fic-DBSK-Fifteen
Title: Fifteen
Author: virdant
Length: 4,048 words; one-shot
Rating: PG / PG-13
Genre: AU, Humor, Supernatural(ish) maybe
Pairing: OT5-ish
Summary: I really had no idea what was going on. First a weirdo says strange things to me when I go buy pudding for my sister, next I get a stalker who tries to mind my business, and then a stranger ends up giving me an umbrella and disappearing.
Warning: A very bad pastiche of Nagaru Tanigawa's Haruhi Suzumiya light novels.
Notes: In which virdant plays around with Kyon narration style (again), and writes really random fics in a desperate attempt to regain writing skills. Additionally, the voice? Yeah... Also, guess who's who in this fic. Have fun. :)
Fifteen
I was never the person to believe in ghosts. They were for frightening children with, for telling ghost stories to five-year-old cousins on stormy nights with. They didn’t actually exist, not when all rational thought pointed to their non-existence, not when I had never heard of ghosts haunting buildings.
I laughed when the TV shows-silly scripted shows for children-talked of ghosts that whispered promises and fears into other people's ears. Because those shows were so obviously scripted, with the papers and clipboards lingering around the cheap set that broke after the hosts stomped viciously on plywood. I was happy with my non-belief, content in the knowledge that ghosts didn’t exist, and satisfied with my perfectly ordinary life, spending my days in school and my nights studying. I had no interest in the supernatural, beyond their usefulness in frightening cousins who spread grubby fingers over sheets of carefully taken notes.
Which was why it was such a surprise when they came back.
*
As I trekked the four block walk to the nearest convenience store, I began regretting agreeing to my younger sister’s plea for pudding. If only I had been a less caring older brother; then I would have been able to ignore her pleas for pudding (and milk, of which we had a bottle at home) and spend my evening carefully reviewing material for the upcoming exam. The air was heavy with humidity, the skies offering rain but refusing to bestow.
By the time I had walked to the convenience store, I was dripping with sweat, detesting the summer humidity that left heat lingering on the city streets even after the sun had gone down. The sun wasn’t even fully down yet, lingering just above the horizon and just glaring with its brightness, even through the haze of humidity coloring blue skies grey.
“Welcome!” The electronic voice greeted me as I stumbled into the air-conditioned store. I headed straight towards the refrigerated foods section, trying to recall if my sister had wanted a small pudding, regular sized pudding, or a giant jumbo sized one. There was also the question of what type of pudding she wanted, but there was no way I was going to buy her chocolate pudding or any of the like. She was getting the plain pudding.
There were others milling around the convenience store, but most of them were over at the drinks section, debating over tea, soft-drinks, and water. Finally, I selected a three-pack of small sized puddings, deciding that she could always save some for later. I was clearly too nice of an older brother.
After selection came the tedious wait in a line that had suddenly spawned, as I stood in line, yawning, I wondered how it had turned out that everybody in the store happened to be in front of me. Pure bad luck, no doubt.
It also happened that not only was everybody in front of me, but all of them had an excessively vast amount of items they wanted the purchase. Additionally, every single one of them happened to insist on paying in change. Exact change.
Why me?
I had finally managed to get to the front of the now non-existent line, and pushing my three-pack of pudding onto the counter.
The next words I heard would change my life forever.
“Hello, welcome to Convenient Convenience. Is this all you’ll be purchasing today?”
Up until now, everything was normal. I nodded and concentrated on extracting money from my pocket to pay.
“We’ve been waiting a long time for you.”
I jerked and looked up.
The employee had short brown hair styled attractively to frame an open face. His confident face was filled with amusement and understanding.
I will never forget his eyes.
He handed back my change and bowed politely. Was this a joke of some sort? Was he talking on the phone at the same time? I stared bewilderedly and shoved my change back into my pocket, grabbing the pudding with my other hand, and backed slowly out of the cool room into the humid summer twilight.
If anybody else had been in the room, they would have been wondering at this peculiar turn of phrase. Certainly it wasn’t said very often.
But judging from his calm assured look, this was no joke.
He never jokes about such matters.
This knowledge comes entirely from my experience with him.
A cheerful mechanical voice thanked me for shopping there as the automatic doors slid shut, separating me from this strangely self-assured man who somehow knew me.
He smiled at me through the glass, and I ran home.
*
That was the beginning.
Despite what people may say, it was not fate.
*
Two weeks and one day later, I found myself wandering a supermarket, craving, of all things, a fizzy drink that convenience stores didn’t carry. It was aggravating, especially since said drink was delicious. I have a soft spot for delicious food and drink.
“You don’t want that,” a voice said quietly as I reached for a bottle.
I gave the stranger a strange look. Who was he to tell me what I wanted and what I didn’t want? He continued, in a raspy whisper. “Don’t drink it.”
Strangers clearly were strange. I grabbed the bottle and headed towards the check-out counters.
“Don’t you remember me? Don’t you remember us?”
I paid and gave the stranger with the stranger hair a weird look before walking home.
