“I don’t want to,” Baekhyun whined, puckering his lower lip out in the same pout that had always worked on his mother when he was a child.

Yixing grunted, hoisting a box onto his shoulder. “You have to,” he said, a rivulet of sweat sliding down his jawline.

“Says who?” Baekhyun challenged, picking up a second box and following Yixing out of the room. “It’s weird.”

“It may be weird,” Yixing said, leading the way down the corridor towards the stairs. “But it’s tradition. Every head of the Kim family resides in those apartments. They’re literally built specifically for the family head.”

“Madame has only been dead a week,” Baekhyun pointed out, following his friend reluctantly. “It feels, I dunno, sacrilegious or something to already be moving into her rooms. It’s like a freaking tomb in there…”

“So make it more homey with your own personal touches or something,” Yixing grunted; the box he was carrying was quite a bit heavier than the one Baekhyun had. “It’s already been thoroughly cleaned out, all Madame’s things moved to storage. Don’t think of them as Madame’s rooms. Just think of it like it’s just been built, specifically for you.”

Baekhyun snorted. “As if I could.”

In all reality, the set of rooms he was currently moving into was elegant, a mixture of refined class and opulence that could easily grace the cover of any home décor magazine. The sitting room was large and airy, with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the gardens. The cold, wintry light slanted through them to cast shadows across the polished wooden floors and thick Persian rugs. Beyond the sitting room was the bedroom, an enormous four-poster bed in the center of the back wall. Attached was the dressing room and bathroom, both more than twice the size of his bedroom back in Mangyang.

“God this is weird,” Baekhyun reiterated, dropping the box he was carrying onto the floor beside the glass coffee table. “It still smells like her.”

“So burn some incense or something,” Yixing said, dropping his own box on top of Baekhyun’s and rubbing his lower back. “Jeez, you complain a lot. I guess you really are turning into a Kim.”

Baekhyun frowned. “Don’t say that,” he muttered. “I’m never going to be like them.”

“Tell the curse that,” Yixing said, accepting the bottle of water Baekhyun held out to him.

Baekhyun sat down heavily on the sofa and gestured for Yixing to join him. “We’ve got to do something,” he said decisively. “Now that Madame is gone and I’m really the head of the family, both in name and authority, there’s no one to get in my way. I need you to get me all the books you can find on curses. From anywhere you can find them.”

“Is this our secret or can I delegate?” Yixing asked, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “There are a ton of places I can try to find books at.”

Baekhyun hummed as he though it over. “It’s not a secret, per se, but I don’t want just anybody to know about it. Just the trustworthy ones. You know, like you, Luhan, Kyungsoo, and them.”

“What about Chanyeol?” Yixing asked.

Baekhyun blushed and examined his friend’s face to see if there as any hidden meaning behind his words, but it seemed like Yixing didn’t know anything about the kiss he and Chanyeol had shared after Madame’s untimely death.

“Yeah,” he muttered, running his fingers through his loose hair. “Chanyeol is fine. Trustworthy, I mean.”

So it was that Yixing and the others went in search of every book they could find on curses. They scoured all the libraries in Seoul and even some in the surrounding areas. They contacted educators and specialists who studied the occult, and purchased other books online.

Baekhyun ended up with hundreds of books. He kept them shoved away in the back of his huge closet, where hopefully none of the regular staff would notice them. He spent every spare moment he had poring over the books, in the car on the way to work to sitting on the toilet and everywhere in between.

He was sitting up in bed one evening with one of the books open on his laps. It was closer to dawn than midnight now, and his eyes were heavy with exhaustion. It had been over a month since Madame had died, and, even though he and the others had looked through countless books on curses and the occult, he hadn’t come across a single thing that could possibly help him in his quest to end the Kim family curse.

After re-reading the same page three times in a row without actually taking in anything it said, his frustration boiled over. With a low growl deep in his throat, he threw the offending book across the room. It collided with the paneling with an echoing thud and landed facedown on the carpet, a few pages bent out of shape.

Baekhyun was so sleep deprived that it took him almost an entire minute to realize that the book had hit something other than solid wood.

Some of his exhaustion slipping away, he pulled back the covers and padded barefoot over to the wall. He rapped on the panel sharply with his knuckles; it echoed back at him. He moved to the next panel over and did the same; this time he was met with the dull knock of solid wood. He tried the first panel again and was again met with a hollow echo.

Feeling an unfamiliar excitement coursing through his veins, he was no longer sleepy at all. Too eager to even throw on a dressing gown or socks, he shoved his feet into the nearest pair of shoes and rushed from the room. Because of the house, he didn’t encounter anyone as he ran down the stairs into the foyer. He pulled back the painting that hid the alarm system, disabled it, and ran outside.

It was nearly February, and though the drive and sidewalks had been meticulously shoveled, the grounds were thick with snow. Still, there was no straight path between the main house and the tool sheds, and Baekhyun was in too much of a hurry to follow the sidewalks. So he plowed straight through the snow, soaking his pajama pants in the process, until he reached the tool shed.

There, he found it locked. Crying out in frustration, he grabbed the handles on the door and shook them violently. They didn’t budge.

A light from the nearby caretaker’s hut flickered on and the door opened, silhouetting a familiar figure. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Luhan,” Baekhyun grumbled, still gripping the frozen metal door handles.

