FINALLY, this chapter is finished! It's not very scary, but I hope you like it, and if you're reading this - hey, thanks for sticking around. I hope to get back to regular updates.  

The sun hasn’t even begun to lighten the sky when Leeteuk steps through the quiet halls, having given up on sleep entirely. He understands why Donghae and Hyukjae would want them sleeping in their bedroom to monitor any overnight activity, but he wishes he could have joined the kids in the office, all huddled together for comfort. He peeks in to check on them briefly, but he wants to make sure they sleep as long as possible through the morning, so he doesn’t even move inside to turn off the flashlights they’d left on and continues into the kitchen.

He’s only mildly surprised to see Donghae sitting behind the monitors, face lit by the glow of the screens.

“Morning,” Leeteuk greets, quietly so as not to startle him. Truth be told, he doesn’t want to ruin the comfort of the kitchen, dark and still with the low hum of computers and equipment to keep it from being eerie. Donghae doesn’t startle, lowering his headphones around his neck and smiling back. “Can’t sleep?”

He shakes his head in affirmation, mouth pressed into a rueful smile. “I sent Kyuhyun to get some rest.”

Leeteuk nods. “You want some coffee?”

“Sure, thank you.”

He’s as quiet as he can be with the coffee maker, although there’s nothing he can do about the hiss it makes as the water starts to boil. He watches it drip into the pot, feeling exhausted, the sound of Donghae clicking around on the computer enough to lull him into a haze.

Leeteuk shakes himself out of it. Drifting thoughts tend to lead him to places he doesn’t want them to go nowadays.

The light in the room has changed to gray when he turns around to carry a coffee mug over to the table. It will be a while yet before there’s much light in the room, the trees surrounding the property filtering out sunrise until it rises above the canopy. Leeteuk sets Donghae’s mug beside his elbow. “Everything okay out there?”

“It’s pretty calm now.” He clicks a button and one of the monitors switches its view from the hallway to the common room. Leeteuk notices two things at once: first, that Donghae must have seen him coming down the hallway before he entered the kitchen, since the monitor had been displaying that corridor’s camera a moment ago; and second, that the common room is a mess. The furniture itself seems slightly skewed, and on the floor beneath the mantle, all of the crucifixes that Hyukjae had set up are now on the floor. “I’ll have to check the footage from last night, but I think that happened while we were in there. I didn’t really notice at the time.”

Donghae gestures at the screen with his left hand as he says it, the one wrapped in a bandage.

“Oh,” Leeteuk says, remembering. “How does it feel?”

Donghae brings the hand to his chest reflexively, then lowers it into his lap. “It’s okay as long as I don’t try to move my fingers. Or put any pressure on it.” He reaches for the coffee cup with his good hand.

“Is that why you couldn’t sleep?” Leeteuk asks, sitting down beside him and cupping his own hands around his warm mug.

Donghae shrugs. After taking a sip, he says, “Mostly,” and leaves it at that.

They drink their coffee in silence, both of them glancing at the monitors, but everything is still and silent. Every now and then Donghae clicks the view over to the camera that’s in the office, but doesn’t linger there, probably for the sake of privacy. He never once switches to the camera in Leeteuk and Kangin’s bedroom, the one that Kangin is still sleeping in at this very moment.

Eventually, Donghae stands, collecting his mug and reaching over for Leeteuk’s empty mug as well and carries them over to the counter.

“Let me - “ Leeteuk protests, but Donghae just laughs and shakes his head.

“I’m fine, it’s not my dominant hand.” He pours Leeteuk another cup, but rinses his own out in the sink. “Will you watch the monitors if I head back to bed?”

“Of course. Thank you,” he adds as Donghae sets the refilled mug in front of him on the table.

“Unless you were planning on trying for sleep again?”

“No, I think I’ll try to nap in the afternoon, maybe.”

“Yeah.” Donghae grins. “Don’t tell Hyukjae I was in here, please? I don’t want him to worry.”

He promises not to say anything. Leeteuk knows that Kangin will worry too, but also that he didn’t want either of them sleeping in that room in the first place, so Leeteuk being safe in the kitchen instead and nearby the kids is probably going to win out over any concern.

Donghae leaves and Leeteuk watches the camera as he heads down the north wing corridor, where he and Hyukjae are staying in the master bedroom. He continues watching the still and silent cameras, but when even the coffee aroma isn’t enough to keep his attention, he gets up to start breakfast.

By the time Kangin wakes up, Leeteuk is just spooning warm rice out of the cooker, the last thing he needed to prepare. Kangin, whose eyes are still half glued shut with sleep, heads straight for the coffeepot. He pours a cup and then detours to the table where Leeteuk is setting down the warm bowl.

“Did you sleep at all?” he murmurs, leaning in to press his lips against Leeteuk’s forehead. Leeteuk shrugs.

“Not much. I’ll sleep after breakfast, I think, when the kids are up.” When the house is loud and the sun is bright.

Kangin just hmms, and Leeteuk doesn’t let him back away, choosing instead to lean his weight into Kangin’s body for a second. He closes his eyes but his head is still buzzing. He tries to shush it, tries to focus on the warmth of Kangin’s arm when it settles around his waist. It doesn’t really work. Then again, the two cups of coffee he had aren’t going to let him relax for a while yet.

His eyes open again when Kangin moves his arm and takes a small step back, and Leeteuk glances to the doorway and sees Hyukjae shuffle in, yawning hugely and attempting to flatten his hair. Donghae is a step behind. He catches Leeteuk’s eye and nods just slightly, an acknowledgement of their shared early morning. Hyukjae looks untroubled, eyes widening at all the food on the table, so Leeteuk assumes that Donghae’s innocent ruse had been a success.

