It's dark outside when little Chaeryeong wakes up with the urge to go to the bathroom. She slips on her pink slippers with a yawn and leaves the room to head for the bathroom.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something—someone—down the hall. It appears to have long hair. Chaeryeong freezes and thinks it's a thief, but her mind tells her it's not. It looked… transparent. Chaeryeong would swear she could see the wall through that someone.

Without thinking, Chaeryeong runs after it, taking care not to fall and not to make noise. She catches up to the silhouette in the kitchen. With the moonlight streaming through the window, Chaeryeong sees her first ghost.

She lets out a choked noise, her heart pounding loudly in her chest. Astonishment makes her jaw hang as the ghost turns around. It's a tall girl with indecipherable colored hair. Her eyes widen wide at the sight of Chaeryeong.

“Are you—? Are you—?” Chaeryeong stammers.

The ghost looks around nervously. Finally, she looks at Chaeryeong. She puts her index finger to her lips: silence.

Chaeryeong doesn't believe she can speak. She blinks and then the entity is gone. Chaeryeong looks all over the kitchen and even peeks into the courtyard, but there is no sign. Her urge to go to the bathroom returns, pressing. Chaeryeong listens to them and then goes to sleep. She feels equal parts nervous and terrified.

The next morning, she tells her parents about the event, but they just laugh and pat her head. “They don't believe me,” Chaeryeong thinks sadly. She tells her little friends at school, but they laugh. Ghosts! How could it be!

But Chaery knows what she saw. “I'm not crazy!” she thinks to herself.

Chaeryeong saw a ghost and no one can make her believe otherwise.

~~~

Chaeryeong opens her dormitory door with a sigh. Classes have her seriously tired, and she can't wait to have even two weeks off. She doesn't ask for crazy things: just two weeks.

Her gaze falls on her roommate. Jisu has her face sunk into the pillow, still in the jeans and sweater she wears to class. “Is she asleep or passed out?” wonders Chaeryeong with an arched eyebrow. Both options are equally likely.

Jisu lets out a jaded groan.

“You're awake,” Chaeryeong says. She throws her bag on top of the chair and sits on the bed. Her body thanks her.

“But almost not,” Jisu replies. She looks at Chaeryeong with one eye. “I just want to sleep like a dead man today, so please—"

“Don't worry,” Chaeryeong interrupts her with a wave of her hand. “I'm also tired. No going out today.”

Jisu lets out a hum of agreement and buries her face in the pillow again.

Chaeryeong lies down. A pleasant shiver runs through her body. “I'll change later,” she thinks lazily. Her gaze wanders to her side of the room. A Girls' Generation poster takes up a good portion of the wall next to her. There's another poster, which has nothing to do with k-pop: it's of Ghostbusters. Their logo, to be precise.

Jisu always arches an eyebrow when she sees said poster. “Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked her that day when Chaeryeong hung up the poster. “I can't believe you believe in such things,” she says presently. It always earns an eye roll or a tongue wag from Chaeryeong.

Chaeryeong closes her eyes and hums quietly. She has the day off tomorrow, and seeing the Ghostbusters logo has given her an exciting idea.

~~~

Chaeryeong's target tonight is a building complex that has been abandoned for several years. There are signs of wear and tear in its architecture—the paint is falling off in strips; the doors, if any, are hanging on one of their hinges; there is dust from the cement eroded by the passage of time—and to Chaeryeong it looks…

“Perfect,” she says with a click of her tongue.

She enters the abandoned building with resolution. Abandoned places are not exactly plentiful in Seoul, and yet Chaeryeong has not visited most of them. Lack of time is the reason: the university consumes her time—and her soul.

Chaeryeong's flashlight draws a dusty beam of light in the darkness. Moonlight does little to illuminate the innermost part of the building. Cement dust crunches under her black shoes.

Chaeryeong is not afraid. Or well, not much: enough to jump at a noise like the of the wind, but not so much as to leave her paralyzed like a fawn. Still, she clutches tightly to the bag in which she carries her ghost-hunting gear.

Chaeryeong climbs to the fourth floor. In her experience, the second floors shouldn't have paranormal activity. They are too close to the street. Although this building is in a relatively secluded location, Chaeryeong takes no chances. Her burning desire to prove that ghosts exist compels her to be a perfectionist.

