✂ Warnings: mentions of death, mentions of blood a lil angsty angst (i don't go into a lot of detail of death and blood and such but pls read with caution regardless angels)
✂ Word count: 1.9k
✂ Summary: Ghost-like abilities come at a price so high even well-off musicians like Jungkook struggle to pay.
✂ a/n: ahh hi hii lovies i've had this idea for months now but only jUST acted on it. pls note that this is highly unedited aHA :)) also wishing everyone a fabulous christmas and a happy new year !! and pls give feedback,, we like feedback in this household.
“Kook-ah? Are you- oh my gosh. Can you hear me?” Jin just barely conceals his urge to throw up. If he had thought blood scared him, then seeing someone he considered a brother covered in it absolutely terrified him.
He felt dizzy. He’d just arrived at the hospital for entirely different reasons and was only just notified that the maknae-est of all his maknaes was in critical condition.
Literal minutes ago he’d been wiping tears of joy and was getting ready to call his brothers when the phone in his hand started ringing. Funnily enough it was Taehyung. A sobbing Taehyung.
“No. No no no no a thousand times no. Jungkook do not play with us right now.” Hobi, much like Jin, could not handle the sight of blood. So although Jungkook's blacked out a couple of times and his eyes hurt (everything hurts) he knows it's not his imagination when he sees the stutter in Hobi's hands. He knows it's tears hitting his skin even after he'd had blood splatter on him not too long ago. He knows this because he knows Hobi.
Yoongi was outside screaming himself hoarse for letting Jungkook leave the house in the goddamn witching hours. Namjoon was talking to a doctor about Jungkook’s condition nearby, trying his best to look calm all while his voice shook and quivered and faltered. Taehyung had been in a corner of the room sobbing since the six of them had rushed to the hospital after an urgent call from a passerby who’d witnessed Jungkook fly off his motorcycle upon collision with a lorry.
Jimin was trying with much fail to hold his tears at bay as he brushed Jungkook’s blood covered hair out of his eyes. Cursing himself when he choked on a sob in the middle of telling his maknae that everything would be ok, that he would be ok. Because Jimin took his job as Jungkook’s emergency contact very seriously whether or not someone had said it as a joke.
“I’m sorry Mr. Kim, but there’s nothing we can do for him right now.” The doctor smiled sympathetically, rubbing the bridge of his nose tiredly. “His rib broke on impact of the collision and punctured his lung which collapsed soon after as well as the fact that he’s lost too much blood.”
“There’s got to be something you can do. Please, please just try I can’t- he can’t die please.” Namjoon begs. He’s ready to go down on his knees right here right now because Jungkook dying isn’t something he’s ever thought about but it’s about to be something he won't ever unthink. He hasn't even begun to think of what he's supposed to tell army.
“I’m truly sorry. Jeon Jungkook, time of death is 4:52 a.m.”
If Yoongi was asked to pick a moment in life that he regrets most he’s not sure if it would be when he let Jungkook leave the house about two hours ago or his decision to walk back into the hospital room just to hear the doctor announce Jungkook’s time of death.
His legs crumple beneath him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“No because how- what even?” If Jungkook is surprised, he lets it show. Minutes ago he was struggling for breath covered in his own blood and now he’s standing in a pristine white room in a line of people with glowing skin. He looks down at his arms to see he too is glowing a bright white colour.
“It’s your turn, go on.” A voice behind him whispers giving him a slight push to walk up to the stage.
“Jeon Jungkook, age twenty four, died at 4:52a.m today…” The voice drones on about other facts Jungkook already knows but his mind is elsewhere. Died? He’s dead? Is that why he’s glowing? Is that why everyone here is glowing? Because they’re dead?
“Jungkook, you have been judged to have been righteous. You may opt to go back down to earth as an imaginary friend or you can continue on to the afterlife.” The voice booms.
Quite honestly Jungkook is in shock. The voice had him at “died”.
After a beat's silence the voice decides to continue, this time offering more clarity about the situation.
“Jeon Jungkook, I understand this might still be shocking to you, but you died a couple of minutes ago. Once someone dies, they are judged and if they are deemed to have been a bad person, they are thrown down to burn. If they are deemed a good person they are given the option to move on to the afterlife or if they miss earth, they may go back down as an imaginary friend to a newborn child whom they will guide for as long as the child believes in their existence. Once the child no longer believes there is such a thing as imaginary friends, the person is teleported automatically to the afterlife. Any questions?”
“So as an imaginary friend I’d be a ghost?” Jungkook was not ready to leave the earth behind yet. Even if it meant only observing people live the life he wanted to live he’d be content. He just wanted to see his brothers again.
“Something like that, it’s not easy to explain, it’s more of a kinesthetic learning thing.”
Somehow, Jungkook felt tranquil. His eyes fluttered shut, opening when he felt himself land after what felt like he was flying. He was standing outside a door. The smell of disinfectant alerted him to the fact that he was in a hospital. He could’ve sworn something about the hallways was familiar but he couldn’t place what.
Jungkook apparently has goldfish memory because not even five minutes ago he’d been told he was somewhat a ghost now but he still moves to knock on the door in front of him. His hand, much to his shock, phases right through the door and he stumbles right into the room.
