- different approaches -

"Well, there's one thing I can guarantee you," Jongdae said as he shuffled along the narrow neighborhood road with his hands in his pockets. It was dark outside and normally he would have sat at his desk by now to type up his last report, but Junmyeon's genius training schedule had messed up his winter routine. Why couldn't they have found Chanyeol in summer? "By the end of tonight you're probably going to think that Tuesdays are going to be the most boring part of your training because, honestly? I don't know what I'm supposed to teach you so you'll have to follow me while I do the stuff I do every day."
"You walk around every day?" Chanyeol said and sounded both amused and slightly out of breath because the even road slowly turned into a slope. They were going to follow it all the way up a hill to a Christian cemetery that was very much haunted and thus the only noteworthy spot on the route.
"Yeah, pretty much," Jongdae said and kicked a pebble that hit the pole of a traffic sign with a clunk. "I mean, truth to be told, most of the time we just check out places by foot because that's the best way to tell if there's anything going on anywhere. Possessions are pretty easy to spot if you know what you're looking for but they don't happen as often as you'd probably imagine."
Chanyeol made an apprehensive sound and looked down on his feet. "Good thing I decided to wear sneakers then," he noted.
"Definitely," Jongdae nodded empathically. "On Tuesdays you'll walk as far as we can get in the two hours you got. You'll probably walk less on Saturday because Minseok-hyung doesn't look for cases, the cases look for him. And on Sunday you can wear whatever you want because Junmyeon-hyung won't let you walk anywhere until you've read at least a dozen reports from the archives."
Chanyeol threw him a skeptical side glance that unwillingly made Jongdae laugh. The funny thing was that he did not even exaggerate. Junmyeon and Minseok had both tried hard to change their schedules around Chanyeol but in completely different ways. Junmyeon attempted to solve all open issues before Sunday so that he could focus his full attention on boring Chanyeol. Minseok meanwhile had ensured that his worst summoning in a while would take place on Saturday. Obviously, they both secretly and yet completely openly disapproved of each other's approaches.
"Honestly though," Jongdae continued chattily. "On Saturday you'll probably see something you'll wish you could unsee and on Sunday you'll doze off while Junmyeon-hyung tells you how the Office, formely known in our part of the world as 'The Order', was founded over a thousand years ago in ancient China and blah blah blah, it really isn't all that exciting, no matter what he claims. And then, by the end of Sunday, you'll probably agree that Tuesdays aren't so bad."
Chanyeol had a mock serious expression as he said, "Well, two hours of aimlessly walking around are at least a healthy way to spend the evening."
"Yeah, totally. I mean, you know what they say, sitting is the new cancer and you'll spend a lot of time sitting on Sunday," Jongdae agreed.
They both laughed and Jongdae already felt a lot better about this. He had met Chanyeol before so although he knew that they would probably get along, he had feared it to be similarly awkward as the first time around. It was strange to explain things he barely comprehended himself but maybe Junmyeon and Yixing really had been right in their assumption that it would be fun to hang out with someone his age. Although Junmyeon and Yixing were not exactly in a position to make bold claims like that because they were the same age and still talked to each other in a strangely semi-formal way.
"So what's going to happen on Saturday that's so bad?" Chanyeol asked in what seemed to be a deliberately indifferent tone and Jongdae accidentally stumbled over a small crack in the road.
"Oh," he said because it suddenly occured to him that he maybe shouldn't have mentioned it. "Well, it's probably not really going to be bad," he continued and hoped to sound as casual as intended. He nervously his lips. "But not exactly something you'd see very often either."
"Like what?" Chanyeol asked with a frown and Jongdae sighed. This was exactly one of those moments he didn't feel prepared for. His own daily activities he could explain but whenever they broached a topic that was connected to Minseok, he didn't know what to say. Everything Minseok did always was shrouded in so many mysteries that his explanations would always end up sounding half-assed.
"So, the way our job normally works is that we're limited to a certain area of the city," he began and obviously digressed so much from the quick answer he could have given, that Chanyeol furrowed his brows in confusion.
"The city is divided into four parts that are run by four separate offices and we don't normally hear much from the others. I mean, we meet during annual events and if there are any interesting records, we get to read those, but we don't usually work with them because we don't have to. There aren't all that many summoners with a set of skills that other offices could need."
The way he stressed the sentence probably made it obvious what he tried to hint at because Chanyeol's frown turned into raised eyebrows.
"And yet, this guy from the Eastern branch, who I heard is a bit of a hotshot and probably their cheap- version of Minseok-hyung, asked Minseok-hyung to help him with a summoning." He tried to say it in as neutral a tone as possible because he didn't want to show that there still were things that scared him.
But Chanyeol clearly got the drift and looked a little pale when he said, "On Saturday."
"Yeah," Jongdae said and forced a smile on his face. "So as I said, after that, Tuesday will seem relaxing in comparison. In a few minutes we'll reach a cemetery which usually is a bit noisy, but apart from that you won't see anything really spectacular. And trust me, sometimes you'll really appreciate the absence of excitement."
Chanyeol let out a strange noise but didn't say anything in return, so awkward silence slowly spread between them. Jongdae unwillingly had to think back to the time when he had been new and been allowed to tag along to one of Minseok's summonings. He had been excited then, but he had also had over a month of Junmyeon nearly boring him to death full-time. It would  obviously be totally different for Chanyeol who had stumbled into their world in the messiest way possible.
So Jongdae said, "I mean, but it's not like you'll be in any grave danger or anything. Minseok-hyung usually stops all the dangerous things before they can happen to you."
It was meant to sound cheerful but by the horrified look Chanyeol threw him he could tell that he only slowly made it worse.