The girl wanders around the fourth floor until she finds a perfect place. It is a small apartment, where there is nothing but bare walls. No chairs or tables or shelves; both the main room and a smaller room are empty.

Chaeryeong sits cross-legged on the dusty floor. She ruffles the settled dust and coughs at it; she almost sneezes, but the impulse goes away, leaving her with a bad feeling.

Chaeryeong puts the flashlight between her teeth and rummages through the bag. She manipulates the hand-held camera until it lights up with a pib. She sets it aside and turns on the recorder, which she sets down. With anticipation, Chaeryeong turns on the EMF meter, disappointed to see that it remains green, inert.

She shakes her head. She's not going to give up.

Finally, Chaeryeong pulls out a large glass bottle and a new candle. Why she is targeting it for troublesome spirits is something even Chaeryeong doesn't know. She wants to catch one and show it to Jisu, to Chaeyeon. Shake it in their faces and say “Ha! See they do exist!”

Still holding the flashlight between her teeth and humming, Chaeryeong lights the candle and opens the glass jar. She fastens the candle inside the jar with the candle's own melted wax. Chaeryeong removes the flashlight from between her teeth and sighs, steeling herself. She reduces the power of the flashlight, just enough to be able to capture something with the camera.

Camera in one hand, jar lid in the other, Chaeryeong speaks, “If there are spirits here, I want you to know that I will not harm you” As if I could. “I just want you to show yourselves to me.”

She is half lying: attracted by her words, the spirits may approach, be drawn to the energy of the candle and wham! Trapped.

The silence is heavy.

“Uhm… Show yourselves to me, please?” Chaeryeong adds uncertainly. More firmly, she repeats, “Show yourselves to me.”

Nothing. She almost gasps as the wind whines in through the only visible window in the apartment. She doesn't want to admit that she always gets on her nerves in this kind of situation, but she does.

“I know you exist,” Chaeryeong mutters, her gaze darting to any gloomy spot.

The EMF meter is still obnoxiously green. Chaeryeong turns it off with a rabid slap.

The candle is a little over halfway up when Chaeryeong gives up. Disappointment wraps its sad blanket around her. She's been waiting all day for this and nothing happened.

“Why do they always dodge me?” Chaeryeong thinks, picking up the flashlight with defeated movements.

As a last resort, she taps the candle trap a couple of times.

“You'll like this energy, I assure you,” she says in a cheerful tone. “I promise on my mom's behalf.”

Even the wind doesn't answer her this time.

With a snort, Chaeryeong lights up the whole room.

“Come out, you devils! I mean!” she adds quickly with nervousness. “I mean ghosts come out, not devils. Not those.”

The fear is gone, replaced by incipient frustration. Muttering to herself, Chaeryeong turns off the camera. Remembering that there is another place in the apartment, she points the flashlight there with little interest and—

“What are you do—?”

“God!” Chaeryeong squeaks.

The next thing Chaeryeong knows, she's hurtling down the stairs. She doesn't even realize where she left the camera. Her body urges her to run, to run like hell. Was it a girl? Maybe, but absolute terror gripped Chaeryeong as soon as she saw it. Praying between shrieks, Chaeryeong reaches the second floor, puffing, and runs with the biggest strides she is capable of to the exit. Anyone who saw her would only see a reddish blur down the sidewalk.

Her lungs demand, burning, a rest, but her legs want nothing to do with it. It is not until she reaches a lighted area that she stops abruptly, wheezing.

“Was it—? Was it—! God, yes it was!” she thinks frantically. She feels not realization, but fear. What if it was a devil? “Why did I have to say about the devils? Heck.”

No sooner does she recover a little when she is already walking quickly. She tries to look as serene as possible, but people still look at her funny. Her heart is pumping hard in her chest, both from the run and the fright.

Ruminating on the scene, she heads for her college campus. As she slips her keys in the door, she notices that her hands are shaking. Sweat trickles down her face and she notices that the flashlight is still on. She turns it off and enters.

Jisu looks at her in alarm.

“What happened to you?” she asks, concern tinging her voice.

Chaeryeong gesticulates tonelessly.

“I saw—in that place! A—” She swallows saliva, shudders and finally shrieks, “A ghost!”

Jisu arches a skeptical eyebrow.

