“I’ve never seen a lost ghost try this hard to communicate. What if we weren't counters?” Kyungsoo whispered and when I checked the time, it was ten minutes past three am. “What do you feel? Any emotions you can pick up on?”

“Cold,” Kai said and Kyungsoo pinched him, Chanyeol saying it for me.

“Sadness," he said softly and I blinked, frowning at Chanyeol. Could he sense her emotions, too? “Like she’s begging to be saved.”

“Of course, she is,” Kyungsoo answered, falling back down on the bed. “Could she be attached to an item?”

“I hardly think so. There isn’t anything here. The bungalows were all renovated a year ago. I remember Sehun telling us about it,” Chanyeol replied and I couldn’t shake the heavy feeling from my heart while I racked my brains to understand the situation. “What is a lost ghost doing here? Maybe she died here.”

“Where? Fell off a cliff and forgotten?” Kai asked and I heard his voice rise. “Why didn’t anyone come and find her?”

We all went silent, Kyungsoo turning to the side to stare at me.

“What do we do now?” I asked him, thinking that the only way to figure something out was to let Kyungsoo take the lead. “Do we leave her alone?”

“We both know that you won’t allow that to happen,” Kyungsoo said to me and I nodded. He was quick-witted and Kyungsoo seemed to know how I was. I closed my eyes, trying not to drown myself in the feeling when I heard Kai say into the darkness.

“We’ll help her. Don’t worry, Noona.” There was a pregnant pause. “No one deserves to be forgotten like that.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I woke up to breakfast cooking and Matthew yelling at me to wake up. When I walked out to the living room, I saw that Sehun was standing in front of a shelf, the male frowning.

“I’m pretty sure something was here,” he said, pointing at a space on the shelf. “Like a paperweight or something.”

“What are you on about at 7 am in the morning, Sehun?” I asked, smiling at him. He greeted me and I heard a snicker. I had walked to the living room just to turn back to see Haechan holding a vase, Sehun yelling out to Haechan to put the vase down.

“Now, that is a very expensive vase!” Sehun was yelling. “No history to the vase, but it is expensive!”

“Well…” Haechan grinned. “My house has one just like this, too! Except it’s bigger.”

“I will kill you,” Sehun hissed, Kyungsoo appearing from the front of the bungalow. He seemed to have gone for his morning walk and left the cooking to Harin. He stopped behind Haechan, the male with his hands behind his back.

“Child.” He looks at Haechan. “If you do not put down the vase, I will obliviate you.”

“What’s that?” Haechan asked, making a face. Kyungsoo grunted, grabbing the male by the back of his neck and forcing him to put down the vase before dragging him to the living room like a mother bear would do to a baby bear. “Sunbae!”

“Sit. And you wait for food.”

That was enough for Haechan to shut up, the male looking down onto the ground when Kyungsoo walked over to the kitchen to check out the food. I looked at the people in the bungalow when I saw that Kai, Chanyeol, Baekhyun, and Minseok were gone.

“Where did the rest go?” I asked Kyungsoo. He sniffed the soup and patted Harin on the back, telling her she did a good job with a soft ‘Good, Ong Harin. Good.’ Harin beamed. “Hiking?”

“No. They went to get more food. When we bought groceries, we didn’t think we’d have an additional three people joining us, no?”

That was true and I nodded, asking him if he needed any help but Kyungsoo shooed me away. Mark entered the bungalow and he was holding his drone, looking very happy with Matthew beside him. Matthew passed me a flying kiss and I smiled at him, greeting Mark with a soft good morning.

While I waited for the food, I heard a car approaching and saw that it was Kai’s car, the male getting down from the vehicle and running towards the bungalow. I wondered if anything happened, Kai bursting through the doors and coming towards me.

“Woah, Woah. What—”

“Found her! Found a lead!” Kai said to me, stuffing a flyer into my hand. “Chanyeol said that it was her! The flyer was on a bulletin board! She's Indonesian!" 

And with that, I looked down on the flyer and saw that it was the same woman we saw in the middle bedroom. She looked exactly the same and I searched the flyer for a name just to see one word “Putri”.

One word—but was it enough? I glanced at Kyungsoo who came up to us, his fingers going towards the flyer when he frowned. Kai looked very hyped up, the male pacing back and forth around the room.

“What do we do now?” Kai asked, Kyungsoo reaching up to grip his cross. “You have a name now, don’t you?”

“I do,” Kyungsoo said smoothly. “But I believe Putri would be a first name or so—”

“Will you look at that?” Chanyeol said from the couch, his phone in his hands. “I searched up number one popular names in Indonesia and Putri came up as the first choice. 0.43% of the population has Putri as a name extension—the statistics aren’t very promising for it to be her only name.”

“That’s rather normal, no? Indonesia is a country where people give out names based on their religion.” I said, thinking back to my classes that taught me of the multiculturism Indonesia had faced before. “Very similar to Malaysia, if I remember.”

“Indonesians believe that: A name is a prayer you give to your child,” Kyungsoo said, reading something from his screen. “Beautiful, but also doesn’t help us. I can’t just pray for her with her first name. I need her full name."

“Mhm…” I hummed to myself, chewing on my bottom lip when I jerked my head towards the bedroom, seeing Mark and Haechan a foot away with Jeno. I didn’t want them to be involved. “Family meeting.”

Kyungsoo raised an eyebrow at me when I said it, Chanyeol pushing Kai towards the first bedroom, Sehun following suit.

“If Noona says the family meeting, then family meeting it is,” Chanyeol told them and we all filed into the room, sitting down on the bed. Harin decided to keep the children company, Minseok with his notebook ready.