As was my luck, it started raining as I was halfway home and I had no umbrella. Covering my head with one of my textbooks-a Physics text with a heavy plastic covered cover-I picked up the pace, trying to get home before the rain got any heavier.
“Here.”
I blinked at the umbrella suddenly in front of my face.
“It’s an umbrella,” the stranger said. A different one, not the one from the supermarket. He continued by saying something that I shall not repeat here due to its frigidness.
I stared. Despite the fact the temperature outside was clearly very high and the humidity was not helping the heat, I felt a shiver roll up my arms. “What?”
The stranger opened his mouth.
“Wait. No. Don’t repeat that,” I said quickly, to prevent any possible hypothermia. “Just. Don’t say anymore really bad puns. Please.”
The stranger obediently clicked his mouth shut.
“So.” I stared at the umbrella. “An umbrella.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re giving it to me?”
“It’s not like I really need it.”
“An umbrella.”
“Yeah.”
My mind seemed to be sluggish when around this stranger. He has an ability to make everybody stop and stare. Usually this is a good thing, but at that time, it wasn’t very good.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” I finally asked, because I was raised with manners and wasn’t a hoodlum who simply took umbrellas from strangers. In fact, usually I wouldn’t accept anything from strangers, but this one seemed remarkably familiar despite the fact that I could not recollect ever seeing him before in my life.
“Sure,” He said cheerfully, handing it to me and sauntering away. “I’ll see you later.”
“Wait”-
He disappeared around a corner, and I was left with an umbrella in my hand that didn’t belong to me.
“How am I supposed to return this to you?”
*
That night, as I sat cramming more information about rates and rate laws into my head in preparation for the killer test that my Chemistry teacher had promised, I paused in my studying to contemplate what these strangers had said to me.
We’ve been waiting a long time for you.
Don’t you remember us?
I’ll see you later
What type of sentences were those? One would assume that I was familiar with these strangers when I clearly could not remember ever seeing them before in my life. What type of strangers say such familiar things to people? People would misunderstand and assume we were friends!
I groaned and set my pen aside. Now I was never going to be able to study in peace. I decided to take a walk outside to clear my head. Hopefully then I would be able to prepare for this test properly.
As I pulled on my shoes and headed out, my sister stuck her head out from where she was playing and called out, “Buy me pudding!”
Why should I buy you pudding when it was your pudding that started this whole mess?
*
The rain had stopped, so I left the Stranger no. 3’s umbrella at home as I headed out. Waiting right outside my home was Stranger no. 2.
What are you doing outside my home? Are you some type of freaky stalker?
“Come with me,” Stranger no. 2 who may or may not be a stalker said. And started walking away.
What type of normal person would follow you?
I followed him.
He led me to, of all places, the nearest Convenient Convenience store, the same one where this whole thing had started. As we walked in, I slowed down somewhat.
“Let’s buy pudding,” he suggested, “You like pudding, right?”
I’m not accepting any food you offer me.
He waved the pudding in front of my face. It looked mouth-wateringly good.
“Is that all?” a bored salesperson asked. It wasn’t the one from a while ago.
“Wait,” I said, “I should get one for my sister.”
So as I picked up another small pudding, I suddenly heard a voice greet me with a casual “hey.”
It was only my classmate. “Hey,” I greeted back, strangely relieved that it wasn’t another stranger who would say strange bizarre things to me.
“I like pudding too,” my classmate said rather inanely. “Shouldn’t you be studying for that killer Chem test tomorrow?”
I wondered if there was a smaller size of pudding. My sister wouldn’t sleep well with so much sugar in her system.
“But then again, you’re such a genius, I’m sure you don’t need to study like us normal people.”
Just because I’m smarter than you doesn’t make me a genius.
“I’ll see you tomorrow!”
Stranger no. 2 was still waiting for me at the check-out counter when I had finally decided that there was no smaller size of pudding and this amount of sugar wouldn’t kill my sister. He didn’t offer to pay, so I paid for his pudding as well. Cheapskate!
We sat outside on the cheap metal chairs provided.
“There is something important that you must understand,” he said.
I nodded and started eating my pudding. I wish I had bought something to drink instead. It was so odd sitting around talking and eating pudding.
“We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
This again?
“You must understand that we are not normal people. We are special.”
More like weird, with the way you followed me to my home.
“I’m an alien.”
That made me choke.
“Well, not really. I’m not really an alien.”
How did I manage to choke on pudding? It’s soft and slushy and delicious and it shouldn’t be possible to choke on pudding.
“Our vitality is like the gingerbread man’s.”
That didn’t make any sense at all.
“We stay around forever.”
This was starting to sound like a really bad description of a disease. Maybe I was in a medical drama and I didn’t know it. That would be interesting.
“Don’t you remember us?”
No.
Stranger no. 2 sighed. “What do I have to do to get you to remember us?”
I’ve never met any of you before. How am I supposed to remember some people I’ve never met before?
“Well…”
I ate more pudding. Pudding is delicious. No wonder my sister was addicted to it.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
When did this turn into a horror movie?
