Snow drifts gently to the city from the overcast sky. It’s all the same light gray; Hoseok can’t really even see clouds unless he squints and looks out of the windshield just right. The family dog, Mickey, groans a little, squished between Hoseok’s lap and torso, so he sits back and slouches until his knees touch the back of his mom’s seat.

“Are we there, yet?” He feels cramped and crabby.

Next to him, his sister pokes his side with a whine. “You just asked that, like, half an hour ago. Is the car stopped? No, we aren’t there, yet.”

“Children,” their mother sighs. She’s kept her eyes closed throughout most of the drive. Car rides make her anxious. Hoseok and Dawon napped, but rather than anxious, they’re just tired of being stuck together for the long drive. “We’re almost there, Hoseok. Is Mickey alright?”

The dog moans a little, more bored than anything else but acknowledging his name. Hoseok straightens the barette holding he dog’s fur from his eyes and nods. “He’s fine.”

Mr. Jung got a position at a university in Seoul, and after months of planning and packing and hectic days of actual moving and handing off the keys of their old home, they’re finally making the final haul into their new home. It's their first actual house after a series of apartments and condos. His mom is so excited to finally have a house that she already has appointments to meet with decorators and contractors to bring the 1920s building into the 21st century.

Dawon rolls her eyes and sits forward to pull her legs up under her, huddling against the door. She made the most fuss when her parents decided to move. The excitement of a house and a new place isn’t enough to even balance the disappointment and sadness of leaving her friends and familiar life.

Honestly, Hoseok feels no better. He knows he can make more friends and rebuild something familiar, but this in-between time is really lonely. He’d made friends through dance and rap battles, making a bit of a name for himself back home. A totally new place—especially so close to Seoul—is terrifying.

The greater worry is that people will be afraid of him for what he sees. He’s seen weird things since he was a little kid, and while his parents and sister may not entirely believe him, they still live with him. Out of sight, out of mind for them; if Hoseok doesn’t point at the corner of the room and ask who their quiet guest is, then they don’t have to look over their shoulders constantly.

For the most part, at least, the weird things have left him alone if he’s ignored them. He keeps his eyes on the sidewalk when he passes women in smart business suits and classy dresses with fluffy tails wagging behind them or the tall, semi-transparent beings hunched in doorways that disappear if Hoseok looks at them directly, and he steps carefully when crossing the street to avoid the little horned demons running among the cars trying to pierce the tires with nails and broken glass.

Maybe the new house will be different. That’d be nice.

Snow’s started to accumulate, lying over the grass like a thin white blanket. Hoseok can make out scuffed footprints when they wait at a traffic light. He hooks his fingers beneath Mickey’s collar, rubbing his neck with his knuckles, and leans his head against the window when he notices unusual two-toed prints among the birds’ and dogs’.

He falls asleep again, because the next thing he notices is something pushing into his hip. Dawon nudges him with her foot one last time once he finally opens his eyes and whines at her to knock it off!. She pulls her boots on and grabs her purse, holding the door open for Mickey to hop out.

The house is unique, as far as houses go. Hoseok isn’t sure he likes it any more now than when he first saw it with his parents, but it’s a place to live. He’ll get used to it.

It’s part modern and part traditional, like someone decided to just add onto an old house but not make it entirely match. The main part of the house has a pitched roof with tiles which has been extended over part of the modest yard. On the opposite end is a blocky, angular two-story addition painted the same white as the rest of the house but without the pitched roof. A wall surrounds the property, open just enough roadside to allow a car to park and people to walk around it.

Dawon heads straight upstairs to her bedroom. Hoseok tours the main floor and sets Mickey’s food and water dish against the peninsula in the kitchen. The dog sniffs them and Hoseok’s fingers, setting off on his own to explore his new territory.

“What do you think, honey?” Mrs. Jung asks her husband, opening another box with the rest of the dishes from their old home. “Pure white, a little bit of blue? Or maybe a green tint, because of the forests and mountains?”

“I think white is white, dear. Whatever you decide, I’m sure I’ll like.”

