Happy Halloween! :D

The text made Chanyeol laugh bitterly. He was literally living a horror movie; Halloween was the last thing he needed to deal with.

Not that he was going to get the chance to. He’d already tried to contact Amber, but it was no use. He could receive texts and calls, but he couldn’t send anything out; the texts wouldn’t send and calls wouldn’t connect. He hadn’t been able to respond to her, or to contact anyone in the outside world, since Tuesday.

A few minutes later, when he didn’t respond, another text came in. Dude, are you angry at me for the Minho thing?

Chanyeol sighed. He knew it looked like he was freezing Amber out, and that bothered him, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. So long as she didn’t get worried and try to come see him, it didn’t matter, anyway.

Either he would be able to answer her once the curse was broken, or he would be dead.

He had six days left, counting today, and about three and a half before he’d have to save both Baekhyun and Jongdae in a single evening. He’d already mapped out his battle plan for November 3rd, trying to keep it as simple and safe as he could manage, considering.

The west wing staircase was a very important part of his plan, so Chanyeol was planning to spend the day today clearing out the rubble from the collapse. He’d been avoiding stairs as much as he could, especially since the house kept threatening to make the floor collapse out from under him again, but he really needed that staircase free of debris before he tried to use it to get away from a tiger.

It was a messy business, which is why Chanyeol had put it off so long in the first place. Dust and sawdust filled the air, and all of the wood debris was splintery and sharp. Chanyeol did most of the cleaning with a long-handled broom, staying on the ground floor as much as he could manage, just in case.

Eventually, he did have to go up to the second floor landing and start clearing away the rubble that had accumulated there. It was hard work, but he was moving slow, both so that he would be ready if the house tried anything, and also so that he didn’t tear his side open again.

He stopped to catch his breath, leaning against the wall with his hands on his knees. In the silence, something caught his attention, an out-of-place sound. He cocked his head, listening.

Whatever it was, it was nearly too quiet to hear. Chanyeol pushed off the wall and walked down the hall a little bit, then back, trying to figure out the source of the sound.

It was coming from upstairs. The third floor, which he still hadn’t explored.

Jogging back down the stairs, Chanyeol grabbed his ladder and brought it up. He set up his ladder on the second floor landing and bypassed the collapsed section of stairs entirely, hauling himself up onto the third floor landing.

As it turned out, the third floor was a single, large, open room that stretched across the front half of the main part of the house. There was a fireplace - if he had to guess, he’d suppose it probably shared a chimney with the library on the first floor - which seemed to indicate that it had been built to be used, but it was pretty clear it had been some time since this room had seen any real use. It was storage, no more than an attic, filled with boxes, knicknacks, and unused furniture.

The sound was louder, now, and Chanyeol stopped moving and listened hard. It sounded like crying? But it wasn’t Kris, he was pretty sure. By now, he knew what Kris sounded like when he cried, and this wasn’t the right tone for that.

He searched the whole room, looking under piles and behind furniture, but there was no one here, living or dead. “Hello?” he called. “Is there anyone here?”

The sound was loudest when he was in the center of the room, in front of the only window, a large but very dirty picture window with Chinese-style fretwork panes. The angled ceiling of the space was gabled here, accommodating the curved peak of the roof, another Asian-style touch on an otherwise European structure.

Chanyeol squinted up at the ceiling. The gable didn’t just stick out from the roof at a right angle, he knew. It rose up quite a ways above the rest of the roofline, with one of the manor’s most striking architectural features, a huge, circular window, right at the top.

The round window wasn’t here, which meant there had to be another floor.

So Chanyeol started looking. He cleared a space, and climbed up onto a nearby chair to get a closer look at the ceiling. Mostly it just looked like any attic ceiling, exposed crossbeams and old boards laid atop them, but over by the far wall he found something - brackets on the wall and the ceiling that looked a whole lot like the ones that held the cast-iron spiral staircases elsewhere in the house, and cuts in the boards in the shape of a square.

He went back to the staircase, reached down, and grabbed his ladder, hauling it up to the third floor. The action strained his injured side, but he just winced his way through the pain and brought the ladder over to the trapdoor. It took a minute to figure out how it worked, which side to open it from, but he managed it.

Memories of getting trapped in the tallest room of the tower flitted through his mind, and Chanyeol made sure to grab a loose board to take up with him. He pushed the trapdoor open and stuck his head in the room.

It looked like it had once been a quaint little sitting room, with a pretty, antique daybed, a bookshelf, and a vanity. The sunlight that streamed in was dimmed through the years of dust and dirt on the huge, round window, which from this side Chanyeol could see was as tall as a person and etched with beautiful art of a Chinese-style dragon.

He could still hear the crying, very clearly now, but at first, he couldn’t see the source. It wasn’t until his eyes adjusted that he realized there was a translucent shape curled up in the corner next to the window, barely visible in the streaky light.

“Hey,” Chanyeol said. “Can you hear me?”

Probably not. Chanyeol pulled himself all the way up into the room and carefully blocked the trapdoor open with the board. It wouldn’t really stop the house if it was determined to lock him in, but then, nothing would.

He approached carefully, but the ghost showed no signs of movement. It definitely wasn’t Kris, it wasn’t nearly large enough. So who was it?

Kneeling close, Chanyeol ducked his head down and looked into the ghost’s face. The ghost was so translucent that it took him a moment to make sense of its features, but when he did, he gasped.

“Jessica,” he said. “Jessica Jung?”

There was no answer, but Chanyeol was sure it was her. Who else could it be? She was dressed in a billowing Western dress and had hair long past her shoulders; even if Chanyeol hadn’t recognized her features, there was no woman more likely to be a ghost in this house.

He tried to touch her, but she was so faded that she barely chilled his hand, let alone was actually touchable. Moving to the side, Chanyeol put himself in the path of the sunlight, casting her into shadow and making her easier to see.

She looked… Gaunt. Starved. Withered, almost. Was that just a trick of her translucency?

No, it wasn’t. Her hands were curled around her knees, and Chanyeol could see that her knuckles were too knobbly, her fingers too thin for the wedding ring still on her hand. She was literally wasting away. Kyungsoo had said that she died of grief… was this her death scene? Had she starved herself to death?

Chanyeol tried again to get her attention. He called her name, he waved his hands in front of her face, he even cut his finger and tried to make her real. Nothing. No response, no movement, nothing but this sad, faded ghost, sobbing quietly in the furthest corner of the house.