“What does this mean for us?” Kai asked, Sehun placing a hand on his shoulder. “We have to stay here until we solve this. We can’t move, right? Right?”

“Right, Kim Kai. Calm down.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Kai huffed, chewing on his bottom lip. “This is sad. Really sad. People don’t even know she’s dead. No one is praying for her and she’s stuck here with nowhere to go—”

“Yes, we know that.” Kyungsoo nodded, Kai continuing to ramble.

“And if she’s here, it means she’s dead and lost. Her body would be somewhere with no one actually trying to find her—”

A snap.

We all turned to Kyungsoo, the male’s big eyes on Kai as if Kai just enlightened him.

“That’s it,” Kyungsoo whispered. “Her body. I was wondering what she was attached to, but this is a resort, right? She flickered throughout the room which means her body may be near and the only thing a lost ghost is usually attached to is its body. Lost ghosts don’t even have the power to communicate, more or less attach themselves to an item.”

“Do you mean that she might have fallen off a cliff?” Sehun asked and we frowned at the possibility. “But wouldn’t we have found out? There are safety nets and there are hikers around the area. I know my resort has rangers around as well. My family knew of the safety hazards when they put up the resort.”

“If she fell off a cliff, it wouldn’t be from Sehun’s resort,” Minseok added. “Over that area is beyond the Oh Valley Resort and if she did—why didn’t anyone report her?”

“A lost ghost with no power cannot go far from its body,” Kyungsoo said and I felt a bit irked that he kept calling the ghost ‘it’ but to Kyungsoo, these ghosts were far from human, as kind as he was to them at times. “What does the flyer say?”

“Just her name, race, and that she is missing,” Minseok said, his eyes running over the paper. Kai looked stressed and I wondered what had changed in him.

“You know, there weren’t even multiple flyers. It was just one flyer, stapled in front of the grocery store. Kai went to ask the police station nearby and they said that someone had come in a few weeks ago to ask about her. Someone from Nepal, the woman saying that this girl was her friend and disappeared. She said her last text message to her was a photo of the mountains with this location but the police didn’t go forth with it because there was no pressure.”

“Anything else you found out?” I asked, Kai’s eyebrows furrowing. “What she worked as? Anything?”

“She was a maid, I think. Or she worked odd jobs, here and there. Other than that, I have no idea. We need to find out what happened, we can’t just stay here and do nothing.”

“Kai, you’re really fired up right now.”

“Noona, I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“This is the first time I’ve seen you act like this,” Sehun said from the side, Minseok nodding. It was a new image to them. “I mean, it’s not like you’ll become a detective or something in the far future, right?”

Silence.

“Huh… I never thought of that,” Kai whispered and I blinked. “Interesting thought.”

“Alright, Mr. Aspiring Detective,” Baekhyun butted in and I saw him smiling at Kai, urging him on. My brother seemed to know that Kai had found a new passion… for lost souls or unsolved cases, per se. “What do you think we should do? Take the wheel.”

Kai straightened himself out, his gaze settling on Sehun.

“Bro, I know you think nothing would have happened here but if you look at the hints. She can’t go far from the body, someone came a few weeks ago to find her—”

“Are you saying that she died here?” Sehun asked and Kai looked like he didn’t want to accuse Sehun’s resort of being the area where a death would have happened, but Sehun took it well. He took a deep breath, nodding. “Fine, let’s say she died here. Where?”

“That’s what you have to find out. I prefer Minseok hyung though, we all know you might fall asleep. It’s a lot of footage to check.” Kai said to Sehun, grabbing Minseok’s notebook and scribbling something into it. “Check the CCTV’s for any images of her from this time frame to this time frame. With that, we might as well see if she ever stayed here.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“If she came here, she must have been with a family, correct?” Kai asked, all of us nodding. It was like Kai had gears in his head-turning. “Or she must have come here for a small job, catering, cooking, etcetera... but it’s a resort and it’s near this room so most likely she came with someone. But to be sure—

“We check the list of people who have come here for odd jobs. I’ll do that,” Baekhyun said, nodding at Kai encouragingly. “You’re doing great, Kai. What’s next?”

“The thing is, if the flyer was placed only once on the board by her friend and not multiple times over multiple weeks, most likely it means that her friend was not stationed here. “Her last photo sent was of the mountains and a location” implies that she wasn’t from around here."

“Seoul,” I found myself saying. “Most likely from Seoul—May I make a suggestion?”

Kai nodded.

“A lot of overseas workers who come to Korea are registered through an agency. I suggest you call the top agencies and scout around to see if they are missing any people.”

“Or you can search online,” Chanyeol said and we saw him on his phone. “Look.”

The switch of the screen was turned to us and I saw Kyungsoo stand back, studying all of us. The photo was of the same person posted under an agency site that she had run away after receiving her pay without finishing the jobs she was supposed to complete.

“What was her last job?” Kai asked, Chanyeol saying that there was no list and maybe it was best they called the agency to find out.

“But to be honest, if people thought she ran away, which happens occasionally… it makes sense why no one is finding her. Other than her friend, of course.” Chanyeol murmured, putting his phone down. “The only reason why the agency would try to find her is because they would have spent money on her work permit and VISA to stay here. If she’s no longer working for them and disappeared, they won’t be able to renew those two things and she’d be in Korea illegally.”

It was hints, here and there and Kai trying to contact the agency but to no avail—no one responding when we began to divide the work. Kyungsoo, Chanyeol, and I would try to talk to her. Sehun would handle the children with Harin; Jeno, Haechan, Mark, and Matthew (Matthew is a child, Noona!). They would bring the kids hiking so they would be distracted.

Minseok would sit