Victor

I have many friends. It's always been that way. It was that way in Russia, and it's that way in Japan. People just naturally like me. I'm a very likable person a good amount of the time, and I've always had many friends because of it.

One of those friends had been Jean-Jacques Leroy, though he strongly preferred JJ and everyone always called him that. He was on the basketball team like all my friends were, and we all hung out together after school. He was good-looking and popular, like all my friends. He did everything right, like all my friends.

Until he suddenly didn't.

It was about a year ago when it happened. It was summer, and the fifteenth of July eventually arrived—JJ's birthday. He had turned seventeen and as a birthday gift, his parents bought him a really nice sports car, almost as nice as mine. He called us the day he got it and said we had to come see it and take it for a spin with him.

So we did, and we had a blast in JJ's new ride. We each came home tipsy that night because we'd each had a bit to drink as JJ drove us all around town, showing off his new car. We were each on a high—my friends and I of the alcohol kind, JJ of the getting-his-first-car kind. It was good fun.

For a few days after, my friends and I would do what we usually did during the summer, but we wouldn't hear much from JJ or see him a lot. He'd call us sometimes, though, and tell us excitedly about all the times he raced people on abandoned roads in his "sweet ride". He usually won, he'd said, because his car was faster than anyone else's. Then JJ was on a different high—the adrenaline-of-racing-and-speeding kind. Racing became one the things he did.

We told him to slow down. Too be at least a little careful. After all, no one's immune to car accidents, or to death, for that matter.

And neither was he.

That conversation would be the last time my friends and I ever talked to him.

On July twenty-fifth, a week and a half after JJ's birthday, Leo went over to JJ's to hang out with him. Only JJ's parents were home. They told Leo to wait for a bit, that JJ would be home soon and he just taking his new car for yet another ride.

But, as Leo told us later that night, JJ would never come home.

After about an hour of waiting, JJ's parents received a phone call that they thought was from their son, but was actually from the hospital.

There had been an accident.

JJ, according to the phone call, had been out racing again when it happened. He was speeding in the nineties, pushing a hundred, on some abandoned road with some other racing-obsessed guy. Then, out of nowhere, a large dog ran right in front of JJ's car. JJ had swerved to avoid it and, because of his speed, was sent spinning out of control. He crashed right into the guy he had been racing and they both smashed into the side of the road before JJ crashed headfirst into a tree. The other guy had been injured but, fortunately, had survived and immediately called 911 for help. Help arrived as quickly as it could and JJ was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

It was when they arrived at the hospital that they realized nothing could be done to help JJ. He died in the ambulance right when they arrived. The cause being extreme blood loss and internal injuries sustained from the crash.

Leo would call all of us that night and give us the news that would shock us immensely—one of our friends had died in a terrible car accident.

We would all attend his funeral a week later, which would be my first funeral here in Japan and my first time ever being at our town's graveyard.

We all mourned over him, and we all watched him be buried, which would give me nightmares for weeks afterward. That was appropriate, because not once during JJ's funeral did I cry. Not once. I remember feeling nothing—being numb. I was aware that what had happened was awful and that I had lost a friend, but all I ever felt was numbness. I thought that I was a terrible person for not bawling my eyes out as I should have been, but I never did. I mean, I guess I coped in my own way; I did some drinking for a few days after his death and rarely left my house, but never once during any of that did I cry. Maybe it was because JJ and I were never close, and we weren't. He and I actually tended to compete a lot and sometimes would get on each other's nerves. Perhaps that's why I never cried and still won't.

And to this day, nearly a year later, I still don't really know why I never cried.

I remember when we all went back to school, it had been weird for a week or two; never seeing JJ in class, sitting at our usual lunch table and staring at his empty seat, never seeing him at basketball practice, never hanging out with him after school, and never receiving a call from him about his car and his latest race. It even felt weird not competing with him over everything. It felt odd and wrong not having JJ in our lives anymore because he had been such a natural part of our group and our daily routines that no longer having him was unnatural. However, after a week or two of going to school (it did help that we had the rest of the summer to mourn before coming back), we slowly started getting back into our old routines and usual lives, finding a sense of normalcy and picking up where we left off, getting used to JJ's empty chair at our lunch table. All that stuff. But JJ's chair remained empty throughout our last year of high school. Everyone sat in their usual seats around it and no one dared to sit in it, as if we would be sucked into a painful realm of awkward silence and uncomfortableness if someone did; just how it was right after JJ's death.

