I woke up to find the demon staring at me from the edge of the bed.

       “Soul number two. Down the street.”, he instantly said to me the moment I opened my eyes. I sat up and quickly threw a pillow at him.

       “You left me with an angry ghost when you could’ve helped me. I stayed up all night, so let me sleep.”, I angrily said at the demon before going back to sleep.

       I woke up again during noon to find the demon at the corner of the room, far from the edge of my bed.

            “Soul number two. Down the street.”, he repeated what he said earlier but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the other pillow I was holding, clearly preparing himself in case I throw another pillow at him again. I sighed and got up from bed, completely ignoring the demon as I cleaned myself up.

       “Where?”, I asked him after stealing some bread from the kitchen. He was now seated on my chair again.

       “You know the lady who’s staring out the balcony of her house every time you see her?”, the demon asked me.

       “She’s dead?”, I asked with a shocked expression written all over my face.

       “No, but her daughter is.”, he sighed, there was then this clear shift in the atmosphere within my room.

       “She has a daughter? Since when?”, I assumed that the woman didn’t have a family as I never really saw anyone with her nor have I ever seen her smile.

       “She had one. But she died 15 years ago.”, the demon said with this unreadable look on his face. I could only keep quiet as I didn’t know what to say after I’ve heard this information about the woman we’ve always assumed as mean and grumpy.

       “We should go there once the sun sets, that’s when we’ll be able to meet her.”, he said and was clearly not in the mood to joke around. He immediately disappeared into thin air again, leaving me wondering about what happened to the woman’s daughter and why the demon seemed to be so affected.

       We walked towards the old house together but he disappeared once again when I saw the ghost he was talking about. She looked much scarier than the first ghost I’ve helped, much scarier as her body was covered with blood and dirt. It also doesn’t help that every part of her body seemed to be either bruised or stabbed. She was the ghost I saw every time I walked home with Minjoo, but never would I have thought that she’s the woman’s daughter as the woman looked quite old while she only looked a few years older than me. I forgot that ghosts don’t age and remain to look the same as how they died.

       She was so focused on looking up at the house’s balcony, she didn’t seem to notice that I was there. I slowly approached her, unsure of how to call for her attention. I carefully tried to reach for her shoulder but abruptly took my hand back when she looked like she was so shocked by the sudden contact.

       “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”, I thought I would be the one screaming but the ghost beat me to it. She let out this high-pitched scream and stepped back while looking at me with a shocked and scared expression.

       “Why are you the one screaming? You’re the ghost.”, I said what was already obvious. 

       “You can see me?”, she then frantically waved her hands in front of me to check and put her hands over in shock when she confirmed it.

       “Yes and I’m here to help.”, I proudly said like I knew how to help her when I barely know anything about her to know how. The ghost suddenly crouched down on the ground and started crying. I just stood there not knowing what to do. It was awkward to just stand there and let the girl cry her heart out. Should I crouch down with her? Pat her back to comfort her? Say “it’s gonna be okay” to the dead girl?

         After a few minutes of her crying and me contemplating what I should do, she stood up and wiped her tears with her sleeves.

       “I’m sorry, it’s the first time in 30 years that someone talked to me and the fact that you said you’re here to help me makes me- makes me”, the girl was about to cry again. It was a weird sight to see—a girl that looks a few years older than me crying like a kid. I spent a lot of years fearing this girl as I expected her to have all the anger in the world because of the way that she died, but she’s just standing in front of me while holding back her tears.

       “I have to know how to help you. Do you have any regrets or any last wishes?”, I asked the ghost.

       “I have quite a lot of regrets.”, the ghost said before looking up at the house again.

       “Is that why you’re always here?”, I asked as I looked up too.

       “She’s still waiting for me to come back alive but I’ve been dead for years now.”, she explained to me. She then looked at me with a solemn expression.

       “She wasn’t always like that. My mother was a kind-hearted woman and would never hesitate to let people inside our house when they needed help. She was talkative. She was so clingy. She was loud, you’d be able to hear her laughter from miles away. She always had this smile on her face, growing up, it was all I ever saw, even when she was suffering and even when my dad left her. But when I disappeared, I never saw her smile again nor have I ever heard her laugh again.”, she said, before looking down and then sitting down on the sidewalk.

       “She was so clingy that at some point, I found it embarrassing when we were in front of my friends. She took care of me like I was still a little kid, it was rare for her to allow me to go out, she was always so worried when I would go home late. At some point, it felt suffocating and at some point, I started to get annoyed. I felt like I barely had any freedom, unlike my friends who could go out and do things whenever they wanted to. I wanted to have that type of freedom from my mother, but I didn’t mean for it to be permanent.”, I could see the regret that she felt as she continued to talk about what happened.

       “I went out with my friends and didn’t tell her. I did things and went to places she would surely disapprove of. The 20 year-old me, the young Lee Chaeyeon, stupid really, thought it was cool to be rebellious, so I chose my friends over my own mother. But those friends, they weren’t friends at all, when a man was trying to stab me, none of them helped and just ran away. I went out with my friends, never telling my mother where I was going, only to never come back and have her wondering where I could be for so 30 years. They never really figured out where my body is buried so my mom still believes that I’m out there somewhere. She spent her whole life looking for me, I know that she’s so tired already, but she’s still waiting for me. I don’t know how to tell her that I’ve been here with her all along”, she said and started sobbing.

       “She loved me so much. I was the only one she had left, but I left her too. I left her too.”, she said as her tears continued to fall and as her breathing was getting heavier. She again used her sleeves to wipe her tears but she couldn’t get herself to stop crying. I sat next to