When Baekhyun comes to, it’s in a bright, antiseptic hospital room. The lights are low and there’s an IV hooked into his right arm; Chanyeol is half-asleep on one of the uncomfortable chairs beside the bed.

He jerks alert as soon as Baekhyun’s eyelids flutter, grasping the elder’s hand. “You’re awake!” he exclaims, and it’s obvious in the weary lines in his face how worried he’s been.

Baekhyun nods, his throat feeling dry and thick. “What happened?”

“I should ask you the same question,” Chanyeol says with a little chuckle that isn’t very humorous. “When you didn’t show up after dark I freaked out. We all went searching for you. Dongwoo found you on the seventh floor. It looked like you fell through the ceiling.”

It all comes rushing back to Baekhyun. The attic, the grand piano, the hanging girl. The hanging girl!

He sits up so suddenly he gets dizzy. “The girl!” he exclaims frantically. “Did you find the girl? Oh my god, the girl!”

“Woah, calm down! Calm down!” Chanyeol cries, trying to force Baekhyun to lie back against his pillow. The machine monitoring his pulse speeds up as he quickly panics. “What are you talking about?”

“The girl!” Baekhyun is practically crying now. He’s never seen a dead body so up close and personal before. He’s never even gone to a funeral. “The dead girl!”

Before Chanyeol can question him further, several nurses rush in to sedate their agitated patient. Baekhyun slips back into unconsciousness.

The next time he wakes, it’s nearing dawn and Chanyeol is passed out in the chair beside the bed again. A pretty little blonde nurse is taking his vitals.

“Ah, you’re awake,” she says pleasantly, keeping her voice soft so as not to wake Chanyeol. “How are you feeling?”

“Not so great, actually,” Baekhyun says, rubbing his head. His whole body aches like he’s been put through the ringer a couple of times.

The nurse laughs, setting down her chart and checking his pupils to see if they’re dilated. “I would expect not,” she says. “You fell through the ceiling and were out for an hour before your boyfriend over there found you.”

Baekhyun winces against the bright light. “So…” he glances at the nurse’s nametag. “Victoria. What’s the damage?”

“Mild concussion and a broken ankle,” the nurse, Victoria, explains. “Nothing too serious, but you’ll be out of commission for a while.” She hands him a little plastic cup with three pills in it, which Baekhyun takes without hesitation. “Your boyfriend tells me you’re renovating an old hotel.”

He tosses back the pills and washes them down with a cup of lukewarm water that Victoria hands him. “Yeah, we bought it a few weeks back and are hoping to have it open within a couple years. It’s called the Westholt Hotel. Have you ever heard of it?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of it. Never stayed there, though,” she says. “It’s been shut down my entire life. My mom was staying there the night of the big fire back in the seventies. The way she tells it, it was totally magnificent. Shame it’s been closed down for so long.”

“Well hopefully we’ll have it back up and running in no time,” Baekhyun says, relieved when the painkillers begin to work almost immediately.

Victoria smiles and takes the empty cups from him. “Well then, I’ll definitely have to stop by and check it out once it opens. Now try and get some rest.” She dims the lights as she leaves.

Baekhyun closes his eyes but he can’t fall asleep again. He keeps seeing the dead girl swinging from the rope in the attic imprinted onto the insides of his eyelids. Though he mostly remembers the way her booted feet swung free of any surface, the way the rough rope dug into the flesh of her neck, he vaguely remembers how unusual her garb had been. Long black dress, white apron. Almost like a stereotypical maid costume that you could buy at any Halloween store.

“You’re awake,” Chanyeol’s voice, thick with sleep, interrupts his straining memory.

He glances over at his boyfriend, dark circles under his eyes. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I should’ve been more careful.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Chanyeol says. “I was really worried, you know.”

Baekhyun feels guilty, looking at how overtired and weary the younger is. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Chanyeol reaches for his hand and gives him a reassuring smile. “The doctors say we can get out of here soon, but you’ll have to take it easy for a while.”

“That’s okay,” Baekhyun tries to make the best of the situation. “I’m not any help with the remodeling anyway. I’ll be more useful sitting in bed working on my sketches. Maybe I’ll actually be able to get something done now.”

After the doctor examines Baekhyun once more and decides he can be released, the nurse brings discharge papers and Chanyeol helps Baekhyun into his truck to go back to the hotel.

They’re most of the way there when Baekhyun says, “Did you find her? The girl?”

“Girl?” Chanyeol repeats uncertainly. “What girl?”

“The one in the attic,” Baekhyun repeats, shuddering at the memory of her hanging there.

Chanyeol shakes his head. “We found you on the seventh floor, so nobody went up to the attic.” Then he frowns. “Wait, there was a girl?”

“Yeah, that’s why I fell,” Baekhyun mutters, wincing as he shifts his broken ankle. “She surprised me, so I stepped back without being careful of where I was putting my weight and I stepped on a rotten board.”

“And this girl didn’t help you?” Chanyeol says indignantly. “What a .”

Baekhyun’s not sure if Chanyeol is teasing him or being genuinely angry. “She couldn’t help me,” he says simply. “She was dead.”

“Dead?” Chanyeol repeats.

“Yeah,” Baekhyun nods. “She’d hung herself up in the attic. Her body is probably still there. You need to go find her, or call the cops or something. With the hotel so easy to break into, what with that gaping hole in the kitchen and all the broken windows on the first floor, I’m sure it’s had its fair share of squatters. She’s probably homeless or something.”

Chanyeol looks a little less uncertain as he pulls into the circular drive of the hotel. “Uh, yeah. I’ll get right on that.”

So, after he settles Baekhyun in bed with his sketchbook and some snacks and more painkillers, Chanyeol goes up to the attic. Unlike his boyfriend, he remembers to bring a flashlight.

He’s a little nervous as he climbs the dark, dank stairs up into the attic, the beam of his flashlight alighting on cobwebs and rat droppings. He deals with dead people about as well as Baekhyun.

Luckily for him, there’s no one in the attic. No dead girl hanging from the ceiling, no squatters. All he can see is leftover furniture.

“But that’s impossible!” Baekhyun exclaims when Chanyeol dutifully reports back to him on his findings. “She was there! She’s got blonde hair and brown eyes and a ing noose around her neck!”

“Hey, calm down,” Chanyeol says soothingly, sitting down beside the elder on the bed. “You probably just imagined it or something. You hadn’t eaten all day and you were probably pretty tired.”

Baekhyun pouts but, if she’s not there anymore, he can’t prove that the girl ever existed. He sighs and takes a bite of his apple.