“You know, the brain can suggest to you to—”

“I saw it!” Chaeryeong is aware that she sounds crazy, but she can't help it; emotions are a whirlwind inside her. “I did see it, Jisu,” she repeats, calmer. “I swear I did see it.”

“Are you sure it wasn't a vagrant? Or worse, a thief. Oh, Ryeong, you know those places—”

“Thieves!” Chaeryeong snorts, still shaking from the memory. “There was no one in that place when I entered.” In a quieter voice, to herself, she adds, “It was a ghost.”

“What about your things?”

Chaeryeong's eyes widen as the realization dawns on her.

“I left them there,” she answers with red ears. “I ran away.”

Jisu runs a hand over , and Chaeryeong knows her well enough to know she's hiding a smile.

“Don't make fun of me!”

“Did I say something?” Jisu replies. “Look, ghost or not, I won't let you go back there at this hour. I'm already uneasy about you going to abandoned places at night.”

Chaeryeong looks at her hands. “It was transparent,” she suddenly thinks. “Like the one I saw as a child.”

“I'll go take a bath,” she announces, standing up. “When I can, I'll get my things. In the daytime,” she adds as she sees Jisu's gaze.

Not that she was looking forward to going back there at night either.

~~~

Two days go by, and it's two days that Chaeryeong keeps ruminating about what happened at the apartment complex. “It was a ghost,” she thought every time she remembered.

Researching and making notes became difficult. She couldn't find the motivation knowing that she had finally seen what she wanted to see so badly. Luckily it wasn't exam season yet.

As soon as she found out she had a day clear of obligations, she prepared. Mentally, mostly—her ghost hunting team is waiting for her. “If it hasn't been stolen.”

People change their minds, and Chaeryeong is no exception. For two days she slept with a small lamp on, afraid of absolute darkness. Her younger self would have looked at her in disappointment, but Chaeryeong couldn't help herself.

She stands again in front of the abandoned building. It was once orange, but now it looks like a light lemon color. Clenching her fists, Chaeryeong walks into the building. In the daytime it is not scary, just a little sad.

By the time she reaches floor four, however, Chaeryeong's stomach is in knots. She says a prayer—nothing assures her that what she saw was not a demon—and sets foot in the corridor. With cautious steps, she reaches the apartment, which has no door. She peeks her head out; her hair falls like a reddish waterfall. Nothing. Just a thick layer of dust covering everything, being less marked where she sat before.

Her equipment is still there. The candle is nothing but a puddle of hardened wax, but everything else is still in place.

“The recorder!” Chaeryeong thinks out of the blue, opening her eyes. It surely recorded what the ghost said.

Chaeryeong grabs the recorder first. It's out of batteries, as expected. Chaeryeong curses loudly and grabs her equipment bag, where she has spare batteries. She changes them with hands trembling with anticipation and turns on the device.

She hears noises that she identifies as herself setting everything up. She hears herself ask aloud for the spirits to come forward, and is surprised. Her voice trembled.

Come out, you devils! I mean! I mean ghosts come out, not devils. Not those.

Chaeryeong sticks the recorder to her ear as she hears this sentence. From the recorder comes out some mutterings from Chaeryeong herself, and she closes her eyes for further concentration. The ghost spoke shortly after the murmurs.

Silence…

God!

Chaeryeong frowns deeply.

“And the entity's voice?” she asks aloud.

She rewinds the recording and sticks the device to her ear again. She closes her eyes and listens intently.

God!

With a groan of frustration, Chaeryeong looks at the device, frowning. “Why, that thing spoke before me!”

She repeats the same process again, getting the same result. She stands for a moment with her eyes closed, defeated. She opens them and—

“It's you again.”

Chaeryeong's scream dies before it is born. She twitches and her eyes bug out. “It's not a demon,” is the first thing she manages to think. The ghost is a girl with black hair. Said hair reaches her shoulders. Although it's difficult for Chaeryeong to detail her features because of her transparency, she is convinced that she is pretty. Very. So much that she is convinced that she is not a demon. Someone so pretty can only be—

“An angel,” Chaeryeong croaks.

The entity lets out a laugh. She stands in the doorway leading to the smaller room. She's wearing homey clothes: long, white, baggy pants that look comfortable, and a gray T-shirt with no patterns.

“An angel, huh?” The spirit gives what appears to be a smile. Chaeryeong relaxes her muscles. “Nice. No one has ever called me an angel.”

“This, uhm… Mmm, you… you—” Chaeryeong swallows and shrieks, “Don't hurt me, I beg you!”

“Let's see, let's see,” the ghost says quickly. Her voice sounds like a normal person's, but it doesn't echo. “I'm not going to do anything to you. In fact, I'm glad to see you again.”

