Chapter Text
It happened on the first week after Jongin got his driving license. He was still unfamiliarized with the city’s navigation from a driver’s point of view, and more often than not attempted at a route that would have worked fine if he had been on foot, but only led him to waste time making huge roundabouts when taking it by car. However, his lack of Driver’s Sense surprisingly failed to get him into trouble until that rainy Thursday afternoon, when he drove himself right into the lion’s mouth.
Cutting the back story short, Jongin had decided to take a risk, again, and had failed, again, at following his planned route. This time, however, he was driving around an area he didn’t know very well, and, when his first roundabout didn’t work, he became effectively lost by going two streets more south than he was supposed to. It was a very grey part of the city, made greyer and melancholic by the cold rain, and Jongin was not very happy about having to drive around there, clueless to where he was. If only to dampen his mood a bit more, the rain grew heavier the more lost he got, as if to warn him he had made a mistake. Jongin huffed, annoyed at his own thoughts. I know that already, he mentally shouted at the weather, glaring at the dense clouds.
Then, it started getting foggy. Jongin was partially sure that he had accidentally entered some real life Silent Hill situation, because the fog was impossibly thick and heavy and it came from nowhere, as if the rainclouds had rolled onto Earth. It took him a while to notice, and he did so thanks to the sudden heat and the dark gray particles gathering on the windshield, that (fortunately) what he entered was not Silent Hill, because what had been tampering his vision was not fog, but smoke.
Jongin had somehow driven himself right into a fire. A huge one.
Jongin hated fire. Well, he didn’t know a single person who particularly liked fire, but he hated it to previously unseen extents. He was terrified of it. As a child, Jongin constantly saw nightmares of fire: his house burning to the ground with him inside, the flames swallowing his family. Growing up only gave him more variations of the dream. Sometimes, it was the school burning down. The bus. The university. Recently, his car. He truly, truly hated fire.
In all honesty, he had the right to panic, but he wished he wouldn’t. Panicking didn’t help, not any more than shrieking like an eight-year-old at the flickering sight of flames, and right now he needed all the help he could use, because it was so hot that he could feel the fire lick his skin, and the smell was getting too intense. He did his best to engage his tiny cheap car in a quick U-turn, but it was harder than he’d have wished for. Then, right when the last of his nerves were waning as he prepared to speed the hell away from there, both doors on the left side of his car winded open and a bunch of unknown people barged in.
“Get us out of here! Quick!!” shouted whoever had the nerve to take the passenger’s seat, and Jongin tried to say something, but opening his mouth resulted in a lot of smoke invading his lungs and he could only cough. “Come on!! You don’t want to die here, do you?”
The stranger had a point, and Jongin decided to do as told, eyes tearful from the smoke as he finished the U-turn and drove away in a truly absurd speed. Luckily, the fog seemed to open up to him as he drove by, and he felt a bit safer, albeit not safe enough to take it easy on the gas pedal. Only when they could no longer see, feel or smell any signs of the fire, was that Jongin slowed down, his heart thumping loudly from the adrenaline. He then decided to take a discreet look at the strangers we was giving a ride to.
They were three, and they looked like an ash-stained sweating mess, but well, they had just escaped from a fire. The one behind the passenger’s seat was pale, all long limbs and huge eyes; he reminded Jongin of a Tim Burton character. His hair had been clearly damaged by the heat, and his nose was bright red. Jongin couldn’t see the one seating behind his own seat very well but, from what he could see, that one also had big eyes, but his eyes were downcast and gloomy. Overall, he looked rather sad and withered, as if all of his energy had been drained from his body.
The one sitting beside Jongin, who had screamed at him earlier, had the best appearance. He looked unaffected to the point that anyone could’ve thought he’d just walked out the mall if it weren’t for the amount of ash covering his jacket, his cheeks, his entire being, tinting his eyelashes and hair with a light, unnatural color. Also – and that Jongin noticed after the stranger turned to face him – his eyes had a strange, menacing gleam.
Despite that, he smiled. “Thanks for saving us, mate.”
“We’re not safe yet,” the gloomy man said, voice soft and as miserable as his features. “He’s on our tail. Let’s climb off and run.”
The man with long limbs looked horrified. “Run? He’s gonna find us in seconds!”