Chanyeol stayed with her for a while, thinking that something would eventually happen, or at least that she would fade away. To his confusion, though, she remained right where she was, unmoving, for literally hours.

When the sun went down and she was still there, Chanyeol decided to leave her be, and went back down the stairs to ponder this development.

Jessica never moved, as it turned out.

Chanyeol went back up to the fourth-floor sitting room several times over the course of the next few days, and she was always there. Always curled in the corner, faded, crying.

He didn’t know if she had been there the entire time, or if she only appeared recently, maybe when the house had locked him in. It bothered him, because what if he had to save her as well, in order to break the curse? But he’d tried everything he could think of, and nothing he had done had even made her lift her head.

Besides, he had enough to worry about.

Sleeping more than two hours at a time had become Chanyeol’s ultimate goal in life, more important to him even than staying alive. He was pretty sure he was starting to sleep right through attempts by the house to frighten him, just out of sheer exhaustion.

He’d moved his mattress to the sunroom that was off of the kitchen, because as part of the new addition it definitely seemed to see less supernatural activity than most of the house, but that didn’t stop the house from throwing at the doors, turning on all the taps in the kitchen, or making the stove start to smoke. Chanyeol had already turned off electricity, gas and water to any part of the house he wasn’t actively using, unwilling to give the manor any more ammunition than it already had.

Time seemed to be simultaneously speeding along and crawling, and Chanyeol was having some trouble keeping track of what day it was, but before he knew it, Sunday afternoon was upon him. Having made all the preparations he could think of and gotten as much sleep as he dared, Chanyeol planted himself at the second floor entrance to the west wing hallway, and waited.

And waited.

The longer he waited, the more nervous he became. Was Minseok wrong about when and where Jongdae would appear? Did Jongdae’s scene require more energy, more blood, than Chanyeol had given? Or had Chanyeol somehow missed him entirely?

His watch ticked past five o’clock, and Chanyeol took a few nervous steps forward, looking over the railing into the foyer. There wasn’t anything there, so he quickly retraced his steps and glanced down the west-wing stairs. Nothing there, either.

By sheer chance, as he was returning to his post, Chanyeol noticed the door to the far guest suite opening. A shimmery figure faded into view, walking into the room.

“!” Chanyeol yelped. “Kim Jongdae!” He sprinted down the hall.

He wasn’t fast enough. The fire was already roaring, leaping out of the damaged fireplace and consuming floorboards that no longer existed, and Jongdae kept walking, entranced. Chanyeol didn’t have time to ponder it, didn’t have time to weigh his options.

Besides, there was no other option. If he failed to save Jongdae, he was a dead man anyway.

Chanyeol yanked his knife out of his pocket and slashed himself haphazardly across the top of his forearm. Dropping the knife, he smeared his hand through the blood, leapt forward, and swiped his hand across the back of Jongdae’s head, yelling the man’s name.

He made contact, smacking Jongdae square in the head. Jongdae immediately flinched and cried out in alarm, but Chanyeol couldn’t even spare a second to apologize because the fire was real now, so hot he could feel his skin sizzling and he wasn’t even touching it yet. He grabbed Jongdae’s collar and hauled.

It wasn’t a graceful retreat. They went sprawling backwards, Jongdae on top of Chanyeol, and internally Chanyeol cursed. The fire had already consumed half the room - including, he realized too late, the legs of Jongdae’s trousers.

Yelling, Chanyeol flipped them over and scrambled to his feet. He’d known, despite what Minseok had said, that there was a possibility he’d have to make the fire real, so he’d prepared for it. To his right, a towel he’d pre-soaked was laying on a chair; Chanyeol grabbed it and threw it over Jongdae’s legs, suffocating the flames.

Terrified, confused dark eyes stared up at him in shock. “Go to the study,” Chanyeol ordered, “and barricade yourself in. Don’t come out until I say it’s okay. Go, run!”

Jongdae hesitated, then nodded, scrambling to his feet and out the door. Chanyeol threw the towel on the closest part of the flames and reached for the other thing he’d prepared - a line of fire extinguishers, every one that he had purchased for the house. Chanyeol had never faced down an actual fire with an extinguisher before, but thankfully his previous job had mandatory training, so he at least knew the theory. He yanked out the pin and squeezed.

It took a long time, and three and a half extinguishers, to finally put the fire out. Part of the problem was that the flames were burning fuel that wasn’t even there anymore, floating supernaturally over the parts of the floor that had been burnt away nearly a century ago, and so the foam from the extinguisher just fell right through the flames and landed in the room below. The smoke was filling the room, so Chanyeol ended up backing out to the doorway and dropping to his knees, trying to stay below the worst of it.

Eventually, he got it all. Gasping, Chanyeol shut the extinguisher off, and waited for a moment, just to make certain no stray tongues of flame were going to spring back to life. He checked his watch.

He’d been fighting the fire for over fifteen minutes. Baekhyun would be appearing at any moment, if he hadn’t already.

Groaning, Chanyeol crawled to the end of the hallway, not standing until he reached the stairs. Out here, the smoke was still detectable by smell, but Chanyeol didn’t feel like his lungs were burning any more, so it was probably dispersed enough to be safe. He leaned against the wall and took stock of himself.

His breathing was winded and rasping from the smoke, in his rush he’d cut himself too deeply with the knife and was bleeding pretty badly, and he’d ing torn his side open again, flecks of blood soaking into his shirt. All he wanted to was to lay down right there and sleep for a week, but he didn’t have the time. Jongdae was safe now - he hoped, anyway - but Baekhyun needed him.

Pushing up from the wall, Chanyeol took a deep breath, and waited until the room stopped spinning. When things were stable again, he smeared fresh blood on his left hand, grabbed the large crowbar he’d tucked away up here in his right, and pressed his back into the corner, hiding himself from the staircase.

And again, he waited.

A bare minute later, he heard a gasp, and running footsteps. He braced himself, leaning out just enough that he could see the very top stair, right before the landing.

Baekhyun’s ghost appeared. “Byun Baekhyun!” Chanyeol hissed, throwing his bloody hand out at the same time. He grabbed a very surprised Baekhyun by the arm, yanked him behind himself, took a step forward, and swung.

The crowbar cracked the tiger right across the nose. It yowled, recoiling, and Chanyeol took off, yanking Baekhyun behind him.

