contest entry #8
title: this night is a perfect shade of dark blue
pairing: qmi
rating: pg
genre: romance/drama
summary: they told zhou mi the house was haunted, but zhou mi didn't believe in ghosts.
there were rumors about the house, centuries old but still firm in its foundations; there were rumors about deaths that had occurred there, murders and screams and blood that stained the ceilings and floorboards. ghastly stories, they were, and horrific from beginning to end. but they were only stories, and zhou mi didn't believe in ghosts.
besides, there were stories about the entire neighborhood. each house had its own tragic tale. chances were, he reasoned, not that good that the entire neighborhood was haunted.
***
"so are you dead yet?" sungmin asked him over the phone, laughter in his voice.
"still alive," zhou mi reported cheerfully. a week into the new house and he was finally getting settled, sorting out the boxes that were still scattered throughout the place. there were fewer of them now, he was pleased to note, even though he still had some ways to go before they were fully emptied.
"i can't believe you left seoul to live out in the middle of nowhere. half of korea lives in seoul, you know. and for good reason!" sungmin is grumbling again, and zhou mi listens with only half an ear as he winds his way through the living room to stand at his front door. the street stretches out before him, pebbly and a little dusty, and the house across the way looks nearly as old as his. but beyond that house, which has weathered years upon years and has stood stolid against time, the sky is blue and pink and yellow. it seems endless and wide, its edges curling into a pastel sunset.
"there's nothing out there," sungmin tells him, exasperated.
zhou mi smiles. "there's sky," he says. "and land. there's a lot. it's okay, sungmin, i'll still go back up to seoul to visit you." he chuckles as sungmin's sigh gusts over the line.
"fine. take care of yourself down there, okay? try not to get killed by a ghost or something."
"thanks," zhou mi replies in good humor, because he knows sungmin's care for him is genuine, even couched in grumbles as it is. "i'll work on it. i hung up the charms my parents gave me." black brushstrokes on red paper, blessed charms that his parents had insisted he bring with him to korea; he had kept them these three years and had packed them carefully with his things when he'd left seoul.
sungmin snorted. "what about the ones heechul and han geng gave you?"
"those are still rolled up," he admitted guiltily. he felt a little bad but, well, the charms had clearly been a joke. they promised full blessings on any intercourse had in the bedroom where they were hung up, heechul had told solemnly when he'd presented them to zhou mi on his birthday. zhou mi had almost taken him seriously for half a moment before he glimpsed han geng trying to hide his laughter from behind heechul.
"i doubt i'll have any use for them down here, anyway," zhou mi added ruefully. "all i've met so far are some nice ahjusshi and ahjumma and a few elderly couples. they all live by the shore though, don't really come into this area." they had all looked at him with those worried, nervous eyes when he'd told them where he was living. rumors, they repeated to him in hushed voices. rumors and ghost stories of his neighborhood.
zhou mi took them as part and parcel of village's folklore and only smiled and promised he would be careful.
like he'd told sungmin: he was still alive.
***
writing, for zhou mi, was like music for his soul. it calmed him and grounded him, and that was why he sought the far reaches of korea in this tiny village by the sea. he passed two years in the bustle of seoul, and now it was time for a change. his fingers itched to write a different story, a new one, yet untold, and he could feel it here, in the rocky beaches and salty air and fading, graying wooden slats that held together his house, waiting for him to write it down. it was like a song on the tip of his tongue and zhou mi was determined to record this message in a bottle.
***
the first night zhou mi heard noises in the attic, he dismissed it as old floorboards and squirrels seeking shelter from the cold nights. he had grown up in a rural part of the country in china, and even the city he'd moved to later on had hosted its share of animal life. noises at night were typical.
he turned over in the bed and pulled the covers up over his shoulder, and went back to sleep.
***
"let me know if you need anything," han geng told him. "if you get lonely...we could probably visit. it's only three hours."
zhou mi triumphantly hung up his last shirt on the hanger and brandished it in the air before him before replying, "thanks but it's all right. don't worry about me." he hooked the hanger over the bar in his closet and pushed the door closed with his hip, pleased.