“For starters, let’s get somewhere safe,” the ash-covered man said in a firm voice, then turning to Jongin with another smile. Jongin wondered if he was dealing with someone famous. “Would you mind…? Turn left here.”
It’s not like Jongin had the backbone to throw them out, so he sharply turned left as told, making his car jiggle dangerously on its wheels. He silently apologized, but the man with long limbs laughed and the ash-covered man chuckled quietly, so Jongin considered himself forgiven. The gloomy man did not make a sound.
“Straight here,” the ash-covered man continued to give him directions. “Then turn right there – not here, there, yes. Follow this street… I think it’s the next one. Left. Left again.”
Jongin just silently followed the orders, hopes of getting to his job interview in time long lost.
Eventually, they reached a place the ash-covered man deemed suitable; a small, tall, decrepit hotel. In all honesty, it looked like it was haunted; Jongin had no idea buildings this crooked and washed-out actually existed outside of amusement parks. As they parked the car in a nearby alley and went into the hotel, they found the moldy entrance hall to be empty, completely empty, and dead silent.
Somehow, the gloomy man managed to fish a room key without even leaning over the counter, and none of them hesitated to simply go find their room. Only Jongin did hesitate, not used to hotels, specially not ones in which you just barge in without talking to anyone.
Later, after climbing several exhaustively long sets of stairs, when wondering if it was okay for him to sit on the bed as the strangers entered the room, Jongin would realize that he could have left instead of following them. Flustered by his own silliness, Jongin decided to remain standing and demand an explanation.
“Um,” the sound that came out of his mouth was a little pathetic, but it immediately attracted the attention of the three men. It almost made him step back instinctively. He scratched his nape in a nervous gesture, suddenly self-aware. “Um, so. So… should I ask what’s going on?”
The three strangers diverted their eyes from him, choosing to glance at each other as if communicating via telepathy. Jongin regretted his words a little. He should just have left. He didn’t want to be let into something he couldn’t get out from later, like the Mafia or something.
“I’m sorry. We ended up leaving you in the dark, didn’t we?” the ash-covered man stood up to shake hands with him, and Jongin found himself unable to take that hand, because Christ, the palms were actually pitch black. The stranger seemed to take notice of that, and gave up on the handshake with an apologetic smile. “My name is Baekhyun. Don’t worry, we’re not dangerous people—”
The gloomy man snorted.
“… not the kind you might think we are, anyway.” That was the least reassuring thing Jongin had heard in a long time. “If you want to, you can stay for a while and I’ll explain what happened. Then, you can just go home.”
It sounded tempting. Baekhyun seemed to be willingly transparent, and Jongin sure would love to know why the hell what were they doing in that fire and why were they in such a hurry if they weren’t criminals. And then, afterwards, he could just go home. So Jongin nodded in agreement.
“Great,” Baekhyun seemed glad. The strange gleam from before returned to his eyes. “So, sit here, the story is long. First—”
“Baekhyun,” the gloomy man spoke up. “Perhaps you should go take a shower? I can explain everything to him.”
Baekhyun blinked questioningly at him, frowning a bit. Then, he seemed to acknowledge the state of his clothes and hair, reckoning that he was much dirtier than what he might have thought, and complied.
“Tell him everything!” he said while heading to the bathroom. Thus, Jongin was left in the presence of the two yet unnamed strangers; Long Limbs, who had been walking around the room in a restless manner since they had gone in, hurriedly sat beside Gloomy on the threadbare couch, his smile slightly manic. Jongin took a seat on the wooden chair placed beside the bed.
“May I ask your name?” Gloomy looked much less gloomy than before, suddenly irradiating an oddly comforting aura.
“Jongin,” no last names.
“Jongin,” he repeated it carefully, as if it were a word in a foreign language that he longed to understand. “My name is Kyungsoo. I don’t really know where to begin, but… well, I’ll try.”
“Basically it all started because I’m dead,” Long Limbs suddenly said, voice deep, startling Jongin greatly.
“You’re not dead, Chanyeol!” Kyungsoo objected, seeming personally offended at the remark. Jongin blinked at the exchange, then frowned. Wait, what? What?
What…?
