A Sign of Life

            It only took three days for the realtor to have papers drawn up for me to buy the house, but it took over four months before the house was renovated enough for me to move in.  I could have started moving in the end of December, but decided to stay in town for the holidays with my parents before moving so far out of the city.  By the time I moved, in early January, everything looked dead around the house.  Sungmin told me that I’d missed out on all the fall colors and there would be nothing left to look forward to until the snow began to thaw, but I kind of liked the look of winter.  Everything was blanketed in white, which made the house look less menacing and the lake was almost entirely frozen over.  I’d watched a couple deer walk across it earlier in the day and wondered if the it was thick enough to support my weight.  It would give me something to do later, when I wanted to avoid working.  As is, I’d taken the next month off work to allow me time to unpack and settle into the new town.

            At first, I worried that the amount of time off was excessive.  I would probably regret it in a week and start working again anyway, but as it turned out, I ended up needing a lot of time for unpacking because barely anyone wanted to help me.  While I was having the house renovated throughout the fall, any time one of the crews would work late into the night, they would tell their boss they refused to ever come back, on the grounds that the house was haunted.  When I finally moved in, I couldn’t find a moving company within an hour’s drive that would willingly take my money to help me move.  So, I ended up talking Changmin and Sungmin into helping me move my things into the house.  But no ghosts ever made an appearance the entire day as we were carrying in furniture and unpacking boxes, to my disappointment.

            Before heading to bed for the night, I walked into the music room.  Aside from cleaning it up a bit, I refused to let the crews do anything else to it.  I wanted the piano left where it stood.  I added a small table near the window, on which I placed a vase with two dozen roses.  It seemed fitting to get him a welcoming gift as well, considering he now had a roommate to share the house with.  I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot.  I set up Ryeowook’s framed picture beside it, which I’d been holding onto since my first visit to the house, back in late August. 

            “I’ve come back,” I said to the silence of the room.  “As promised.”

            I left the door open and walked down the hall to the kitchen, pouring myself a glass of wine, and then I walked out onto the deck.  It was bitterly cold out and the surrounding woods were dark.  It was a new moon, so the only lights I could see were from Sungmin’s house, down the hill, and from the multitude of stars.  I’d never seen so many before in my entire life.  I could actually see the Milky Way, which I’d never seen before due to all the light pollution in the city.  I stood outside for the next half hour, trying to identify the few constellations that I knew, but I couldn’t find them among the large number of stars.  I wasn’t that good of a stargazer, apparently, and would have to find someone with a little more knowledge to point them out.

            I walked back into the house and turned off the lights, making my way up the stairs to the second floor.  The house seemed so quiet.  Everything in the area seemed quiet, considering I’d grown up in the heart of the city.  The silence was almost deafening, but I listened attentively anyway.  I laid awake half the night, waiting for something—anything—to happen.  It never did.  Late into the night, I finally fell asleep and slept soundly.  I didn’t wake until late in the morning and the sun was already streaming in through the window. 

            I didn’t exactly have food in the house yet, so I showered quick and decided to make my way into town.  I recalled that there was a café and a restaurant, despite how small it was.  I parked outside the café and looked through the pastry case as the person in front of me paid for their order.  When I was next, the guy behind the counter just patiently waited for me to finish browsing.  There was no one behind me.  It was a little late for breakfast, but too early for lunch, so the place was quiet.  Finally, I made my choice and stepped up to the register. 

            “I’ll have a tall regular coffee and one of those cinnamon rolls,” I told him.

            He nodded.  “That’s everyone’s favorite,” he said, smiling. 

            “Is it?  I guess I should be relived that there’s still one left.”

            “I order a lot of them and that’s the last one,” he pointed out, handing it to me before pouring my coffee. 

            “I would have been happy just to have the coffee, honestly. I’m a little tired from moving yesterday,” I confessed. 

            “Ah, are you our new neighbor, on the hill?” he asked.

            I nodded. 

            The café owner brought the coffee over and held out his hand.  “Welcome to the neighborhood.  I’m Kim Yesung.”

            “Cho Kyuhyun,” I said, shaking his hand.

            “I’ve been here since I was a kid and I’ve wondered for years now when someone would buy the place.  Seems so empty with Ryeowook and his parents gone.  I thought of buying the house for a little while, but I couldn’t afford it and the café bills, even at the price they were offering.”

            “Did you know the former occupants?” I curiously asked.  For some reason, it had never occurred to me to ask the townspeople about the former residents, but now that he’d brought the topic up, I knew that it would likely be my best way of finding out information about the past. 

            Yesung nodded, leaning against the counter.  “I did.  He was so kind to everyone, talented at writing music and playing the piano.  It tore everyone’s hearts when they found him in the lake.  He was so young and had so much to look forward to, it was a terrible accident.”

            “How do you think he died?  You think it was really an accident?” I asked, biting into my roll.

