"Look to your left," I say.
He does, and for a moment nothing happens, he just looks at the platform the way you look at furniture, registering it without registering it, and then it catches and his whole face changes.
"That's —" He stops. Looks at me, looks back. "That's my face."
"Yes."
"That's my body."
"Yes."
"But I'm standing here." He says logic should resolve itself if he just states it plainly enough. "I'm standing right here."
"You are."
He looks at me and I can see him deciding that I'm wrong, that there's an explanation that doesn't require him to accept what he's looking at, that the most reasonable conclusion is that this stranger in a hidden room with a headlamp and a notebook has made some kind of error. "That's not — that can't be my body. It looks exactly like me but that doesn't mean—"
"Cha Junho," I say. "Look at it properly."
He looks at it properly.
The silence that follows is a different kind of silence from the ones before it. He stands very still and looks at his own face and I watch the denial run out of the road.
"I'm dead," he says.
"Yes."
"I'm actually dead."
"That's what I said."
He's quiet for a long moment and then, almost to himself, "That explains some things." He turns back to me and there's something new in his expression now, something that hasn't decided yet what it wants to be.
"You summoned me. My ghost. You did this."
"It's all me."
"How long have I been dead?"
"Fourteen months."
He takes that in. Doesn't react to it the way most people would, no visible grief for the lost time, just files it somewhere and keeps going. "And you've had my body in your flat for how long?"
"Seven months."
Something crosses his face that might, in different circumstances, be impressed. "You kept a dead body in your flat for seven months."
"It required preparation."
"I'm sure it did." He looks at the platform again, then back at me. "You're either very dedicated or deeply unwell."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
He almost smiles at that. Not quite, but almost, the corner of his mouth doing something brief and involuntary before he pulls it back. "So I'm dead and you summoned me and you've had my body in a hidden room in your flat and you still haven't told me who you are. I mean really who you are, not just your name."
"…"
"Or why you did any of this?"
"Uhh…"
"Or how you even knew to find my—" he gestures vaguely at the platform, "—me."
"We'll get to that later. I have other things to respond to."
"When."
"Tomorrow. Or the day after. When I have time to explain it properly."
He tilts his head slightly, just enough to be pointed. "You summoned my ghost, informed me I've been dead for over a year, and now you're telling me you don't have time."
"I've had a long day."
"You've had a long day," he repeats.
"I started a new job this morning."
He stares at me. "You started a new job and summoned a ghost on the same day."
"The timing was specific. It's related. And like I said… I'll explain that too, tomorrow."
He looks at me for a long moment and then something shifts and he laughs, not loud, more like a breath that got away from him, the kind of laugh that comes out when a situation has become too absurd to respond to any other way.
"Fine," he says, when it passes. "Fine. Go to sleep, Yeon Siah."
I pick up my notebook. "There are things I need to go over with you but they can wait."
"Clearly everything can wait."
"You'll be alright in here."
"Will I." He glances around the room. "You're leaving me in a room with my own body."
"Do you want me to move you to the bedroom?"
He considers this with more seriousness than the question probably deserves. "No. I think if I'm going to be dead I should at least be consistent about it." He sits down on the floor, which answers the question from yesterday about what he'd do if there was nowhere to sit, and leans back against the shelf. "Go. I'll be here. I don't appear to have other options."
"You truly don't," I agree.
I go through the panel and close it behind me and stand in my bedroom in the dark and listen to the quiet of the flat, Seojun still out, the couple across the hall settled, everything ordinary on this side of the wall.
He handled it. That wasn't guaranteed — I had contingencies for panic, for aggression, for complete non-responsiveness — but he handled it and landed on something close to dry and cooperative, which is workable, which is more than workable.
I sit on the floor with my back against the bed.
Fine. Go to sleep, Yeon Siah.
He said my name like it was a word he'd always known.
I don't think about that. I put it in the same place I put the thing my chest keeps doing and I lie down on top of the covers without changing and look at the ceiling until I stop looking at anything.
Tomorrow I'll explain it.
Tonight he can sit with his body and I can sit with the tenth line and we'll both deal with what we have.