Flutter//Jaehyun

Chapter 4

"Luckily, my apartment is four blocks away!" He says, beaming unprompted omptimism once again and although I want to protest the option of going to his apartment at this greuling hour, I decide that warmth is the priority for right now.

I realize now, through a brief pause in our lively conversation about the ghostly weather, that we were meeting for a talk. About Jaehyun's past? Our serendiptuous meeting? How unclear and ambiguous this whole meeting-at-2am situation might be?

Wait...does he just want to have sex?

"What did you want to talk about? Or are you taking me to your apartment for," I glare at him, tilting my head up as I do so. "unpure reasons." 

"Unpure reasons?" He thinks for a bit after repeating my phrase and just as it clicks, his dimpled cheeks flush, furiously.

"No! Not that! Of course, not." He clears his throat, dismissing any worry of his true intentions I initially believed. "Look, Deka. I just realized it sounds almost insane to try and explain what I'm trying to tell you--"

I puff out a breath of air, tired of his rambling and confusing persona. My legs drag on slowly, somehow encapsulating both the tired cityscape and the lingering sweatbeams on the back of my neck from the post-panic attack at work. My brain is fatigued from trying to break through the mind of Jaehyun so I push to end that.

"--and believe me, I tried to reword it and make it sound better on my way here, god, now I sound like an idiot who speaks to himself. But seriousl--"

"Just tell me, Jaehyun." I stop abruptly which simultaneously stops the wheel running in his brain, I guess. He stops too, a few feet ahead of me, but breathes in a deep breath and closes the distance between us with wide steps.

But you're with Jaehyun, now. The other voice enters my thoughts again but I am too focused on his apprehensive lips.

"I can speak to ghosts." 

He puts a hand on my shoulder, and once again, a shiver of uneasiness snakes through his skin. 

"And one of them is telling me to talk to you." 

I part my lips to instantly shut down his words but my voice fails to proceed.

I want to scoff and laugh. I want to push Jaehyun away from me, yell at him that he is a compulsive liar and a creep. But this suddenly aggressive resistance lies much deeper than an external outburst. Something burns below my chest and I hear the other, eerie voice in my head.

Another gust of wind pushes by in absolute silence. 

To....take...care of yourself.  

Deka

Though this felt like a thought and a memory in my head, it felt fuller; -- my name reverberating around my ears and lingering like a peircing sound spoken by another person-- I swear, I heard it whisper along with the wind. 

Throughout this jumble of sensory contemplation thickening the air, I can't help but link two simple things together.

Jaehyun may have an uncanny ability

and my brother is dead. 

I daringly look back into his defeated eyes and part my lips. This time I manage to choke out a reply. 

"Well then...lets go to your apartment." 

* 

Jaehyun had claimed earlier that he and Johnny live in an old, shitty apartment and apologized in advance if it were messy. Although, as we approach the quirky looking building, i'm beginning to detect that he was downplaying his living situation out of modesty. He was right, it is old, but in the way that architects would gawk at. The infrastructer stands confidently with dusty pillars holding up bricked curves and bright plant leaves are hanging gracefully from isolated balconies. The two streetlights illuminating both sides of the building drew everyone's attention directly into it and painted the rest of the block mundane. This single building, where Jaehyun so humbly calls his home, is a mystical being. It is--as it naturally sits on the corner of the dim-lit street almost as if it begs for a gaze-- an oil renaissance painting.