“When did you have time to make all this?” Hyukjae asks, and judging by the way he doesn’t take his eyes off the table while he says it, it’s probably rhetorical.

He’s saved from answering anyway by Sungmin, who enters the room with eyes still swollen from sleep but wearing a smile, bowing lightly to Hyukjae and Donghae.

“Good morning,” Hyukjae says, grabbing a plate. He pauses in the middle of passing a plate to Donghae, frowning slightly. “Did Kyuhyun go to bed?”

“Ah.” Leeteuk rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t sleep well, so I told him I’d watch the monitors if he wanted to head off to bed,” he explains, although it was Donghae who had dismissed Kyuhyun, but he doesn’t mention that. “And… , I didn’t really watch them while I was cooking. Sorry.”

“‘S okay,” Hyukjae says, circling around the table to get at the monitors. “We’ll spend most of the day going over the footage from last night anyway.”

“Sungmin, are the rest of the kids awake yet?”

“I just checked, Kibum and Shindong are awake. They’re all curled up like kittens in there,” he says, which makes Leeteuk smile.

Kangin skirts around the table, heading out the door. “I’ll go see if they want breakfast.”

“As if anything on this earth could keep them away from food,” Sungmin mutters sarcastically, giving Leeteuk a tired smile.

It’s not looking like anyone had a proper night’s sleep, but really, that’s been the norm around this household for too long now. Leeteuk reaches for a boiled egg, watching the others fill up their plates. Hopefully there will only be one more night of this, and then they can all just sleep away the rest of the summer in peace.

“We left a mess in the common room,” Hyukjae remarks, pointing to one of the screens. Leeteuk shuffles over to glance over his shoulder, feeling awkward because he knows exactly what he’ll see: the mess that had been left in that room ,which he and Donghae had already noticed some hours ago. Donghae makes a low, thoughtful hum and then takes a long swallow out of his water glass. He doesn’t see it, but Leeteuk notices Hyukjae glance askance at Donghae with confusion wrinkling the skin between his brows.

Hyukjae opens his mouth to speak again but then Kangin comes back into the kitchen, escorted by their children, who barely have time for a ‘good morning’ before swarming the table. Kyuhyun appears a minute or so later, glaring against the sunlight that’s now bright within the room, looking like he hasn’t slept half as much as he wishes.

And then Heechul appears. “What is wrong with you lunatics, don’t you realize that it’s only eight in the morning?” he snaps, and there’s a momentary pause of conversation in which only the clink of spoons and the sounds of chewing can be heard. In that space of time, Leeteuk wonders again whether telling Heechul about the paranormal investigation was a good idea, but then Heechul says, “Oh my god, look at all this food!”

The mood returns, and it’s exactly what Leeteuk had needed. Noise and light and a full kitchen. Heechul telling Kangin some outrageous story (while Kangin interjects his commentary about how Heechul’s story probably actually went, instead of his exaggeration); Yesung and Shindong squabbling over their food while Sungmin attempts to mediate; Ryeowook sitting quietly on Donghae’s lap while he cuts leftover pork into smaller bites for him; Hyukjae still at the monitors and pretending not to notice.  

It’s good, it’s easy. Last night seems like a spectre, a bad dream, and the morning passes quickly. The children run off to play outdoors, dispersing to lord only knows where, but Leeteuk knows they’re safer outside than in so he doesn’t mind. Kyuhyun’s the one who volunteers to clean the common room, Sungmin following behind him with a thousand questions on his tongue. Soon only the adults are left in the room. Donghae pours what’s left of the coffee into a mug and then insists on cleaning the carafe, a shadow-play of what had happened when he and Leeteuk had had their first cups in the early hours of the morning.

“Thank you for breakfast,” he says, “and for the coffee.” The corners of his mouth turn up into a casual smile, but the pointed look he’s sending Leeteuk is unmistakeable. He’s actually thanking him for keeping their secret.

Hyukjae thanks him too, standing up from his place at the table. “We’ll help you clean up, it’s the least we can do.”

“No no, you’re helping enough just being here,” Leeteuk insists.

Heechul, from where he’s sitting at the table, scrolling the screen of his phone with a lazy finger, says, “Jungsoo thinks we’re all his children and needs to clean up after us, just take the charity.”

Kangin laughs, covering his mouth with his hand and Leeteuk would be lying if he said he wasn’t pleased.

“It’s a tactic,” Kangin says. “He’ll do everything by himself until you feel so bad, you start cleaning dishes and doing laundry before he can convince you not to. That’s why we have five kids who will clean their rooms without being nagged.”

“Stop giving away my parenting secrets,” Leeteuk jokes, feeling the tips of his ears turn red.

“I’ll have to remember that one. When Ara is older she’ll be no match for Donghae’s puppy eyes.”

Donghae smiles, closed-mouthed and sly. “Works pretty well with you so far.”

Hyukjae sighs audibly.

“Okay,” Heechul says abruptly, “I’m out. If I’m going to be stuck with all of you tonight, I’m not sleeping in my clothes again. I’ll be back later.”

“If you’re going out, can you pick up some chicken for dinner?” Leeteuk asks before Heechul is out the door.

“Do I look like I’m a manager?”

“Please?”