"i know it's been a year," han geng said, his voice suddenly softer, "but let me know if you want to talk about it."
his eyes fluttered shut and he breathed in deep the salt breeze staining the air, growing familiar after a month. "i don't know what you're talking about," zhou mi replied. "i'm fine. i promise."
***
it was two months after he'd moved in when zhou mi woke up in the middle of the night, startled. his room was pitch black. that was odd, he thought, because there was a window in his room and though he usually pulled the shutters closed at night, he left a slit through which the moonlight could sliver into pieces on his floor. tonight, there was nothing. when he blinked, he couldn't tell when his eyes were open or when they were closed.
and things were eerily silent, absent of the creaks and soft chirrups of the bugs he had grown used to. it was as if a heavy blanket of stifling darkness had settled over his room. even his heartbeat felt heavy.
zhou mi exhaled loudly, just to hear himself. his eyes strained fruitlessly in the dark, ears perked to catch any sound.
then, suddenly, there was movement, a shift of a body and a rustle of something that sounded like clothes. the sliver of moonlight reappeared and zhou mi's heart staccatoed as he realized it had been blocked earlier - by shadows. by a body.
"hello?" he called out nervously.
there was no answer. he couldn't even hear a second breath, a second heartbeat. but there was another shuffle of movement in the darkness and then it, he, whoever it was - had disappeared. his fingers clenched involuntarily in his sheets as he let out a long shudder, unable to help himself.
maybe it had only been a bad dream, he thought to himself in the morning as the rain pattered down on the old house. he put out pails under the leaks, and moved the paper blessings from the living room into his bedroom. out of paranoia - now you're just being ridiculous, zhou mi, he told himself - he hung up the joke charms from heechul as well.
the red paper on the walls soothed him as he replaced a full pail with an empty one.
***
it kept raining through the night.
this time, zhou mi woke up to the sound of someone singing, softly. at first he thought he was imagining it, still dreaming. the voice was a low, sweet tenor, curling warm around him.
he smiled involuntarily, still lost in a haze of sleep.
when he jerked upright a minute later, heart racing, he realized he could still hear the singing. zhou mi cast a wide-eyed look around his room, but he could see nothing.
every sense pointed to the singing coming from the darkest corner, where shadows and cobwebs reigned. he couldn't even remember what was in that corner, maybe a desk or a chair. stacks of empty boxes? no, he had cleared out all his boxes earlier in the week, hadn't he?
"hello?" zhou mi called out and he winced at the waver in his voice. he swallowed hard. "is someone there?"
the singing had stopped at his first word.
then it came, the shifting, the movement. heart in his throat and clutching at all the courage he had, zhou mi lunged out of bed toward the light switch. something brushed past him, stirring the air by his cheek as his fingers found the switch and the lights flickered on.
his room was empty.
***
"i think this place is haunted," zhou mi said into the phone.
"i thought you didn't believe in ghosts," sungmin said skeptically.
"he keeps...singing." zhou mi was hesitant. "there's clearly something...some sort of presence. he has the prettiest voice i've ever heard."
sungmin didn't reply for a long time. "maybe you're just dreaming," he suggested at last.
"maybe." but he didn't believe it.
zhou mi spent the rest of the day at the beach, perched on a rock and staring at the waves. he wrote pages and pages in his notebook that day, and he thought might have stumbled across the story that he wanted to tell.
he has the voice of an angel was his first line. and in his mind, zhou mi painted the rest of him, someone unbearably lonely and beautiful. no one who could sing like that, he thought, could have an ugly soul.
***
it was a wednesday when zhou mi found the photograph. it was faded with age, lying dusty under the piano and hidden for years under the cover that no one had touched.
zhou mi had wanted to play out that song, get it out of his head, and had found the old piano in a back room. whipping off the cover had gotten him a fit of coughing and a sneeze, but the photograph and fluttered through the air at the corner of his vision.
he held it carefully with the edge of his thumb and forefinger. a boy - a young man - stared out at him, pale-skinned and dark-eyed. a mop of unruly black hair splayed over his forehead and teased at his eyes. a curve of a smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth.
zhou mi touched his face with the gentlest of fingertips. was he the one who sang?
are you the one who is so sad?
