Suho frowned as he replayed the section of audio he had just listened to, trying to figure out what exactly he was hearing. He had spent most of the past two days camped out in the backroom of his bookstore with a laptop, going over evidence from the investigation three nights ago. He was supposed to be meeting with the family tomorrow, to show them anything the team had caught and give them his opinion on what may be there. Usually he left the evidence review to Sehun, Kai and Baekhyun, since he worked the most out of all of them and Kyungsoo was busy enough between working and researching cases, but Suho wanted to go over it himself this time. He didn’t really want Baekhyun anywhere near the evidence for this case after what happened, and as much as he trusted their two youngest members, he couldn’t risk a single detail being missed. He needed to know if whatever had trapped Baekhyun meant harm or was just being playful, otherwise he couldn’t give the family a solid evaluation. Fortunately he had competent employees – Jinki may be a little clumsy, but he could be trusted to take care of the store while Suho was otherwise occupied.

Hearing a light knock on the door, Suho paused what he was listening to and looked up as someone poked their head into the room. Smiling, he motioned for them to come in, tilting his head towards the only empty chair in the room.

“Hey boss, Jinki said you wanted to see me?” Chanyeol asked, grinning as he walked in and sat down across from Suho. Nodding, the older man pulled off his headphones, setting them on the table in front of him. Chanyeol had been working at the store for about six months now; he had come in looking for books on the paranormal, and somehow or another left with a job. It had taken two months for him to find out that Suho was the leader of EXO, and ever since he had been begging for a chance to investigate with them. Yesterday, Suho had finally relented, and the boy had been ecstatic. He could be a little annoying at times (annoyingly persistent at least), but he was passionate and eager to learn. He was also a lot smarter than he let on, and Suho felt that he could be a valuable asset to their team. The others had been introduced to him last night, the group gathering at the restaurant Kyungsoo worked at instead of the office. He seemed to fit right in, Kyungsoo, Kai and Sehun got along with him well and had no problems with Suho’s choice. Baekhyun had never shown up for dinner.

“I just wanted to let you know that your training starts tonight,” Suho replied, noticing how the younger man’s grin widened at that. “Remember I told you last night that we had another member who couldn’t make it? He’ll be here in about an hour to take you over to the office. For tonight he’s just going to show you some of the equipment and tell you a little more about how our investigations work. I want the two of you to spend the next few days getting to know each other, since you’ll be working together a lot. Kyungsoo is working out the final details of our next case, so it shouldn’t be too long before you get to work with us in the field.”

“Great! I can’t wait to get started. What about my shift though?” Chanyeol’s brow furrowed slightly in confusion, realizing he was supposed to be working for the next four hours.

“Oh, don’t worry about that, I’ll cover your shift. I wasn’t really planning on leaving anytime soon.” Suho said. He frowned at his laptop slightly. No, he wouldn’t be going anywhere for awhile… he still had to sort through the rest of this evidence. At this rate he would probably just end up closing the store early; Jinki’s shift ended in two hours, and he would be far too distracted to deal with customers. Not that many people came in that late anyway.

The hour seemed to pass by slowly for Chanyeol, who could barely contain his excitement as he waited on customers. He had been asking Suho to let him join nearly every day for four months, and he had barely been able to believe his ears when his boss finally said yes the previous day. Meeting the team had been great, they seemed fun to work with and he was looking forward to meeting this last member as well. From what Suho had said, it sounded like this was the guy who would primarily be training him. Apparently the guy wasn’t very punctual though, because when Chanyeol checked the time again, it had been an hour and fifteen minutes since he talked to Suho and the man still hadn’t showed up.

It was another fifteen minutes before a shorter man walked into the store, looking around for a second before walking towards the checkout counter. He had short, dark hair and was dressed in a simple black graphic tee and a pair of dark skinny jeans. Chanyeol vaguely remembered seeing him come in a few times to talk to his boss, and he didn’t look like he was shopping for books, so he assumed this was the man that was supposed to be meeting him.

“Hi!” Chanyeol greeted, smiling widely at his new teammate. He held out a hand for the other man. “Nice to meet you, I’m Chanyeol! I hope we can work well together.”