Apparently taking my skeptical look for no, Stranger no. 2 continued quickly, “Don’t you know why we’re here?”
I had no idea why strangers were invading my life. Especially at this crucial time. I was preparing for exams now! Somehow, I didn’t think that they would understand if I tried to explain. Despite the fact that they looked around the same age as me, none of them seemed to be students. Maybe the first one, since he looked like a responsible student despite his strange words.
“It’s the fifteenth today,” he said.
And so it was. I didn’t really see the point.
“It’s the fifteenth,” he repeated. And then he gestured vaguely towards the sky, where the full moon was shining dully through a haze of humidity.
I nodded in agreement.
“It’s the middle of the month,” he added, as if that would stir my memory of something I had no idea about.
Actually, I did mental calculations and figured that the middle of the month would actually be the sixteenth, but I suppose the fifteenth could count.
Stranger no. 2 finally sighed. “Aren’t you supposed to be smart?”
I really had no idea what was going on. First a weirdo says strange things to me when I go buy pudding for my sister, next I get a stalker who tries to mind my business, and then a stranger ends up giving me an umbrella and disappearing.
“Did you drink that drink?”
Actually, I didn’t. I was planning to, but then I decided to save it for tomorrow, to celebrate the completion of my Chemistry test.
“Good. Let’s go now then.”
And then he grabbed the plastic container my pudding had been in away from me and tossed it into the trash.
“I have to give this pudding to my sister,” I reminded him.
“Then let’s do that and then head back.”
Back where? I started wondering if I was in the company of an escapee from a mental institution. But those things only happened in romance dramas. Or maybe romantic comedies, depending on what new ideas the script-writers had come up with.
By now, I was thinking that I should have listened to my parents and stayed away from strangers. Especially ones with really bad hair-dye jobs.
*
Upon dropping the pudding off at home, I told my sister that I would be back home soon, and gave Stranger no. 2 a skeptical look. Imagine my surprise when Stranger no. 2 actually wasn’t there, but Stranger no. 1 was there instead.
I was really wondering what type of joke this was.
Stranger no. 1, however, offered tea. Not bottled tea, but tea from tea stalls. Those always cost almost double cheap bottled teas sold in convenience stores. Somehow, he had also managed to purchase the one flavor I liked.
I decided to listen to him, if only because he took the time to buy tea for me. Tea. That was as good as pudding. Maybe even better.
He led me to the park where we sat in sticky humidity on old wooden benches sipping tea. Was he some type of serial rapist who led unwitting strangers into dark parks? Maybe he was wanted by the police!
“I’m not a serial rapist,” he protested, gesturing wildly and generally flailing like a flustered fool. I believed him, though I really didn’t understand why. To be honest, I didn’t understand why I kept agreeing to follow them; it didn’t make any sense to follow strangers to strange places and I was more sensible to follow random strangers places. Not to mention I had a Chemistry test tomorrow and I had to study for it!
“But you don’t need to study for that test,” he said rather confused. “You understand all of the material and you’ve already done all the practice questions three times already, including the ones that weren’t assigned.”
Why was I being stalked by not one, but two people!?
“I, well….” Seeming to realize that he had revealed a little too much of my personal life out, he grimaced and stared at his hands. “I uh, noticed you.”
I can tell.
“It’s not that I’m a stalker! Really, I’m not. I mean, at least out of all of us, I’m the least likely to be a stalker. That’s more like…”
He trailed off awkwardly. Smiling sheepishly at me, he shrugged and fiddled with his fingers. Not for the first time, I realized how pretty this stranger was. Not necessarily in the masculine sense, but in the feminine sense. Now if his hair was a little longer and tied up at the back, and… oooh.
“Do I have something on my face?”
“Oh! No.” I stared at the table instead of him. “What did you want to tell me?”
He grimaced, and shrugged. “I’m not very good at explaining this.”
Then do an interpretive dance if you think it’d work better.
He laughed awkwardly.
We stared at each other.
“Well… I’m kind of dead.”
That wasn’t what I had expected.
“I… do you know what month it is?”
“August.” What does this have to do with anything?
He squirmed uncomfortably. “Um. I didn’t mean like that.”
I waited.
“It’s well. The seventh month. And it’s the fifteenth of the seventh month. And um. You don’t know what I’m talking about do you?”
He smiled awkwardly.
“No, I don’t.” I tried to be as nice as possible, and not imply that I was in the company of an institution escapee who thought he was dead and had problems remembering the date. “I’m sorry. Thank you for the tea.”
“You’re dead too!”
That was rather surprising.
“I mean, you don’t have to be. But you can if you want to be.”
Why would I want to die?
“It’s complicated.”
“Thank you for your time,” I said, really regretting buying my sister pudding, “But I’m not interested in dying.”
“It’s not dying. You can’t die if you’re already dead.”
*
I got home to find my sister making a bonfire in a metal pot.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, trying to figure out where she had gotten a metal pot and what on earth was she burning.
“It’s a bonfire!”
“You’re going to set off the smoke-detector!”