***
"was there ever a boy who lived in this house?" he asked the locals, curious. "a boy with pale skin and dark hair and a voice like an angel?"
the old grandmother looked at him for a long while, and he felt pinned down by the weight in her eyes, sunken into her head but sharp still. at last, she reached out a wrinkled, lined hand and stroked his cheek. her touch was startlingly soft, warm and dry. "such a nice boy," she said and she sounded sad. "such fine skin and dark hair."
she never answered zhou mi's question.
***
he slept earlier, half-hoping it would bring him closer to this dream boy, this ghost boy. he wanted to coax him out, to convince him that zhou mi didn't want to hurt him. just to...hear his story. learn his life.
***
it was his singing that woke zhou mi. he laid still on his bed for a few minutes, breathing shallowly as he listened. the song was different tonight, the melody less melancholy than the one before. this one was more light-hearted, sweet, almost happy. if the last song had mourned the past, this one was reliving old memories with fondness.
zhou mi's heart ached with how much he wanted to hear this story. tell me your memories, he wanted to say, but bit his lip to keep silent.
when the song ended, zhou mi shifted, very carefully, onto his back. other than the thin strip of moonlight on his floor, cast from the crack in the shutters, he could see nothing. the room was pitch dark, just like every time before. the corner was a black hole to him, mysterious and impenetrable. still, zhou mi turned his gaze into that corner, straining his vision as he whispered,
"will you sing me another song?"
the silence was so long, stretching so thin, that zhou mi was afraid to breathe. maybe the ghost had left. maybe he'd disappeared as soon as zhou mi had spoken, just like last time.
but he hadn't heard the shift of movement, the telltale fall of footsteps.
and, at long last, a new melody began from that corner. zhou mi sank back into his pillows, the tightness in his chest loosening. a small victorious smile graced his lips.
it felt like winning.
***
"how's the book?" heechul asked. "am i in it?"
"it's coming along," zhou mi said happily. "i've written so much this past week. it's the songs, i think. they really...express so much. it's like i can hear the story as clearly as if it was laid out before me!"
heechul snorted on the other end of the line. "sure. great. so have you at least had some delicious seafood out there?"
zhou mi blinked. "oh. no. i...haven't eaten in a while," he said, sounding embarrassed. "i got caught up in writing."
"you complete and utter idiot," heechul said affectionately, and zhou mi could practically hear him rolling his eyes. "did you forget to eat lunch today?"
"er, and dinner yesterday and..." zhou mi trailed off as he realized it had been two days since he'd eaten anything at all. he hadn't even felt the gnarls of hunger, so caught up in his world with the ghost boy.
it was like heechul could read his mind. he'd always been uncanny that way. "zhou mi. how long as it been since you've eaten?" his voice was sharp.
"two days," zhou mi admitted meekly.
"what the hell, what is wrong with you? seasoning, you have to be able to take care of yourself! i thought you could, i thought you were okay - that was the only reason we let you go off on your own, you know that right?"
the wind stirred through the open window and zhou mi thought he could hear a strain of music on it, carried from the sea. a new thought struck him and he scribbled frantically with his pen into his notebook; another line, another scene.
heechul's voice faded into the back of his consciousness.
"zhou mi, it's only been a year. are you sure you're okay? do you need one of us to go down to see you?"
"mm, i'm fine," zhou mi said absentmindedly, pen flying over paper.
his name, he thought. i need to know his name.
***
zhou mi hadn't heard any of the new stories about his house, about the boy who lived there. he had asked and no one had answered him, so he had stopped asking. it had been a long time since he'd been down in the village center anyway. he was happier up here with his old, old house and its beautiful ghost and the story he had finally found voice to tell.
***
"what's your name?" zhou mi whispered into the darkness as the last notes of the song died away.
the reply was faint, whispered.
"kyuhyun."
