"Oh, right!" Gabriel clapped, getting fired-up. "I'm not a lightweight, so why would I blackout after one drink? I don't even drink much, so there's no way I'd forget. I was clearly drugged!"
Kant nodded slowly, thinking. "Who was with you at the bar?"
Gabriel crossed his legs, swinging his foot up and down. "Well, I was alone... My uncle asked to meet at the Red Tail bar, saying he needed to tell me something."
"Did he not show?" Kant pressed.
The ghost nodded. "I think he forgot about our meeting, but I wasn't feeling well anyway, so I left without calling him."
Kant's brows tightened. Why would his uncle drug him on top of ordering the hit? Wasn't it going overboard?
Jefferson Everett really wanted Gabriel dead, huh?
Kant adjusted the thermostat to the lowest setting, ten degrees Celsius. It wasn't cold enough to properly store a dead body, but he was counting on Gabriel's ghost to bring it back to life soon.
"I wonder what he was going to tell me..." the ghost murmured, picking up a couch cushion to toy with it absentmindedly. "This sucks..."
"Do you think you get back inside your body and stay in it?" Kant steered him back to the topic. "I know your heart's not beating and you're not breathing, but if you focus—"
Gabriel touched his ghostly chest. "But my heart is beating right now."
"What?" Kant turned his head around so fast that he almost sprained his neck. A ghost with a heartbeat?
Gabriel gestured for Kant to touch his chest. "Try it."
"I can't touch you."
The ghost hummed, glancing around. He snatched the blanket from the corner of the sofa, draping it over his shoulders and chest. "What about now?"
Kant's eyebrow raised skeptically, but reached out to touch the blanket nonetheless.
The moment his fingers came into contact with the fabric, he froze in place. There was a distinct pulse against his fingertips—a steady heartbeat. His eyes widened, mouth opening in disbelief.
"How is this possible...?" Kant mumbled, feeling the need to slap himself back to reality.
Gabriel shrugged. "Beats me. But it means I should have a chance at jogging the dead heart of the body, no?"
Kant stood up, his head spinning with this unexpected development. "Try it."
Gabriel stood as well, looking down at his dead body with a thoughtful expression. "Now?"
"Do you want to schedule it?" Kant retorted, gesturing at the body. "Yes, now."
Kant watched as Gabriel hovered over his body again with a determined expression. Then he leaned forward and sank into his body, disappearing from view.
This time, Gabriel kept himself in a calm, almost meditative state, focusing on the cold stillness of the limbs, the eerie peace surrounding the corpse.
Kant stared at the body, mouth hanging open as if awaiting a miracle.
But minutes trickled by with no improvement. The sun had started to rise, and the ghost's head lifted from the body, a hopeless look on his face.
"It's not working."
Kant's gaze followed Gabriel as he got off the table, sagging like a bag of potatoes, his ghostly shoulders drooping.
It seemed like they'd hit a dead end after all. Quite literally.
"But... I can't die just like that. I didn't get to figure out my life…" Gabriel murmured, his eyes fixed on the empty body.
Kant clenched his jaw, not knowing what to say. His job was usually straightforward—research the target, kill, get paid, and move on. He got over any flashes of guilt by reading the files of vile things his targets had done.
But this time—just this once—he had skipped the first rule and it had set his gut on fire.
Seeing the pained, innocent ghost in front of Kant made him want to rip his own heart out. But what was he supposed to do? Apologize? Say "sorry for killing you"? As if that'd make it any better.
Gabriel huffed, pacing around. His ghostly form almost rippled with frustration. "We managed to steal my body, and I managed to possess it. I didn't feel alive per se, but I could move my body! That has got to amount to something, right?"
Kant chewed on his thoughts. Logically, it was hopeless. Once something was dead, it was dead. However, his rationality had also told him that ghosts didn't exist, yet here they were. He let out a deep sigh.
This was a whole new level of crazy. Here Kant was—overthinking how to console a ghost next to a corpse he just stole from the local hospital morgue. In a room that was as cold as the autumn night.
Even worse—if they couldn't bring Gabriel back to life, what the hell was he supposed to do with the body? It wasn't like he could just bring it back like a piece of clothing to the store. "Oh, sorry, it didn't fit quite right, so I came to return it."
Kant was about to scoff at the absurdity, but Gabriel sank to his knees on the floor next to the table with a sorrowful look.
"It's already my birthday..." the ghost murmured defeatedly. "What do I do if I can't bring myself back to life before the day's over?"
The room had grown colder, but Kant ignored the chill, listening to the ghost's regrets. Even the nearest lamp blinked sadly.
"Truth be told, my life was worthless..." Gabriel confessed.
Kant knelt beside him by the coffee table, his hand hesitantly reaching out to console the ghost, yet unable to make physical contact.
"I didn't do anything special. Nor was there anything I was genuinely passionate about. I wasn't even happy... I just… lived like a shell of a human and died without any meaning."
As Kant glanced to the side, his eyes found the blanket that had allowed him to touch the ghost earlier.
"And I can't even blame anyone... Neither you, nor whoever ordered my death... I had twenty-six years to make something out of my life, yet I wasted them all... thinking I had more time..."
While Gabriel went on, muddling his words, Kant threw a blanket over him.
The ghost sighed, but didn't pull it off. "What are you doing?" he asked, his voice muffled by the fabric of the blanket.
"I'm not good at comforting people, dead or alive," Kant started in a lowered voice, patting his back, "but I'm sorry. I made a mistake. You shouldn't have died."
Gabriel's head turned under the blanket, truly like a ghost. "Are you feeling sorry for me?"
Kant sighed quietly.
The ghost nodded theatrically, the blanket bowing. "Well, I appreciate the sentiment. And at least you can acknowledge when you're wrong."
Kant could feel the warmth coming from the blanket, which was very noticeable in the cooled room.
The heat from the soul was like a hot coal in a refrigerator. Was it supposed to be like that? It was strange—feeling 'living' warmth from someone that didn't fully exist in the material world.
"You know," Gabriel started, his voice carrying a hint of ironic amusement. "I used to wish I could turn invisible so I could live a life outside public scrutiny. Seems like I got my wish, just in a messed-up way."
Kant turned his head, deep in thought. "A wish?" He had a few of those too.
As if he'd heard Kant's thoughts, the ghost asked, "Do you have any wishes?"
Should he share? Kant glanced at Gabriel's downcast expression, then sighed again. How could he deny the ghost's curiosity?
"There have been times I wished I could see my dead friend's soul," he finally revealed.
"Oh?"
Something seemed to click for Gabriel. He slapped his thigh. "Both of us got our wishes, but in the wrong way!" He pointed at Kant. "You got to see a soul, and I got to be invisible. Except both didn't work quite right, because I'm not the soul you wanted to see, and I'm not fully invisible since you can see me!"
"You think it's the wishes?" Kant questioned.
"What else can it be? There's nothing else tying you and me together," the ghost talked quickly, his mind rolling at lightning speed. "Do you have any superstitious friends?"
"I guess I could ask Jones. He knows a bit about everything," Kant murmured, getting up.
Gabriel watched as he walked to the kitchen counter, preparing the coffee machine.
"You're not going to sleep?" the ghost questioned, glancing outside the window. Early morning hours had passed and the sun had fully risen.
"I can't imagine going to sleep with your dead body lying on my coffee table. I'll go to the chicken shop so we can figure this out as soon as possible."