#if you struggle with paranoia in convincing yourself you’re awake and in real life

[skzsauce01]

Magic Words

Description: You resurrect Hyunjin while studying for your exams. There’s no way you’re telling him the first thing you thought of his cold, dead body was that he’s hot.

Warning: dead bodies, criminal activity

Word count: 6.3k

Pairing: Hyunjin x fem!reader, bestfriend!Chan

Special thanks to ad.gold who helped edit and write!

Maybe breaking into the university hospital in the middle of the night isn’t the best idea, you think to yourself. Although is it really breaking in if you have a key?

You scan the area around you for security guards one last time before you reach into hoodie pocket for the set of keys Chan gave you. Being friends with one of the work study janitorial staff has its perks. You still can’t believe he let you borrow them without a fight. This is a terrible idea, you think to yourself. A terrible, awful, extremely illegal idea that could land both you and Chan into jail.

The one marked with blue painter’s tape fits into the lock just like Chan said, and you hear a small click as you turn the key.

You let out a sigh of relief and hurry inside, making sure to quietly close the door. Your backpack hits the frame, and the sound echoes across the empty hallway. You dart into the stairwell, hoping no one heard the noise. Thankfully, no one comes running, and you can breathe again.

Alright. All you need to do is get down into the morgue, open up a couple of body bags, and study the dead bodies.

This is a really bad idea.

Why did Chan let you do this?

After a few more glances around, you take the stairs down, taking slow and quiet steps. Your heart pounds with every move. One hand grips the bannister, and the other hand covers your mouth in an attempt to muffle your hyperventilation.

A few agonizing minutes later, you arrive at the entrance. The other key Chan lent you opens it, and you get a face full of cold air when you walk in. You shut the door behind you, ensuring that it is locked. There are no bodies on the examining table, so you clear a cart and open the morgue fridge closest to you. You pick a random body bag and slide it onto the cart. The corpse is a little too heavy and tall for your small frame, and you wish you recruited someone to come with you.

With a lot of effort, you manage to get your study subject onto the examining table. You drop your backpack onto the floor before unwrapping the shroud. There’s a blue tag stating the cause of death attached to the wrapping, but you don’t look at it. You need to find out on your own.

You take a step back to get a full view of the corpse. It’s a male about your age, and it looks like he just recently died.

“Wow, he’s hot.” You never knew a dead person could be so… well, attractive. You shake your head, dissipating the thought of developing necrophilia.

“Hello there,” you say. You always feel that you should treat the dead with respect, so you speak to them as if they were still alive and present. “I have an exam tomorrow, and I need some practice. I hope you don’t mind me studying you.”

You take out your notebook and pen from your backpack. First, you write down observations (“face swelling,” “bumps on neck,” and “rash on arm”). When you can no longer find anything else of significance from merely looking at it, you take some gloves from the box in the wall and approach the body.

“I’m really sorry,” you whisper, “but I have to pass that exam. I’m just going to take a closer look at you.”

You gently poke his skin. He’s still firm, confirming your suspicion of it being a recent death. Upon closer inspection, you can see that his skin is tinted a very pale blue.

Realization hits you. “I bet I know how you died!” you excitedly whisper. You write down “allergic reaction” on your notebook and check the blue tag, which says “anaphylaxis”. “I was right!” you cheer. You make a mental note to use proper medical terms on your exam.

Before you can look at other bodies, you need to put this one back into the fridge.

“Thank you”– you check the tag for the body’s name– “Hwang Hyunjin.”

You drape the shroud over him and tie the binding back together in a butterfly knot and prepare to push the body onto the cart.

It’s a struggle to get it on without making any loud noises. The cart won’t stay still, and Hwang Hyunjin is too heavy for you to handle, so he keeps slipping out of your grip.

“Stop moving!” you hiss at nothing in particular.

“Let me out then!”

You freeze. The body bag moves in your arms, and you drop it. You back away– far, far away.

Breathe, you tell yourself. It’s late at night, and you drank way too much coffee before coming here. It’s just a hallucination caused by your paranoia.

“Let me out!” the same voice repeats.

“Y/N, pull it together!” you say out loud. “It’s not real.” You slap your cheeks a few times. “Okay, let’s do this.”

“You’ll let me out?”

You walk back to the examining table. “Nice try, guilty conscience,” you mutter to yourself. You resume trying to load the body onto the cart.

“Wait! I’m actually alive!”

“You’re a dead body. Tag says you died.” Goodness, it’s moving again. Chan was right; no more caffeine after 8 PM.

“Just open the bag and check!”

“You’re a figment of my imagination.”

“I’m moving around!”

“Could you move yourself back into the fridge?” Look at yourself, having full-on conversations with a corpse. Your classmates would have a field day if they saw you.

“Only after you open the bag.”

Maybe if you indulge in this stupid hallucination, it will go away. You untie the bindings and throw the shroud off.

“See? It’s…” You trail off when you see that his eyes are open and staring back at you.

He already looks terrifying, but then he waves and gives you a teasing smile. “I told you so.”

The normal thing to do would be to run out of the morgue and back into your apartment where you would bury yourself under a pile of blankets and convince yourself that it was all a caffeine-and-stress induced nightmare.

Instead, you stand there and say “You’re supposed to be dead” in a strangled voice.

He stands up, not realizing he’s completely naked. Now that you know he’s no longer dead, the sight becomes too awkward. You quickly dart your eyes elsewhere, stammering incoherent nothings to try to ease your nervousness. He’s naked and he’s very attractive, you think. He, just as flustered, scrambles to lift his body bag in front of himself.

“So, why aren’t you dead?” you cough.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? You must have done something!”

“Maybe you did something,” he suggests. “Are you a med student? Med students know how to do weird things.”

“Pre-med,” you correct. “And we can’t bring people back to life.”

He gasps. “I bet you’re a necromancer! That’s it!”

You ignore his nonsensical babbling and pull out your phone. You have to call Chan. It’s only 2 AM, thankfully; he’s still going to be awake.

“Hello?” you say.

He greets you with, “Are you in trouble?”

“Not really? It’s debatable.” There’s a not-so-dead body in front of you, and he’s going on and on about witchcraft and bringing the dead back. Why did you have to pick a crazy one?

“What did you do?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He yells something, but you continue. “Can you come to the morgue? And can you bring some pants?”

“Y/N, if you did something with a dead body-”

“I didn’t do anything!” you shriek.

