(A/N: Hello! Some quick notes for this chapter regarding children's games in Korea: sam pul sun is like a cross between capture the flag and freeze tag; eoreum ddaeng is actually freeze tag, and jegi is similar to hackey sack; jegi were traditionally made with cloth and a coin or stone in the center. I am not Korean, if I get any of this wrong and you want to call me out on it, please do so.)

2014

When Kangin rolls down the drive to the new house, it’s the first time all day there's been silence in the car. Shindong breaks it, pushing his way between the two front seats and staring out the window with wide eyes.

“Are you serious?”

Then it's mayhem as usual. Sungmin is the only to have seen the property since Kangin and Leeteuk signed the loan, so the reaction from the other four kids isn’t unexpected. Yesung shouts that he claims the biggest room while Kibum pulls Shindong back into his seat with a gentle hand. Kangin catches Leeteuk in a sidelong gaze, rolling his eyes and matching Leeteuk's little smile with one of this own.

The moving truck rumbles to a stop beside the car and the passenger door opens, Sungmin swinging down from the side with a wave in their direction. “All right, calm down!” Kangin says. “Time to unpack.” A collective groan sounds from the back of the car.

It doesn’t go as well as planned. Well, it goes with pretty much the exact amount of chaos that's expected from four kids under the age of 13.

“Why can’t we pick our rooms first?” Yesung whines, holding a box that’s larger than his torso.

“Might be better to get them out of the way for now,” Kangin says to Leeteuk under his breath, who nods and hands the box he’s carrying off to Sungmin.

“Okay, okay,” Leeteuk concedes with a sharp clap of his hands. “First, a head count. Sungmin?”

Sungmin’s already halfway into the house. “One!” he calls over his shoulder.

They go from there: Shindong, Kibum, and Yesung with a cheerful “Four,” bouncing on his heels.

“Four, hmm. Who are we missing?” Leeteuk taps his chin in thought and turns to Kangin, who shrugs. There’s a tug on the bottom hem of his shirt, but he ignores it.

“I guess that’s it, right?” The tugging becomes more insistent.

“Only four kids now, huh. Oh well!”

“Me!” comes a shout from down around his legs. “Don’t forget me!”

Kangin looks down. “Oh! Ryeowook, there you are. I didn’t hear your number.”

“Five!” he chirps, panic in his sweet voice. Leeteuk chuckles and gives in, crouching down to Ryeowook’s level.

“We just don’t want to lose you, okay? You can go play, but stick by Yesung and the others.” Ryeowook nods. Yesung comes over to take his small hand in his and they run off into the house.

Kangin stretches his back while Leeteuk brushes the dirt off his jeans. He blinks into the sunlight, the bright noon sun washing out his vision. It’s going to be a long day hauling boxes and furniture, but he doesn’t mind all that much. They finally have a place big enough for all seven of them and with room to spare. Not to mention privacy. Safety. As safe as they can get, given their situation.

Moving is exhausting. Moving with five kids, and Kangin feels like he's just run a marathon. Leeteuk is quiet beside him, for once not trying to move three steps ahead of himself, and they take a moment to breathe.

It’s a beautiful, sprawling hanok style home. If Kangin is going to believe the records, the foundations have been standing for over 100 years, but hell if he knows which parts are original and which have been rebuilt. It’s not completely traditional: four buildings forming a square shaped house, with the courtyard roofed over and renovated into a common room. Two L-shaped buildings extend as wings with individual bedrooms. The intent of the previous owners was that it be a guesthouse, but the realtor had told them it wasn’t lucrative and they sold it just to recoup their losses.

It must have been some loss. They had rebuilt so much of the hanok that it looks like new. Each room has access from the inside and the outside along the two wings, there's a completely refurbished kitchen, and most of the house came already furnished.

“Dream come true, eh?” Leeteuk’s words shake him into the present.

“Yeah.”

Chuckling under his breath, Leeteuk sets a smacking kiss on the side of Kangin's head, then pushes him away. “Come on. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

-

“I’m older, so it’s my room.”

“Yeah, but you should be setting an example! How will I know how to be a good hyung if mine is selfish?”

“You can room with Sungmin, he’ll teach you how to be a good hyung.”

