"Jeremy I swear to fucking God. —actually, hey, you know what? I'm buying this fucking house." Phone, he's gonna go ahead and call Park Jipyeong while he starts stalking around the house to see if he can find this stupid ghost boy.

The stupid ghost boy is not in evidence.

How about the creek? Also it's fucking cold. Okay, Park Jipyeong picked up, he's getting the house asap and then he's also having him bring a space heater and a generator and some clothes to the house. Yes, right now. Oh also a portable shower. Cool, cool, thank you, goodbye.

"JEREMY!"

There's kind of a sense, which Jake's not used to, which is that... there's something.  Underground.  And over there.

It stays in relatively steady position, even as Jake traipses around the property.  He can triangulate it to under the treehouse, maybe 30 feet down.

Fucking figures.

"Jeremy, I know you're here and if I have to dig this tree out to find you so help me God I will. Face me like a man!" He stuffs his hands under his armpits to protect them from the chill.

The top of a head down to just below the eyes appears in the grass near Jake's feet, angled to look up.

"Seriously? Get up, come on, what are you, twelve?"

He floats up a fair bit more, legs already bent to kneeling position as soon as they clear the ground.

"...what are you doing."

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"Why are you kneeling."

"........It seemed appropriate."  But he rises to his usual height and straightens his legs.

Oh right he's tall. 

Jake punches him in the face. Not hard enough to actually knock him over, probably, but it's not a nice friendly punch. And Jake has training, he knows how to throw a punch.

—Jeremy is flung through the air satisfyingly but kind of startlingly far.  He catches his toes in the grass some fifteen feet away and staggers to a landing.  It looks like he might go to his knees again but he manages to stay upright, in stature if not in gaze.

...right, ghost. Whoops.

But also, ghost, he'll be fine. 

"Been wanting to do this all fucking day long," he grumbles while he crosses the distance between them, shaking his hand because of the sting. "You're incredibly stupid," he says, then he hugs Jeremy.

"Yes."

"Wh—" he stiffens up substantially under the hug.

"You're an idiot, and I've also been wanting to do this all fucking day long."

"Okay."  He relaxes into it, some.

"But let's keep doing this inside, it's fucking cold." He pulls away and starts leading the way, without waiting to see if Jeremy will follow. He will if he knows what's good for him. "I'm getting a heater here but it'll take like half an hour to arrive. Oh and by the way I'm buying this house."

"That all seems fine."  It sounds like he's keeping a pretty close following distance.

Does it now. 

"And you were planning to take over my life to reveal ghosts to the world, seriously? You're falling apart with guilt over not even twelve hours of possessing me, you really think you'd have lasted?"

"I think—it's easy to imagine all sorts of things, when you have nothing to check them against."

He's walking briskly; he wants to get to the bedroom quickly and get under the bedcovers.

"Then you're really goddamn lucky I'm the one you decided to screw over, aren't you?"

"Ye-es?"

Here they are bedroom bedcovers brr.

...also he's leaving his shoes by the door of the bedroom because he's really fed up right now and he doesn't want to pretend to be American anymore. Walking around the house with shoes on. Horrible.

"I'm going to teach you how to use a computer and then you're going to figure out the spell you lied to me about which would have been so much more useful than the bullshit you pulled today. And your spell had better include a way for you to leave this house, I've only been around four days and I'm already dying of boredom here. And it had better also give you taste buds, I can't believe you decided to waste your first proper taste in thirty years on a Snickers bar."

This near-instantly grungifies his socks, and the sheets whip up a dust cloud that makes Jeremy blink.

"Okay.  I'll try.  ...There are already untethering spells."

Okay change of plans he will first try to shake all of the dust off, covering his mouth and nose with the crook of his elbow to try to prevent coughing.

"If you open the window I can probably manage a breeze."

Excellent! He'll do that.

Then there can be a gust of wind in here.  At first it just swirls the dust up more, but after a moment there does seem to be less in the room.  (Though substantially more on Jeremy's desk.)  It's not very warm, but it is warm rather than cool. 

Jeremy's panting, when he lets the air go still.

Cool so Jake can close the window then and get under the covers. And keep them lifted and pat the bed next to him, looking at Jeremy expectantly.

Here's a Jeremy.  He looks kinda—dizzy, or something, now that he's at less of an angle to hide his face.

"You okay?" asks Jake, snuggling up.

The covers fall through Jeremy.  "...Yeah, I—yes.  I'm much more able to affect the physical world than most ghosts but within that I'm much worse at ghost things than I am at things a human body can do."

Jake frowns at the cover going through Jeremy. "You're behaving very badly," he tells the cover. "There's a boy here and you should cover him so I can snuggle." He tries again.

Jeremy stiffens at the initial comment but—at least stops doing that, if not relaxes, when it's clear what Jake's addressing.

It feels really weird to attempt to move the cover, given that both it and Jeremy are tangible to Jake but not to each other.  But once he puzzles it out it's not actually very difficult.

".....I—"  The blanket falls though Jeremy again.  "I don't think me trying to hold that up right now would have consequences you prefer."

"No, you shouldn't, it's the cover that's working badly." What if he koalas Jeremy, then the cover will be mostly over him. Come onnnnnn.

Then it drops half through Jeremy, but at least he's technically covered by Jake, and where there's not blanket there can be touching Jake directly.

"This is stupid. You can interact with my clothes, the cover should count. This is making it less cute." What if he stretches the cover so that it's taut over them?

Then it will only intersect what an approximately-flat plane would intersect!

"I need to learn magic to fix this but I'll declare it good enough," he says, adjusting their position so that he's mostly on top of Jeremy.

Now that works, because Jeremy's body holds up Jake fine and Jake holds up the blanket fine.  Jeremy makes a small noise about this but doesn't otherwise object.  "Okay."