“I’m almost dead. I’m just a spirit without a body,” Chanyeol carried on, unaffected. “Like a reverse zombie, you know?”
Jongin’s frown deepend. “What?”
“He’s not dead, nor is he almost dead. He’s wandering,” Kyungsoo tried to fix it. “The bit about him being a spirit is true, though. At least right now. But I don’t think it’d be correct to call him a reverse zombie, because he’s not dead.”
Ignoring the bit about zombies, Jongin gaped. “So… you… you’re a ghost?!”
Chanyeol suddenly jumped on his feet in a burst of energy. “Ah! Ah!! That’s the word I was looking for!! I’m a ghost!” he fell back onto the couch with a satisfied grin. “See, Kyungsoo! That’s what I wanted to tell you before! I can haunt people! How cool is that?”
“Not cool at all,” Kyungsoo muttered, back to being gloomy. “The only one you’ve been haunting for the past days is me. Anyway, I should go back to the explanation. Yes, it all happened a week ago, because Chanyeol’s soul escaped from his body. We were trying to fix this when—”
“Wait, wait,” Jongin interrupted. “I want to ask you something. If… Chanyeol sshi… is a ghost,” he hesitantly phrased his question. “And you’re trying to, um, fix his situation?, or something… are you a medium?”
Kyungsoo’s expression was blank. “Oh,” he muttered, hit by enlightenment. “No, I’m not. Um, I’m an entity. I don’t know how to say this without making it sound drastic, but I’m what humans know as an angel.”
Jongin just gaped again, looking severely dumb.
“I think you just made it all even more drastic,” Chanyeol chuckled, and Kyungsoo blushed slightly.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and Jongin shook his head to dismiss it. “So, anyway. Where was I? Ah, yes, we were trying to fix Chanyeol’s situation when we met Baekhyun. Baekhyun had some problems of his own, and we got caught up in them somehow. Also, upon meeting Baekhyun, Chanyeol’s soul became even more detached from his body, to the point that he might actually die if he remembers anything else.”
“So I am almost dead,” Chanyeol cheekily pointed out. Kyungsoo looked like he was aching to hit Chanyeol on the head.
“Ah, wait,” Jongin interjected once again, pointing at Chanyeol in sudden agitation. “If you’re a ghost,” he then pointed at Kyungsoo. “And you’re an angel… Baekhyun sshi is…?”
“A demon,” they answered in unison.
Jongin nodded, dumbfounded, the human embodiment of white noise. He wasn’t sure of what he had been expecting for an answer.
“And, and,” he rushed to ask as remembered his other question. “You said that when you met Baekhyun sshi, Chanyeol sshi’s soul became more detached…”
“Yes. The more Chanyeol remembers about his life, the more detached his soul becomes. Usually, wandering souls are wandering because they don’t know who they are and whether they are dead or alive. The nature of Baekhyun’s… um, job, as we might say, ended up reminding Chanyeol of his own… occupation as a living being.”
Jongin nodded again, increasingly shocked at how absurd it all was, the story, the whole situation. He, Kim Jongin, normal twenty-something South Korean college graduate, had left home early for a job interview. Then, he got lost on his way. Now, it was high morning and he was sitting in a stingy hotel room with a ghost, an angel and a demon who was taking a shower.
Baekhyun chose that moment to come out from the bathroom, hair dripping, clad in a quite grimy bathrobe. “What did I miss?” he asked with a saucy grin.
“Everything. I just finished the story,” Kyungsoo smiled for the first time since Jongin first saw him. “I’m heading to the shower too now. Please try not to destroy anything,” he glanced at Chanyeol, implying that the plead was directed to him as well.
“Can I go with you?” Chanyeol was the portrait of childish innocence.
“No!” Kyungsoo shouted, shutting the door closed before Jongin could tell whether he had blushed or not.
Chanyeol waited until he could hear the shower running. When he did, he put a finger on his lips, asking Jongin and Baekhyun to keep quiet, and slipped into the bathroom wall, away from their sight. Jongin watched the scene in stunned silent. When he turned around, he found out that Baekhyun had been watching his stunned silence with an amused grin on his lips.
