Triangle. |Stray Kids

Five.

The world today is much more different from how it used to be. It's not like it was anything near normal for hundreds of years, but it was less twisted. Even before the day the three let their first cry ever echo inside the hospital's labor rooms, the world was already messed up.

It wasn't uncommon to meet someone who can see ghosts and interact with them. It was typical to have a family member who once was a wandering soul. It was familiar to find two different people with the same exact name, face, voice, build, and even education and profession, yet are not related by any means. And it was also predictable to spot someone among the crowd that looks exactly like your very dead great-grandparent.

That was the world the three grew up overthinking about and how it used to be different when it used to be normal. If there is a thing called normal.

What toppled over that, was how this universe turned upside down within a night. People went to bed ending their day and woke up the next morning to more chaos stirring the very little peace left. And that was when the three friends were high school teenagers.

The three friends witnessed people disappear as if they never existed. They watched people get punished by some invisible powers for their bad deeds. They were there when soulmates' bonds started to take their place among the abnormalities of this world.

They were there when the word normal got erased from this life's dictionary.

And surely, They were there when people started falling into an unexplained deep sleep. Some were suspected to be in a coma due to unknown reasons. Others were subjected to trauma -either physical or psychological- before their sleep. But then, there were those who just didn't wake up. They had no damages or injuries wherever they were examined. They had nothing wrong with them except for not waking up.

Some experienced changes during their sleep. Some woke up on their own after years of sleeping, telling tales about what they witnessed while being confined to those hospital beds. Some just passed away without much disturbance to their surroundings. And then, there were those who didn't pat an eyelash for long long years of hibernation. They were just sleeping, with no expected date for their wake-up.

"If you are that worried, one of you can stay with her." Said a voice that didn't belong to any of the three friends. That didn't belong to anyone inside the room as there was no one except them.

Upon hearing it, the two males' faces dropped, and Lilly smirked.

They looked behind Lilly to spot the figure that talked as it started to make itself visible. Behind Lilly, an outline started to form out of the blue, drawing a human hollow figure. As seconds ticked, that figure started to solidify, showing feminine curves with long chocolate brown hair and cutely trimmed fringes. Later, the innocent facial features made themselves clear for the two males who still had wide eyes. But Chris was the one to widen his eyes even more.

"Si-Sienna?" Chris gasped.

"Who's Sienna?" Lino questioned, unable to avert his eyes from the female that sat on the sofa behind Lilly. The girl had soft features and a childish lovely smile. She was in her school uniform. She's a high school student. No. She was a high school student before she left this world for good.

"One of The Ghost's victims." Chris gritted his teeth.

"Hello!" The girl waved at them while smiling.

Lilly turned around with a bag of chips, extending it to Sienna. "Snacks? I can't offer you a beer. You're still a minor."

Sienna rolled her eyes. "I'm a ghost, anyways."

"Whatever." Lilly turned back to her drink.

"What the hell is happening here?" Lino questioned. He was super puzzled. He didn't see a ghost for years. Exactly for nine years. Their voices too weren't that clear in his ears. Of course, he would hear them but it was always muffled and distant. Sometimes it was just hums or incoherent words he would hear during his sleep when he was in the most vulnerable state. But Sienna was as clear as his two friends as if she was a living human.

"Sienna came to me when I was in Japan." Lilly started explaining. "I don't know how she found me but she did. She was desperate for help and I couldn't turn her down. I was already planning to come back soon, but she fueled me and made me move my plans forward. That's how I came back." Lilly looked over at Chris. "That's why I was where The Ghost was earlier today."

Chris looked at Sienna. "Is that why he was in that state of hallucination?" Chris questioned, remembering how that criminal was out of his mind and trembling in fear when they arrested him. He kept asking the officer to save him and make her leave.

"I guided Lilly to where he was since I was already following him. The second Lilly touched him, he could see me by her side." Sienna scoffed. "The coward fell to his knees in fear."

"Come on!" Lilly whined. "You went all ghostly on him." Lilly looked at her friends. "She looks scary when she's in her ghostly mood. She scared the shit out of me the day she came to me for the first time."

"Now," Sienna clapped her hands, averting the three friends' attention to her. "I'm here to thank you." She looked at Chris. "I know you were the most devoted in this case. Thank you for listening to the victims' voices even if they weren't clear to you. Thank you for arresting him. Now we can leave for good with no regrets." She smiled widely at him.

Sienna looked at Lilly who nodded at her. Sienna left the sofa and dropped to the floor beside Chris. The boy flinched but didn't have time to comprehend what happened next. In a fraction of a second, Lilly was holding his hand and that was when he felt something tingling on his right cheek. He flinched again and jerked away to find Sienna planting a soft peck on his cheek.

His eyes widened as the girl smiled shyly at him. Lilly giggled in the background while Lino was as shocked as the kissed one. Sienna moved to Lilly's side to give her a quick hug before she vanished into thin air the same way she appeared. Her body started to hollow, leaving only a thin outline then, it wasn't there anymore.

Lino gulped loudly. "What the fuck was that? She could touch him? Is that normal?"

Lilly let out her wildest laugh ever. "Normal? What is even normal in this world?" Lilly's face dropped as quickly as she laughed. "We know there is nothing normal around us, especially us." She added, giving them a knowing look.

When the whole world was going upside down and people were questioning what happened to make the little peace in it stir like that, what happened nine years ago and unleashed all the oddness, when the whole world was going nuts while looking for the answer, the three friends knew it. The three friends were the only ones who knew how the chaos began.

Because they were a part of it.

They opened the hell gates.