            Yesung shrugged.  “Some people think he walked into the water and intentionally drowned himself—they think that the pressure of leaving and going to the university were getting to him—but I knew him better and I can tell you that he was excited to be leaving.  I think he looked forward to leaving this little town behind him.”

            “Some people claim that he was murdered,” I pointed out, continuing to eat my roll.  It was damn good!  I’d have to quiz him about where he got the pastries from later. 

            “By who?” Yesung questioned.  “As far as I know, he had no enemies.”

            “Wasn’t he dating someone?”

            Yesung rolled his eyes.  “There was a guy named Hyungsik that had a crush on him, but as far as I know, they never went out.  It was completely one-sided.  Ryeowook humored him because he was a sweet kid, but he had no interest in dating him.”

            “Is he still in town?  This Hyungsik guy?”

            Yesung began to laugh.  “Are you a detective, Mr. Cho?”

            I shook my head.  “Website designer.  But I have a general curiosity about what happened in the house I’m currently living in.  Some people claim that it’s haunted.  They say that Ryeowook’s ghost still roams through the house in the middle of the night.  I thought, perhaps, that the reason his spirit was so unsettled might be due to how he passed.”

            “Guess you’ll have to ask him if you ever see him,” Yesung only said. 

            I stared at him across the counter for a moment.  “You don’t think it’s true?”

            “About the house being haunted?  No.  Lots of people have come in here, claiming to have seen a ghost that looked like Ryeowook, but I think they just wanted attention.  If you head to the bar, you’ll find that Leeteuk has heard even crazier stories than I have.  After a while, without any proof of it, you begin to doubt them all.”

            I never told him about the music I’d heard that first night, after wandering through the abandoned house.  For one, I simply had no proof that the noise had come from the house…but I knew that it had.  I just couldn’t prove it. 

            “How much do I owe you?”

            Yesung waved me off.  “Consider it my welcome-to-the-neighborhood present.  I imagine the house cost a small fortune to fix up.  It’s the least I can do.  I’m just happy to see someone living in the house again.”

            “Thank you!” I said, nodding to him and tossing my napkin away.  I’d already eaten the whole roll while we were talking together.  It was simply too good to put down.  “Nice meeting you!”

            “You, too!  Come back soon!”

            I headed out the door and walked down the sidewalk to the hardware store.  I had a long list of things I needed to buy for the house.  I’d been living in an apartment all these years and never had a need for outdoor equipment, but I realized that I needed a shovel after we’d gotten a light dusting of snow overnight.  I needed much more than just a shovel, but that was on the top of the list.

            I walked into the hardware store and began looking around.  They also had a couple snow blowers on display and I thought over if I wanted to get one.  I had a huge driveway, which I had signed up to be plowed whenever it snowed.  I only needed to do the sidewalks around the house and the stairs leading down to the lake, if I was feeling energetic.  I’d had the wooden staircase put in over the fall, during the rest of the renovations, since the hill getting down to the lake was so steep.  I didn’t want my parents visiting and falling down just to see the water. 

            I walked over to the display of shovels and picked out a sturdy looking plastic one.  At that point, the shopkeeper wandered over.  “Hello!  Looking at getting a new shovel?”

            “I’m looking at getting my first shovel,” I confessed.  “I just moved into the neighborhood and realized that I don’t have one.”

            “Ah, are you the new neighbor by the lake?” he asked.

            “I am,” I said, holding out my hand to him.  “Cho Kyuhyun.”

            “Shin Donghee, but everyone around here just calls me Shindong,” he informed me, shaking my hand.

            “Nice to meet you.  Been here long?”

            “My whole life!  My grandfather opened this shop when he moved here, a long time ago.”

            “I can tell that it’s been well kept.  It looks very nice,” I told him. 

            “Can I help you find anything else?  The last time I was over that direction of the lake, the house looked like it needed a few repairs done,” he pointed out.

            That was the understatement of the year.  I paid more for renovating the house than to actually by it, but I left that unsaid.  “I’ve had a lot of work done before moving in, so this is probably all I need at the moment.  I’m sure I’ll be back to buy out half the shop when spring comes.”

            He nodded.  “I can ring you up unless you want to look around a little.”

            “I’ll be back.  I need to get some groceries as well before heading back,” I told him, walking over to the register with him.  “Since you’ve been here so long, you must have known the former owners.”

            Shindong’s chipper mood suddenly faded.  “Such a tragedy!  I was never very close with little Wookie, he’s a few years younger than me, but whenever I saw him, he was always glowing.  Everyone adored him!  He was an excellent singer and piano player!”

            “He sang as well?” I asked, even more curious now. 

            “Beautifully!  I told my friends that he ought to go into the singing business or try out at a contest to see if a label might pick him up.  He almost always played one of the lead roles in the musicals that the high school performed.  I think they even made a cd out of one of them.  I’ll have to dig around and see if I still have it somewhere.”

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