CHAPTER III
Ghost in the Wind.

Each day which passed by for Doh Kyungsoo was exactly like the others. Every morning he awoke in his tapestried room and found Jina kneeling upon the hearth building his fire; every morning he ate his breakfast by the fire which was either porridge or eggs, bacon and bread. After each breakfast, he gazed out of the window across to the huge moor, which seemed to spread out on all sides and climb up to the sky, and after he had stared for a while he realised that if he did not go out he would have to stay in and do nothing - and so he went out.

After his first meeting with Jongin, he, surprisingly, only saw him from time to time. Kyungsoo wished he could see more of Jongin, but he could never find him in the huge gardens and moor. Whenever they did meet, Kyungsoo found himself becoming more comfortable with the elder and even going out of his comfort zone to let Jongin touch him and show him how to pet all the wild animals that seemed so tame in Jongin’s touch.

Whenever Kyungsoo did go out, he would run along the paths and down the avenue, increasing his rate of circulation, and making himself stronger by fighting with the wind which swept down from the moor. He ran only to make himself warm, he hated the wind which rushed at his face and roared and held him back as if it was some giant he could not see. But the big breaths of rough, fresh air blown over the heather filled his lungs with something which was good for his whole thin body.

After a few days spent almost entirely outside after arriving at Misselthwaite, he awakened one morning curious and intrigued about what secrets lie in the house. He had many questions, Where was his uncle? Why couldn’t he go to any other rooms except his own and the library and what was the cry in the corridor so late at night?

He took his time eating his breakfast, fearing the cold outside soon to come. Luckily, there were a few rainy days, so the boy was delighted to stay inside and read. He wondered if Jongin was allowed to come over and play in his room. Maybe they could play hide and seek in the huge house. After he ate, he was shoved outside once he was dressed warmly. He couldn’t wait for the spring to arrive, the winter days were becoming unbearable.

Once he went outside, there was nothing to do. He walked round and round the gardens and wandered around the paths in the park, which was the place he went to more often than others. It was a long walk outside the gardens with walls around them. There were bare flower-beds on either side of it and ivy grew thickly against the walls. There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark green leaves were bushier than elsewhere. It seemed as if that part had been neglected for a long time. The rest of it had been clipped and made to look neat, but this lower end of the wall had not been trimmed at all.

Kyungsoo stopped to notice this and wondered why it was so. He had just paused and was looking at a long spray of ivy swinging in the wind, when he saw a gleam of vermillion and heard a chirp, and there, on the top of the wall, perched the red robin he saw a week ago when he first met Jongin. He was tilting forward, looking at Kyungsoo with his small head on one side.

“Oh! Hello!” he cried out, he whistled like how Jongin taught him. It did not seem strange to him that he spoke to the robin as he was sure that he had understood and answer him.

The robin did answer. He twittered and chirped and hopped along the wall, as if he were telling him all sorts of things. Kyungsoo followed him, and every now and then the robin stopped to check if the boy was still there. The robin whistled back at Kyungsoo, and at last spread his wings and made a darting flight to the top of a tree, where he perched and sang loudly.

It reminded Kyungsoo of the first time he had seen him. He walked along the path, following the ivy-covered wall until he noticed a very tiny hole in the wall, big enough for a brick to sit there. Kyungsoo stood on his tiptoes to see if he could see through the hole, but he was far too small and could only see even more ivy. He decided to follow the wall, to see if there was an entrance but each corner and end he found no door. He wondered what was on the other side of the wall, and why there wasn’t a door.

Kyungsoo was so curious, he spent the whole morning running around in circles trying to find the entrance. He wondered if Jongin knew about the mystery beyond the wall.

This gave him so much to think about, maybe he and Jongin could climb over the wall. Or perhaps they could ask one of the gardeners if they could borrow a ladder so the curious boy could see what was hidden.

He ran back to the house when it was noon to get lunch. The food wasn’t particularly to his liking, but from being outside in the cold all day gave him an appetite. Kyungsoo sat by the fire and ate quietly, his hair had been tied back into a short ponytail, by courtesy of Jina, on the top of his head, that and his rosy cheeks making him resemble an apple. Yet Kyungsoo still managed to pull his bangs forward so they were in his eyes. Jina didn’t understand Kyungsoo and his hair. Although she didn’t like to provoke him, Jiwoo would question how a young man could look so scruffy with such long hair, that is, if he ever meets his nephew.

Kyungsoo didn’t know why he liked his hair long and tangled. He liked it in his eyes and covering his ears. As a toddler, Kyungsoo would fall asleep with his chubby fingers wrapped in his hair. And if anyone was to sleep next to him, his hands would find a way into theirs and he would tug. It comforted him, the fine silky strands wrapped around his fingers. As he got a little older, by the age of four, Kyungsoo started tugging his hair so much that it started to fall out. Small patches around his ears and the front of his hairline were bare. No one really understood why, and Kyungsoo didn’t either. He just knew that it made him feel safe and comforted.

