there are remnants of her life that she still can’t kick in the programme. insomnia is one of them; li’er is far too used to staying up well past a healthy time, obsessively working. in the afterlife, there’s no need for that particular bad habit, but there’s also no need for actual sleep — so she finds herself giving in to the circadian rhythms that came pre-progammed into her avatar. it’s not unusual for her to be wandering around late at night, anyway; there are familiar faces, night owls taking advantage of a body that never tires.

it’s been years, but part of her still wonders at how real the afterlife feels. there’s a slight breeze against her cheek, soft and smooth, pavements cracked in just the right places to make it feel believeable. it’s late enough that the moon is bright against midnight, li’er wandering around without needing to worry too much about the people around her. there shouldn’t really be anyone around who’d need help, though she likes taking these walks just in case she could be helpful. if anything, at least she’ll be awake and around.

there’s the sound of a few PCDs beeping all at the same time, her’s included. li’er is, as always, on top of it, activating the device to find the message — but there isn’t really one to read. at first glance, the characters are jumbled and missing strokes. what she can make out, she doesn’t like. someone around her sucks in a breath audible enough for her to hear, but when she turns her head to look, the message blinks out, deleted. if the ominously worded and encrypted message she’d received hadn’t been obvious enough that something’s wrong, their response definitely makes it so.

After so many hours sitting in his room alone, with his notebook and pen in hands, and fingers bruised red from all the writing he has been doing the entire night about what he had seen just a couple of hours earlier, Hanbyeol finds himself curled up against his couch, his head hanging low between his knees as he wraps his arms tightly around his legs. His head hurts after so much thinking, and the thumpering of his foot on the floor is a clear sign of the anxiety that has been creeping inside of him ever since he received that notification on his PCD.

He still hasn’t found out a way to truly enjoy his second chance in life, and the paranoia of a previous life living under constant watch only makes it worse for him. Hanbyeol does have his moments when he actually lives — when he meets Xiwang and Yongjin, when they encourage him to leave his apartment and make him feel a little bit safer in the outer world —, but that doesn’t mean he is entirely comfortable in this new life, it doesn’t mean he feels safe to be outside like the normal person he craves to be so badly.

After all, he’s still in a world where it’s so easy to be observed, so easy to be controlled... Who knows who’s controlling afterlife, who knows what the professionals in AFTpex can or can’t see in this world that they have created? These questions send adrenaline in his loodstream, and that adrenaline ends up in a peak of anxiety that Hanbyeol can almost compare to what he felt when he was alive, when he was still an idol. Most of the times, he’d prefer to be left alone in this situation, but right now... That’s the last he wants.

SMS SENT TO : JIN . jin, arw you homr?

His hands shake as he types the messages and he struggles to see the little letters behind the tears that form on his eyes, but he does his best to be understood as his fingertips tap the screen before him.

SMS SENT TO : JIN . i’m npt feeling well could yoi comr over?

Living a second life after his death means not having to stick to the same routine every single day like he used to. A day that once used to be filled with dance practices, vocal training, lyric writing and playing on the piano, is now filled by almost nothing; Hanbyeol doesn’t make plans anymore, he does whatever he wants and sleep happens whenever he feels like it — which sometimes might happen at 10pm, sometimes at 4am, and this time is the latter.

Music is playing on his tv as he writes something on his diary, just a little note about how he didn’t do anything that day other than lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling, but he makes to describe all of the thoughts he had with details. He writes to distract himself, and having a diary to write about small things he does as well as the notebook he has to write things he witnesses in afterlife really helps him relax when he isn’t feeling the best.