Good, good, he can relax, then. "Will I get any words out of you other than quiet acquiescence anytime soon?"

".....There are truth spells," he notes.

"...okay?"

"Given that I... deceived you, and then appeared to come clean while extensively deceiving you again..."  He shifts a little, under Jake.  "You might want to be sure that there's nothing else."

"Oh. Sure, I guess, maybe sometime. Right now I just want to hug you and see if that helps the thing where you think everything will be terrible forever and you're the most wretched of sinners."

"I think it can help me with seeming like that.  If that's what you want.  ........In the spirit of being robust to truth spells I don't think it will make me.  Feel.  Better."

"Well you should definitely feel at least a little bit bad. What the fuck were you thinking anyway."

"Um, that, it wasn't very likely that you would immediately want to use the spell... but that a sure thing that I would hurt you and wreck our—connection—was worth the one-in-a-thousand, or one-in-ten-thousand, that... you would.  ..........It's kind of like that Kite's Attending bit I recited."

"...a one-in-ten-thousand chance that I would use a spell you would not need to inform me the purpose of beyond saying that it was awful, including the chance that I'd be able to even find said spell without having the faintest idea that spells were findable...?"

"...No," he says in a small voice.  "You'd have had to write out the copies and destroy them.  You'd still need the prerequisite spell for the stones, but I'm not actually confident I have the bad one memorized to perfect character accuracy.  I'd have needed to check against the book, somehow.  And you might have noticed."

"No, just go, 'hey Jake there's this spell I need to destroy, it's really bad, I can't tell you how bad, I need to possess you for a couple of hours, can I do that?'"

"But what if you said no?  And it cost the world a few continents because it took me that long to find a second person to kill?  And what if I couldn't convince him?"

"If you'd waited like at most a week it'd have been really obvious I wouldn't say no. Hell, I think if you'd waited a day I'd have suggested you possessing me so we could start working on your orgasm thing, it was like at the tip of my tongue I think. I guess I didn't know it was possible for sure but I thought it probably was?"

"Well.  We already knew I was a stupid and evil person, is that what you want me to say?"

"...no. You just did something you thought had a real chance of destroying the first human relationship you had in thirty years for the sake of uncountable strangers because it was that important, how could you be evil?"

"You could have been hurt a lot more by the possession than you, uh.  Seem to have been."

"I mean don't get me wrong I'm really mad at you and I was terrified at first and it felt horrible. But. Still would've been worth it, probably. Still does not make you evil."

"Quiet acquiescence."  He sighs.  "Did you punch me to punch me or so that I would be punched?"

"I punched you because I was mad and it was going to keep bothering me how mad I was until I did something about it and now that I did something about it I can tell my being mad that I already punched you about it."

Nod.  "......Your being mad should know that it's really noticeable how much less I can feel things right now.  And that if it really wants me to, to feel one, then it should try again when I'm more adjusted.  Or just build it up over multiple."

"Well it hurt my knuckles and I don't want to repeat the experience if it's not necessary. ...why can you lie on the bed but not have the cover stay over you. This is really stupid."

"I'm not holding up the bed."

"That's not how being solid works! Why is gravity special, why would 'holding up' be a special thing for magic, it's just, like, forces between objects. Actually it's literally just, like, electrostatic repulsion, isn't it?"

"....My physics education was thirty years ago."

"Well. It is. There's no difference between you holding something up and something holding you up and this bed cover should start behaving in a way that makes sense instead of a way that doesn't." Sigh.

"What is going to make you feel better?"

"If I felt like I could pay you back, somehow.  Like, Lord Ghenera killed his brother, and he says it's his sacrifice too, but—it isn't, really—but for me it could be—"

"...that all? Fine, then, you're gonna be my pet ghost until you decide that you've done enough for me to pay me back, how about that."

"...Yes, sir."

"Okay that does actually sound kinda hot to be on the other end of, too."

"Oh good."

"Is it, really?"

"Certainly if I want to be able to pay you back."  He bonks his forehead up into Jake's shoulder.  "...What, uh, does being your pet ghost entail—"

"I'll tell you to do things and you'll do them."

"Oh.  That's... simple."

"What'd you expect instead? I'm not gonna ask you to live in a dog house."

"That's good, because I can't live anywhere."

He rolls his eyes. "Is that what we're doing? Not gonna ask you to die in a dog house either."

"I also cannot die."

"Exist! Find me a good verb, your language doesn't have 있다."

"Maybe we'll have to loanword it."

"Alright, you don't have to 있다 in a dog house."

"Yes sir.  ...How much are you planning to tell the person who does things for you about me?"

"I wasn't, particularly. Park Jipyeong-shi is not paid to be an advisor just a PA."

"It seems like we should tell someone.  Something could still happen to you even though it's no longer going to be me."

"You're really trying to get rid of me, huh?" he says. His tone is teasing but they're snuggling close enough that Jeremy will probably notice the way he kinda froze for a second before forcing himself to relax.

"...Not... anymore?"

"Reassuring!" There's a buzzing from his pocket and Jake reaches down to grab his phone from it and look at it. "Oh good the stuff I ordered's arrived, I should go grab it. ...hey, by the way, do you need to do the spell every time you want to possess me or can you just do that now."

"....It's every time."

"Wow that's annoying. Is there some other spell that makes this just be a thing you can do whenever. Ideally one where we can actually communicate without me having to choose random body parts and try to talk via guessing games?" Also he should hyup, even though it's cold. Hyups.

Jeremy falls through the bed.  Pops up a moment later through the floorboards next to Jake.  "Uh—uh, maybe."

—that makes him stop walking and stare. "Okay, what, why did you fall through the bed, you were lying on it fine just now!!!!"

"Well I was very surprised."