“I’m not rooming with anyone.” Sungmin sets a box down with a thud, his name scrawled in thick letters across the side. “This is my room, you two have the one across the hall.”

Kibum and Shindong stare at him, mouths agape. “What!” Shindong says. “But you’re leaving in two months!”

“Exactly. After that, Shindong moves in here. Then you both get your own rooms.”

Footsteps come pounding down the hall and Yesung slides around the doorframe, out of breath and holding up a cloth napkin. “Look what we found,” he says, Ryeowook trailing into the room after him. “Want to play?”

This is how Sungmin winds up refereeing a game of sam pul sun. With only two players on each team, it becomes an elaborate version of the game, spread out between the two wings of the house. The invisible border line is in the center of the common room. Sungmin crosses this line at least six times while carrying boxes around the house, and each time one of the boys is sitting crossly near the border, waiting to be unfrozen by their teammate. They all argue with Sungmin about how unfair it is to be caught this close to the border and he offers to trade places, holding out a box. None of them take him up on his offer.

At five, Leeteuk leaves and comes back with more food than he can carry. It’s all eaten in record time, and he collapses back on the bare kitchen floor when the kids have all run off to resume their game, exhausted.

“Let’s not do this again.”

Kangin laughes and kicks at all the empty containers. They should clean up. Really. Any moment now. “Let’s save the furniture for tomorrow. I’m not assembling anything until I’ve had a good night’s rest.”

“Mm,” Leeteuk agrees lazily.

Ryeowook shuffles back into the kitchen. “Hey, kid,” Kangin says, and Ryeowook smiles his flat-mouthed smile, cheeks puffing out. “I found this,” he says, and holds out his hand, some small token on his palm.

Leeteuk hauls himself off the floor to take it. “What is this?”

Ryeowook shrugs. “Kibum-hyung almost got the flag. But it wasn’t there. It was this.”

It takes a moment before Leetuek figures out what it is he’s holding. At first it just looks like a knotted tangle of dirty cloth and he wonders if it got dragged in from outside somewhere, but the longer he stares, the more sense he makes out of it. He pokes his fingers between the tassled, threadbare edges and finds a weighted center.

“Jegi,” he says, and Kangin makes a hum of understanding. “This thing’s dirty, Ryeowookie, whose is it?”

“Nobody’s.” Leeteuk looks up to see Kibum hovering in the doorway. “We haven’t unpacked anything. We thought you knew.”

Leeteuk curls the thing in his palm and shrugs. “Well, game’s over anyway, you guys have to unpack.”

Fueled by dinner, they do end up getting most of the kids’ things unpacked that night. They have to save their own bedroom for last, and although they're exhausted, it’s not too hard to get through. They leave their clothes in boxes for now. It makes him feel a bit itchy, like he's not putting as much effort into this as he could be. He tells himself that there’s going to be plenty of time to settle in. Still, they’ve been planning this for so long that Leeteuk just wants to be moved in already. He wants to get the next chapter of this life of theirs started.

The night is so much quieter out here than it is in Seoul. Leeteuk thinks the quiet is going to be easier to get used to than he expected. He's going to fall asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, though, so the first night is not the best predictor of what's to come.

He drops another box of clothes onto the pile in the corner of the room and lets out a long breath when he stands, pressing the heel of his hand to his brow. Kangin’s arms wrap around his waist from behind and Leeteuk leans back, lets Kangin take some of the weight off his feet.

“Tired?”

“Hmm. Long day.”

Kangin chuckles. “No kidding.” His arms unwind, skimming across the front of Leeteuk’s waist until his hands settle on his hips. “Want to christen the new house?”

Leeteuk laughs breathlessly. “Not if you want me to fall asleep in the middle of ,” he says, turning around to watch Kangin’s eyes crinkle up when with his answering laughter.

“Okay, okay, you make a good point.”

“All my points are good.” Yawning, Leeteuk sways forward, draping his arms around Kangin's shoulders. They stand listening to the silence for a while, and then Leeteuk says a quiet, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not letting me go insane during this move.”

“You did that yourself. Park Jungsu and his meticulous planning. I’m impressed.”

“As always.”

“As always,” Kangin concedes, pressing a soft kiss to Leeteuk’s mouth. Leeteuk kisses back in instinct, but has to pull back to yawn again. Kangin says, “Okay, we’ll sleep. Before I start thinking you just find me boring.”