Hwang Hyunjin takes this opportunity to chime in with “Yes, you did.”

You groan and glare at him. “Do you want to die again? I can make it happen.”

“Who is that?!” Chan shouts. You can hear him moving around, presumably to leave your shared apartment. “And what do you mean ‘again?’ Y/N, what are you doing?”

“I’ll explain it when you get here. And make sure to bring some pants with you.”

“Why do you need pants?!” You hear a door slam shut and Chan running.

“Just bring them.” You look over to the boy on the table, remember he’s naked, and switch your gaze back to the floor. “And come quick.”

“Did you hook up with someone? Geez, Y/N! Why would you even do it at the morgue!”

“It’s nothing like that!” you wail. “I’ll explain it all later.”

“Seriously, if you did something, tell me! I won’t judge!”

“Yeah, just tell him!” Hyunjin adds. “She did something really cool to a dead body! Guess what it is!” he says a little louder.

“You really have a death wish, don’t you?” you hiss over Chan’s screaming.

Chan won’t stop shouting, Hwang Hyunjin won’t shut up, and you can’t decide who you want dead more– the one who keeps accusing you of necrophilia or the one who keeps making the situation worse.

“See you later, Chan!” you say as cheerfully as you can. Before he can argue, you end the call.

You turn to Hyunjin and stab a finger at his chest. “I am going to kill you very painfully and slowly and make you wish you were dead again.” Your voice loses its venom when you realize that you have a bigger problem on your hands. “How did this even happen?”

“I think you brought me back to life,” he quietly says. “It sounds dumb, but there’s no other explanation. According to my tag, I’ve been dead for a week now; this can’t just be a Lazarus phenomenon.”

“If that’s true, then I should have brought back at least ten other dead bodies in my anatomy class. But guess what? There’s not.” You sigh. “Dang it, I promised Chan that I wouldn’t get into trouble. He’s going to be so mad at me.”

“That’s partially my fault.” He pats your head in you think is supposed to be a reassuring matter. “Sorry for pissing him off. I just wanted to get back at you for not letting me out sooner.”

Normally, you would say something like “It’s fine” or “It’s no big deal,” but you are tired and the additional stress of not knowing what is happening rains on your mood, so you instead mutter, “I’m going to kill you.”

The door swings open, and Chan stands hunched over in the frame, breathing heavily. When he takes in the scene in front of him, he groans.

“Y/N, I thought you said you didn’t hook up with anyone.” He walks over to you and tosses the pair of pants to Hyunjin.

“I didn’t!” You turn the other way and let Hyunjin dress himself.

“Why is he naked then?”

“She just brought me back to life. I told you she did something really cool to a dead body,” Hyunjin answers. “I’m decent now,” he tells you to cue you to turn back around.

“Is this a prank?” Chan asks. “Is this why you wanted my key? Who is this guy anyway?”

Animosity forgotten, Hyunjin asks Chan, “How did you get in if Y/N has the key? And I’m Hyunjin.” He sticks out his hand for the other male to shake.

Chan shakes his hand and flashes a thin silver key. “I’m Chan. I’m also the head janitor here, so I have a universal key.”

Is this really happening? You blink a few times to make sure you’re seeing things right. The two guys that were screaming at each other earlier are having a civil conversation, and you’re pretty sure they’re exchanging work out tips now.

“Can we focus on the issue here?” you interrupt. “He was dead and now he’s alive.”

“So, it’s not a prank?” He looks at Hyunjin. “You were actually dead?”

“Yeah.” Hyunjin replies. “I have a cat allergy. A cat scratched me, and I didn’t realize until it was too late.”

You’re standing in-between them, so you wave your arms and get both of their attention. “Back to the main subject: what do we do?”

“You study for the exam, and Hyunjin and I will figure it out,” Chan suggests.

The exam. In the midst of the drama, you almost forgot about it. Your grade is on the line, but Hyunjin seems to be the bigger issue here.

“We need to figure out what to do with this guy first,” you protest.

Chan shakes his head and pulls out another body. “You came here for this; you need to finish it. I’ll figure Hyunjin out.”

“But–”

“No but’s,” Chan says with such finality in his voice that you give in. You try to eavesdrop on the two males and their discussion on how Hyunjin is alive and what to do with him, but Chan catches you staring and scolds you until you turn back to your work with a huff.

It’s 4 AM, and your head is filled with medical terminology and the whisperings of Chan and Hyunjin. For the past two hours, you identified causes of death for nearly fifteen corpses, none of which came alive. Meanwhile, the two made themselves comfortable on another examining table and chatted about solutions. They sometimes put back and pull out more bodies for you, but they always stop talking when they do so as to not distract you.

When the words start blurring on your notebook pages, you announce that you’re done and that it’s time to leave.

Chan seems satisfied with your work and agrees. “Hyunjin, you can stay with us.”

You shake your head. “What if they find out they’re missing a body? He can’t leave.”

“We can’t tie him back up and shove him back in the fridge either.”

“Yes, we can.”

“Y/N!” they both yell.

Chan pauses to think. “How about I’ll tell the higher-ups that I was taking the trash from the morgue tomorrow morning and when I came in, I heard banging from the inside of the fridge?”

“I don’t want to stay here all night,” Hyunjin complains. “Or appear on the evening news for being a medical miracle either.”

“What else can we do? We can’t just steal you!” you argue.

Hyunjin seems rather enthused about the idea. “Just do that! You guys don’t even have to carry me! I’ll walk out with you guys!”

“Chan, say something!”

“He can stay with us. At least until we figure this out.”

It’s 4 AM; you don’t have time for this. You stretch and gather your things. “Fine. But if we get caught, I’m telling the police it was all your idea,” you tell Chan.

“Thanks for letting me stay!” He heads for the door, but you stop him.

“Well just pants isn’t going to cut it,” you sigh. You thrust your hoodie towards him. “Here.”

He looks at it with a frown. “But you’re going to be cold.”

“I have a shirt at least,” you rebuttal. “Just take it. You’re the one who came out a freezer.”

“Just take it,” Chan supports. “She’ll be fine.”

You feel a soft weight plop on your head and recognize the sleeve of Chan’s gray jacket draping over your vision.

“You could have given it to me normally,” you grumble. You thread your hands into the sleeves anyway, liking how they can cover your hands.