Chanyeol’s plan had been to duck into the closest bedroom and barricade the door. He’d even moved the bed earlier, leaving just enough space for the door to open, with the idea that he would shove the bed the last meter or so as soon as they were inside.

Unfortunately, to his shock, he couldn’t get a hand on the doorknob. Just like with the exterior doors, the house was holding it closed.

And the tiger was recovering fast.

Chanyeol didn’t even try the other bedrooms - if one was blocked, they probably all were. Instead, he pulled Baekhyun around the balcony to the top of the grand staircase, and they raced down.

Wracking his brain, Chanyeol tried to think which rooms on the first floor weren’t a trap. With all of the exterior doors sealed, there wasn’t a lot of options - basically the great room, the kitchen, and the dining room were the only spaces with multiple exits. He opted for the kitchen.

Unfortunately for them, the tiger did not need to use stairs, and Baekhyun screamed as it jumped right from the second floor down to the first, completely erasing any lead they had gained. They ran, but it wasn’t enough - the tiger cornered them in the great room, before they could even get to the kitchen.

Instinctively, Chanyeol shoved Baekhyun behind himself and planted his feet. The full-on sprinting right after inhaling a load of smoke had really taken it out of him, and Chanyeol wasn’t sure he had a whole lot left, but his adrenaline was singing and his entire being was focused on I will not die, and nothing else.

The tiger leapt. Chanyeol jammed the crowbar crosswise between its jaws and dropped, intending to roll back and throw the tiger over his head with both feet in its stomach.

It didn’t work like that. Chanyeol was too weak, the tiger to heavy, too fast. Claws ripped into his shoulders, and Chanyeol went down, unable to get his legs up in time to keep from being flattened.

Blam. Blam.

Suddenly, the tiger’s full weight collapsed onto him, claws retracting from his skin. Chanyeol gasped, the breath knocked out of him. He pushed, but he was trapped, too hurt and too weak and at too bad of an angle, the full weight of the beast pressing all the air out of his lungs.

Then, the tiger rolled off him. Was rolled off him. Baekhyun’s face peered down at his own, wide-eyed. “Are you alive?” he demanded.

Chanyeol tried to answer, and ended up coughing instead.

Baekhyun helped him to sit up, plopping down next to him and half-holding him upright. Across the room, Chanyeol saw Kim Jongdae, in the act of lowering a shotgun to his side.

“That was close,” Chanyeol gasped, as soon as he had his breath. “Thank you.”

“Barricade yourself in the study, he says,” Jongdae muttered, dropping to his knees in front of them. “Don’t come out until I say so, he says. Real smart, there.”

Chanyeol tried to laugh, coughed again, and had to hold up his hands when both Jongdae and Baekhyun reached for him, alarmed. “I’m okay,” he said. “The smoke. But I’m okay.” He winced. “I didn’t know there was a gun in the house?”

“Won’t do a lot of good,” Jongdae said. “The tiger will be back. It always comes back.”

What? Whoa. “That’s not the first time you’ve shot that tiger, is it?” Chanyeol asked.

“Stop talking,” Baekhyun chided, “you’re dying.”

Chanyeol blinked, offended. “I am not.”

“You’re sitting in a pool of your own blood,” Baekhyun snapped, and… Oh. Right.

“There’s a medical kit in the kitchen,” Chanyeol said meekly. “First cabinet on the right, on the top.”

“I’ll get it,” Jongdae said, and ducked out of the room.

Chanyeol shifted, but Baekhyun pushed him back down with a ginger touch on his chest. He was gentle, but the touch pulled at sliced-open skin and Chanyeol was suddenly excruciatingly aware of how much pain he was in. “Oh, ,” he whimpered.

“Stay put, hero,” Baekhyun said. “Let’s get you patched up, and then I will ask you why there are two strange men in my house, saving me from the tiger that no one else can see.”

“It isn’t your house anymore,” Jongdae said as he returned, medical kit in hand. “You’re dead, Byun Baekhyun.” Baekhyun gaped, and Jongdae dropped in front of Chanyeol, opening the kit on his lap. “And I think I am too. Aren’t I?”

“Yes,” Chanyeol said, after a beat of silence. “I’m sorry.”

Jongdae dropped his gaze to the kit. “I knew it,” he muttered. “The gun safe looked like it hadn’t been touched in years, and that is definitely not my uncle’s kitchen. I knew the house would get me someday.” He eyed Chanyeol. “Didn’t know someone dead could be made not-dead, though. I suppose that’s a plus.”

As Jongdae pulled out antiseptic cream and bandages, Baekhyun spluttered. “I’m not dead!” he protested. “I’m right here!”

“You’re dead, Baekhyun. I’ve seen your ghost. Several times, actually.” Handing the supplies to Baekhyun, Jongdae pulled out the safety scissors from the kit. “I don’t think you should be raising your arms,” he said, “so I’m going to have to cut that shirt off you.”

Chanyeol nodded. “You have medical training,” he observed.

“I fought in the war,” Jongdae muttered. “Managed to keep myself alive mostly by volunteering for the medics.”

The war? Which war? Jongdae had died in 1949, right? Chanyeol did the math.

“World War 2?” he asked. “But Korea was under Japanese rule. You would have only been sixteen when…” Jongdae gave him a look, and Chanyeol trailed off. “,” he breathed.

“Hold on, wait, please shut up for a second,” Baekhyun pleaded, as Jongdae sliced into Chanyeol’s shirt. “Who are you? Why do you both know my name? What is going on?”

So while Jongdae cleaned and wrapped his wounds, Chanyeol introduced himself, and explained everything - about the hauntings, about who is targeted, about how they died and how they became ghosts and how he’d set them free.

He had the story down pat by now, but that didn’t make it easier to see tears gathering in Baekhyun’s eyes, or the muscle in Jongdae’s jaw tighten. “And you’re both going to fade,” he concluded, “as soon as the sun goes down. Which should be any minute, actually.”

Baekhyun’s expression compressed. “So soon? I’m not ready to go yet,” he said. “Do you think I could say goodby to Yifan, at least? Is he still here?”

Chanyeol and Jongdae looked at each other, then at Baekhyun. “Who’s Yifan?”

“The ghost! You said you’d both seen ghosts too, right? Yifan comes and talks to me sometimes. He’s a little odd, but nice.” Taking in their expressions, Baekhyun raised his eyebrows. “Tall fellow, enjoys fashionable menswear, horrifying wound across his neck?”