Chaeryeong glances sideways at the door. Running again doesn't sound like a bad plan. However, she stays in the same place. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other.

“Ah… I don't—I don't know what to say,” she stammers.

“Your name, for starters,” the ghost points in a friendly voice.

Chaeryeong stifles the little voice inside her that tells her that perhaps the entity hopes to curse her with her name. The girl emanates an aura that tells Chaeryeong that she is harmless.

“Chaeryeong,” she says, her voice still taut as a wire.

“Good name.” The ghost bows her head.

She says no more, and Chaeryeong manages to ask, “And… your name… what is it?”

“Ah!” The ghost slaps her forehead. What surprises Chaeryeong is that she does carry out such a thing, though it doesn't produce any echoes. “I am Ryujin.”

Chaeryeong does not remember any evil entity with that name in her country's folklore. She lets out a relieved sigh.

“What?” the ghost, Ryujin, asks. “Relax, girl. I don't bite. Even if I wanted to, I can't.”

Chaeryeong giggles, to her own surprise.

“They are real,” she murmurs.

“Very much so, yeah.” Ryujin is still standing in the doorway. She gestures to the equipment scattered on the floor. “What's all this, Chaeryeong?”

“Ah, ghost-detecting equipment,” Chaeryeong says, now relaxed.

Ryujin raises an eyebrow, a gesture Chaeryeong clearly notices. Her transparency is not pronounced, now that Chaeryeong details. “It's fainter than a living person, but not by much,” she thinks in surprise. Was the ghost she saw as a child the same? She doesn't remember; it was a long time ago.

“What nonsense,” Ryujin says. “You can't detect us unless we want you to.”

Curiosity replaces every other emotion in Chaeryeong.

“Really?”

“Aha.” Ryujin nods her head. She crouches down in front of the EMF meter. Her hand goes through it as she tries to touch it and Chaeryeong stifles a gasp of astonishment. “Turn this thing on so you can see.”

Hesitantly, Chaeryeong approaches the meter and thus Ryujin. She stops at a safe distance. Ryujin raises her head.

“Really, I'm not going to do anything to you,” she says in annoyance.

“With that look, I believe it,” Chaeryeong thinks. Ryujin is quite pretty.

Chaeryeong bends down and picks up the meter, aware of how close she is to the entity. She turns it on. Leaf green.

“How?” she asks in surprise.

“We don't abide by the same laws,” Ryujin explains. “Not that I know much, but these things are useless unless we want to have fun.” With that said, Ryujin slaps the device.

Chaeryeong registers two things: the first is that her hand is pierced by an icy cold, and the second is that the meter reads red. With an interjection, Chaeryeong drops the device, walks away and holds her affected hand to her chest.

Ryujin lets out a chuckle.

“Sorry,” she says. “It's the first time I've ever done that. I only knew what other ghosts told me.”

The coldness in Chaeryeong's hand moves to her spine.

“Others?”

Ryujin looks at her seriously. She stands up.

“Before, long ago, there were other spirits here, but they left. To the Beyond. Heaven.”

The Beyond. Chaeryeong shudders.

“And why are you still here?” she asks softly.

“Because I want to go back!” Ryujin exclaims as she folds her arms. “I want to ing come back to life.”

Chaeryeong looks at her incredulously. What?

“But that's—”

“Necessary!” Ryujin interrupts angrily. It seems like anger directed at nothing in particular and everything at the same time. “There has to be a way to get my physical form! I'm sure of it.” Suddenly, her ethereal eyes widen as she looks at Chaeryeong. “Help me, Chaeryeong.”

“Ah?” Chaeryeong continues to process the information.

“Help me regain my physical form,” Ryujin says with tones of pleading in her voice. “Please, I know you can.”

“I'm just a normal student,” Chaeryeong points out shyly.

“You're the first one to see me who's come back,” Ryujin says. “You're the first one who cares enough about me to come back.”

“I came back for my things, actually,” Chaeryeong remarks inwardly, but falls silent. The excitement in Ryujin's voice, the longing in her countenance… Chaeryeong finds herself unable to tell her the truth.

“I—I will help you,” Chaeryeong says reluctantly.

Ryujin lets out a shout of happiness and claps her hands. Her clapping produces no sound, which disturbs Chaeryeong.

“Thank you, Chaeryeong! Thank you!” Ryujin repeats again and again. She sounds as excited as a little girl. “I'll finally be able to—”

Chaeryeong's phone rings in the room. Chaeryeong answers, glancing sideways at Ryujin.

“I need your help with a couple of things, Ryeong,” Jisu says. “Please come back as soon as possible from that place.” She hangs up.

“That's a smartphone, isn't it?” Ryujin says, pointing to the device.

“Ehm, yes.” How do you not know? “I have some business to attend to, so I have to go,” Chaeryeong excuses herself.

She gathers her things with a renewed nervous air, remembering that she's talking to a ghost who incidentally asked her for help to come back to life.

Ryujin looks on silently.

“I'll... I'll be back,” Chaeryeong promises as she straightens up with her bag.

Ryujin gives a smile that Chaeryeong thinks is cute.

“I'm counting on you, Chaeryeong.”