Baekhyun ignored the hand, trying not to glare at the overly cheerful man in front of him. Somewhere inside, he knew that none of this was Chanyeol’s fault, but he just couldn’t bring himself to be nice. He didn’t even want to be here, but despite his anger at the older man, he knew that fighting Suho wouldn’t solve anything – if he was pulling rank as leader, then there was no way he was going to give up on this. As unhappy as he was with the situation, even he could admit that he hadn’t been very fun to deal with for the last year, and he owed it to his friend to be at least a little cooperative for once. So, after eight ignored text messages and a few hours of being stubborn, Baekhyun had finally agreed to train the new kid. That didn’t mean he had to like it or be nice about it.

Having heard Chanyeol’s greeting, Suho stepped out of the back room in time to see the man’s smile falter slightly at Baekhyun’s less than pleasant attitude. Sighing, he tried not to be too disappointed. Baekhyun showing up was already more than he had expected, they could work on civility later.

“Baekhyun, glad you could make it,” Suho said, walking over and patting his friend lightly on the shoulder before turning to Chanyeol. “Chanyeol, this is my good friend and the last member of our team, Byun Baekhyun. In addition to being an investigator, he’s our tech manager, so it will be his job over the next few months to show you how we conduct our investigations and get you used to using the equipment. Baekhyun, meet our newest member, Park Chanyeol.”

“Yeah, great, lovely to meet you. Can we go now?” Baekhyun finally spoke. Suho’s gaze hardened slightly at the rude tone, grip on his friend’s shoulder tightening. Noticing the look Suho was giving him, Baekhyun finally shook the hand that Chanyeol had been holding out the whole time (rather stupidly, in his opinion), forcing a smile. The three of them stood there for a few awkward seconds before Suho ushered the two out of the store, telling them to go get some work done and be nice to each other (the latter part obviously directed more towards Baekhyun than Chanyeol).

Once they were gone, Suho found Jinki in one of the store rooms and sent him out as well, telling him he looked tired and to go home and rest. The younger man didn’t protest too much, probably since he really did look quite tired, and within a few minutes Suho was standing in the store alone with the ‘closed’ sign up in the front window. Slipping his cell phone out of his pocket, he headed back into the backroom, dialing a familiar number along the way. He needed a second opinion on the evidence he had found.

“Hey, Kris, do you have a minute? I have some stuff I want you to take a look at.”

A few minutes later, Suho had sent the files over and had Kris on a video call, phone propped up against a book next to his laptop.

“Okay, so what exactly was so important that you had to call me out at two in the afternoon, when you know I just got back from a very long case a few hours ago? Or did you just forget the time difference again?” Kris grumbled, glaring sleepily at Suho through the screen. They had spent the previous night investigating a hotel a few hours away, but hadn’t been able to stay because Tao and Jongdae insisted on working that day, complaining about how many hours they had been missing out on. It had been well into the morning when they finally got home, all dead tired after a long, sleepless night. Kris personally thought they should be sleeping like he, Luhan, Yixing and Minseok were doing (at least until Suho woke him up), but the pair had been stubborn about it.  

“Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep,” Suho chuckled, “but this is kind of important. We had a case a few days ago and there were some rather… odd things going on. Unfortunately we didn’t catch too much evidence of it, but I want an opinion on what we did catch from someone who wasn’t there. Before I tell you what happened, just listen to the clip I sent you and tell me what you think. Kyungsoo and I were trying to do some EVP work at the time, so you’ll hear us talking.”

“Alright, fine.” Kris replied, curious what exactly had happened to have Suho so bothered. Opening up the file he had been sent, he hit play, not bothering with headphones for the moment. Suho could hear the clip he had replayed a hundred times filtering through the phone.

 “’Is there someone in here with us? We were about to leave, did you not want us to?’

‘…nnnt…ytt…’

 ‘Okay. If you don’t want us to leave, then we’ll stay right here. We only want to help.’

