he wanted, or that anyone would be able to hear him if he did try to reply when they answered it, but on the other hand... he might be able to talk to his family again. Leave them a message, at least. Tell his mother he was sorry and...
He took a deep breath and focused himself on the dialling again before he could change his mind, feeling the energy surge with his emotions even though he was not at all sure what exactly it was he was feeling. Hope? Excitement? Dread? He couldn't put a name to it but as he listening to the ringing on the other end, it felt like his stomach was slowly tying itself in knots.
His mother answered the phone sounding just like she always did, perhaps more tired but familiar enough to put what felt like an ache in his throat, and he blinked hard, feeling like his eyes were stinging even though he couldn't possibly have tears in them when they weren't technically even there.
"Mom?" he whispered uncertainly, and then shook his head and tried again, louder, not sure if the phone would pick up his voice or not but it almost certainly wouldn't catch a whisper - a ghost whisper, at that. "Mom, it's me. It's Jin."
There was a long enough silence that he nearly thought it hadn't worked at all, that he couldn't be heard over the phone any better than he could face to face, and then his mother's shaken, trembling voice came again.
"Jin? No, no...it can't be...my son is dead," she mumbled, sounding dazed and wary and afraid. Jin's throat hurt so bad he wasn't sure he could even say anything else.
"It is me," he managed finally, and he could swear he felt tears leaking from his eyes, even if it was all in his head. "I know I'm... I'm not there anymore, and I'm sorry. I'm really sorry that I...I'm gone." The word 'dead' seemed to be much harder to say than it used to be. He swallowed hard, if a ghost could swallow, and tried to bring his chaotic thoughts into some kind of order.
"I don't know why I was in that building that day," he told her softly, feeling apologetic even though there was no way he could have known there was going to be an earthquake, even if he'd known the building was unsafe, which he doubted. "I don't remember...how I died, I don't know what happened but I'm sorry...I'm sorry that it did. I want you to know that it's okay. I'm okay. And I love you. I always will, even... even from - here, on the, the other side," he assured her, stumbling over his words and not really knowing what to say, or how to say it, but wanting to give her something, anything to ease the sorrow and pain he'd seen in her and the rest of his family, just a little bit. From the other side of what, he didn't know, but it didn't matter.
He could hear the sound of his mother sobbing softly on the other end of the phone, and a stab of grief made his heart ache worse, making him long to be able to tell her that it was all a mistake, he wasn't really dead and he would be coming home. That he really could go home and make everything alright again, dry her tears and hug her and promise that she wouldn't lose him like this, so sudden and too soon.
"I'll be watching over you," he promised instead, the only promise he could make. And he could still feel a sensation like tears running down his face as he listened to line go dead, the phone wobbling in the air as he nearly dropped it again, and he hastily returned it to its cradle, swiping insubstantial hands across his insubstantial face and swallowing back the ache of grief that still seemed to be lodged in his throat.
The effort it had taken to make the call, not to mention the emotional intensity, left him feeling drained, and he wandered dazedly back into Kame's bedroom to collapse on the bed and attempt to bury his face in the pillow, wanting a hug so badly that it hurt. From anyone really, but preferably Kame, who had always had the ability to somehow make everything better, just by being there, even when Jin felt like his world was ending.
Technically his world had already ended, but he felt sure that if Kame had been there he could somehow make it better anyway, even if it was only a little. And Kame had always given the best hugs, which seemed odd when he was so slender and seemed small next to Jin, but Kame hugs were always, always warm and comforting and made Jin feel suddenly steady and... anchored somehow, but Kame tended to do that to him anyway.
He had some kind of gravity or something that was like a Jin-magnet, it pulled him in and grounded him and made him feel like he could get through anything, go anywhere, do anything. Anything at all.
Part 2