"Do you have to exert power to not fall to the center of the Earth or something? Didn't you say not holding things up was fine?"

"There's a bottom to the property the same way there's a top.  Uh, but no, not quite—it's kind of, expectations-based?  And also I can fly, obviously, which is only very slightly harder."

"This makes absolutely no sense." Okay he's gonna resume walking. "Anyway, what's so surprising?"

"I—it was bad, I'm paying you back for it—but the bad part was that you didn't want it??  You're going to say?  But that doesn't tell me why you do, now."

"Well the immediate reason is that I'm hungry again and you should get to enjoy eating nice food, too."

"But I haven't paid you back yet—this is just going to make it worse—"

"...Jeremy, I want you to have nice food because it will make me happy if you have nice food, it's not a thing you're doing to me, you don't owe me for being happy about something I decided to do for you to make you happy."

"I still don't understand it," he grumbles.  "But that doesn't really matter because it's not practical to do it right now."

It also doesn't matter because they're outside now so he's gonna not talk to the ghost that is invisible to other people while fetching the portable shower and generator and space heater from the person waiting out front. Oof these are heavy, okay, the way back is a bit slower.

Jeremy hovers by awkwardly.

Once he's back in the house: "I'm not sure what's confusing about it." Oh lawd stairs, this is gonna suck.

"Why you want me to be happy.  Not even in an abstract sense; you want to see and, and cause it."

"...do you not, typically, want your friends to be happy. Or, like, did, when you had more than one friend?"

"I only sort of had friends.  But even so I think I can say it's baffling that you count me as one."

"Well, I do." Hyupppp the stairs. "You did," heave, "fuck up", ho, step after step, "but you're," huff huff, "gonna make up for it," huff, "aren't you?"

"Yes.  Should I levitate something for you?"

"Aren't you," huff, "still weak?"

"Yes."

"Then no thanks." Huff huff he's in good shape though hyuuup he's up, now to the bedroom where he can set these things down.

Hover.

"At least that probably warmed you up some?"

"It sure did," he says, pinching the front of his shirt and shaking it to let some breeze in. Alright, time to unbox: a chonky generator (really a glorified battery you can feed with fuel or electric power), a space heater, and the portable shower. "Cool, this'll be good for the night."

...Nod.

"So anyway, while the heater gets to work and I eat, why don't we go back to the thing where we were getting to know each other and you tell me more about your whole deal?"

"...Yes.  Okay.  I, uh, did in fact go to six high schools, including here in Winter River.  I grew up very religious and had only recently become an atheist when I went down the stairs.  It was because I found the book and tried some spells and they worked and the whole ghost situation didn't seem to square with Christianity.  My parents actually didn't mean to hurt me that much but they did mean to rough me up a little and then they pretended.  My mother apparently considered killing me, in case that would have a better chance of sending me to heaven; she would have been willing to go to hell for me if that would have worked.  But, uh, there's neither, there's just this, and they're around decreasingly much of the time as the years go by.  But now it's pretty... fine, when they're around, it's better than being alone which did not used to be true—ghosts sometimes end up in these weird other lands and there are other ghosts there, so rarely I can learn a bit of world news or something that way.  ...I don't know, what else do you want to know?"

"You found the book while you were alive and—did it tell you how to become a different kind of ghost or something?" Om nom gimbap.

".....Kind of, yeah.  I—sacrificed my parents, and—it also technically made me more powerful while I was alive but that didn't last very long."

"Oh you needed to sacrifice them for the spell. ...based tbh."

"What?"

"—oh that's, uh, slang for... how do I explain based. Google to the rescue." He Googles it. "Okay these explanations are bad. It's like, the opposite of cringe? It's cool and sexy and high status and interesting. And 'tbh' is 'to be honest'. ...it's also at least a little bit ironic? Or, not ironic, exactly, but I don't mean that it's literally cool and sexy to murder people for power, it is not, but in context it's—this is making me sound like a psychopath. Don't take me seriously." Nom gimbap.

"...Okay.  Y—okay."

"What did you stop yourself from saying?"

"I don't quite know.  Something like, 'you know I regret killing my parents, right?' but.  You'd already disclaimed that there were going to be some connotations that I wouldn't get.  Or then and maybe something about not taking you seriously.  But I didn't want to sound like I meant that in general."

"Yeah, I know. The connotations can be, you know—it doesn't actually matter. Yes I know you regret that.

"If you weren't all twitchy about it I'd want to hug you about now. ...do want to hug you right now, but only if you would want it, without taking the thing where you think you don't deserve any nice things ever again into account."

"... Do I want a hug, but only if I really do, but also ignoring my actual preferences?"

Sigh. "For someone who isn't a Christian you sure still think a lot about what it is you deserve or don't, don't you."

"How is that related."

"Well, if there isn't a God to tell you what you deserve, then the only person telling you that is you, and you're choosing to say you don't deserve something nice because you did something bad even when the person you did the bad thing to disagrees with you, so that looks like just—choosing on your own to create a judge in your head that is condemning you, when there isn't any judge like that here actually doing that. ...I don't know how to say what I mean. It's whatever, it's clearly not helping, forget I said anything." Ugh he wishes he could redo this interaction from the start.

"Huh.

"Me not wanting it for reasons you think are bad doesn't actually make me want it, you know.  Like I don't think I would enjoy it, and that's because I feel guilty, but—I don't know.  I'm your pet ghost and you can do what you want with me."

"I—that's not what I meant. If you don't want it you don't want it. Just, sometimes I want things but I think I don't deserve them and then I do them anyway because the voice in my head that says I don't deserve things is always wrong a hundred percent of the time, and if you do want something and it would be nice but there's a voice in your head telling you you don't deserve it then—that voice isn't mine, and it isn't God's, and I think that as the primary victim of your thing I'm—I mean I'm not entitled to tell you how to feel. But. I don't think you don't deserve nice things because of what you did to me. Especially when I'm the one who wants to give you nice things. Giving people nice things makes me happy, didn't you see how I literally bought you a phone the day after I met you, I like it when I give people nice things.