‘…heeeelmmm…. hmmm’

 ‘Can you tell us your name? If you’re trying to talk to us, I’m sorry but we can’t hear you. You have to be louder, can you do that?’

‘…yrrr… frnnnnn…. hehehhh’”

Kris frowned as he listened, trying to make out the words. He could definitely hear a voice that didn’t belong to Suho or Kyungsoo – in fact, it sounded like a little girl. Pulling out a pair of headphones, he put them on and turned up the volume. He had an idea of what he thought was being said, but he wanted to take a closer listen before he said anything. Suho watched all of this in silence, patiently waiting for Kris to finish listening. It was another few minutes before Kris spoke.

“That’s… strange.” Kris said, face scrunched slightly in confusion. “And you guys weren’t hearing that at the time? Because if it’s saying what I think it’s saying… it sounds pretty much directly in response to your questions, though it’s definitely a weird response.”

“We heard the laugh at the end, but otherwise nothing.” Suho confirmed. “What is it that you think it’s saying? I’m willing to bet we’re hearing the same thing, but I just want to be certain.”

“The first part definitely sounds like ‘not yet,’ which makes sense considering what you were asking. The second part though… what I’m hearing is ‘help him… your friend’ and then a laugh.” Kris said, still looking confused. “But I don’t understand, why would it tell you to help your friend, what friend? And even weirder, it sounds playful, teasing almost… not like it’s actually telling you to go help someone.”

“Yes, that’s what I hear as well, though it may make more sense when I tell you the rest of the story. Something… happened to Baekhyun, at the same time that Kyungsoo and I were having this experience.”

“What do you mean something happened? Is he okay?” Kris was worried now. Suho was being awfully cryptic about this whole thing, and he didn’t like it.

“He’s fine… well, more or less. Just do me a favor, and don’t tell anyone about this okay? Not even Tao, especially not Tao. I don’t think Baekhyun really wants to talk about it, he’s only said anything at all to us because we were there, and I highly doubt he ever planned on bringing it up to any of you guys.” Suho waited for Kris to agree before continuing, telling him about what he and Kyungsoo experienced, as well as what had happened to Baekhyun.

“I see… and knowing him, he’s pretending nothing is wrong, even though I’m pretty sure any of us would be shaken up after something like that.”

“Of course he is. Kyungsoo barely even got Baekhyun to tell him what happened, and he’s said nothing else about it to any of us except that he’s fine and we shouldn’t worry. There’s something else too…” Suho trailed off, not sure what Kris would think about this. “We all know how much Tao leaving affected him, everyone except Tao at least, which is why I haven’t brought anyone new into the team yet. But Baekhyun has been refusing to partner with the rest of us most of the time and wandering off on his own instead, and after the other night I’m not taking any chances. One of my employees has been asking me for months to join the team, and yesterday I told him yes.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Kris asked, eyebrow raised. He hadn’t really been expecting that; he’d had many conversations with Suho in the past about this very subject, and they had always agreed that it was best to just give Baekhyun time. “He must be completely pissed at you.”

“You could say that. I’m not exactly happy about it, but the rest of the team seems to like Chanyeol, and I think he could be good for Baekhyun.” Suho was half hoping that some of Chanyeol’s cheerfulness would rub off on Baekhyun, though he knew the problem ran deeper than that. “At the very least, training him should keep Baekhyun out of trouble, give him something to do besides sit around being depressed. They headed over to the office together a little while ago, so he could show Chanyeol some of the equipment.”

“I’m surprised he’s even going along with it at all. I just hope you’re right, and this doesn’t make things worse.”

“Yeah, I hope so too.”

The drive over to the office had been silent and tense. Chanyeol looked like he had a thousand questions to ask, but after the scene at the bookstore, he’d had enough sense to stay quiet so far. Baekhyun was grateful for that much, not at all in the mood for unnecessary chatter. After what seemed like forever, but had really only been fifteen minutes, Baekhyun pulled up in front of the building and motioned for Chanyeol to get out. While he double checked that the car was locked properly – you could never be too careful on this side of town – Chanyeol took the chance to get a good look at the building.