Chan just sticks his tongue out at you, and Hyunjin quickly pulls your hoodie over himself now that he knows you will be fine.

“You smell nice,” he mumbles as his nose barely peaks out of your clothing.

“Thanks, I guess? Alright, let’s go.”

The walk back is the most stressful trip you’ve ever taken in your life. Every five seconds, you turn your head around to check for security guards while trying to look natural at the same time. You let out a sigh of relief when all three of you manage to make it to the front door of your and Chan’s shared apartment without getting thrown into jail.

Once inside, you and Chan wave goodnight to Hyunjin who makes himself comfortable on the couch. You and Chan head in yourselves, you ask him, “Did you figure out why he’s alive?”

“Not yet,” he replies. When you yawn, he chuckles. “Let’s just have you focus on getting some sleep and doing well tomorrow, okay?”

“I know, I know. Good night.”

“Good luck on your exam, Y/N!” Hyunjin calls.

He gives you an encouraging smile with a blanket under his chin, and your breath suddenly hitches.

“Yeah, thanks,” you reply while turning to the side to try to forget his unfairly beautiful face. Why is your heart speeding up? You curse at yourself. He was literally dead flesh not a tenth of a day ago; he shouldn’t be able to have this effect on you.

Despite getting only three hours of sleep, you think you did well on the exam. You almost fell asleep during the first five minutes, but you caught yourself thinking about Hyunjin’s smile, and that thought alone jolted you awake.

As you walk out of the lab, you see Chan waiting for you outside.

“Hey,” you greet. You look behind him but your other roommate isn’t there. “Where’s Hyunjin?”

He tosses you a granola bar. “At a job interview. How was the exam?”

“Not too bad. Spending two hours in the morgue last night helped. Thanks, by the way.” You gratefully unwrap and start eating the snack. “So, you just left Hyunjin alone?”

“He’ll be fine. It’s not like he’ll get attacked or anything.”

“And how the heck is he going to get hired when he’s technically dead?”

“I’m a criminal who burned his death certificate. He’s still alive now.”

You nearly choke on your granola bar. “What? Aren’t you supposed to be the responsible one?”

“Look, we already stole his body. Foot in the door phenomenon.”

“Have you been reading my psych book over my shoulder?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t have anything else to do.”

“Are you sure this is okay? We could get into so much trouble.”

Chan flashes you an assuring smile. “When has anything I’ve done ever gone wrong. Besides, you can just tell the police it was all my doing if it does,” he adds with a wink, referring to what you said that morning.

You open your mouth to point out a time he did mess up only to discover you can’t remember a time he did.

“Can you come to the library with me?” he asks. “I want to do some necromancy research.”

You groan and roll your eyes, but follow him anyway. “You seriously bought into his conspiracy theory?”

“It doesn’t hurt to check.”

“What are we supposed to do?” you whisper to Chan once you are there. “Go up to the librarian and ask if they have any books about raising the dead?”

“Yeah, we can do that.”

Chan drags you to the circulation desk, and you frantically pull his jacket sleeve to stop him.

“I was kidding!

“It’s RACHA U. They’ll just think we’re a bunch of weird kids.”

You sigh and let go of his sleeve. “Whatever.” You wait for him to continue walking, but he doesn’t. “What’s wrong?”

“Y/N, you have to go ask. You look like you’re into occult stuff more than I do.” He gestures to your oversized sweater and black combat boots. “Besides, you have a weird enough face for it.”

You glare at him, but that only further justifies his point. He gently shoves you forward, and you smile brightly at the librarian. Chan owes you big time.

“Good morning!” you say in a chipper voice that you can hardly believe is yours. You can see Chan wincing at the sound.“I was wondering if you have any books about raising the dead or witchcraft?”

The middle-aged lady only glances at you before telling you, “Third floor, 100-199. Make sure you put the books back in the right place.”

You enthusiastically nod and say in the same bright voice, “Thank you so much!”

The bookshelves labelled 100 to 199 are tucked in the back corner of the floor. You pick a random one and scan the selection. It’s mostly books on philosophy, and you wonder if the librarian sent you here to tell you to reconsider your life choices.

“I’m done with this,” you groan after a few minutes.

“Fine.” Chan sweeps your book towards himself.

You let out a sigh of relief and pull out your textbook, something actually worthwhile and realistic. You and Chan fall silent as you both dive into your respective texts. He drops a few books onto the table, and every time he does, you scoff at the titles.

“You nonbeliever,” enters a new voice. “Shame the nonbeliever.”

You and Chan look up to see Hyunjin who moves to sit by Y/N. He slides you both a coffee and your fingers brush as you take it from him.

“The interview went well then?” Chan asks while raising up his cup in thanks.

Your hand burns in the spots where he touched you. You place the fingertips of your other hand on it to try to ease the alien feeling to no avail.

“Yeah, I got the job, and they gave me some coffee as congrats.”

“Oh, nice. Make sure to give us discounts when we go over to the cafe.”

“Which cafe?” you ask to distract yourself from your still burning hand.

“Yellow Wood. It’s pretty quiet there, so you can study there sometime.”

You nod, suddenly gaining an interest the corner cafe you usually pass without notice.

“So, what have we found so far?” Hyunjin inquires, peering at Chan’s book.

“Not much. Although I think a recurring point in these books is that necromancers all need to say a spell before their magic works. It’s different for everyone,” Chan answers.

You can feel their attention shift to you.

“Y/N,” Hyunjin begins, “Do you remember saying something before you said hello to me? That was the first thing I heard.”

You thought for a second and then nearly spit out your coffee when you remember the one and only thing you said in the morgue before greeting him. There is no way you are admitting to saying that. No way.

“No,” you squeak out, your voice even higher than it was when you were talking to the librarian. “I don’t remember anything.”

“She’s lying,” Chan calls you out. “She pulls her sleeves over her hands like that when she lies.”

You quickly hide your hands under the table. Dang it, Chan knew you too well.

Hyunjin chuckles. “Aww.”

“If you heard me say hello, why didn’t you move then?” you ask in an attempt to change the subject.

“I couldn’t move yet,” Hyunjin answers. “And because you said you had an exam to study for. I wanted to help.”

“What did you say?” Chan tries again. “Don’t dodge the question.”

“I’m not going to tell you,” you reply as you heat creep up your cheeks. “It’s something personal.”

“We’ve been friends for ages,” Chan reminds. “You can tell me. I won’t judge.”