Leeteuk rolls his eyes and shuffles over to the bed, lifting his shirt off. It's cold in the room, but he doesn't want to have to open another damn box until morning, so his sleep clothes are just going to have to stay packed. “Everyone was in their rooms when I checked, do you want to go make sure they’re all settled in?”

“Yep.”

Leeteuk lets himself fall on top of the bed just before he hears Kangin say, “Teuk?” from the doorway. He glances up. “Thank you,” Kangin says, voice just as quiet as Leeteuk’s had been before. He doesn’t have to say for what.

He’s half asleep when the lights shut off and Kangin slides into the bed beside him. “The kids are fine,” he murmurs, and Leeteuk finally lets himself drop off to sleep.

-

The alarm winds its way into Leeteuk’s dreams. He surfaces, frowning, and pokes at the screen of his phone until the sound stops. Something unsettling sets his nerves on edge. Leeteuk stares at the unfamiliar ceiling, trying to catch the dream he’d been having. He decides that the odd feeling is just a result waking up in a new place. The alarm goes off again. Damn, he’d hit snooze. Leeteuk sits up, leaving the phone for Kangin to deal with and hauling his sleep-heavy body to the bathroom.

The mirror is disorienting. He squints at it, his reflection multiplied and askew. Sleep rushes clear from his head  when he realizes that the mirror is broken. Leeteuk blinks. The cracks in the glass spider out from the edges of the frame, unlike the way broken glass would look if something had hit it; there's not point of impact, no shattering. It looks more like the miror had been squeezed into a frame that is too small, or like someone slammed it onto the wall.

The muffled alarm shuts off again. “Hey, Youngwoon?” he calls softly. “Was this mirror broken yesterday?”

Kangin shuffles in behind him, his reflection appearing on the broken mirror alongside Leeteuk’s. “Uh. I don’t remember. That’s weird.”

He makes a mental note to replace the mirror, but he forgets about it when he hears a scuffle coming from out in the hallway. Pulling a shirt on over his head, he heads out to break up whatever fight his kids have gotten into already.

“It’s not me!” Kibum is shouting, looking more flustered than he usually gets.

“Well what else is it! You should take a bath sometime, don’t blame it on me!” Shindong counters. “This is why I didn’t want to room with you.”

“What are you even… that's a lie! Come on, you know I shower.”

The door across the hall slides open and Sungmin leans out of his room, hissing, “Hey, shut up, Teukie and Kangin-hyung are sleeping! Oh, hey. Nevermind.” He nods at Leeteuk. The other two turn to look.

“Sorry,” Shindong mumbles, and Kibum doesn’t say anything, mouth tight, glaring at the floor like he’s trying to calm himself down.

“Okay, what’s going on and why can’t you solve it without yelling?” Leeteuk asks.

“He said I smell,” Kibum mutters.

“He does, it’s gross!”

“It’s not me! It’s the house!”

Leeteuk sighs. “Kibum, you smell fine. Shindong, don’t pick fights, okay? We’re all stressed out because of the move, don’t add to it.”

Kibum shuffles his feet. “He’s… he’s not making it up. It really does smell bad in our room.”

Curious, Leeteuk heads toward their room, the two boys at his heels. He doesn’t even make it into the room before he can smell something that reminds him of rotten eggs. Inside, the smell is even worse, like uncured meat that’s gone bad. “Okay, I have no idea what that smell is but you’re both forgiven. Open the windows, we’ll let it air out. Smells like something died in the walls.”

Kangin appears behind him, frowning. “Please tell me nothing actually died in the walls. We haven’t even lived here for a day.”

Leeteuk heaves a sigh.

“I hate to say it, but that’s not all,” says Sungmin. “The mirror in my bathroom is broken.”

Leeteuk meets Kangin’s alarmed expression with one of his own.

“What?” Sungmin says into the awkward pause.

“Ours is broken too.”

As it turns out, all the mirrors in the house are cracked around the edges. None of them are are as badly broken as the mirror in Leeteuk and Kangin’s en suite bathroom, but by the time Kangin returns from the empty wing of bedrooms with a grim confirmation that they’re all broken, Leeteuk is starting to get upset.

