(A/N: Thanks for all the new subscribers, hello! I hope you like exposition.)

-

Donghae drops his suitcase unceremoniously onto the floor and bounces onto the bed, dislodging pillows and snagging both of the little chocolates that roomservice had laid there. Hyukjae rolls his eyes, kicking Donghae’s suitcase out of the little hallway and leaning his own against the wall.

“Hotels are the best,” Donghae declares, ignoring it when Hyukjae wrinkles his nose in disagreement. They’ve had this argument before. It always ends with Hyukjae’s protests about hotel beds being filthy, then being silenced by Donghae’s reminder that they are the kind of people who dirty up the sheets in the first place.

Pulling out his phone, Hyukjae frowns at the blank screen. “Hey, did Kyuhyun call you?” he asks, but by the time Donghae has wrestled his phone out of his jeans, Hyukjae has already scrolled to Kyu’s contact listing and pressed call. It picks up on the second ring.

“Seriously, give a guy enough time to check into his hotel room, why don’t you?” Kyuhyun says by way of greeting.

“If you weren’t late so often I wouldn’t have to worry.”

“I am never late.”

“You’re always-“

“Okay! But I’m purposefully late. It’s a choice.”

“Oh, really.”

“Yes. You going to meet me there for the set-up?”

Hyukjae hums, looking around the room for the clock. “Yeah, we’ll meet you. Kyuhyun, thanks again.”

“Mmhm,” Kyuhyun returns in a tolerant tone. Hyukjae swears up and down that they’ll pay him back for all the work he does for them one day, but if they paid him by the case, they’d never be able to afford any equipment. “Don’t be late, I’m not hauling that stuff out of the van by myself,” he says, and then hangs up before Hyukjae can manage anything more than vague squawks of indignation.

Donghae is sitting quietly now in the center of the bed, his own phone still in hand. “I checked in with Byunghun, everything’s fine,” he says. There’s a nervous sting to the air, at odds with the brightness of the walls and the fluffy white duvet that Donghae is sitting on, summer air breezing in through the window. Their presentations go relatively smoothly nowadays; the general turnout is more populated with people interested in the paranormal than it is with skeptics. They don’t go around announcing their relationship, but it’s not a secret, either. It’s publicized enough that most of anyone who’d be bothered by it just steers clear of them in the first place.

They’re still on guard, though. The benefits of spreading awareness and information outweighs any harassment they might come across. Always has.

Hyukjae looks at the clock pointedly even though he just checked it a minute ago, smirking at Donghae. “We’ve got two hours,” he says, flopping across the end of the bed.

“Oh, do we,” Donghae says coyly. He stretches out parallel to Hyukjae.

“Yep. No deadlines, no baby monitor, nobody about to walk through the door at any minute…”

Donghae smiles and sets his hand over Hyukjae’s hipbone, fingers skimming under the hem of his t-shirt. “I love hotel rooms,” he repeats, voice pitched low, then kisses Hyukjae’s answering grin.

“That’s cheating,” Hyukjae mutters, but gives up the issue in favor of kissing Donghae some more. It’s not as if they don’t still make time for this, but something about being truly unburdened and unhurried makes it easier to just stop thinking about anything other than the slow give and take of the kiss; of Donghae’s hand moving further under his shirt, palm sweeping warmly against Hyukjae’s side. He sets his own hand against Donghae’s cheek to steady the kiss, thumb brushing his cheekbone. It gives him enough leverage to scoot closer, to tilt Donghae’s head back so he can kiss him open-mouthed, familiar but careful. There’s no rush. Donghae sets the tip of his tongue just under Hyukjae’s upper lip, it gently into his mouth in a lazy way that sends warmth traveling up Hyukjae’s spine. Donghae’s hand soothes it away, moving up the back of his shirt until his fingertips are brushing at shoulderblades.

Donghae releases the kiss only long enough to repeat it with his lower lip and Hyukjae’s chest tightens; he pulls back for breath. Donghae’s eyes are smug and lazy when they open to look at him. Hyukjae smiles with one side of his mouth, glad at how swollen it is from just a few minutes of kissing. He props himself up with the elbow previously trapped against the bed, using his leverage to push at Donghae’s shoulder and roll him entirely onto his back.

“So?” Hyukjae teases, “What d’you want?”