"But if it in fact wouldn't be nice then I don't want to give you it."

"I think I don't want hugs that are for comforting me about horrible things I've done.  Because they won't... work.  But I will sometimes want hugs that are for something else."

"Okay. Fair. Understood."

Nod. 

"...You're planning to sleep here?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want me to do anything during that time?"

"...I guess you're gonna be awake. Uh. I don't know, what do you want to do?"

"I mean, I don't normally really do anything special, so it doesn't matter.  ...The book says ghosts can influence dreams, which I've never tried."

"Influence dreams? Like, how exactly?"

"I haven't had the chance to try it," he repeats.  "Um, but I get the sense it's more, nudges and directions than—it's probably not as much as when you're awa—well, hm.  Since I have a lot of illusory power over you while you're awake maybe that will also apply when you're asleep.  But I don't believe that to be, uh, standard."

"Huh. ...could you, like, enter my dreams, because that'd be sick if you could. ........'sick' is a good thing, to be clear."

"'Sick' as a good thing has been around since I was a kid."

"And I will try that if you want me to."

"Buuuut you don't want to?"

"...It sounds much more interesting than watching you sleep or something?  It sounds fine, I dunno."

"I'm having trouble identifying your, like—when you say stuff like 'I'll try it if you want me to' it sounds like you'd rather lie in front of traffic and I usually prefer it when people don't generally find being around me worse than lying in front of traffic."

"...I would probably sometimes lie in traffic for variety if I could reach the road.  I mean—I don't know, I definitely wouldn't do it if you didn't want me to..."

Cool, excellent, they have successfully determined that Jeremy has gotten past the point in his life when he did things without other people's consents.

Jake will not say this. It will be counterproductive.

"Okay but is this a 'you'll do it because you're my pet ghost but you actually don't want to' thing or a 'I don't actually care either way' thing or..."

"It sounds much more interesting than watching you sleep?" he repeats.

"Alright! Then I want you to try it."

"What would you like me to try and make you experience?  ...Flight you can control yourself?"

"I mean, if you can enter my dreams we can figure it out as we go along. Otherwise... yeah I guess that's good probably?" He does not see the point of the exercise if he won't be able to interact with Jeremy in there. "I dunno I never thought about what I'd want to dream about if I could pick."

"Well, you have a few hours to think about it."

Jeremy is making that FACE again. Jake is beginning to absolutely hate that face.

"We should also figure out a spell for you to be able to, like, interact with the world again."

"....I have in fact developed one of those.  But it only works in the springtime."

"As in you can only cast it in spring or you can only interact with the world in spring?"

"It can only be cast in springtime."

"Okay... And you can't get a new one that doesn't need to wait six months? I wanna show you how to use a phone you're the kind of nerd who'd love the internet. I want to introduce you to Wikipedia."

"I can write a new one.  More easily if you can get ingredients for me, even.  What's that?"

"It's like if an encyclopedia had everything in it and was updated in real time and you could look things up in it whenever you wanted and every definition in it had links to other pages in it and you could just easily bookmark all definitions and go from one to the next. If the first time you open Wikipedia on an interesting article you don't get swallowed up by a wiki walk I'll eat my hat."

"Alrighty.  ...Did it grow out of a publisher I've heard of?"

"I don't... think so? But I can always check the history of Wikipedia on Wikipedia." He goes ahead and does that and shows Jeremy the page. "Seems like no."

He floats for better shoulder peeking.  "...Anyone can edit it??  Is that... good?"

"So there's some people who are in charge of, like, making sure people aren't trolling—uh, messing it up—and articles that are hot button issues or political or whatever get locked so that only trusted editors can do anything, and I think maybe if there are too many edits and unedits in sequence an article can get locked too, and also people can get banned from editing if they troll? But sometimes someone's an expert on a species of squid that was discovered last year and then they go and write an article about it and no one else would've."

"Wow."

Eheheheheheh he was right. "So I want to unleash you on Wikipedia because I think you'll really like it."

"Maybe I can use computers more like a blind person does?  Don't they—even back in my day there were ways of navigating without a mouse or a that-thing; I could... it would be easier for me to press buttons, I think.  To only press buttons."

"A that-thing being a stylus? Yeah you can totally use computers using buttons."

"No, the—touch rectangle."  He points to the trackpad.  "Stylus also sounds too hard to do most of the time, but still easier than those two."

"Trackpad," he provides. "Sure, it should be easy to set up." He's gonna go turn the laptop on again and finish scarfing down the gimbap.

"I don't know if there are any ways to make a phone have buttons I can press easily."

"Phone's a bit harder 'cause of the screen real estate but that really sounds like a problem for people who have less money than me. I also have a tablet if you want, though." Once again he will tether the internet from his phone to go Google some way to get the arrows to control the mouse or something. "You can just, like, use the keyboard for things—this here button gets the Start Menu and then you can just type the name of whatever app you want, Chrome is for internet, and then there's, like, stuff you can do with control and shift and tab and alt—but probably getting a way to make you able to control the mouse using the arrows is a good idea."

Nod.

Win                c                           h              r    —  "Okay it's there, now what do I do."

...he's cute. Why is this cute? It's so cute. 

"Now you press the enter key."

Enter.

Here's Google Chrome!

"So Google and Wikipedia are the biggest things you should learn. If you press tab," point, "that generally moves your selection to different elements on the app your computer is focused on, so you can press it until you select the address bar here. Shift tab—this one is shift—moves back to the previously selected element instead if you press it one too many times. 