“Are you sure they weren’t like that when we signed the contract?”

"We would have noticed. It's... strange," Kangin admits.

There isn't anything they can do about it. Leeteuk stares at his broken reflection, unable to shake the feeling of unease that has been following him around all morning.

"Come on." Kangin takes him by the wrist and leads him down the hall. "Let's round up the kids and go buy food, okay? And new mirrors."

Leeteuk grins. "Sound off!" he shouts. This was easier when they lived in a smaller space, but he still hears Sungmin shout "One!" from the kitchen, then answering shouts from the other boys as they all make their way to the front of the house.

"All right," Kangin says with a clap of his hands. "Time to buy food." Everyone scrambles for their shoes. Leeteuk feels better already.

-

The sun is hanging low enough in the sky to tinge the roomin a warm glow, the sound of the kids playing tag drift in through an open window, and Kangin is never going to build another piece of furniture in his life.

“We're supposed to use six of these screws, how could they only give us four?” he gripes, counting the screws for the hundredth time. Sungmin grabs the instruction booklet.

“That’s because you’re looking at bag number 12 when you should be looking at bag number 15. Here, I think those screws are for Leeteuk’s cabinets,” he says. He digs around in the box for the correct bag of six screws and tosses them into Kangin’s lap.

“Oh, I was looking for those,” says Leeteuk, plucking the four little screws out of Kangin’s hand as he stares at Sungmin in shock.

“That’s it. That’s it! No more, I’m done, go on without me.” Leeteuk pats him on the thigh absently and goes back to assembling his cabinet.

Sungmin laughs. He leans back on his hands, listening to Yesung’s increasingly agitated shouts of eoreum! outside the window, followed by the sound of Shindong cackling. “You know, we could have done this sooner. This place is awesome and I only get to live here for a few months.”

“Well, you don’t have to go to university,” Kangin says.

“Actually, I do.”

“Good point.”

“Stop!” Leeteuk says, “Don’t talk about it.”

“Aw, Teuk.” Kangin leans over and gives a gentle tug on Leeteuk’s ear, “You’re getting upset. Look, Sungmin, you made him cry.”

Leeteuk covers his face with his hands. “I’m not crying!”

“You are. Look at how red your face is.”

Leeteuk shakes his head, lowering his arms. His face is indeed red, but he’s grinning. He looks at Sungmin and might be halfway to tears, but he’s not going to admit it. In a few months his oldest is going to be living on his own, and it's hard to believe that it’s been nine years since he and Kangin adopted him. Nine years already, and four more adoptions, in spite of all the odds.

“I’ll be fine.”

“See, he’ll be fine. And there will be one less mouth to feed.”

“Hey,” Sungmin deadpans, flipping through the instruction booklet.

Leeteuk picks up the bag of screws Kangin discarded and starts to finish the entertainment center he had been working on. “Well," he sighs, "we won’t have anyone to keep the kids busy.”

Sungmin freezes. “Don’t.”

Kangin ignores him. “Oh, that’s true,” he gripes. “I thought the point of buying this place was so that we’d all have more space. But no, we still can’t have without worrying about all the children down the hall.”

“Oh my god!” Sungmin cries, dropping the booklet in favor of covering his ears with his hands.

“I wonder how soundproof the bedrooms are,” Leeteuk muses, and Sungmin shouts, “You are deranged! Both of you!” and stands up, storming out of the room. The sound of Leeteuk’s laughter follows him down the hall.

-

Kangin turns the car down the long drive, headlights swinging to light his way, and feels the kind of happy exhaustion that only comes when you know you’re home again. It’s weird, leaving Seoul behind and knowing he isn’t leaving his family this time, but going back to them. He’s only been away for two days, but it felt so much longer. He hadn't wanted to go back so soon after the move, but there had been some loose ends to tie up with the job transfer.

He kicks off his shoes and shouts a hello into the entryway, frowning slightly at the silence.

“Hello?” he calls again. Leeteuk comes around the corner from the common room, an expression on his face that Kangin can’t read. Which is worrying, because he can usually read Leeteuk like a book. “Oh, hey. Everything okay?”

“I’m not sure,” Leeteuk says, still watching him with an odd look. His eyes dart to the side and he inclines his head back the way he came. “We’re eating in there. The kitchen stinks.”