Donghae pretends to think about it, twisting his face up dramatically until he looks all of five years old – or he would, if not for the lecherous grin he follows it up with, right before hitching a leg over Hyukjae’s hip and reversing their position. Hyukjae just laughs and draws Donghae’s head down to his, picking up where the last kiss left off. Donghae’s familiar weight settles over him, and the breeze sends a shiver through his body has very little to do with the cold.

-

They don’t show up late, exactly. They just arrive a few minutes after Kyuhyun, who lords it over them during set-up, people filtering into the lecture hall as seats begin to fill. It doesn’t take long. Kyuhyun spends most of the time hooking up the laptop to the projector while Donghae and Hyukjae carry in some of their equipment, placing cameras and sensors on a folding table set up on the stage. They test the projector screen to make sure the computer is working the way it should, and then Kyuhyun opens on a title slide. Paranormal Investigation, it says, simply.

Hyukjae leans against the front of the lecture podium and glances sideways at Donghae. He nods.

“Well,” Hyukjae starts, “we’ve got a pretty full room, so let’s get started. My name is Lee Hyukjae, I’m a paranormal investigator and researcher.” He turns to Donghae, who smiles at him, then at the audience.

“I’m Lee Donghae.” He gives a little bow. “I experience varying degrees of clairvoyance.”

“He’s psychic,” Hyukjae puts in, grinning and waving his fingers in Donghae’s direction. Donghae kicks him in the shin.

“You could say that,” he concedes when the light chuckles have died down. “Definitions can be confusing. I have a high degree of clairsentience, which basically means I can sense the paranormal, and I can see auras easily. In some cases I can hear and feel spirits, but usually that can only happen if a spirit is – to put it simply – broadcasting.”

“Can you read my fortune?” someone calls out from near the front of the audience, snickering.  Hyukjae stands casually upright from his lean and looks at Donghae, who’s frowning at the man.

“If you’re talking about seeing the future, no. I could read your aura, but that doesn’t tell you anything you don’t already know about how you’re feeling. Sometimes I…” he looks distant for a moment, trying to find the words. Hyukjae wouldn’t have given this guy this nice of an answer, but Donghae is… Donghae.

“Sometimes I can sense things… experiences, from living people rather than spirits. But only in rare situations, and I can’t control when or if it happens.”

“But the short answer is no,” Hyukjae interjects. “If anyone else has questions, we’ll have time dedicated to answering them. I’m going to go through some basic equipment, definitions, and types of haunts, and then you can ask anything you want.

“Donghae’s extrasensory perception is a helpful starting point in a case, but the aim of our investigations is to collect evidence. Honestly, we debunk more of our cases then turn out to be true.”

He turns to the laptop where it’s set up on the podium and switches to the next slide, which lists some of the equipment they use. Kyuhyun trots in from the side of the stage and hands Hyukjae a small remote so he doesn’t have to keep using the computer to change the slides, and then goes back to where he was standing.

“Okay, this one’s probably the most popular,” Hyukjae says. He picks up a recording device from the table and holds it up. “EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon. Basically, the recorder catches sounds that we can’t hear, but that spirits might be trying to communicate. You can catch EVPs with any recording device as long as the microphone is sensitive enough. Handheld recorders like this one are ideal. Sometimes we use more sensitive external mics hooked up to a computer, usually in an area where we’ve already caught EVPs. EVPs are common, but they’re not a very good source of evidence. Background noise, radio waves, animal interference; basically there’s a lot of contamination.”

“He uses me instead,” Donghae cuts in, tapping the side of his head and earning a few more polite chuckles.

“Well, yeah. Donghae is just as reliable as this thing.” Hyukjae waves the little recorder in the air. “But his senses are not measurable proof. Photographic proof gets a better reputation, but to be honest, those just as easy to contaminate as EVPs, and harder to catch in the first place. Most photos are taken in the dark, which means shadows and reflections are easy to confuse with an actual spirit. Photos taken during the daylight are usually too bright to catch anything.”

“What about all those pictures full of dust that people say are orbs?” says the man from earlier.

Hyukjae forces a smile that he hopes is polite. “Can you save your questions, please?”

But Donghae speaks almost on top of him, too lost in his head to notice the rudeness. “Most of those photos really are of dust or bugs, we think. Orbs, as people call them, are probably just concentrated energy. Spirits don’t actually admit or give off light – that’s why they’re most often described as being either shadows or transparent. It’s important to remember that they’re not occupying space, they’re just echoes. It takes a lot of energy to manifest, and what we’re seeing are disturbances in that energy. Orbs take a lot less energy than full manifestations, and they usually mean that there’s concentrated activity in the area. Lesser spirits sharing energy, using each other to amplify. They’re generally too weak for a camera to pick up. So yes, you’re right to be suspicious of those photos.”