After I doused the bonfire and settled my sister with pudding to keep her from bawling her eyes out, I tried to go back to my Chemistry text to prepare for this Chemistry test. However, the minute I walked into my room, I was hit with a chill.
What was going on?
There was another stranger sitting on my bed reading my textbook. How on earth had this stranger gotten into my room? Who was this stranger? He wasn’t no. 1, 2, or 3.
Stranger number four. Four.
“I can never understand whatever you study,” Stranger no. 4 said petulantly. He looked up.
Wow.
That was all I could think of. If Stranger no. 1 had been good-looking, then this stranger was just… wow.
“Is something the matter?”
What are you doing in my room? How did you get in? Get out before I call the police! Those were all thoughts that were flashing through my mind. Somehow, however, I didn’t say any of those. “Give me back my textbook.”
He handed it back.
“Who are you?” I finally asked.
He beamed. “I thought you’d never ask. We’ve been waiting forever for you.”
*
“It’s been very impolite of you to ignore us for all these years. You’ve had so many years but you’ve never done anything and we just got so tired of waiting.”
His voice rambled on and on, and I was finding it hard to focus on what exactly he was talking about. Perhaps on another day I would be able to focus more on his words. As it was, it was hard to listen to him when I kept thinking about rate laws and stoichiometry.
“We were very lonely without you. It’s just not the same with only four instead of five. You know. Five minus one equals zero.”
Clearly, he failed his elementary math class. Five minus one was four.
“And well…”
What was the point of this?
“It’s just that we wanted to talk to you again. And ask you to join us.”
No way.
“It’s just…”
Why couldn’t these people just get to the point?
“Aren’t you Buddhist?”
How did you know? And what does my religion have to do with anything?
“I give up,” he finally said.
“This is the seventh month of the lunar calendar.”
So?
“It’s Ghost Month.”
What does that have to do with anything?
Oh.
Oh.
*
Oh the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the gate to the ghost world opens. On the fifteenth, all the ghosts come into the world if they haven’t been appeased. On the last day of the month, the gate closes.
“So none of you have any family members?”
“Well, we do,” he said awkwardly, “but well, it’s different. You’re our family.”
I thought for a moment. “And you want me to be a ghost?”
“It’s just that we thought it’d be nice to be all together again, like old times.”
I paused, and then looked more closely at this stranger. “I know you,” I said suddenly.
He smiled. “I hope you do.”
“What will happen to my sister?”
“She’ll wait for her time I guess.”
“And I’ll just… die?”
He looked a little confused. “I think the idea was that you wouldn’t exist, since you’re not really alive anyways. Just kind of… existing. I don’t really know. You could probably explain it better.”
Except I didn’t actually know what was really going on.
“I think the idea was that the world would end and then restart and be arranged so you didn’t actually exist. But he was very confusing when he explained everything.” He scratched his head in bafflement. “That didn’t really come out right, did it?”
So if I agreed, I would end the world? That wasn’t very encouraging.
“So how do I save the world? Not go with you?”
“Well, we kind of messed up the world by actually coming down. I mean, we weren’t supposed to really be real and like, solid. That’s bad.”
So the world was already ending. And it was all because I didn’t burn paper money all my life.
“But if you come with us, then I’m sure things would be better!”
Not likely.
“Well, maybe? You don’t know until you try it!”
You’re talking about dying! You can’t try being a dead person for a while! It doesn’t work like that.
“But you don’t know that!”
I groaned. “Get out of my room!”
He frowned and disappeared.
*
I tried to settle down to my studying, but somehow Stranger no. 4’s words kept staying with me. Were they really unhappy because I wasn’t dead? And I somehow did know these people, so wouldn’t it be better to die? Maybe my family wouldn’t miss me if I was actually dead but not really dead.
I groaned. Why did it have to be him who explained everything? He was such a spaz.
But actually, out of all of them, I was the most intelligent.
I sighed. If only for the sake of the world.
Opening my window, I stuck my head out. “Alright. I’ll go with y-mmph!”
“You will? Really! That’s wonderful!” Stranger no. 3 laughed.
“Oh, good,” Stranger no. 1 said in relief.
“Great!” Stranger no. 2 said in really awkward English.
Stranger no. 4 pulled away from my face. “Let’s go!”
And then they pulled me out of the window and I realized that I was well, dead, and it didn’t really feel very different from being alive. And looking back into my window, I realized that really, I had never existed.
“You didn’t let me finish!” I protested, even as they dragged me away. “What type of ending is this? I didn’t actually agree to die! I didn’t finish my sentence! Jaejoong, you cheater!”
And they laughed at me. Laughed.
*
Now, I’m dead. Yeah.
It’s a little strange, but for the most part, it’s good. The others are nice, even if they are incompetent at explaining things, and it’s been interesting re-knowing them for the past years.
But right now, I’m preparing to visit my sister, with pudding.
And tell her everything there is to know about ghosts.
(And it won’t take me four-thousand words to tell her about us.)
End-Notes: This took a while lol. And it's so late, but ehh... whatever. Enjoy! :) I will now go work on well, other stuff, haha.
