Hey, loser, am I seeing you tomorrow?

Chanyeol closed Amber’s text without answering it. He didn’t know what to say, really - any excuse he made, she would find a way around, because she was worried about him. Chanyeol knew it, and it made him feel weird inside, guilty and squidgy. She cared about him, but he had to push her away right now, for her own safety.

That, and she still had no idea he was injured. The lacerations were healing pretty well, all things considered, but the combination of antibiotics and painkillers was making Chanyeol nauseous and woozy, and he wasn’t anywhere near his usual speed and agility. If he had to run for his life right now, he might be ed.

And the house was making it pretty clear that that was a real possibility. Chanyeol had had thrown at his head, pipes burst, appliances turn on by themselves, screaming at all hours and blood coating the mirrors when he tried to shave. He was starting to understand why Lu Han had acted insane, why so many of the ghosts seemed so terrified in their final moments, but he was determined not to let it get to him.

He was getting worried about Kris, too. The ghost had appeared to him only twice since he’d returned from the hospital. Once was just to sit and talk with Chanyeol as he ate breakfast, but once, Chanyeol found him up in the tower library, screaming and throwing books in a blind rage, completely senseless to Chanyeol calling his name. Seeing him like that had shaken Chanyeol, badly, even though he knew it was only a memory. Kris’s hurt and anger had been so palpable, Chanyeol himself had gone down to his room and cried for a good hour just from the emotions he’d absorbed secondhand.

At one AM on Saturday morning, running on about four hours of sleep, Chanyeol dragged himself, his lantern, and a blanket up the spiral staircase to the northeast tower. There was no moon visible, making the stars seem extra bright, the Milky Way above only partially obscured by dark, wispy clouds. He spread himself out in the very center of the fifth-floor terrace, laying back on the blanket so he could stretch out his bad leg.

The night was beautiful, if chilly. Quiet. Chanyeol hadn’t caught the beginning of Junmyeon’s scene yet, so he had no idea how long it would take him to appear, how much time he would have to convince Junmyeon not to jump.

Well, if it came down to it, he had his craft knife in his pocket. He could always just hold Junmyeon down until the clock chimed, right?

The minutes ticked by slowly, and Chanyeol was quite tired, still not feeling up to his full strength. He fully intended to remain awake for the hour, but that didn’t happen - he drifted off, only to be rudely awoken a while later by a familiarly panicked voice.

“No, no! I shan’t listen, I shan’t!”

Chanyeol bolted upright, groggy and confused. The ghost! , how long did he have? Shaking the fuzziness from his vision, Chanyeol tried to focus, even as he scrambled stiffly to his feet.

Junmyeon was already only a few steps away from the edge, too terrified to realize the danger he was in.

! “Kim Junmyeon!” Chanyeol yelled, reaching out one hand as his other dug in his pocket for the knife. “Look out!”

It was loud enough that Junmyeon heard him, turned his head sharply to look at him, widened his eyes in surprise. Unfortunately, it seemed to freak him out even more, because he stumbled back another few steps, until his back was pressed against the railing.

“You’re going to fall! Don’t move!” That worked, where a less specific warning had not. Junmyeon froze, seeming to realize his predicament for the first time.

The bricks under him started to slide.

Junmyeon and Chanyeol lurched forward at the same time, Chanyeol thumbing the cap off his knife as he went. The bricks dropped, but Junmyeon was pitched far enough forward this time that he was able to grab onto the unbroken part of the railing, and slid down until he was dangling off of the tower, screaming.

Blood flew, and then the knife flew after it as Chanyeol tossed it haphazardly on the terrace. He dropped to his knees, ignoring the shooting pains up his side, and wrapped his hands around Junmyeon’s arms as they became solid against his fingers. He pulled, and Junmyeon strained, scrambling to get purchase against the side of the tower with his feet.

Chanyeol felt the floor under him begin to shift as well, sliding, dropping. Gritting his teeth, he kicked one leg out, braced it against the railing, and pushed himself backwards, hauling Junmyeon halfway up. Junmyeon was able to get one knee swung up onto the terrace, and even as the bricks kept sliding he pulled himself all the way up.

They both scrambled away from the crumbling bricks, but the entire tower was shaking now, and Chanyeol suddenly feared he’d put himself in too vulnerable a position, that the tower was going to entirely collapse and kill them both. He tried to get to his feet, but he was too unsteady and the rumbling was too much; he couldn’t quite get himself upright.

“Kris!” he screamed. Stupid. What the hell could Kris do?

For a long moment, the tower listed, leaning so heavily that looking straight ahead he could see trees instead of stars. Junmyeon clung to him, and Chanyeol braced himself against the bricks as best he could and held on tight.

Then, it was over. As if the threat had never been, the tower was suddenly back into place, the extra crumbling bricks back where they belonged. The night was still, but for the very, very faint chime of the grandfather clock.

Junmyeon pulled away from Chanyeol, scooting back and scrambling to his feet. “Who are you?!”

“Whoa, hey.” Surprised, Chanyeol held up both hands palms-out, a gesture of conciliation. “I’m not here to hurt you, I’m here to save you.”

“I don’t know you,” Junmyeon said, “and it is deep in the middle of the night. How did you get into my home?”

Hoo boy. “Do you want to go inside?” Chanyeol asked. “I will explain everything.” So far, the house had always remained totally dormant in a ghost’s last moments, but Chanyeol didn’t completely trust that and this terrace was just a little too precarious for his peace of mind.