Hyukjae is already circling around to the table to pick up an IR camera and an EMF detector. He can’t really decide if this lecture is going well or not – he’s distracted by the obvious skeptic who keeps interrupting them, but Donghae doesn’t seem disturbed. And the guy is unknowingly playing right into their hands, anyway.

“Since Donghae is talking about energy,” he says, holding up the EMF detector in one hand and setting the IR camera on top of the podium. “This is a good way to figure out if we’re dealing with paranormal energy or normal, residual energy from the atmosphere. It’s an electromagnetic force detector, which is exactly what it sounds like. It senses and measures the natural electromagnetically charged particles around us, and the ones given off by electricity. It’s one of the reasons we turn off all the lights and anything using electricity before we investigate – we need to get a base EMF reading before we can tell if there are any spikes in energy.”

He turns the little device on and lets it run for a second. “Okay, you can’t see it from your seats but this is reading point six milligauss, which is a science-y unit of measuring magnetic density. This is a normal reading, considering the computer and projector set up in here, and all the energy powering this building. It means it’s not haunted. Is it, Donghae?”

Donghae shakes his head at him, grinning. “Not necessarily, it could just mean that no spirits are present right now. But yeah, no, this university is not haunted.” Hyukjae nods once, satisfied.

“Okay. Now, when we start getting readings above 2.0, we start to get suspicious. Again, this doesn’t prove much, but some local power source would have to be generating a lot of power for this thing to get such high readings. EMF testing just narrows things down so we can tell where to focus the investigation. Usually the EMF reading spikes really high when some activity that can be seen with the eye is about to happen. This is the best indication we have in paranormal research that EMF readings are legitimate, and that our theories about supernatural entities manifesting energy are on the right track.”

He turns off the meter and sets it back in the table, turning to the IR camera. “Kyuhyun, can you…?” Kyuhyun trots back onto the stage and starts fiddling with the computer. He pulls up a video which starts playing silently on the projector screen.

“Some aspects of the paranormal can’t be perceived by us. Unless you’re Donghae.” He glances over where Donghae is watching the screen silently, but he gets no reaction.

When they first started doing public seminars, they considered keeping Donghae’s clairvoyance to themselves. They shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that people who believe in the paranormal are just as ready to accept that Donghae’s abilities are real – but mere belief is not what proves any of their investigations. The audience is leaning forward a bit now, more engrossed in the video playing behind him. It’s demonstrating what film looks like that’s been shot in infrared, and he guesses they’re waiting for a ghost to pop out. It’s not going to happen; the video was shot in their apartment, and it just demonstrates how IR cameras can pick up on heat signatures.

But as Hyukjae is explaining this, he notices some audience members, as they always do, glance at Donghae from time to time. They’re curious. Once, in Incheon, an audience member asked Donghae if he had been reading everyone’s aura. He’d been a little flustered at that, but a quick explanation of how he can tune out certain senses the same way anyone can close their eyes when they don’t want to see had satisfied the man. Hyukjae knows that Donghae mostly tunes him out during this part of their routine, but it does give him a sort of mysterious air, which plays right into the audience’s perception of him.

“So,” Hyukjae continues once the video has stopped, “infrared or thermal cameras work outside of the spectrum of visible light. That doesn’t mean it’s ghost-vision, though. Ghosts, spirits, entities, however you want to refer to them, aren’t always using their energies in visible ways. Most aren’t aware they’re doing anything, and some are using too much energy of one form to be detectable on the other.”

He picks up the remote and flips to a new slide. “Okay, let’s talk about different kinds of entities for a bit and then we’ll open to questions.

“There are two main types of hauntings – residual haunts and intelligent haunts. Residual haunts are the most common, the easiest to catch, and the least treatable. The spirits behind a residual haunt are repeating the same actions or sounds, always at the same interval of time, like an echo. To put it dramatically, they don’t know they’re dead. One of our first cases was in the home of an older woman who claimed that she’d lived there for 20 years, and every morning at 7 a.m., an apparition moved across the floor and exited the house from the front wall.”

“The apparition didn’t have any signatures.” Donghae cuts in. “I couldn’t read anything from her, and neither I nor any of the equipment could interact with her at all.”