He’s met with a young woman holding a screaming little bundle. The woman was facing down and her shoulders shook slightly. Jungkook only just noticed she was crying.
Almost unconsciously he strides over to the bed. His hands ghost the baby’s cheeks and the mother looks up. He tenses up, apologies already at the tip of his tongue. He knows she can’t see him but it feels like she’s looking right into his soul.
Jungkook’s memories hit him like a freight train. The woman before him is Jin’s girlfriend, Chungae. The hallways of the hospital seemed familiar to him because he’d gotten glimpses of them as he was being wheeled into the ICU.
His whirring mind screeches to a halt. If that’s Chungae, then the little girl must be Jin’s daughter.
~~~~~~~~
They named her Ki. It's something Jungkook thinks about daily. Something he's cried and laughed about in equal measure.
Six years down the line, Jungkook had learned that he looked like a child to Ki. She saw him as a six year old Jungkook. She’d seen him as his twenty four year old self on the day of her birth. He’d managed to get her to sleep just as a bleary eyed Jin had stumbled into the room looking every bit exhausted. From then on, he’d aged with her.
They had named her Ki. Jungkook smiles a sad soft smile. Silently, he promises to look after her as well as he can. He will know all her problems and solve them. He swears it.
He’s pulled from his thoughts when he hears Ki babbling on about something to Jin. His now small feet are soundless as they hit the tiles of Jin’s house, trying to hear what the little one was on about this time.
“You should meet him appa!” Ki was grinning and waving her hands about her.
“Sure princess. Tell me more about this imaginary friend of yours.” Jin smiles an amused smile watching as his daughter’s features fold in frustration.
“He’s not imaginary appa, don’t say that or you’ll make him sad. He’s real. His name is Jungkook and he’s right here you know.”
Jin swears he hasn’t felt this nauseous in six years. Jungkook can only watch on as his eyes welled up in tears and his lip wobbled.
If Jin thought hearing the doctor announce Kook’s time of death was painful, he didn’t know how to describe this feeling now.
Jin swears his heart was being wrung. His vision blurred and his stomach dropped. He groped the floor around where he was seated trying to feel for his phone. The boys had always been his support system and right now he felt as though he might collapse.
“Kook, what’s wrong with appa?” Ki’s eyes are wide as she regards her father, turning to shoot a questioning glance at Jungkook.
Jungkook kows he doesn't have a physical body anymore, but he swears he can feel his heart race and the tears prickling at his eyes. He moves to go and comfort Jin but falters in his step when his hand goes through his hyung’s shoulder.
Ah yes. The ghost-like abilities, or "something like that”. The price he had to pay to see his friends again was high.
This is the first time Ki sees him cry.
~~~~~
Ki has a wild imagination, she knows this. She knew this when she was six and she completely and utterly shocked her father at the mention of her imaginary friend. She knew this at nine when she was caricatured for having an imaginary friend. And she knows this now as a twenty four year old who still can’t seem to put the idea of her imaginary friend to rest.
Of all her uncles, Taehyung seemed to understand this the best. Not to say the others didn’t understand this, he just seemed to almost see Jungkook too. He accepted Jugkook’s presence like he could see him too. He left the right amount of space for Jungkook to sit whenever he was over at Jin's.
However, if Ki thought the nine year olds that taunted her were mean, she had another thing coming. She has had to stuff Jungkook in the back of her mind for fear of all the names she'd been called before resurfacing.
Against any resistance put up by Jungkook or her own mind, Ki is trying. Trying to force herself to accept that he isn’t in fact real and is purely a figment of her imagination. Telling herself that she should grow up.
Jungkook remembers the voice telling him that so long as his assigned child believed in his existence he would remain on earth as their imaginary friend. Ki never wants to speak with him anymore, but he knows she still believes in him, seeing as he hasn’t been teleported to the afterlife.
Jungkook knows all your problems, so he knows the real reason for your car crash. He knew stress had been getting to you, that you had barely slept and you were drowsy but you needed to see your father at the hospital. He watches helplessly as you bleed out in the car panting and gasping for breath, giving him flashbacks to his own labored breathing twenty four years go.
As someone who had spent fourteen of the last twenty four years fighting not to be chased to the back of your mind he has had enough time to understand a couple of things. The first being he cannot save people.
He cannot save Ki. Yes, he knows all her problems, but the most he can do is try talking to her, praying she’ll listen. He realized very early on that he’d have to break his promise to himself. He could not solve all your problems. At times he feels he is the root of them honestly.
And so he watches, seated by the wreckage of your car as the nearby buildings are washed in blues and reds from the ambulance’s siren. He watches as she fights to keep her head up. Watches as she tries to steady her fingers so she can dial her father, groaning when it goes straight to voicemail and she remembers Jin telling her he would be at the hospital getting the constant migraine he’d been having checked out.
He watches on as she spits out blood, struggling more and more to breathe. The first responders’ boots smack the tarmac as they run closer, his own footsteps silent as he makes his way towards the car you had been driving.
Jungkook still watches on, chest clenching as he begins to think Ki has truly forgotten him.
“Kook-ah? Are you- oh my gosh.” A wheeze. “Can you hear me?”