Junmyeon crossed his arms and glared. Chanyeol could see that his hands were shaking. “I will go nowhere with you,” he said. “Explain yourself.”

So Chanyeol did. He stayed seated on the ground as he did so, trying to seem as earnest and non-threatening as possible. Junmyeon remained standing for a while, but eventually, as Chanyeol explained and convinced and showed him the photograph of his headstone, he ended up sitting crosslegged on the blanket, elbows braced on knees and head dropped into his hands.

He was silent for so long that Chanyeol couldn’t help but to reach out to him, tentatively patting his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, uselessly.

Junmyeon heaved in a deep breath, and blew it out slowly. “Everyone I have ever known is long since dead,” he murmured. “And I have… How long?”

Chanyeol looked at his watch. “About three and a half hours,” he said. “Until the sun rises.”

A laugh, slightly hysterical. “There is no point, then,” Junmyeon said, “no point in trying to do anything. I may as well just sit here and wait for Death to come.”

“I’ll stay here with you,” Chanyeol murmured.

Junmyeon glanced up, his tight expression softening a bit. “Thank you.”

“Do you want to, um…” Chanyeol made some rather unhelpful gestures, feeling stupid. “Lay down? I just - with the others, the physical contact seemed to help.”

He got a skeptical eyebrow, but eventually Junmyeon nodded. They spread out on the blanket, arranging themselves.

“Oh,” Chanyeol said, “sorry. Not that side. Here, come over here.”

Junmyeon rearranged, moving to Chanyeol’s left side. “I saw the way you were moving, earlier,” he said. “You are injured?”

Chanyeol explained what had happened, and even pulled up his shirt to show the stitched-up wounds on his right side, disappearing into his waistband. “It makes wearing pants a bit difficult.”

“The rug caused this?” Junmyeon asked incredulously. “It is ugly, but it isn’t alive.”

“No more than anything else in this house is, anyway,” Chanyeol muttered.

“Ah. Yes, I suppose that is true.” Junmyeon sighed. His stiffness was beginning to relax, making himself comfortable against Chanyeol’s side. He was very warm, which struck Chanyeol as being ironic, for a ghost. “I must apologize. The rug was a gift from my uncle, I was obligated to display it. I had no idea the manor would corrupt it.”

Surprised, Chanyeol looked down at him. “It didn’t come with the house?”

“No. Is that significant?”

“I… it might be? I assumed it had been a part of the house since the time the original owner died. But if it was brought in later, that means that the house really can take things over, anything that is brought in.” He shrugged. “I burned it. I was hoping that would make the tiger stop appearing, but it apparently that doesn’t matter.”

Junmyeon snorted. “Good. I didn’t like it, anyway.” He shifted, adjusting his position. “Tell me of the world now,” he requested. “It must be so very different.”

Chanyeol had done this a few times now, so it was relatively easy for him to ramble on the subject. He talked quietly for quite a while, watching the stars above move, and then slowly fade as the sky began to lighten.

A chill across his left side stopped him mid-ramble. He turned his head, and found Kris kneeling on the blanket next to him.

“Morning,” Chanyeol said.

Kris inclined his head, returning the sentiment. “He is asleep.”

Chanyeol looked, and sure enough, Junmyeon was completely passed out against his shoulder. “I’m this close to joining him,” Chanyeol admitted, smiling fondly.

“He doesn’t have much time left,” Kris murmured. “Will you let him go in his sleep?”

Looking at his watch, Chanyeol sighed. “Just a few more minutes,” he promised. “Then I’ll wake him. Just in case he remembers anything important.”

Kris’s expression compressed. “I will take my leave, then,” he said.

“What? Why? No, stay.”

“I would not be welcome,” Kris insisted, glancing over at Junmyeon. “My face should not be the last he sees as he moves on; it’s bad enough it was the last he saw when he died.”

Chanyeol pursed his lips stubbornly. “There’s nothing wrong with your face,” he insisted.

Caught by surprise, Kris chuckled. “Thank you. But I am a different - ah - person, than I was a century ago.” His gaze shifted to Junmyeon’s sleeping expression, and he sighed. “I was so confused. So angry.”

Junmyeon stirred, groaning, and blinked his eyes open. “What…” His eyes focused on Kris, and immediately he startled, scrambling upright and shoving himself away.

“It’s okay!” Chanyeol said, sitting up himself and holding his hands out placatingly. “He won’t hurt you, it’s okay. You’re safe.”

“He is a demon,” Junmyeon spat.

. Chanyeol glanced at Kris, who looked disappointed but unsurprised by this reaction. “He is a victim,” Chanyeol said softly, “the same as you.”

Junmyeon did not look convinced, but he didn’t move any further away, so that was something. Kris remained where he was, watching them.

Chanyeol prodded Kris in his ghostly knee. “I think you might owe him an explanation,” he muttered.

Kris blinked at him in surprise, then grimaced, then sighed. “I do,” he agreed. “If he will hear it.”

They both looked to Junmyeon, but Junmyeon’s expression remained stiff, shuttered. That wasn’t an outright refusal, though, so Kris gave it a shot.

“You were the first thing that I became aware of, when I became aware,” he said quietly. “I did not know what I was. I did not know that I had died, or that my form would be frightening to you. I did not understand why you seemed to ignore me, and then later, why you recoiled from me.” He raised his gaze and met Junmyeon’s. “It has been well over a century, and I understand now what I am. But that does not change what I put you through. I apologize.” He bowed from the waist. “I would take it back, if I could.”