“No,” Heechul says with finality, stalking out of the room. Nobody mentions that he’s not actually stuck with them tonight, since he more or less invited himself, but Leeteuk knows he’ll be back, and he’ll most likely have the chicken with him, too.

So the room is quiet again, especially after Donghae and Hyukjae decide to get some fresh air for themselves, and then it’s just Leeteuk and Kangin quietly cleaning up the breakfast dishes. It’s almost, almost, normal.

“What’s up with those two?” Kangin asks, placing leftovers into the fridge. “Something seems off.”

“Ah, you noticed that? I don’t really know. Donghae was awake before I was, though. He made me promise not to tell Hyukjae that he’d woken up so early. I think it happens often.”

“Hm. I bet he gets tired, ghost-whispering and mind reading and stuff.”

“Youngwoon-ah, you know that’s not how it works,” Leeteuk softly chides. From where he stands in front of the kitchen sink, he can see out the window to the yard, where the pair in question have gone to have some privacy. He’s trying not to watch, but he doesn’t think it’s anything more serious than lazy morning talk, if their easy expressions are anything to go by.

“You can’t tell me you don’t think he can read your mind.”

Leeteuk chuckles. “You should have come to that seminar the other day. The way they explain it… well, you’ve seen what they do.”

Kangin sets a stack of dishes next to him at the sink, stealing a rag to clean the table with. After a moment of silence, he says thoughtfully,“You think it’s real? I mean, the  - After last night not even Heechul can deny this stuff exists. But you think Donghae can really sense it?”

Leeteuk shrugs. The answer is simple. “Yes.”

He glances out the window again, absent-mindedly rinsing the dishes and settling them into the drying rack. Outside, Hyukjae says something that Leeteuk can’t hear, but he can see his mouth move. A moment later, Donghae bursts into laughter. The sound carries into the house, muffled, Donghae bent nearly double and holding onto Hyukjae’s arm with one hand, balancing his coffee mug in the other. Hyukjae says something else, a smile set into his lips, and this makes Donghae push him away, laughing again. Some coffee sloshes over the side of Donghae’s mug but he hardly seems to notice. Hyukjae shakes his head like Donghae is being ridiculous, but he’s still smiling, eyes never leaving the side of Donghae’s face, who doesn’t seem to notice.

“Still, he must be exhausted. It’s hard enough being in this house without a sixth-sense.”

Leeteuk wonders if that’s what they’re normally like. All he’s seen of them have been at investigation work. What must he and his family look like to them, then? There was a little more normalcy this morning, but how often to Donghae and Hyukjae deal with people who are terrified or in mourning? It probably does weigh on them. He has to wonder about that particular look that Donghae gets, the one that reminds him of some people he’d known in the army, the ones who’d seen a little too much action for peacetime.

“...Teuk?”

Belatedly, he realizes that Kangin had spoken some minutes ago. He comes to stand at his elbow, reaching across Leeteuk to turn off the running faucet. “Sorry,” Leeteuk says, gesturing out the window.

“Ah, why are you spying on people, old man,” Kangin jokes, rapping his knuckles on the window to get the attention of the two out in the yard. They both look, traces of amusement still on their faces. Hyukjae waves and Donghae’s eyes lift up to a smile, and they both turn towards the sliding patio doors to head back inside.

Kyuhyun beats them back to the kicthen, Sungmin in tow, and they’re carrying a small collection of recording devices. Hyukjae and Donghae follow soon after.

“Back to work?” Kangin asks.

“Just dumping the files,” Kyuhyun says vaguely, digging through one of the bags in the corner and producing a couple of electronics cords.

“We’ll transfer the files over to one of the computers for review, then empty the audio recorders and set them up around the house again,” elaborates Hyukjae.

“Will the investigation continue right away?” Leeteuk says, feeling vaguely guilty because he’s starting to worry that he won’t get that nap after all. Maybe he shouldn’t have had so much coffee.

“No, we won’t do anything until nightfall. We just need to keep the devices running through the day just in case, but they can’t hold all that data. We’ll listen to see if we’ve picked up any EVPs, or - “ Hyukjae’s hand touches on the video camera Kyuhyun had set on the table, the one Donghae had been using to record their session last night - “We should see if you caught the spirit on camera, Donghae,” he finishes.

“Yeong-Ja,” Donghae says with a nod.

Leeteuk watches them mess around with all the technical equipment, listening to the far-off echoes of his kids playing somewhere around the front of the house, the dishes half forgotten. Kyuhyun and Sungmin eventually disappear again to place the audio recorders back into the rooms they came from, Hyukjae insisting that he’ll be fine to start reviewing the files as long as Kyuhyun promises he’ll do the transcriptions later. There’s something he’s missing there, some inside joke maybe, but he doesn’t really concern himself with it.

Sungmin, on his part, complained so petulantly when Kangin asked him to do some chores that Leeteuk had to wonder about his sudden interest in the paranormal. That, or the stress of the situation has gotten to him, but when Sungmin eventually followed a waiting Kyuhyun out of the room, Leeteuk thought better of it. Sungmin didn’t have very many people around his age to hang around with, especially after they’ve moved out of Seoul.

Leeteuk takes the opportunity for a quick shower before Kangin gets the washing machine going, and he returns to the kitchen to find Donghae leaning over Hyukjae’s shoulder and pointing at one of the monitors, Hyukjae’s expression lit up with excitement. He only catches the tail end of whatever Hyukjae says before playfully pushing Donghae’s hand away from the screen. Donghae reaches for the computer mouse instead.

“What’s going on?” Leeteuk asks, unable to stop the corner of his mouth from lifting.