- the execution -

At first, Jongin's pride had not permitted him to call Kim Minseok. He himself was a good summoner, a great one even. In his branch of the Office he was the one who took on all the difficult cases because he was one of the few with a truly unique skill. He could read ghosts, could see their past lives and their inner thoughts. That was how he usually managed to convince every single one of them to leave. He had in fact been doing it for so long, that he believed that, if he could not read a ghost, it could not be summoned at all. It had to be impossible. Either that, or he had simply been in a bad shape that day.

"Yeah, you know, the other day? That ghost in the homeless guy? I thought he couldn't be summoned either," his colleague Tao said as he flipped through a magazine during lunch break. "And then you came along and told him all this stuff about his dead daughter and he was gone, just like that." To put emphasis on his words, he clicked his fingers and Jongin sighed.

Of course he had read reports on Kim Minseok before. Those written by him usually posed more questions than they answered because he never elaborated on anything. Reports mentioning him meanwhile always sounded made-up. If everything about him was true, he could maybe deal with a ghost Jongin could not deal with.

"Well, I mean, let's be honest here," Luhan had said in a strangely chatty voice over the phone after introducing himself as one of Tao's Chinese friends. "I've known the guy half my life and he's not perfect. In fact, judging from what I heard, you have the more humane skill. But not every skill is right for every situation, is it? Most of the time a counselor works perfectly fine but sometimes you have to accept the truth and find an executioner."
He didn't like it. It made no sense to kill someone who already was dead. He did not even comprehend how it was supposed to work.

"It happened before that they sent him to other branches," his colleague Sohee said while stirring her coffee. She had been part of the Office for twenty years, so despite not being very skilled, she usually knew more than enough gossip. "He actually came here over ten years ago. Imagine how much it frustrated everyone that they sent a boy." She gave him a look as as though to suggest that he was the current clueless boy. "But well, the boy solved our problem and we could go back to living our regular lives. Sometimes you have to swallow your pride and accept that you're not the one this time. If you act first, it's at least not as much of a slap in the face."
So he called the executioner and naturally assumed the worst.