Silence. Chanyeol thought the apology was surprisingly eloquent and respectful, and found himself proud of Kris for being willing to humble himself like that, to admit his mistakes.

Junmyeon didn’t seem convinced. “You murdered me,” he said, very plainly. “You tortured me, destroyed my mind, and then you lead me to my death. More, you have locked me in my own hell, to relive this horror over and over, for decades.” Chanyeol’s eyes widened. The sun was almost risen - was Junmyeon remembering? “I will not forgive you, for that is an injury which can never be forgiven. As you have condemned me to hell, so do I condemn you.” He sneered. “Go to hell.”

Damn. Feeling helpless and a little queasy, Chanyeol looked between the two ghosts. Kris kept his eyes down, but Junmyeon, now nearly as translucent as Kris, got to his feet. “Chanyeol,” he said, his tone softening, “thank you. Please end this torture if you can. I do not think my spirit could stand to be drawn back here yet another time.”

Oh, wait, , really? “You’ve been saved before,” Chanyeol realized. “The man who saved you, do you remember, did he tell you his name?”

Junmyeon cocked his head, and thought about it. “Yes. His name was Kim Minseok,” he said. “He told me that he was my great-grandnephew. A very odd notion, to be sure.”

Another name. Yes! “I’m going to do everything I can,” Chanyeol promised quickly. “Please, rest easy. If I have any power at all to stop it, nothing will disturb your spirit again.”

Smiling, Junmyeon nodded to him. “I hope you can,” he said. “Goodbye.” He turned, took a few steps, and faded away.

Closing his eyes, Chanyeol blew out a long, slow breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I shouldn’t have pushed it.”

“No, you were right,” Kris murmured. “And even if he could not accept my regrets, I think perhaps I needed to voice them. At least he heard me.”

Chanyeol opened one eye and regarded Kris carefully. “You didn’t need to hear his response, though.”

“I did. And he is right.” One side of Kris’s mouth turned up, a half-smile. “What I have done and been in the past is not forgivable. I cannot undo the damage I have done.”

“But you can move forward from it,” Chanyeol pointed out.

“Can I? I am a ghost, Chanyeol. Can a ghost really change?”

He disappeared from view, leaving Chanyeol alone on the terrace.

What the heck. Rude. “Yes you can!” Chanyeol yelled after him. “You already have! And conveniently disappearing so that you can always have the last word is cheating!”

There was no response but for a soft, deep chuckle in his ear, and the chill of ghostly fingers brushing gently down his cheek.

Chanyeol was losing sleep.

As if the nightmares weren’t bad enough - and they were - the house kept waking him up in one way or another, as if purposely trying to torture him via sleep deprivation. He didn’t put it past the place to be that cruel, anyway.

He was living on catnaps and coffee, and had nearly died four times in forty-eight hours. He was jumping at any shadow and every sound, all his senses on high alert, all the time. It was utterly exhausting.

But Chanyeol was not giving up yet. He had four ghosts left, and with any luck, after sunset on Tuesday, he’d be down to three. Of those three, he only needed one name, and one date and time of death scene, and he had just under a month to finish it, if his deadline theory was right.

Hopefully, he could manage it faster than that. He wasn’t sure he would survive an entire month of this, and he was getting really, really worried about Kris, too. As if the house could sense how close he was getting, the number of times Chanyeol found Kris’s ghost reliving scenes of torture, despair, rage, and isolation was increasing, and the number of times he found the ghost to be aware, calm, rational was noticeably decreasing. Kris was losing his grip on reality, losing his connection to Chanyeol.

Chanyeol could leave at any time, and he knew it. He could walk out, drive away, never return - or return after his birthday, at which point, he theorized, the house would no longer be interested in him and he would no longer see any ghosts. He’d know they were there, of course, but they wouldn’t appear to him.

The fact that he could leave is part of what pushed him to stay, to ride this out as long as he possibly could. If it got too bad, if he really couldn’t take it anymore, he would go. But he wasn’t at that point, not yet.

Kris needed him. He wasn’t ready to give up.

Knowing he needed more clues, Chanyeol forced himself to witness the tiger scene in its fullest, something he’d been studiously avoiding ever since he’d figured out that it played on Sundays, a bare few minutes before sundown.

It was a longer scene, and a nasty one, definitely the worst he’d witnessed. Chanyeol actually ended up following the tiger first, since the beast appeared in the great room, curled up in front of the fireplace, a good half an hour before the scene was meant to take place. The tiger didn’t move, and thankfully, didn’t seem to notice Chanyeol, for a good ten minutes or so. Then, as if prodded, it got up, stretched, and padded out of the room.

Chanyeol followed the tiger through the house, tailing it at a distance, until they entered the main library. It was lit by a pleasant little fire in the fireplace, and a young man, handsome in a refined sort of way, was peacefully reading in a nice armchair. His clothes were disheveled, casual, and very late Joseon in style, but his hair was short and neat, not long the way the older Joseon ghosts wore theirs. Turn of the century, perhaps?

He didn’t get a chance to observe further, because at that moment the ghost realized there was a tiger in the room and startled out of his chair so badly, he practically seemed to levitate. The tiger advanced, and the man backed away, but the library only had one exit and so he was quickly backed into the shelves, trapped.

Or, at least, Chanyeol assumed he was trapped, but then the man pulled on a candlestick that was on one of the shelves, and disappeared through the bookcase.