"Then you can just type something you're looking for here and it will automatically use Google for it, which is this site that lets you just look for things online. If you type Wikipedia, that's W-I-K-I-P-E-D-I-A, the first search result will be it. Oh and press enter at the end."

w        i      k i        p      e        d            i         a                  enter            tab            tab  — okay quite a lot of tab presses are necessary; Jeremy's finger starts passing through the key or stopping up against it without being able to push it down increasingly many times, and he seems to get a little out of breath.  But eventually:

"This one?  Enter?  'The Free Encyclopedia'?"

"Yeah, that's the one. Is pressing and holding easier than pressing many times? Or harder?"

"Might be harder.  I think it's only exerting because I'm trying to do it so many times so fast."  Enter.  ".....Now I select 'English'?"

"You don't need to, that's the default. Just type the thing you want to look up and press enter."

"...What do I want to look up?"

"...I dunno. Is there anything you wanna know about? Maybe something that changed recently? I dunno."

"...Hm."

l     a                p  —  tabbing until that gets him to the Laptop page.  Enter.

"—Huh."

"Blue text is links to other pages, if you press control enter it will open a page to another tab so you can look at it later. Control tab switches between tabs, control W closes the current tab, control T opens a new empty tab, control shift T opens the most recently closed tab in order if you accidentally close the wrong tab."

"....Can you write that down for me somewhere I'll be able to reference it?"

"Yes, sir." He grabs the tablet he bought Jeremy, opens a notetaking app- "Oh I'm gonna write stuff down here first because I'm sure there'll be things I'll remember later so I'll write it by hand elsewhere once I'm more confident we got most things."

Tap tap tap.

"I—yeah, that seems like it makes sense."

He reads and scrolls through the page some more, and then—"Okay, nope, I'm done for a while—"  He curls up horizontally in the air, panting and looking ill.

"...you okay?"

"I will be.... This just happens when I—hh—try to touch too many things...."

"Oh. I'm sorry. ...uh, to scroll down you can press page down, it'll go farther down than pressing tab all the time." He wants to hug Jeremy. "Am I allowed to hug you for this?"

"Yeah..."  The angle's not the best for it and he doesn't fix that, although he does translate himself over to rest the side of his head on Jake's shoulder.

He's cute. Jake will hug him.

Snuggle.

"Normally I can do a lot more than this, but I think—I—probably spent a lot of what I would have had, over the next... few months, on.... resurrecting you."

"Oh. Well. Thank you."

"I mean I also killed you.  Like... I know you don't want me to... something, but—it's not like you would have died otherwise.  It's—a pair."

"I mean, sure, it's a pair, so taken as a pair the end result was that I got to know you? So, can't complain."

"If you say so..."  He presses his forehead more firmly into Jake's neck.  "It's really dumb that ghosts can get nauseous...  Like, I can't throw up, not even ectoplasm...... With hyperventilating it's at least like... I'm already usually breathing.... or at least a facsimile..."

"Oh, yeah, that is really dumb." Pet pet. "—do you actually breathe? Like does air go into your lungs and then out? ...do you still have lungs?"

"I'unno.  Doesn't feel—h—homogenous, when I stick my hand in there."

"Oh it feels like something, I—didn't realise. Wow."

"Pretty sure I'm not moving air though.  Else it'd make me feel worse now."

"That makes sense." Pet pet.

...pet pet?

.......eh, sure, whatever. Pet pet.

Eventually Jeremy apparently feels well enough to go vertical again.

"...When I feel better, do you—want?—to see whether you can feel if I have organs?"

"...if you want me to?" Why would Jaeha—no, Jake, Jaaaaake, come on you've been doing so well—why would Jake want to know this? It was just a thought.

"—No, no, it's just—it's really weird, and I didn't think you would, but—you seemed interested, and—it looked like you.... thought it was—cool, with the arms—"

"I do think it's cool, but I was just, like, a bit curious? And it sounds like it might me uncomfortable?"

"Yeah.  I don't want it for me, but, I thought—I didn't think you would want it but I thought if you did, I don't know, you might not ask for it, or something."

"Oh. No, I'm fine." And not really into just randomly doing unpleasant things to Jeremy for no reason.

"Sorry."

Whyyyyy is he apologisingggggg this is not a productive line of questioning and Jake knows the answer. He'll just tilt his head and make a very obvious "you don't have anything to apologise for" facial expression but then say, "Anyway, what else do you wanna do tonight?"

"...Continue to attempt to lessen my debt to you?"

"...okay..." What the fuck does he have to ask Jeremy to get rid of this shit.

"........Do you want to do some more sex stuff?  Now?"

He stares at Jeremy incredulously. "...no, not that."

"—Sorry.  I—sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry. ...but, like, why—I mean, unless I'm completely misreading you and you actually want it? But you don't look like you do??"

"I think... there are some things we could do that I could want.  Only if you also did."

"Uh... huh? What are those?"

"Um.  I think things that are more like me doing things to you than, uh, the reverse.  Or reciprocal stuff."

He never thought he'd see the day when he'd straight up refuse a boy offering him sex. Like, him? Kang Jaeha? Refusing gay sex with a hot boy? What's the world coming to?

But there are quite a lot of other facts about the current situation that are also not things he'd expect of the real world, and it turns out that dubcon is hot in BL manhwas and not at all in real life. He prefers his partners to be consenting much more enthusiastically than this.

"Maybe when you're feeling more like how you were feeling yesterday about it."

"...and, uh, relatedly, I'm, uh. Sorry. About... earlier. With the—influencing you to—while you were possessing me."

"...I don't think you did anything wrong.  I don't think you could do anything wrong; I was—it was all me.  In control.  And I shouldn't have."