Eventually, the hair pulling stopped when he turned six, and his hair grew back over the summer. But to this day, when Kyungsoo was upset, he would lie in bed and wrap his fingers around a chunk of hair and tug lightly.

After lunch, the boy decided to go read in his room. He was tired from running around outside, he was a little upset that he didn’t see Jongin today, but it was still early and he had plenty of time to go outside and find him.

Later that day, around three o’clock, Jongin surprised Kyungsoo by turning up at the manor house. He took the younger boy by the hand and led him outside to a field that was through a long stretch of land covered by trees. In the field was a small honey-coloured pony and its mother grazing the grass. Jongin walked over to the baby and patted his head. The pony seemed happy to see the boy and his mother trotted over to say hello too.

“His name is Whiskey. When he was a youngling he got stuck in a ditch and cried for hours. I pulled him up and ever since, he follows me around everywhere. He’s always so happy to see me.” Jongin smiled while combing Whiskey’s thick mane. Kyungsoo thought the pony was cute but a little bit scary, his teeth could nibble his fingers away if he were ever to feed him.

Jongin gestured for him to come closer, he took Kyungsoo’s hand in his own and placed it on Whiskey’s head. “Don’t be scared of animals, you’ll find that they are more scared of you than you are of them,” Jongin said calmly, he placed his own hand over Kyungsoo’s and smiled down at the boy. Jongin’s hands felt warm under Kyungsoo’s nimble fingers, his stomach felt strange for a few seconds during the short touch. He continued raking his fingers through Whiskey’s mane, it felt quite wonderful being on the open fields alone with Jongin. The evening was arriving early and soon the winter sky would be turning from grey to glowing pinks and warm oranges.

Jongin went over to a fence, where a green bucket was hanging off the post. He picked it off and swung it lightly as he walked back to Kyungsoo. Inside were carrots, leftover vegetables and some hay.

“Would you like to try feeding him?” Jongin asked, he took out a carrot and showed Kyungsoo how to do it. Whiskey gently took the carrot out of Jongin’s hands and crunched loudly. The younger boy watched with fascination, Jongin was so good at doing that. He thought Jongin was good at a lot of things, even though he wasn’t book smart like himself, Jongin had his own kind of intelligence that Kyungsoo admired.

The boy reached into the bucket and took out a handful of hay, he flinched when Whiskey’s mouth came near his hands, Jongin noticed the sudden anxiety and cupped his hands over his. Together they fed the pony and Kyungsoo felt a sudden wave of achievement. The warm hands of Jongin on his own gave him some kind of power he did not know he had. For the first time since Kyungsoo arrived at Misselthwaite, he smiled.

“Wow.” Jongin gasped. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile!”

Kyungsoo immediately scowled. He didn’t understand why it was such a big deal for someone to smile.

“Forgive me Master Kyungsoo. I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just so surprised to see such a beautiful smile on such a sad boy,” the tanned boy apologised softly. The sun started to set, the golden skies reflected in Jongin’s warm eyes and lit up his face. The two stood side by side for a while, feeding both ponies and Kyungsoo sat and watched Jongin brushing their manes. As he watched the sunset illuminate Jongin’s frame, he thought about the wall he found earlier. His curiosity got the best of him again.

“Do you know what’s over the high wall?” He said out loud.

“High wall?” Jongin replied, he had finished caring for the ponies and now the pair were walking back through the gardens.

“There’s a wall covered in ivy and it goes on for ages. I’ve circled it many times, but I cannot find the door.”

Jongin bit his chapped lips and shoved his hands into the pockets of his waistcoat. “Could be the garden Master Jiwoo had locked up ‘bout six years ago.”

“Garden? Why did he lock it?”

Jongin shrugged. “No idea. After she died, Jiwoo changed.”

This got Kyungsoo thinking even more. “Surely there is a door? It cannot possibly disappear!”

“Oh, there is a door. But I am not certain where it is, as I have never been in there,” Jongin replied, he was now walking with a stick he found on the ground and using it to lightly hit against trees and raking through the leaves on the earth.

The garden didn’t seem to show as much interest to Jongin as it did to Kyungsoo, and he didn’t understand why. Being at Misselthwaite somewhat gave him so many interests other than reading. The fresh wind from the moors blew the cobwebs out of his young brain and woke him up a little.