Hoseok makes a hasty escape before his parents start flirting. It’s great that they’re still so in love, but they go from zero to sixty with cheesy grossness. It’s embarrassing.

His bedroom is upstairs on the end of the house opposite the addition. A bathroom sits between his and Dawon’s rooms. Like the rest of the house, his room is a beige-y shade of white; there must have been a clearance sale on ugly paint. No wonder his mom is so excited to change it.

The basics are set up from his last visit, although a lot of boxes and bags are still piled in a corner. His bed is set up and pushed where he wants it, with Mickey’s dog bed at the foot; his desk is against the wall nearby, and most of his clothes are hanging in the closet.

For some reason, it’s freezing inside. He purposely avoided pushing his bed and dresser against the vents, and he can feel heat when he puts his hand against the front of the vents, but the heat just isn’t warming his room.

“First night in a new house, and the heat’s busted,” he grumbles. Usually, he runs warm. His mom being a mom, though, made sure he had extra blankets and socks and sweaters. They moved north, but it’s not that far north.

He’s grateful, though, and reminds himself to thank her as he pulls on a sweater and wraps a fluffy red blanket around himself and drops onto his bed. It squeaks, but there’s a good bounce to it.

From his bed, he can see his whole room and out the window. It feels even colder; he tucks his legs up and wonders if he should move his bed away from the window. Maybe it’s not insulated enough.

It’s too cold to move right now, though, and coldness makes him tired and lazy. He rolls onto his back, staring into the darkness. The outside edges of his vision are even darker, somehow, and maybe it's his mind playing tricks on him, but it seems like the longer the stares, the more the darker darkness closes in.

"Y͞ou͢ s̶ho̷u҉ld l̢e̵a̴ve͞.͜"

His heart punches his throat. The voice is distorted, like it’s far away and being piped into his room from somewhere.

"Ŷ̠̘̪̽͑̇o͓̙̺ͯ̾u̪͙̖̰̱̜ ͍̭ͮ̋̇͑̎s̍ͭ̓̾ͯ͌̚h͙ͦ̆̑̈ͅö̯̗ụ̹͉̭̰̣̤̐̐̀̿ͭl̥͇͖͖͌d͈̬̻͇̮͗͑́ͅ ̯̭̠͓̣͈ͦ̊̏͒̑̿l̻̖̜ͧ̓̑ͅe̗ͭ͊ͤ̓̂a̘̥̙̫̜ͩ̀̄ͨv̫̭̲̥̬̳͔̆͑̐̉eͫ͋͆͂̽͆.̟̦̔͋͒͗"

He's afraid to blink, certain that whatever is in the dark corners of his sight will actually appear, and he doesn't want to see. He wants to shout for his parents, but he's fifteen and too old to be afraid of the dark. They’d blame his nerves on the comics he likes to read—which doesn’t make sense, because he hates scary things and only reads dramas and comedies—and the strangeness of being in a new place.

He can’t ruin his mom’s excitement by mentioning weird things the very first night. The last thing they need to worry about is living in a haunted house.

If it is haunted, it’s not that big of a deal, fundamentally. Ghosts are displaced spirits; they only hang around because they need something. They're too attached to move on to wherever they're supposed to go. Maybe he can help, and his family will be none the wiser.

"W-Who are you?" He sees his breath as a fog. He’s never been so cold that his braces sting his teeth.

“Non̄̍̌̉͑͒e̵ͪ̿̿̑ oͯ͂͊͋͝f̨͊ͨ ̿ͧ̚y̔̅́ͨ̂̏̑̕ǒ͐͐ͧ͡u͐̊̏̀͠r͏ ̷̉̿b̴ũ͋ͨ̾̂ͩ̚s̛͐͌̌͌ͨ̉̎i̧n̸̓ͤͯeş̈̄̎̓̏̾s͆.̐̾"

"I want to help you."

"Wh͘y͠?" They sound closer and clearer, curious.

"You're here because you're hurting,” he bulls. “I can help you, and then you can rest..." In peace and leave the Jung family in peace.