“Wow, this is pretty awesome. I can’t believe you guys really have your own office!” He said, rocking back and forth on his feet in excitement. Baekhyun just stared at him for a second, wondering how insane you would have to be to look at the lopsided brick building in the most rundown part of town that housed their crappy second floor office and think it was ‘awesome.’

“It’s really not that great, but okay.  Come on, it’s on the second floor.” Baekhyun led Chanyeol through the front door and up the rickety staircase into their office. It really wasn’t much of an office, just a small room with a table in the middle surrounded by about ten chairs. There was a tiny bathroom off to one side, and a storage closet in the back where they kept their equipment and case files. It was certainly nowhere near as glamorous as Chanyeol made it out to be, but it served its purpose, and thanks to the location and size they were able to rent it for a pretty low price.

“I still think it’s cool that you have an office,” Chanyeol replied, looking around the room with wide eyes. It was almost child-like, and Baekhyun hated that he didn’t find it as annoying as he should have.

“If you say so…” Baekhyun gave Chanyeol an odd look before walking over and opening the door to the storage closet. “We meet here most nights, but there’s not really a set schedule since we all work at different times, and there’s not always a need to meet unless we’re working on a case. I’m sure Suho will let you know if you need to be here.”

Chanyeol nodded along to show he was listening, watching as Baekhyun pulled different items out of the closet and set them on the table. “How often do you guys go on investigations then?”

“It depends on what kinds of requests we get.” Baekhyun replied vaguely, grabbing one last piece of equipment before shutting the closet door.  Then he noticed Chanyeol looking at him like he expected a further explanation and sighed. “We get a lot of requests from people who are just being paranoid or looking for attention, so we have to sort through and find the ones that sound legit. That’s Kyungsoo’s job. There aren’t always a lot of those though, and many of the ones that are real are out of state. Most of us can’t afford to take many days off of work, and on top of that it can take a few days to review all the recordings, so generally we can only go on three or four investigations a month. Sometimes we’ll do more if a local case comes up.”

“I see. So, what’s all of this then?” Chanyeol asked, gesturing towards all the things Baekhyun had lain out on the table.

“This is all the equipment we use – cameras, audio recorders, EMF meters, thermometers – I hope you at least know what some of those are.” Baekhyun explained, glaring when he saw Chanyeol reaching a hand out towards the table. “Don’t touch any of it unless I tell you otherwise.”

Jumping when Baekhyun snapped at him, Chanyeol pulled his arm back to his side, smiling nervously at the other man. “Okay, no touching, got it.”

“Sorry, but this stuff is expensive.” Baekhyun was not really sorry at all. He couldn’t help being protective over his equipment – they had worked hard to afford all of this, and it was his job to make sure nothing happened to it. He felt a little bad for snapping, but there was nothing he could do about that now. Picking up a small gray device with colored lights across the top, he began explaining. “I’m going to assume I don’t have to tell you what we use a digital camera or a flashlight for. This is a K2 meter, do you know what that is?”

“Uh, no, I think I’ve got that.” Chanyeol blinked, looking down at the device Baekhyun was holding. “Yeah, that’s used to detect EMF spikes, right?”

“Right,” Baekhyun nodded, putting the device down and picking up another, this time black with a small display screen. “The device I’m holding is also an EMF meter. This one is more accurate, because it gives an exact readout, but the K2 is useful for detecting sudden jumps. Want to tell me why we bother measuring electromagnetic fields?”

“Well, there are a few reasons. There’s a theory that entities give off their own EMFs and can be detected through changes or spikes in the base EMF reading for an area. Usually anything higher than around 1.5 milliGaus that isn’t a steady reading can be considered paranormal. Some people also believe that spirits can use the energy from man-made EMFs – those produced by computers, power lines, and various other electrical equipment – as a means to manifest, so that can be a good indication of why paranormal activity may seem concentrated in certain parts of a building.” Chanyeol answered, trying to recall what he had read about the subject.