"—I wanted it. And I thought—you wanted it too and were just holding back because you thought you shouldn't so I wanted you to know that I—did want it and that if you also wanted it then—but I think it was more—it was stronger than just that. And I was more forceful about it than I probably—at all."

"None of that is a reason why it wasn't on me to control myself, though."

"You were having a religious experience from eating a Snickers bar, clearly the emotions were overwhelming and I noticed it," he snaps. "So yeah sure you could've controlled yourself but the only person who was hurt by your not doing that was you and I'm sorry for the part I played in it."

"I—uh."

"Okay."

Okay he's kind of fed up with this right now. "You want to pay off your debt? Then go start figuring out that spell that'll let you do things without giving you nausea that doesn't have to wait until spring. I'm gonna go figure out how to use this thing to take a shower." He gets up without waiting for a response and grabs the portable shower, the towel (thank you, Park Jipyeong), the soap and shampoo (thank you, Park Jipyeong), and the toothbrush and toothpaste (thank you, Park Jipyeong), and goes to look for a bathroom where he can set them up.

Here's one, downstairs, past the kitchen and off the living room.  The floor looks probably sturdy enough over here to handle the weight.

Ugh. Annoying.

Alright, lugging that thing downstairs, sure, then he'll shower.

Jeremy has presumably gone outside or something; he's not in Jake's way while he does that.

A shower is good to clear his mind, yeah, and make him feel a bit less annoyed at Jeremy. And he did ask for a change of clothes and Park Jipyeong also got him slippers (thank you, Park Jipyeong), so he's soon upstairs rubbing his hair dry.

Jeremy's hovering near his desk with a fair bit of glowy stuff beaded up on his sleeves.  "...Hello.  Good, uh," he has to clear his throat.  "Good shower?"

"Hi. Not very, these things aren't super comfortable, but it was fine."

...Nod.

"Is it.... uh, how much of the water did you go through?"

"...no idea, I think without recharge this one lasts three days? I'm gonna need to go back to my dorm tomorrow night to go to school on Monday anyway, don't worry, I'll get out of your hair."

"I wasn't worried about that.  Though I was a little curious why you'd want to stay in these conditions for this long."

"Well, I was kind of worried that if I left you were gonna figure out a way to lock me out of here and I wanted to make sure you knew I did not want you to do that. Now I think you know. And now it's late and, I dunno, I like y-you?" WOW Kang Jaeha that was the most uncool place you could've stuttered EVER, in English that doesn't even mean anything? He'll, uh, just pretend it didn't happen. "And wanted to sleep over."

Jeremy backs into and a little bit through the desk chair and then attempts to nonchalant his way back out of it.

"No, I mean yeah, that's totally your right.  Uh, legally.  Apparently.  Just, not really the best accommodations."

"Yet. I'm getting this place refurbished. ...we. We are."

"I will be very helpful.  Somehow."

"Having opinions will be helpful. And, I don't know, maybe being able to see places that are hard for people who are made of matter see for... broken pipes and faulty foundations or whatever maybe? I dunno."

"If you can get a light source in there for me.  To be determined whether my night vision is much better than yours, but it still doesn't work in pitch dark.  Or through solid matter."

Jake blinks at Jeremy. He looks... more cheerful. Why does he look more cheerful. What happened while Jake was showering.

Well, Jake's not complaining. "Skill issue."

Jeremy's slight smile wobbles while Jake blinks at him.

"...Is that slang?"

"—yes, sorry. It's, uh. Like. Literally it means if you were more skilled you'd be able to do it but since this isn't actually a matter of skill it's kind of just a light hearted social noise? I guess?"

"And is 'social noise' slang?"

"Maaaaaaybe? I guess? It sounds like just like a thing. Like, you know, when something doesn't really necessarily mean anything exactly and it's just there to say, uh, social things." He never has to think about this shit in words he doesn't know how to explain it.

"Like... small talk?"

"I mean, like, you know when someone's telling you a story and you sometimes go 'yeah' or 'uh huh', it's not because they like asked you a question that you're saying 'yes' to it's just saying 'I am still here listening and paying attention to you', it doesn't really mean anything. So like I say 'skill issue' and it basically just means 'I like you and feel affection for you' or whatever."

"......I don't see how that could be the case but I believe you."

"I'm not good at explaining this stuff I just kinda do it," he says, shrugging.

"The important part came through, I think."

"Excellent." He has done a sufficiently good job of dedusting the bed that he can flop back onto it without stirring up a cloud of dust.

Jeremy kind of stutter-floats in that direction a few times.  "—Should I come over?"

Jake is suspicious that this means Jeremy has decided to fake feeling fine to please him.

He doesn't have it in him to care right now. He scoots. "Sure."

Here is a Jeremy!  He puts his bottom arm through the mattress for more efficient cuddling (which feels surprisingly un-weird to Jake; being touched by two things in the same spot isn't all that different than one thing, at least in the current configuration) and—tucks his other arm behind his back, apparently.

Okay no what's weirding Jake out is the thing where Jeremy is suddenly being affectionate.

"Okay what happened while I was showering?"

"I didn't complete writing a brand-new spell, if that's what you mean."

"No I mean the thing where you were acting upset and guilty and now you're acting cheerful and cuddly."

"Should I not?"

Bingo. "You should act honest."

"......We might have to try out the truth spell for that."

Oh for the love of- "Fine, get me the damn spell."

Jeremy is up and back over by the desk quite quickly.  "I mean, it didn't—it didn't seem like it was helping, when I—I don't know.  I'm sorry."

"The thing I want is a genuine human relationship and those occasionally involve people feeling upset."

...wow uh. Does Jake have. Literally any of those in his life. Now that he thinks about it. 

He's known this boy for three days.

"I'm—n—uh.  .....You have the book.  And, can touch it."