"Y̵ơ̬̣̫̜ͅṳ̹͚͔̼̭̰ ̠͓̹̬͡ͅc͖͓͓͝a̖̖̜̪͚n̤͜'̙͎̮̤͖͞t̺̺͖̤̪̲̣͜ ̷̦͍͎h͔̜̫̙̠e͎̙͎̺͚l͙̩̠̺̲̕p̠̗̝̻̳̹̤ ̞̜͕̠̦͇͟m̷͚̖̫̖̩̻e͎̗̪͇̪͓͞.ͅ ̠̙͚͙J̦̺̯̱u̹̘̼̪̪s̟̫̥̖̳̬ṱ̹̥͇ ̟̬͙l̷͉͎͔̟̗̫e҉a̯̪̫̳͖ve͚̜̘͇̦͡.͈̜̮̦͙"

Hoseok waits, choking, and blinks in the creeping darkness. There’s not much else he can do.

He breathes deeply, unconsciously, and breathes again, bringing a hand to his throat. The weight on his chest is gone, and he actually feels warm again. Whatever—whoever—was there is gone, and Hoseok doesn't realise just how exhausted he is until he wakes up seemingly minutes later to his mom knocking on his door for breakfast.

"You don't look well, Hoseok. Did you sleep okay? You slept through dinner last night; I couldn’t wake you." She shuffles a short stack of pancakes onto his plate with a concerned frown. Her husband's already at the university and Dawon wanted to take a walk around to explore.

Hoseok nods and rubs at his eyes with his fists. "I'm fine. Just...new place and all."

Mrs. Jung smiles in understanding. She had a rough time falling asleep last night, because she kept thinking about all the changes and colours and decorations she wants to add to the house. "Eat up, then, and get dressed. You can help me pick paint."

Hoseok spends the better part of the day looking at walls of paint colour strips and debating whether or not this colour is too dark for the living room or if that colour goes with this other colour. They buy rollers and brushes and trays, and his mom gets tiny cans of seven different shades of white to smear on the walls and look at them throughout the day.

He doesn't know how nervous he is until they get home. For some reason, he looks up at his bedroom window. Bags hanging from his arms, Hoseok bumps the fence door closed with his hip and freezes on the narrow walkway to the front door. He hadn't opened his bedroom curtains, but something has hooked one of them, holding it back as though someone was watching the street and driveway.

"Hoseok?" his mom touches his shoulder. He blinks, and the curtain is hanging like he'd left it. "You need help?"

"No, Mom. I'm good. Just thinking." He hurries up to the porch to get out of her way, kicking packed snow off the soles of his shoes. She unlocks and opens the front door, closing it behind her son. A shiver shimmies her shoulders. "Brr. You feel that? Did I accidentally turn off the heat?" She mutters as she sets her purse on the kitchen counter and checks the thermostat. "It's not so bad in the kitchen. How strange. Maybe it’s the furnace," she sighs, adding it to her mental to-do list. Hoseok drops the bags onto the one sofa that came with the house and looks around nervously.

Everything's as they left it this morning, he thinks. The chill is gone from the air when he cautiously walks towards the front door again.

"We'll deal with it when your father gets home. Maybe he knows some trick on how to fix it. He's always surprising me, even after seventeen years." Mrs. Jung laughs fondly and claps her hands together. "Okay. How about we get some colour on these walls?"

"If you can call white a colour."

His mother pops open a little can with a church key the store employee included. "It's elegant!" She peers at the paint in her hand critically. "And anything will be better than this weird yellow they chose..."

Hoseok pops open the rest of the paint cans and dabs neat squares at relatively even intervals while his mom just dunks in a wooden-handled sponge and strikes the wall in various places. "I need to see how it all looks in the light and shade!" she insists. If his mother is doing it, so can he. He runs away from her threatening sponge of honeymilk after writing his name across half the wall in winter orchard.