“We caught her,” Donghae says.

“Full body apparition,” Hyukjae elaborates, sounding almost awed, as if he was saying they’d just found the holy grail.

“Well, almost. And it’s only a second. But she’s there.” Donghae waves Leeteuk over, and he goes to join them.

Hyukjae scrolls the video back. On the screen is Hyukjae, walking around the center of the common room trying to provoke the demonic presence; Kangin and Leeteuk can be seen in glimpses to the far right if the camera’s movement follows Hyukjae in that direction.

“Watch here,” Donghae says, pointing at the spot on the screen where one of the common room entrances shows through to the shadowy corridor. Something flickers there on the screen. “Did you see it?”

Leeteuk frowns, shaking his head a little.

“It’s not the good part, don’t worry, that one’s hard to see,” Hyukjae says. He scrolls back once more and hits play again. This time, Leeteuk can tell that there’s a slight change in the depth of the shadows, a hint of movement from one side of the entryway to the other.

“I think I see it. That’s her?”

“Keep watching.”

The video plays through for another minute or two. Donghae’s voice is loud coming from behind the camera when he tells Hyukjae that he’s seen Yeong-Ja, and the camera seems to drop a little after that, as if he’s not actually looking at what he’s filming anymore. Then it swings sharply to the side, toward another of the entryways, and this time it’s easy to see. Leeteuk’s heart jumps into his throat.

Donghae says, “Do it in slow motion.” Hyukjae clicks around on the screen and then the same few seconds of video play, but much more slowly.

It’s a girl. It’s unmistakable that there’s a child there, even though the camera is at an angle and you only catch a glimpse, but the shape of a dress is easy to see, the movement of the skirt. Hyukjae plays it for a third time, this time pausing the video at the instance that Yeong-Ja can be seen fully.The more he looks, the easier it is to tell the shape of her body, even the long braided hair. Her feet can’t be seen because they’re off-camera, and when Hyukjae clicks play she’s gone in a flash. The camera just barely caught her - but it caught her.

“That’s… that’s amazing.”

“It’s going to help our case a lot. We still have to go through the audio and the rest of the footage from last night, but this is damn good even if we don’t turn up anything more. And it’s promising. We might be lucky enough to catch solid evidence of a demon infestation tonight.”

Hyukjae still sounds excited, but some of Leeteuk’s enthusiasm wilts as he remembers that the spirit of an innocent child is not the only thing they’re dealing with here.

“Everything okay?”

Leeteuk looks up to see Kangin in the doorway, balancing a large basket of wet towels and sheets on his hip.

The basket gets left behind in favor of showing him the video as well, although Kangin doesn’t take it at face value and the two investigators have to explain to him why this is solid evidence. They agree to work on trying to debunk the video later tonight, which Leeteuk doesn’t find necessary, but he doesn’t say anything. Kangin has to deal with this in his own way. Somehow or another, watching that video clip had made him feel better about the way everything is going, like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel after all, so when Hyukjae asks whether they’d like to help review the footage from last night, Leeteuk volunteers. Maybe it will make him feel like he’s doing something about the problem instead of just hanging around and hoping it will end. Kangin claims that he has to set the laundry to dry, and to Leeteuk’s surprise, Donghae offers to help. Hyukjae doesn’t seem to bat an eye at this, and Kangin is surprised at the offer, but accepts it.

“It’s best to have two sets of eyes,” Hyukjae explains to Leeteuk as he sets up playback for data from one of the cameras that had been recording overnight. “We’ll probably need a trained ear to review the audio, but if we see anything on the video, mark down the timestamp so we can check for an accompanying EVP.”

Leeteuk nods and nods, and then Hyukjae hits play on a video of the east wing corridor, and they settle back to watch.

-

There’s a clothesline set up on the south side of the house adjacent to the kitchen. When they’d moved in, there had been an obvious gap in the guest bath at the front of the house where large, industrial-sized washer and dryer had probably been in place while the property was being run as a guest house, but apparently some perfectly good machinery was something the previous owners had felt was important enough to remove before they sold the place. With five kids, Kangin is sure that a huge laundry would have been helpful, but as it is, they had to invest in a cheaper washing machine, with drying the old-fashioned way until winter sets in.

Donghae trails behind him quietly, and it isn’t until Kangin drops the laundry basket to the ground with a thump that he remembers the other’s injured hand.

“You know, I can manage just fine on my own if your hand still hurts.”

“Hm?” Donghae stares at Kangin for a second before he seems to remember. “Oh, it’s fine.” He demonstrates this by lifting his wrapped hand and flexing his fingers, but it doesn’t seem very convincing. It still looks stiff, and he winces just slightly. “I need to change the dressing anyway.”

Shrugging, Kangin grabs the end of one of the damp bedsheets and tugs it out of the tangle of linens. “Not that I don’t appreciate the help, but you’re doing enough help around here, chores aren’t really a requirement.”

Donghae laughs a bit, finding the opposite end of the sheet and walking backwards so that it’s straightened out between them. “Reviewing the evidence has never been my favorite part. The equipment picks up a lot of things that can’t be seen by the eye, but to me it’s like being blindfolded. I can’t feel it.”

Kangin doesn’t say anything for a long moment. They drape the sheet over the line and go back for another. He’s not a skeptic in the way Heechul is - there’s no way he could be, not after what he’s seen and heard in this house. But if you’d asked him a month ago, he would have said that ghosts aren’t real. Hell, even when things started going sour, it took him a hell of a lot of convincing before he was ready to accept that the paranormal really existed. The idea that someone, a regular person just like him, could sense things outside of what’s normal for the human experience, is stretching it just a bit too far.