—right yes. Okay sure, magic spell rather than scrolling through Instagram. Hyup.

"Uh, it's kind of, I don't have the page number memorized but it's near the beginning of the subsection on them.  It's not Meda's style; I'm pretty sure she didn't write it or, uh, find it useful."

"Who?" Time to finally look at this book.

"The author.  She's kind of... um... maybe a really bad person, or something.  So because this spell involves, in this case me, saying a lot of dramatic stuff... I don't think she could have gotten people to cast it for her.  It'll be more towards the back—because they would know what it does, and she, she generally seems to tend towards more kind of manipulative stuff.  I think her strategy would look different if this was in her—yeah that's it."

For Complete Truth-Telling

Cast at Night when the Moon is more than Half Full.

Symbolically bind the Subject's Wrists in front of him or her.  (If a Ghost Subject, you may place a loop at a convenient height and have it place its hands through this for the duration of the Casting, if no Ectoplasmic Object suits.)

This is a Paired Incantation:  C—Caster; S—Subject.

C:  May the truth be spoken.
S:  May I speak it without reservation.
C:  May nothing be hidden from me.
S:  May I hide nothing from you that you would wish to know.
C:  May no words be twisted for my hearing.
S:  May I speak plainly and clearly, without intent of deception.  May I give a full account of all matters that concern you, without intent to deceive or mislead.  May the words to do so come easily to my mind, lips, and voice.
C:  Swear it.
S:  By my conscious and my consciousness, I will speak the truth.  I will not conceal or alter any aspect of it.  I will elaborate on any subject you desire in the length and detail you wish.  I will answer any question swiftly, accurately, and completely.  There is no matter in my knowledge that I will not reveal to you.  There is no thought in my head I will withhold from you.  There is no feeling in my heart you will not know, should you desire to.  Thus I swear.

The Spell will last until Dawn, or until the Caster Breaks it with an Act of Will.  Unbind the subject at your leisure.

"...it? She's calling the ghost it?? Was she somehow not aware that she was going to someday become a ghost?"

"She's maybe a really bad person, yeah.  ...Although again I think this isn't her spell, but like, she probably rewrote the description to match her style, so—it doesn't matter.  For this."

"Well, I guess not. Well, do you have an Ectoplasmic Object that suits?"

"The flannel should do it, I think."  He shrugs out of it.

Why is he hot Kang Jaeha, please shut the fuck up.

Anyway, sure he can symbolically tie Jeremy's wrists. "You're sure about this?"

"Yes."

...why does Jeremy sound kinda into it—ohhhhhhhhh.

Jake is now a lot less reluctant about it! 

"May the truth be spoken," he says.

"May I speak it without reservation."

"May nothing be hidden from me."

"May I hide nothing from you that you would wish to know."

"May no words be twisted for my hearing."

"May I speak plainly and clearly, without intent of deception.  May I give, uh—pfeh."  He takes a deep breath, and starts again more slowly and with more careful articulation.  "May I speak plainly and clearly, without intent of deception.  May I give a full account of all matters that concern you, without intent to deceive or mislead.  May the words to do so come easily to my mind, lips, and voice."

"Swear it." Kinda hot he's not gonna lie.

"By my conscious and my consciousness, I will speak the truth.  I will not conceal or alter any aspect of it.  I will elaborate on any subject you desire in the length and detail you wish.  I will answer any question swiftly, accurately, and completely.  There is no matter in my knowledge that I will not reveal to you.  There is no thought in my head I will withhold from you.  There is no feeling in my heart you will not know, should you desire to.  Thus I swear."

"—Oh."  All of the tension goes out of his body at once, his hands tied up in his outer shirt dropping in front of him.  "This feels really different.  Like, nice.  I wasn't expecting that."

Oh wow the change is abrupt. "I wasn't expecting it to feel like something."

"I might have been less willing to cast it if I'd known.  Maybe not, though.  ...Maybe yes but with even more angst."

"Less willing to cast it because... you still feel like you don't deserve to feel nice things?"

"I don't currently feel that, but yes.  ....Maybe I do still feel it, but it's... all the way over there, does that make sense?  I would have to go over and get it."

"Well, don't, if it's all the same to you, it's not a very helpful feeling. ...although it does defeat the point of this exercise a little bit if now the way you act honest is different because you're not feeling the same way anymore but sure whatever, if you're feeling okay that's good."

"I don't think it was as dishonest of me as you seem to think that I was pretending.  Because... pretending is real, sometimes.  You took a shower, I had a cry—I didn't do any work on spell creation, I'm sorry, I was really upset—and then you came back and you kind of smiled, and I thought it made sense to try and mirror your tone, so I did that.  And it did make me feel a little bit better, than with the sad dial turned up to eleven.  What I meant with needing this spell was that I didn't know which was real, necessarily.  Probably if I was left alone it would have been somewhere in between, but for me acting a certain way begets feeling that way more strongly.  Except now I feel very at peace and I think it would be hard to shake that."

"Alllllright. ...well, I dunno what to do with this. Uh, this power, I guess."

"I think you should touch my hair with it."

Blink blink. "Yes, sir," he says, reaching up to do so.

"That feels really nice.  ....But it would feel better if you did—more with your fingertips, and harder, than—wow, yes, that's what I meant—than like petting.  Also I think maybe we should be on the bed."

Wow okay! Sure! They can be on the bed! And Jeremy can ask Jake to pull his hair! Why not!!

Jeremy lies flat on his back looking up at the ceiling and making contented sounds.  "...I think I love you.  I thought I might not, back when I was about to possess you, because how could I love you and still do that?  But then I came to the conclusion that I'm just an exceedingly fucked-up person who will do bad things even to people I love.  And that assessment still seems correct to me now."