Right from the start then, it did not go particularly well. At first Minseok stalled time as though he either did not take the issue seriously or hoped that it would just solve itself. They all knew how crucial it was to quickly deal with a summoning, but Jongin couldn't say anything because he himself had wasted time by trying to deal with it himself. If it had only been that, it probably wouldn't have bothered him too much. But then Minseok appeared at their agreed meeting point with another guy he introduced as a fresh trainee and Jongin honestly was speechless. With the right protection summonings were not necessarily dangerous but this was a ghost he had not been able to read. He did not know why. He could not possibly know what else the ghost could do that was supposed to be impossible. What he did know however, was that it probably was not very smart to bring a complete novice into a situation like that.
He tried to say something, but Minseok didn't even ask any questions on what had happened the first time. For a moment Jongin thought that Minseok maybe didn't know about his skill, but then he already explained it to his trainee.
"He can read the minds of ghosts," he said in a perfectly dispassionate voice and his trainee looked more confused than anything. "It's a rare gift and can't be learned, so you won't be able to do it."
Jongin wasn't even sure whether he was supposed to feel flattered at the description or annoyed because Minseok apparently didn't think of it as impressive enough to be interested in learning more. If anything, he only seemed to wish to be done with the case as quickly as possible.
So they arrived at the metal gate in front of the house that could barely be seen behind the fence and a few trees, and Minseok seemed about to just ring the bell without any further discussion, when Jongin quickly said, "The host recently got divorced but there are a maid and a gardener who are sometimes around. I haven't quite figured out their schedules but today should be safe."
Minseok blinked at him in confusion, as if Jongin had uttered something very stupid. "I read the report," he then said very slowly.
"Right," Jongin said and tried to recall whether he had written all those details down. He had only released the report a day earlier after they had forced him to. It had not felt right to write a report on something that was not actually finished yet. But that at least explained the lack of questions.
The situation obviously caused Minseok to lose his momentum because he now stared at the bell and then at Jongin and asked, "Anything else?"
Jongin only shrugged and Minseok nodded while ringing the bell. His threw his trainee only a small glance as he said, "Try to stay behind me."

He was not sure what he had expected.
"He couldn't have been older than maybe sixteen and he was really skinny, so the man could easily overpower him," Sohee had recalled. "We tried to help but what he ultimately did was to charge at the guy and tackle him into a wall. Then it looked as if he was trying to choke him because he put his hands around his neck but then it looked as if he teared something off. I don't know how he did it, but he managed tear the ghost off the guy. As if the ghost was nothing but a giant leech."
"He can touch them," Luhan had said vaguely. "I guess that's his power. He can touch them as if they're living things."
And then there were the reports.
'Took out ghost. Might have fractured it,' Minseok had written in one case that had completely puzzled Jongin because he couldn't fathom it. Fractured what? The one being possessed? The ghost possessing them?
'Kim Minseok had to eliminate the ghost to get rid of it,' another report had read. 'If he had not done that, our life would have been in danger. The first conventional attempt at summoning the ghost had failed.'
It was one thing to read these things and to unwillingly imagine a comic hero in a floating cape and a corny mask. It was a completely different thing to watch the whole thing in action.
Right from the moment they entered the house after pretending to deliver a package, the ghost clearly knew what they were up to because Jongin immediately heard the same static he had heard when the ghost had previously realized that he tried to read him. Most ghosts possessing humans were not fully lucid and did not necessarily understood what they did. This one clearly did, and Minseok did not waste any time at trying to do the usual small talk.
Before the ghost could say anything, Minseok pushed him further inside and barked at them to close the door. Jongin and the trainee only managed to look at each other in confusion when Minseok already was halfway down the hallway and into whatever room came at the end of it.
"," Jongin swore under his breath and then slammed the door shut before he hurried past the trainee and after Minseok. They were already in the kitchen and Minseok pressed the much taller host against the kitchen counter while the host tried to push his head away. In Minseok's left hand was something translucent that was connected to the host's torso and Jongin unwillingly stared at it in bafflement. Part of his mind understood that he saw part of a ghost. But he didn't know how. He had read it over and over again. Kim Minseok could touch ghosts. But to actually see Kim Minseok pull a piece of a ghost out of someone touched part of him that was still filled with primeval fear of the unknown. He could literally see the man's right leg go limp while Minseok pulled and pulled. The man wobbled and Jongin stared like an idiot. But then the man wound up his right arm and it took Jongin a split second too long to understand that he had to react, when the man already hit Minseok's head hard enough for him to stumble backwards.
"Minseok-sshi," the trainee gasped behind him and pushed past him but Jongin could still only stare. The part of the ghost Minseok had pulled out slowly slithered back inside.
"Minseok-sshi, , are you okay?" the trainee yelled while Minseok leaned into a shelf and held his head.
"Stay back," Minseok muttered, still scowling at the man.
"Are you ing nuts?" the trainee asked and tried to help Minseok straighten up, only to be pushed away. "What is this? A fist fight? Is that what you do all day?"
Before Minseok could say anything, the ghost inside the possessed man let out a strange growl. The growl and the man's voice mixed into a horrible chorus when he said, "Get out of my house. Get off my property. I will call the police." He clearly was not fully used to speaking.
"What do you want us to do?" Jongin asked much too late and Minseok threw him a quick exasperated glance. He spat on the ground like a thug and Jongin realized that there was blood.
"Nothing," Minseok said as he charged forward again, this time much lower so that he bumped his head into the man's chest and put his left arm around his waist while he pulled at his abdomen. Again, there was a translucent bit, but this time Jongin forced himself not to get distracted. The trainee had already jumped forward but seemed unsure how to help while Minseok grappled with the ghost. When the man eventually elbowed Minseok's back, the trainee managed to get hold of his arm. Jongin quickly jumped in, grabbed the other arm and forced it on his back. The man was strong, so even with the two of them wrestling him down, they barely managed to get him down on his knees while Minseok pulled more and more bits out. At one point he got hold of a large piece that he threw behind him like debris. 'Fractured.' That probably was the meaning.
It seem to take an eternity. The man was going more and more limp and at one point Jongin realized that they were not really holding him down any longer. They were stabilizing him while Minseok's movements became slower and slower and his breathing heavier and heavier. Around him was a puddle of ghost parts that faded away like smoke. When Jongin shifted his position a little, he accidentally stepped into some of it and felt almost startled at the sensation. It was almost too ordinary. Coldness and fragmented memories and a mix of contradictory emotion. There was the face of another summoner he vaguely remembered and the knowledge of something that was not to be. And then, before he could really comprehend what he saw, it was over. He understood then what the others had meant. There was no way to explain it. He couldn't feel the ghost any longer and he knew that it had not gone anywhere. It had just stopped existing altogether, leaving nothing but a strange emptiness behind.
The man's eyes fluttered before he threw up in front of him and Minseok took a few step backwards before he knocked down a chair as he fell down.

