When Seunghyun awoke, the sun was shining fully through his opened blinds.  He found himself sprawled out on the couch, sweating lightly in the slacks and button-up shirt he had never changed out of the night before.  His head was pounding.  “Must have passed out…” he thought groggily.

Instinctively reaching for his phone, a sharp pain in his hand caused him to wince.  A piece of white cloth was wrapped around his palm, stained red along the center.  The cut burned fiercely and he cradled the injured hand in his other as he sat up.

“What on earth…”

“I do apologize for that,” a voice from behind caught him off guard.  He whirled around and shielded his eyes from the light; foggy memories of the bizarre encounter from that morning came rushing back and he recognized the voice immediately.

“You!” Seunghyun barked as he jolted off the couch.  “What are you—what did you do to me?!”  Nearly tripping over furniture, he stumbled into the kitchen, headed for the knife he had armed himself with the first time he had heard noises in the study.

“It was an accident!” the black and gold clad being implored, floating gracefully on his back over the couch and coming to rest with crossed legs above the coffee table.  He motioned towards a pile of glass shards on the table.  “I cleaned up the mess, and dressed your wound, master.”  His voice was soft and cautious.

“Don’t call me that!” Seunghyun shouted.  “I don’t want any wishes, o-or freaky ghost men in my living room, nothing!  Just get out!  Go back in the—“

“Don’t say it!”

The man extended his arms desperately, flying a few feet closer to the kitchen.  But the movement only sent Seunghyun clamoring backwards towards his bedroom in retreat, and so he stopped midair.

“If you send me back in the urn now, you’ll never call me forth again, I know.  You will waste my—your chance, at riches, power, anything you can dream of and more!”

Seunghyun didn’t want to listen.  He still only halfway believed this was happening, still was caught between terror and anger.  Nothing that the floating phantom who had appeared in his apartment at dawn had said made sense.  Why should he go along with his request?

His bloodshot eyes glared at the supposed genie.  “I want answers, now.  Where did you come from?  And don’t tell me the urn again, I get that.  I mean where did it come from, and why are you in it?”

The genie hung in the air above the kitchen sink, his tongue rolling around his mouth behind his lips.  “I cannot say.”

“Wrong answer,” Seunghyun declared, and he marched towards the study and the urn.  He didn’t know what he intended to do once he got to it – break it? order the genie back inside? – but he wanted to show that he meant business.

“I don’t know the answer!”  Moving like a fish through water, the spirit flew past Seunghyun and blocked the entrance to his office.  Though his words were pleading, his eyes were fierce.  “You must understand: it’s always been this way.”

Seunghyun paused, but remembering the fiasco near the couch that morning, continued into the study, walking through the genie as if he weren’t even there.  “What’s always been this way?  I want to know everything that you know about this.”  He pointed to the black urn emphatically.  It no longer glowed, or smoked, and seemed utterly just the same as it had the day Seunghyun brought it home.

The apparition sighed, his frustration prominent.  He didn’t enjoy masters who needed so many explanations, and Seunghyun was proving to be one of the worst.  He wrung his hands.  “If I’m not mistaken, I was first called forth to serve nearly ten centuries ago.  Perhaps exactly ten centuries.  But I know little to nothing about why it must be so.”

“So if those are your remains in there, you don’t remember—“

“Who I was?  Not a thing.  And it isn’t as if I haven’t tried.”  He crossed his arms and legs mid-air.  “I have a lot of time to think between wishes.  To be honest I don’t even know if they’re my ashes or not.”

“Then what…  How…”  Seunghyun’s face contorted into a pained expression.  Where to even begin?

“You’ve been presented with endless possibilities at your fingertips, sire,” the spirit went on.  “Yet you quarrel with yourself over why?  There is no ‘why’ to magic.”

“I don’t believe in magic,” Seunghyun blurted out, aware of the naivety of the statement in the face of such supernatural circumstances.

The phantom grinned through the side of his mouth, alluring and yet menacing.  “Wrong answer.”

Before Seunghyun could reply, a knock at the door drew his attention.  His face paled.  But the genie was unperturbed, and returned to a standing position.  “Don’t fret.  I know by now to make myself scarce when need be.”

“Just stay here,” Seunghyun’s watchful eyes darted between the genie and the apartment’s entrance anxiously.  “We’re not done talking about this!”  He shut the office door and stood still for a moment, considering not answering the knock at all.  What if it were Dr. Yang, come to collect his artifact?  Or his landlord responding to neighbors’ complaints of strange noises?