***
the night zhou mi sang in return was the night kyuhyun first stepped out of the shadows. zhou mi felt his voice falter slightly as faint shadows stirred from darker shadows, and finally a form detached itself. in the barest light from the crack in his shutter, zhou mi finally saw kyuhyun, the boy who had haunted him for months now.
he was tall and thin, his face pale and drawn. his hair was dark as ink, his eyes like liquid zhou mi could have drowned in. he looked frail but, but oh he was smiling. a little upturn of his mouth and zhou mi felt his heart trip. he looked exactly like his photo, just as faded and unreal, like a breath could blow him away into nothing but smoke. but his smile, it was warmer than the photograph.
"keep singing."
his voice was lower than when he sang, slightly raspy. it skittered along zhou mi's nerves as he obliged, singing the rest of the song, pouring out mandarin that he could sing in his sleep. he had grown up on this song, knew it more than by heart: he knew it by instinct, knew it in his very bones.
"you sing beautifully," kyuhyun said.
and zhou mi found that he couldn't stop smiling. "oh kyuhyun," he sighed, "how can you say that? i've wanted to tell you for ages now - your voice. it's so...there are no words for it. you. you're amazing. i - thank you for singing for me," he babbled, because he was never short for words, but sometimes he didn't know how to string them together.
what did you say to a ghost, after all? a ghost that sang him love stories and bitter tears, whose smile left him breathless. zhou mi sometimes wondered if this wasn't all a dream.
***
zhou mi hadn't talked to sungmin in two weeks before he received a call. "how are you?" his normally bubbly voice was subdued, quiet with concern. "are you okay, mimi? heechul said you weren't taking care of yourself."
"when did heechul turn into such a worrywart?" zhou mi laughed.
"zhou mi," sungmin said like he didn't know what else to say. he stopped and zhou mi closed his eyes and hummed a melody, the song kyuhyun had sung to him last night. he was only faintly aware of sungmin's breath catching.
"zhou mi," sungmin said, softly, sadly, "do you miss kyuhyun?"
zhou mi blinked, startled out of his song.
"no," he said, honestly confused. "how could i miss him when i see him every night?"
***
sungmin had hung up on him after half an hour of shouting, in tears. zhou mi's heart ached for him, but he couldn't make sense of what sungmin was saying, words flung like accusations, and kyuhyun's name mixed into all of that. he died, zhou mi, he'd screamed at him. he died in that car crash last year, how can you have forgotten? you loved him.
but the only kyuhyun that zhou mi knew was this one, his kyuhyun. the ghost who sang for him, who smiled at him, who teased him and asked him to sing in return. the one who warmed his nights and his darkness and gave him a story to tell.
zhou mi didn't understand.
***
"are you a ghost?" he whispered, and kyuhyun smiled.
"do i feel like a ghost?" his hand came to a rest against zhou mi's chest, a gentle weight, and then he kissed zhou mi. his lips were dry at first, but warm, and zhou mi found himself kissing back as warmth spread slowly through him, like a drug.
red paper charms fluttered in his vision as he closed his eyes and let himself fall.
arms caught him.
***
i love you, he whispered. don't leave me again.
never, never, never, he swore. i'll never leave you.
***
the stories they told of the house were different now, and their eyes were sadder when they told the tale. the elderly grandmother was quiet when the others retold it, her expression heavy and tired as she regarded the house on the hill, in a neighborhood of ghosts. it sat between two other houses on the edge of a street, faced another house; it was nondescript. nothing special.
but once there had been a boy who lived there, a boy with pale skin and dark hair and the voice of an angel. he had left one day for the city, and had never come back.
and then another boy had come, a boy with pale skin and dark hair and the voice of an angel, so tall and polite and with a smile like sunshine. he had come looking for solace, he told her, for a story to tell. he had come looking for the one his memories couldn't remember.
he had come and fallen in love with a ghost. and now the darkened house echoed with strains of song at night, sometimes accompanied by piano.
the journal he wrote she found and kept, tucked away among her things where no one would ever find. it was their secret, that she kept for them, with a yellowing photograph tucked between the page where his handwriting ended and the beginning of blank pages. the story he had tried so long to tell had finally found its ending.
he had come and found a ghost. he had come and become a ghost.
she told his friends who came looking for him that she had never met anyone by the name of "zhou mi", told them she had never heard of a "kyuhyun" who had once lived in that house.
it was not her secret to tell, the love that tied them to each other through life and death.
pairing: qmi
rating: pg
genre: romance/drama
summary: they told zhou mi the house was haunted, but zhou mi didn't believe in ghosts.
there were rumors about the house, centuries old but still firm in its foundations; there were rumors about deaths that had occurred there, murders and screams and blood that stained the ceilings and floorboards. ghastly stories, they were, and horrific from beginning to end. but they were only stories, and zhou mi didn't believe in ghosts.
besides, there were stories about the entire neighborhood. each house had its own tragic tale. chances were, he reasoned, not that good that the entire neighborhood was haunted.
