The Ouija board was set up on the floor, illuminated by dim candlelight. Flickering flames painted an ominous glow over the three women sitting around it.

“I’m still convinced this is a bad idea,” Minji mumbled, glancing at her friends Jisoo and Chaeyoung, who weren’t the least concerned. They grinned excitedly, not budging from their plan to have a real ghost appear in Minji’s living room.

When they had come over this Friday evening, Minji thought they would watch movies together. Still, instead, Jisoo had brought a creepy old Ouija board she wanted to use to summon a ghost. Jisoo was just as superstitious as her grandma, the owner of the board. She believed in ghosts, demons, and other beings that Minji found unsettling.

“You are a chicken, Minji!” Jisoo laughed, nudging her friend. “Come on, this will be fun!”

Reluctantly, Minji put her fingers on the wooden pointer just like the other two. She glanced at their faces, seeing their eyes glow in the eerie candlelight.

“Are there any ghosts here in this room with us?” Chaeyoung asked and waited for a few seconds. Nothing happened, of course not, but this didn’t make Jisoo lose hope. She was persistent and had too much patience regarding her ridiculous belief that ghosts were real.

“Is anybody here?” Minji asked, not expecting anything to happen, but she was in for a surprise. The pointer moved under their fingers, slowly inching towards Yes. Wide-eyed, the three women stared at it, unable to believe what was happening.

“What are you doing?” Minji hissed at Jisoo, but she looked just as flabbergasted as Chaeyoung. They both weren’t good at hiding their astonishment, observing the Ouija board with excitement and trepidation.

“It’s not us,” Jisoo said breathlessly. “I told you, this is legit!”

“Uh… hell no,” Minji whispered, unsure if she should actually believe her. Maybe Chaeyoung and Jisoo were playing a stupid prank on her.

“Let’s ask a question,” Jisoo said, driven by curiosity. “How old are you?”

The pointer moved to the numbers on the board, spelling 375.

“Let me ask something too!” Chaeyoung yelled, her eyes never leaving the board. “Are you really a ghost?”

The pointer shifted to Yes, pausing there, but Chaeyoung wasn’t convinced yet. “Prove it to us! Tell us something only a ghost would know.”

The pointer moved again, dragging over the board with increasing speed, occasionally halting over a letter or a number until it had spelled something that made Minji’s stomach lurch. Rika 05132018.

“What does it mean?” Chaeyoung asked in confusion, about to call the others out for messing with her, but she was interrupted by Minji, who knew all too well what the numbers and the name meant.

“Rika is my cat's name,” she said, her voice quivering in fear and sadness. “She died on May 13, 2018…”

“What?” Chaeyoung hissed, snapping her head around to look at her friend. “Are you serious right now?”

“I remember. You were very sad when it happened…” Jisoo confirmed. “We really are dealing with a supernatural being here. How else could it have known?”

She had a point, and Minji hated admitting it. Until now, she had been able to convince herself that all this was nothing but a silly children’s game. Opening her eyes to the sinister truth behind it was difficult and nauseated her. A part of her still hoped the others were playing some cruel prank on her…

“I want to ask something else,” Chaeyoung said, filled with morbid fascination and curiosity. “Is the devil real?”

The entity answered with Yes, and Minji’s jaw dropped. “No way! And what about demons?” The pointer stayed on Yes and didn’t move despite the trembling fingers of all three women.

“See, I told you!” Jisoo whispered.

“Can you show us a demon?” Chaeyoung asked, tilting her head when the entity answered No. “Aww… and here I was hoping…” she started, but trailed off as it spelled something else.

Summon.

An ominous sense of foreboding filled Minji, and her stomach churned with dread. This sounded like a bad idea.

“How? What do we need to do? Explain!” Jisoo asked, earning a sharp glare from Minji, who didn’t like where this was going.

Summoning Circle. Blood. Fire.

“That’s so cliché…” Chaeyoung frowned. “I don’t think we can do it.”

“Wait, wait. We can try it!” Jisoo cut in and eagerly leaned closer to the Ouija board. The flickering candlelight painted eerie shadows over her face. “My grandma showed me how to draw a summoning circle! It’s complicated, but I remember how it works.”

“Your grandma is so weird,” Chaeyoung said, rolling her eyes. “If I didn’t know better, I would have guessed she’s a witch. No offense, but she comes across as quite peculiar.”

Minji had to agree. While the older woman was friendly and kind, she had always had a strange aura around herself, and owning an Ouija board wasn’t exactly typical either. Jisoo was unconcerned by her friend’s comment and shrugged her shoulders, a daring grin stretching over her lips.

“I’ll prove that demons and ghosts are real. We’ll summon one right here, and then you’ll believe me.”

“What the…? We are not doing this in my living room!” Minji protested, but her two best friends were pushy, insisting until she gave in.

“Come on, it’s not like it’s going to work. Let’s have some fun with this,” Chaeyoung grinned.

Minji crossed her arms. “If it’s not going to work, then why do it in the first place?”

“Why wouldn’t it work? We received help from an actual ghost; how insane is that?” Jisoo said persistently. “By the way, thank you for your help.”

My pleasure.

A chill went down Minji’s spine as she observed the pointer, which seemingly moved by itself. She had enough of this madness and decided to end it, forcefully pushing the pointer to Goodbye.

“Why did you cut the connection off? Now we can’t communicate with it anymore! Who knows if we will ever get a chance like this again!” Jisoo insisted. “You have to make up for it! We need a drop of your blood.”

“Oh my God, fine!” Minji sighed, hoping to get this over with as soon as possible.

Minji walked to her desk in the corner of the living room. She fetched a piece of paper and a pen for Jisoo and handed them to her. The black-haired woman drew a summoning circle. At this point, Minji wasn’t surprised that her friend knew by heart how it worked… She drew a ring and a pentagram inside, adding various strange symbols to the outside of the ring. When she was done, she held it up proudly.

“Next, we need your blood,” she said as if it was the most normal thing to ask for. Minji grumbled, cutting her thumb with a knife and smearing her blood over the circle on the paper. Thankfully, the cut wasn’t deep, but she put a band-aid on it regardless.  

“Okay, now the fire… problem is, I have no idea what the ghost meant earlier. I’m assuming we need to put a candle in the middle. If you hadn’t sent it away, we could have asked!” Jisoo said annoyedly, putting the paper and the candle on the ground.

The three friends observed it with somewhat different expressions. Jisoo was fascinated, Chaeyoung excited, and Minji downright nervous. For a whole minute, none of them moved, and nothing happened. “Well? Looks like it didn’t work after all,” Minji said, but Jisoo wasn’t done yet.

“I have another idea. I think we should add something to the summoning circle. If we want to summon a demon, we must specify which one,” Jisoo said.

“It’s not working, just give up,” Minji said, getting annoyed at her friend. Chaeyoung, on the other h