“To be fair, we didn’t have much equipment back then. We’ll get to that in a second,” Hyukjae grins. “After some research, we learned that the woman’s house had been expanded before she bought it. The front room, and the front door, had been added to it. The old door –” he flips to a scan of an old building plan – “had been about ten feet to the left. Right where this apparition appeared every morning.”

“The spirit didn’t know anything had changed. She just kept going out the front of her house, like she probably used to do every morning when she was alive. Hyukjae couldn’t see her – I could, and the homeowner could, but that’s because the homeowner was attuned to the same energy after living in the house for so long.”

“In any case, we took advantage of it. Since no outside influence affected the spirit, and we knew exactly where and when the apparition would occur, we got this.” Hyukjae flips to the next slide.

It shows a photo of a room with white sheets draped over the walls and a pale, shadowy transparency in the shape of a person. He smiles at it, remembering that day – remembering when the digital camera had shown the preview of this photo and its clear, unmistakable full apparition; how Donghae had practically tackled him in excitement when he saw it, causing Hyukjae to fumble the camera and almost drop it.

“We got lucky,” he says, still grinning at the memory. “Full body apparitions are rare. Like I mentioned earlier, we didn’t have any of this fancy equipment back then. We had a digital camera with a bad video feature and a built-in microphone and that was pretty much the best we had to work with. We draped sheets over the walls to try and eliminate any shadows contaminating the photo. Taking the shot during daylight hours couldn’t be helped, and the morning light was kind of bright and annoying. We made a reflector with tin foil and did some test shots.”

He flips to the next slide, the same room but this time a younger Donghae standing in the frame instead of the apparition, throwing a v-sign at Hyukjae behind the camera. He casts no shadow. Hyukjae gives the audience some time to look and then clicks the remote again, switching back to the photo of the apparition. This time, the shape is easier to see. “This is the first image, but digitally altered to give it more contrast.”

There are a few murmurs from the audience. It’s possible that they’ve seen this photo before; it pops up on Naver searches. Hyukjae can’t help but feel proud. He has a lot of fondness for this photo. He wouldn’t say it was the most life-changing event of his life – that would be meeting Donghae – but it was a turning point for their investigative career.

“Okay,” he says, shaking himself out of it. From his peripheral vision he sees Donghae turn his face away from the screen as well, settling back into his visual scan of the audience. “The second type are intelligent haunts. These spirits interact with and react to the physical world. However, that doesn’t mean they’re always aware of their state. Often, they exert their energy as a force in our world - messing with electronics, making sounds, and even manifesting without realizing that they’re doing so. Sometimes they interact willingly. This is when we get a lot of our EVPs or other physical evidence. We can ask the spirits to interact. Now, that doesn’t mean we sit down and have a chat.” 

He gets some polite chuckles. The skeptic up front huffs, shifting in his seat and barely containing an eye roll.

“Even with evidence, we find that a lot of homes and businesses choose to just… let the spirits be. They’re nothing to be afraid of. But I do want to touch on malevolent haunts, because it’s important to know what you’re dealing with.

“First of all, let me tell you that people are rarely injured by malevolent spirits. That’s not because they aren’t dangerous. It’s just that the kind that can hurt you are rare. Yes, the spirits of the dead can be and often are angry, which is what keeps them here. But just like their less harmless counterparts, they need a lot of energy to manifest and a lot more to interact with physical objects. They can’t hurt you directly unless they have power or take power from us. That’s the most common type of harm – using human energy, draining us, targeting us. You can’t really protect yourself from that any more than you can prevent a place from being haunted in the first place, but it’s only a temporary danger. They feed off negative energy, so usually all it takes is a strong heart to render them harmless.”

“That’s very important,” Donghae cuts in, nodding. “Positive energy keeps negative entities at bay, but fear invites them. Any kind of fear, really – fear for your safety, fear for your loved ones. Humans are strong, but they can also be weak and vulnerable.”

Hyukjae wonders if he should elaborate on that, noticing the uncomfortable looks on some of the faces in the crowd. Donghae can be vague. Sometimes he forgets that others can’t see and feel energies the way he does, a tangible and intrinsic part of the world. But they want people to be cautious. He clicks the projector to a new slide.

NON-HUMAN ENTITIES, it says, and below that, Elemental, Spiritual/Mythological, Demonic.