Hell if he’d ever question it to Donghae’s face, though. After that video he just saw, he’s ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“So,” he says finally, “that video of the spirit - that’s what you see all the time?”

Donghae pauses in his reach for the next sheet in the basket, looking at Kangin fully. “Not exactly. Yeong-Ja, for example, looked more real to me than she does on film. But not very many spirits are strong enough for even me to physically see. Last night was the first time I actually saw her because she can’t manifest on her own. When it - the other thing, the demon - when it needs energy, it draws it from her. You know how every light in a room will get brighter during a power surge? It’s like that.”

That’s when it hits him like a thunderclap. “I’ve seen her,” Kangin says, sounding shocked even to his own ears.

Donghae blinks. “When?”

“, how did I forget? It was the night Sungmin saw it, the night we decided that we were going to need help. I woke up right before, and….” He remembers seeing a figure in the bedroom, but the memory had faded like a dream in the wake of what had happened next. “I thought it was one of the kids. But it must have been her. Yeong-Ja.”

Donghae is smiling when he looks up, looking pleased and almost fond. “She was trying to warn you. Actually, that’s probably why she showed up last night as well.”

“I couldn’t see her last night, though.”

“You were asleep before you saw her, right? You might not have been fully awake. The hypnopompic state is what they call that place between waking and sleeping. Most of what people see at that time are hallucinations, but people have a harder time connecting emotions to reality in that state, so it’s easy to suspend disbelief. You stop trying to make logical sense out of everything, so the illogical is easier to understand.”

“I have to be honest, I’ve never been really into this stuff. But I can’t really argue with that explanation,” Kangin chuckles.

“Sorry,” Donghae says, coloring slightly. “Hyukjae is the one who does all the paranormal research, but we’ve been doing this for so long that I can’t help but learn the ways that most people experience it.”

“Normal people, you mean,” Kangin jokes, helping to throw the last of the bedsheets over the clothesline. There’s a pile of sopping bath towels still at the bottom of the basket, and he hands one of them to Donghae, who shrugs unapologetically at his comment, and then starts wringing the rest of the water out of a second.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

They work in silence for a minute or two. Donghae doesn’t seem anxious at all, doesn’t act like his burned hand is bothering him… he wonders if he’s just really good at hiding his agitation, or if he really is used to all this. Hyukjae, on the other hand, had seemed more than a little upset at Donghae’s injury the night before, maybe even more upset than Kangin himself had been feeling about Leeteuk’s experience. Surreptitiously watching Donghae swing a towel over the line and straighten its edges, Kangin wonders not for the first time if there isn’t some part of his story that he’s missing.

“How long have you been together?” Kangin asks casually, sweeping his eyes back to concentrate on the washbin at his feet.

“Hmm?” Donghae hums distractedly. Kangin peers up at him again; he can’t understand how Donghae can be this calm. “Hyukjae? Since university. He was writing his paranormal theories in the school paper but no one was taking him seriously. Except for me.”

“Ah. Okay. You seem… you’re good together.” Kangin hands him another wet towel and Donghae twists it, humming again in agreement as the water droplets hit the ground.

“I don’t know where I’d be without him. Sometimes it’s hard to remember which part of the world I belong to. He helps.” Donghae pauses a moment to hang the towel over the line. “And he’s beautiful too, you know?”

“Ah. Um.” Kangin steps back into the tub, awkwardly squishing the cloth and water around with his feet. “Well, that’s.”

Donghae chuckles, smiling kindly at Kangin and saving him from having to answer. “Don’t worry. It’s not something you could really see, anyway.”

“Like an aura?”

“I thought you said you weren’t into this stuff,” Donghae says, grinning.

“I did research!”

Donghae just laughs, wringing out another towel. “It’s not really an aura. That’s something most mediums could see and identify, if they cared to look. Everyone has an aura, that’s natural. What I’m talking about is more… personal. Hyukjae is important to me. It resonates.”

They work in silence after that, rinsing and wringing and hanging clothes. Donghae glances sidelong at Kangin after a few minutes, and then says quietly, “You’re like that too, sometimes. When you’re with Leeteuk.”

Kangin bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling too hard. “Can you see your own aura?” he asks, maybe a little too loudly, feeling suddenly exposed.

“I try not to.” He gives a little laugh, but his voice sounds odd. Donghae spends extra time smoothing the last towel over the line. There it is again - the feeling like Kangin is missing something. When Donghae turns around again, his smile is back in place. He looks into the empty basket and then back at the clothesline, eyebrows raised. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. Now let’s go grab my phone so I can ask Heechul what the hell is taking him so long.” Kangin swoops over to pick up the basket and the two of them fall into step together, heading back across the lawn.

-

The first few minutes of the video are at least somewhat interesting - nothing paranormal, but this was the camera set up in the east wing, so on the screen Donghae and Heechul had wandered around, recording the base EMF readings. There is other footage that Hyukjae is more eager to watch, like anything going on in the common room for the first half of the night. He thinks they’ll watch the video of Donghae’s K2 session with Yeong-Ja next; it will be good for Leeteuk to see. The audio files he’s going to want to listen to with Donghae himself.

On the screen, Donghae and Heechul had disappeared into one of the rooms and for the last seven minutes, Hyukjae and Leeteuk had been staring at footage of the empty corridor.