Thaaaaaaat makes him stop and stare. "We've known each other for three days."

"I agree."

"That was a factual description of the matter there wasn't anything for you to agree with." He's kinda frozen in place, no longer, uh, moving, locked halfway into petting Jeremy.

"Well, I also agree with the implication that that's too short a time for a sane person to fall in love, or that my intuitive definition of being in love might be worse than other people's."

"Okay."

Uh. 

He sits up. 

"Why."

"You're so nice to me, you got me a phone after having barely met me, and you didn't mind that I killed you.  And there's something about you where I just felt so swept up with you; I was just trying to seduce you to the point where you'd go along with the possession spell, but I ended up going along with you instead.  I wasn't even absorbed with guilt the whole time and speaking in double meanings like I apparently love to.  You're intensely charming and kind to me to the point I don't understand it.  Also, obviously, I've been severely undersocialized for almost thirty years and that is presumably affecting how quickly and firmly I feel inclined to latch socially onto someone."

He guesses it's as good a time as any to come clean because hoo boy.

"Jeremy, I'm an asshole. I come from a world of assholes, I speak asshole better than I speak Korean. My father expects me to get over this gay bullshit so he can arrange me a marriage that will give Samsung a good partnership with some other big company, I was raised in a den of vipers.

"I'm also a slut. When I met you I was planning to get a fuck or twenty out of you like I do sometimes and then dip when I got bored. Things got a bit—out of hand—when you turned out to be from thirty years ago—but you really, really shouldn't be in love with me. When you can get out of here and interact with the world for real you can find a good boy, a good man, who isn't an asshole and doesn't come with my baggage, who'll be good for you. But I'm not good for you, or anyone else. I'm not good."

He delivers all of this matter-of-factly. Not like he's feeling bitter about it or like he's apologising, just as an objective description of a value-neutral aspect of reality.

"I think I would need a wider emotional range than I currently have access to to properly engage with most of that.  But I think it might be objectively a little funny to claim that I should dismiss you for having baggage when I clearly and at face have more.  ...I somewhat want to say much more but I don't know that that would be certainly true."

"I mean, I don't mean emotional baggage. I mean that even though I do not plan to give my old man the satisfaction of marrying the nice girl he'll undoubtedly find for me he still will find one. There's all these—expectations—I moved here because I was caught in the wrong person's bed and Kang Jaehyuk wanted to get me away from other important people's sons and thought that maybe if I spent a while not able to damage my or his reputation and got all of this teenage rebelliousness out of my system I'd be able to come back to be the cog in the Korean corporate machine he wants me to be. That's part and parcel of the life of Kang Jaeha, I wouldn't wish that shit on anyone else." ...well. There are some people he might wish that shit on, but that's because he's not a good person, as said.

"Do you ever feel like you should be able to know certain things, but you can't because then you wouldn't be... a person?  In the right way, or something?"

"...uhhhh like I don't think so but maybe you'll give me an example and I'll go oh yeah totally that thing yeah."

"I had no idea you had a name besides Jake, not even when I was in your body, even though now that I think about it it would be really surprising if someone in Korea had that name.  And if you told me your family name then I forgot it.  But you just said 'Kang Jaeha' and I should have been confused I think, but instead I was like, oh, that's you!  Am I right?"

"...well, yes. That was—what I was saying. You think if you'd known my Korean name you would've been less of a person??" What in the.

"Nooo, because I did know it.  But I think there are other things I can't know.  I feel it sometimes."  He sighs.  "—Does this mean I can say true things I've never learned??  You should ask me something factual and verifiable that I don't know.  And that isn't guessable at all from context clues."

"...what's the hundred and fifty seventh digit of pi?"

"Uh, seven?"

Jake Googles it. "No, it's four." He blinks at the page. "Unless you start counting from the three in which case it is seven. Uh. Two hundred and third, fifteen hundredth, seven hundred and forty seventh?"

"Uh, three, four, nine?"

"No, it's four... five... and zero. So much for that."

"Sad.

"I want to know whether you would feel conflicted about touching my hair some more."

"...did you like miss the part where I was trying to gently turn you down and tell you it's a very bad idea for you to be in love with me?"

"No, I just wasn't sure if that would affect hair touching."

"I mean, I—selfishly—enjoyed it? But I thought you might not? I don't know I've never been in love but I hear it's not great to do that without reciprocation but if you're fine you're fine??" What is going on here.

"I am," he hums, "magically fine right now.  If you want me to introspect on how I'll feel about it later I can try that."

"I would like to not do things right now that would feel nice and fine but which would later on make you feel worse than if we hadn't done them. It'd feel like—taking advantage of you in an altered state of consciousness. So yes I guess?"

"I am definitely in an altered state of consciousness...  Ummm.  Probably I'll be very upset.  Maybe not more about that than everything else.......  Also I somewhat don't believe you.  In the same way I recognized your name."

"You... don't believe me about what?"

"I'm not really sure...  I believe you about your problems, but maybe not about—how they are likely to affect me.  Or something.  I don't know if this is a trustworthy feeling."

"Uh... What? What problems would affect you?"

"Your baggage."

"...okay... Wait are you saying that like, you think I shouldn't let my baggage hold you back from dating me or something, or—"

"The opposite.  You from me."

Blink.

He opens his mouth to say "Jeremy I don't love you," but what comes out instead is "Jeremy we've only known each other for three days," which is pretty much the same thing when you think about it.

He's never had someone confess to him before!!!! He doesn't like it!!!!!! Under normal circumstances he thinks he'd be running for the hills!!!!!!!!!

"I agreeeee.  ....I think it would be really good to have sex under this spell because I think it solves almost all of the problems I had with the first time we tried it.  But I do have the presence of mind to recognize that it would be an obviously bad idea to attempt that tonight."