Author: virdant
Length: 4,048 words; one-shot
Rating: PG / PG-13
Genre: AU, Humor, Supernatural(ish) maybe
Pairing: OT5-ish
Summary: I really had no idea what was going on. First a weirdo says strange things to me when I go buy pudding for my sister, next I get a stalker who tries to mind my business, and then a stranger ends up giving me an umbrella and disappearing.
Warning: A very bad pastiche of Nagaru Tanigawa's Haruhi Suzumiya light novels.
Notes: In which virdant plays around with Kyon narration style (again), and writes really random fics in a desperate attempt to regain writing skills. Additionally, the voice? Yeah... Also, guess who's who in this fic. Have fun. :)
Fifteen
I was never the person to believe in ghosts. They were for frightening children with, for telling ghost stories to five-year-old cousins on stormy nights with. They didn’t actually exist, not when all rational thought pointed to their non-existence, not when I had never heard of ghosts haunting buildings.
I laughed when the TV shows-silly scripted shows for children-talked of ghosts that whispered promises and fears into other people's ears. Because those shows were so obviously scripted, with the papers and clipboards lingering around the cheap set that broke after the hosts stomped viciously on plywood. I was happy with my non-belief, content in the knowledge that ghosts didn’t exist, and satisfied with my perfectly ordinary life, spending my days in school and my nights studying. I had no interest in the supernatural, beyond their usefulness in frightening cousins who spread grubby fingers over sheets of carefully taken notes.
Which was why it was such a surprise when they came back.
*
As I trekked the four block walk to the nearest convenience store, I began regretting agreeing to my younger sister’s plea for pudding. If only I had been a less caring older brother; then I would have been able to ignore her pleas for pudding (and milk, of which we had a bottle at home) and spend my evening carefully reviewing material for the upcoming exam. The air was heavy with humidity, the skies offering rain but refusing to bestow.
By the time I had walked to the convenience store, I was dripping with sweat, detesting the summer humidity that left heat lingering on the city streets even after the sun had gone down. The sun wasn’t even fully down yet, lingering just above the horizon and just glaring with its brightness, even through the haze of humidity coloring blue skies grey.
“Welcome!” The electronic voice greeted me as I stumbled into the air-conditioned store. I headed straight towards the refrigerated foods section, trying to recall if my sister had wanted a small pudding, regular sized pudding, or a giant jumbo sized one. There was also the question of what type of pudding she wanted, but there was no way I was going to buy her chocolate pudding or any of the like. She was getting the plain pudding.
There were others milling around the convenience store, but most of them were over at the drinks section, debating over tea, soft-drinks, and water. Finally, I selected a three-pack of small sized puddings, deciding that she could always save some for later. I was clearly too nice of an older brother.
After selection came the tedious wait in a line that had suddenly spawned, as I stood in line, yawning, I wondered how it had turned out that everybody in the store happened to be in front of me. Pure bad luck, no doubt.
It also happened that not only was everybody in front of me, but all of them had an excessively vast amount of items they wanted the purchase. Additionally, every single one of them happened to insist on paying in change. Exact change.
Why me?
I had finally managed to get to the front of the now non-existent line, and pushing my three-pack of pudding onto the counter.
The next words I heard would change my life forever.
“Hello, welcome to Convenient Convenience. Is this all you’ll be purchasing today?”
Up until now, everything was normal. I nodded and concentrated on extracting money from my pocket to pay.
“We’ve been waiting a long time for you.”
I jerked and looked up.
The employee had short brown hair styled attractively to frame an open face. His confident face was filled with amusement and understanding.
I will never forget his eyes.
He handed back my change and bowed politely. Was this a joke of some sort? Was he talking on the phone at the same time? I stared bewilderedly and shoved my change back into my pocket, grabbing the pudding with my other hand, and backed slowly out of the cool room into the humid summer twilight.
If anybody else had been in the room, they would have been wondering at this peculiar turn of phrase. Certainly it wasn’t said very often.
But judging from his calm assured look, this was no joke.
He never jokes about such matters.
This knowledge comes entirely from my experience with him.
A cheerful mechanical voice thanked me for shopping there as the automatic doors slid shut, separating me from this strangely self-assured man who somehow knew me.
He smiled at me through the glass, and I ran home.
*
That was the beginning.
Despite what people may say, it was not fate.
*
Two weeks and one day later, I found myself wandering a supermarket, craving, of all things, a fizzy drink that convenience stores didn’t carry. It was aggravating, especially since said drink was delicious. I have a soft spot for delicious food and drink.
“You don’t want that,” a voice said quietly as I reached for a bottle.
I gave the stranger a strange look. Who was he to tell me what I wanted and what I didn’t want? He continued, in a raspy whisper. “Don’t drink it.”
Strangers clearly were strange. I grabbed the bottle and headed towards the check-out counters.
“Don’t you remember me? Don’t you remember us?”
I paid and gave the stranger with the stranger hair a weird look before walking home.
