An Encounter in their high school locker room changed Jimin's view, it leaves him unsettled. He is infected by troubling thoughts and dreams. Who will provide him peace now?
My thighs are quivering with pain and the strain of holding him like this. The wraith is closer, within ten feet of us. I let out a roar of frustration.
What do I do? Do I run? No. There's nowhere to go. Then, suddenly, I feel a sense of calm descends. In front of me, Hoseok's face transforms.
It's still his face, but now it's the version of him from the house party last year. We are in the house, crowded in among the dancing bodies, the thrumming bass. Brilliant lights track across his forehead, eyes, and hair.
We are dancing together. He is smiling at me and his smile is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Our bodies move against each other in time to the music.
I hold him close to me, and I feel... whole. Resonant. Exquisitely bound.
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He leans in and presses his cheek to mine. I close my eyes, savoring the feel of him. I can smell him, his intoxicating clean-sweat smell.
He whispers in my ear. "This isn't real, Jimin," he says. His words move through my body like a roll of thunder.
They precipitate a moment of clarity, free from the cacophony that's been growing inside my head. I finally understand. I know that what he says is true.
He is who he is, this beautiful Hoseok, here in my arms -- and also, he is the wraith. I know the truth, and yet, I don't want to let him go. I don't want to lose this -- lose him.
Maybe even more, I don't want to lose this version of myself. A person who managed to find something real, the fundamental realness of what I have found here -- with Hoseok. Could this be worth keeping? Even if what I am keeping is just a diseased fragment of my mind? I know that if I leave this smiling boy behind and move back toward my life, toward health, there's a good chance I won't ever find my way back here again.
Back to this dance floor, back into the arms of someone... someone who could ever really love me. I take one last long look at him. The light from the disco ball flashes in his eyes.
I caress his cheek, take a breath, and then push myself away. I drop my arms and stagger into the lockers for a second before collapsing onto the ground. As I fall, I feel myself split. I watch a version of myself move off toward the wraith.
This Jimin, my double, moves away from me as if in slow motion. I see the large muscles of his legs flex and engage his weight against the ground as he begins to run -- charge -- down the row of lockers. The wraith doesn't react, it just keeps walking forward.
At the moment Jimin collides with it or would have collided with it, the wraith evaporates and disappears as if it were made of mist. The sweep of Jimin's body obliterates it. He stumbles, surprised to encounter no solid body, and falls forward.
The air around his body vibrates, tears open, and then he falls, falling, falling into a bright light, a brilliant landscape filled with grass, tumbling through the air. I see the stump rush up to meet his body -- my body. I feel an echo in my chest of the impact of his torso hitting the wood.
And then the shimmering, ragged hole in the air zips itself up, knitting the locker room back to normal. I'm lying on the cool concrete floor, now. There is static buzzing in my head.
And pain, and fear. But everything is muted, now. Subdued. Hoseok is gone.
After a while, there is a set of legs standing near me. Then another set of legs. From far above me, I hear my name.
"Jimin." Jimin. Jimin.
That's me. I see more legs and hear more voices. A voice is saying, " Please send medics.
Yes...Yes...The patient has a history of schizophrenia...yes yes...seizure...". Then I feel my body being lifted and carried away.