Yes, you will, you think. Because even you’re judging your poor choice of words.

“It doesn’t matter. This ‘necromancy’ thing is a load of bull, anyway.” The last part comes out louder and harsher than you intended, and you awkwardly sip your coffee and try to ignore the stares from the both of them.

Chan sees your discomfort and decides to drop the subject. He goes back to gathering books, but Hyunjin stays by your side, with his head resting on his forearms.

“You’re not going to help him?” you ask, taking care to sound nonchalant.

“I’m just trying to figure out how to apologize to you.”

You laugh. “Shouldn’t you be thanking me? I supposedly brought you back after all.”

His voice is soft when he says, “I know I’m a bother. I want to know why I’m here, but I don’t want to make you stress over it.”

“Chan’s the one stressing over it, not me.”

“Then what did you say before you said hello?”

You shut your textbook and stuff your papers in your bag. You can’t tell him, and there’s no way he’s going to give it up like Chan did.

“Thanks for the coffee. I just remembered I gotta go… buy a new notebook. I’m running out of pages in mine,” you make up. “Bye.”

You practically run out of the library, and you hear him call your name. He doesn’t follow you, thank goodness.

When you’re finally outside, you pause to rest. With nowhere else to go and because you need to keep up the lie, you head to the campus store and buy an overpriced notebook. Your bank account cries, but it’s better than Hyunjin finding out.

Returning to the library isn’t an option, so you go back home. You’d have to face the two boys again later, but at least for now you can relish in your moment of not being under an interrogation light. It doesn’t last long, however. You only get through reading half of the next chapter of your textbook when you hear Chan’s keys jiggling in the doorknob.

“Did you buy your notebook already?” Chan asks, raising one eyebrow.

Jokes on him though. You smirk and hold up your brand new purchase. “Isn’t it nice?”

“Not nice enough for fifteen dollars.”

You silently agree. “Are you guys done with your ‘research?’”

Chan ignores your sarcasm. Or maybe he doesn’t care. “Almost. We just need you to test out our idea.”

“I already told you. It’s not gonna work anyway.”

You swear you hear them murmur, “Nonbeliever.”

“You can try on your own and tell us if it works or not after,” Hyunjin offers.

There’s a very big flaw to his plan, but you don’t say anything about it. “Look, even if I believed in this theory of yours, we can’t exactly go back to the morgue and bring back another dead body.”

“What if you tried on an animal?” Hyunjin suggests. “RACHA U has a lot of animals around.”

“Great. You can kill a squirrel for me then.”

“Roadkill, Y/N,” Chan sighs. “We’ll just find some roadkill.”

“Even better. You can run over a squirrel, and I’ll wait on the sidelane.”

Chan sighs again, but you can see Hyunjin suppressing a smile. You and Hyunjin exchange looks, and he gives you a small, secretive grin.

“Dinner?” Chan changes the subject. “We can go to Yellow Wood and make Hyunjin give us a discount.”

You start packing as Hyunjin says, “I’m not even working the evening shift!”

“What? They don’t give out employee discounts?” Chan looks to you. “Ready?”

“You’re buying me dinner for making me ask the librarian.”

Hyunjin interjects, “It’s okay, Y/N. I’ll buy you dinner.”

“I didn’t give you $50 for you to do stuff like this,” Chan tsks.

“I’ll buy yours too.”

“Now we’re talking.”

Much to Chan’s disappointment, there are no employee discounts. Much to Chan’s pleasure, he doesn’t need to pay today.

“Thanks, Hyunjin,” you say as he places a turkey sandwich in front of you.

“No problem,” he replies and immediately turns to get you a cup of water.

“Is this the roadkill you were talking about, Chan?” you tease as you flip open the sandwich to add a few stripes of mayo.

“Try saying the words loud and clear if that’s what you think,” he shoots back.

“Abracadabra,” you humor him with a scoff.

Before Chan can retort back, Hyunjin returns with the cup of water.

“Where’s my water?” asks Chan with a childish pout.

“Get your own.” You stick your tongue out at him before thanking Hyunjin with a smile.

“No problem,” replies Hyunjin. You think you see him blush, but you don’t want to believe he would do that because of you.

The three of you eat your sandwiches while making light conversation. About halfway through your sandwich, Chan’s phone rings, and he excuses himself from the table. When he comes back, he doesn’t sit down but instead stuffs his sandwich in his mouth.

“What’s wrong?” you ask.

“I have a shift right now. I have to go,” he apologizes.

You and Hyunjin wave goodbye. It’s just the two of you, alone. You avoid eye contact with Hyunjin while still trying to maintain a normal, friendly conversation.

Hyunjin, however, has other ideas. “Is this a date?”

You flush red and try to cover your face with your hair. “No. It’s just two people eating together.”

“So, a date?”

“Two people eating together is not a date.” The back of your neck feels hot, and you focus on the traffic lights outside.

He senses your discomfort and offers you a smile which makes you lose your sense of objection.

“Ask me out properly next time,” you grumble into your bread.

Hyunjin’s face lights up like a puppy but then falters. “Will Chan be okay with it?”

“Yeah, I think so,” you blink, confused. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“I thought maybe–” You can see him visibly relax. “Nevermind.”

You are relaxing with some BGA music when Chan rudely obscures your vision by dropping a dissection tray in front of you.

“Chan!” you yell. “What the heck!”

In the tray is a very-much dead squirrel.

“I found it while on my shift. We can test out the necromancy theory now,” Chan grins victoriously.

“And you bring it into my room?!” You bring a hand in front of your face. The dead animal smell is going to permanently taint your room now.

“Unless you wanna do it in the living room? Hyunjin’s there getting ready to sleep,” shrugs Chan.

“Restroom,” you propose while pushing past him. “I’ll try it there.”

You slam the door behind you and turn on all the faucets to drown out the noise. “No eavesdropping!” you yell.

You look at the rodent in front of you with a sigh. You tuck your nose inside your hoodie and begin with, “Hi Mr. Squirrel. I’m sorry I have to use you to indulge in Chan’s stupid plans. You could’ve been resting peacefully in some compost bin right now.”

You let out a huff of air and place your hands above it. “Here we go.” You close your eyes and whisper, “Wow, he’s hot.”

You quickly tap the corpse with your fingers for some extra magic before opening your eyes. Sure enough, the little brown animal begins to blink awake. A yelp of surprise leaves your lips and you jump, bumping into the towel rack.