During the evening, Kyungsoo found it difficult to sleep once Jina had left him. His brain refused to shut off and it was quieter than usual. There were no footsteps from the servants, no pots clamping in the kitchen and certainly no crying. It had been a few nights since Kyungsoo had heard the mysterious crying.

He was suddenly inspired by an idea. He made up his mind to go and find it himself, he was not troubled about Anne, who seemed always to be in her comfortable housekeeper’s sitting room downstairs. In this strange place one scarcely ever saw anyone at all. In fact, there was no one to see but the servants. Kyungsoo’s meals were served regularly, and Jina waited on him, but no one troubled themselves about him in the least. Anne came and looked at him every day or two, but no one inquired what he did or told him what to do. It made him feel incredibly lonely.

Kyungsoo got out of bed, taking the chamberstick with him and opened the door of the room, he went into the corridor and was met with darkness. He began his wanderings, the corridor was long and it branched into other corridors. It led up to short flights of steps which mounted to others again, there were so many doors and just as many pictures on the walls, Kyungsoo glanced as he tiptoed through the house. Some of the pictures were dark, containing curious landscapes, the majority of them were portraits of men and women in strange grand costumes made of satin and velvet.

He had never seen so many pictures, and as he walked further into the darkness, the faces in the pictures seemed to stare at him. He felt as if they were wondering what an odd little boy was doing in their house. Some were pictures of children - little girls in thick satin frocks that reached to their feet, and boys with puffed sleeves and lace collars - or even big ruffs around their necks. He stopped at all the pictures of children and wondered what their names were, where they had gone and why they wore such odd clothes.

It seemed as if there was no one in all the huge rambling house but his own small self, sauntering about upstairs and down, through narrow passages and wide ones, where it seemed to him that no one but himself had ever walked. So many rooms had been built, people must have lived in them, but it all seemed so empty that he could not quite believe it.

All the doors were shut, just like Anne had said, yet Kyungsoo’s curiosity reached out to him and he put his hand on the handle of one of them and turned it. He was almost frightened for a moment when he felt that it turned without difficulty and that when he pushed upon the door itself it slowly opened into a big bedroom. Like his own room, there were embroidered hangings on the wall and inlaid furniture. A broad window with leaded panes looked out upon the moor; the moon was bright and full. In the far distance, Kyungsoo could see a small amber light. He wondered if that was where Jongin lived.

After that, he opened more doors and explored. He became tired of seeing so many rooms that he began to think there must be a hundred, though he had not counted them. In all the rooms there were old pictures or old tapestries with strange scenes worked on them. There were curious pieces of furniture and ornaments in nearly all of them. In one room, which looked like a lady’s sitting room, the hangings were all embroidered velvet, and in a cabinet were about a hundred little rabbits made of ivory. They were of different sizes, from the length of his pinkie finger and some as big as his fist. He set the chamberstick on the cabinet and opened the door, he sat on a footstool and played with the rabbits for quite a long time. When he got tired he set them back, arranged them in order of size and shut the door.

He decided he was tired of walking and turned back to where he came from. Two or three times he lost his way by turning down the wrong corridor, but after a short amount of time, he reached his own floor, though he was some distance from his room and didn’t exactly know where he was.

He stood in the darkness, only the single candlelight being his guide. The corridors were so long that he couldn’t see what was ahead of him for a few feet. The stillness of the night was suddenly broken by a sound. It was the cry again, but not quite like the one he had heard before. It was only a short one, a fretful, childish whine, muffled by passing through walls.

Kyungsoo’s heart began to beat faster, his hands clamming up and the hairs on the back of his neck stood still. He put his hand accidentally upon the tapestry near him, and then sprang back, feeling quite startled. The tapestry was the covering of a door which fell open and showed him that there was another part of the corridor behind it, Anne was coming up it with her bunch of keys in her hand and a very angry look on her face.

“What are you doing here?” She hissed, grabbing Kyungsoo by the arm and pulling him away. “What did I tell you about poking around?”

Anne dragged Kyungsoo down the corridor, chamberstick forgotten on a table and ignored Kyungsoo's pleading. She was firm and did not care about being quiet or gentle to the boy, and pushed him inside his room. Anne said nothing but scowled at Kyungsoo and slammed the door.

The small, confused boy sat on the hearth-rug pale with rage. He did not cry, but anger washed over throughout his body. He did not understand what he had done wrong. Shaking from both fear and anger, he slowly strolled to his bed and covered himself fully with the bedsheets after taking his shoes off, but leaving his clothes on. Hiding his head in the bedsheets, he drew deep, hitched breaths as he attempted to calm himself down. He started to soothe and pull at his hair again until he fell asleep.

