Chapter Text
Jeongguk blinks.
He squeezes shut both eyes, counts to ten and opens them.
The red, dripping words "eat something else other than chicken breast u flop" written on his bathroom mirror doesn't disappear, much to Jeongguk's chagrin.
He takes deep breaths to calm his rapid heart palpitations, trying to mentally digest the sight in front of him. The forced breathing movements have little effect on soothing Jeongguk, because one, he does eat food other than chicken breast (he's on a gym diet goddammit), and two, what the absolute flying fuck.
It's not normal right? Disses written in blood on mirrors definitely isn't normal.
Jeongguk rakes his mind for anything, any possible scientific explanation for the offending message smeared onto his mirror, and chews down on his lip in anxiety as nothing of substance comes up.
In his twenty-six years of living, Jeongguk didn't believe in the supernatural. Why would he when there was nothing to prove the made-up legends passed down from drunk mouth to mouth?
And now, the first seed of doubt planted itself into Jeon Jeongguk's cold, rational heart.
Maybe, Namjoon hyung did it as a joke when he came over.
Yeah, that seems possible.
It was just too dark for me to figure out the words at night when peeing.
The viscous, red liquid glares back at Jeongguk, as if in protest of his thoughts. Jeongguk trembles, ever so slightly, and tears off paper napkins to wipe the words off. They leave trails of translucent pink on the glass as he attempts to remove all evidence of the message, taunting him. Jeongguk sees himself clearly in the mirror again after a few moments, albeit stained with dabbles of rose-colored specks.
Jeongguk crumbles onto the bed, mind still reeling from the shock after cleaning up. His gaze trails off to the phone on the duvet, and he hesitates.
What are you waiting for? Text Namjoon-hyung.
The bloodied words reappear behind his eyelids when Jeongguk blinks.
What if...
No. No way. Come on Jeon, text him.
Jeongguk's fingers tremble as they reach out for the phone.
They stop as they meet with the smooth, glass surface.
Fucking hell.
Jeongguk ends up sending an email to his boss, telling him he was taking a day off from work. He knows he wouldn't be able to deal with anything without sorting the mess of himself out. As he clicks 'send', Jeongguk melts into the sheets, curling up into himself.
The mental exhaustion seeps in, and Jeongguk succumbs to the sleep that blankets his consciousness.
As he falls into dreamland, Jeongguk thinks that he might have heard a voice by his ear.
"You know, your boxers are really boring."
Jeongguk wakes up the next day and stalks over to the bathroom to checks his mirror the first thing in the morning.
A shiny, clean surface stares back at him, as if taunting his memory's competency. Jeongguk glares back at his reflection, irked by the spotless image. He looks dreary, purplish eye bags weighing down his already big, droopy eyes. He rubs his face in annoyance; he didn't really have time to contemplate about fixing his appearance when a ton of paperwork is sitting in his office, waiting for him since the day before.
Shuffling sleepily across his room, Jeongguk attempts to dress himself decently for work, taking care to avoid putting on any of the unwashed articles of clothing haphazardly strewn across the floor out of laziness. He was nearly done, except for the necessary tie which his boss demanded all employees wear for professionalism sake.
Jeongguk never really understood the rationale behind looking smarter after tying a piece of cloth around your neck.
He combs through his wardrobe for the standard black tie, only to find that his stash has mysteriously disappeared. Now this wouldn't be surprising, considering Jeongguk wasn't exactly the neatest person, but he was quite sure he owned at least six black ties. And all six were not there.
Naturally, it was time to freak out, since Jeongguk had less than fifteen minutes to get his shit together and bolt out of the front door. The only tie left was an obnoxiously bright orange one, one which Jeongguk bought on a whim for a halloween party a few years back. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and Jeongguk saved his cringing for the future as he slung the hideous thing over his collar.
So much for professionalism when you look part clown.
And that was just the start of Jeongguk's strange period missing things.
Over the next few days, Jeongguk's plain socks, underwear and even shirts pull disappearing acts whenever he needs them. He ended up having to forsake his minimal fashion sense for something he regarded as TCS, or too-colorful-syndrome.
And Jeongguk, although never regarded as very bright, felt from the deep dark pits of his guts that something was going on. Either he was slowly going crazy and misplacing everything everwhere, or somebody else was messing around.
Namjoon hadn't dropped by since the blood prank, so Jeongguk could rule him out as a possibility.