They go out for lunch to a food stall they saw on the way home from picking paint. Hoseok likes being out with just his mom. He loves his sister, but she can be a bit much, and when his parents are together, especially out to eat, they act like they’re on their honeymoon.

Walking home, Mrs. Jung holds Hoseok’s elbow, tugging him to take a different route and see what they can find. It’s always an adventure for Hoseok, because he can’t let his mom know about the things living among them. He focuses on her comments about the homes they pass. There are some houses that look a lot like their house, probably built and renovated around the same time, and there are others that look very traditional—some roof tiles have faces that frown when they notice Hoseok staring—and very modern. Cutting down an alley, they return to their street and greet an elderly woman with a fat Dachshund wearing a tight sweater.

Hoseok purposely doesn’t look up when they return home, not wanting to know if they’re being watched or not.

Mickey doesn’t bark a greeting like usual. He doesn’t even come out, and Hoseok finds him cowering in the kitchen by his dishes. “What happened, boy?”

“Hoseok!” He carries Mickey into the living room, where his mother has collapsed onto the sofa, white as a shade of paint.

The tiny sample cans they brought home aren’t all that big, but their contents are emptied and smeared across the walls and ceiling, dripping into puddles on the floor.

“How did this happen? We locked the doors…”

“You want me to call the police?”

“I’ll do it. You go to your room and make sure Mickey’s okay. He must be terrified.”

Upstairs, Mickey gets restless the closer to Hoseok’s room they get. He starts thrashing in Hoseok’s arms and pushes with all his might until he can jump to the floor and scurry down the hall to Dawon’s bedroom. Hoseok follows him, but the little dog refuses to come out from beneath his sister’s bed.

“Mickey, I know you’re scared. It’s okay, now.” He pleads with the dog for a few minutes but gives up. He’s safe under the bed, at least. Dawon won’t mind.

His mom’s voice carries up the stairs as she files a report. A cruiser shows up within fifteen minutes, but it’s a brief interview that ends with an unsatisfying We’ll look into it and be in touch. They found no signs of forced entry or of any damage or stolen items anywhere in the house.

Mr. Jung is mystified and alarmed when he comes home but assures the family that they will have a security system installed as soon as possible. Dawon apologises for being out for so long, but she’d already made friends at a nearby cafe. She helps clean the floor; they leave the mess on the walls and ceiling. It’ll still serve its purpose.

The mood lightens during dinner and after a bath. Mickey makes an appearance again but avoids Hoseok and his bedroom, so he puts the dog bed in Dawon’s room.

Hoseok doesn’t sleep well again and wakes up to the feeling of falling through his bed. He's perfectly still, but his insides are dipping heels over head. His eyes snap open, leaving him disoriented and dizzy, which he assumes is why things are hazy, at first. Looking to the wall across from his bed, it's as though someone decreased the saturation and offset the remaining colour to something brighter than normal.

It shifts, and things are in focus again. It sighs, and Hoseok tries to look directly at the haze, which takes the shape of something like a shoulder.

"Who are you?"

"I̡'m Seokjin͠ ͢I liv͞e ҉h̸ere.̵" He sounds far away, like there's more than literally a foot and a half of distance between them and the distance is filled with ripping wind.

"Was that your dream?" Hoseok saw a house that looked like their new one, before the additions were built and before there were so many other houses. It had an overall melancholic feeling, although he couldn’t see anyone or hear anything that would specifically make him sad.

The ghost, Seokjin, shakes his head sadly. "I do̕n̨'̡t͏ ͠drea͢m̧ an͜ym̧o̴r͘e.͡" He draws his legs up to his chest, and Hoseok realises that Seokjin is pretty much on his lap.

In his lap. He's taking up the exact space Hoseok is. He doesn't flinch when Hoseok scrambles backwards until his back slams against the headboard. His shins pass through Seokjin's hips.

"You're a real ghost," Hoseok marvels softly. He throws out his arm. "You're the ghost who messed with my mom's paint!"