“Not bad, you’re mostly correct.” Baekhyun had to admit, he was a little impressed. This was basic stuff, but still, the kid had clearly done his research. Kai and Sehun had been clueless about any of the technical terms when they first joined the group a year and a half prior. “We also do it for debunking purposes. Some people are sensitive to high EMFs, so if they’re around a lot of electronics or appliances that are giving off high EMF readings, it can create the illusion of paranormal activity. Uneasy feelings, paranoia, skin irritation, nausea, even hallucinations – we’ve found many creepy basements that were just the result of electrical boxes or wires creating high electromagnetic fields.”

“Huh, that’s good to know.” Chanyeol murmured to himself, staring at the meter thoughtfully for a moment, then glancing back up at Baekhyun. “So, what else do you have?”

“Well we have a few different types of video cameras, which I’ll show you in a minute, along with a digital thermometer and a digital audio recorder. There’s also a set of two-way radios, very important for keeping in contact on a case. Obviously we have multiples of most of this stuff, I just saw no point in dragging all of it out of the closet.” Baekhyun continued, pointing to each device as he mentioned it. He chose not to bring up how he was a prime example of what one should not do with their radio – ignore it, leave it sitting in central command, leave it in the van, forget to turn it on… well, Suho had done that once too, so he at least didn’t get yelled at for that one. “Since you’ve proven you’re not a complete idiot, go ahead and tell me what the thermometer and audio recorder are used for, other than the obvious.”

“Um, okay…” Chanyeol tried not to be too hurt by the comment – the guy was obviously not in the best of moods – but he still cringed a little. “Similar to the EMF theory, some people believe that spirits can manifest by drawing energy out of the air, creating cold spots. So, the thermometer is to check for cold spots or any other odd changes in the ambient temperature. The audio recorder would be for catching EVPs.”

“Good, and what’s an EVP?” Baekhyun frowned a little when he saw Chanyeol cringe; he hadn’t meant for that to sound nearly as insulting as it had.

“It stands for Electronic Voice Phenomenon, which is basically a voice that shows up on playback of a recording, but wasn’t heard at the actual time and place of the recording.” Chanyeol replied, hoping that by answering the questions, he was at least somewhat changing Baekhyun’s opinion that he was an idiot.

Satisfied with the answer, Baekhyun went on to explain the different cameras they used. They had four mini DVs, handheld digital video cameras that were usually either used when walking around or set up in addition to the DVR cameras if they had a large area to cover. Their DVR system wasn’t super high end, but it did the job. They had five wireless cameras that connected back to a single hard drive and could be viewed all on one monitor. During any case, they would set the monitor up in one of the rooms and label it central command, which is also where they would meet if necessary and keep any extra equipment. Someone was almost always stationed at central command, watching the cameras while the others were investigating. They usually tried to rotate it out so that everyone had a shift at central command and everyone had a chance to walk around, but recently Baekhyun had been spending most of his time on cases watching the DVR. The last type of camera they used was the thermal camera, which showed the surface temperature of everything in its view, and was great for detecting any odd temperature readings or figuring out when random noises were just caused by animals, among other things. Baekhyun gave Chanyeol an extra warning to especially not touch the thermal (“It cost us more than you probably make in a month, and if you break it I will make Suho take it out of your salary”).

By the time they had finished going through everything, they were both surprised to find that they had been there for nearly two hours. Chanyeol still had a lot of questions about how their investigations worked, but Baekhyun assured him they would be answered later and dragged him out of the building – only after triple checking all the locks on the office door of course, he wasn’t kidding when he said this part of town was shady.

“I suppose I have to drive you home?” Baekhyun asked when they were standing outside of the building, noticing how dark it had gotten.

“Oh… no, you don’t have to, I don’t live that far from here.” That was a flat out lie, it would take Chanyeol at least forty-five minutes to walk home, but Baekhyun clearly didn’t want to spend any more time with him than he had to.

“Just get in the car. I’m not gonna have Suho yelling at me tomorrow when they find you stabbed to death in an alley.” Baekhyun didn’t give him another chance to protest, walking over to the driver’s side and getting in. Eyes widening at that, Chanyeol smartly said nothing and climbed into the passenger seat, quietly telling Baekhyun his address once he was buckled in.