“Crap,” Chanyeol said in surprise, as the tiger bounded after the ghost and disappeared. He ran after them, attempting to find what must be a secret door, but he quickly realized the candlestick was also ghostly, set over a very small lever rusted into the bookcase. He didn’t have a way to open the secret door in this time.

Rather than try to fight with it, Chanyeol raced back and looped around, wracking his brain to figure out where that passage must open to. It had to be the hallway that connected the master suite to the west wing, and as Chanyeol ran down the west gallery, he found that he was right. As he turned the corner, the tiger was disappearing up the west wing stairs - the ones that were covered in rubble from the collapse.

“Damnit.” Chanyeol cocked his head, listening; he could hear gasps and running footsteps but it was too difficult to tell which way the chase was headed. He decided he’d have better luck returning to the great room and waiting there.

Not knowing which direction they would come from, he positioned himself at one of the doors that led out onto the back patio, with the doorknob in hand in case he had to get out quickly. It didn’t take too long. The ghost ran into the room from the foyer, having clearly come down the central stairs, and bolted right through, headed straight for the door Chanyeol was standing in front of.

He wasn’t fast enough. The tiger bounded in from the kitchen side, cutting the ghost off. Screaming, the ghost skidded into a turn and attempted to run back towards the front of the house.

The tiger pounced, and Chanyeol closed his eyes instinctively, trying to block out the awful noises, too horrified to move. The screaming stopped, and the crunching stopped shortly thereafter, but Chanyeol didn’t open his eyes until he heard the grandfather clock chime.

A quarter to six, and nothing remained in the room except the bloody handprint on the far wall, the last thing the young man had touched in his desperate effort to get away.

Chanyeol ducked out onto the patio and into the frigid late-October air, letting the cold calm him down. His hands were shaking, his mind racing. He was going to have to face that himself, going to have to find a way to stop that from happening. But how?

The sun was already starting to set - he wasn’t going to get much time with this ghost.

His pocket started vibrating, making Chanyeol jump and swear. He tugged his phone out, figuring it was probably Amber and planning to mute it - but then he saw who the call was from, swore again, and accepted it.

“Minho?”

There was a pause, long enough that Chanyeol started to think he’d been pocket-dialed. Then, awkwardly, “Hey, Yeol.”

It should have been good to hear his voice, but Chanyeol was on-edge and not at all in the mood to deal with some personal bull right now. The hesitation in Minho’s tone - like he was afraid of what Chanyeol would say to him - ticked Chanyeol right off. “To what do I owe the honor of this call?” he asked, a little more snarkily than was really called for.

“I, um. I guess I just wanted to check in with you. It’s been a while, and I know the way we left it was… not great.”

Chanyeol snorted. “Sure, yeah. Well, I’m doing fine, you know? Living the high life.” He could hear his voice shaking, and took a deep breath to try and stop it, pulling the phone away from his face so Minho wouldn’t hear.

“That’s good.” A beat of hesitation. “Amber said you’d, um, there was an inheritance? Something about a mansion.”

A solid block of icy shame sunk into Chanyeol’s stomach, all at once. “She asked you to check up on me, didn’t she,” he realized.

He could practically hear Minho’s wince. “, am I that obvious? Sorry, man. Yeah, she’s, uh, worried, I guess. You haven’t been responding to her.”

“And she knew I’d pick up the phone if it was you calling me.” Guilt warred with anger, drawing bile up his throat. He should have given her a better excuse, instead of avoiding her like a goddamn coward. “Because I, a grown- 26-year-old man, cannot be ing trusted to live on my own for two goddamn weeks.”

“Dude, it’s not like there’s no precedent for you… She’s got reason to worry, alright?”

“For me to what? Freak out? Completely lose my because you dumped me?”

“Chanyeol -”

“No, you know what? You’re the one who dumped me, Minho, because I wasn’t putting out enough for you.” His voice was trembling outright now, with all of the hurt and anger he hadn’t let himself voice for the past four months. He was too tired to hold this in anymore. “I loved you, I loved you so goddamn much, but just because I didn’t want to you every time you wanted it, you ing left me. I tried to reach out to you, and you shut me down. And hey, maybe you were right, maybe I did need the time to get over you, because I am definitely ing over you right now.” He didn’t let Minho reply, because he was damn certain he didn’t want to hear what he said, no matter what it was. “Don’t call me again. If I ever forgive you, I’ll call you.”

He hung up, and resisted the urge to scream, to throw his phone across the yard. He wanted to text Amber immediately, with something like don’t ing use emotional blackmail to get ahold of me, but he managed to stop himself. He wasn’t in a good frame of mind to be reaching out to her right now, not if he still wanted to have a friend come morning.

Instead, he dropped to the patio and sat, his head in his hands, trying to force himself not to cry. .

A blanket settled over his shoulders. Chanyeol jumped, startled, but of course, it was only Kris, sinking down to sit next to him on the patio with that otherworldly grace he had. Chanyeol wiped his eyes and gratefully pulled the blanket close - he was so angry, he hadn’t realized how cold he was.

“So you heard all of that, huh?” he asked.

Kris nodded. “It explains a few things,” he murmured. “I am sorry. That is a terrible reason to leave a lover.”

Chanyeol snorted. “Yeah, well, I am a terrible lover.” Kris’s brow furrowed, and Chanyeol sighed, his anger draining away and leaving only exhaustion behind. “I shouldn’t have been so ty to him. He was right to leave me, after all. He wasn’t happy.” Chanyeol shook his head. “I can’t fault him for getting out of a situation that made him unhappy. Hell, I was unhappy, I was just too co-dependent to be able to break away myself.”