“Not the kitchen, too?” Kangin says; how many pests are living and dying in the walls?

“I wish I was joking. There’s… there’s more, but I don’t want to bring it up with the kids listening. They're been kind of scared, I don't want to remind them why.”

“I was only gone for two days, what the hell happened in here?” Kangin follows Leeteuk into the common room without waiting for an answer. Everyone choruses a hello in his direction, Sungmin waving at him with a flat, humorless smile. Only Ryeowook beams, almost knocking over his bowl in his haste to hug Kangin. “Hey, kid! Did you miss me?”

Ryeowook seems to be the only one, as far as he can tell. Shindong is poking at his food with a downcast expression and Kibum is giving him worried glances every few seconds. When Leeteuk hands Kangin a plate, Yesung gets out of his seat to take Ryeowook by the hand, leading him back to the circle of boys surrounding dinner on the floor.

Kangin sets the plate down as soon as he takes it. “Explain.”

Leeteuk scratches the back of his head, sighing, and before he can say anything, Shindong interrupts. “Just tell him. I'm going to have nightmares anyway.”

“He saw something,” Leeteuk says quickly, which is an excellent distraction technique because Kangin immediately feels guilty – how could he let Shindong have nightmares? Never mind that he couldn’t possibly be the cause of that or protect him from it in any way, but he’s never claimed to be rational when it comes to his children. “Last night, in his room. He was pretty upset.”

“Something?”

“Someone,” Shindong cuts in. And they said –“ His voice chokes.

“Kibum?” Leeteuk promts, and Kibum tears his eyes away from Shindong and sighs. “I didn’t see anything. He woke me up because he was yelling at someone to leave him alone and I thought he was just being annoying. I believe him now.” He says the last in a small, ashamed voice.

“Did you call the police?” Kangin asks, alarmed. He wants to demand to know why Leeteuk didn’t call him immediately, but he knows better than to question his judgment.

“There wasn’t anyone there.”

“There was!” Shindong insists.

“Shh, I know, that’s not what I mean.” Leeteuk rubs Shindong on the back apologetically. “I thought he was dreaming and confused, but I don’t know, Kangin. I don’t see why he would lie.”

“It was a ghost,” Kibum says, and the whole room grows quiet, like he’d just spoken aloud what everyone was thinking.

“Right,” Kangin laughs. “A ghost.” Nobody laughs with him.

“Everyone, eat your dinners. Kangin, come here,” Leeteuk says. Kangin follows him back into the hallway and watches him lean against the wall, looking exhausted. “I know it sounds insane but as soon as you left, things were just. Odd. I woke up the night before last because Shindong was screaming, Kangin, and I couldn’t even get the door to his room open. I had no idea what was happening, it scared me half to death. Then the door opened and it was freezing in there, and Kibum was staring at Shindong like… like…”

“Okay, okay, I get it. I just think there has to be a good explanation for this.”

“I know, so did I. Shindong won’t say much, but Kibum says he was talking to someone who wasn’t there. I know there’s something Shindong isn’t telling me, but I can’t get him to open up about it. And then I could have sworn I heard someone knocking on my door at three in the morning, and I expected it to be Shindong wanting to sleep in our room, but nobody was even awake. He and Kibum were sharing beds with Yesung and Ryeowook. And what’s even stranger is that I heard the knocking again last night, one o’clock on the dot. And then again at two. And at three.”

Kangin rubs a hand over his face. “Look, I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but…”

“You don’t believe me?”

Leeteuk is smiling when Kangin looks, which relaxes some of the tension in his shoulders. “It just has to be a coincidence, or you’re looking for things that aren’t there. It’s a new house.”

“I know, believe me, I know. And I thought it was all in my head, but Kibum told me he’s been hearing the knocking too.”

“A draft?”

“I don’t know about that. Could be, but it just doesn’t seem likely. I can’t explain it.”

Silence stretches on in the hallway. The walls are dim, the sounds of dishes clinking together in the other room seem as normal as any other night, but Kangin has a house full of people who are suddenly convinced it’s haunted and doesn’t know what to do about it.

“I’m sorry you had to come home to this,” Leeteuk says. “Just humor me on this tonight, and if nothing else happens, I promise that we’ll never speak of it again.”