Seokjin flinches but nods. "I̎̔ͩ͞'̔m͛ͣͪ̾̚͝ ͂͋̉ͥ͐s̍̎ͧͣ͑͊̕ǒ̊̾̇̆rͯ͌͢r̀̂͛y.ͥ͆ͫ̇̆̽ͭ" I j̶ust wan̢ted͝ ̷yo͜u ̧ţo ̕l҉e̸a͢ve̡ ̨my͠ ̡ho͘m̶e̴."

Hoseok pulls his blankets up. It must be Seokjin making the house cold with his moods. "You didn’t hurt anyone, but my mom’s pretty freaked. At least you didn’t start throwing furniture or something.”

"You͏ s͟ai͏d y̶ou͞ ̴w͏ant͝ed͞ ̶t҉o h͢e̴l̕p ̨m̵e͡.͝"
̨
"Y-Yeah.” His jaw shakes with how much he tries to not shiver. “What I know of ghosts, they're just kind of stuck."

"W͡il̛l͡ ̢you ̕stil̷l͞ help̸ ̸me͜?͜ ̵Ev̧en ͞thoug̸h͜ I̢ ͟r̕u̢in̛eḑ th̡e ̧pa͟i̸ņt?"
̸
Hoseok nods. Seokjin doesn't see him, so he says, "Yeah. It's just paint, anyway; we cleaned it up easy enough. Like I said, you didn’t hurt anyone. And...you shouldn't be here. You'll be lonely."

Seokjin hugs his legs tighter. He looks young, somewhere around Hoseok’s age. He almost can't hear his whisper, but it draws goosebumps up along his legs."I̷ ͡w̴an̸t͠ ̶to ̧kn͞ow̴ w̛hąt ͟ha͝ppe̕ne̵d t͘o͟ ̢me͏.͟" He turns his head, still not looking at Hoseok, although the perceived distance between them is gone, and Hoseok can hear him clearly. His voice is soft and even. "I want to know why I died."

Hoseok sleeps better after talking to Seokjin. The ghost apologizes for the coldness; he can’t feel it and didn’t know he was affecting anything, but the room warmed up once he left to wherever ghosts go when not actively haunting.

Mrs. Jung is browsing sectional sofas on her tablet in the living room. They’ve covered the current one with an old blanket; there’s too much paint to clean off. Hoseok drapes himself over the back of the sofa and rests his chin on her head. “Hey, Mom?”

“Yes, dear.”

"Do you know anything about the people who used to own this house? Like, its history or whatever?"

She looks at the ceiling over her reading glasses, thinking. "I’d think that'd be in the paperwork we got when we bought the place, if we have it at all. They wouldn’t just give out personal details..." She sets the tablet aside and crosses the room to the rolltop desk she'd inherited from her grandfather. The wood squeaks as she opens it. "Your father keeps everything together, so it should be in the folder. Here!" Pulling out a white envelope with the real estate's logo on the front, she hands it to her son. "Do not lose any of that information, or face your father's wrath, got it?"

"Thank you."

She returns to the sofa, pausing to look thoughtfully at the paint smears in the morning sunlight. "What do you want it for, anyway?"

"Just curious. Maybe knowing some of its history will bring up ideas for decorating you might wanna do."

She pats his cheek fondly. “You’re such a good son. Let me know if you find something interesting.” She kisses him and picks up her tablet.

Hoseok and his flushed cheeks escape to his bedroom, where he closes the door and just about has a heart attack when Seokjin appears right behind him. "Don't do that!" he hisses. His heart calms under his hand and trembles a little at the ghost's hurt expression. He really does look young, but now that Hoseok can see him clearer, he looks a little bit older than Hoseok. More mature and filled out or something. "Give a guy some warning next time. I don’t do surprises well." He holds up the folder. "I got this from my mom. Maybe it'll have something useful that'll help you remember something useful."

Seokjin nods. "Okay."

Hoseok sets out the pages in order. They're only printed on one side until the more recent documents printed with a printer rather than typed on a typewriter. Seokjin sits on Hoseok's bed and reads quietly, eyes darting back and forth and absorbing things impossibly fast.