“If you were not right for each other, then you were not right for each other,” Kris said. “It does not cast any doubt on your suitability as a lover.”

“No, you don’t - ” Chanyeol sighed. “I’m being literal when I say that. I am a ty lover. As in, I do not enjoy the act of making love, and avoid it at whatever cost, and deprive my ‘lovers’ of it.”

Kris watched his expression, his own unchanging.

“Do you even understand what I’m saying?” Chanyeol grumbled. “, Kris. I avoid it. I refuse to have it.”

Black eyes crinkled at the corners. “As did I,” Kris said.

Chanyeol stared at him. “What?”

“ion. . I avoided it, in life. I never performed these acts, the very idea of it repulsed me.” He wrinkled his nose. “It still does, to a degree. Not that I need worry about it, anymore.”

Literally what. “But - you were married,” Chanyeol said, confused. Kris smiled at him, secretive and sad, and Chanyeol put two and two together. “Oh my god, that’s why you said Jessica was your best friend, that’s why you wouldn’t have chosen to get married if not for her father.” Chanyeol blinked. “Was Jessica like you, then? Or - like us, I suppose?”

“Not exactly. Jessie preferred the company of women.” Kris’s expression darkened. “A fact which her father was aware of, and which angered him immensely.”

“You married her to protect her,” Chanyeol realized. “You were her beard.” , that made so much more sense.

Kris shrugged. “I loved her,” he said softly. “More than anything. Certainly more than she loved me, but I didn’t mind. As long as she was happy, so was I.” He looked out over the yard, unfocused. “I thought I would be content forever, just to have her near, to see her happy. And if her father had left us alone, I think I would have been.”

This was the only time Kris had ever talked about himself, talked about what had happened to him, and Chanyeol seized upon the opportunity. “The history books say you went insane,” he prompted.

A snort. “Of course they do. That is what Jung told everyone. The town, my business contacts, my friends… Probably Jessie too, though I never found out. He had already separated us.”

Chanyeol could see, from his expression, that this was upsetting Kris, but something told him he needed to know. He put a hand out, balancing it carefully in the air where Kris’s knee was not. The ghost’s foggy form felt thicker than usual, clammy, almost touchable, but not quite. “He locked you in the tower.”

“Yes,” Kris whispered. “For - I don’t know how long. Weeks, maybe months.”

“What did he want from you?”

The temperature around them suddenly dropped, so cold that Chanyeol’s lips immediately dried out and chapped. “Don’t ask me that,” Kris growled.

“Alright, I won’t,” Chanyeol murmured, aiming for soothing. Slowly, the air around them warmed again, and Chanyeol at his lips, willing his racing heart to slow back down. “Lord Jung, is he - is he in the manor? Is he still here?”

“I believe that he is the manor,” Kris said. “Who else would hold me back, keep me from moving on? He imprisons me even now.” He shook his head. “I have digressed rather badly, I apologize. My point is that the fault is not your own, Chanyeol. It is not you who is sick, who is broken and wrong.” He looked up, fixing Chanyeol with his black gaze. “The world would like to make you blame yourself, but you carry no blame. As your ex-lover deserves someone who will make him happy in his way, so do you deserve someone who will make you happy in yours.”

His ears heating, Chanyeol dropped his gaze. “No one will ever want to be with someone who won’t have with them,” he muttered. “Why would they?”

His hair ruffled. Chanyeol looked up, and found that Kris was reaching up, brushing his fingers through the strands. Chanyeol couldn’t feel his touch, but he could feel his hair moving, and that was almost good enough. He all but purred, leaning into it.

A chill trailed down his cheekbone, traced out his jaw. “I have already seen that you love with your whole being,” Kris whispered, as his hand slid down Chanyeol’s neck, making him shiver. “Without reserve, without regard for yourself. Anyone would be lucky to have you at their side.”

“I wish it could be you,” Chanyeol blurted out. He hadn’t meant to say it, hadn’t even really known it was true, but as soon as he did, he realized it was.

Somewhere along the line, without even realizing it, he’d fallen in love with a ghost.

Kris smiled at him, brilliant and sad. “I do too,” he whispered. “Believe me, I do too.”

By Tuesday, Chanyeol knew that the house suspected that something was up.

He was awoken far too early by a horrible nightmare about drowning, and before ten AM he had dodged three more attempts on his life, one of which nearly got him - the bathroom mirror shattering in his face. He’d only just avoided getting sliced across the jugular because he thought he’d seen Kris standing behind him, and had turned to look just in time.

All the food in his pantry had mysteriously rotted overnight, so Chanyeol spent the morning clearing it out, and then went down to the town to pick up more. Being outside the house helped him to relax, and he managed to catch a couple extra hours of sleep in his car while parked, which helped. He stocked up on non-perishables, choosing things that came in boxes and plastic bags rather than cans, since he could just see the house turning a can opener against him.

As he was driving back, he again had the thought that he could just… Not. Just go to a hotel for the next month and wait it out, safe and sound.

But no. That wasn’t an option anymore, not really. Half because he was in love with Kris and determined to set his spirit free, to not fail him, but the other half was sheer, stubborn spite. Jung and his monster mansion were not going to defeat him.

