The fourth time Ryang sees the ghost, he's hungover and it's knelt at the foot of his bed, elbows folded over the duvet, peering at him dolefully with eyes that are more the colour the sun is through the cracks in the blinds than what Ryang feels they should be. He blinks at it blearily, rubbing the bridge of his nose, hoping to smooth away the headache that roils and rears at the edges of his conscious, threatening one hell of a migraine in an hour or two. The ghost watches all the while.
"I said I'd be up in an hour," he groans.
The ghost nods, a nearly imperceptible motion. "You said that last time." It rings out its hands, and counts off its fingers. "And last time. And the time before that." It has an honest, doe-eyed, gaze that reminds Ryang a little too closely of Koh's, and a face that strikes him as extraordinarily prettyâ but only through how extraordinarily delicate the features are, shaped askew, crookedâ
The ghost frowns, opening its mouth; still groaning, Ryang rolls out of his bed, shunting it aside and getting to his feet in one fluid motion. He musses its hair for good measure, â"It's a compliment," "It's not niceâ"â and misses the space in its movement from kneeling to his bed to curled up behind him. It's one of the many extraordinarily creepy things he's had to live with since moving back to Henrietta, but compared to some of the other things the ghost does, it's almost tolerable. Likely totally aware of the boundaries he's set for it and then some, the ghost blinks at him with a look at once imploring and mischievous, its unrelenting gaze simultaneously piercing and easily forgettable against the background burble of Rutherford's pilfered antique radio downstairs. Yawning, Ryang tries and fails to stretch luxuriously, managing only to cramp up his tired, slept-on, shoulder.
"Why is theâ radioâ?"
"I turned it on."
He hisses his migraine through his teeth, growling, "god. Don't," with maybe a little more venom than necessary, regretting it definitely when the ghost follows him down to the kitchen and there's nothing to do but bear its gaze as he rifles through the pantry, pretending the last time he left the apartment for a shop wasn't almost a fortnight ago. He hadn't been able to see the ghost, then, instead more than happy to live out his break curled up on the couch with a bottle of Grey Goose and all the other buried Henrietta ghosts hissing at his throat. He'd sure as hell never turned the fucking radio on.
The ghost is rapping its knuckles on the countertop, the sound muffled by the insubstantiality of its pale fists. Ryang eyes it with a mixture of wariness and fondness, and decides on a peanut butter sandwich and chopped fruit for breakfast, a combination that makes him feel, if even for a moment, a little less of a fucking disaster than he actually is: hauling the only just-stale loaf of bread off the top shelf in silence, picking off the hard crust with more care than necessary, he can ignore the stack of unwashed dishes, the rancid smell of soured milk that no longer emanates just from the fridge but his person, the flurry of unsorted papers over the countertop, and his laptop, half-fallen into the sink. The only knife in the kitchen is plastic and toothless, meticulously blunted and deeply depressing to acknowledge, so he forsakes the fruit and sets to work on the sandwich, too pissed off and hungover and sore to acknowledge how dark it is in his shitty little one-windowed kitchen, all the sunlight filtered in through the blinds soaked up 'round the edges of the ghost, who never takes its eyes off him, even for a second.
"You know," says Ryang, picking off his crusts more out of habit than personal choice, "you can have some, if you want." In recent days, the ghost's presence has stopped making him self-conscious; he swipes his palm across his jaw, feeling the shadow of two days' growth bearing heavy on his unwashed Harvard sweater and misted-up glasses, and thinks nothing of it. He's come to feel a kinship with this strange and guileless thing; some days, he wants to bodily haul it out of his apartment and his life, and some days he wants toâ pet its head and throw open the blinds and see just how much colour he can get into its pale, fleshless, cheeks.
For now, all he does his slide the jar of peanut butter across the countertop, shrugging when the ghost raises its chin to regard him quizzically. "I don't eat," it says, plain and blunt as anything. "I can't," it insists when Ryang makes no move to retrieve the jar.
Ryang considers this. "Really? Feel as if you'd be a PB&J guy." When the ghost blinks, eyes going wet for a fleeting, frightening, second, he adds, lamely: "You know. If you could."
The ghost seems placated by that. Crouched over the tabletop, it begins to slide the jar around, passing it from palm to palm, fingertips skittering in brief flashes over the glass and only making contact in the moments where Ryang takes his eyes away to blink. Everything about it is soft, made more so by the flickering light that sculpts out of its barely-defined features: the narrow slash of a cheekbone, a nearly-dainty, guileless, jaw. Set against huddled shoulders, the attractive curve of its spine makes an easy resting place for tired eyesâ a study, or sketch, in morning-light and dewdrops, to ponder on as he chews mindlessly, feeling the pangs of a day's hunger subside.