“Baek?” Luhan said incredulously, coming closer and squinting through the darkness. He took in Baekhyun, wearing soaked pajama pants, a sleeveless shirt, and an expensive pair of dress shoes that were probably now ruined. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I need in the tool shed,” Baekhyun replied breathlessly, feeling hopeful again. “Do you have the keys?”

“You need to get into the tool shed?” Luhan repeated. “At three o’clock in the morning?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Baekhyun screeched. “Do you have the keys or not?”

“I-uh…yeah, yeah, I do,” Luhan replied uncertainly. “Hang on just a second…”

He disappeared back into the caretaker’s hut and emerged a minute later, wearing a heavy coat and warm boots.

“What’s this all about?” he demanded, crunching over the snow towards the tool shed. He pulled a heavy set of keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door. “What’s going on?”

“I dunno,” Baekhyun muttered, launching himself into the shed. “But hopefully something big.” He searched around desperately for something useful, nearly cutting himself on a handsaw in the process. Then he spotted an axe hanging on the wall. He grinned breathlessly, snatched it off the wall, and took off for the main house again at a full sprint.

“Baek!” Luhan shouted after him. “Baekhyun!”

But Baekhyun didn’t stop.

He took the stairs three at a time until he skidded to a stop in his bedroom, throwing himself down in front of the hollow panel. Taking a deep breath, he swung his arms back and brought the axe down into the wall. It splintered with a satisfying crunch. Over and over again he hacked at the wall, the wood cracking around the axe head.

He had just created a big enough hole to peer in when Luhan appeared, Yixing right behind him. “What the hell is going on?” Yixing demanded, his hair disheveled from sleep and his accent stronger than Baekhyun had ever heard it. “Luhan says you’ve lost your damn mind!”

Baekhyun reached into the hole he had created, his finger closing around a dust wooden box. He pulled it through the hole, his heart pounding. He glanced up at his friends.

“I think I found something…”

There was a long silence while Luhan and Yixing looked at him, concern etched clearly in every feature.

Then Yixing said, “Well what are you waiting for? Open it already!”

The three of them crowded close together while Baekhyun wrenched open the box. The hinges creaked almost ominously. Inside, they found piles of old, yellowed, faded letters. Every one of them was addressed to Kim Hoik.

“Jeez, these must be over a hundred years old…” Luhan breathed, reverently picking up one of the letters. It was brittle and looked like it could crumble between his fingers if he wasn’t careful.

“Clearly, nobody wanted these found,” Yixing said. “They must’ve been buried in this wall for ages… How did you discover they were there?”

“I threw a book at the wall and it sounded like there was an empty space behind it,” Baekhyun explained, taking one of the letters off the top of the pile.

Yixing rolled his eyes. “Do I even need to ask why you were throwing books?”

“Forget about it,” Baekhyun muttered, flipped the letter over and carefully removing it from the envelope. The other two crowded around him as they all read it silently.

“It’s from Woo Yewon,” Yixing muttered.

Luhan frowned. “The witch?”

“There’s no such thing as witches,” Yixing replied almost automatically.

“Just like there’s no such thing as curses,” Baekhyun said sarcastically.

“Well, let’s read through them,” Luhan exclaimed. “Maybe there will be something here that’ll help us at least understand the curse a little bit better.”

Yixing frowned. “There are a lot of letters here,” he pointed out. “Over a hundred, easily. Maybe even two hundred.”

“She must’ve really loved him to write this many letters,” Luhan said dreamily.

“Yeah, well clearly the feeling wasn’t mutual, since Kim Hoik had her burned at the stake,” Baekhyun muttered. “Let’s each take some. We’ll get through them faster that way.”

So they each grabbed a pile of letters and began reading through them. The room was silent save for the occasional rasp of old paper.

The sun had long since risen when Luhan suddenly let out a sharp gasp. It was so sudden and loud in the quiet room that Baekhyun jumped and accidentally tore the letter he was currently holding.

“What is it?” Yixing demanded urgently.

“Serious drama,” Luhan said eagerly. “Get this: Woo Yewon was pregnant!”

“Pregnant?” Baekhyun repeated, the torn letter in his hands forgotten. “Like, pregnant with Kim Hoik’s baby?”

“According to this letter, yeah,” Luhan said, passing it over so Baekhyun and Yixing could read it for themselves. “And it seems like she was pretty far along by the time she wrote this letter.”

“What’s the date on it?” Yixing asked quickly.

“March of 1832,” Baekhyun read aloud. “That was the same year Kim Hoik married his wife, Namjoo.”

“I’m sure that didn’t go over well with Hoik,” Luhan said. “Maybe her being pregnant is the reason he her and accused her of being a witch?”

There was a long pause while they all mulled over this new piece of information.

It was Baekhyun who finally broke it. “So if Woo Yewon was pregnant,” he said slowly. “What happened to her child?”

So I know you guys thought I was never coming back, but surprise! Here I am! 

I lied before (obviously) about finishing this story before baby number 2 arrived. Well she's 2 months old now (nearly 3!) which is super crazy to think about. Luckily for me, she's an AMAZING sleeper and takes a loooong nap at the same time as my 2.5 year old. Sooooo I managed to actually completely finish this story! Like it's already done so I'm not liar anymore lol I'll post a chaper a day or every other day until it's finished. If you're still with me after all this time, I really super appreciate it!