“Like I mentioned before, malevolent spirits, often non-human, are rare. There are many, but the good news is that positive energy will keep you from having to deal with them. Unless they can harness negative emotions, they’re mostly powerless.”

As quickly as he can, Hyukjae explains elemental spirits, like poltergeist, and the spiritual beings that are normally the catalyst for myths and legend - la llorona, the white women from Central- and South-American myth; Scottish each-uisge, the malevolent water-horse; the more well-known kumiho and kitsune fox-spirits. He’s aware that he loses a lot of his audience here. Even those who believe in spiritual entities rarely believe that they can manifest in physical form, or that they still exist, even if they did in ancient times. Even Donghae fidgets. It’s not as if they don’t exist, he has told Hyukjae in the past. It’s that people don’t believe in them anymore. That’s the only difference between elemental spirits and the next category, though, so he moves on.

“Here’s where we’d like you to pay attention,” he says, earning some embarrassed mutters. Hyukjae just grins, clicking to the next slide – DEMONIC POSESSION.

Hyukjae actually hears the skeptic’s groan from the front row, but he ignores it entirely. Under the slide heading are three words: 1) Infestation, 2) Oppression, 3) Possession.

“Demonic haunts could technically belong with the spiritual, but we like to put them in their own category because they’re more frequent and we know more about them. The reason for this is belief, because belief is power. Especially for the supernatural. Demonic haunts are the most common malevolent haunts to make it beyond the infestation stage.”

“We don’t like it when they get past infestation,” Donghae pipes up. Hyukjae shakes his head in agreement.

“There are a couple of things that attract infestations. Sometimes it’s people dabbling with the occult, but more often than not, infestations are already present in our cases, and have been for some time. They’re not often seen in physical manifestation, but they can be felt. Donghae, tell them what it feels like.”

Donghae visibly thinks for a moment, chewing on the side of his lip. “It feels like… a heaviness. Like a shadow over the world. It weighs you down, keeps you on edge. You start believing in bumps in the night.”

“And then the bumps in the night become real. Oppression. This stage is when the demon begins to feed off negative energy and uses it to affect the physical world. It’s hard to tell them apart from a malevolent, once-human spirit, which is why it’s important to contact someone like us if you think you’re dealing with either. Don’t mess with the paranormal – it’s not good to take things into your own hands. In a demonic case, blessings and prayers and exorcising the home is only effective in the infestation stage, which is why it’s so important to catch it early. Once it moves on to oppression, the demon has already found a target, and it’s going to pursue. The final stage is the actual possession, and that’s dangerous. It’s not really like how you see it in movies. A possessed person usually acts normal as the demon bides its time. Demons don’t always have an agenda, but once a person is possessed, only an exorcism can help them. If they’re lucky.”

A hush has fallen over the auditorium. Hyukjae uses this to his advantage. “If you suspect that something is in your home, contact us. Most of our cases turn out to not be preternatural at all, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. That’s why we do this. Please, spread this information. Most supernatural beings are not going to harm you, but there’s no shame in fear. Let us help you.”

He exchanges a glance with Donghae, who nods. Hyukjae drums his fingers on the table briefly. “Now – any questions?”

Hyukjae answers a couple of the usual questions – how many cases have they investigated, how often do they catch anything, how do they get rid of spirits. Donghae is distracted through the first few, squinting at one of the back rows, but Hyukjae doesn’t know what he’s looking at. He probably couldn’t see what Donghae is seeing even if he knew where to look. Then a woman raises her hand and asks, “Have either of you ever been hurt on a case?” and Hyukjae freezes up.

Have you ever been hurt? He opens his mouth to speak, but the only thing he can think of is Donghae; the only image he can conjure is the smudge of dark hair under a pile of white linens, unresponsive for days, and he can’t tell them about that. But the Donghae of the present moves past him on the stage now, bouncing a bit as he goes to the computer and opens the file of case photos.

“Well, we don’t want to mislead you, it’s rare that people are physically injured. But sometimes – here.”

Hyukjae twists around to look at the projector screen and smiles to himself despite the subject matter. It’s a close shot of a boy holding up the side of his shirt to display two scratch marks along his ribcage, pressing a 100-won coin beside them to show scale. The photo doesn’t show his face, but Hyukjae knows the boy is his old university roommate, Hangeng. It’s from his and Donghae’s first investigation, the one that fell into their laps when they had no idea what they were doing. He can still remember the way Donghae’s hands had been shaking after this incident – he’d never come across such negative energy.