Chanyeol got back to the house just around two-thirty, giving him approximately half an hour before Kim Minseok’s scene would begin. He put away his groceries quickly, then went and got his craft knife, his axe, and the very large raw steak he had just purchased, and went to his sitting room to wait.

This one made him jittery, way more jittery than most. He was going to have to face down the tiger, he knew. And if his math was correct, he was going to have to keep it busy - keep it from killing him - for at least five full minutes. When you were talking about fighting a goddamn tiger, five minutes was a really, really long time.

He shifted his weight, glanced at the clock. It had been less than a week since he was released from the hospital, and though his pain was considerably lessened now, he was still stiff, not as fast or as strong as he normally would be.

It was going to be a very dangerous few minutes, of that he was certain.

Sure enough, just around five minutes of three, Chanyeol heard a roar. Taking a deep breath, he went ahead and cut his hand right away - he didn’t know if he’d get the time to do it, later - and then dropped the craft knife and picked up the axe. His heart was pounding so loudly, it nearly drowned out the pounding of footsteps that approached.

The ghost burst into the room, pushing on a door that was, to Chanyeol’s eyes, already open. Chanyeol put his hand out in front of him. “Kim Minseok!”

Minseok froze for only a second, wide-eyed. Before he could think the better of it, Chanyeol reached forward and touched him with his bloody hand. Minseok became real under his fingers, and so did the tiger that skid to a halt in the doorway, looking somewhat bemused at the sudden appearance of a man with an axe.

“Run,” Chanyeol ordered. “Don’t go near the pond.”

He saw the confusion in Minseok’s eyes, then, to his surprise, realization. But of course - if Minseok had saved ghosts himself, he would understand what Chanyeol’s sudden appearance in front of him meant.

Sidling around Chanyeol, Minseok slid out the back door and onto the patio. Chanyeol saw him head to the right rather than straight ahead, keeping a good distance from the pond.

The tiger took a step forward, eyeing Chanyeol with ears pushed back. Keeping the axe ready in his right hand, Chanyeol reached over to the table and picked up the plate with the steak on it with his left.

“Hungry?” he asked. “Here, kitty.” He tossed the plate forward carefully, and it landed a meter or so in front of the tiger with an obnoxious clang. The tiger recoiled, startled, then leaned forward and sniffed.

While it was distracted, Chanyeol quickly slipped out the back door, and closed it behind him. He went in the same direction he’d seen Minseok go, crossing in front of the great room windows to the other side of the patio, looking around.

“Minseok?” he called, trying not to be too loud.

“Here,” a soft voice replied. Chanyeol looked around, then up, and found catlike eyes peering down at him from the roof of the new addition. “Is it - , behind you!”

Chanyeol turned just in time to see the tiger burst out from the door of the great room. Acting completely on instinct, Chanyeol leaped right over the patio railing, desperate to put something between the animal and him.

It was, as it turned out, a phenomenally stupid thing to do. The patio was not raised very far from the ground, but it was raised enough, and Chanyeol had momentarily forgotten that he was injured. His right leg collapsed when he hit the ground, and he went down, narrowly avoiding landing right on the axe in his hands.

Unable to stop his yell of pain, Chanyeol rolled onto his back and threw his hands up over himself, axe and all, as if that was somehow going to help if the tiger leapt onto him. Fortunately for him, the tiger did not leap onto him.

Unfortunately, the tiger leapt straight up onto the roof.

Minseok screamed. Ignoring his pain, Chanyeol scrambled to his feet, looking wildly around. There was a fallen branch tangled in the detritus that had blown up against the side of the patio; Chanyeol seized it and flung it upwards. It caught the tiger a glancing blow across the flank, just enough to make it hesitate and look around.

“Minseok, catch!” Chanyeol yelled, and heaved the axe up onto the roof. As he did, he felt a sharp pain in his side and heard a ripping noise, and immediately gasped, pressing his hand to his stitches. Blood was soaking into his shirt.

He hadn’t quite gotten the axe high enough for Minseok to actually catch it, but it was close enough for Minseok to scoop it up, brandishing it at the tiger. Gritting his teeth and clutching his side, Chanyeol went looking for something else he could throw. The tiger was distractible, and that was pretty much their only advantage right now.

Chanyeol found a rock, just as the tiger leapt. Somehow, miraculously, Minseok managed to stop it by catching the outstretched claws with the handle of the axe and twisting. The axe was pulled from his hand, the tiger went past him, and Minseok bolted across the roof. He made a rather incredible flying leap and hauled himself up over the railing of the second-floor balcony.

Quickly reviewing his mental map of the house, Chanyeol swore. That particular balcony door was rusted locked; he hadn’t had the chance to replace the mechanism yet. As the tiger turned and Minseok frantically tried to get the door open, Chanyeol wound up and threw the rock.

It bounced directly off the tiger’s head, which definitely got its attention. Chanyeol was shaking now, his damaged muscles spasming so hard he could barely remain standing, and as the tiger turned towards him and crouched, preparing to pounce, Chanyeol realized he didn’t have enough energy left in him to run.

The tiger leaped, descending upon Chanyeol with all of its claws outstretched. Chanyeol flinched away, cowering behind his arms, the only thing he could do.

The grandfather clock chimed, and the impact never came.

“Oh holy ,” Minseok breathed, and Chanyeol opened his eyes in time to see the other man sink to his knees in exhaustion. The tiger was completely gone, nowhere to be seen. “That was ing close.”

“You’re telling me,” Chanyeol said weakly. His legs didn’t want to hold him up anymore, so he didn’t bother, and dropped down to the grass.