Oh! “You mean Kris!” Chanyeol said.

“Well, yes,” Baekhyun replied. “But that’s not actually his name, of course.”

Suddenly, Chanyeol was gripping Baekhyun’s wrist. He didn’t even remember moving. “What.”

“He was native-born Chinese,” Baekhyun said, giving Chanyeol a strange look. “You didn’t think he was born with the name Kris, did you? He adopted it when he was living overseas.”

Chanyeol sat back, stunned by this. Of course. He was a ing idiot. “That’s why he doesn’t answer me when I call his name,” he muttered. “It’s the wrong goddamn name.”

“Um. Fellas?”

Chanyeol looked up, and found Jongdae staring slightly to the left.

“What - oh.” Baekhyun’s eyes fixed on the same spot.

Reaching out, Chanyeol took both of their hands. “I guess it’s time for you guys to go?”

“It’s so… Bright,” Jongdae said. “Is this what everyone sees, when they die?” He glanced back at Chanyeol. “You going to be okay on your own?” he asked softly.

Chanyeol forced up his best smile. “Yeah,” he said, far more confidently than he felt. “I’ll be fine. You two go rest now, okay?”

Jongdae nodded, and faded away.

“,” Baekhyun breathed. “Okay. I’m coming.”

He squeezed Chanyeol’s fingers, closed his eyes, and faded as well, leaving Chanyeol holding nothing.

Over the course of the next few days, it was all Chanyeol could do just to stay alive and sane.

His body was a wreck, fighting to heal, and tending to one shoulder was difficult when he couldn’t easily move the other. He was pretty sure the prescriptions he already had for painkillers and antibiotics were the only thing that was keeping him from keeling over, at this point.

Sleep was nigh impossible to come by. Nearly every time he closed his eyes, the house brought some kind of hell down on him, including the tiger, twice. Chanyeol was in an active war zone, and the only thing that kept him going was his deadline.

He only had to survive until sunrise on Wednesday. By then, it would all be over, one way or another.

Chanyeol really wished he could see Kris again, talk to him, get even just a little reassurance that he was on the right track and this would all be worth it. But Kris, though he was appearing a lot more often, was completely senseless to anything, including Chanyeol’s blood or Chanyeol calling his birth name. Every scene he relived was a scene of torture, of physical or emotional abuse, of despair. Nothing Chanyeol did could pull him into reality, which seemed to indicate that Minseok had been right - Kris could only be saved on the anniversary of his death.

Chanyeol was pretty sure he was watching the memory of Kris’s last days, and honestly, he was having trouble imagining how he was going to talk Kris out of killing himself. His situation was difficult enough to watch; Chanyeol had no idea how it would feel to experience. He wasn’t certain he wouldn’t have made the same choice, in Kris’s place.

On top of all that, even if Chanyeol was able to pull Kris out, he might have only minutes before Kris’s spirit faded. By this point he’d figured out that the grandfather clock was stopped at 6:02 because that was the exact time that Kris had died, and therefore, the exact time that Kris’s spirit would be completely safe. But on November 6, the sun was scheduled to rise at 6:06.

Four minutes with the man he’d fallen for. That was all he was going to get.

He tried to prepare himself for that, tried to prepare himself for the scene, but what could he prepare? He had no clue what he was about to walk into.

So, on Tuesday night as the sun was going down, Chanyeol climbed the tower with all of the supplies he could think that he might need, and settled on the bed to wait, with the best of intentions. But it was an unusually peaceful night, the house quieter than it had been in weeks, and Chanyeol didn’t realize he’d drifted off until something startled him awake.

He jerked upright, heart hammering. What woke him? Had he missed it?!

Then, he heard it - the distinctive, awful screech of the bookcase in the study, the one he’d never gotten around to WD-40-ing. Chanyeol leapt from the bed and raced down the stairs.

The bookcase was standing open, but there was something very wrong with the light that filtered through. It seemed faded, greyish, like it was made of fog more than actual light, and Chanyeol found that he couldn’t pass over the threshold into the room. When he tried to force the issue, his limbs refused him. Something was keeping him out.

Kris was in the room, but for the first time, he wasn’t alone. Several ghostly men were in there with him - two holding him by the arms, two bringing in a pallet, and the last was Lord Jung himself, instantly recognizable from his portrait.

“Yifan!” Chanyeol yelled. “Wu Yifan!” He tried making noise, stamping his feet, but he already was fairly certain it was no use. Whatever was about to happen, it was what had caused Kris to kill himself, and Chanyeol had the terrible feeling that he was going to have to watch every second of it if he wanted to have a chance in hell of stopping Kris later.

When he realized what the pallet was bearing, Chanyeol gasped audibly. Jessica was lain upon it, completely unconscious; her head lolled as the two servants set her onto the large, heavy desk.

Kris yanked on his captors, struggling. “What have you done?!” he shouted.

Jung looked at him, cocking an eyebrow. “She is only asleep,” he said, his voice nasally and a little taunting. Chanyeol was already predisposed to hate him, but that voice made him hate the man even more. “Do you think that I would harm my own daughter?”

Barking out an awful, grating laugh, Kris yanked his arm again, trying to pull away. It didn’t escape Chanyeol’s notice that the two men holding Kris were considerably larger than the rest of the men in the room. “You? You would poison your entire family if there was any gain at all to be had,” Kris snapped. “I’m not entirely convinced you didn’t murder your own wife.”

“Hold your tongue,” Jung snapped, “or I will cut it out.”

“No you won’t,” Kris retorted immediately. “So long as I have not named an heir, you need me alive and communicative.” He cocked his head. “How would you explain to a magistrate how I suddenly lost my tongue while under your care, hmm?”

Jung sneered. “Unfortunately true, but not for long. This charade will end tonight, in one way or another.” He motioned. The two men holding Kris frog-marched him forward, and one of the other men, the only one of the four servants who was smirking instead of stone-faced, stepped up to Jung’s side.

Kris was pushed right up against the desk, his hips shoved painfully into the wood between Jessica’s lax feet. “What are you -”

Reaching out, Jung grabbed Kris by the chin and forced his head around. “I have asked you politely,” he said, in tones soft and dangerous. “I have asked you repeatedly. I have told you a dozen times, that you only need to do one thing, to make me happy.” Chanyeol couldn’t see Kris’s face from this angle, but he could see Kris’s body stiffening. “I am done asking. You will give my daughter a child before the end of tonight.”