“You do this for every investigation?” Leeteuk asks.

Not looking away from the screen, Hyukjae says, “Pretty much, unless we’re sure there hadn’t been any activity. Sometimes we’ll investigate for a night just to put clients at ease, even if Donghae swears up and down that there’s no hint of the paranormal.”

“Kyuhyun and Sungmin kept an eye the cameras last night, though, didn’t they?”

Hyukjae shrugs. “He watches, but he’s also usually doing a bunch of other technical stuff at the same time.”

Leeteuk huffs a quiet laugh.

“I can mess around with audio and video programs, but setting up live feeds and all that - it’s why we hired Kyuhyun in the first place.”

“Hired?”

“Well, he - doesn’t get paid. But he’s the one who tracked us down and offered to help in the first place.”

“You’ve been doing this a long time, right? You and Donghae looked pretty young in some of those pictures you showed at the seminar.”

Hyukjae nods. Neither of them take their eyes off the screen, which is still void of activity. “We’ve been investigating since before we were together, technically. Our second year of university.”

“So, ghost hunting brought you together, huh?” Leeteuk’s voice is colored with cheerfulness, but something about it makes Hyukjae glance away from the screen to look at him.

“I guess you could say that. What about you two? You and Kangin?”

“We met in the army.”

Hyukjae turns to look back at the screen. Leeteuk’s sentence had been filled with a heavy weight. “That’s… I can imagine… I mean…”

“It was hard,” Leeteuk says with a rueful laugh. “It was damn difficult, especially since it snuck up on both of us.”

Hyukjae swallows, a sudden lump forming in the base of his throat. “I bet. Donghae and I served after we graduated; we’d been together for two years already.” Which meant, of course, hiding for two years, from everyone but their family and closest friends. And then there had been two years of Hyukjae shamefully letting his fellow soldiers assume he had a girlfriend waiting at home, when he’d actually had a boyfriend, who wasn’t just waiting, and was actually a conscripted policeman on the other side of the country. He shouldn’t think of it as shameful, especially because the two of them had discussed it together and Donghae had been doing the same. But it hadn’t felt right, and he hated that he needed to lie to everyone just to keep himself and the person he loved safe.

But what Leeteuk and Kangin had gone through must have been so much more dangerous.

“It’s worth it though, right?” Leeteuk says in a soft voice. Hyukjae smiles, eyes still glued to the monitor, mind elsewhere. They’d gotten their first apartment right after discharge, and everything that had followed had indeed been worth everything that came before it. And now there’s Ara, despite incredible odds.

“Oh hey, if you don’t mind my asking, I’ve kind of been curious about your kids? When Donghae and I tried to adopt, it was next to impossible.”

“I don’t mind. And Donghae told me how you got around that - your mother, I think, is your daughter’s legal guardian?”

“That’s right.”

“That was a pretty smart idea. We - that is, I don’t have much family, and… to be honest, that wouldn’t have been an option. We don’t have a lot of support.” Hyukjae chews on the inside of his lip, feeling for the second time that he’s accidentally stepped on some nerve. He knows how incredibly lucky he is that his parents support his relationship, but of course it’s not like that for everyone. Leeteuk doesn’t seem to be taking it to heart, though, and continues. “But Kangin was able to adopt as a single parent. We sort of took advantage of the system, to be honest. Sungmin was nearly a teenager, which would have made him much less likely to find a permanent home.”

“He’s a good kid.”

“Yeah, we lucked out with him,” Leeteuk says with a chuckle. “He’s the only one legally adopted, the rest of the kids are technically fosters.”

“More taking advantage of the system?”

“Absolutely,” Leeteuk says darkly.

Hyukjae can understand the feeling. It had been so frustrating for them when they first started looking to adopt. They were turned down again and again, despite the fact that there were so many children and infants who needed homes.

“Do you think you’ll foster any more?”

Leeteuk gives a heavy sigh. “I don’t think so. Five is quite a lot, but we’re trying to push for some changes in the system. Sungmin is especially passionate about it. What about you?”

“We haven’t really talked about it. But then we never talked about having kids at all until - ”

He cuts himself off. He knows that “until” is hanging in the air, but Leeteuk doesn’t press. On the monitor, there is a change: himself, walking down the corridor and disappearing into the same room Donghae and Heechul had gone into. He’d been bringing them equipment. He hadn’t been there for very long, and indeed, his on-screen self exits the room after less than a minute and then heads back down the corridor. No change after that, and they’re back to staring at video foortage so still that it might as well be a photograph.

“I should tell you something,” Hyukjae says finally. “This is our first investigation involving a non-human entity in three years.”

Silence for a minute, and then Leeteuk says gently, “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“It’s not that there weren’t any cases, but I… the last time we were involved in an exorcism it didn’t exactly go well for us.”

Hyukjae mentally kicks himself for this instantly; the last thing he needs is to stress Leeteuk further. But Leeteuk only says, very gently, “Were you hurt?”

He sighs. “Not me. Listen, I don’t want to scare you, but it’s never easy to deal with an exorcism. It’s especially hard on Donghae, but he’s incredibly strong. And last time, something managed to damage that.”

“The demon?”

“It did… it did something. I don’t know what, but afterward, Donghae locked himself up at home and didn’t speak for eight days.”

He has to take a few deep breaths, trying hard to concentrate on the screen in front of him. He hasn’t really told anyone apart from Donghae’s own mother, and saying it out loud makes it seem somehow worse.

“So that’s why you’re so careful with him.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“Very,” Leeteuk says.