“You - hey, , are you okay?” Minseok hauled himself up and came back over the railing onto the roof. He went to the corner where the new addition met the original part of the house and dropped himself carefully onto the patio, hanging from the roof for a moment before he let go.

He dropped to his knees at Chanyeol’s side, and Chanyeol noticed for the first time that his arm was scratched up. The tiger’s claws must have gotten him after all. “Did this happen just now? I didn’t see it hit you,” Minseok said, carefully peeling Chanyeol’s shirt up so he could survey the damage.

“No,” Chanyeol told him wearily, “this was from before. I just tore a stitch. It’ll be fine.”

Minseok pursed his lips. “You need to clean this. Let’s get you inside.”

Between the two of them, they managed to get Chanyeol upright and into the house. Chanyeol felt Minseok hesitate when he saw the kitchen - it would have looked completely different, when he was living here - but he gamely kept moving, without comment. Once Chanyeol was seated and shirtless, Minseok found some paper towels and began carefully cleaning away the blood.

“Hi,” Chanyeol said, once he had his breath back. “I’m Chanyeol.”

Minseok flashed him a rueful smile. “Hi, Chanyeol,” he muttered. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

Chanyeol winced. “I’m sorry.”

Heaving a sigh, Minseok shook his head. “I’m not very surprised, honestly,” he said. “Considering it’s my birthday. Or… it was.”

“So it’s true, then,” Chanyeol asked. “The birthday thing.”

“Yeah. The house starts to terrorize any young man who’s past about 25 years old, though it kind of seems to vary exactly when and how much. It toys with you, tortures you, then actively tries to kill you.” He sighed again. “No one has managed to make it past their 27th birthday, as far as I can tell. I knew that, but I’m a stubborn idiot.” Minseok eyed him. “How long have you got?”

“Just a little under a month. Twenty-nine days.” He hadn’t really intended to keep a count of it, but when it was literally how long he had to live, he kind of couldn’t help it. “I figure I’m going to stick around for another two weeks or so. If I haven’t saved all of the ghosts by then, I’ll get myself out.”

Pressing a compress over Chanyeol’s wound, Minseok gave him a questioning look. “All the ghosts? How many have you gotten so far?”

“You’re the eighth.”

“Eight! , my friend, you’re doing way better than me.” Minseok shook his head. “I only managed three.”

Three. Three? “Zhang Yixing mentioned you,” Chanyeol said, “and so did Kim Junmyeon. Who was the other?”

“Byun Baekhyun.”

“Byun Baekhyun?” Chanyeol tried to sit forward, winced, and collapsed back into the chair. “Is he the ghost in the great room? The other one the tiger got?”

“Yeah, he died in 1902. I take it he’s one of the ones you haven’t gotten yet?”

“Him and Kim Jongdae. I know Jongdae’s name, but I haven’t seen him yet. I have no idea when he appears.”

Minseok blinked at him. “The third.”

Chanyeol froze. “What?”

“The third of the month. Him and Lu Han are the only ones who repeat monthly, instead of weekly or daily. Or, at least, they used to be the only ones.” He cocked his head. “You didn’t realize? Lu Han appears on the nineteenth, and Kim Jongdae on the third. I’d only just figured that out myself, hadn’t really figured out how to stop them yet.”

The third. What had Chanyeol been doing on the third? “This month I was away on the third,” he realized. It was when he’d been living out of a hotel room, too ing frightened to come back. “And the third of the prior month was the day I moved into the house. It had been empty for ten years, there probably wasn’t enough energy for Jongdae’s scene to manifest.” It made sense. The two times he’d seen Lu Han were a month apart, weren’t they? “, that’s probably why I only saw Zitao once, too. I bet he was also monthly.”

“So you only have who left? Baekhyun, Jongdae, and…?”

“Kris.”

Minseok made a face. “Right, obviously. I should have known.” He shook his head. “Those are going to be three tough scenes to break, are you sure you’re up for doing that? This injury probably isn’t going to be healed for a month or two, minimum.”

“Hah. Yeah, I’m up for it. I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“Yes. Yes you do.” Minseok fixed him with a glare. “You can leave, right now, and not come back. You know you can.”

Chanyeol met his eyes steadily. “No,” he said. “I can’t.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

Narrowing his eyes, Minseok said, “Maybe I should use my last two hours on Earth to get the cops to lock you up for exactly one month.”

“Hah. You can try.” Chanyeol shook his head. “I’ve made up my mind, Minseok. If you want to help me, tell me everything you know about Kim Jongdae’s scene.” He heaved a breath. “If what you’re telling me is true, then any way you look at it, I’m only going to get one shot at saving him.”

So as he finished wrapping Chanyeol’s wound, Minseok did exactly that, explaining what he had seen. “It starts late, just after five PM,” he said. “Clock tolls for Jongdae at quarter after five. The first time caught me totally off-guard, and I didn’t even realize there was a ghost in the flames until I heard screaming.”

Chanyeol winced.

“The second time, I tried waiting in the room, figuring I would catch him as he came in. Thing is, by the time Jongdae walks in, he’s already gone. I called his name, over and over, but it was like the house had control of his mind. He barely responded to me.”

“Like Jongin,” Chanyeol said to himself.