Chanyeol’s jaw dropped. His hand flew over his mouth, horror seeping into his mind at the realization of what, exactly, Jung’s goal had been.

He wanted a grandchild, so that he could use the child to take over Kris’s fortune.

Chanyeol wasn’t too well-versed in older laws, but he was pretty sure than inheritances were meant to go to blood children. Once there was a grandchild, Jung would no longer need either Kris or Jessica in order to get what he wanted. He would get rid of them somehow, and manage the trading empire in the child’s name.

Clearly, all of this had occurred to Kris as well, because he spat in Jung’s face. “My answer is the same as it has always been. Go to hell.”

Jung backhanded him, almost casually. “No, I’m afraid you do not understand. You see, if you cannot give my daughter a child tonight - now - then Joowon here will do it.” He gestured to the servant next to him, who smiled cruelly. “No one will ever know the difference… not even Jessica.”

Chanyeol hadn’t thought it was possible to be more horrified.

He was wrong.

Kris hadn’t moved. He was frozen, and Chanyeol still couldn’t see his face, a small mercy. He was pretty sure he did not want to know what those particular emotions looked like on Kris’s features.

“I see we understand each other at last,” Jung said.

“You are a monster,” Kris said, and he sounded so small, so lost, and simultaneously so, so furious that Chanyeol winced and had to stop himself from pulling away. “You are forcing me to your daughter.”

Eyebrows raised. “You are her husband,” Jung said, as it if was obvious, as if Kris was an idiot for suggesting otherwise. “Moreover, she is your wife. This is her duty, and yours, and nothing more. I know you will not be harsh with her, and so I pray that you will do the right thing, for her sake.” He glanced at the servant. “Joowon, I fear, may not be so delicate. It is your choice.”

He smiled, and reached out to run his hand over his daughter’s hair. Then, he nodded to the servants, and left, turning to wisps of nothing before he even made it to the door, leaving Kris and the servants staring at each other.

The scene kept going, but once Chanyeol realized that Kris was going to do it - of course he was, he really had no choice, not if he wanted to prevent Jessica from being hurt worse than she already was - he put his back to the wall, closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and tried not to listen. He wouldn’t leave, couldn’t leave, but he wasn’t going to watch, either.

Bad enough that the four servants stood there and watched.

It went on for an age, and Chanyeol was feeling more than a little queasy, by the time he heard a cut-off, stifled moan and the creaking of the desk stopped. He got to his feet, worried that something important or unexpected would happen, and risked looking into the study.

He’d looked too soon. Kris was only just getting off of Jessica, the juncture of their bodies mostly hidden from view by their clothes, which no one had bothered to take off, just pushed out of the way. Jessica’s skirts fell back down, but not before Chanyeol had gotten an eyeful of skin he hadn’t meant to see.

Wincing, he looked away, but even as he did so his mind processed what he had seen, and he frowned. The angle was all wrong, and ...Kris’s hadn’t looked wet? With Jessica’s skirts arranged the way they were, the others wouldn’t have been able to see it, but Chanyeol was on the opposite side of the room.

His eyes widened. “He faked it,” he realized. “You sly bastard, you faked it!” , that took balls, taking a risk like that with four men watching. If he’d gotten caught…

But he hadn’t. Straightening his clothes, Kris drew himself up to his full height and glared hatefully at the four servants. “You may report to your master that I have done my duty,” he spat, his voice trembling with anger. All around the room, the bookshelves shuddered, and Chanyeol jumped. “Take her back to her rooms, she should rest.”

He turned, and marched for the bookcase. As he did so, the four servants and Jessica faded away into nothing, as if they only existed when Kris was looking at them. Chanyeol frowned, but he didn’t have the chance to ponder that, because Kris walked right through him, chilling him to the core.

The bookcase slammed shut in Chanyeol’s face, locking him in.

For a moment, Chanyeol panicked. He’d never closed the bookcase while he was on this side of it before - was there a latch? Could he get it open again, or was he completely trapped?!

Then, Chanyeol realized it didn’t matter. Kris was here, and it was already after five in the morning. He had a little under an hour to convince Kris not to kill himself, and after what he’d just seen, he had a feeling it was going to take some serious convincing.

When he climbed the stairs, Chanyeol found Kris in the library on the third floor. He was staring at a sketchbook, his expression as blank as the page in front of him.

“Wu Yifan?” Chanyeol called.

No response. Kris picked up a pen and started to write, and Chanyeol came and looked over his shoulder.

It was a suicide note, and moreover, it was a will, bequeathing everything Kris owned to Jessica and Jessica alone. Kris’s hand was shaking so badly, he could barely keep the pen steady, but eventually he finished, signed, and tore the page out, taking it up the stairs with him.

Chanyeol followed. Kris set the letter on his bedside table, then sat on the edge of the bed. Slowly, his blank expression began to crumble. He hid his face in his hands and started to sob.

His heart pounding so hard he felt like he might puke it up, Chanyeol sat down next to him. This was it. This was the part of the scene that played out every night, and Chanyeol’s last chance.

He pulled out his knife, cut his hand, and called Kris’s name, his real name.

Kris looked up at him, tear tracks on his face but recognition in his eyes. Swallowing, he reached out, and took Chanyeol’s hand. Long fingers entwined with Chanyeol’s own, and for the first time, Kris became real, his heat radiating up Chanyeol’s side and his weight sinking into the mattress.

Kris turned his head into Chanyeol’s shoulder, curled his other hand into the sleeve of Chanyeol’s shirt, and completely broke down.

Chanyeol held him, blinking through his own tears, his mind racing. He wanted just to hold Kris, his instincts were screaming at him to comfort, but should he be doing something else? Should they be talking, or should he be going to get the razor and throwing it out the window?

In the end, he let Kris cry, because it felt ty to do anything else. Holding him felt less strange than it logically should; they fit together well.

Kris’s tears eventually slowed, and he took a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re here to stop me,” he said, “but I have to do it, Chanyeol. I have to.”

Chanyeol’s heart lurched painfully. “No,” he said. “You don’t have to. You’ve been doing this every night for two hundred years, Kris, please. Just this once.”

Shaking his head, Kris sighed, shaky. “It is the only thing I can do,” he murmured. “Jung has trapped me, in all ways. I cannot leave, I cannot fight, and every time I try to do anything to stop it, it all just gets worse. She’s suffering because of me.” Chanyeol didn’t really know what to say to that, because as far as he could see, it was true. “Worse, she’ll wake up tomorrow and her father will tell her what I’ve done, what he thinks that I have done. She will hate me.” Kris’s expression crumpled. “She should hate me. I hate me.”