“This another of our first investigations,” Donghae is saying. He picks up the remote where Hyukjae had left it on the edge of the podium and switches the screen to show another photo. This one isn’t quite as closely shot; Hangeng’s face is visible and Hyukjae is partially in view, holding up Hangeng’s shirt for him because his arm had been too weak at that point. The scratch marks are an angry red now, split open and infected. “This picture was taken a day after the scratches showed up. Nothing we did to treat it helped, it just kept getting worse. It wasn’t until we got rid of the malevolent entity that caused them that the cuts began to heal. They did heal up completely, and he’s no worse for wear, and it’s the worst physical injury that’s happened to any of our clients.” On his way back to his previous spot on stage, Donghae surreptitiously presses his hand into the small of Hyukjae’s back.

He takes in a deep breath and asks for more questions.

The man he chooses asks, “Is it easier to use digital images and video rather than film to catch evidence?”

“Good question. I have no idea. Kyuhyun does, though. Kyu?”

Off the side of the stage Kyuhyun is shaking his head frantically, waving his hands and mouthing no repeatedly. Donghae walks over and grabs one of his flailing arms, laughing as he pulls him on stage.

Kyuhyun shuffles to stand in front of the table awkwardly. “Um,” he starts, and then throws a glare in Hyukjae’s direction and squares his shoulders. “Well, digital imagery is easier to fake –er, manipulate -  but film has a lot of flaws, too. Dust, bad exposure; grainy, low-quality photos can make you see things that aren’t there or make it harder to see the things that are. Digital photography can have the same problems if you don’t know what you’re doing. I still say digital is better to use, though.”

There’s a moment of silence in which everyone looks at him, waiting for more. Hyukjae clears his throat. “Why?”

“Oh, um. If we’re talking about spirits using energy, then I think digital photography lends itself to that pretty well. Light is energy. Photographs are imprints of light in different colors and lengths. Film captures light in several chemical processes, but digital photography stores light information in an electrical charge. It more accurately captures the energy sprits exert on the world in order to manifest. Digital imagery can also separate light information, such as brightness, into separate tones, like an organized list of all the shifts in light and how we perceive it. Digital cameras are almost as sensitive as the human eye, so they can catch much more than a film camera ever could.”

Hyukjae blinks at him, catching Donghae’s eye over his head. Donghae shrugs. They trust Kyuhyun to know what he’s doing with their equipment, but maybe they should start using his information to their advantage.

“Thanks, Kyuhyun,” Hyukjae says, and Kyuhyun shuffles gratefully off stage. “We do still bring analog equipment to our investigations. The downside of digital technology is that spirits can draw energy right out of it. Good for them, bad for us, because then we don’t have anything to use to capture evidence. So a film camera is always close by just in case.”

“Luckily Hyukjae and I don’t usually need to draw spirits out with large amounts of energy,” Donghae adds. “They’re likely to show just because we’re there. And anyway, we’re more concerned with learning what spirits are there and why; getting evidence isn’t for us or for our clients. It’s for everyone else’s benefit. Your benefit.”

The skeptical man from earlier has the decency to raise his hand this time, but only an instant before he speaks without being called on. “How do you explain the fact that there’s more activity when you guys are there, then? I mean, doesn’t this stuff happen at random? Why does it all suddenly happen when you show up?”

This kind of question is asked a lot, but it always sets Hyukjae’s teeth on edge. Donghae handles it with ease and a smile every time.

“Well, first of all, it doesn’t always happen at random. Hyukjae talked about this already - when activity happens on a regular basis, we call it a residual haunt. They happen whether anybody is there or not. But that’s not the question you’re asking,” Donghae says.

“There are ways to draw the spirits out. Because most of them aren’t harmful, we try to learn something about their identities first. For example, many, many of the spirits we do encounter were soldiers or civilians killed during war. When the war is mentioned aloud, then, well. That interests them. Other spirits are not so friendly – they’re the kind who were never human. In that case, we place spiritual relics around the home to draw them out.”

“It really pisses ‘em off,” Hyukjae interjects, and Donghae nods while audience members laugh.

Donghae looks at the remote in his hand, turning it over and over as the chuckling dies off. “When I’m in the house,” he says when it’s once again silent, “it makes it easier.”

“For the spirits,” Hyukjae clarifies, watching the side of Donghae’s downturned face. Donghae nods.