“I couldn’t get him to snap out of it in time. The fire goes up almost as soon as he walks in the door; he doesn’t realize he’s walking into the flames until it’s way too late. If you’re going to stop him, you have to stop him before he enters that room, Chanyeol.” Minseok stopped what he was doing and held Chanyeol’s gaze. “And listen, I would not risk making his scene real with blood, okay? That fire is scary, but harmless, so long as it is only on Jongdae’s side of the veil. If you make it real, it might take the whole house out.”

, that was a really, really good point. “So I have to save him without touching him,” Chanyeol said. “Got it. Do you know which direction he comes from?”

“The hall from the main part of the house. I don’t know which set of stairs he takes up to the second floor, but he is definitely already on the second floor when he approaches, and he’s not coming from the far end of the wing so I don’t think he went up the spiral stairs in the library.”

Chanyeol nodded, picturing that part of the house in his head. “I’ll wait for him at the entrance to the wing. No matter which stairs he goes up, he has to go past that way.”

Nodding in return, Minseok said, “It still won’t give you much time, but it’s the only way you’ll be sure to catch him. Sorry, my friend, I wish I could tell you more.” Chanyeol shrugged. “When will he appear next?”

Pulling up a calendar on his phone, Chanyeol checked. “Sunday,” he said. And then, he realized, “Ugh, wait, that means his scene is going to overlap with Baekhyun’s. Maybe I’ll wait until the Sunday after that to save Baekhyun, and then get Kris. That still gets this over with a full two weeks before my birthday.”

“Assuming you can save Jongdae in your first shot,” Minseok pointed out dryly. “And that the house doesn’t kill you in the meantime.”

“I’m going to go ahead and be optimistic about that.”

“I hope you’re right,” Minseok said, as he patted the finished wound dressing. “It would be a hell of a thing to get wrong.”

And didn’t Chanyeol know it. “Anything else you can tell me?”

“Mmm, not that I can think of. You know when and where Baekhyun’s and Kris’s scenes takes place, I assume?” Chanyeol nodded. “How are you gonna stop that tiger?”

Chanyeol shrugged. “Same way I did today, I guess, and that I did with Lu Han. Just keep distracting and confusing it. I know the path it takes, maybe I can set up some kind of a trap?”

A snort. “I wouldn’t. The house would probably turn it against you.”

“Okay, point.”

They kept discussing it for the rest of the hour, going over everything Minseok knew. The vast majority of it, Chanyeol had already figured out himself, but he kept hoping there would be something else, something that would show him how to win this thing easily.

There wasn’t. He was going to have to fight, no matter what. But he had everything that he needed now, all of the clues. The end was in sight.

Eventually, the hour grew late. The light coming in through the kitchen windows was pinkish gold, and threw long shadows. Chanyeol knew it was coming, but he still winced when Minseok trailed off mid-sentence, turning his head and staring at something Chanyeol couldn’t see.

“Wow,” he muttered. “That’s… not really what I expected that to look like.”

And then his eyes widened. He turned back to Chanyeol, gripping his arm.

“I just remembered, oh my God,” he said quickly. “It’s only once, you only have one shot each year.”

Chanyeol blinked, startled. “What?”

“To break the curse!” Minseok hissed. “I didn’t figure it out until I was already a ghost, it only just came back to me. The scene that plays every night in the tower, that’s not the whole scene. You can only witness all of it on the anniversary of his death. If you don’t break the curse then, you never will.”

Chanyeol tried to put his hand over Minseok’s, but Minseok was already fading, and his hand touched chilly nothing. “What? Minseok, I don’t understand!”

“You said Yixing and Lu Han mentioned me, they remembered me?” Minseok asked. Chanyeol nodded. “Then I guess I’ll remember you, if you fail.” He gave Chanyeol a look. “Don’t fail, Chanyeol.”

He disappeared, leaving Chanyeol wide-eyed.

“The scene that plays out every night in the tower,” he repeated out loud. “Kris’s scene. That’s not the whole thing? There’s more?” He got up, started pacing the kitchen. “Is that why I can’t break him out? He can only be saved on the anniversary of his death.”

Wait.

Wait.

.

Chanyeol pulled out his calendar again. Kris’s death had taken place on his birthday, November 6th.

“I don’t have a month left,” Chanyeol breathed, horrified. “I have a week.”

It took Chanyeol quite a while to absorb that. A month had been bad enough, but a week? It meant he’d have only one shot at Jongdae, one shot at Baekhyun, and he’d have to save them in the same night, one right after the other. Jongdae wouldn’t even have time to fade before he went to save Baekhyun.

And he’d only get one shot at saving Kris. If he couldn’t manage it, it was over. All he would be able to do would be to run away, knowing that he’d been so close and he failed. It killed Chanyeol to even contemplate running, failing, after all that he’d been through, but if he couldn’t stop Kris’s scene on the sixth, there would be nothing left for him in this house except certain death as his own birthday approached.

The sun was all the way down and the stars were starting to appear when Chanyeol finally calmed down enough to get off his and head outside, intending to grab his axe.

To his surprise, though, when he reached for the door out to the patio, he found that his hand wouldn’t make contact.

Blinking, he tried again. His hand literally would not move forward enough to touch the door. There was nothing stopping him, nothing he could feel or see, but he could not reach the door.

He tried his other hand, and then his foot. He wound up and kicked, but his foot rebounded long before it connected with wood, as if there was a force field.

With panic rising in his throat, Chanyeol went to the great room and tried that door, with the same result. He ran to the doors in his sitting room, on the sides of the house, and all three doors in the front, and even tried the second-floor balcony doors and some windows he knew would open.

Nothing.

He was trapped.

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