When Ryang saw the ghost for the first time, he hadn't believed in ghosts. Recently, he's found himself watching it more than he'd care to admit. The ghost doesn't seem to mind; if anything, itâ (it? he? Ryang doesn't knowâ he feels as if Lee would. Lee reads Descartes. Lee readsâ Freud. Ryang readsâ)
"He," mumbles the ghost. The jar comes to a stop between his fingers; the idle hunch of his shoulders, straight. His eyes are gold and murky and distantly hurt in the bright, unforgiving, light.
"He," agrees Ryang, tongue thick in his throat. "Sorry," The ghost shrugs; Ryang hisses out his hangover through his teeth, trying and struggling to taste his sandwich. He eats in silence, chewing mechanically, pausing sporadically to thumb through the remains of his paper left scattered over the tabletop, and trying not to time his breaths with the ghost's wandering glances upward.
It's a stroke of serendipity, sweet and fucking blissful serendipity, because Ryang hadn't believed in ghosts and he still doesn't believe in karma, that his phone goes off against his thigh, the notification tone an onerous default as unpleasant as it is startling after two days after nothing but his unfinished work and his thoughts to keep him company. The ghost's head snaps up, a spasm of shock wrecking his otherwise pleasant features, his mouth wincing, but Ryang is already scrolling through his messages, squinting to read off the harsh brightness of the screen.
Because Ryang hadn't believed in ghosts and still doesn't believe in karma, or fate, or god, it's a text from Henry that unscrolls across his screenâ not Koh or SickSteve or even, god forbid, Rutherford and Lee from their little bohemian hovel in Taipei, but Henryâ Henry, who Ryang has not seen since graduation, and certainly not since his return to the Statesâ Henry, who had vanished off the face of the earth a year and a half back, politician's smile likely still cut into his cheerful, easy-going, face, and aspirations traded for Gansey Junior's hand in unholy, WASP-y matrimony. I'm aware that this is unprecedented, reads his message in winsome preamble, but I'll be out of Geneva, back in Vancouver, in a week, and I was thinking, the summitâ
"Ryang," warns the ghost, hands fluttering over the jar but failing to make contact, "Ryang."
The last time Ryang'd let his life touch Henry's had been four months back, in New Haven, at a piss-take of an Aglionby-meets-Ivy-League meet-up with Koh and ChengTwo, Jiang and Morris and Parrish and all the rest. He had been drunk; ChengTwo, wasted, and Koh, ruinous. They'd bumped shoulders, traded drinks, jostled 'round murmurs of ChengChengCheng what's he up to now? He's back in Vancouver, Koh had told him. Gonna meet up? Make him proofread your thesis? Go to the summit? Just like old times?
Just like old times, he had laughed, and then he had passed out and woken up sore and sour and only able to write for the next month sober and through excruciating effort. (God forbid he get something in on time for once, maybe even show up prepared for once in his life.) It's with similar effort that he extracts the phone from his grip, snapping it face-down onto the countertop with an audible crack. The ghost, looking caught between clearing his throat and taking the phone from him, murmurs, almost plaintively: "Ryangâ"
"I'm going back to bed."
"You just woke up,"
"I'm going back to bed." He drags his eyes up to meet the ghost's, then slaps the remains of the sandwich next to his phone, ignoring the downwards curl of the ghost's mouth. Despite it all, he doesn't say anything, and Ryang can't even find it in himself to be disappointed as he stomps down the hall and throw himself back into his wrecked bed, cocooning himself in unwashed sheets and the smell of sleep. For a few seconds, all he does is grind his teeth into his pillow, fighting to keep all the warmth he'd lost in the ten minutes for him to ruin his appetite and his mood. Bound up like that, barely breathing and unsure of when his eyes are open or closed, he can breathe, slow and deep and easy; with his knees tucked into his chest, Henry and Harvard, his unwashed dishes and unfinished paper, do not exist.
"Ryang," comes the whisper, cutting through the mess in his head, "don't go." There are no footsteps, no pressure to be felt at his feet, but the bed groans nonetheless, buckling under phantom weight. "I think you cracked your screen."
The fifth time Ryang sees the ghost, he's kneeling atop him, straddling his lap and cradling a half-eaten jar of peanut butter in his delicate hands. He smiles imploringly and timidly, leaning down briefly before realising the jar still tight in his grip, obviously and childishly unaware of what to do with it. Gingerly, Ryang reaches up to swat it out of his hands; his fingertips brush against the ghost's, then, and reflexively, he relaxes, going limp in his grimy little sweater. "I'll get a new one," he mutters, turning a little further into his pillow. "Give me an hour."