“Y/N! Are you okay?” Hyunjin bursts through the door with worry evident in his eyes.

“I-it–”

“It worked!” Chan exclaims from outside.

The squirrel twitches, and you hide behind Hyunjin.

“There’s another problem now! We have a squirrel in our bathroom!” you squeak out. “What do we do?”

The squirrel moves again, and Hyunjin reaches for a towel. You and Chan watch as he wraps the towel around the creature. He picks the squirrel up and runs outside to release it.

“So, it worked,” Chan repeats.

“It did work,” you echo.

“What did you say?”

“I told you many times! It’s something personal! It’s none of your concern.”

“It’s about Hyunjin, isn’t it?”

Caught off guard, you pause for a brief moment. “Pft, no, it’s not.”

“You’re doing the sleeve thing again.” When you don’t say a word, he continues with, “What was the spell?”

There’s no point in hiding it from your longtime friend. You check to make sure Hyunjin’s not back before answering in a whisper, “Wow, he’s hot.”

You expect him to laugh, to threaten to tell Hyunjin, but he just gives you a look of disgust.

“You saw a dead body and the first thing you thought was that he’s hot?“

“I’m not proud of it either! Please don’t tell him.”

“I won’t. Because you will.”

You stammer some incoherent sentences before getting out, “No!”

“What’s the problem? Aren’t you two gonna start going out?”

“How do you know about that?”

“He called me during my shift and rambled on and on about it. He’s so excited. It’s a little concerning that he’s so happy to date you. I should teach him to have better taste.”

“Rude. But that’s not the point! It’s such an embarrassing thing to say!”

The front door opens, and Hyunjin walks back into the bathroom with the towel and a few scratches on his arm. You jump, and Chan gives you a look.

“Hey, I’m back,” he announces. “That squirrel seemed pretty mad that he was alive again.”

Conversation with Chan forgotten, you reach for the first-aid kit under the sink and hurry to help Hyunjin. While you’re busy disinfecting the wounds, Chan keeps trying to send you signals.

“Chan,” you ask to interrupt his eyebrow raising and nodding, “can you put the towel in the hamper?”

“Yeah.” He takes the towel from Hyunjin and suddenly pauses. “Oh, Hyunjin. Y/N said she wanted to tell you something.”

“I wanted to let you know that I think we should get ice-cream for our first date.” It’s a good thing your hands are busy, otherwise you would be hiding them with your sleeves again.

“No. The other thing.”

“Oh, right.” He is going to get it now. “Chan said he would personally fund our date, so I think we should try that gourmet ice-cream parlor.”

Chan chokes and starts coughing. The two of you stopped by in the beginning of the year to check it out, and the two of you immediately left after seeing the absurdly high prices.

“That’s really nice of you, but I’ll treat Y/N with my own money. I’ll pay you back the $50, too,” Hyunjin adds.

Chan smirks at you and thanks Hyunjin for being such a gentleman and treating you so well.

You finish patching up Hyunjin, and he thanks you in appreciation. When he goes to lie down on the couch, Chan pulls you aside.

“Just tell him!”

“Only if you fund the date!” You know he’ll never agree.

“I don’t have that kind of money!”

“And I don’t have that kind of courage!”

You head back into your room and bury yourself in your blankets. Without meaning to, scenarios of you admitting to Hyunjin the words run through your mind. All of them end with Hyunjin mercilessly teasing you, and for some strange reason, Chan is there as well, laughing.

You groan and put your headphones on.

The first official date with Hyunjin happens after Hyunjin receives his first paycheck. As promised, he pays back Chan, who is still won’t stop pestering you.

He laces his fingers with yours as the two of you walk down the street to the less expensive ice-cream parlor. You’re shocked at his boldness but don’t let go. It’s only when he wraps his arms around your shoulders at a stoplight do flinch and look at him uncertainly.

He apologizes with one of his warm smiles and holds your hand again.

He buys you an ice-cream cone, and no matter how much you insist on paying for it, he ignores you and drops his money on the counter.

“I’ll pay you back,” you promise.

“Y/N, you’re my girlfriend now. I’ll buy you anything you want.”

“How about a house?”

“Only if we can live together.”

As the two of you, still holding hands and eating ice-cream, stroll through a park, he points out a dead bird.

“Look! You can bring it back to life!”

After all the squirrel commotion, no one ever really brought up the necromancy thing again. Well, Chan kept bothering you to tell Hyunjin the spell words, but that didn’t really count. Hyunjin, on the other hand, just seemed glad that his hypothesis was right and that he could spend time with you. And you just pushed the newfound part of yourself away and kept quiet during anatomy classes.

“I’m not doing that again.” You try to drag him away from the tiny corpse, but he’s rooted to the ground. “Let’s go.”

“You don’t want to help it?”

“It’s dead already. I just want to forget my powers and let nature take its course. Besides, you said the squirrel was angry when I brought it back.” You try moving him again. “Let’s go get coffee.”

He gives in and lets you lead the way to Yellow Wood. “You know, you never told me what you first said to me.”

“It’s personal.”

“Fine. You don’t have to tell me the exact words. What was it about?”

“I’m not telling you,” you say with the most childlike voice you can muster.

“Y/N.”

“If I let you hug me, will drop the subject?”

He pouts, “Don’t think you’re getting out of this,” but he’s more than excited to hug you and bury his nose in your hair. Your face heats up, and he grins at your bright red cheeks. He’s happy which makes you happy, and you don’t even have to tell him the words yet.

And you never will. Or so you think.

You cried when he proposed, and you cry now when he reads his vows. At some point, you can no longer hear him speak because he’s sobbing as well.

It takes several breaks and some throat-clearing before he can end his speech with, “And I know people usually promise ‘until death do us part,’ but I know I’ll love and be with you to death and beyond. Literally.”

You laugh at the inside joke and reach forward to brush his tears away.

“Hyunjin,” you choke out, “I love you so much.”

Chan, who is both the best man and the maid of honor, is the first to start cheering at your statement, but the rest of the guests soon join in.

“So, will you tell me now?” he jokingly whispers into your ear.

With the loud noise from the guests and the euphoria you feel, you murmur, “Wow, he’s hot.”

For some strange reason, he’s surprised. “You think I’m hot?”

“Of course I do.”

His eyes are bright as he gently lifts your chin up. “I love you, too,” he replies back right before he kisses you.

