"Come on, we met yesterday! Surely this can't be peak Jake in your life."

"We'll find out.  ...But maybe tomorrow, if that's alright.  I—really like hanging out with you.  A lot.  But I'm getting kind of tired."

"—oh, sure." Is that the health issue. "Are you okay?"

"I expect to be in fine spirits tomorrow.  It just would be really nice to lie down alone for a while."

"Understood." Up he gets, ow, his knees hurt, he's been on the floor far too long.

"Hug?"

"...you're so cute," he says. Of course hug.

"Wow."  Jeremy rises and receives the hug.

And then, yeah, "I'll walk you out again?"

"My handsome gentleman, of course I would love nothing more."

"Wow."

So Matthew takes him by the arm and out of the yard again.  Inside the house he's a little pushier, or maybe he's just worse at balancing in the somewhat-narrow passageways.  He doesn't offer Jake a brownie for the road, even though it's by this point pretty late and he has no reason to think Jake's had dinner; he just escorts him straight to the sidewalk.

Concern! Much concern! It doesn't seem like Matthew wants his concern but he has it! 

He stops before the threshold, turns around, and says, "Tomorrow at the same time, then?"

"Yeah!  I look forward to it."

He—is clearly trying to look plausibly deniable about it but is also clearly, by the slight lean forward and the turn of his head, asking for another cheek kiss.

Adorable. He can get it, then, though this time Jake lingers the kiss for a moment.

"Wow.  Thank you."  —He spins Jake around to hug him around the shoulders from behind, and kisses the top of his head.  "I'm going to disappear.  Get home safe."  And he releases him to give a playful little shove out onto the sidewalk.

When Jake turns around, there is indeed no sign of Matthew.  Also he's super hungry.  It's almost as if he didn't even have the brownie.

Maybe it was a sugar-free brownie of some kind and that's why it tasted different.

Who cares. Matthew is adorable and Jake is going to have his way with him in no time.

Oh god.  Oh god, Jesus Christ what is he doing.  What the fuck is he doing—he fails to stop himself from carrying on in this vein for quite a while, which is fine because it's not like he has anything else to do for the next 20-some hours.

Eventually he calms down somewhat.  It makes sense that after being alone for so long, he would find interaction so—intoxicating—especially when that interaction is with a hot guy who seems into him.  (He was waiting for someone who seemed seduceable, not—)  It's really clear to him that this reaction is not the sort of thing he can fix by just intending to; he knows he in some sense has what he thinks is an impressive reserve of willpower, but he also knows himself well enough to immediately be able to tell that he's not going to be able to draw on it while talking to Jake.  (...Well, no points for introspection there; he just spent quite a long time trying to exercise willpower around Jake and completely failing.)

So this is clearly the sort of thing where he has to change something about the situation ahead of time, if he expects this to go differently, except: how can he possibly do that.

He spends a few hours flying around the property, trying to think of ways.  They could talk outside, instead of in his room?  That won't help; it'll just make Jake cold.  They could...

The thing is that even with Jake away, Jeremy doesn't actually want to act very differently.  He got hugged.  And also kissed.  (...Kissed in kind of a chiastic structure, even?  Resurrection kiss from him, cheek kiss from Jake, big kiss, cheek kiss from Jake, another kiss from him to hide him disappearing.  And huh, the first one was introducing magic and allowing Jake to see him, while the last—Jesus Christ he's a fucking nerd; he's got to keep that on the down low when Jake's around or... well, Jake actually seemed to like that.  Whatever, it doesn't matter, he can't really control what he does around Jake anyway so what's the point of worrying about it.  And he plans to break the structure tomorrow, anyway.)

He pace-floats, and frets, and thinks about the kiss and everything around it, how Jake backed off and gave him space when he seemed skittish, and his smile, and it's all just so—

Nice.  It feels really nice to think about, but he knows where that feeling leads and how frustrated it'll make him feel if he lets it grow.  To say nothing of how ill-suited it is to the reality of the situation.

So he goes and lies in the crick, letting the water and the fish pass through him until he feels like he's not there at all.  It takes a while; he keeps remembering the last time he was here and having feelings about that, but—then he's not there at all, and neither is his sense of time, and he can skip most of the day like that.

So. A health condition, huh?

...Jake really has no fucking clue. It's probably not an STD, if Matthew gets—weak and tired like that. Cancer? Does he have cancer? Is it terminal, is he trying to be like oh we can't date because I'm going to die so I don't want to lead you on but you're so hot and into me and it's so hard to resist~

He knows he's hard to resist, of course, so that'd be a convenient story, but also, he doesn't want to date Matthew so it's a nonissue. But Matthew probably doesn't know that, he seems really old-fashioned in a lot of ways and might be catching feelings.

This is... really something Jake should not be encouraging. He's gonna need to figure out a way to explain to Matthew that he is a slut and not looking to particularly settle down, no matter how adorable Matthew is.

Also there's definitely something up with all of that, like, no phones? At all? And no computer? What kind of—there's a word in English for that, what was it—what kind of Luddites are they? And did they threaten Matthew or something, or does he agree with them that tech is bad? Wait, are they, like, not allowed to treat some disease that is straightforwardly curable if only you were allowed to fucking use medical technology or something?

Argh. He is really, really bad at mysteries. And he shouldn't be wasting his time on this, anyway, Matthew said he was gonna say what it was later today, so he can just wait.

On the ?bright? side, in the afternoon they manage to somewhat recover the video that was being recorded by his phone when he fell from the tree house, so he can go watch that and see what the fuck happened that night.

The video is remarkably unilluminating.  Frustratingly so; the thing that shoved him was on that side, and it really looks like there should be a clear view of whatever it was.  But there's just... nothing there.  It's not even like the screen was damaged at that point, either; it's very obvious when that happens.  (It's when it hits a rock in the bottom of the creek!)

...???????

What.

No, he's, he's certain there was something—well, not certain certain, his memories are kinda fuzzy—at least the stuff he does remember is in the video, but—what??

Yeah, he can see the trees and the house in the background fine, if blurrily from the motion.  It really doesn't look like there's anything there.  Maybe it got him from a really specific angle?  Which isn't the one he remembers feeling?

That's.

Confusing. And frustrating. And... a bit scary.

.........................ghosts aren't real. Get over it, Kang Jaeha. You're spooking yourself for no reason.

Did the ghost of Jeremy try to kill him and Matthew saved him ghosts aren't real. What happened to your atheism, come on, man.

Maybe the mystery will be solved tonight. After six o'clock, when he goes to visit Matthew. Which he is going to do, even though the day seems to start to drag onnnnnnnnnnnnnnn after he watches the video.

(The ghost idea wasn't even his, it was one of the other kids he showed the video to. It's stupid, is what it is.)

(At least now everyone believes him about visiting the haunted house. Someone jokingly suggests that actually Matthew is the ghost of Jeremy and Jake is being manipulated, which is one of the dumbest things Jake has ever heard in his life.)

Anyway! Time to go see a cute boy who is not a ghost because ghosts aren't real!

"Hello!!"