***
"so are you dead yet?" sungmin asked him over the phone, laughter in his voice.
"still alive," zhou mi reported cheerfully. a week into the new house and he was finally getting settled, sorting out the boxes that were still scattered throughout the place. there were fewer of them now, he was pleased to note, even though he still had some ways to go before they were fully emptied.
"i can't believe you left seoul to live out in the middle of nowhere. half of korea lives in seoul, you know. and for good reason!" sungmin is grumbling again, and zhou mi listens with only half an ear as he winds his way through the living room to stand at his front door. the street stretches out before him, pebbly and a little dusty, and the house across the way looks nearly as old as his. but beyond that house, which has weathered years upon years and has stood stolid against time, the sky is blue and pink and yellow. it seems endless and wide, its edges curling into a pastel sunset.
"there's nothing out there," sungmin tells him, exasperated.
zhou mi smiles. "there's sky," he says. "and land. there's a lot. it's okay, sungmin, i'll still go back up to seoul to visit you." he chuckles as sungmin's sigh gusts over the line.
"fine. take care of yourself down there, okay? try not to get killed by a ghost or something."
"thanks," zhou mi replies in good humor, because he knows sungmin's care for him is genuine, even couched in grumbles as it is. "i'll work on it. i hung up the charms my parents gave me." black brushstrokes on red paper, blessed charms that his parents had insisted he bring with him to korea; he had kept them these three years and had packed them carefully with his things when he'd left seoul.
sungmin snorted. "what about the ones heechul and han geng gave you?"
"those are still rolled up," he admitted guiltily. he felt a little bad but, well, the charms had clearly been a joke. they promised full blessings on any intercourse had in the bedroom where they were hung up, heechul had told solemnly when he'd presented them to zhou mi on his birthday. zhou mi had almost taken him seriously for half a moment before he glimpsed han geng trying to hide his laughter from behind heechul.
"i doubt i'll have any use for them down here, anyway," zhou mi added ruefully. "all i've met so far are some nice ahjusshi and ahjumma and a few elderly couples. they all live by the shore though, don't really come into this area." they had all looked at him with those worried, nervous eyes when he'd told them where he was living. rumors, they repeated to him in hushed voices. rumors and ghost stories of his neighborhood.
zhou mi took them as part and parcel of village's folklore and only smiled and promised he would be careful.
like he'd told sungmin: he was still alive.
***
writing, for zhou mi, was like music for his soul. it calmed him and grounded him, and that was why he sought the far reaches of korea in this tiny village by the sea. he passed two years in the bustle of seoul, and now it was time for a change. his fingers itched to write a different story, a new one, yet untold, and he could feel it here, in the rocky beaches and salty air and fading, graying wooden slats that held together his house, waiting for him to write it down. it was like a song on the tip of his tongue and zhou mi was determined to record this message in a bottle.
***
the first night zhou mi heard noises in the attic, he dismissed it as old floorboards and squirrels seeking shelter from the cold nights. he had grown up in a rural part of the country in china, and even the city he'd moved to later on had hosted its share of animal life. noises at night were typical.
he turned over in the bed and pulled the covers up over his shoulder, and went back to sleep.
***
"let me know if you need anything," han geng told him. "if you get lonely...we could probably visit. it's only three hours."
zhou mi triumphantly hung up his last shirt on the hanger and brandished it in the air before him before replying, "thanks but it's all right. don't worry about me." he hooked the hanger over the bar in his closet and pushed the door closed with his hip, pleased.
