“Why are we doing this?” Yoona whispered as she scratched at a particularly relentless itch on the back of her neck. The nerves were certainly clawing with vengeance today.

“Half-switches usually get stuck in the middle when they’re stuck in a situation scary enough to traumatise them,” Jungkook explained as he waited for the car in front of him to switch lanes. “Facing your fears usually sets it right.”

“Okay,” Yoona squinted at him in disbelief. “But I wasn’t exactly scared to the point of being traumatised.”

“You don’t need to be traumatised then,” Jungkook sighed, already tired of just hearing the word. “Being scared is enough. Does anything scare you more than ghosts?”

“Your face this morning when you realised we were out of sugar coated cornflakes?”

“Shut up, you were supposed to go grocery shopping yesterday and buy everything on that stupid list,” Jungkook muttered as he realised that without Yugyeom, grocery shopping for the house was probably never going to work out properly.

After a moment of silence at a red light, Yoona scoffed lightly.

“What?” Jungkook felt his eye twitch out of its own accord. Was the little brat doubting him?

“Nothing,” she waved her hand before glancing sideways at him. “I was just thinking about how churches would be the last places you’d expect to be haunted.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a place of sanction, salvation and all that jazz,” Yoona mumbled bitterly. “They practically preach about going towards the light, so why would ghosts hang out there?”

“Seriously?” Jungkook deadpanned, shooting her a dull look.

It was dull enough for Yoona to want to slap the living daylight out of him.

“Before you judge me, I’ve been fending for myself for two years.” She certainly looked angry enough from being two seconds away from snapping her teeth at him. “Excuse me for not being trained in all things ghostly.”

“Funny you should bring that up,” Jungkook said with a grunt as he switched lanes. “My mother was a clairvoyant who could sense potential in others. She knew I was a clairvoyant before I was even born.” Changing a quick glance at Yoona, he cleared his throat. “Did she uh... did she say anything to you?”

“Other than my oatmeal cookies being dry enough to replace drywall?”

“They were terrible,” Jungkook pressed as he struggled to restrain a smile. “Actually, speaking of terrible, ghosts wouldn’t normally haunt one specific place unless it had some sort of significance, or if they’re into self-torture. Most ghosts prefer to torture the living, but this particular church is an exception. The former congregation was a cult. Unfortunately, it’s non-living members didn’t get the memo and are waiting for the return of their leader.”

Yoona’s glare swung from the window to bore a hole into the side of Jungkook’s head, intense enough for him to feel the pin pricks of trepidation on his neck.

“You locked me in a closet full of cult ghosts?”

Dammit. Of course she would focus on that detail. “I didn’t know at the time!” He defended himself. “My mom was the one who told me, and she was the only one who believed me when I told her why I pushed you.”

Yoona felt the urge to trace the scar running from her elbow to her wrist.

At the cemetery that one blessed day, long before Jungkook knew ghosts were very much real, one had tried to touch her. In his eyes, he had seen a strange man in burnt pajamas reach for her, and Jungkook had tried to save her.

So he pushed her, hard enough for her to lose balance and fall against a flower holder. Her arm had been sliced so badly that she needed more stitches than Jungkook could have counted back then.

No one had believed him, and Yugyeom had stopped speaking to him for several weeks because he thought his best friend had pushed Yoona her on purpose.

“If there really was a ghost in the graveyard, why didn’t I see it too?”

Jungkook snapped out of musings and shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe it wasn’t strong enough to be seen by half-switches.”

“If you call me a half-switch again I just might jam a switch halfway down your throat.”

As they rounded the corner, the cemetery came into view. It had been constructed a year after the town’s first anniversary, growing from a small plot to a property quadruple its size. The cemetery was written under the name of one of the town’s oldest families, who refused to tear down the abandoned church. The lawn was a vibrant shade of green. The black lacquer plaques shone, glinting under the sunlight.

How was such a place so cold and devoid of life capable of looking so warm?

Jungkook drove past the gravel driveway through the wrought iron gates, open daily from sunrise to sunset. He parked in one of the designated spots and killed the engine. “Alright, get out.”

In the distance, the church loomed over like a bad omen. The wood panels had mostly chipped off against weather conditions and were tainted black. The formerly colourful stained glass windows were now cracked and caked horribly in filth and cobwebs.

The duo walked across the garden until they