It’s been twenty hours since Yebin and Minkyung kissed. 

Yebin can still feel it—yes, sure, Minkyung’s mouth tasted slightly like dirt, but her lips had that scent of the cherry chapstick Yebin always sees her obsessively apply. 

It had only been a few seconds before they had pulled apart.

Nothing had happened, it meant nothing.

Yebin wasn’t going to get her hopes up over a stupid accident. 

Now, sitting on top of Eunwoo’s roof, gazing at the speckled sky, she stares at Minkyung’s profile, the other girl too entranced by conversation with Kyungwon to notice. 

Sometimes, it shocks Yebin how oblivious Minkyung is. It’s been years and years of pining, of flirting, and yet—she can’t seem to tell that Yebin is hopelessly in love with her. 

“You need anything, Yeb?”

She turns to see Soonyoung, handing her a beer can. 

“Sure. Thanks.”

“How’d ghost hunting go yesterday?”

Yebin cracked the tab of her can, as if the loud pop would drown out the embarrassing memories of tumbling down the hill.

“There was an accident.” 

“I can see.” Soonyoung chuckles, eyeing the bandage taped to Yebin’s cheek. “There’s nothing out there, you know?”

“You never know.” She sips her drink. “The nothing out there is better than the nothing in here. In town.”

“We’re not going to be stuck here in Diamond City forever, you know.”

Yebin let her eyes rise to the stars, then back to Minkyung. 

“I don’t know about that.”

The droning fluorescent lights of the grocery store are giving Yebin a headache. But they do that every day anyway, she’s adapted to it. 

“You good, Yebin?” Siyeon, her coworker, asks. 

“I’m fine. Just lost in thought.”

Putting a cereal box on the shelf, Yebin turns to the younger. “Hey, Siyeon, are you going to college?”

She notices how her coworker’s eyebrows crease, stress-ridden. 

“Not sure. I wish I could. My family can’t really afford it right now. My dad’s out of work.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” 

“I can deal with it. It’s not like anyone from here ever makes it out. It’s just a given.”

Yebin’s headache throbs harder. An hour until work is over. 

An hour until Minkyung. 

The two of them meet in the parking lot. The wind whips at Minkyung’s long hair, and she looks almost goddess-like as the sun sets behind her, leaning against her car.

“Where are we going today?” Yebin calls across the way. 

“Deeper. Deeper into the woods, I mean.”

A chill down her spine, Yebin leans next to Minkyung. 

“Scary.”

“That’s kind of the point.” her taller counterpart replies, smirk and all, turning around to open the car door. “It’s not my fault you’re such a huge .”

Yebin follows to the passenger seat, mock-gasping.

 “Hey! Don’t be mean!”

Minkyung turns the key, the engine rattling to life. 

“How was work?” 

“I dunno.” Yebin threads her fingers through her hair. “It was just... work. You know how it is. And you?”

“It was ok. Stole some candy for tonight. Roll down the window, will you?”

Yebin complies with a soft hum as the car slowly backs out of the empty parking lot and into the street. Wind rushes through the car, tossing at their hair. 

Minkyung gives a wistful smile as the car creaks up onto a gravel road, leading into the darkened woods, one of her hands on the wheel and the other reaching for a tube of cherry chapstick. 

The one nice thing about living so far away from everything is that the sky shines so much brighter. The woods would’ve been terrifying, but the soft twinkle of thousands of stars above give Yebin a sense of calm. 

Trees tower overhead, blocking some of the sky, and Minkyung’s flashlight beams through the darkened scenery, casting ominous shadows. 

“Where are we going this time?”

“The fire tower. The one Wonwoo was talking about.”

Minkyung has always lead every adventure, determined to find something. It’s always been like that—in high school,  it was the valedictorian position, and applying for mountains of scholarships, getting into college and being able to afford it. Only one of those things worked out. Perhaps it was no wonder she had been so consumed by this ghost-hunting project lately. 

The silhouette of the fire tower stands against the royal blues of the night sky, on the edge of a cliff overlooking a deep canyon below. 

“Have we ever even had a forest fire?” Yebin asks. 

“I’m sure, at least once. But not any time recently.” Minkyung shines her flashlight upward as they break through the trees and out into an open, grassy, cliff’s edge. 