In the morning, the winds woke Kyungsoo up. They roared throughout the house and rattled the glasses and silverware in the large dining room. The hollow, shuddering cry rushed round and round the house, as if a giant that no one could see were buffeting it and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in. Jina had just opened the door by the time Kyungsoo had sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“Good morning young master, I heard you were out strutting around the house in the night. You gave Anne quite a shock” Jina laughed softly, her eyes crinkled the same way Jongin’s did when he smiled.

“I do not strut,” the boy replied hotly, he was still upset for Anne being so cross with him. He ate his breakfast with a frown on his face, and when he was finished - Jina began to prepare him for a bath. Jina talked a lot, sometimes too much, but Kyungsoo’s brain would usually zone out and he would only tune in for the things he found interesting. Yet he never asked questions.

In the bath, Jina chatted away like there was no tomorrow. She mentioned Jongin a few times which had Kyungsoo’s ears perk up like a dog’s. She talked about how spring was just around the corner, but Kyungsoo didn’t understand how as it felt like there would be no spring or summer here due to the dead earth.

Jina talked about how pretty the gardens are in the spring, and that the whole moor is swarming with colour and the air smells like honey.

“Why did my uncle lock up the garden?” Kyungsoo suddenly asked. Jina blinked several times and sighed. She sat on the floor of the bathroom on a soft rug while Kyungsoo lay back scooping the bubbles around him.

“Our Jongin told you right?” he nodded, waited for Jina to continue. “Anne said it's not to be talked about. There are lots of things in this house that’s not to be talked over. That’s Kim Jiwoo’s orders. His troubles are none servants’ business. The garden belonged to his wife, Cho Minsoo who had made it when they were first married and she just loved it, and they used to tend the flowers themselves. None of the gardeners were ever to go in themselves. The married couple would stay in them for hours, just talking or reading. Ever since she died, Jiwoo locked the garden up and threw away the key.”

“How did she die?” Kyungsoo asked curiously, he felt sorry for his uncle.

“I am unsure. I have heard many things, but I don’t know the truth,” Jina’s eyes glazed with a sadness Kyungsoo hadn’t seen before. He did not ask any more questions and decided to let it rest for now.

While Jina was rubbing Kyungsoo’s hair with a fluffy towel, she combed through the tangles but the boy winced and pulled away.

“You have many knots, if your hair was shorter it would not be this messy,” she advised. Kyungsoo sat on the chair in the bathroom with his bathrobe around him moving his head away from Jina’s touch.

“I think it would be best if we cut it now, I won’t be able to unknot it with you moving around like that.” She opened a drawer by the vanity and took out a pair of silver scissors. Kyungsoo’s heart began to speed up, he stood up and ran into the bedroom. Jina followed him and didn’t understand why he was behaving the way he was so suddenly.

“Don’t cut it.” He said, hands balling into fists and coming to rest just under his chin. He stood in the corner of the room, feeling safe with two walls protecting him.

“It’s just scissors, they won’t hurt you.” She tried to soothe and began to walk closer to him, closing him in between the walls. She reached out to take a clump of knots, but Kyungsoo reacted quickly and moved his head.

“Don’t move Kyungsoo!” Jina raised her voice for the first time, and tears began to form in his eyes and sting as they made their way down his cheeks. She managed to snip one clump of hair, the sound vibrated in his ears and panic rose in his chest. All of a sudden, out of nowhere - Kyungsoo pushed Jina with all his strength and slapped her around the face. She looked at him with disgust, holding her burning cheek with one hand and the scissors in the other.

She turned around and stormed her way out of the room, shutting the door. Kyungsoo slammed his tiny fists on the huge wooden door, tears prickling. He did not understand why he hurt Jina. He did not understand why she was so angry with him.

Kyungsoo was frustrated and it made him even more upset. He banged his head several times on the door and tangled his fingers through his hair. He pulled and pulled until he felt a little better.

After a while, Kyungsoo sat on the floor by the fire. He assumed he would not be allowed to go outside today. Usually, when he acted out in the orphanage, he was locked away in his room without his books or anyone to talk to. He didn’t understand himself, and he felt a great wave of sadness over him. More than anything, he wished that Jongin was with him right now.

At that very moment, Kyungsoo’s cries were replaced with another. The same mystery crying. A door must have been opened somewhere downstairs; for a great rushing draught blew along the passage and the door of the room he sat in was blown open with a crash. As he jumped to his feet, the light from the fire was blown out and the crying sound was swept down the far corridor, causing it to be heard more plainly than ever. Kyungsoo’s eyes, glassed with unshed tears, widened and his bottom lip started to tremble in a sob, eyebrows furrowed with worry, as he covered his ears and began to scream.

wow, i'm so surprised this fic has love! i thought it wasn't something people would be interested in reading. 
anyway i had fun writing this chapter!!! 
please remember to leave a comment :)