~~~

A week passes Chaeryeong engrossed in college and her part-time job at the library near the university. She searches for information on how to revive the dead, not surprised to confirm that it is impossible. The Internet suggests satanic rituals, which Chaeryeong doesn't even bother to look into.

She thinks of various ways to tell Ryujin that what she's asking for is impossible, but she always remembers the smile Ryujin gave her when she said she would help her. The cry of joy she let out, the longing in her voice.

When she has enough free time, Chaeryeong returns to the abandoned compound with a knot in her stomach produced by nervousness.

“Ahm… Ryujin?” Chaeryeong asks as she finds herself in the dusty apartment.

It's hot, despite the glassless window.

“Good morning, Chaeryeong!”

Chaeryeong gasps when she hears the cheerful shout. She turns around and there is Ryujin, with her faint transparency. Chaeryeong can't help but detail the transparency. She can see through Ryujin, but to do so she has to focus her eyes on the background. It's like looking through a dirty window, and Chaeryeong always thought ghosts would be much more transparent.

“—Chaeryeong!”

Another gasp, and Chaeryeong comes out of her musing. Ryujin is looking at her with her head cocked to one side.

“Is something wrong?” she asks.

“No, just… Nothing.” Chaeryeong waves a hand to put the subject behind. “Sorry for disappearing for a week.”

“I've been waiting for a lot of years for someone like you.” Ryujin shrugs. “I don't mind waiting a little longer.”

Someone like you. For some reason, Chaeryeong finds the words very pleasant. She shakes her head and leans back against the wall, looking at Ryujin. “I have to tell her that it's impossible what she's asking me,” Chaeryeong thinks. She swallows saliva and opens to blurt out the words, but ends up saying:

“How long have you been here?”

She wants to slap her forehead for being a coward.

Ryujin hums—Chaeryeong doesn't understand how—and paces around the room. She looks at a random spot near the wall, turns around and sits down. In the air.

“Eighteen, I think,” she says matter-of-factly.

Chaeryeong gags, mostly from seeing her sitting on nothing.

“Eighteen!?”

Ryujin nods and lets out an “uh-huh”.

“Some of the people who came here were carrying those devices they call 'smartphones' and I could see the date on them.”

“Since 2003,” Chaeryeong says quietly.

“Yep. I had a blast with the other ghosts, and besides, time doesn't go by so slowly for me.” A note of sadness is added to Ryujin's voice. “But, since everyone left, I have felt a bit lonely.”

Sympathy rises inside Chaeryeong. She can't even imagine what it would be like to spend several years alone in that place. She frowns as she notices something.

“Why haven't you gone elsewhere?”

Ryujin stirs the invisible couch—Chaeryeong has a feeling that if she reaches over and touches it, she'll only find air—with obvious discomfort.

“I can't get away from this building,” she says after a few seconds. “And going to the Beyond is not a damn option,” she adds with a snort.

“If she can't get out of here, even worse for what she wants to accomplish,” Chaeryeong thinks. She sits down on the floor careful not to kick up too much dust.

“Why do you want to come back to life? Surely in the afterlife you won't have to worry about anything. Not working, not paying bills, not studying… Nothing.”