“The demon showed him something, that’s the best way I can think to describe it. And to be honest, he hasn’t been the same since. That’s when we decided we needed something else in our lives, something positive. And now we have Ara.”

Leeteuk makes a low sound of understanding in his throat. “What did he see?”

Hyukjae clenches his jaw, then relaxes. “I don’t know. And I won’t ask.”

A minute passes, and then Leeteuk reaches over and grabs the mouse. Hyukjae leans out of his way and lets him press the pause button on playback.

“Well,” Leeteuk says, gathering his long-empty coffee mug from the table, “We’re more grateful to you than ever for deciding to help us.”

“Thank Donghae,” Hyukjae says wryly, turning in his seat to watch him walk back across the room.

“You’re both taking risks,” Leeteuk says with a smile.

When he turns to place the cup into the sink, the sleeve of his shirt pulls back from his wrist, and Hyukjae catches a glimpse of something that makes his stomach drop. Hyukjae’s hand is on Leeteuk’s wrist before he realizes he’s even moved, and they both freeze. There’s a dark bruise on the skin of his wrist, spread wide across the side.

“What happened?”

Leeteuk hesitates, eyes a little wide. He shrugs at the same time as he turns his wrist over in Hyukjae’s hand to reveal the rest of the bruise, spreading across the underside, bluish-black and nasty enough that Hyukjae hisses in a breath.

“Nothing,” Leeteuk says. At Hyukjae’s raised eyebrow, he tries again. “I mean, nothing happened that I remember. I think I must be doing it at night. Knocking into the bed in my sleep, that sort of thing.”

“Leeteuk,” Hyukjae says evenly, “You would remember where a bruise like this came from.”

“What’s going on?” comes a voice from the doorway. It’s Kangin, with Donghae hovering close behind him. Kangin looks from Hyukjae to Leeteuk, and then his brows draw in when he focuses on where they’re touching.

Hyukjae steps aside when Kangin comes over, letting go only for Kangin to take Leeteuk’s arm, brushing his sleeve back further. “Woah, when did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Leeteuk finally takes his arm back. “This is why,” he says sharply. “I don’t think they’re a big deal, they’re just bruises.”

“They? There’s more than one?”

Leeteuk swallows, realizing his mistake. He nods, meeting Kangin’s eye, and something passes between them that Hyukjae can’t interpret.

“Leeteuk,” Donghae says, nearly startling Hyukjae with how close he’s gotten to the three of them. “When did the bruises start?”

“Um. Last week, I think.”

“And they’ve been getting worse?”

A nod.

Donghae heads over to the table, picking up a camera. “Can I photograph them, if you don’t mind? For evidence?”

“So it’s related to the… haunting.” Leeteuk doesn’t ask it like a question, more like his suspicions are being confirmed. Hyukjae can say that he’s never seen it, but he’s heard of mysterious bruises happening in cases related to demonic activity, and he knows Donghae is thinking the same. “I don’t mind photos, but do you need a shot of all of them?”

“Jungsoo, how many bruises are we talking, here?” Kangin asks, sounding resigned.

Leeteuk looks a bit like a caged animal and Hyukjae is starting to regret acting without any tact. He taps his finger nervously against his thigh. “Hey, we don’t have to do this here if you’re uncomfortable. Maybe Kangin can take the pictures for us, does that sound okay?”

They all agree on this. Donghae hands over the camera and the two disappear into the house, leaving Hyukjae to catch Donghae’s worried gaze, no doubt a mirror of his own.

“What does this mean?” he says into the quiet room.

Donghae shrugs a bit jerkily. “Nothing good.”

-

Kangin clicks the bathroom door shut gently. He wants to ask it again - why didn’t you tell me - but he bites his tongue.

Leeteuk pushes his fringe back, tugging on it a little. He pushes out a heavy sigh. “I didn’t mean to make it seem like I’m hiding things from anyone. I didn’t want you to worry.”

“I’m worried anyway,” Kangin mutters. He should probably get for that, but Leeteuk doesn’t say anything while Kangin fiddles with the camera. “Okay, how many bruises are we talking, here?”

“Well, there’s this one.” Leeteuk tugs down the collar of his shirt, revealing the edge of a nasty looking bruise just under his clavicle. Kangin bites the inside of his cheek.

“And?”

“And - “ He hesitates. Instead of continuing, he pulls his arms through the long sleeves and levers his shirt over the top of his head, turning so that Kangin can see his back.

There’s another bruise, smaller and darker under his right shoulder blade. Kangin can see another curving around his ribcage, and has to force himself not to touch.

“Do they hurt?” he says at last.

Leeteuk shrugs. “Not really, not unless I bump into anything.”

He turns to face the front, allowing Kangin to fully see the bruise under his collar, and he’s finally hit with a wave of anger towards whatever the hell is the cause of this. It’s extremely frustrating to not be able to do anything about it, so he just concentrates on staying calm while he looks at the sickly yellow of the days-old bruise, tinged in green around the edges. It’s wide and spreads across the right side of his chest, and while its color shows that it’s obviously healing, it’s still nasty enough.

The other bruise, the one Kangin had glimpsed around the Leeteuk’s ribcage, is fresher looking. He remembers the camera when his free hand moves almost involuntarily, and Kangin skates his fingers lightly over the healthy skin just above this rib bruise. Leeteuk doesn’t flinch at all, but his head is lowered. He reminds Kangin of back when everything between them was new and terrifying, back when Leeteuk - Jungsoo - was a closed book and Kangin was nearly as stubborn. But it’s been a very long time since Leeteuk felt like he had anything to hide from Kangin, and he tries not to dwell on the worry. It’s been so many years now since the army days, since Leeteuk had decided he was allowed to be happy as well as strong, and Kangin will be damned if he lets this… thing, whatever it is, make the strongest person he knows feel like he is inadequate.