As was my luck, it started raining as I was halfway home and I had no umbrella. Covering my head with one of my textbooks-a Physics text with a heavy plastic covered cover-I picked up the pace, trying to get home before the rain got any heavier.
“Here.”
I blinked at the umbrella suddenly in front of my face.
“It’s an umbrella,” the stranger said. A different one, not the one from the supermarket. He continued by saying something that I shall not repeat here due to its frigidness.
I stared. Despite the fact the temperature outside was clearly very high and the humidity was not helping the heat, I felt a shiver roll up my arms. “What?”
The stranger opened his mouth.
“Wait. No. Don’t repeat that,” I said quickly, to prevent any possible hypothermia. “Just. Don’t say anymore really bad puns. Please.”
The stranger obediently clicked his mouth shut.
“So.” I stared at the umbrella. “An umbrella.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re giving it to me?”
“It’s not like I really need it.”
“An umbrella.”
“Yeah.”
My mind seemed to be sluggish when around this stranger. He has an ability to make everybody stop and stare. Usually this is a good thing, but at that time, it wasn’t very good.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” I finally asked, because I was raised with manners and wasn’t a hoodlum who simply took umbrellas from strangers. In fact, usually I wouldn’t accept anything from strangers, but this one seemed remarkably familiar despite the fact that I could not recollect ever seeing him before in my life.
“Sure,” He said cheerfully, handing it to me and sauntering away. “I’ll see you later.”
“Wait”-
He disappeared around a corner, and I was left with an umbrella in my hand that didn’t belong to me.
“How am I supposed to return this to you?”
*
That night, as I sat cramming more information about rates and rate laws into my head in preparation for the killer test that my Chemistry teacher had promised, I paused in my studying to contemplate what these strangers had said to me.
We’ve been waiting a long time for you.
Don’t you remember us?
I’ll see you later
What type of sentences were those? One would assume that I was familiar with these strangers when I clearly could not remember ever seeing them before in my life. What type of strangers say such familiar things to people? People would misunderstand and assume we were friends!
I groaned and set my pen aside. Now I was never going to be able to study in peace. I decided to take a walk outside to clear my head. Hopefully then I would be able to prepare for this test properly.
As I pulled on my shoes and headed out, my sister stuck her head out from where she was playing and called out, “Buy me pudding!”
Why should I buy you pudding when it was your pudding that started this whole mess?
*
The rain had stopped, so I left the Stranger no. 3’s umbrella at home as I headed out. Waiting right outside my home was Stranger no. 2.
What are you doing outside my home? Are you some type of freaky stalker?
“Come with me,” Stranger no. 2 who may or may not be a stalker said. And started walking away.
What type of normal person would follow you?
I followed him.
He led me to, of all places, the nearest Convenient Convenience store, the same one where this whole thing had started. As we walked in, I slowed down somewhat.
“Let’s buy pudding,” he suggested, “You like pudding, right?”
I’m not accepting any food you offer me.
He waved the pudding in front of my face. It looked mouth-wateringly good.
“Is that all?” a bored salesperson asked. It wasn’t the one from a while ago.
“Wait,” I said, “I should get one for my sister.”
So as I picked up another small pudding, I suddenly heard a voice greet me with a casual “hey.”
It was only my classmate. “Hey,” I greeted back, strangely relieved that it wasn’t another stranger who would say strange bizarre things to me.
“I like pudding too,” my classmate said rather inanely. “Shouldn’t you be studying for that killer Chem test tomorrow?”
I wondered if there was a smaller size of pudding. My sister wouldn’t sleep well with so much sugar in her system.
“But then again, you’re such a genius, I’m sure you don’t need to study like us normal people.”
Just because I’m smarter than you doesn’t make me a genius.
“I’ll see you tomorrow!”
Stranger no. 2 was still waiting for me at the check-out counter when I had finally decided that there was no smaller size of pudding and this amount of sugar wouldn’t kill my sister. He didn’t offer to pay, so I paid for his pudding as well. Cheapskate!
We sat outside on the cheap metal chairs provided.
“There is something important that you must understand,” he said.
I nodded and started eating my pudding. I wish I had bought something to drink instead. It was so odd sitting around talking and eating pudding.
“We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
This again?
“You must understand that we are not normal people. We are special.”
More like weird, with the way you followed me to my home.
“I’m an alien.”
That made me choke.
“Well, not really. I’m not really an alien.”
How did I manage to choke on pudding? It’s soft and slushy and delicious and it shouldn’t be possible to choke on pudding.
“Our vitality is like the gingerbread man’s.”
That didn’t make any sense at all.
“We stay around forever.”
This was starting to sound like a really bad description of a disease. Maybe I was in a medical drama and I didn’t know it. That would be interesting.
“Don’t you remember us?”
No.
Stranger no. 2 sighed. “What do I have to do to get you to remember us?”
I’ve never met any of you before. How am I supposed to remember some people I’ve never met before?
“Well…”
I ate more pudding. Pudding is delicious. No wonder my sister was addicted to it.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
When did this turn into a horror movie?