“But you didn’t do it,” Chanyeol pointed out. “You did everything you could to protect her, Kris, I saw that.”

“Not everything,” Kris murmured. “As long as I am alive, my Jessie is in danger. If I die, she’ll be safe from him. He’ll have no reason to hurt her.” He shook his head. “It’s all I can do. The only recourse I have left.”

Chanyeol frowned. “But, Kris,” he said, “that isn’t true.”

Kris looked up at him, red-eyed. “What? Of course it is.”

“No, it isn’t. You left her behind, and she died in agony anyway.” It felt ty to say it, but it was the only argument Chanyeol could find. “You killing yourself doesn’t save her. It didn’t save her.”

Searching his eyes, Kris said, “You’re lying. You have to be lying. I don’t believe it.”

Did he really not know? How could that be? “Kris… Jessica died only a few years after you did. She wasted away, and she was so, so sad.”

Kris shook his head. “No. That’s just the story that Jung made up, the accounts that made it into history books. It can’t be true.” He sounded desperate.

“But it is,” Chanyeol said. “Jessica’s ghost is always crying.”

Silence.

“What do you mean, Jessica’s ghost?”

Wait. What? “You haven’t seen her?” Chanyeol asked. And then, he realized, “Oh… oh my god. She only appears at this time of the year, doesn’t she? Only when the house is so strong that you’re trapped reliving your past. You wouldn’t have been able to go see her.” He took Kris’s hand and stood. “Come on, you need to go see her.”

Kris looked back at the nightstand drawer. “But -”

“Kris.” Chanyeol took both of his hands, and crouched in front of him. “I know that I have ulterior motives here, but please, please just trust me.”

Exhaling slowly, Kris considered, and then finally nodded. Smiling encouragingly, Chanyeol stood again, and pulled Kris to his feet.

So strange, to feel him there as a real presence at his side, and not a very handsome bank of fog.

They went down the stairs, and Kris showed Chanyeol how to open the bookcase from this side. “He would disable this,” he said, “and lock me in the tower for days, sometimes weeks.”

Chanyeol pursed his lips. “If he wasn’t already dead,” he muttered, “I’d be tempted to do the job myself.”

“You may yet get the chance.”

They crossed the house, with Chanyeol leading the way. The sky was already beginning to lighten outside, reminding Chanyeol that his time was limited.

There were flashes of movement along the way, too. At first, Chanyeol thought the house was messing with him, but then he realized what the flashes were. Out of the corners of his eyes only, figures followed them, peering through doorways and watching from the ends of halls. They were never there when he looked directly at them, but he caught impressions of robes and hanboks, short hair, long hair, bell-bottoms.

The ghosts of the young men the manor had taken were watching. Waiting.

“No pressure,” Chanyeol muttered, as they reached the west wing stairs. The ladder was still there from the last time Chanyeol had gone up, and he motioned Kris up it.

Kris went. He was strong, but a little clumsy, clearly unused to having to contort himself around broken flooring or over railings, possible out of practice at having a body at all. Chanyeol tried not to find it endearing, and failed.

He’d nearly forgotten how injured he himself was in all this commotion, and got a rough reminder when he went to pull himself up over the railing and both his shoulders started screaming at him. Kris ended up having to help him, which was a tiny bit embarrassing, but he hardly had the time to worry about that now.

When Chanyeol opened the trapdoor, Kris’s eyes widened. “I forgot that this was here,” he said wonderingly. “It was in the plans, but I never intended to use it for anything but storage.”

Chanyeol went up first, just to make certain Jessica was there. She was, the same as always, so he swallowed, gestured for Kris, and retreated to a corner of the room to watch.

The expression on Kris’s face when he saw Jessica was hard to describe, and harder to witness. Kris approached carefully, clearly wary, and knelt in front of her.

“Sooyeon,” he called. “Jung Sooyeon.”

Jessica’s head raised, the first response to anything that Chanyeol had seen her give. Her eyes focused on his face, and shades of a dozen emotions swept over her own.

“Kris,” she whispered. “But… you’re dead.”

His smile was so sad, it brought tears to Chanyeol’s eyes. “We both are, my love,” he murmured.

Jessica frowned, and looked around. She spotted Chanyeol, but it seemed her eyes got caught in several other places as well, as if she was seeing more than just Chanyeol. “So we are,” she said, and looked back at Kris, with growing understanding in her eyes. “You have finally found me.”

“I’m sorry,” Kris said, expression crumpled. “I didn’t realize you were here. I would have come sooner.” He looked around. “This room is your prison.” It wasn’t a question, but a realization.

“Yes. It is where I died.”

Kris’s lip curled angrily. “And even in death, your father traps us both.”

A blink. Jessica focused on him, her head tilting. “Is that what you think?” she asked. “Kris, my father put me here, and kept me until I died. But he is not holding me now. He’s gone.”

Kris frowned, obviously confused. “What?”

Jessica giggled, high-pitched and ugly. “He is gone. He died peacefully in his bed and his soul flew, Kris, he is not here. He’s not the one imprisoning spirits.” She pinned him with her gaze. “You are.”

The room was so still, Chanyeol was afraid for a moment that something in reality had broken, or that the house had literally frozen. Then, Kris shook his head, sharply. “No.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Kris,” Jessica said, in the familiar tones of someone who was very used to reminding him that he was an idiot. “It is your house. Your death. You are the one who cannot let me go.”

Kris stood abruptly, and turned away from her, his hands digging into his hair. The floor started to tremble, and Chanyeol braced himself in the corner. “No. He’s here, I know he is here!”

“He is gone. He died a very wealthy, well-respected man who never had to answer for his crimes, and I can’t stand that, but it is the truth!”

Chanyeol yelped and jumped as the wall he was pressed against suddenly heated under one hand, and chilled under the other. Blood was dripping from the ceiling down the walls, freezing on one side and steaming on the other, and the etched glass of the window was rattling ominously.

He stumbled across the room and took Kris’s shoulders in his hands. Kris tried to jerk away, but Chanyeol held him, more for his own stability than anything else as the room started to sway. “Kris! Kris, the house, it’s responding to your emotions. You have to calm down!”