Free from the ashes, Baekhyun looked much more human than before. The natural color of his hair and eyelashes, previously covered in grey, was now revealed to be dark sienna, warm and soft. Jongin didn’t know what led him to associate warmth to a hair color, but it was automatic. Everything about Baekhyun seemed to be warm; his flushed skin, his mischievous grin, his gleaming, menacing eyes.
“So!” he spoke up suddenly, startling Jongin. “I hope Kyungsoo wasn’t too dramatic about the whole deal. Did he tell you about me?”
Slowly, Jongin nodded. “He told me you’re a demon…” he trailed off, realizing that such a sentence would have had multiple connotations if the context had been different. Baekhyun crossed his arms, leading the bathrobe to slide imperceptibly from his shoulders, and nodded.
“That’s right. I don’t think he told you what I do, considering that Chanyeol was listening,” he waited for Jongin’s confirmation. Jongin shook his head. “He’s afraid talking about it will kill Chanyeol. Anyway, it’s not really a relevant detail,” Baekhyun shrugged, tearing a stripe off the bathrobe with practiced ease, as if it were paper and not rough fabric. “I just need an excuse to show off.”
He threw the strip of fabric in the air, way above their heads, and stared at it intently. So did Jongin, almost unconsciously, wondering what that could be about – and then he saw the smoke. Black smoke, rising slowly from the fabric, a thin, almost invisible thread of it.
When the fabric reached Jongin’s eye level, it burst into flames.
Jongin jumped back, falling from the chair and almost hitting his head pretty hard on the bedside table. Hot blush crept up his neck when he heard Baekhyun laugh, but he couldn’t blame him; that had been a pretty pathetic fall.
“Chill! I’m not gonna set you on fire or anything,” the demon reached his hand out for Jongin to hold, chest now completely exposed. On his way up, Jongin hit the chair with his own knee, hard, and had to bite his lip so not to whimper in pain. “That was just one of my tricks. How did you like it?”
Jongin stared at him in disbelief, but Baekhyun seemed to be serious. “Cool,” he said simply, and it seemed to make Baekhyun slightly frustrated. “What do you use it for?”
“Cause mayhem,” the demon said simply, browsing the bedroom for something. Presumably, something else to set fire to. “Wreck havoc. Nothing too big, just small freak accidents here and there. Domestic fires, short-circuits, exploding lamps. Ah,” he looked up with a sly smile. In a second, the lamp was going on and off in a quick rhythm, and Baekhyun was clumsily beatboxing a dance club beat. “Strobe. How’s that? Never a dull moment with me around.”
Jongin didn’t know what to say. The laughter that suddenly escaped from his lips was involuntary, surprising himself. It seemed to please Baekhyun, though. “Really cool, right?”
“Yeah,” Jongin nodded, smiling when Baekhyun started to disco-dance to his own beatboxing. Eventually, the unavoidable happened: the lamp burned out with a soft ‘poof’. “Oops,” Baekhyun made a face before, somehow, forcing the lamp to go on again. “Don’t mention that to Kyungsoo, okay? He hates when it happens.”
“Okay,” and the next sentence slipped before Jongin could think twice. “I should probably go.”
It fell a bit heavily in the room. Much heavier than Jongin would have liked, at least; he wasn’t in a rush to leave. Even though he should. Probably. Considering the circumstances.
Baekhyun looked disappointed, and that shrunk Jongin’s will to leave to almost zero. “You’re right,” the demon gave in, shrugging, and Jongin tried not to pay attention to how the bathrobe was going to be fully open in a matter of seconds. He could already see Baekhyun’s belly button. Maybe it was a good time to leave. “Thank you for helping us out today. We’d be deep-fried by now if you hadn’t.”
“You’re welcome,” Jongin said politely, bowing, as Baekhyun guided him to the door.
“No we’re not,” Baekhyun rolled his eyes. “I’d say ‘see you around’, but you should hope I don’t. So, goodbye, Kim Jongin.”
Jongin was outside already. From where he was standing, he heard a loud noise coming from the bathroom, followed by several thumps on the door. Kyungsoo had probably found Chanyeol peeking on him. “Goodbye. Stay safe.”
With a bright chuckle, Baekhyun unceremoniously shut the door right on his face.
And that was the end of Jongin’s supernatural adventures.
Or so he thought, at least.