"i know it's been a year," han geng said, his voice suddenly softer, "but let me know if you want to talk about it."
his eyes fluttered shut and he breathed in deep the salt breeze staining the air, growing familiar after a month. "i don't know what you're talking about," zhou mi replied. "i'm fine. i promise."
***
it was two months after he'd moved in when zhou mi woke up in the middle of the night, startled. his room was pitch black. that was odd, he thought, because there was a window in his room and though he usually pulled the shutters closed at night, he left a slit through which the moonlight could sliver into pieces on his floor. tonight, there was nothing. when he blinked, he couldn't tell when his eyes were open or when they were closed.
and things were eerily silent, absent of the creaks and soft chirrups of the bugs he had grown used to. it was as if a heavy blanket of stifling darkness had settled over his room. even his heartbeat felt heavy.
zhou mi exhaled loudly, just to hear himself. his eyes strained fruitlessly in the dark, ears perked to catch any sound.
then, suddenly, there was movement, a shift of a body and a rustle of something that sounded like clothes. the sliver of moonlight reappeared and zhou mi's heart staccatoed as he realized it had been blocked earlier - by shadows. by a body.
"hello?" he called out nervously.
there was no answer. he couldn't even hear a second breath, a second heartbeat. but there was another shuffle of movement in the darkness and then it, he, whoever it was - had disappeared. his fingers clenched involuntarily in his sheets as he let out a long shudder, unable to help himself.
maybe it had only been a bad dream, he thought to himself in the morning as the rain pattered down on the old house. he put out pails under the leaks, and moved the paper blessings from the living room into his bedroom. out of paranoia - now you're just being ridiculous, zhou mi, he told himself - he hung up the joke charms from heechul as well.
the red paper on the walls soothed him as he replaced a full pail with an empty one.
***
it kept raining through the night.
this time, zhou mi woke up to the sound of someone singing, softly. at first he thought he was imagining it, still dreaming. the voice was a low, sweet tenor, curling warm around him.
he smiled involuntarily, still lost in a haze of sleep.
when he jerked upright a minute later, heart racing, he realized he could still hear the singing. zhou mi cast a wide-eyed look around his room, but he could see nothing.
every sense pointed to the singing coming from the darkest corner, where shadows and cobwebs reigned. he couldn't even remember what was in that corner, maybe a desk or a chair. stacks of empty boxes? no, he had cleared out all his boxes earlier in the week, hadn't he?
"hello?" zhou mi called out and he winced at the waver in his voice. he swallowed hard. "is someone there?"
the singing had stopped at his first word.
then it came, the shifting, the movement. heart in his throat and clutching at all the courage he had, zhou mi lunged out of bed toward the light switch. something brushed past him, stirring the air by his cheek as his fingers found the switch and the lights flickered on.
his room was empty.
***
"i think this place is haunted," zhou mi said into the phone.
"i thought you didn't believe in ghosts," sungmin said skeptically.
"he keeps...singing." zhou mi was hesitant. "there's clearly something...some sort of presence. he has the prettiest voice i've ever heard."
sungmin didn't reply for a long time. "maybe you're just dreaming," he suggested at last.
"maybe." but he didn't believe it.
zhou mi spent the rest of the day at the beach, perched on a rock and staring at the waves. he wrote pages and pages in his notebook that day, and he thought might have stumbled across the story that he wanted to tell.
he has the voice of an angel was his first line. and in his mind, zhou mi painted the rest of him, someone unbearably lonely and beautiful. no one who could sing like that, he thought, could have an ugly soul.
***
it was a wednesday when zhou mi found the photograph. it was faded with age, lying dusty under the piano and hidden for years under the cover that no one had touched.
zhou mi had wanted to play out that song, get it out of his head, and had found the old piano in a back room. whipping off the cover had gotten him a fit of coughing and a sneeze, but the photograph and fluttered through the air at the corner of his vision.
he held it carefully with the edge of his thumb and forefinger. a boy - a young man - stared out at him, pale-skinned and dark-eyed. a mop of unruly black hair splayed over his forehead and teased at his eyes. a curve of a smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth.
zhou mi touched his face with the gentlest of fingertips. was he the one who sang?
are you the one who is so sad?
