It is another long day tomorrow. While Chanyeol is busy with Dongwoo and the workers in the kitchen, trying to get the rest of the ruined appliances unhooked and removed, Baekhyun looks for the little boy. He’s not really convinced he’s going to find the kid, but it sure beats being in the way in the kitchen. He doesn’t think he can take another day of dirty looks from the workers doing all the hard work while he sits on his and fails to produce any design worth using.

It at least gives him an opportunity to really explore the hotel. Of course he and Chanyeol had taken a cursory tour before they’d bought the place – not to mention several more after the deed was in their name – but there were an awful lot of rooms and suites they’d yet to see.

He starts from the second floor, preferring to leave behind the hustle and bustle taking place on the first. He and Chanyeol both have universal keys that will unlock all of the doors. The renovated rooms have all been upgraded to electronic key cards, which makes it easier to get in and out of.

Baekhyun begins by looking through all of the hotel rooms on the second floor. At first he thoroughly examines each room, taking note that everything needs a good scrub down after the past eight years of neglect. After the first fifteen or so rooms that look identical down to the plush blue carpet and mini fridges underneath the televisions he just opens the door, gives the room a cursory glance, and shuts it once more.

The rooms on the third, fourth, and fifth floors are the same. The same dimensions, the same furniture, the same pattern on the bedspreads. It’s after lunchtime when Baekhyun reaches the sixth floor and his stomach is starting to grumble – he’s always been a guy who likes his food, after all – but the sixth floor houses the renovated suites and he’s eager to examine them closely. These aren’t uniform rooms but surprises to be explored.

After going through all of the suites on the sixth floor – and determining that he and Chanyeol should definitely move their living quarters up to one of these once the elevator is checked out and okayed for use – he climbs the stairs up to the seventh floor.

This is the only floor of rooms that the previous owners hadn’t gotten around to restoring and renovating, and it’s easy to tell. It’s not just the layers of dust that linger over everything – this floor clearly hasn’t been touched in decades. The majority of the lights don’t work, and those that do are burning so low that the entire corridor Baekhyun finds himself in is in almost complete darkness.

The carpet here is different from below, different colors and a different pattern, worn bare in some places from heavy tread. Baekhyun runs his fingers over the threadbare carpet, tracing a flower in the pattern. He wonders who strolled through these corridors a hundred years ago, or even longer ago. The historian in him is ecstatic at being surrounded by such a rich history.

Up here, in the un-renovated part of the hotel, the suites have old-fashioned locks instead of electronic ones. Luckily, the woman they’d bought the place from also had a skeleton key to unlock these doors. There’s only one – it’s ancient and heavy and rusty – but Baekhyun at least had the good sense to bring it with him.

The first suite he lets himself into smells musty, dank. Something in the air makes him cough heavily, having to cover his mouth and nose with his sleeve until the attack passes. Spiders and rats skitter away from him, away from the noise and the disturbance, and Baekhyun quickly pulls the door shut with a shudder. He doesn’t do well with spiders and rats.

Luckily for him, the next suite he lets himself into is – as far as he can see – free of both spiders and rats. He flips the light switch by the door but the lights don’t come on. Either the bulbs burned out years ago or the wiring up here is iffy. Chewed through by the rats in the last suite, maybe, Baekhyun thinks grimly. Luckily it’s still light outside and the afternoon sun provides enough light for him to wander around the room.

It’s gorgeous, he finds himself thinking. Everything is in desperate need of repair, but he’d like to keep this furniture if he can. It would be impossible to recreate something this beautiful, as magnificent as these tables and beds and armoires from the turn of the century. That could definitely be an advantage to the “authentic” theme they’re going for.

He’s finishing up on the seventh floor, ready to go grab something to eat and take a nice long bath, when he remembers the previous owner mentioning something about an attic. She’d known that the hotel had one, but she’d never been in there. She didn’t even know where it was, but she’d wanted to make sure that he and Chanyeol knew there was one.

He goes in search for it, trying all the doors and looking for anything that might lead to an attic. Eventually he finds a narrow, dark staircase through a tiny doorway in a supply closet.

Baekhyun hesitates while still standing in the supply closet. It’s dark enough in here and only gets darker up the stairs, and, while he’d been smart enough to bring along the old skeleton key, he hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight.

But Baekhyun is lazy if nothing else and if he traipses all the way downstairs to get one, he’s sure as hell not climbing seven flights of stairs back up. So he brushes aside an old mop and heads up the stairs.

He’s going by feel alone by the time he’s halfway up, fingers feeling along the wooden walls and the toes of his shoes stubbing against the stairs before he takes another step.

The staircase winds around and around, almost like a turret. Eventually a light stabs at his eyes and the end of the staircase comes into view.

The attic, like the seventh floor, has clearly been abandoned for decades. He’s probably the first to step here since before the fire forty years ago, which means he has to tread lightly. There’s no telling what state these floorboards are in.

The circular room is filled with what appears at first to be old junk, illuminated by the late afternoon light streaming through the single window with the busted out glass. Upon closer inspection, Baekhyun discovers that it’s really not junk at all but old furniture. Sure the majority of it is broken – probably shoved here by some handyman who was too lazy to properly dispose of it. Baekhyun’s grateful for that. It shouldn’t take much to repair these elegant pieces and use them in the hotel when it’s opened in a couple years.

He’s running his fingers along a grand piano that’s missing a few keys when he turns and sees her.

She’s staring at him with big brown eyes, blonde hair falling unchecked over her shoulder. She mouths something but Baekhyun can’t quite make out what it is she’s saying because he’s more focused on the way her feet swing freely and the noose cuts into the pale flesh of her exposed neck.

And then the floor beneath him is giving way and Baekhyun falls through.