There’s a ghost in Dongwan’s new house.

He thinks it’s nothing at first, excuses it just as sunlight dappling the walls or the foundations settling. It’s an old house, after all, and hidden in one of the more reclusive parts of the wood. He thinks of snakes in the pipes or mice in the attic, but then there are soft footsteps on the stairs when dawn bleeds grey through the dusty windows, or a quick-moving shadow dashing past the corner of his vision just as he turns off the lights to retire for the night. His keys vanish from his catchall in the foyer and end up in his hiking boots. His cat purrs against empty air.

“What’s wrong?” Hyesung asks when they meet for coffee in the city. “Having trouble settling in?”

He sips at his drink, nearly startles at how it burns against his tongue. His fingers thaw against the porcelain; he’s always cold nowadays.

“Just tired.” Dongwan says, which is not actually a lie. On the third day after he moved in, he fell asleep spread-eagle on the floor, exhausted from unpacking, and awoke to his coat laid across his chest and the faint scent of freshly-brewed coffee. His dreams in that house are vivid and warm, but are of faraway rolling fields and countryside streams, like the home movies of someone else’s life.

“You’ll adjust,” says Hyesung, and Dongwan nods. Yes, of course, I always do.

--

Dongwan wonders if the ghost has always been there. If he was, perhaps, a previous tenant who had met an unfortunate end, or just a lonely spirit who had finally settled on a home after long years of wandering. God knows he knows what the latter feels like, and so nixes the idea of a homemade exorcism, turns a blind eye instead to when his radio suddenly flicks on, or when the TV switches channels without him even touching the remote. When he hears a soft sigh behind him as he sings to himself while making dinner, he pretends not to have heard.

--

On some days, he forgets he has an invisible companion. On others, it’s more insistent: a trace of cologne that reminds him of hidden mountain springs, or a lighter he never owned resting by the doorstep. He thinks he sees the ghost once as a reflection in one of the windows, its form reminding him of liquid mercury or cigarette smoke, but it melts away into a patch of sunshine before he can approach, leaving Dongwan with a strange sort of melancholy, a longing for something that was lost before it was even started.

“Your name?” he asks one day to air so still it feels like someone holding its breath, but the only response he gets is the low chirring of insects in the woods surrounding the house and the soft creaking of settling foundations.

--

He sets up his old piano keyboard and one day enters the house to the ghost playing him the refrain from Somewhere in Time. Rather than being afraid, he stretches himself out on the couch, closes his eyes as he sings the accompanying lyrics.

Love never goes
Once it has touched your heart

He stays there and it plays for hours: Satie and Mozart, jazz, and the odd nursery rhyme. The temperature in the living room feels like winter but he’s eventually lulled to sleep, warm in an oversized hoodie that swallows him like an embrace. His dreams that night are of strong, soft hands that hold onto his and the sound of unfamiliar laughter, whole and free and joyous.

Minwoo, a voice within the laughter says.

When he wakes in the morning to cold silence in an empty room, there are dried tear tracks on his face.

--

Andy says, “You look terrible.”

Dongwan says nothing. It’s midsummer but his fingers feel like ice. He’s taken to sleeping in the living room now, comforted by the familiar chill that inhabits it and the keyboard being played by an invisible maestro at random intervals.

“Dongwan hyung. Maybe you should move back…I have an extra room at my apartment that you can rent.” Andy’s worry is reflected in the way he purses his lips and the deep furrow in his forehead. “Your hands are so cold,” he continues, and Dongwan tugs his palm back from his grasp.

“I’ll be okay,” he says, clenching his fist as he tries to forget the sound of laughter by someone he’s never met and the sensation of a touch he knows he’ll never experience beyond a dream.

--

Midnight, and the ghost is playing a melancholy tune. Dongwan is sitting huddled in the armchair trying to remember how ghost stories end.

“Minwoo,” he whispers to the sullen dark. The name feels like spice and honey on his tongue.

The song stops, and the room plunges into a sudden silence that feels almost electric.

“Minwoo.” Dongwan says again. His face is wet and the air next to him suddenly feels like thick earth and decaying fruit. He lifts his chin and closes his eyes against empty air, shivers as his tongue tastes fog and smoke and the faintest trace of vanilla.

Somewhere in time
I came to realize
Love never goes

Goosebumps rise on his skin in a trail, and Dongwan smiles.

end.