Wide eyes, more brown than black now that he was opaque, stared at him in horror. Chanyeol cupped Kris’s face in his hand, rubbing a thumb over his cheek. His skin was frigid, belying his flush. “Breathe with me, okay? Breathe in.” He inhaled, holding Kris’s gaze and gesturing with his other hand. “And out.” He exhaled.

It took a few breaths, but eventually, Kris started to follow along. The temperature fluctuations in the room calmed, and after a minute or so, the blood started to fade, as well. Kris himself was shaky, but the room was no longer shaking.

“That was well done,” Jessica said quietly.

Chanyeol flashed her a sheepish smile. “It’s not that much different from what happens in my head when I have a panic attack,” he admitted. “Except, you know. Real. And not in my head.”

Kris heaved a breath, clutching into Chanyeol’s shirt. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Baby.” Chanyeol pulled him close, ran a hand over his hair. “It’s okay. I know how it feels, or, at least, some of how it might feel.” He braced himself. “But I think Jessica is right. Your anger is justified, believe me, but it’s holding you hostage.” When the walls didn’t immediately start shaking again, Chanyeol pulled back and looked Kris in the eyes. “You have to let it go.”

Kris’s eyes squeezed shut, and tears leaked from them. “How?” he asked. “It’s all I have. It’s all I am.”

“No it isn’t,” Chanyeol told him firmly. “You’re sweet, and curious, and a really good artist.”

Kris laughed. “I was terrible,” he admitted. “I learned to draw after I died.”

“Oh.” Chanyeol blinked. “Well, there! Doesn’t that prove that you’re more than your anger?”

“I hurt you so many times,” Kris realized, horrified. “I nearly killed you. I’ve murdered so many people.”

“I don’t think it was you, not really,” Chanyeol argued. “I think your anger and bitterness and shame became something else, something that soaked into the house and infected it. You weren’t in control of it anymore, you were a victim, just like everyone else.” He pressed his lips to Kris’s forehead, and Kris deflated in his arms, melting into the touch. “Take it back. Breathe it in. Then let it go.”

A chilly touch at their sides made them look up. Jessica was standing beside them, waifish and withered, her nearly skeletal hand resting on Kris’s arm. “Please, Yifan,” Jessica murmured. “I’m so tired. Please let me go.”

Kris looked like he was barely holding himself together. “I love you,” he gasped. “I’ve always loved you.”

“I know,” Jessica assured him, her expression softening. “I’ve never doubted it, I promise. But it’s time.”

She waited, watching him. Kris nodded, and closed his eyes, and breathed.

For long, long moments, nothing happened. Chanyeol grimaced - was it even going to work? Anger was a hard thing to let go, especially old anger; it wasn’t the kind of thing one could normally just drop.

Then, Jessica sighed, and faded away. Her hand dropped to her side, and her wedding ring slipped from her finger and fell to the floor with a clatter.

Kris collapsed to his knees. Chanyeol followed, gathering him up in his arms. Faintly, in the distance, Chanyeol heard the grandfather clock chime. Six AM.

“Please tell me that you are not still planning to kill yourself,” Chanyeol whispered.

Kris laughed, watery. “No,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

Chanyeol sat back onto his hip, and pulled Kris down. Pliant, clearly exhausted, Kris laid down on his side, his head on Chanyeol’s thigh, and Chanyeol brushed his fingers through Kris’s hair.

Reaching out, Kris picked up Jessica’s wedding ring, which was left behind on the floor. “It’s strange,” he said. “This was the one room of which I didn’t have any awful memories. Maybe that’s why I forgot it was here.” He tried to put the ring on his pinky finger, but it was so small, he couldn’t get it past his first knuckle. “Or maybe I just didn’t want to face her, deep down.”

The sky was almost light now, softly filtered sunlight bathing them both. Chanyeol brushed Kris’s hair back from his face. “Do you still have regrets?” he asked softly.

Kris snorted. “Regrets? I have dozens of regrets. I regret everything.”

Chanyeol blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that. Maybe he should have been.

“I regret allowing Jung to bully us into getting married. I regret that I didn’t throw him out of my house the moment he arrived - I almost did, did you know that? I regret that I was too wrapped up in my work and Jessie to notice him dismissing or executing all of my staff.” Kris exhaled, shaky. “I regret that I was too ashamed, too afraid to really fight back. I regret killing myself. I regret that I didn’t do it sooner, too, as if that makes a of sense.”

Weaving his fingers through Kris’s, Chanyeol remained silent.

“I regret that it took my death for me to find the time to learn art, and music. How could I have been so blind to these things in life?” He grimaced. “I regret that I never finished the house the way I intended to, and that my presence cursed it for two centuries. I regret every poor soul that I trapped here. They were happy, they were alive, and some part of me couldn’t stand that.” He looked up. “I regret that I never really got to be with you.”

Chanyeol was trying really hard, for Kris’s sake, to hold himself together, but that broke him. With tears welling in his eyes, he leaned down, curled in, and kissed Kris on the lips, exactly the way he’d wanted to for ages.

Surprised, Kris didn’t react at first, and the angle was sort of sideways and awkward. Then, he sat up, turned over, and pulled Chanyeol in, kissing him back, kissing him hard.

Too soon, he broke away, resting his forehead against Chanyeol’s. “No,” he gasped. “I don’t want to go.”

His stomach flopping, Chanyeol glanced at his watch. 6:05, one minute to sunrise. He pulled Kris close, hugging him fiercely.

“I’ll never forget you,” he sobbed. “Never. I promise.”

“No,” Kris cried, “no! It’s not fair!”

“Kris - ”

“My life was stolen from me before I was even a third of the way through it,” Kris snapped. “My death was lost to my own poisonous anger. My entire existence has been a waste.”

“No, it hasn’t, I promise you it hasn’t.” Chanyeol’s heart was breaking, shattering on the floor.

Long arms crossed over Chanyeol’s back. Long fingers clenched into his shirt. Kris buried his face in Chanyeol’s shoulder and snarled, “I’m not going.”

“Oh my God,” Chanyeol whispered.

“Don’t let me go, Chanyeol, please, I don’t want to go,” Kris begged.

Chanyeol pulled him closer, holding on tightly. “I won’t let go,” he promised.

White light filled the room, and Chanyeol tried to hold on. But when it cleared, Chanyeol was alone.

Curling up in the center of the room, Chanyeol buried his face in his knees and cried.