The sight of the fire tower gives Yebin an odd, crawling feeling in her stomach. Like she’s being watched. She squints, and sees that by the fire tower, there’s a rickety old bridge leading across the canyon, that looks like it could snap and fall away at the lightest breeze. 

“This is definitely a lot weirder at night.” she murmurs to Minkyung. 

When she turns to face her companion, she sees her staring with a confused look at the window of the fire tower. Yebin looks up, and feels her body lurch with an unnatural emotion. 

In the window is the shadow of a person, but perhaps more unsettling is their burning red eyes, flickering as if they were about to burn out like an old lightbulb. 

“!” Yebin gasps, instinctively clinging to Minkyung’s arm as the other girl fumbles through her bag for something. 

With shaking hands, she takes out a Polaroid camera—it must be the one Wonwoo claimed to own—and lifts it to her eye. Pressing the button, a loud “SNAP!” echos through the forest, the only noise besides a distant bird. 

At the sound of the noise, the figure in the window vibrates, and its eyes suddenly go out, the entire humanlike shape suddenly sinking away. Yebin breathes heavy, terror seeming to be reverberating through every bone in her body.

“Oh my god.” Minkyung whispers. “We have to go in there.”

“No! No f-ing way. Let’s go home. Y-you got your picture, that should be enough.”

“This could be our only chance!” Minkyung exclaims, pulling the undeveloped photo out of the camera and shaking it. “I'm not losing this!” She runs forward, feet crunching against dry grass, the wind creaking the structure of the fire tower itself. 

Yebin can’t leave Minkyung here, and Minkyung’s the one with the car keys anyway. Hands shaking, cold as ice, she runs after her best friend. 

“Minkyung! Wait up! Don’t leave me here.”

Barely hearing her calls, her friend grips the railing of the winding fire tower stairs, too enthralled by her slowly developing photo. Panting, Yebin follows. How did this happen? Minkyung was supposed to be the sensible one, and Yebin made the reckless decisions. 

“Oh! Look!” Minkyung turns around, showing off the photo. It’s slightly streaky, and fuzzed with a dark nighttime grain, but there’s an obvious image—an ominous figure, burning red eyes, traced by a crimson glow. 

“Just go up!” Yebin hisses. “I want this to be over as soon as possible.” 

As they get closer to the top, wind blowing against the structure so hard that she can swear its going to collapse, a faint noise gets louder and louder. 

It’s some sort of scratchy tune—an old jazz song, maybe, carrying down from the window. 

“Oh my god...” Minkyung murmurs, stopping and looking up. She reaches behind her, long, dainty fingers finding Yebin’s. 

Her heart pounds, and she isn’t sure if its because of her taller companion holding her hand or because of the creepy saxophone riding the wind around them. The steps croak under her Converse-clad feet, and her beating heart threatens to crack her ribs.

Only one flight of steps left.

The music sounds old, like its been played too many times. 

They approach the balcony. The small wooden structure at the top is only about the size of perhaps a small bedroom, or a large bathroom. 

Peering into the dark windows, Minkyung holds her camera, and Yebin notices the way her fingers tremble. The confident Minkyung is gone—she seems like a deer, flighty and nervous. 

Wind rushes through the trees and the door of the fire tower swings open, startling both of them. 

Finally, the inside is displayed. 

There’s one swaying lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, flickering red. It illuminates the maps sprawled all over the floor, and stacks of strange books—on astrology, it seems, judging by one large star chart still lying open. A singular cot sits by the window, sheets thrown on the floor as if whoever was sleeping in it left in a hurry. And most haunting is the record player, spinning and spinning directly across from them at the far side of the room. 

Minkyung takes a tentative step in, snapping a picture, and approaches the record player. 

“Yebin, look. The needle is barely at the beginning of the record.”

“And?”

“That means someone just put it on.”

Goosebumps rise on Yebin’s neck. 

“But—no one came down from up there.” 

Minkyung swallows. 

“Exactly.”

A cold silence. 

Suddenly, the light goes out, with a sudden loud bang. Yebin yelps, turning to see that the red lightbulb exploded all over the room. 

“What the f-“ 

The noise of the record stops, with a loud scratch, before suddenly turning into a garbled mess of noise. Later, when Yebin reflects on the incident, she’ll realize it was the song, but in reverse. In this moment, however—she only feels the terrifying rush of fear, crawling down to her toes, telling her one thing. 

Grab Minkyung’s hand and run.