Kangin eyes him knowingly. He’s about to open his mouth to tell him that in a couple of weeks this is all going to be a silly memory, but then Sungmin comes into the hallway carrying a stack of bowls.

“Welcome back,” he says sarcastically.

“Sungmin, what do you think of all this?” Kangin calls as he carries the dishes back down toward the kitchen.

He turns his back as he walks, shaking his head sadly. “Sorry, hyung. I’m with everyone else on this. You bought a haunted house.”

Kangin growls in frustration. At least it makes Leeteuk laugh.

-

“Sit,” Leeteuk insists, checking his phone.

“Teuk, come on, it’s the kids.”

“It’s not the kids, they don’t know anything about it. You know Kibum wouldn’t lie.”

“He’d lie to Sungmin,” Kangin mumbles, petulant. When Leeteuk looks over he’s picking at his nails with careful disinterest.

“He would absolutely not lie to Sungmin. He might collaborate with him, but he would give in and tell the truth if I pressed. And I pressed, Youngwoon. When I asked Shindong he looked like – well, he looked like he’d just seen a ghost.”

Kangin sighs and scoots over on the bed to leave a spot for Leeteuk. “Okay, fine, let’s see what happens.”

Leeteuk stares down at his phone and sits again. “Two minutes.”

“One in the morning, though? One exactly? Come on, that’s the witching hour. Sungmin has been scaring the kids with that since he was thirteen.”

“Well, they don’t call it the witching hour for nothing.” Leeteuk grips his phone and stares at the doorway, waiting. He guesses they have about thirty seconds left. Kangin doesn’t seem convinced, but he watches the door dutifully.

Bang, bang, bang. One o’clock on the dot. The sound sends a shock straight up Leeteuk’s spine, but he swallows a breath and checks Kangin’s reaction. His expression goes from shock to anger in half a second. He shoots off the bed, sliding the door open with such force that it bounces halfway closed again before Kangin’s open palm stops it.

There’s no one on the other side. Leeteuk watches from his spot on the bed, peering around the space Kangin is taking up in the doorway. In the space of a heartbeat – the time it takes for Kangin’s anger to deflate into confusion – all three doors along the hallway fly open on their hinges with a clang so loud that Leeteuk’s heart jumps into his throat.

He moves forward on instinct to pull Kangin away from the doorway; Kangin stumbles back a step, mouth open in shock. A moment later Sungmin steps out if his open door, still dressed in jeans, his eyes wide in a mirror of Kangin’s expression. They all meet gazes for only a second and then Sungmin strides across the hall to check in Shindong and Kibum’s room. A second later, Yesung, who is a heavy sleeper on any normal night, steps out of the other room with sleep-mussed hair. He heads straight for Kangin, wrapping his hand in the hem of his shirt and burying his face in his hip. The hand still holding onto the edge of the door slips down to rub Yesung’s back.

Leeteuk slips past them, heart still pounding, to check in on Ryeowook. The child awake, sitting up in the bed with a solemn expression that no five-year old should ever wear.

Sungmin steps back into the hallway. “They slept through it.”

“Wake them up. It’s going to come again in an hour. Grab your blankets, we’ll have a sleepover.” Leeteuk tries for a smile but it isn’t returned. Kangin gives a game trial at it, but his mouth twists into more of a grimace than a smile. He nods, Yesung still clinging to him, and mouths I’m sorry. Leeteuk shakes his head, heartbeat beginning to find its normal rhythm, and goes to collect Ryeowook.

It takes them a while to settle down, but nobody is crying so he counts that for a win. The center of the common room becomes a mess of blankets and bodies, lights on in the hallways casting a shadow of daytime into the room. Leeteuk can't sleep. At two, he can hear it. Muffled, but still there: the bedroom doors all shaking on their hinges once, twice, three times. He holds his breath, Ryeowook tucked in his lap sleeping, and glances beside him. Kangin is awake, lying with an arm behind his head and Yesung curled up beside him. He catches Leeteuk's eye. There's nothing to say. He hopes that Kangin had been right, that this will all end up as a distant memory. Hopes that he hadn't just put his family in danger. He holds Ryeowook just a little bit tighter.

-

Next time: Donghae and Hyukjae return, the situation grows worse at the KangTeuk household, and their stories converge. ~