Then...?
A strange chilliness ran over Jeongguk's exposed skin, as he made the realisation while pondering over the recent peculiarities. He whipped around, scanning the apartment for a third-party that shouldn't exist in the first place, seeing that he lived on the eighteenth floor and had a double security system.
He saw nothing but bare walls.
The previous owner was an art collector, and he'd hung up various abstract works around the place, most notably a replica of Jackson Pollock's Convergence right smack in the living room. The genial man had offered to leave Jeongguk a painting as a gift, but Jeongguk, not the biggest fan of things that he couldn't fully comprehend, declined politely, opting to leave the walls white and pristine.
The white paint was now glaringly sharp against his retinas, and Jeongguk briefly contemplates getting a painting to hang up.
He slumps down on the couch, exhaustion from work and stress from the recent happenings seeping right through to his bones. Jeongguk can't afford to get caught up in all this ghost bullshit when he has two proposals to submit and an entire section of potential newbies' portfolios to go through.
The analogue clock on the mantel reads 2358.
Fuck this, I'm going to bed.
Jeongguk shuffles to the bathroom to wash up and hopefully, get some beauty sleep after.
Turns out, the almighty gods above had a problem with that.
I recommend Dali's "Les Elephants"!!!!
Jeongguk's in proper terms, really fucking terrified.
The words were back on his mirror, written in the same fashion, with the same blood which still seemed fresh, slowly crawling down the glass.
First off, okay, he's probably being haunted.
Second, he's probably going to die, alone in this house, without anyone knowing.
Third, Jeongguk didn't know ghosts could read minds (now he does and he won't live to tell the tale, pity).
By now he'd collapsed down on the cold granite, water soaking his sweatpants and boxers. But it wasn't like he could give a fuck about it when the thought of him being haunted saturated his entire being.
Jeongguk gulped, twitching his fingers to break out of the numb reverie. His nails scraped audibly against the floor, the sound penetrating the horrifying silence in the house.
"H-Hello?"
Fucking great Jeon Jeongguk, yes, talk to the ghost that wants your soul.
He ignores his rational subconscious, opting to try to communicate. Maybe making friends with the spiritual being would help him keep his life to himself.
His subconscious scoffs.
"I'm, I'm Jeongguk. I don't mean any harm! P-Please don't kill me..?"
The quiet bathroom serves to mock Jeongguk as he performs the embarrassing monologue, and Jeongguk imagines that he was a sight to laugh at. Nothing out of the ordinary happens, as Jeongguk waits for a sign from the ghost that haunted his mirror.
His heart continues to thump against his chest as the minutes ticked by, and Jeongguk curls up on his bathroom floor, eyes never leaving the blood-stained mirror. The thought of leaving behind a will occupies his thoughts, and Jeongguk groans inwardly as he regrets his short life and all the things he'd never done.
Nothing like a life-threatening haunting to spur you into wanting to get your shitty life together.
Jeongguk's eyelids grow heavier as he waits, and the cold of the night does nothing to help his sleepiness. He tries to stay awake, he really does, but soon Jeongguk succumbs to sleep and nods off leaning against the toilet bowl.
He jerks awake, toes freezing and drool crusty at his lips. Jeongguk's eyes take a moment to adjust to the dark, before he spots the mirror, still bloody, but with different words.
i don't want your soul lmao
Jeongguk freezes, the thought of him being in the same small space as the thing, momentarily stunning him. He double checks the message, and relaxes slightly knowing that his life wasn't in immediate danger.
Maybe watching so many horror movies was a bad influence.
"I'm sorry for... discriminating?"
Jeongguk sheepishly looks around, subtly shifting to move outside the bathroom. When he confirms that the mirror was going to stay the way it was, he exits slowly, moving backwards to keep his eyes on the message for as long as possible.
He breathes out a sigh of relief he didn't know he was holding in as he tumbles into the living room. The illumination from the lamp was comforting, and Jeongguk relished in the dim, warm light that bathed over his being.
The analogue clock on the mantel read 0417.
Jeongguk sighs, retrieving his phone to send in another email to his boss for the second sick leave in two weeks. Mr. Park was sure to scream at him, but Jeongguk couldn't really care less about his chihuahua-like boss yapping at his face when he had more important things to clear up.
Like his haunted apartment.
Occupied with a less-than-living thing.
At least the ghost, or whatever, didn't want his soul, thank the heavens.
