“How do you feel about the instating of Parliament in view of the British royal family’s long history of rule? Please explain in detail in no less than seven hundred words,” Junhong reads off the first essay question on his Modern European History homework. He stares at the question blankly. “You’ve got to be ing kidding me.”

Junhong doesn’t really pay much attention in his Modern European History class. Sehun and his friend Sunwoo are both in that class as well, so he spaces out a lot during class and wheedles the answers out of his friends when it’s time for homework. Unfortunately, Sehun is out with some of the other dance club members, so copying from his roommate’s homework is pretty out of the question.

Junhong groans and lets his head fall forward onto his desk, wrinkling up his essay paper and his textbook pages. He’s not smart enough for this stuff. Didn’t the school take his abysmal grades into account before offering him a full scholarship? And what about Aunt Sumin? Surely she’d known she’d be setting him up for failure by sending him to Peritia. It’s impossible for him to keep up in his classes.

With another groan, he forces his head off the desk and begins flipping pages in his textbook, trying to find the section they’d covered in class the day before that went over British Parliament’s creation and what that meant for the royal family.

He is re-reading the same sentence at the top of the paragraph for what seems like the fourteen time – each time it seems to make less sense than it had the time before – when there’s a sharp rap from behind him.

Jumping in his seat, he quickly turns around, eyes narrowing in on what had made the noise. Nothing seems amiss, so he attributes it to his and Sehun’s next door neighbors – they’re pretty loud, and it is a Saturday afternoon – and turns back around to try to at least get something down on his paper. His teacher, Ms. Lee, will skin him alive if he doesn’t turn something in.

He manages to get a sentence down – it’s pretty much verbatim from the book, but he’s not eloquent enough to paraphrase it correctly – when another noise comes from behind him, this one loud enough that he curses out loud and nearly knocks his chair over in his haste to turn around.

There’s a book lying in the middle of the floor, a book that clearly wasn’t there when he’d turned around a minute ago. It’s also nowhere near anything else, so it couldn’t have fallen off something.

Frowning, Junhong walks over to the book and picks it up. It’s his English-Korean dictionary, quite a hefty tome. He distinctly remembers leaving it on the bookshelf, which is all the way across the room. There’s no way that the book could’ve fallen from the bookshelf and ended up in the middle of the dorm room.

Still, Junhong just shrugs it off. He replaces the dictionary on the bookshelf, between his English and Geometry textbooks, and returns to his desk. He has to get this homework finished.

Only, when he reaches his desk, it’s empty. There’s nothing sitting on top of it, even though he knows he’d left both his history textbook and his homework paper there. Even his pencil is missing, the same pencil he’d been chewing on while reading.

“What the actual ?” he mutters, scratching the back of his head in confusion.

Maybe Sehun is playing an elaborate prank on him or something? Only Sehun left hours ago and hasn’t returned; there’s no way he could’ve sneaked back into the room when Junhong has been here the whole time.

When Junhong turns around, he finds his Modern European History textbook and homework stacked neatly in the middle of his bed, his chewed-up pencil waiting expectantly for him on top.

A chill goes down Junhong’s spine and, for the first time, he feels an actual inkling of fear. What the hell is going on here?

He cautiously walks over to his bed and picks up his book and homework, turning them over to see if everything is as it should be. It appears to be, so he takes it back over to his desk and settles down again. Only this time he’s too wound up to even pretend to focus on the essay question he’s supposed to be answering. It feels like there are eyes boring into his back, but, when he turns to look, the room is quiet and empty.

In fact, it’s almost too quiet. Since the weather has been getting a bit warmer, there are usually students out playing in the bailey, shouting and having a good time, especially on the weekends. But today Junhong can hear nothing other than his own heavy breathing and fast beating of his heart.

He swallows the lump in his throat and tries to go back to his essay, but he only gets two more words down before another crash, this one louder than the other two, echoes from behind him.

Junhong jumps up, his desk chair falling to floor behind him. The entire bookshelf has turned over, sending books and papers flying in every direction.

And Junhong has had quite enough. Not even bothering to look for his shoes, he flees the room, only remembering to grab his key just before the door slams shut.

He doesn’t know where he’s going; anywhere, as long as it’s away from his dorm room. His heart is still pounding as he rushes down the steps two at a time, the stone cold through his cotton socks.

He runs straight into someone at the bottom of the stairwell, stumbling back a few steps. The person has to grab onto Junhong’s shoulders to keep the terrified boy from falling to the floor.

“Woah, you okay?” It’s Yongguk, the upper classman that Junhong had met before. He gets a closer look at Junhong’s face and recognition dawns in his eyes. “Ah, Junhong, right? What the hell happened? You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”

Junhong lets out a weary chuckle, feeling a bit less panicked now that there was someone else there with him. “Funny you should say that,” he mutters, running his fingers wearily through his hair.

Yongguk frowns and looks down to see that Junhong isn’t wearing any shoes. “What the hell, dude?”

Junhong hesitates, but he decides that he has to know and Yongguk is probably the best person to give him the lowdown on Peritia Academy. “Is the school, you know, haunted?” he asks.

Yongguk gives him a flat look. “Are you insane?” he demands. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Junhong mutters, feeling foolish now. “It’s just…some really weird stuff happened in my dorm room just now.”

“Weird like how?” Yongguk asks, but he seems a little judgmental and Junhong is a little embarrassed now to talk about it.

“I dunno,” he mutters. “Things kept moving around and then the bookshelf got pushed over and it was just really freaking me out.”

Yongguk put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “The castle is old and so it creaks a lot, and there are a lot of drafts. Besides, it’s easy to freak yourself out when you live in a castle.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Junhong says, but he knows that a draft couldn’t have pushed over the bookshelf. It was pretty heavy; it had taken both him and Sehun to move it when they’d first rearranged their room. And that didn’t explain how his books had moved from his desk to his bed.

There is something creepy going on, Junhong thinks to himself.