“For the spirits. Think of it like tuning a radio: when the signal’s just a little bit off, you get static. You can still hear the station coming in but it’s fuzzy. Hard to understand. So you turn the dial a bit until it comes in clearer. That’s me. I’m easier to connect with. The spirits think they’re experiencing the world the same way they did in life; they expect everything to make sense like it used to, but it doesn’t. It’s confusing. But if they interact with me it’s kind of like… imagine visiting a foreign country, lost and confused, and then meeting someone there who speaks your language. They’re drawn to me and then they find they can communicate, and they use it to their advantage.”

The skeptic folds his arms across his chest and leans back in his seat, but he says nothing. They get a few more questions directed at Donghae and Hyukjae divides his attention between watching the skeptic out of the corner of his eye and watching the time. Eventually they have to wrap it up, and it’s an unexpected relief to watch everyone file out of the auditorium.

They thank the university’s events coordinator while Kyuhyun disconnects the laptop and brings equipment back to the van. There are a few people still milling about the building when they step back into the warm day. Hyukjae toys with the idea of just driving back home, but they’ve already paid for the hotel room and it just seems like a waste.

He’s pulling out his car keys, Donghae wondering aloud about what kind of food they should eat tonight, but his voice trails off just as Hyukjae has gotten the door unlocked. He looks over the hood of the car to see Donghae turned away from it, watching as Kyuhyun approaches, accompanied by another man. Hyukjae circles in front of the car to meet them.

“He asked to talk to you about something important,” Kyuhyun says.

The man looks exhausted, but his cheek dimples when he smiles and bows politely, introducing himself as Park Jungsoo, “but please call me Leeteuk.” He says fervently, a note of desperation in his tone. Hyukjae can tell where this is going already, and he meets Kyuhyun’s eyes, raising his brows. Kyuhyun knows they’re not here for investigations, but he only shrugs in response and turns to walk back to the van, footsteps scuffing on the blacktop as he goes.

“I really liked your presentation,” Leeteuk is saying, “but I have a few questions that I couldn’t ask in front of the audience. I’m really – really glad we found you.”

Hyukjae does’t miss the plural, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone else around them.

“So am I,” Donghae says, smiling encouragingly, and both men look at him. “How can we help?”

It all comes out in a rush then. “We just moved into a new house and there have been some… some things happening. I’m sorry to stop you when you were about to leave but I don’t see any other options right now. My family needs your help.”

“Leeteuk-ssi, I apologize, but we’re only in town for the weekend. I could get you some referrals for investigators who live in the area.”

“No, please. It has to be you.”

Hyukjae gives a placating smile. “Often, things aren’t as bad as they seem. It’s most likely to be old plumbing or high concentrations of EMF, sometimes just a small nuisance like uneven flooring can –”

“You don’t understand,” Leeteuk interjects, shaking his head. “It’s not that, I know it isn’t. The things we’ve seen are scaring my family, and I can’t even get a priest to bless the house. My family is a bit unconventional.”

“Family?” Donghae echoes.

“Yes. Five children, myself, and my boyfriend.” He’s looking between the two of them nervously now.

He doesn’t need to be nervous. Even aside from the fact that Hyukjae and Donghae really could be one of few investigative teams who would be willing to help, Hyukjae knows that they’re going to give in the moment he says the word children.

“We’ll help, of course we’ll help,” Donghae says earnestly. The relief in Leeteuk’s expression is tangible. “Do you live nearby, or… ?”

“Not too far, about a half hour drive.”

“We’ll follow you.” Hyukjae twirls the keys in his hand and Leeteuk breaks into a smile, nearly tripping over himself as he bows and thanks them.

Hyukjae drops into the drivers’ seat of the car and Donghae slides in the other side. Hyukjae looks at him for a moment, key in the ignition, poised to turn.  “Are you sure you can –” he starts, but Donghae interrupts him.

“We can just look. It could be nothing. If there is something in the house, we can come back in a few days to investigate. Okay?”

Hyukjae watches through the windshield as Leeteuk makes his way across the lot, heading to a van parked close to the building. He must have been one of the first people here.

“Is he as bad as he looks?”

In his peripheral vision, Donghae nods. “I saw him when we were on stage, I think. Whatever’s on his mind doesn’t leave it for a second."

“Okay. The least we can do is give it a look.” Hyukjae starts the car. 

-

Spoiler alert: it's not nothing.