Now he had a little problem, what was he going to do with his haunted place? His current salary wasn't enough for him to purchase a new home, that's for sure, and Namjoon was sure as heck not to let him crash at his house, especially since he got together with the pink-haired dude whose name Jeongguk couldn't remember.
Actually, a haunted apartment might be comparatively better to hearing Namjoon and his boyfriend fuck every other night. Now that would truly be a nightmare.
Jeongguk, by his twenty-sixth year of living, had learned that the internet, although not the most reliable, gave him solutions to any problem in the world. So naturally he hit up the search engine, typing in "how to live with ghost".
And naturally, like how the internet always fucks up, Jeongguk was presented with a bunch of occult websites that he had no interest in entering.
He clicks his tongue in frustration.
The ghost's words resurface in his mind, and Jeongguk finds himself searching up Salvador Dali's works.
Les Elephants was certainly.... interesting to say. The ghost had taste, a peculiar one, but still. He makes a mental note to look out for affordable replicas of the work.
The ghost couldn't be that bad, could it?
Jeongguk stretches, and the popping of his joints gave a timely reminder for him to rest his weary bones. Sleeping on the bathroom wall was not good for his back, and Jeongguk moans as he crashes onto the mattress, soaking up the feeling of soft pillows and silky sheets.
Whatever it was, he could deal with it tomorrow morning.
When Jeongguk decided that he was to continue living in the haunted apartment, he certainly didn't expect an onslaught of bloody messages addressing him, not once in a while, but every other moment he stepped into the bathroom.
The morning after he'd accepted that the supernatural did somehow exist, the big bold letters on his mirror greeted him a cheery "Good morning!"
Jeongguk had just took a deep breath and brushed his teeth, and after second thought, he'd greeted back with a stiff "Morning.", just to be polite. He figured even the dead would appreciate manners.
From then on, Jeongguk found his mirror almost permanently vandalized.
The messages ranged from greetings, to random thoughts like "I didn't know charcoal was used in medicine", to insults that Jeongguk grew increasingly irritated by.
The second (if you counted the first ever message Jeongguk received) one was after Jeongguk had fallen asleep on the bed after working out at the gym, sweaty and all. He'd went to take a bath the next day, only to find the ghost snubbing his behavior.
Dude ew, now your sheets are fucking gross
Jeongguk rolled his eyes. He didn't need his non-living "housemate" telling him what to do.
"Try doing seven sets of strength-training, you'd be too tired to care."
The third was a criticism on his fashion, giving Jeongguk a deja-vu from the whisper he'd heard before.
Your ties are so boring
Jeongguk found his face heating up in embarrassment, and he scowled in no particular direction.
"Shut up, it's called being classic."
Needless to say, the blood on the mirror became an everyday occurrence, and Jeongguk grew so used to it to the point that he even felt a little worried when his bathroom mirror was clean on rare days.
Never in his life he'd thought he'd get to meet a ghost, let alone get attached to it.
The haunter was harmless, even maybe endearing with his persistent nagging at Jeongguk to wear brighter clothes and out-of-the-blue comments about little things that it noticed in the day. It was like having a weird, non-visible roommate.
Something struck him on a particular Saturday night.
Jeongguk never bothered to know the ghost. He, even though externally regarded as a cold bitch, actually had a heart that could empathize, contrary to popular belief. And he figured it wasn't very nice of him to keep calling the ghost as an "it".
Plus "it" kind of reminded him of that one horror movie that he'd hated.
Gingerly, Jeongguk sat on the toilet and stared at the mirror. The ghost had been raving about ELO's album, with "You should totally check out Eight Femmes" smeared messily around.
"Hello? Uh, so... um. What's your name?"
Up till now, Jeongguk had never witnessed the ghost actually writing out anything on the mirror, and nothing changed this time. He blew a puff of air, a tad disappointed at the lack of response.
"If you're uncomfortable with it, I can leave for a moment."
Jeongguk played around with his fingers, fidgeting in his seat. It was one of the first times he'd directly addressed the ghost, and it was making him slightly uneasy, even though he knew it meant no harm.
He gnawed on his bottom lip, growing impatient waiting for a reply that he knew wasn't going to appear.
Or so he thought.
The next moment, Jeongguk looked up from his nails to face two very wide, bright eyes, staring directly at his face.
He only remembered a voice saying, "About time you asked," before blacking the fuck out.
((((how cute)))))