"Do you know where he lives?" Jongin asked and knew how useless he probably sounded. It was the kind of question he only asked for the sake of it. In a way it had been his fault that Kim Minseok would end up passed out on the back of his trainee after all.
The trainee shifted his weight and then said, "Yeah. But I don't know the passcode so I hope he wakes up by then." He pulled a grimace and Jongin put on a lopsided grin because it was not exactly funny but he wasn't sure what else to do. The were no mentions of the great Kim Minseok passing out in the reports, so he could not tell how normal this was.
He was about to ask whether the trainee knew how to reach anyone else from his office, when a ghost in a school uniform appeared next to them and curiously looked up to Minseok. "What happened to him? Is he taking a nap?"
He attempted to nudge Minseok's foot with his hand but the trainee staggered to the side. "Just shut up," he muttered akwardly.
"Who's that?" the ghost then asked and squinted his eyes at Jongin. When he noticed him looking back at him, he concluded, "I see. Another exorcist."
The trainee clearly tried to ignore him when he forced a smile on his lips and said, "We're off then."
"Are you sure you'll be okay?" Jongin asked and skeptically looked up to Minseok's face buried somewhere in the trainee's hood. Maybe that was why he had brought him in the first place. As a guarantee to get home. Or as a warning. Summonings could be exhausting, especially to those who could do what others couldn't. Jongin had experience with that, when there were too many ghosts, or old ghosts with terrible life stories.
The trainee seemed to consider his answer for a moment before he said, "I don't know. I hope so."
When he left with Minseok on his crooked back, the ghost followed him and Jongin rubbed the back of his head. He wasn't sure whether he was supposed to help after all, but what actually worried him even more was what to write in his report. He refused to become one of those people whose report on Kim Minseok sounded like a literal ghost story.