🅵🆁🅸🅴🅽🅳🆂 // A Minsung Fantasy ff (Eng.) 🗝

✦Don't✦

Boy, tell me what you're doing on the other side... 

And so, just tell me what you're doing with that other guy.

~

It rained.

The rain pounded the pavement and puddles with a regular murmur. It ran down the curbs and soaked my shoes.

It drummed on the roof of the bus stop and the steady rhythm sounded like a sad song that the rain was playing just for me. A song that he played for me for the second time.

And it sounded just as beautiful as last year.

I looked up and saw the half-empty bus pull up in front of the stop and open the doors. I quickly grabbed my bag and got in.

I went to the back and sat down in an empty seat. The rain gently tapped the window and continued to play its song.

I sighed softly and tiredly pressed my forehead against the cool window of the stationary bus.

Felix used to say that the ghosts of lost souls cried when it rained and that the drops were their tears. But that couldn't be right.

Otherwise the rain would taste salty.

I turned on my phone and stared at the screen. My background image was a photo of me and Minho, we took it just before he had the accident. That had been today exactly one year ago.

His mother had called us first. Then she had called the school. Minho hadn't come home. And he was nowhere to be found either.

It had also rained that day.

I gently stroked Minho's face with my thumb. The police received a call an hour after the start of the search operation, Minho had been hit by a car. The driver of the car had suffered trauma and had to be taken to a mental health clinic. Minho had succumbed to his injuries at the scene of the accident.

Minho was dead and I still didn't quite get it.

I still hoped that one day he would show up at my door grinning or text me suddenly.

"It was all just a joke, I'm not dead."

I wished for it so badly.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I missed my hyung.

I missed his annoyed gazes and his joking insults, I missed the way his perfectly formed eyes sparkled when we burned another one of our failed tests behind the school, and I missed his loud laughter when we ran away from the teachers.

I missed him too much to be willing to leave him behind.

The last passenger, an old woman, got on and the bus driver closed the doors. I stared out the window and continued to watch the silver iridescent rain. Suddenly something shimmered on the other side of the street.

A face.

Minho.

I immediately jumped up and ran all the way to the front. "Sorry, but I really need to get out!! It's an emergency!!!" I yelled at the puzzled bus driver, who wordlessly opened the doors.

I charged into the pouring rain and blindly ran across the street. It was almost a miracle that I didn't get run over. I reached the other side of the street and looked around frantically. But there was nobody here.

I could have thought so too.

Where I thought I saw his face was just a big, sad puddle in which I was reflected. No Minho, just a completely soaked and lonely Han Jisung.

I ran my fingers through my hair in disbelief and narrowed my eyes in frustration. "I'm going insane... that thing about the mirrors was bad enough..."

This wasn't the first time  I saw Minho. A few weeks ago I had seen him in mirrors, a few weeks earlier in photos taken months after his death. But whenever I looked closely, he was gone.

I closed my eyes and turned my face to the sky. I silently let the rain pelt my face and drip off my fingertips. It was completely silent around me, the only sound was the rushing of the rain.

If Felix was right, then the rain was all I had left of Minho.

I opened my eyes again and blinked the water out of my lashes. Everything was so strangely blurry. I took a step toward the crosswalk to cross the street in an exemplary manner for a change, but then I felt a slight tug on my pinky.

I turned my head and noticed the paper-thin red thread wrapped tightly around my right pinky at one end. The other end disappeared somewhere in the puddle.

I tugged at the thread, confused, but it seemed to be firmly attached. And I couldn't shake it either. I pulled again, this time a little harder.

Suddenly a tug went through the thread, as if someone on the other side was also pulling on it as well. I lost my balance and tripped.

I expected to hit my head and end up in the dirt, but I didn't. Instead, I took a last-second deep breath and walked through the puddle as if it was a door.