~ ad.gray

#hyunjin #hwang hyunjin #skz #stray kids #bang chan #chan #necromancer #college au #20190910

[mrmichaelchadler]

Bright Wall/Dark Room November 2018: An Essay on Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf by Ethan Warren

We are pleased to offer an excerpt from the latest edition of the online magazine, Bright Wall/Dark Room. This month, in honor of #Bergman100, and Criterion's upcoming release of a 30-disc box set of his work, they're devoting our entire November issue to the films of Ingmar Bergman, looking to bring new & diverse perspectives to the legendary Swedish auteur's work. In addition to Ethan Warren's "Hour of the Wolf" piece "The Tumult Breaks Loose" below, they also have new essays on "Scenes from a Marriage," "Cries & Whispers," "Persona," "Fanny & Alexander," "The Passion of Anna," "Face to Face," "Summer with Monika," "The Magic Flute," "It Rains on Our Love," and an intimate, in-depth interview with frequent Bergman collaborator Liv Ullmann.

You can read our previous excerpts from the magazine by clicking here. To subscribe to Bright Wall/Dark Room, or look at their most recent essays, click here

Eighty-five miles off the coast of Sweden lies the island of Fårö. With a population of around 500 and an area of under 45 square miles, this is, in the words of a 2016 New York Times profile of the region, “Where Swedes go to be (really) alone.”

The shoreline of Fårö is dotted with rauks, stone stumps that were once grand arches before they were attacked by the elements. The wind and the surf would drive against the arches until cracks formed, and once those cracks were there, it was only a matter of time until one half of the arch could no longer sustain itself and collapsed into the sea. The other half of the arch might manage to stay upright for a while, but without its supporting half, it too would crumble, leaving behind just a rauk.

Fårö has no bank, no post office, no police force. “It can feel dangerous to be alone in the country for long,” Christine Smallwood wrote in that New York Times profile. “Being alone is a sign that something is about to go wrong, perhaps catastrophically so.”

And in 1968, it was here that Ingmar Bergman chose to tell his most horrific tale.

*

Hour of the Wolf is the story of a marriage crumbling in a void. Johan and Alma (Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, the ultimate Bergman power couple) have traveled to their remote island cottage to spend the season, but as we know from an opening title card, Johan will be gone long before the season is through.

Johan is a painter of some renown, but his professional success masks a turbulent inner life. As we’re told by Alma in a prologue delivered straight to the camera, Johan has a history of anxiety and paranoia. He can’t sleep at night—particularly not during “the hour of the wolf,” that predawn hour, as he explains, when nightmares become real—and he’s pestered by strange supernatural figures that he calls “flesh eaters,” drawing them compulsively until they’ve overflowed his sketchbook.

Johan is, in the old-fashioned literary sense of the word, mad. Bergman elides any proper diagnosis in favor of a more poetic depiction, the tormented artist as fairy-tale figure. And as you might expect of a storybook nightmare, it’s not long before Johan’s madness is made flesh. The demons step out of Johan’s sketchbook and present themselves as grotesque aristocrats who wine and dine Alma and Johan at their gothic castle. They menace Alma and flatter Johan, digging their claws into the cracks in this marriage until they’ve torn it apart. By the end of the film, Johan has abandoned Alma and given himself over to these physical manifestations of his madness and all its seductive promises of freedom and relief.

Hour of the Wolf is often cited as Bergman’s one true foray into the horror genre, and the surreal hysteria that awaits Johan in his climactic visit to the castle is absolutely unnerving—a woman removes her face and drops her eyeballs into cocktail glasses; a man walks onto the ceiling while another grows wings. To me, though, the horror stories it calls to mind are the ones where a monster is loose in the house—except here the house is a marriage, and the monster wreaking havoc is Johan’s instability, a festering rot borne of his secrets and regrets. And that kind of psychic monster can’t be kept at bay for long. Soon enough, “the tumult breaks loose.”That line comes from the climax of the published version of Hour of the Wolf included in Bergman’s 1972 book Four Stories; it’s spoken by Alma as she cowers in the forest watching Johan’s demons tear him limb from limb. This denouement is entirely reconceived from page to screen; in the most significant shift, Bergman’s text has the demons badger and taunt Johan as they rip at his flesh, hurling contradictory commands (“Keep standing, don’t be afraid! Lie down and it will be quicker”), taunts (“Can’t you take a joke?”), and nauseating boasts (“He can’t talk because I’ve made mincemeat of his tongue”). In the film, the dismemberment is punctuated only by avant-garde sound effects.

That was the right choice. The demonic chant is pleasantly disturbing, but those impressionistic bursts and shrieks are so much more accurate; when your madness is having its way with you, it’s impossible to convey in words the havoc being wreaked upon your mind.

*

My own tumult broke loose in the spring of 2011. Just before my 25th birthday, I slipped into a manic episode with psychosis. For a week, I cycled from howling rage to howling sorrow, operating on increasingly erratic impulses as my rational self was devoured by a hyperactive id, one powered by incessant emotional neediness and savage retaliative force.

The primary witness to my breakdown was my girlfriend, Cait. We had met in college four years earlier in the kind of old fashioned story you’re not even supposed to hope for in the 21st century—she was the beautiful clerk at the school store; I had a massive crush and visited every day for weeks, buying things I didn’t need just so I could exchange a smile and a pleasantry while I worked up the nerve to introduce myself.

By 2011, Cait was spending most nights at my apartment near Harvard Square, so as my hours of sleep and my interest in food decreased, she was the one watching with mounting anxiety, and as my grip on reality crumbled, she was the one bearing the brunt of my flourishing paranoia. While my friends received alarming phone calls and it was my family who drove me to the hospital when it became clear there was no other option, Cait was the one beside me every morning and evening. She was the one in the eye of the storm, tasked every night with convincing me to stop ranting long enough to eat even one bite, saddled with my belligerent calls and texts throughout her work day. And when it all started falling down around me, it was Cait I punished.

I spent years dragging my way back to something resembling emotional equilibrium, but even by 2015, when Cait and I relocated to Connecticut so she could attend nursing school, my trauma and grief was too raw to touch with anything but the briefest remembrance. And living hours from my friends with a girlfriend who worked multiple overnights a week at the hospital, I turned to movies to give my life shape. I gorged myself, consuming anything I could put in front of my eyes. And so one night, I found myself watching Hour of the Wolf for the first time.