It was a good hour before Chanyeol could bring himself to move. He took several deep breaths, wiped his tears on his sleeve, reminded himself that he was lucky to even be alive, and went back down the stairs.

The front doors were unlocked, and touchable. Chanyeol opened them wide and stepped outside, just to be certain. He was free. Whatever had been in the house, whether it really was Kris’s anger or part of his spirit or something else entirely, it was letting him go.

Actually, he was pretty sure whatever it was was gone entirely. The house was silent in a way it hadn’t been, ever. No creaky pipes, no settling floorboards, no wind whistling through gaps in the windows. Chanyeol had gotten so used to tuning all those noises out that it seemed creepier now that it was quiet and empty than it did when it was haunted.

Chanyeol sat right in the doorway, on the welcome mat and legs stretched out onto the front stoop, and stared out at the lawn, wondering what the hell he was going to do now.

Could he stay here, surrounded by so many reminders of everything that happened? Or should he just sell the place, let someone else restore it, and… what? Move on, like it never happened at all?

His phone rang. Startled, Chanyeol yanked it from his pocket, and answered.

“Amber. Hey.”

“Hey, nothing, you ! I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for a week, and then all of a sudden I have all these texts and missed calls from you! Where have you been?!”

Her familiar tone made him smile, just a little. “Sorry about that. There was some kind of issue with the network here, I haven’t been able to call or send texts. Guess they must have gotten it fixed.”

Amber kept yelling at him, sounding relieved, and Chanyeol murmured reassurances and let himself just bask in her voice. He was exhausted, physically and emotionally, too exhausted to do anything but make affirmative humming noises.

He should probably go to bed, honestly. Sleeping for a week sounded like a good plan. Groaning, Chanyeol got to his feet, and turned to go back inside.

He stopped in the doorway, wide-eyed.

Kris was standing at the top of the grand staircase, hands braced on the railing, watching him.

Chanyeol blinked. “I’m hallucinating,” he said aloud.

“What? Yeol, are you okay?”

, he’d forgotten he was still on the phone.

Kris smiled at him. “No,” he said, “you aren’t.”

“...Who is that? Is someone with you?”

. Oh, . “You heard that?” Chanyeol asked, aware he sounded like an idiot and not caring. “You can hear him?”

“Dude. Like. If you’re in trouble, if there’s someone there with you, just say ‘yes,’ okay?”

Chanyeol barked a laugh, his feet moving forward on their own, his eyes not leaving Kris’s face. He was solid, not translucent, and seemed to almost be glowing golden tan in the early morning light. “I’ll call you back,” he said, and hung up. “Kris - how - ”

Starting down the stairs, Kris shrugged. His footsteps seemed too heavy, too loud - Chanyeol had never heard his steps make noise before. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “I don’t remember much of what happened on the other side. I know I was arguing. A lot.” He reached the bottom stair, and stopped. “I can be extraordinarily hard-headed when I want something, you know.”

Still moving forward, Chanyeol had to remind himself to breathe. “And you wanted to stay.”

“I did. I do.” Kris caressed the newel post at the bottom of the stair railing, familiar and fond. “So I suppose I am. Staying, I mean.”

Reaching out, Chanyeol hesitantly touched Kris’s shoulder. He was warm under his ragged Victorian shirt, maybe even a little sweaty. He felt solid, real. Alive.

His eyes met Kris’s, deep brown shining almost gold in the direct sunlight. “I want to cry,” he said stupidly, “but I don’t think I actually have any tears left in me. Sorry.”

Kris laughed. Full out, throwing his head back, joyful. His hands found Chanyeol’s and squeezed, and Chanyeol did start to cry then, hiccuping sobs that came out sounding more like laughter of his own.

“You’re here,” he said. “You’re alive, you’re here, you’re here with me, oh my God - ” Surging forward, Chanyeol kissed Kris as hard as he’d ever kissed anyone, almost throwing himself into Kris’s arms. Kris caught him, carefully keeping his right arm up high enough that he didn’t touch the stitches in Chanyeol’s side, and , , could this really be real?

“I’m here,” Kris said, when they broke apart. “To hell with dying, I did that for almost two hundred years. I’m going to live, Chanyeol.” He cupped Chanyeol’s face, wiped his tears with his thumbs. “I want to live this life with you. May I?”

Chanyeol’s heart was going to explode into a million messy, rainbow-colored, sparkly pieces. “I did warn you that I’m terrible at relationships, right?” he joked.

“Apparently I am terrible at handling my own emotions,” Kris said dryly, “so it may be a rocky road all around.” Chanyeol chuckled, and Kris’s expression softened. “Still. I want to try?”

Nodding, Chanyeol straightened up. “I do too,” he said. “I think maybe… maybe I can get it right this time.”

Kris smiled, and leaned in, kissing him gently. “I won’t ask you for ,” he promised.

Chanyeol laughed. “I think that, right there, makes you a far better fit for me than anyone I’ve tried to be with.” He cocked his head. “Do you want to stay here, or do you want to move somewhere else? I can sell the house, we can start over somewhere entirely new.”

Humming, Kris thought about it. “I meant for the manor to be filled with love,” he said, “and it was, for a few years. If you are willing… I’d like to reclaim it. I get another chance, it should too.”

Breaking out into a grin, Chanyeol said, “Yeah, okay. Let’s do it.”

“There is one more thing, though,” Kris said, very seriously.

Chanyeol blinked, his heart tripping. “Oh?”

“Yes. Very important.” Kris turned and took Chanyeol’s shoulders in his hands. “Your friend. Amber?” Chanyeol nodded, wide-eyed. “How does she make her hair that color? I want my hair to be that color.”

Stunned, Chanyeol’s jaw dropped. Kris’s lips twitched, and Chanyeol burst into laughter.

“Yeah,” he said between giggles, “we can dye your hair. And anything else you want. Anything.”

Smiling helplessly, Kris pulled him close and buried his face in Chanyeol’s neck. Chanyeol rested his forehead on Kris’s shoulder and just giggled, overwhelmed with giddy happiness.

When his giggles finally died down, Chanyeol pulled back a little. “Hey,” he realized, “it’s your birthday, right?”

“I suppose it is,” Kris murmured. “After two hundred years, I’m finally twenty-seven.”

“Happy birthday,” Chanyeol said with a smile. “What do you want for your present?”

Kris pulled him close and kissed his forehead. “I got what I wanted,” he said. “I got a second chance.”

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the end. see the next chapter for notes and thanks!

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