you'll be mine || vmon

no

Namjoon had never really been one for Halloween traditions and legends, always dismissing the tales he heard as fabricated, but the past few days had been making his skepticism waver.

Through the years, he had heard dozens of stories of this time of year, of witches and demons and paranormal evils, of children in costumes and pumpkins and corn mazes, living vicariously through the tales of his peers since his family never celebrated it themselves. The magic and superstition of it all made sound fun, but despite his occasional desire to experience the same things as everyone else, he was never all that into Halloween. He never found himself actually believing in any of it, no matter how nice it was to entertain the idea. At least, he hadn't until today, October 30th.

Yesterday morning, when he looked in the bathroom mirror, solidly awake since it had already been 20 minutes since he woke up, he had immediately dropped the toothbrush he was holding in his hand. Because behind him, reflected in the clear mirror he had cleaned only a few days before, was a face.

A familiar face, with a body underneath it, partially translucent, showing the pattern of the door behind it. In the dim light and his own panic he wasn't sure who it was, but he knew he recognized them. He recognized the way the ends of their lips curved upwards in the ghost of a smirk and the structure of their features.

Cursing and leaning forwards to rescue his toothbrush from the sink, he peered at the mirror to get a closer look, but the more he stared the blurrier they got. But even so, they were still there. Even if not as much. They weren't just a trick of the eyes.

He turned around frantically after a couple of seconds, finally coming to his senses, and for just a moment he swore he could see the faint outline of the person. Even if they were there at all, though, now they were gone.

Maybe if that was the only weird thing that had happened, Namjoon could dismiss it and move on. Maybe he could tell himself that it really was a trick of the eyes, that he was tired that day.

Except that wasn't the only thing that happened.

The day before the mirror incident, while at work, he had heard a voice calling out for him. It didn't belong to his boss or any of his coworkers, he was sure of that, but just like the face, it was familiar, deep and smooth. It would have been soothing if it wasn't calling out to him, repeating his name in whispers, sounding like it was coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

Namjoon, he could hear, the voice teeming with excitement and glee. He yanked his head around immediately, wondering if there was a new worker he wasn't informed about for whatever reason, more irritated than anything at first.

There was nobody. Nobody was anywhere close enough to whisper to him. No one was even near him at all.

The voice kept calling him, but it faded, and within a few minutes it was gone.

And then there was today, where things had taken a sudden turn.

The voice was even quieter at first, whispers even softer, but it was saying more now. Joonie, joonie, it repeated, an urgency in its voice that hadn't been there at all before. Miss you. Love you, it said, along with a few other phrases that were both too quiet and too indistinct for him to make out. But he could always hear the shaking of the voice, the clear emotion of it, as if everything the voice felt was being beamed straight to his mind.

He was sure he was going insane. Maybe his workaholism had finally caught up to him. Maybe it was just random. Maybe reading all those stories about Halloween had gotten to his head. Either way, he didn't care about the reason, he was terrified and confused and hesitant to tell anyone else for fear that he'd immediately be locked up in some sort of mental facility.