Apparently taking my skeptical look for no, Stranger no. 2 continued quickly, “Don’t you know why we’re here?”
I had no idea why strangers were invading my life. Especially at this crucial time. I was preparing for exams now! Somehow, I didn’t think that they would understand if I tried to explain. Despite the fact that they looked around the same age as me, none of them seemed to be students. Maybe the first one, since he looked like a responsible student despite his strange words.
“It’s the fifteenth today,” he said.
And so it was. I didn’t really see the point.
“It’s the fifteenth,” he repeated. And then he gestured vaguely towards the sky, where the full moon was shining dully through a haze of humidity.
I nodded in agreement.
“It’s the middle of the month,” he added, as if that would stir my memory of something I had no idea about.
Actually, I did mental calculations and figured that the middle of the month would actually be the sixteenth, but I suppose the fifteenth could count.
Stranger no. 2 finally sighed. “Aren’t you supposed to be smart?”
I really had no idea what was going on. First a weirdo says strange things to me when I go buy pudding for my sister, next I get a stalker who tries to mind my business, and then a stranger ends up giving me an umbrella and disappearing.
“Did you drink that drink?”
Actually, I didn’t. I was planning to, but then I decided to save it for tomorrow, to celebrate the completion of my Chemistry test.
“Good. Let’s go now then.”
And then he grabbed the plastic container my pudding had been in away from me and tossed it into the trash.
“I have to give this pudding to my sister,” I reminded him.
“Then let’s do that and then head back.”
Back where? I started wondering if I was in the company of an escapee from a mental institution. But those things only happened in romance dramas. Or maybe romantic comedies, depending on what new ideas the script-writers had come up with.
By now, I was thinking that I should have listened to my parents and stayed away from strangers. Especially ones with really bad hair-dye jobs.
*
Upon dropping the pudding off at home, I told my sister that I would be back home soon, and gave Stranger no. 2 a skeptical look. Imagine my surprise when Stranger no. 2 actually wasn’t there, but Stranger no. 1 was there instead.
I was really wondering what type of joke this was.
Stranger no. 1, however, offered tea. Not bottled tea, but tea from tea stalls. Those always cost almost double cheap bottled teas sold in convenience stores. Somehow, he had also managed to purchase the one flavor I liked.
I decided to listen to him, if only because he took the time to buy tea for me. Tea. That was as good as pudding. Maybe even better.
He led me to the park where we sat in sticky humidity on old wooden benches sipping tea. Was he some type of serial rapist who led unwitting strangers into dark parks? Maybe he was wanted by the police!
“I’m not a serial rapist,” he protested, gesturing wildly and generally flailing like a flustered fool. I believed him, though I really didn’t understand why. To be honest, I didn’t understand why I kept agreeing to follow them; it didn’t make any sense to follow strangers to strange places and I was more sensible to follow random strangers places. Not to mention I had a Chemistry test tomorrow and I had to study for it!
“But you don’t need to study for that test,” he said rather confused. “You understand all of the material and you’ve already done all the practice questions three times already, including the ones that weren’t assigned.”
Why was I being stalked by not one, but two people!?
“I, well….” Seeming to realize that he had revealed a little too much of my personal life out, he grimaced and stared at his hands. “I uh, noticed you.”
I can tell.
“It’s not that I’m a stalker! Really, I’m not. I mean, at least out of all of us, I’m the least likely to be a stalker. That’s more like…”
He trailed off awkwardly. Smiling sheepishly at me, he shrugged and fiddled with his fingers. Not for the first time, I realized how pretty this stranger was. Not necessarily in the masculine sense, but in the feminine sense. Now if his hair was a little longer and tied up at the back, and… oooh.
“Do I have something on my face?”
“Oh! No.” I stared at the table instead of him. “What did you want to tell me?”
He grimaced, and shrugged. “I’m not very good at explaining this.”
Then do an interpretive dance if you think it’d work better.
He laughed awkwardly.
We stared at each other.
“Well… I’m kind of dead.”
That wasn’t what I had expected.
“I… do you know what month it is?”
“August.” What does this have to do with anything?
He squirmed uncomfortably. “Um. I didn’t mean like that.”
I waited.
“It’s well. The seventh month. And it’s the fifteenth of the seventh month. And um. You don’t know what I’m talking about do you?”
He smiled awkwardly.
“No, I don’t.” I tried to be as nice as possible, and not imply that I was in the company of an institution escapee who thought he was dead and had problems remembering the date. “I’m sorry. Thank you for the tea.”
“You’re dead too!”
That was rather surprising.
“I mean, you don’t have to be. But you can if you want to be.”
Why would I want to die?
“It’s complicated.”
“Thank you for your time,” I said, really regretting buying my sister pudding, “But I’m not interested in dying.”
“It’s not dying. You can’t die if you’re already dead.”
*
I got home to find my sister making a bonfire in a metal pot.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, trying to figure out where she had gotten a metal pot and what on earth was she burning.
“It’s a bonfire!”
“You’re going to set off the smoke-detector!”