So everyone just subtly avoided JJ's chair and we all accepted his death and began to move on. JJ was dead and we would never see him again, so we all eventually accepted that. I accepted that. I knew he was dead. I got the news of the car crash and attended his funeral and watched him be buried. He was dead and I knew it. Lived it.

Which why it is normal that I am completely and utterly shocked to see none other than JJ himself standing right in front of me after I had just secretly attended Yuri Katsuki's funeral and was going to head home.

I mean, anyone would be freaking out too if their dead friend was standing right in front of them, talking to them, right after they just attended the funeral of a guy whose death they were one of the causes of.

Which is also why it is normal that I'm standing frozen in shock, screaming my head off.

JJ instantly begins waving his arms around frantically. He shushes me many times. "What are you doing?! Stop that! Quit screaming like a little girl or you're going to attract unwanted attention! Jeez, Nikiforov, I had no idea you had such an eardrum-shattering scream...!" He then covers his ears.

I stop screaming and continue to gawk at him. JJ uncovers his ears and rolls his eyes at me.

This isn't happening this isn't happening this isn't happening this isn't happening...

I'm dreaming. I have to be dreaming. There's NO WAY my dead friend is standing in front of me right now, talking to me.

"This is a dream," I say aloud to no one in particular. I shake my head in an attempt to clear it. "You're dreaming, and any second now you're going to wake up and you'll be at home in your bed—"

JJ interrupts my freak out, laughing to himself and shaking his own head. "No, Victor, you are most certainly not dreaming—"

This time I interrupt him. "I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming...," I mumble over and over to myself. Then I close my eyes. "Okay, I'm going to open my eyes, and when I do, you won't be there and I'll be at home, in my bed, having just woken up from a very bizarre dream." I open my eyes to see JJ still standing there, now smirking at me.

I swallow and begin pinching myself. "Wake up, wake up! It's dream, it's a dream...!" I keep on pinching myself with no success. I close my eyes again and pinch myself again. When I open my eyes, I find that JJ is still standing there I'm still not at home in my bed.

JJ raises an eyebrow at me, looking bored. "Are you done yet?" he questions, unamused, his smirk now gone.

I just stand there, still frozen in terror, and keep staring at him.

Then I snap out of my terrified trance and snatch my keys up from the ground before I run as fast as I can to my car. I unlock it and open the door, practically jumping inside before I slam the door closed and lock the car. Then I jam my keys into the ignition, put the car into drive, and slam on the brakes. I basically speed out of the parking lot and on to the exit road.

I turn around to make sure JJ isn't following me.

I don't see him.

I turn back, facing front as I try to take deep breaths and calm down so I can drive without getting into an accident.

Just calm down and take deep breaths... In and out... In and out...

"It's okay...," I say aloud to myself, driving just above the speed limit so I can get home that much faster. "It's all okay... Calm down, Victor... This is just a dream... A really messed up dream..." I speed up a bit more, hoping there are no cops around. I just need to get home and... I don't know! I just need to get out of here and get home! Then maybe when I get home I'll wake up!

"It's a dream...," I tell myself again, just beginning to calm down. "It's just a dream... A harmless dream that I will soon wake up from... It's a dream..."

Then JJ is suddenly in the backseat of my car, leaning forward and resting his arm on the back of the passenger seat. His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. "No it's not," he says.

I let out a less-than-manly cry of horror as my body jerks in shock which causes me to swerve and nearly hit the car in the lane next to mine. They honk at me and I try my best to straighten myself out and drive normally.

"What the hell?!" I cry as my scared eyes shift back and forth from the mirror to my surroundings. "Did you just freaking teleport into my backseat?! Because you sure as hell weren't there when I left!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," JJ says, waving off his presence like it's nothing. He's supposed to be dead—he IS dead! He gives me a serious look. "Look, Victor, I need you to listen to me. This isn't a dream, I repeat, this isn't a dream. This is actually very important."