***
"was there ever a boy who lived in this house?" he asked the locals, curious. "a boy with pale skin and dark hair and a voice like an angel?"
the old grandmother looked at him for a long while, and he felt pinned down by the weight in her eyes, sunken into her head but sharp still. at last, she reached out a wrinkled, lined hand and stroked his cheek. her touch was startlingly soft, warm and dry. "such a nice boy," she said and she sounded sad. "such fine skin and dark hair."
she never answered zhou mi's question.
***
he slept earlier, half-hoping it would bring him closer to this dream boy, this ghost boy. he wanted to coax him out, to convince him that zhou mi didn't want to hurt him. just to...hear his story. learn his life.
***
it was his singing that woke zhou mi. he laid still on his bed for a few minutes, breathing shallowly as he listened. the song was different tonight, the melody less melancholy than the one before. this one was more light-hearted, sweet, almost happy. if the last song had mourned the past, this one was reliving old memories with fondness.
zhou mi's heart ached with how much he wanted to hear this story. tell me your memories, he wanted to say, but bit his lip to keep silent.
when the song ended, zhou mi shifted, very carefully, onto his back. other than the thin strip of moonlight on his floor, cast from the crack in the shutters, he could see nothing. the room was pitch dark, just like every time before. the corner was a black hole to him, mysterious and impenetrable. still, zhou mi turned his gaze into that corner, straining his vision as he whispered,
"will you sing me another song?"
the silence was so long, stretching so thin, that zhou mi was afraid to breathe. maybe the ghost had left. maybe he'd disappeared as soon as zhou mi had spoken, just like last time.
but he hadn't heard the shift of movement, the telltale fall of footsteps.
and, at long last, a new melody began from that corner. zhou mi sank back into his pillows, the tightness in his chest loosening. a small victorious smile graced his lips.
it felt like winning.
***
"how's the book?" heechul asked. "am i in it?"
"it's coming along," zhou mi said happily. "i've written so much this past week. it's the songs, i think. they really...express so much. it's like i can hear the story as clearly as if it was laid out before me!"
heechul snorted on the other end of the line. "sure. great. so have you at least had some delicious seafood out there?"
zhou mi blinked. "oh. no. i...haven't eaten in a while," he said, sounding embarrassed. "i got caught up in writing."
"you complete and utter idiot," heechul said affectionately, and zhou mi could practically hear him rolling his eyes. "did you forget to eat lunch today?"
"er, and dinner yesterday and..." zhou mi trailed off as he realized it had been two days since he'd eaten anything at all. he hadn't even felt the gnarls of hunger, so caught up in his world with the ghost boy.
it was like heechul could read his mind. he'd always been uncanny that way. "zhou mi. how long as it been since you've eaten?" his voice was sharp.
"two days," zhou mi admitted meekly.
"what the hell, what is wrong with you? seasoning, you have to be able to take care of yourself! i thought you could, i thought you were okay - that was the only reason we let you go off on your own, you know that right?"
the wind stirred through the open window and zhou mi thought he could hear a strain of music on it, carried from the sea. a new thought struck him and he scribbled frantically with his pen into his notebook; another line, another scene.
heechul's voice faded into the back of his consciousness.
"zhou mi, it's only been a year. are you sure you're okay? do you need one of us to go down to see you?"
"mm, i'm fine," zhou mi said absentmindedly, pen flying over paper.
his name, he thought. i need to know his name.
***
zhou mi hadn't heard any of the new stories about his house, about the boy who lived there. he had asked and no one had answered him, so he had stopped asking. it had been a long time since he'd been down in the village center anyway. he was happier up here with his old, old house and its beautiful ghost and the story he had finally found voice to tell.
***
"what's your name?" zhou mi whispered into the darkness as the last notes of the song died away.
the reply was faint, whispered.
"kyuhyun."