“Hey.” He moves his hand from Leeteuk’s side and gently takes his chin, waiting until he has eye contact. “We are going to be fine. Okay? This will all be behind us soon.”

Leeteuk doesn’t avoid the eye contact this time, but he doesn’t seem to be listening either. “Youngwoon-ah,” he says, voice like a wound, “Was it really such a good thing, moving away from Seoul?”

“Don’t think like that. We had no idea this would happen.”

“That’s not what I meant. Aren’t we just hiding again? Like we used to?”

Kangin takes a half step back. Hiding again. It takes a moment before he can form a response. He’d be lying if he hadn’t been thinking that moving out of Seoul would put them further from prying eyes, from people who wouldn’t like the two of them raising their boys and who could hurt their family. But really, isn’t Seoul more progressive than the countryside? “We did this for the safety of the kids. They needed more space, they needed smaller class sizes at school, they needed a fresh start. This was a good decision, Teuk.”

“Was it really such a good idea, though, to bring these kids into a home where they risk being mocked - even injured - because of us?”

Kangin stares at him. He bites back the sigh, the we’ve been over this; he can’t imagine why Leeteuk is worried about this again. He doesn’t need to be brushed off, though, Kangin recognizes that. Fortitude. He can lend Leeteuk strength.

“Did you see them this morning?” He waits for Leeteuk’s shoulders to relax. “Yeah. They’re happy. They are really happy. They’re outside right now playing football or something, being together, counting on each other. And what we’re going through with this... this haunting is not our fault. We have help now. Good help. Okay?”

He nods, expression clearing. Kangin pecks his forehead lightly before stepping further back, finally raising the camera for the task at hand. He takes quick shots of all the bruises he can see, plus one on the side of his knee that his jeans won’t roll up far enough to reveal. When the fabric bunches against it and Leeteuk hisses, Kangin makes him awkwardly step out of the pant leg first. He gets the shot, but it takes some fumbling for Leeteuk to get that one pant back on, leaning on Kangin’s shoulder and laughing.

After checking to make sure all of Leeteuk’s clothes are back in place, hiding the bruises from sight and mind, they head back into the kitchen where they had left Donghae and Hyukjae. Kangin edges into the room first, seeing them both sitting shoulder to shoulder, pressing headphones onto their ears and staring at the computer monitors with strict concentration.

“What’s going on now?” he asks, the scene feeling a bit like déjà vu. They both look up at once and Hyukjae waves them over.

“Come here, we think we found some audio. Can you tell us what it sounds like? We can’t figure it out.”

Hyukjae hands his headphones to Kangin and he puts them over his ears, Leeteuk hovering by his shoulder. On the screen is just an audio wavelength, a small window with the video footage playing on the program. The footage is of them all gathered in the common room, focused on Hyukjae as he must have been speaking to thin air. Er, to the demon, or whatever the thing is.

He presses play and the highlighted section of the wavelength begins to play on a loop. It’s probably two seconds long total, and at first it sounds like nothing. Kangin shakes his head.

“Here, for some context - “ Hyukjae plays a longer cut of the audio, the sound of his voice asking, “We’ve dealt with your kind before. You know that, right? Listen, just give it up.”

The EVP audio in question can be heard vaguely, sounding just like some sort of background noise behind the smaller section Hyukjae highlights again: “...that, right? Listen...”

“It’s there, sort of. We’ve tried to isolate it but it’s difficult when the EVP is talked over. It sounds like it’s not a complete sentence, maybe? Through something, near something… or it’s addressing me? ‘You’ something.”

Hyukjae lets Leeteuk listen next, finally settling on that original two seconds of sound, isolated and sounding very distorted, like a sound that hasn’t come from a human throat. Unplugging the headphones so they can all hear, Kangin feels like his eyes are crossing, watching the spikes of the wavelength play over and over. He mouths to words to himself, trying to figure out what he could be hearing, and he is close to giving up and suggesting that it’s just a stray sound, not a ghost talking or anything like that, when Leeteuk suggests, “Could it be a name? Chanyeol? Jinoo?”

“Jin Oh,” Donghae says, very quietly.

There’s a pause, and then Hyukjae slams a pair of headphones over his ears and plugs them in with fingers that, Kangin can’t help but to notice, are shaking.

“You’re right,” he says after a moment, cold and hard. Removing the headphones once again, Hyukjae slams them on the table and stands up.

“Hyukjae,” Donghae tries, settling a hand on his elbow, but Hyukjae just says “Jin Oh,” the name heavy with a meaning that Kangin cannot begin to grasp, has no frame of reference for. Then he steps back from the table and pushes past them all, stalking out of the room as Donghae scrambles to follow, saying, “Hyukjae, wait;” disappearing into the corridor and leaving Kangin to exchange a wide eyed glance with Leeteuk, completely baffled.

The audio is still playing on repeat, coming muffled through the headphones. Leeteuk leans in, the both of them now ignoring the distant sounds of an argument that is now taking place at the front of the house, and on the computer, he presses stop.

-

Next time: Some mysteries are solved, and gets real.

ETA: If the end of this chapter confuses you, check out this story's prologue again :) I know it's been ages since this story began posting....