Hoseok's just skimming pages from the 1970s when he hears Seokjin hum. "Here." He points to a name on a yellowed paper. "Kim. That's my family name."

Hoseok takes the paper and reads the dates, information, and names. There are two Kim families that have owned this house, but Seokjin points to the first one, listed as living here in the 1950s.

Nothing mentions a family, much less a son, but he has enough to work with that maybe he can find something online. His school has already given him the username and passwords to their online databases, which are supposed to be used for literature and history research. Seokjin fits into the history category, Hoseok thinks. Now that he's had more opportunities to look at him without the rigidity of fear, he notices that Seokjin's hair is black and straight, cut short, and he wears a simple striped T-shirt tucked into tan slacks. He wouldn't really stand out today, but there's something about the cut of the pants or how the shirt hangs that reminds Hoseok of photographs he's seen of his grandpas as kids.

“When were you born?”

“1953.” Hoseok chokes on his spit. His mother was born in 1954.

“Okay, ahjussi. I start school in a couple days, so I’ll have access to their databases, but I’ll also get busy with homework. I’ll try to find what I can, though. There’s a big library in town, too. They’ll have newspaper archives.”

“Thank you for doing this, Hoseok.”

He hums, sifting through the rest of the papers. A lot more goes into real estate than he realized. Aside from a copy of the house listing, there are pages of features and dates when maintenance work occurred, a folded sheet with blueprints, local ordinances and rules for the neighborhood… There’s even before and after photos of the renovations. He hopes his dad doesn’t want everything in the same order it was.

The blueprints look nothing like the house as he knows it. It’s too flat and simple, and he doesn’t know the shorthand or symbols for a lot of the things, although he can guess based on what’s there now. Plans for the second story are on a sheet behind the main floor. Before the addition was built, the house had only two bedrooms, and Hoseok’s room was considered the master.

It’s smaller than it was, though. According to the blueprints, his closet should extend farther than it does.

“Look at this.” Hoseok spreads the plans on his bed. Seokjin leans over, not wrinkling the blankets with his lack of corporeality. “My closet’s shallow, but this shows something the size of a small room.”

“It was bigger before.”

“It was? Why is it so small, now? I could fit, like, all of my clothes and dresser and things in there and have enough room to dance in here.”

Seokjin shrinks back, and the temperature chills.

“Seokjin? What is it?”

“It’s closed for a reason.”

“A good reason?”

“Yes.”

Hoseok refolds the plans and stuffs everything back into the envelope. Scooting off his bed, he opens his closet doors and pushes his clothes aside. He wishes there was an overhead light, but his phone as a flashlight app.

The back of the closet looks normal. It’s beige-y white and slightly textured. When he knocks on it, however, it doesn’t sound solid. There’s some give when he pushes against it, too. It’s cold beneath his palm.

“I think this is fake.”

“Hoseok, please don’t.”

“Don’t what?” He pushes harder, but he’d probably have to kick it to break through, and he’s not sure he could cover up the sound with his mom and sister in the house.

“Just leave the closet alone. It doesn’t mean anything. Someone just wanted a smaller closet.”

“No one wants a smaller closet, especially now. Rule number one of modern life.” He leaves Seokjin to return the envelope and almost trips over his sister’s legs as she’s lacing up her boots. “Where are you going?”

“Mom wants to look at furniture. You want to come? We were planning on lunch at the cafe I found.”

He shakes his head. It’s an opportunity he can’t pass up.

With his family out of the house and staying gone for at least an hour and a half, Hoseok has free reign. He digs around a hall closet for his dad’s toolbox and picks out a claw hammer. Being the back of the closet, he can hide any hole with his clothes and boxes. He’s curious and wants to know what’s hidden that Seokjin doesn’t want him to find. Even ghosts can have treasure. Hoseok’s heard of money hidden in the walls and floors and attics of old homes. Some people even bury time capsules.

Mickey sniffs at the hammer and looks at his boy curiously. Hoseok scratches his ears. “No worries, boy. It may get a little noisy, though.”