I knew nothing about the film, I was simply seduced by a cover depicting a shadow-drenched face shrieking with what might be maniacal laughter, mortal terror or both. I was no stranger to Bergman’s visions of terror, but as they tended to lie in the theological (the “Silence of God” trilogy) or cerebral realm (Persona and The Passion of Anna, two more Fårö stories of crumbling psyches), I was tantalized by the promise of the master stripped of any enigmatic subtlety. I wanted Bergman with the gloves off.

I forgot to be careful what I wished for. Hour of the Wolf hit me with brutal force, leaving me gasping and reeling as I struggled to process a story that was simultaneously alien and shockingly familiar. In Johan’s struggle to maintain a grip on his sanity in the face of his demons’ temptations, I recognized how easily I’d succumbed to my own worst urges, and the horrors that lay in store once I’d given myself up.Most painful was the scene in which a demon invites himself into the cottage and politely places a handgun on the table between Johan and Alma. The demon claims that he wants Johan to be able to defend himself from the island’s small game, but the metaphoric implication is clear: the forces of madness have offered the tool to conclusively sever any connection to the tedious responsibilities of sanity.

Out of any damage that I did during my psychosis, the memory that still ached the most years later was of the night before I was hospitalized. Supercharged with the raging energy of a collapsing star, I took a gentle plea from Cait—“You don’t seem like yourself and I’m getting scared”—as an excuse to unload a torrent of wrath. When my madness pressed that weapon into my hand, I used it without a second thought. Though my memories of the night remained hazy, what lingered was the feeling that I had wanted to destroy the only woman I’d ever loved. And then, just like Johan, I had surrendered to my madness, and all the freedom it had promised had been revealed as a lie.

Bergman had held up in my face, with stark, monochromatic objectivity, everything that had happened to me, a tangle of trauma I could barely organize enough to begin processing. For years afterwards, I would remember Hour of the Wolf as my own personal cracked mirror. But it would be years before I could really begin examining the same question that Johan asks when his demons show him his shattered visage: “What do the shards reflect?”

*

Alma’s greatest desire is to merge her life completely with Johan’s. On one of the long nights that she stays awake to keep her husband company, she muses, “I hope we become so old that we share each other’s thoughts.” This is no typical intimate union she wishes for; she yearns to become indistinguishable from her husband, even physically.

It isn’t her choice to sit up all night. “You have to stay awake awhile,” Johan has barked moments earlier. “Talk to me, Alma.” But he hides his face as she speaks, either unwilling or unable to engage. On first viewing, I felt Johan’s pain. But when I returned to the film two years later, I was startled to see the callousness in the gesture, a husband piling onto his wife the full weight of the night’s emotional labor.

Cait and I had been married nearly two years when curiosity, possibly half-masochistic, brought me back to Hour of the Wolf. I put it on late one night while Cait and our new baby slept upstairs, and though I was wary, I told myself that I’d already absorbed the visceral impact. Now I could view the film from an academic perspective, appreciate the craft.

Once again, I underestimated Bergman’s power; a film that had once been a blunt weight had sharpened into a razor. Perhaps it was the six years of therapy that had elapsed between my breakdown and this second viewing, but where I had once been so focused on Johan’s pain, I was now shocked to recognize the abuses with which he pummeled Alma, and her pain in every scene.

Johan takes up so much air in the film—and often so much of the frame, as in the aforementioned scene where von Sydow hunches in the foreground, filling half the frame with his face, while Ullmann sits in the background cloaked in shadow—that it’s easy to see Alma as merely a supporting player in his story. But when I made the effort to see the film through Alma’s perspective, it was as though the entire plot was inverted, causing moments that hadn’t even lodged in my memory to now stand out as the most crucial. I was devastated by the scene in which Alma sits Johan down with her ledger, forcing him to listen to her studious accounting of their household purchases—if she can’t find a way to see the world through his tormented perspective, then she can at least invite him into hers. And I cringed with agony and regret at the scene’s end, when Alma weeps in the face of Johan’s indifference to her gesture.

Bergman shoots this and so many other scenes of the couple’s strained domesticity in long, still takes with no cathartic cuts to guide your emotional response, leaving you stranded in each agonizing episode of a love succumbing to entropy. But despite the staid visuals, the film shifted beneath me to reflect something I’d never fully reckoned with: yes, I had been through hell during my psychosis. But I had put Cait through hell with me, driving the vehicle towards disaster with her as the helpless passenger.At the close of the film, Alma agonizes over all her unanswerable questions. Could Johan’s destruction have been prevented if she hadn’t loved him so much? Or if she had loved him more? I had glossed over the scene before, too focused on all the trials Johan had just endured, but now I ached for Alma—why couldn’t she see herself for the blameless victim she so clearly was?

As the screen faded to black, I thought of my week on the psych ward. I’d spent every day terrified to step into the phone booth and call Cait, unable to trust my tenuous stability enough to believe I wouldn’t lose my grip and do even more damage. When I was discharged, though, I opened my inbox to find it full of letters from her; she’d written to me every night that I was gone, even as she knew I had no access to email. She told me how much it hurt to know I was scared, and promised she’d be beside me for every step of my road to recovery. She wrote about the puppy her friends had brought over to distract her, and the therapist she had visited to make sure she was properly equipped to support me when I got home.

Reading the letters was a comfort, but it was a heartbreak, too. I had used the weapon my demons pressed into my hand, and Cait hadn’t run. How could I ever be worthy of her support again?

*

This is not the essay that I expected to write about Hour of the Wolf. I hadn’t seen the film in a year when I started organizing my thoughts, believing (in what I now should have recognized as a cycle of hubris) I finally had the film straight. I had my perspective locked down.

I expected to focus quite a bit on one scene that loomed large in my mind. In the second of Alma and Johan’s late-night vigils—which is, unbeknownst to them, the last night they’ll spend together—Alma murmurs, “It’s strange when the sea is completely calm. Scary somehow.” Seven years after my diagnosis, I still viewed my marriage as this calm sea—something that should be beautiful, but would always be defined the memory of a squall, and the question of when another might come.

When I sat down for another viewing of Hour of the Wolf, I felt secure in my understanding that this was the story of a marriage between an unstable abuser and his helpless victim. At last I could approach the film academically. But it shifted under me again, and this time that shift may have changed my life.

