part seventy six

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EXO COMEBACK EUREUREONG

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hg: dead like me au, part three -- team kaibaek (2/3 baek, 1/3 kai) (1450 words)

[(Anonymous)]

Re: hg: dead like me au, part three -- team kaibaek (2/3 baek, 1/3 kai) (1450 words)

[(Anonymous)]

obviously, warnings for death-related discussion and humor.

Re: hg: dead like me au, part three -- team kaibaek (2/3 baek, 1/3 kai) (1450 words)

[(Anonymous)]

Baekhyun peels Jongin out of bed the next morning bright and early, ignoring his grumbling to push a plate of fishcakes under his nose. "Eat. You've got a long day ahead of you."

"There's still food when you're dead?" Jongin asks dumbly, fists rubbing at his eyes, still crusted half-shut with sleep.

Chanyeol snorts, mouth full of egg bread. He manages to keep most of it in his mouth but Kyungsoo still grimaces and wipes at the table with his napkin. "What did you think we ate?"

"I'm running through the list of possible Seoul-food related jokes and I assure you none of them are funny," Baekhyun says, patting Jongin on the back encouragingly. "Give the kid a break. I've heard some stories about your first week and your feeble attempts at haunting people from your past life." Chanyeol flushes a deep crimson and buries his eyes back in his breakfast, sufficiently cowed. "He's doing fine figuring this whole technically-dead-yet-hasn't-crossed-over-yet thing."

"So is your watch still fucked up?" Jongdae asks, hands cupped around a steaming mug of tea. "Are you still stuck on Jongin?"

Baekhyun shakes his head. "It'd reset itself when I woke up. Still fucking weird." He holds it out. The cool cobalt glow from the day before has faded, both hands wound back to one minute before midnight. Ready for the day's assignment.

Kyungsoo shrugs. "Whatever. It'll be nice to have the extra help around." He smiles at Jongin and rises to his feet. "Gotta go. Early appointment." He pats Jongin's arm as he walks past. "Good luck today. Remember—however freaked out you might be, they're always going to be more scared than you are."

Baekhyun nods in agreement. "Really good thing to remember. Nothing bad can happen to you now—right? You're already dead."

Jongin looks a little dazed as if he'd completely forgotten all about yesterday until Baekhyun mentioned it..

"Me too," Chanyeol says, pushing away from the table. "Gotta go out of town for this one."

"Did you take your pill?" Baekhyun asks, eyes narrowing. Chanyeol flashes a guilty smile.

"I—was just about to, thank you for reminding me."

"Mmm." Baekhyun shakes his head. "I don't know how you can fucking forget something as big as that."

Chanyeol shrugs. "Who knew Reapers could suffer from allergies?"

"Only you, Princess. You know, you really should pass the job off—maybe Jongin's going to want it." Jongdae sets his empty mug in the sink. "Alright. Sorry to cut this short but I've got to be at a nursing home across town before ten and you know how the buses are—oh." His eyes pop a little as he looks over at Jongin. "Sorry, I didn't even think—"

"Uh—yeah—no worries," Jongin says stiffly. "I—a bus?" He looks at Baekhyun. "Is that how I died?" Jongdae gives an awkward wave and backs out of the kitchen (and the conversation).

"Yeah." Baekhyun pulls the newspaper from Kyungsoo's vacated seat and smooths open the page to the obituaries. "Don't worry. It's normal to forget—one of those Reaper coping mechanisms so you don't lose your damn mind every time you're on assignment."

"Oh." Jongin puts a fishcake in his mouth and chews slowly. It tastes like cardboard but that might just be the weird panic he feels every time he tries to think about yesterday and comes up with a fistful of air. "I guess that makes sense. But—why—I mean, I can't remember that but I remember being—you know, alive."

"That'll fade with time," Baekhyun assures him. "You won't always remember your life before death."

Jongin's face falls. "Always?"