After I doused the bonfire and settled my sister with pudding to keep her from bawling her eyes out, I tried to go back to my Chemistry text to prepare for this Chemistry test. However, the minute I walked into my room, I was hit with a chill.
What was going on?
There was another stranger sitting on my bed reading my textbook. How on earth had this stranger gotten into my room? Who was this stranger? He wasn’t no. 1, 2, or 3.
Stranger number four. Four.
“I can never understand whatever you study,” Stranger no. 4 said petulantly. He looked up.
Wow.
That was all I could think of. If Stranger no. 1 had been good-looking, then this stranger was just… wow.
“Is something the matter?”
What are you doing in my room? How did you get in? Get out before I call the police! Those were all thoughts that were flashing through my mind. Somehow, however, I didn’t say any of those. “Give me back my textbook.”
He handed it back.
“Who are you?” I finally asked.
He beamed. “I thought you’d never ask. We’ve been waiting forever for you.”
*
“It’s been very impolite of you to ignore us for all these years. You’ve had so many years but you’ve never done anything and we just got so tired of waiting.”
His voice rambled on and on, and I was finding it hard to focus on what exactly he was talking about. Perhaps on another day I would be able to focus more on his words. As it was, it was hard to listen to him when I kept thinking about rate laws and stoichiometry.
“We were very lonely without you. It’s just not the same with only four instead of five. You know. Five minus one equals zero.”
Clearly, he failed his elementary math class. Five minus one was four.
“And well…”
What was the point of this?
“It’s just that we wanted to talk to you again. And ask you to join us.”
No way.
“It’s just…”
Why couldn’t these people just get to the point?
“Aren’t you Buddhist?”
How did you know? And what does my religion have to do with anything?
“I give up,” he finally said.
“This is the seventh month of the lunar calendar.”
So?
“It’s Ghost Month.”
What does that have to do with anything?
Oh.
Oh.
*
Oh the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the gate to the ghost world opens. On the fifteenth, all the ghosts come into the world if they haven’t been appeased. On the last day of the month, the gate closes.
“So none of you have any family members?”
“Well, we do,” he said awkwardly, “but well, it’s different. You’re our family.”
I thought for a moment. “And you want me to be a ghost?”
“It’s just that we thought it’d be nice to be all together again, like old times.”
I paused, and then looked more closely at this stranger. “I know you,” I said suddenly.
He smiled. “I hope you do.”
“What will happen to my sister?”
“She’ll wait for her time I guess.”
“And I’ll just… die?”
He looked a little confused. “I think the idea was that you wouldn’t exist, since you’re not really alive anyways. Just kind of… existing. I don’t really know. You could probably explain it better.”
Except I didn’t actually know what was really going on.
“I think the idea was that the world would end and then restart and be arranged so you didn’t actually exist. But he was very confusing when he explained everything.” He scratched his head in bafflement. “That didn’t really come out right, did it?”
So if I agreed, I would end the world? That wasn’t very encouraging.
“So how do I save the world? Not go with you?”
“Well, we kind of messed up the world by actually coming down. I mean, we weren’t supposed to really be real and like, solid. That’s bad.”
So the world was already ending. And it was all because I didn’t burn paper money all my life.
“But if you come with us, then I’m sure things would be better!”
Not likely.
“Well, maybe? You don’t know until you try it!”
You’re talking about dying! You can’t try being a dead person for a while! It doesn’t work like that.
“But you don’t know that!”
I groaned. “Get out of my room!”
He frowned and disappeared.
*
I tried to settle down to my studying, but somehow Stranger no. 4’s words kept staying with me. Were they really unhappy because I wasn’t dead? And I somehow did know these people, so wouldn’t it be better to die? Maybe my family wouldn’t miss me if I was actually dead but not really dead.
I groaned. Why did it have to be him who explained everything? He was such a spaz.
But actually, out of all of them, I was the most intelligent.
I sighed. If only for the sake of the world.
Opening my window, I stuck my head out. “Alright. I’ll go with y-mmph!”
“You will? Really! That’s wonderful!” Stranger no. 3 laughed.
“Oh, good,” Stranger no. 1 said in relief.
“Great!” Stranger no. 2 said in really awkward English.
Stranger no. 4 pulled away from my face. “Let’s go!”
And then they pulled me out of the window and I realized that I was well, dead, and it didn’t really feel very different from being alive. And looking back into my window, I realized that really, I had never existed.
“You didn’t let me finish!” I protested, even as they dragged me away. “What type of ending is this? I didn’t actually agree to die! I didn’t finish my sentence! Jaejoong, you cheater!”
And they laughed at me. Laughed.
*
Now, I’m dead. Yeah.
It’s a little strange, but for the most part, it’s good. The others are nice, even if they are incompetent at explaining things, and it’s been interesting re-knowing them for the past years.
But right now, I’m preparing to visit my sister, with pudding.
And tell her everything there is to know about ghosts.
(And it won’t take me four-thousand words to tell her about us.)
End-Notes: This took a while lol. And it's so late, but ehh... whatever. Enjoy! :) I will now go work on well, other stuff, haha.