***
the night zhou mi sang in return was the night kyuhyun first stepped out of the shadows. zhou mi felt his voice falter slightly as faint shadows stirred from darker shadows, and finally a form detached itself. in the barest light from the crack in his shutter, zhou mi finally saw kyuhyun, the boy who had haunted him for months now.
he was tall and thin, his face pale and drawn. his hair was dark as ink, his eyes like liquid zhou mi could have drowned in. he looked frail but, but oh he was smiling. a little upturn of his mouth and zhou mi felt his heart trip. he looked exactly like his photo, just as faded and unreal, like a breath could blow him away into nothing but smoke. but his smile, it was warmer than the photograph.
"keep singing."
his voice was lower than when he sang, slightly raspy. it skittered along zhou mi's nerves as he obliged, singing the rest of the song, pouring out mandarin that he could sing in his sleep. he had grown up on this song, knew it more than by heart: he knew it by instinct, knew it in his very bones.
"you sing beautifully," kyuhyun said.
and zhou mi found that he couldn't stop smiling. "oh kyuhyun," he sighed, "how can you say that? i've wanted to tell you for ages now - your voice. it's so...there are no words for it. you. you're amazing. i - thank you for singing for me," he babbled, because he was never short for words, but sometimes he didn't know how to string them together.
what did you say to a ghost, after all? a ghost that sang him love stories and bitter tears, whose smile left him breathless. zhou mi sometimes wondered if this wasn't all a dream.
***
zhou mi hadn't talked to sungmin in two weeks before he received a call. "how are you?" his normally bubbly voice was subdued, quiet with concern. "are you okay, mimi? heechul said you weren't taking care of yourself."
"when did heechul turn into such a worrywart?" zhou mi laughed.
"zhou mi," sungmin said like he didn't know what else to say. he stopped and zhou mi closed his eyes and hummed a melody, the song kyuhyun had sung to him last night. he was only faintly aware of sungmin's breath catching.
"zhou mi," sungmin said, softly, sadly, "do you miss kyuhyun?"
zhou mi blinked, startled out of his song.
"no," he said, honestly confused. "how could i miss him when i see him every night?"
***
sungmin had hung up on him after half an hour of shouting, in tears. zhou mi's heart ached for him, but he couldn't make sense of what sungmin was saying, words flung like accusations, and kyuhyun's name mixed into all of that. he died, zhou mi, he'd screamed at him. he died in that car crash last year, how can you have forgotten? you loved him.
but the only kyuhyun that zhou mi knew was this one, his kyuhyun. the ghost who sang for him, who smiled at him, who teased him and asked him to sing in return. the one who warmed his nights and his darkness and gave him a story to tell.
zhou mi didn't understand.
***
"are you a ghost?" he whispered, and kyuhyun smiled.
"do i feel like a ghost?" his hand came to a rest against zhou mi's chest, a gentle weight, and then he kissed zhou mi. his lips were dry at first, but warm, and zhou mi found himself kissing back as warmth spread slowly through him, like a drug.
red paper charms fluttered in his vision as he closed his eyes and let himself fall.
arms caught him.
***
i love you, he whispered. don't leave me again.
never, never, never, he swore. i'll never leave you.
***
the stories they told of the house were different now, and their eyes were sadder when they told the tale. the elderly grandmother was quiet when the others retold it, her expression heavy and tired as she regarded the house on the hill, in a neighborhood of ghosts. it sat between two other houses on the edge of a street, faced another house; it was nondescript. nothing special.
but once there had been a boy who lived there, a boy with pale skin and dark hair and the voice of an angel. he had left one day for the city, and had never come back.
and then another boy had come, a boy with pale skin and dark hair and the voice of an angel, so tall and polite and with a smile like sunshine. he had come looking for solace, he told her, for a story to tell. he had come looking for the one his memories couldn't remember.
he had come and fallen in love with a ghost. and now the darkened house echoed with strains of song at night, sometimes accompanied by piano.
the journal he wrote she found and kept, tucked away among her things where no one would ever find. it was their secret, that she kept for them, with a yellowing photograph tucked between the page where his handwriting ended and the beginning of blank pages. the story he had tried so long to tell had finally found its ending.
he had come and found a ghost. he had come and become a ghost.
she told his friends who came looking for him that she had never met anyone by the name of "zhou mi", told them she had never heard of a "kyuhyun" who had once lived in that house.
it was not her secret to tell, the love that tied them to each other through life and death.