"Don't worry. You want to remember what you've left behind?" Baekhyun shrugs and buries his hand in his pocket, fishing for something. "It's easier this way, trust me. Here—" His hand re-emerges, clutching a watch. He drops it on the table in front of Jongin and motions for him to put it on. "Sent down from HQ this morning. You keep this on at all times—I don't give a fuck if you're in the shower or you're worried about tan lines, this thing's a permanent accessory. It calls—you fucking answer. Death doesn't wait for you to finish dinner or whacking off or whatever the fuck you're doing. And before you ask—no, it doesn't come in any color other than black." He flicks at the watch face which sets the hands wobbling crazily beneath the glass. "Pretty easy to understand. Hands on the skull—time to get to work." He points at the question mark located at the three. "This means there's a backup at central and your collection time's been delayed. A glorified soul stall, basically. And this," he points at the exclamation point at the six, "means you're home free. Both of you."

"How do you know who you're looking for and where to go?"

Baekhyun turns the dial at the side of the watch. It whirs to life and the screen glows white. A name scrolls past, then an address and an estimated time. "Pretty neat, huh? That's your assignment for today. Looks like we're going to Jung—oh, neat. I hope it's at Namsan. Those reaps are always a blast." He smirks a little at Jongin's awestruck expression. "If they've got any special notes—you know, multiple deaths, prone to nervous breakdowns so make sure you hold their hand, stuff like that—it'll be included."

"What did it say about me?"

Baekhyun shrugs and pulls his hand away. "I don't remember."

"You're lying." Jongin frowns, face dark. "Was it that bad?"

"Jongin." Baekhyun rubs his forehead tiredly. "I've reaped so many goddamn souls. You all blur together a little bit. You'll see—you know, if you're around long enough. Death is pretty much the same after a while—one minute you're on that side, the next minute you're talking to me." He folds the newspaper and pushes his plate to the center of the table. "Alright. Let's get going."



Baekhyun explains the whole reaping process on their way to Namsan. He spends the first few stops waxing poetic about being a soul guardian until he sees Jongin's eyes start to glaze over and he cuts to the chase: "It's pretty easy, really—you spot your mark, you follow them."

"How are you going to know?"

"They kind of—glow? I guess? It's not like their skin changes color or anything drastic like that. It's more—a weird haze? Kind of like when you look at a street light late at night, that weird starry-looking halo thing? It's like that." He smiles at the confused crease that forms in Jongin's forehead. "You'll see what I mean. It freaked me out the first time I saw it. You can tell how close to death someone is by the color of the glow. It'll be almost red when they're ready to pop—excuse the expression." His eyes settle on Jongin's hands. He keeps clasping and unclasping them in his lap, knuckles clenching white before the color comes back into them.

"Can they see us? Can—are we invisible?"

Baekhyun snorts. "Of course they can fucking see us. I told you, we're not ghosts. Just—here," he pulls Jongin's chin around to look at his reflection in the bus's mirror. A pair of generic-looking boys stare back. One of them looks decidedly sleepier than the other. "Easy to blend in. Forgettable. Best disguise there is." He pokes at his alter-ego's face. "Pity about this nose, though—I know a guy who could fix it, but it's not—you know, it's not real, it's just kind of... I don't know how it works, exactly. A really elaborate illusion. Allows us to do our job among the people."

Jongin blinks, fingers outstretched. He traces the outline of his 'new' face, frowning at the weak taper of his jaw, the thin lips of this new face—Baekhyun understands the frustration. It's perhaps the most sobering realization when you figure out you're never going to see your old face ever again. It's almost scarier than when you realize you're essentially an orphan, alone in the world except for the rest of the reapers on your team. "And then? What happens after they die?" he asks in a hushed whisper. He still can't take his eyes off the reflection.

"You have to get them to follow you."

Jongin blinks and turns. The spell's broken. "What?"

Baekhyun sighs impatiently. "You think everyone's happy to die? That they're just ready to move on? You remember, right? You didn't want to come. You wanted to stay and watch them scrape you off the road. You have to charm them a little bit. Ease them into the idea of the great beyond and all that." The bus screeches to a halt. "You ready? Time to pop that cherry of yours."