I waited to feel pity for Alma’s victimization, but scene by scene, something became clear: I had sold her short. Now, a bevy of holes sprang in my understanding not just of this story, but of my own. I had always wondered why in the world Alma stayed with Johan, willingly absorbing his onslaught. But as I mulled the film, I came to recognize I had robbed Alma of her agency, that in positioning her as Johan’s victim, I still viewed her through the lens of his experiences rather than seeing it as a shared narrative. And, I was ashamed to realize, I had spent years doing the exact same to my own wife.

Now, one scene that had always struck me as opaque finally became clear. As Alma and Johan walk home along the cliffs, shaken by their dinner at the castle, Alma’s pent up fear and confusion erupts. She whirls on Johan and lets him know that no matter what disaster they’re cruising towards, she isn’t going anywhere. She grabs hold of him, but her tone is defiant rather than pleading, and when she’s overcome and whirls away, she shirks his touch.

In Four Stories, Alma’s outburst is rendered from Johan’s incredulous perspective. “He realizes in a flash,” Bergman writes, “that her grief applies only to herself.” Alma is asserting her own needs, not merely pledging her devotion to him. She’s terrified of whatever might be happening to him, but just as much, she’s terrified over what might happen to her in the process. Their lives are too conjoined for his pain not to be hers as well, not just sympathetically but literally.This all may seem self-evident from an objective standpoint, but other people’s needs are a strange concept to grapple with when you see yourself as the protagonist of your nervous breakdown and interpret everyone else’s behavior through the distorting lens of your own perspective. When I managed to understand this scene—with a bit of guidance from Bergman’s prose—a tumbler fell into place in my own mind: by continually flagellating myself for what I’d done to Cait, I was casting our story as a one-way transaction rather than an interaction between two autonomous people.

I now saw that Cait’s letters during my time on the psych ward were as much for her as they were for me. As she noted in the first one, since the beginning of our relationship, we’d spoken every day, no matter whether we were in the same space or separated by half a world; now we were separated by only a few miles, but I’d been plucked out of her life entirely. I had always valued the letters as proof of our love, but until this most recent viewing of Hour of the Wolf, I had never really understood what it was they proved. Even if she knew I couldn’t hear it, Cait couldn’t go to bed without speaking to me. When she pledged to be there beside me as I worked towards recovery, the pledge wasn’t that she would hold me up, but that after all these years of falling deeper and deeper in love, we now leaned on one another so much that when one of us collapsed, the other couldn’t help but falter, too.

This lightning bolt shattered the essay I meant to write. But it may have just freed my marriage from almost a decade of my self-sabotaging self-pity, too.

*

Only after this last viewing did I take the time to untangle one of the stranger scenes in this strangest of films: during their visit to the castle, the demons treat Alma and Johan to a puppet production of The Magic Flute. In the scene performed for Alma and Johan, the hero, Prince Tamino, pauses during his quest to rescue his beloved, the fair maiden Pamina, from captivity. Alone and on the verge of despair, he asks two questions: Will this night ever end? And is Pamina still alive?

In his 1987 autobiography, The Magic Lantern, Bergman writes at length about his enduring fascination with this passage in Mozart’s opera. “These 12 bars,” he writes, “involve two questions at life’s outer limits.” In asking whether the night will ever end, Bergman saw Mozart as wrestling with his own existential terror as he began succumbing to his fatal illness. And in asking whether Pamina survives, Bergman argues, Tamino is really asking after the very concept of love. Bergman believes the question to be, “Is love real?” and the answer to be, “Love exists. Love is real in the world of human beings.”

There was debate following the release of Hour of the Wolf as to whether it’s Alma who stands in for Pamina in Bergman’s calculus, or whether Johan’s lost love Veronica fulfills the role, always taking for granted that Johan represented the conquering hero. Personally, I was shocked to realize anyone would see Alma as the damsel and Johan the savior. Perhaps the notion would have tracked on my first viewing, but by now it could not be clearer to me that if anyone in Hour of the Wolf is battling staggering odds to rescue their beloved, it’s Alma, and that it’s Alma who has the right to wonder whether love is strong enough to slay the forces of darkness. Johan is preoccupied with many things—primarily a lifetime of simmering guilt, regret, and shame—but the power of love does not often seem to be one of them.

After Tamino’s questions are answered, the demons are momentarily struck dumb, shaken by the affirmation. But they can’t be conquered forever. No matter how strong love is, the pain must come eventually. And it’s just a matter of perspective whether that impermanence is enough to turn a romance into a tragedy.

*

“I have this theory,” I told Cait recently, “that every love story is really a horror story.” The thought had been percolating as I mulled all these new revelations spurred by Hour of the Wolf. Nearly every story of a lifelong love, I explained, ends with one lover burying the other and being forced to endure in a world they’ve forgotten how to navigate alone. “I think the happiest ending to any love story,” I concluded, “is the old couple in Titanic lying in bed together while the ship sinks. They had a long life together and they never have to live without each other.”

I was so absorbed in my theory that it took me a moment to notice her appalled expression. “Personally,” she replied with enviable serenity, “I would rather live a few years without you and go peacefully than drown.”

It was hard to argue with that. Cait’s and my perspectives are frequently diametrically opposed; I spend my days submerged in Swedish psychodramas from half a century ago while she spends hers at a hospital helping bring new life into the world. And when we see each other at the end of the day and I tell her the fantasies I’ve cooked up in the course of my work, more than once she’s gasped, “This is what’s in your head?”

And the more I think about it, the more it seems like that might be how we survived our tumult. Neither of us has ever wished for the other’s worldview. And while any marriage is necessarily an arch formed by two people leaning on each other for mutual support, neither of us has ever so fully surrendered to the idea of us as a single unit that we couldn’t endure without the other. Because we’ve maintained that measure of distinction between us, avoiding the temptation to surrender our individuation the way Alma dreams of, then if some new tumult were to break loose and the worst befell one of us, the other might be able to stay standing and avoid becoming a rauk, an incomplete husk living on only as memorials to the past.

Though one can’t be sure, it seems unlikely that Alma will escape that fate. By the end of Hour of the Wolf, she’s so thoroughly cleft that even her sentences are severed. Trying to make sense of the trials she’s experienced, she remarks, “Sometimes, you get completely…”

But she loses the thread. She turns away, and then just before that final fade to black, she turns back to the camera, aching for an end to her agony, one it seems may well never come.

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