“Hoseok, please don’t do this." The ghost reaches for him but pulls his hands back to fidget. “Just leave it. Seriously. I don’t want you to see…”

"I want to know what’s back there that someone felt they had to hide." A bad feeling is growing in his chest, though, telling him that he won't like whatever he finds. He pulls his shirt up over his nose. “My family’s involved, now; this is supposed to be our home, and you’ve been hurting this whole time. If I can figure something out by doing this, then it’s worth it.”

Seokjin fades a little, lowering the temperature. “It’s just...s҉̠̜̖͝o̡͙͘ ͏͏͓̖̲͜ụ̰͓̬̞̣͈g̦̠̪̠̥ͅl̶̛̪̺̳͉̤̼͇y̯̞͘…”

“Keep lookout for me, okay? I don’t want my mom to come back while I’m doing this.” It’d be an awkward thing to explain.

“Okay, stand back, hyung.” Pitching his arm back, he firmly grips the hammer and slams it into the closet wall. It breaks easily, freeing dust and releasing old smells that make Hoseok’s stomach lurch. His brain brings images of dehydrated mouse corpses. Worse—rats. He hates rats.

He pounds a few more holes before flipping the hammer around to pull bigger pieces away with the claw until there’s a hole big enough to stick his head and an arm through. The hammer’s tossed onto his bed, and Hoseok opens a flashlight app on his phone. Sticking his arm into the hole, he shines the light around and recoils at the thick cobwebs draped from the ceiling to the walls. He’s never understood movies that show a seemingly sealed room or cave coated in cobwebs and dust.

As far as he can see, the flooring should match his bedroom. It’s not unfinished or bare, like he’d expect behind a wall. There aren’t any wires or plumbing either. It’s just dead space.

“This is weird,” he says. “It’s just an empty part of the room that someone closed off.” Even if there was something there, and it was taken, why reseal it with a fake wall?

At the far corner, his light catches something large that glistens, covered in plastic or a tarp. It leans against the wall with strange rigidness, like a rolled up rug that’s bent and slouching beneath its own weight.

Seokjin shifts away from the curtains, still fidgeting and casting glances between the window and Hoseok. “Hoseok...” A car door slams outside. Mrs. Jung and Dawon walk up the porch and open the door. Mickey barks once, welcoming them back or tattling on Hoseok.

It clicks in his head, when he eyes the shape and size of the bundle plus the little white things poking out from the front of the bottom of the bundle, and he drops his phone as he trips over his feet in his hasty escape from the secret room. He doesn't even realise he's screaming until Seokjin's kneeling in front of him, eyes wide and hands hovering uselessly.

"Hoseok?!" Two pairs of feet thunder up the stairs, and his mother is immediately beside him, pulling at his arms and pushing his hair back to see if he's hurt. Dawon’s right behind her, cheeks flushed and eyes rounder than usual. "What happened? What did you do to your closet?"

"Mom," Hoseok whimpers, "I found Seokjin."

"Who?" She shudders, passing through Seokjin, and looks into the hole in the wall, where Hoseok's phone is still illuminating the hidden room. "Oh my God..."

“Mom, what is it?”

“Don’t come here, Dawon. Call the police. I’ll call your father.” Mrs. Jung takes Hoseok’s elbow, pulling more gently when he can’t stand right away, and guides both of her children downstairs.

Seokjin passes through the wall to his secret place. It looks nothing like him, he thinks, but it's still familiar. There's even a little bit of soul clinging to the bones, calling him home. What will happen to him if he responds, after all this time? Where will he go? What will happen to his body?

His sadness lowers the temperature of the whole house, but the Jung family is too numb to notice.

Police arrive with a coroner and determine that the body in the wall has been there for too long for any of the Jungs to be involved.

Mr. Jung comes home early from a lecture and watches as a corpse is removed from his son’s bedroom.

Hoseok, Dawon, and Mrs. Jung sit in the living room of their elderly neighbor with the fat dog, a woman with a heavily lined face named Mrs. Lee. Red and blue lights flash on the walls, even with the curtains closed. Mickey sits on Hoseok’s lap and whines softly when his boy doesn’t respond to his curious nudges.