The visitor knocked again.  “Seunghyun?  Are you home?  It’s Mrs. Gong!”

Minji’s mother?  What was she…?

Seunghyun realized for the first time since waking that he had no idea how long he had been out.  The clock on the wall confirmed his suspicion: it was already nearing 2pm.  He had forgotten all about his dinner invitation, as Minji and her mother surely knew he would, and Mrs. Gong was here to remind him.  Simple as that.

Exhaling in relief, he answered the door.

Mrs. Gong was a stout middle aged woman who treaded perhaps too closely to the title of “Cool Mom.”  Her trendy, permed and dyed hair had only a small chance of looking appropriate on a woman half her age; on her, it was a bit of an embarrassment, and her teenage fashion sense was worse still.  But she delivered tupperware containers packed with steaming home cooked meals to her bachelor neighbor at least once a week, so Seunghyun was nonetheless quite fond of her.

She smiled for just a moment, as Seunghyun opened the door cautiously and positioned himself to block as much of her view as he could.  But the toothy grin flickered in shock when she took in a disheveled Seunghyun, receding to a thin line across her face.  “Oh, I’m sorry, if it’s a bad time—“

“No, no, it’s… well yeah kind of,” Seunghyun stuttered nervously, running his uninjured hand through his hair, knowing it must be a mess.  He would invite her in if he had any manners, but that was impossible.  “Er, can I help you?”

“I just came to make sure you remembered we were having dinner tonight,” Mrs. Gong replied slowly, her eyes wandering behind Seunghyun’s head, straining to peek inside.  “Is everything alright?”

Seunghyun corrected his posture, trying to appear as collected and normal as he could.  “Oh yes!  Just… just a late night, you know how that goes.”

Mrs. Gong was now not so subtly craning her neck to see behind him.  “Ah, well, dinner should be ready around 4, so—“

“Sounds great!  I’ll see you then,” he began to close the door, but Mrs. Gong’s foot swiftly moved between it and the doorway.

“Seunghyun, listen…” she lowered her voice.  “If there’s someone you’d like to bring with you, any ‘friends,’” her drawn-out emphasis on the world made Seunghyun twitch.  “I just want you to know there’s plenty of room at our table.

Mrs. Gong was polite, and thoughtful, but tended to be a bit of a gossip.  And she was endlessly curious about Seunghyun (albeit nonexistent) love life.

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he replied with a forced smile.  “Now I’ve gotta go, take a shower, get ready, all that.  Bye!”

The lock clicked shut. “A friend of yours?”

This time, Seunghyun felt the chill in the air before the voice could spook him.  “None of your business.  I told you to stay in that room.”

“True, but you didn’t wish me to.” An insolent grin broke out across the genie’s lips.

“No, and I’m not going to.  I don’t trust you,” Seunghyun waved him out of his way as he headed for his bedroom.  So what am I going to do when I go next door?  Leave him here alone?  Hell, what am I gonna do tomorrow when I go to work?

“You’re leaving soon?” the being asked, floating along behind Seunghyun into the bedroom.  He watched as Seunghyun opened the doors of his closet.

“Yes, but you’re not.”

“But of course, Master Seunghyun.”  He wafted to the bed, stretching out horizontally and laying down a foot above the blankets, hands behind his head.  His skirts blew lazily in an unseen wind.  “That is your name, correct?”

Seunghyun didn’t answer, only moved to the dresser for fresh underclothes.  A sharp pain shot across his palm as he pulled open the top drawer.  The wrap was bunched and had detached from the open wound.  He could see that it was shallow and thin, but inflamed and in need of sterilization.  There was a bottle of rubbing alcohol under the bathroom sink, at least he hoped, and a proper bandage.

The hovering phantom on his bed could tell he would get nowhere by pestering his new liege.  If he couldn’t make the cut disappear, he could make himself.   “Fine, I’ll leave you be.  For now!”  And in a poof, he was gone.

Seunghyun turned at the sound of whirling air, peering quizzically out the bedroom door across the living room.  The genie was back in the study, pulling books from his shelves and flipping through the pages at a rapid speed.

“Please, let that occupy him while I figure this out,” Seunghyun muttered, and headed for his bathroom.