"What's your name?" The grim reaper asks, crouching down to stare at the new strange boy who has taken up residence in his friend's house. There is an air of dissonance and his years reaping souls at least tells him that the boy is upset. But he won't know what until they stop hugging their knees and actually look up at him.
"Jihyun...what about you?" Eye contact is made as a hesitant voice flutters through. In a second the reaper knows all. Memories are read, foreign thoughts flutter in and out of his mind. He is not built for sympathy but maybe he understands Jihyun a bit more now.
"I don't have one. Oh, but the boy who looked like this before he died...he was called Dojoon. Do you want to call me that? Or maybe you can give me a name."
"How about uhhhh Jisung?"
"Jisung? I like that," the reaper now named Jisung grins. Without warning, he grabs one of the other boy's arms and gives a small tug pulling the both of them up to stand. "Nice to meet you Jihyun. As your friend Jisung, I think I should show you around!"
Haetae later whacks Jisung on the head with a loaf of bread, still wrapped in the plastic it came in from the grocery store nearby. "Just because Jihyun's working under me now doesn't mean he's suddenly gained infinite stamina. He's still a young human boy."
"I wanted to show him around. We just wanted to have some fun. Right?" Jisung whines, pouting as he casts a glance behind him to where an exhausted Jihyun has flopped over like a dead fish onto the couch.
"Y-yea," there's a wheeze and Jisung thinks maybe, just maybe he did push Jihyun a bit too much. But the human boy had said he was fit and would be alright when the reaper asked. Jisung did all the teleporting for the two of them too. Surely, even if the move itself was a strain to the body there was still a decent recovery period. Maybe.
"I can assure you a marathon runner would have had an easier time," Haetae deadpans, hand swiping Jisung's away from the glass of water he hands over to Jihyun. "The Grim Reaper isn't that scary. You can say no."
"I have a name now. It's Jisung," he boasts with much smugness in his tone. "Jihyun gave me it. We can be called two Ji now."
"Hm," Haetae glances between the two of them, a raise of a brow that doesn't need a mind read from the reaper to know he is calculating the mess he has pulled himself into. "Well you can refuse Jisung next time."
Except Jihyun doesn't. Not next time. Not even the next few times. In a way it becomes a game for Jisung to see how far he could push the boy before the other refuses. But at the same time the reaper finds himself still holding back on the expanse of the extremities. He blames it on not wanting to feel a painful smack on his head from Haetae, but the knowing smile the magician gives him does make him wonder if it's something more.
"You push yourself a lot. Why?" Jisung asks one day, in interest given how well he knows the mortals take to sloth. The two of them dangle their feet over a Jeju cliff. Jihyun can fall, he thinks briefly, eyes envisioning cliff jumping and the dangerous freedom it tantalize daredevils with. Broken bones. He could jump, dive into the waters with violent splashes and still come out hollering. With ease.
There is silence at first. Then hesitancy. "So I can feel alive."
Alive. A concept that would always be foreign to the Grim Reaper. He is synonymous with death. His fellow reapers are synonymous with death. So the opposite can only seem like a distant shoreline over an expanse of water.
"I think you're more alive than Haetae," Jisung responds, grasping the other at the nape of his neck. Cold means warm and the other quickly wiggles out of his grasp. "Definitely more than me."
Maybe he should feel sad at the moment to know that there are some things he could never have no matter how badly he wanted it. But he is not human. So instead Jisung laughs as if everything is fine and Jihyun laughs with him too as an echo of many things.
"This is Shihyun," Jihyun states the next time Jisung visits Haetae's place. He is grinning ever the more brightly than Jisung has ever seen and there are stars resting in his eyes instead of a quiet hurricane. He watches as Jihyun pulls someone into view from the hidden hallway.
The boy is a living doll, Jisung decides the moment the shy child raises his head to stare into the reaper's eyes. Mind is quickly read and he shifts his perspective just a bit. A sad doll.
"He's living with us from now on. And this is Jisung, he's a reaper, but he's not that scary I promise!"
"N-nice to meet you," the boy stutters as he shuffles forward to extend an awkward bow. Jisung gazes with major amusement, for a boy who is even older than him it seems there are many things that has yet to be learnt. Interesting.
"Yes, nice to meet you," he responds, eyes curling into half crescents. Jisung reaches a hand forward to place on the other's shoulder and watches him flinch from the cold. Some things won't change.
"So my new friend Shihyun and Jihyun too." Retracting his hands, Jisung clasps his own together with a bright playful smile. "Why don't we go have some fun together?"
While Jihyun is brash and straightforward, Shihyun is second guessing and calm. One voices emotions and one voices reason. Jisung wonders if fate, the one who dictates many of the actions between the reapers, was also the cause of this. Two opposites for Haetae. A yin and a yang. Water and fire. A definition of harmony to help the magician in his works.
If not the magician then for each other.
It is at the second outing Jisung already finds himself adjusting to Shihyun with an almost scary effortlessness that was certainly not there when Jihyun first came into the picture. Speaking of the other boy, he can see how he is also in the same boat as if the two of them were being danced around by Shihyun. But it's not that when they are both better off now.
Maybe, just maybe, Jisung can fade a bit. Become a shadow in the picture he has barged himself into in the first place. He wonders about this at moments when he sits back and watches the two lost in their juvenile frolicking around in the new place he has teleported them to. Maybe he should be sad, he has heard humans explain their loneliness when old habits are lost.
But he can only smile and watch. How Shihyun smiles much like the morning glow of the sun fluttering through the windows. How Jihyun is like the lazy afternoon aureate crawling through cracks to hit the eyes.
Then they look over to him and grab his hand, ignoring the coldness that speaks of death and pulls him forward to remind him morning and afternoon will need a dusk to keep things continuous.
(And of course Haetae is the beautiful night. To that, all three of them agree.)