There's no response. With only the suggestion of space between them, he feels suddenly, unbearably, guilty. "You don't," âthis, dredged out his chapped, blue, lips to the tune of his headacheâ "It's likeâ you don'tâ it's being forgotten. That's what it's likeâ it's being. You don't, listen, you don't knowâ"
From above him thrums a low and easy sound, a half-human hum to the tune of no song Ryang's ever heard. The ghost is an outline in the blue morning dark, the mere description of the boy Ryang's come to know after four months of wasting himself into nothing. The first time Ryang'd seen him, he'd been a curl of hair, a skinny palm fanned out in the grass, less real than Ryang's early-morning sketches of cities he'd approximated from dreams. Now, he's much the same and yetâ greater, the architecture of him a study in perspective, everything Ryang's come to know converging on a single point, or an empty space. A cold hand wipes the sweat off his collar, ghosting curiously over his Adam's apple. Another meanders upward, coming to a gentle, reconciliatory, rest over his forehead
"Noah," starts Ryang, dragging his hand up the bridge of his nose to pull at Noah's grip, "you don'tâ"
Noah shifts to the side, making himself comfortable atop the tangled mess of sheets and Ryang's legs. Ryang barely feels the disturbance. "I think," he muses, not like he usually does, not confidently but not uncertainly either, "I'm a peanut butter and honey guy. But you don't have any."
Ryang looks at him, sees him then. "I'll get some," he decides, "give meâ"
"An hour?"
"An hour, yeah."
Apparently pleased with that, Noah begins to slide off him. Ryang digs his teeth into his bottom lip, then exhales hard and heavy through his nose, canting his head up to look at him in a way that forces him to look up, and up, and up. Noah's not a big guy, and neither is Ryang, so it's an unfamiliar and unpleasant ordeal, the task of maintaining eye contact with him. "Noah," he tries, "another hour, right?" He pets the space beside him, fist tangling momentarily in the technicolored duvet, doing his best to clear a little nest in the swath without outright ripping it away and dragging Noah down with it. "Come down,"
Noah nods vaguely. "Really," he points out, sliding over Ryang's thigh, "you're even smaller. Your shoes are a size six."
"Six and a half," insists Ryang, and moves over to make space for him on the single bed. Noah curls up beside him in a jittery motion Ryang can only describe as folding, facing away from him so Ryang can no longer see how strongly the light shines through his face. They lay there, half-asleep and half touching 'til, by a stroke of blissful serendipity, Ryang turns to say something, anything, and the exposed space where his sweater hikes up his back bumps up against Noah, leeching all the warmth out of their shared flesh in an instant.
"Jesus!" he snaps, "Cold! Watch itâ we don't have heating anymore, man."
He feels Noah nod, his sheepish laughter a white-water rush down Ryang's spine. He mouths at Ryang's nape: "the power went out three hours ago. And I've been dead forâ" he trails off, shrugging slightly, lackadaisical in a way that Ryang appreciates. Shifting to regard him in a shuddering motion that would surely muss the sheets if he were able to leave any physical imprint on them, he nudges Ryang's nose with his own, pressing their foreheads together. "You should go."
Ryang thinks about Vancouver, and missing it. He can barely remember Cheng's smarmy, WASP-reserved, politician's smile, and yetâ
And yet.
"Maybe," he hums, "don't think I can cover two plane tickets,"
Noah draws a little further into himself, toying with the frayed sleeves of his sweater, looking both fidgety and pleased when Ryang unfolds his hands for him and holds them together like that, grip pointedly gentle. His efforts to suffuse some warmth into the both of them don't do much, but Noah doesn't seem to mind, as sweet and vague and mild as Ryang isn't. "I don't think I can fly." Then, quieter: "I got kicked off a plane, once."
Ryang snorts in dismissal, lets his eyes slide shut. "I'll put you in my suitcase." he replies. "You'd fit."
The only response is a peal of laughter, high and muted in a far-off, distant, way. It's strangely soothing, and Ryang falls asleep like that, unsure if it's Noah he holds in his arms or the memory of him, the substance of him fading further with each moment it takes for Ryang to fall deeper into sleep.
When he wakes, Noah's gone, the only indication he'd ever been there the jar of peanut butter leaned carefully against his laptop when he slides out of bed and pads down to the kitchen alone. (Ryang still doesn't really believe in ghosts.) (House elves are becoming another matter entirely.) The air smells empty and like new beginnings, all the cold vanished from the mildewing walls, the outside sky pale as his long-faded roots âonce, fire-engine red, now a dusty maroon he reflects that Rutherford'd better suit, if not emulateâ and matched to the clocks throughout the house, none of which have power, all of which twitch and shudder from 6:21 to 22.
He fishes his lunch out of the fridge and finishes it out of the microwave; makes himself a macchiato and drags out his old suitcases, measuring, deliriously, widths and lengths with the flats of his palms. His half-proofread draft goes into one pile; the stack of bills intermingled within, into another, at last cleared off his long-suffering, barely-charged, laptop. The spring sun rises high into the sky, rinsing out the darkened crevices of his particular chunk of shitty Henrietta architecture, and with his tongue scalded by last night's congee and the bittersweet taste of some small and hopeful sense of triumph, Ryang begins to write.