“Are we gonna move again, Mom?” Dawon asks. She holds a mug of cooling tea in her hands, although she hasn’t drunk from it since taking it. Hoseok hasn’t touched his tea at all.

“I don’t know, honey. We’ll see.” She’s more worried about her son than her house, wondering if he knows more about the mysterious body than he’s said. He’d mentioned a name to police but couldn’t say how he knew it.

Hoseok has been quiet since being taken to the neighbor’s house. He’s seen dead bodies before; his grandparents and some older uncles have died in his lifetime, but a body laid out for a funeral and a body wrapped up in the wall of his bedroom are totally different. He knows what to expect when he goes to a funeral; he knows what to feel and what to say.

Seokjin is...unexpected.

It makes sense, he knows, that Seokjin would be dead. Ghosts aren't ghosts if they're not dead. He just never thought he’d be so close, literally living and sleeping and playing games in Seokjin's final resting place.

After a long time, everyone leaves and curious neighbors return home. It’s late by the time the Jungs return. No one seems willing to go to bed, although they’re all exhausted.

Mr. and Mrs. Jung’s room is on the main floor. They retire first after checking that their children are both okay for the nth time. Dawon takes Mickey and curls up on the blanket-covered sofa. She turns the TV on with subtitles, keeping the volume almost muted.

Hoseok feels lost, standing in the front hall. To his right are the stairs and to his left is the living room. When she doesn’t hear anything, Dawon looks around the corner.

“Are you going upstairs?”

“I dunno.”

“I can go get some pillows, if you want to stay in here.”

“It’s fine. I can get them.” He walks into the room and perches on their dad’s recliner, pulling his legs up. He’s not even sure what show his sister has on, but she eventually falls asleep with Mickey beneath her arm. She doesn’t stir when he gets up and leaves.

The stairs don’t creak as he ascends, but there’s a really squeaky board right at the top that he fears will wake everyone and freezes.

No one comes. They stay wrapped in their own dreams.

His room seems darker, like it’s leaking from the hole in his closet. Something is crawling slowly across the floor, but he’s seen them before in old buildings. They’re harmless little things that seem to prefer old buildings and stagnant air. He nudges it aside with his foot and stands in the middle of his room until he feels the ghost’s presence.

"It's okay, Seokjin hyung. You can go, now," Hoseok murmurs. He can see him clearly in the shadows, darkness filling in what life left behind.

Seokjin shakes his head. "I don’t think I can. I want to—I promise I’m not trying to be difficult and make trouble for you or your family—I just still feel...stuck.” He sighs and rubs his hair viciously. “Wh͝y ͠a͟m͘ I s҉til͡l̡ ͟here̕?"

“Do you…” Hoseok wonders if it’s impolite to ask a ghost how they died. “Are you aware of how your body came to be in that little room?” Seokjin’s silent, fading a little. “Hyung?”

“Ḭͅ'̲m҉͇̬̱̖ ̙͍̪̫͘ţ̹͚i͈̟̟̟͕͢r̢̤̱͉͍eḏ̨.̝” He disappears entirely, although Hoseok still feels his presence. “W͞e ̛c̡an̶ ̸t͢al̵k͠ la͝ter.̨”

“I still want to help you, hyung.” Hoseok shivers. “Please believe that.” He tucks his pillows beneath his arm and drags his comforter from his bed, trudging back downstairs to reclaim the recliner, although he doesn’t fall asleep until very early in the morning.

a.n.: Written for ppphonology for the 2017 Elfscouts exchange. It was a little different this year in that we didn't get actual prompts but more a list/letter of our recipient's likes/dislikes. I was going to do a different high school story, but it felt too typical, and I switched gears to write this, instead.

I even managed to throw together one of those moodboard things before my PS died on me.

For now, I'm marking this story as complete. I'm bad with "sequels" or chapters, so I'm going to try to trick myself into continuing this.