"Okay, so maybe I'm not dreaming," I say as I wave one of my hands around in a freaked out gesture, because I am still very much freaked out. "If I'm not dreaming, than I must be... seeing and hearing things because I'm going crazy. That's it! I've gone mad. My guilt over Yuri's death must have somehow manifested itself into a psychotic break! I've become mental, that's all...!"

JJ rolls his eyes. "I knew you were going to make this hard for me, Nikiforov. Listen; you're not dreaming, and you certainly aren't mental either. You're right, I'm dead. I haven't come back to life as a zombie or a vampire or any of that freaky shit, but I am dead, dead as a doorknob," he says, looking at me with calm eyes as he says every word.

I frown at him as I continue to try and drive calmly. "Doornail," I correct him.

JJ frowns right back at me. "What?"

"Doornail," I repeat. "The expression is dead as a doornail. You said doorknob, and that's wrong. It's doornail."

JJ's frown deepens. "No, I'm pretty sure it's doorknob," he protests.

I shake my head. "No, JJ, it's really doornail. I'm positively—" I cut myself off before I blink several times. "Why the hell am I arguing with you—my dead friend—about a stupid expression?! You're dead and you're in the backseat of my car, talking to me, which shouldn't even be possible!" I shake my head again as I continue to freak out. "It isn't possible! Isn't!"

JJ looks away from me and scoffs under his breath, just barely loud enough for me to hear. "It's doorknob, I swear..." he mutters, sounding irritated.

My eyes meet his in the mirror and I glare at him. "It's doornail, and if I wasn't driving and freaking out and you weren't dead, I'd so Google it right now and prove your ass wrong!" I shoot back, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles are beginning to turn white. "I must be dreaming... or crazy..."

JJ looks back at me. "God, for the last time, Victor, you're not dreaming or crazy! This is actually happening in real life! Now, I need you to take a giant chill pill and listen to me!"

I ignore him. "So, if I'm not dreaming or crazy, then I must be... in a coma! Maybe I crashed my car on the way to Yuri's funeral and now I'm in the hospital, unconscious, and in a coma...!" I say, but as I hear the words come out of my mouth, they don't ring true. Besides, wouldn't I know if I was in a coma? I hope I'm not, especially because I don't want to die the same way he died; and though he was never in a coma, JJ was in a car accident that ended his life.

JJ, who, by the way, is still in the backseat of my car and talking to me.

He gives me an unimpressed look. "Seriously? Come on, Victor, you know you're not in a coma. But, really? That's how you're rationalizing this to yourself?" he says with a tsk before he snorts.

"I don't know! Maybe you have an evil twin and you're really him right now and playing a cruel and unusual prank on me for some sick reason...!" I blab, and I'm really beginning to sound crazy now. I mean, forget about seeing and hearing my dead friend, I'm straight-jacket-padded-room-worthy all by myself!

JJ cocks his head to the side, giving me another unimpressed look. "Yes, Victor, I'm my evil twin that totally exists and your life is a cliché soap opera," he says sarcastically. Good to know that after you die, your ability to be sarcastic stays with you.

I shake my head yet again and mumble to myself in Russian as I drive. "Eto ne proiskhodit... Eto ne proiskhodit..."

JJ blinks. "Come again?" he asks.

I sigh. "I said this isn't happening because this isn't happening; this can't be happening!" I reply, still quite shocked at this whole unbelievable, crazy ordeal.

This time JJ is the one to sigh. "Victor, I get that this is crazy, and what I'm about to tell you will be even crazier, but I really need you to calm down and listen to me. This is very important and a matter of life and death. I'm serious."

I shakily try to relax and loosen my hands so they aren't squeezing the steering wheel in a death-grip. I take a deep breath and force myself to calm down before I once again meet JJ's eyes. "Fine. I-I'll listen," I say as calmly as I can manage.

Staying silent now, I wait for JJ to explain himself.

"Not while you're driving, Victor. You're clearly unstable right now and while I may be dead you're not and I really don't want you to be," JJ says after heaving a relieved sigh. "Pull over."

I look at JJ as I keep driving, still incredibly doubtful about this whole thing.

JJ looks back at me, his gaze serious but calm at the same time.

I sigh yet again. "I must be crazy..."

I make sure to use my signal as I pull over.