Work Text
Kihyun wakes up all alone, laying in his back, the wide, clear blue sky spreading above him.He lifts himself to a sitting position tring to recall where he is, but strangely, feeling so at peace.He looks down at his body, the simple black pants and white shirt he is wearing, his bare feet. There is soft grass underneath him, colorful flowers here and there, creating an endless meadow.There is nothing else around him, so he doesn’t stand up, he knows there is no reason.He waits and waits, putting the gears in his mind into motion and he comes to the only answer he can find.A man appears right next to him.Kihyun looks up at the slim figure, the old-fashioned suit and the umbrella he’s holding.“Am I dead?” He asks, looking into the man’s hazel eyes.“Yes.” The man gives him a gentle smile, letting his umbrella on the ground and sitting next to Kihyun.From tales of scorching cauldrons to the more realistic expectation of nothingness, just a body under the ground, Kihyun would never imagine his after death place to be like this.“Is this heaven or hell?” Kihyun asks, hoping there’s a bit more to the endless sky and fields.“A bit of both, but really, neither.” The man looks up at the sky. He seems thoughtful.“How did I die?”“By choice.”“My choice?”He always wished for a painless death. Of old age, happily surrounded by his family, fulfilled. He knows it’s not the case.“Don’t you remember?”“No.” He tries, he knows he was alive, he knows his name, but his memories consist of only vague images, colors, shadows of people.“The accident.”The word triggers something. The accident. Kihyun looks at his hands. They are intact. He remembers gripping the stirring wheel, the feeling of losing his balance and sense of gravity.“The car tipped over.” An empty, upside down road was in front of him. His eyes were closing. It didn’t hurt. “Did I die in there? Did they find me?”“Do you really want to know?”“If I do, will you tell me?”“I will.”“Okay. I want to know.” Kihyun curls into himself, the images in his head getting cleared up, being sorted out. There is oil spilled on the road. There are cars passing next to his own, one, two, sparing a look and speeding up. There is blood dripping from his temple to the roof of the car. It’s too late to say he doesn’t want to know anymore.“A passing driver stopped and called an ambulance, you were already unconscious when they found you.” The man takes in a small, shaky breath. “You were still alive when you reached the hospital, they tried to bring you back.”“I can guess they weren’t successful” Kihyun laughs bitterly. If only someone stopped earlier. Maybe he would still be alive.No use for maybes now.“They called the last person from your call log.” The man looks at Kihyun like he’s not sure he wants to say more. “You flat lined a few minutes after he came inside the emergency room.”His body being dragged out from the car carefully, shouting, then the smell of hospital and people frantically moving around him. Someone calling his name. And blank.“Jooheon?” Jooheon calling his name.Kihyun buries his face in his hands. Imagines Jooheon rushing from work after the hospital call. Entering a room full of monitors, doctors and nurses running around. And in the middle of it, Kihyun. Dying. Dead.It’s all too much.The man clears his throat and it takes Kihyun some time to talk again.“Did they bury me already?”A simple tombstone with his name on it. His mother inconsolable, crying on top of it. His father and brother a few steps behind, maybe some other relatives. Jooheon trying to keep it together.“Yes, and no. Time does not exist here. Right now it’s the day you were born and your dying moment.” The man exhales, and something stirs inside Kihyun.They’ve met before.“Are you dead too?”Drinking coffee and reading the morning paper at the café near the port. Waiting across the crosswalk. Riding a bus that passes by Kihyun who’s walking to somewhere. Slipping a watch on his desk, in the old building he worked as a doorman at. Kihyun has seen this man too many times before.“I am not alive.” The man simply states.“Are you some kind of god? Or angel?” In the middle of the road. Appearing when Jooheon drove off in the car. But Jooheon didn’t drive off in the car that day, Kihyun did.“Just a traveler.”“I begged you not to let him go” Kihyun whispers. “I begged you to take me instead.”He remembers now.The car flipping over. Kihyun running after it, turning the crown of the watch time after time, watching the hands move. He couldn’t get it right. He had to see the car flipping over with Jooheon inside again and again. Oil spreading on the road. Kihyun arriving too late. One, two cars sparing only a look and speeding up. The third stopping, but it was already too late.If Kihyun was the one to call the ambulance, maybe help would have arrived on time.“I granted your wish. I took you instead.” The man looks teary-eyed for a moment, but maybe it’s just the sun reflecting in his eyes. “That was your final decision. And that was more than I’ve done for anybody else.”The man takes a pocket watch out of his suit. Flicks the cover open for a moment, looks at the time and shuts it again. He gets up.“Do you have a name?” Kihyun stands up too, knowing their time is up.“Hyungwon.”“Why did you give me the watch?”“I wanted to help.”“Did you? Did you help me?”“That’s up for you to decide.” Hyungwon opens the umbrella above his head, but there isn’t a single cloud above them. “Did you save your friend’s life by sacrificing your own? Or did you save your own consciousness by condemning your friend to a life of guilt?”